The Evolution of Human Sexuality

The Evolution of Human Sexuality

Cover of the first edition
Author Donald Symons
Country United States
Language English
Subject Human sexuality
Published 1979 (Oxford University Press)
Media type Print (hardcover and paperback)
Pages 358 (first edition)
ISBN 978-0195029079

The Evolution of Human Sexuality is a 1979 book about human sexuality by anthropologist Donald Symons, in which Symons discusses topics including sexual anatomy, ovulation, orgasm, homosexuality, sexual promiscuity, and rape. Commentators have called The Evolution of Human Sexuality a classic work on human sexual evolution, though it has also been criticized on various grounds.

Background

According to Symons, the ideas that he developed in The Evolution of Human Sexuality were partly inspired by a conversation he had with ethologist Richard Dawkins in 1968. Symons found that Dawkins had independently reached conclusions about human sexual behavior similar to his.[1] Symons presented an early draft of the book during a 1974 seminar on primate and human sexuality he co-taught with anthropologist Donald Brown. Symons argued in the draft that there are universal human sex differences.[2]

Summary

Symons discusses "the evolution of human sexuality and, more particularly, the evolution of typical differences between men and women in sexual behaviors, attitudes, and feelings." Symons contrasts his views with those of Shulamith Firestone, as expressed in The Dialectic of Sex (1970).[3] Symons surveys human sexual behavior and discusses the development of human ovulation.[4][5] He argues that in all societies, sex is typically conceived of as a female service or favor.[6] Symons argues that gay men have on average more sexual partners than straight men, and many more than straight women, because gay men do not have to compromise with the different sexual tastes and inclinations of women. Gay men's sexual behavior is an exaggerated version of universal male tendencies, while lesbian women's sexual behavior is an exaggerated version of universal female tendencies. Symons suggests that straight men would have as many sexual partners as gay men if they had the opportunity.[7] In his discussion of homosexuality, Symons cites Clarence Arthur Tripp's The Homosexual Matrix (1975). Symons writes that Tripp's hypothesis that erotic feeling depends on resistance makes adaptive sense, since females may almost always have been a scare sexual resource in natural human habitats and selection favors the experience of pleasure or satisfaction not only in consummation but in the effort to consummate.[8]

Discussing rape, Symons criticizes Susan Brownmiller's Against Our Will (1975) and her argument that rape is not sexually motivated. Symons remarks of Brownmiller's book that, "Perhaps no major work since Konrad Lorenz's On Aggression has so inadequately documented its major thesis".[9]

Scholarly reception

1979–1989

Anthropologist Clifford Geertz criticized The Evolution of Human Sexuality in a review in The New York Review of Books, writing that "virtually none" of Symons' claims are based on research Symons conducted himself, and that he has "made no direct inquiries into human sexuality", instead basing himself on anthropological reports and other material, resulting in a book that is "a pastiche more than a study". Geertz writes that while the evaluation of Symons' characterizations of male and female homosexuals "may be left to those more competent to judge them" he sees them as being at "about the level of descriptions of the Irish as garrulous and the Sherpas as loyal"; Geertz added that whether Symons' "undigested, fragmentary, surface observations" support his claims about differences between male and female sexuality "seems at least questionable."[10]

Author Brian Easlea writes that while Symons sees desire for anonymous sex as characteristic of men in general, it is actually typical only of sexist men. Easlea responds to Symons' argument that socializing men to "want only the kinds of sexual interactions that women want...might well entail a cure worse than the disease" that he believes that "the cure would be very much better than the disease."[11]

Biologists Richard Lewontin and Steven Rose, and psychologist Leon Kamin write in Not in Our Genes (1984) that, like some other sociobiologists, Symons maintains that "the manifest trait is not itself coded by genes, but that a potential is coded and the trait only arises when the appropriate environmental cue is given." In their view, "Despite its superficial appearance of dependence on environment, this model is completely genetically determined, independent of the environment." They write that Symons' arguments in The Evolution of Human Sexuality provide examples "of how sociobiological theory can explain anything, no matter how contradictory, by a little mental gymnastics".[12]

