Posts Tagged ‘Sex differences’
Sunday, August 8th, 2010 by Mel Konner
Note: By invitation, I’ve started a blog on the Psychology Today website, and my latest post can be read there or here, although different (and likely more numerous) comments will be posted there. This entry resembles and updates one I posted here in March 2009, which was followed by an interesting exchange on “insatiable widows” and other cross-cultural myths.
We hear a lot about sex differences, and arguments rage over which are real. Evolutionary theorists weigh in about why this or that difference should be expected, while some anthropologists say cultures vary so much that generalizations are folly. But of all Darwinian predictions about la différence, few are as logical as the one about sex differences in sexuality. Here’s why.
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Tags: evolutionary psychology, gender, sex, Sex differences, sex drive, sexual desire, sexuality
Posted in My Blog | No Comments »
Sunday, November 29th, 2009 by Mel Konner
My friend and colleague Alice Schaerr Rossi, a co-founder of the National Organization for Women and one of the leading sociologists of her generation, died on November 3 at age 87.
For a few years in the ‘70s and ‘80s, I worked with her and Jane Lancaster, a distinguished anthropologist now at the University of New Mexico and editor of the journal Human Nature, on a committee of the Social Science Research Council, and both of them affected my thinking about gender. (more…)
Tags: Alice Rossi, difference feminism, gender, menstrual cycle and mood, mothers, parenting, Sex differences
Posted in My Blog | 5 Comments »
Monday, June 29th, 2009 by Mel Konner
My friend and colleague Prof. David Blumenthal wrote this comment on my last posting, and I try to answer it below.
Dear Mel,
I’m not sure I agree that educating women is the way to go. As long as Islamic
men have the following cluster of problems, no amount of women’s education
will work:
(1) Islamic men have no empowerment - not economic, not religious, not
political, etc. This is also why Arabs can’t negotiate a peace; they have to
be empowered, to win. (2) Islamic men believe that submission is the
ultimate value - for themselves and especially for those who defy them. (more…)
Tags: Arab cultures, educating girls, evolutionary psychology, gender, gender gap, Iran, Iranian protests, religion, Sex differences, sexism, women's rights
Posted in My Blog | 3 Comments »
Wednesday, April 15th, 2009 by Mel Konner
In response to my last posting, “Sex Lives, Male and Female,” reader Clare wrote this thoughtful comment:
“I’m curious what you make of the ethnographic accounts from cultures where widows are considered to be insatiable sex fiends? Is this how fear of women expresses itself, that they become more interested in sex than is considered usual? Or is there some truth to the folklore? Is there any evidence that sexual interest waxes and wanes (so to speak) over the life course of men and women?”
I thought it well worth answering at length: (more…)
Tags: education, evolutionary psychology, female sexuality, gender, gender gap, male dominance, Pakistan, patriarchy, polygamy, sex, Sex differences, sexism, sexual desire, sexual drive, suttee, Taliban, widows
Posted in My Blog | 4 Comments »
Sunday, November 30th, 2008 by Mel Konner
Is terrorism really “unnatural”?
I watched in sadness but, alas, not in shock, as India suffered its own 9/11. Casualties were far fewer but the impact was similar because the action was brilliantly as well as savagely executed.
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Tags: ethnic conflict, evolutionary psychology, human nature, India, Mumbai, Sex differences, terrorism, violence
Posted in My Blog | 6 Comments »
Saturday, August 30th, 2008 by Mel Konner
McCain’s VP Pick Makes Darwinian and Boasian Sense
Shock and awe. That had to be one thought in McCain’s mind when he picked a little-known governor of Alaska–the state one pundit called an overgrown igloo–to stand a heartbeat away from his seat in the Oval Office, his age and cancer history be damned.
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Tags: affirmative action, culture, Darwin, evolutionary psychology, gender, human nature, motherhood, Politics, Presidential election, Sex differences, sociobiology
Posted in My Blog | 4 Comments »
Saturday, August 2nd, 2008 by Mel Konner
Evil is real, and so are evil genes.
Today I stumbled on a C-SPAN presentation by Barbara Oakley about her book Evil Genes: Why Rome Fell, Hitler Rose, Enron Failed, and My Sister Stole My Mother’s Boyfriend. I haven’t read the book, but it evidently overlaps with many things I’ve long thought and written myself, in The Tangled Wing and elsewhere.
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Tags: antisocial personality, borderline personality, evolution, gender, genes, genetics, human nature, malignant narcissism, Politics, psychopath, reproductive success, Sex differences, sociobiology
Posted in My Blog | 1 Comment »
Saturday, June 7th, 2008 by Mel Konner
Prejudices change slowly, but they change.
Anthropologists take the long view. Fads come and go–hula hoops, Heavy Metal–but where it counts, culture change–cultural evolution, really–is slow.
Take racial equality for instance. I am always amazed by people who say that affirmative action has gone on long enough.
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Tags: affirmative action, cultural evolution, gender, hunter gatherers, hunting and gathering, Kung, Politics, Presidential election, race, Sex differences
Posted in My Blog | 4 Comments »
Saturday, May 24th, 2008 by Mel Konner
Maternal yearning has its day in court
In early April Texas state authorities entered the compound of a polygamous sect and took as many as 468 children into custody for their own protection, following an anonymous phone call accusing the sect of promoting sex between grown men and girls as young as thirteen.
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Tags: children, evolution, motherhood, polygamy, Sex differences, sociobiology
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Saturday, April 26th, 2008 by Mel Konner
When men get together, dangerous things can happen
A recent talk about terrorism sent me back to 1969, when a classic in sociobiology was published. It was called Men in Groups, and it had a straightforward thesis: “The behavior of men in groups in part reflects an underlying biologically transmitted ‘propensity’ with roots in human evolutionary history.”
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Tags: Politics, Sex differences, sociobiology, terrorism
Posted in My Blog | No Comments »
Sex differences 
