Steven Pinker -- How the Mind Works - Hampshire High Italian ...

Family Values 479All of these intrigues come from a single difference between the sexes,men's greater desire for multiple partners. But men are not completelyindiscriminate, and women are not voiceless in any but the most despoticsocieties. Each sex has criteria for picking partners for liaisons and for marriages.Like other staunch human tastes, they appear to be adaptations.Both sexes want spouses, and men want liaisons more than womendo, but that does not mean women never want liaisons. If they never didwant them, the male urge to philander could not have evolved because itwould never have been rewarded (unless the philanderer could alwaystrick his conquest into thinking he was courting her as a wife—but eventhen, a married woman should never philander or be a target of philandering).Men's testicles would not have evolved to their larger-thangorillaproportions, for their sperm would never be in danger of beingoutnumbered. And jealous feelings directed at wives would not exist; aswe shall see, they do exist. The ethnographic record shows that in allsocieties, both sexes commit adultery, and the women do not always takearsenic or throw themselves under the 5:02 from St. Petersburg.What could ancestral women have gained from liaisons that wouldhave allowed the desire to evolve? One reward is resources. If men wantsex for its own sake, women can make them pay for it. In foraging societies,women openly demand gifts from their lovers, usually meat. Youmay be offended at the thought that our foremothers gave themselvesaway for a steak dinner, but to foraging peoples in lean times when highqualityprotein is scarce, meat is an obsession. (In Pygmalion, whenDoolittle tries to sell his daughter Eliza to Higgins, Pickering shouts,"Have you no morals, man?" Doolittle replies, "Can't afford them, Governor.Neither could you if you was as poor as me.") From a distance itsounds like prostitution, but to the people involved it may feel more likeordinary etiquette, much as a woman in our own society might beoffended if a wealthier lover never took her out to dinner or spent moneyon her, though both parties would deny there is a quid pro quo. In questionnaires,female college students report that an extravagant lifestyleand a willingness to give gifts are important qualities in picking a shorttermlover, though not in picking a husband.And like many birds, a woman could seek genes from the best-qualitymale and investment from her husband, because they are unlikely to be