Biologist Anne Fausto-Sterling writes that while Symons believes that rape should be eliminated, he also states in The Evolution of Human Sexuality that the rearing conditions needed to eliminate rape "might well entail a cure worse than the disease." Of that statement, Fausto-Sterling comments, "Worse for whom, one might wonder."[13] Professor of Russian Daniel Rancour-Laferriere writes that The Evolution of Human Sexuality is an "important treatise", but argues that while Symons questions whether the female orgasm is adaptive, the evidence Symons cites about animal behavior should have led him to suspect otherwise.[14] Philosopher Michael Ruse writes in Homosexuality: A Philosophical Inquiry (1988) that Symons' hypothesis about male homosexual promiscuity may possibly be correct, but still depends on controversial and disputable claims.[15]

Ethologist Irenäus Eibl-Eibesfeldt, discussing why there are no "visible signs of estrus in the human female", questions Symons' argument that the absence of visible estrus in women developed so that they could "offer themselves to men to obtain portions of the booty from the hunt", pointing out that "prey is already shared in chimpanzees without any such sexual reward by the partner." Eibl-Eibesfeldt rejects Symons' hypothesis that the female orgasm has no function because it occurs infrequently, calling it "unacceptable".[16]

1990–present

Author Jared Diamond calls The Evolution of Human Sexuality "outstanding" in The Third Chimpanzee (1991).[17] Law professor Richard Posner calls it the "best single book on the sociobiology of sex, as far as I am able to judge".[18] Anthropologist Helen Fisher criticizes Symons' views on homosexuality, writing that he wrongly believes that "homosexual behavior illustrates essential truths about male and female sexual natures".[19] Psychologists Steven Pinker and Paul Bloom write that Symons' observation that "tribal chiefs are often both gifted orators and highly polygynous is a splendid prod to any imagination that cannot conceive of how linguistic skills could make a Darwinian difference."[20]

Journalist Matt Ridley writes in The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature (1993) that the implications of Symons' ideas about the evolution of gender differences were revolutionary, since "the overwhelming majority of the research that social scientists had done on human sexuality was infused with the assumption that there are no mental differences" between the sexes. Ridley endorses Symons' argument about male homosexual promiscuity.[21] Psychologist David Buss identifies The Evolution of Human Sexuality as "the most important treatise on the evolution of human sexuality in the twentieth century" and a "classic treatise".[22] Journalist Robert Wright calls The Evolution of Human Sexuality "the first comprehensive anthropological survey of human sexual behavior from the new Darwinian perspective" in The Moral Animal (1994).[4]

Philosopher Maxine Sheets-Johnstone writes that The Evolution of Human Sexuality is "used as a textbook and is considered a major formulation of human sexuality"; Sheets-Johnstone sees as the work "a paradigm of the prevailing Western biological view" of female sexuality, which she considers "essentially male".[23] Literary critic Joseph Carroll calls The Evolution of Human Sexuality "a standard work on the subject", but criticizes Symons' arguments about homosexuality.[24] Sociologist Tim Megarry dismisses The Evolution of Human Sexuality as, "a projection of American dating culture onto prehistory."[25]

Anthropologist Meredith Small writes that there is evidence to support Symons' view that the female clitoris has no purpose in evolutionary terms, and actually results from an embryonic connection with the male penis. Citing the work of sex researchers Masters and Johnson, she notes that the clitoris is made of the same tissue as the penis and responds sexually in a similar manner.[26] Evolutionary biologist George C. Williams calls The Evolution of Human Sexuality one of the classic books on "the biology of human sexual attitudes", alongside the work of anthropologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy.[27] Alan F. Dixson describes Symons' argument about male homosexual promiscuity as "interesting".[28]

Biologist Paul R. Ehrlich describes The Evolution of Human Sexuality as a "classic but controversial treatise on human sexual evolution", and identifies Symons' study of the development of human ovulation as a landmark.[29] Biologist Randy Thornhill and anthropologist Craig T. Palmer write in A Natural History of Rape (2000) that Symons was the first author to propose that rape is "a by-product of adaptations designed for attaining sexual access to consenting partners." They note that Symons has falsely been accused of basing his arguments on the assumption that "behavior is genetically determined", even though he explicitly rejects that assumption and criticizes it at length. Thornhill and Palmer endorse Symons' argument about male homosexual promiscuity.[30] Pinker calls The Evolution of Human Sexuality "groundbreaking" in The Blank Slate (2002).[6]

