Evolution: Is sexual selection sexist?

[RainbowUnicorn]

Men generally like closeups because they are more visually stimulated.

i think you may be a little behind the science on this one.
visual stimulation by gender has been well and truly tested and the results show a leaning of around 10% bias toward women being more visually stimulated than males.

as for the nature of porn, close ups Vs emotional themes....
i think it is nonsensical to define one as being more or less than the other as both are visual stimulation. just different types.

generically speaking males are inclined toward natural selection for fast copulation in any possible environment, where as females will have a strong leaning toward atmospheric safety and resources for brooding and birthing.

thus i think the debate needs an awful lot more work done to outline and then dismiss various natural tendencies to come to a general equal measure(assuming there was some intent to quantify the difference on a sameness measure.

RE the monkeys... there is different drives to equate group survival which have been omitted for some reason.
males being the larger stronger group protectors will be more drawn to things that are unusual and of strange and bright colours.
the babys/dolls were very life like for the monkeys so females being maternally selected would be drawn to them to care for them.

did it not seem odd that all the trucks were coloured bright contrasting colours ?
... and why no sticks or rocks painted pink or blue ?
it clearly shows the dice is loaded and made for popular TV audiences rather than true scientific analysis.

[Ben the Donkey]

That was perfect.

Thanks, Ben.

Perfect for a moment, perhaps; but far from it, personally speaking. I mean the bit about the light switch and the cave were rather lovely (if unpolished), poetically speaking, but one might have been able to pull me up just a little on the philosophical aspects, ja?
Don't doubt for a second I  haven't been. And by extension, waiting here for someone else to do so. We are social animals, and I require validation as much as the next man. Well, perhaps not "as much"... 

Perhaps a small lesson on the futility of placing beauty before utility? One causing not a small amount of personal pain, I might add. 
A lesson originally not designed, but conceived of only in afterthought.
There is so much... conflict. Yet conflict is an enforcing factor in evolution. No gain without pain, they say in the health clubs, but it applies to science and philosophy as much. Being able to understand the perspective of both, yet adopting one or another as expedient, is... difficult. 
Wheat, chaff, beer. 

All the way back to the OP, m'dear, because we have become more than a little sidetracked. Sort of, not really, and somewhat. 


[*]It's not that these facts aren't necessarily facts, or whatever. It's that it's too simple and biased toward some stories, ignoring others.

Yes. 

[*]Knowledgeable people aren't objecting to facts. They're objecting to biased story-telling and its annoying and harmful consequences.

Oh my, yes. In addition to watching every step to ensure one doesn't fall into the same trap. "Know thyself" being the ultimate goal - and yet one most never achieve even if they claim to. 


[*]What about the other side of the sexual dimorphism story? The women? Selection could well be the reason they stop growing before men.

A small point. More a... hmm. Piece of evidence, than a point in itself. How does the old saying go, "the prettiest flower is soonest visited by the bee"? So the flower should be ready, as the bee really isn't going to care much. I might also make some comment here about "legal age"... but one must watch ones step on occasion. 


[*]
What constitutes "pretty" varies both subjectively, and not at all. Aesthetic fads survive as long as they are not detrimental, and as long as they depend at least in part upon some scientific basis. 
Imagine, as a question. In the times if the hunter-gatherers, what would a woman have looked like? Apart from facial looks alone... fat? thin? athletic?  
Why the historical aesthetic  interest, then, in "voluptuous" women? Skinny ones? Athletic ones, over time?
And why (related) the "sudden" interest in what men look like?

[*]Perhaps men can make babies while growing, but perhaps women can't. Energetically, metabolically. So reproduction wins over growth.

Men can make babies at nearly any stage of their lives, which is something noted upon on several occasions, here and elsewhere. Women have a time frame, outside of which they may or may not be successful. I made a note of that when talking about age-appropriateness in the modern world being an artificial thing; in the animal kingdom, it really doesn't factor in at all. We could make a separate thread about age-appropriateness sometime, probably, but I'm sure you'll know what I'm likely to say. If I were to give an arbitrary figure, I'd say 20 years - 30, in this day and age, in favour of the male. Given a pair-bonding scenario, of course. And with the caveat that all things remain equal, economically speaking. 

[*]...and it's as if women don't exist at all in these tales except as objects for males to fight over or to fuck but it's nice to have choice!