Anthropologist Melvin Konner calls The Evolution of Human Sexuality "the classic introduction to the evolutionary dimensions" of sex.[31]

References

Footnotes

Bibliography

Books
  • Brown, Donald E. (1991). Human Universals. New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc. ISBN 0-07-008209-X. 
  • Buss, David (2003). The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating. New York: Basic Books. ISBN 978-0465008025. 
  • Carroll, Joseph (1995). Evolution and Literary Theory. Columbia: University of Minnesota Press. ISBN 0-8262-0979-3. 
  • Diamond, Jared (2006). The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal. New York: Harper Perennial. ISBN 978-0-06-084550-6. 
  • Dixson, Alan F. (1998). Primate Sexuality: Comparative Studies of the Prosimians, Monkeys, Apes, and Human Beings. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-850182-X. 
  • Easlea, Brian (1981). Science and Sexual Oppression: Patriarchy's Confrontation with Woman and Nature. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. ISBN 0 297 77894 3. 
  • Ehrlich, Paul (2000). Human Natures: Genes, Cultures, and the Human Prospect. Washington: Island Press/Shearwater Books. ISBN 1-55963-779-X. 
  • Eibl-Eibesfeldt, Irenäus (1989). Human Ethology. New York: Aldine de Gruyter. ISBN 0-202-02030-4. 
  • Fausto-Sterling, Anne (1985). Myths of Gender: Biological Theories About Women and Men. New York: Basic Books. ISBN 0-465-04790-4. 
  • Fisher, Helen E. (1992). Anatomy of Love: The Natural History of Monogamy, Adultery, and Divorce. New York: W. W. Norton and Company. ISBN 0-393-03423-2. 
  • Konner, Melvin (2002). The Tangled Wing: Biological Constraints on the Human Spirit. New York: Times Books. ISBN 0-7167-4602-6. 
  • Megarry, Tim (1995). Society in Prehistory: The Origins of Human Culture. New York: New York University Press. ISBN 0-8147-5538-0. 
  • Pinker, Steven (2003). The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. London: Penguin Books. ISBN 0-140-27605-X. 
  • Pinker, Steven; Bloom, Paul (1992). Barkow, Jerome H; et al., eds. The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-510107-3. 
  • Posner, Richard (1992). Sex and Reason. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-80279-9. 
  • Rancour-Laferriere, Daniel (1985). Signs of the Flesh: An Essay on the Evolution of Hominid Sexuality. Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. ISBN 0-253-20673-1. 
  • Ridley, Matt (1994). The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature. London: Penguin Books. ISBN 0-14-029124-5. 
  • Rose, Steven; Lewontin, Richard; Kamin, Leon (1990). Not in Our Genes: Biology, Ideology and Human Nature. London: Penguin Books. ISBN 0-14-013525-1. 
  • Ruse, Michael (1988). Homosexuality: A Philosophical Inquiry. New York: Basil Blackwell. ISBN 0-631-15275-X. 
  • Sheets-Johnstone, Maxine (1994). The Roots of Power: Animate Form and Gendered Bodies. Chicago and La Sale, Illinois: Open Court. ISBN 0-8126-9258-6. 
  • Small, Meredith F. (1996). Female Choices: Sexual Behavior of Female Primates. New York: Cornell University Press. ISBN 0-8014-8305-0. 
  • Symons, Donald (1979). The Evolution of Human Sexuality. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19502535-0. 
  • Thornhill, Randy; Palmer, Craig T. (2000). A Natural History of Rape: Biological Bases of Sexual Coercion. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-20125-9. 
  • Williams, George C. (1997). The Pony Fish's Glow: And Other Clues to Plan and Purpose in Nature. New York: BasicBooks. ISBN 0-465-07281-X. 
  • Wright, Robert (1994). The Moral Animal: Evolutionary Psychology and Everyday Life. London: Little, Brown and Company. ISBN 0-316-87501-5. 
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