This last point I wanted to address in particular, as it may represent a rather nice example of cognitive bias. I think, too, that it is mostly what you had in mind when posting this thread. 
Do those women really not exist? Or are you referring to those women as they value themselves - as feeling, cognitive humans? 
Do you, personally, not evaluate your own attractiveness? Emphasise one point over another, rate yourself against other women? 
Perhaps most importantly - as far as physical attractiveness goes, who are your greatest critics? Women, or men? 


Fairy tales, right? The Princess? Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzel?
Why is the princess always beautiful?
Why haven't the standards for what an attractive woman is changed since television was invented, yet the standards for what makes a man attractive have?

We've seen trends in men change from the Carey Grant type, to nerds, to sensitive new age guys.
The biggest concession I've seen in the last 50 years is the (Asian!) character of Glenn in "The Walking Dead" - and he's a former pizza delivery guy who transfers his skills to the post-apocalyptic world. You know, quite reasonably competent, but also enjoys the advantage of being unmarried, not a redneck, fairly intelligent... and one of the last living guys on earth. 

Contrasted with "Ugly Betty", who was essentially a very attractive girl who was made "ugly" by dint of having to wear braces and a pair of unflattering specs. 
I'd doubt there'd be too many men on earth who'd kick America Ferrera out of bed. Even if she were as dumb as a box of rocks. 


So. What is it we're really talking about here. The extent to which women really have a choice in their mates?
How they go about making that choice? 

Over to you.

[Zinjanthropos]

Didn't before but now I see the need for online dating sites. 

I imagine myself on the prowl sitting at a table with women discussing the merits of sexual selection, a scene right out of Sex and the City, and then discreetly excusing myself before getting lost. Don't get me wrong, I admire intellect but is it physically attractive or sending the right signal? I don't ever remember seeking out women with fantastic minds, I was too focused on other attributes. Call it sexist but I wouldn't have cared even if it was.

But none of that really mattered. Eventually one chooses. Fortunately I chose wisely in the end. My wife had a university degree, she's not a runway model, and is a great mother and all round caring individual. I didn't think of any of that stuff when I popped the question. We just got along well. 

As for initial introductions, Eli Wallach (Tuco) said it best in the Good, the Bad and the Ugly, 'If you're going to shoot.....shoot! Don't talk'

[RainbowUnicorn]

Why haven't the standards for what an attractive woman is changed since television was invented, yet the standards for what makes a man attractive have?

excellent question.
is it a perception ?
what do women have to say about what they feel are the expectations put on to them to be "attractive".
is "employed" now a pre req for attractiveness in women ?
gainfully employed or independantly wealthy has always been a pre req for male attractiveness.

a few things thathave changed
1 clothes have become more complex and better quality, more affordable and of greater diversity.
this requires more attention to be unique asa far greater range is now availible where previousely the cost of formal female attire was very high.

men in suites... hhmmm uniform fetishes & power & control fetishes (thus im not going to mention men wearing suites).
social class symbology etc...

make up... as an example 1950s forward make up was expected and expected to be thick and uniform removing all blemishes and putting on false colour.
now make up technology and the acceptance of a wider range of skin tones resulting in a natural look being prefered as acceptable with a better quality of skin care availible at a lower cost.
skin condition = social class symbology.

evolution... male evolution Vs female evolution ?
men becoming more emotionally complex, becoming less of the psychopathic killer that was previousely desired.
the emancipation of the male psychopath lol

social acceptability is no longer tin soldiers and porcelain dolls in modern western societys.

do women think its now easier ? i doubt it. probably the same but different.

[Ben the Donkey]

Well, as to standards not changing on tv with regard to women, they have... a little bit.

It's gone from "she's hot - and looking for love"

To "she's hot, and looking for love (also, she's a doctor!)"

---

Actually, I forgot something.

With regard to the fairy tales, I should probably note that in the original versions of "Sleeping Beauty", The prince was struck by Beauty's loveliness and fucked her while she was asleep. It was only after he found out she bore him twins he became interested in her.

In the annals of human evolution, only a couple hundred years have passed since that tale was written. 
These days, of course, the prince (or President) would have been publicly shamed and impeached. 
And Sleeping Beauty would have become rich off the proceeds. With her own spinoff reality show.

Muck fee.

[Secular Sanity]

Do those women really not exist?

No.

Do you, personally, not evaluate your own attractiveness?

No. I do.

Emphasize one point over another, rate yourself against other women?

I do.

Perhaps most importantly - as far as physical attractiveness goes, who are your greatest critics?
Women, or men?

Women.

Why haven't the standards for what an attractive woman is changed since television was invented, yet the standards for what makes a man attractive have?

Status.

So. What is it we're really talking about here? The extent to which women really have a choice in their mates?

How they go about making that choice?

Status.

Bottom line...beauty enhances female status, contributes to mate selection, and aids in competition for other resources, as well.

But sexual dimorphism could be a push-and-pull.

"The findings support the idea that the sexes are locked in a push-and-pull battle over height."

http://www.livescience.com/22179-evoluti...eight.html

[Ben the Donkey]

Short and sweet.
Obviously, it isn't as simple as I've made out though, is it.

I think one of the main problems today is in the propensity to try to establish norms before one even understands that one must pour the concrete for the foundations before one can begin building the house.

They're trying to build houses on sand.

[Syne]

Men generally like closeups because they are more visually stimulated.

i think you may be a little behind the science on this one.
visual stimulation by gender has been well and truly tested and the results show a leaning of around 10% bias toward women being more visually stimulated than males.

as for the nature of porn, close ups Vs emotional themes....
i think it is nonsensical to define one as being more or less than the other as both are visual stimulation. just different types.

generically speaking males are inclined toward natural selection for fast copulation in any possible environment, where as females will have a strong leaning toward atmospheric safety and resources for brooding and birthing.

thus i think the debate needs an awful lot more work done to outline and then dismiss various natural tendencies to come to a general equal measure(assuming there was some intent to quantify the difference on a sameness measure.

RE the monkeys... there is different drives to equate group survival which have been omitted for some reason.
males being the larger stronger group protectors will be more drawn to things that are unusual and of strange and bright colours.
the babys/dolls were very life like for the monkeys so females being maternally selected would be drawn to them to care for them.

did it not seem odd that all the trucks were coloured bright contrasting colours ?
... and why no sticks or rocks painted pink or blue ?
it clearly shows the dice is loaded and made for popular TV audiences rather than true scientific analysis.

That's a lot of claims with no supporting citation to studies.

[C C]

Yeah, "romantic" is just more about the setting, and women prefer the gestalt, with closeups on things like kissing, rather than a lot of crude genital close ups.

IMHO, I don’t think that women prefer closeups to the whole picture.  I think that men prefer closeups because they like to deal with parts/objects; breasts, lips, legs, buttocks, etc.  You’re not dealing with a person, a relationship, you’re dealing with parts. We’re more than the sum of our parts.

Although something like "brains of both genders see men as people and women as body parts" could be dispensed, science doesn't really do much to settle it. The issue would remain revolving around opinion and argument and preference.

The research treats the test-subjects' cognitive approaches toward passive image content as if the results would be the same in the context of personally dealing with real, active individuals. As well, the question of whether evolution or conditioning or combo of both would be behind the tendency hangs adrift.

Since dependence upon outputting a generalization from psycho-social experiment and data is an inherent or preconceived feature / goal of the enterprise, the very exo-scientific matter of whether it's possible for behaviors and mental traits of a particular person to be known by and to be predictably subsumed under a quantitative stereotype -- and should / ought be done so -- has already been decided by just that. (I.e., by the discipline's school of thought, the working philosophy behind such science, optionally appended to the cultural and business machinery which benefits from the output of published research papers).

Not that empirical circumstances could decide or determine the prescriptive aims or a priori structure of operation, anyway. That would roughly be kind of like asserting that a survey of surrounding nature beforehand would provide instructions and commandments as to what direction and what creative properties a musical composition of Mozart should have had (yet another invention rather than an item found under a rock).

Our Brains See Men as Whole and Women as Parts
https://www.scientificamerican.com/artic...-as-parts/

EXCERPT: [...] The results showed a clear schism between the images of men and women. When viewing female images, participants were better at recognizing individual parts than they were matching whole-body photographs to the originals. The opposite was true for male images: People were better at recognizing a guy as a whole than they were his individual parts.

People were also better at discerning women's individual body parts than they were at men's individual body parts, further confirming the local processing, or objectification, that was happening.

"It's both men and women doing this to women," Gervais said. "So don't blame the men here."

In the second experiment, researchers preceded the body-part task with images of letters made up of a mosaic of tiny letters — an H made up of hundreds of little Ts, for example. They told some participants to identify the tiny letters, prompting their brains to engage in local processing. Other participants were asked to identify the big letter, revving up global processing. This latter group became less likely to objectify women, the researchers found. They no longer were better at recognizing a woman's parts than her whole body.

There could be evolutionary reasons that men and women process female bodies differently, Gervais said, but because both genders do it, "the media is probably a prime suspect."

"Women's bodies and their body parts are used to sell all sorts of products, but we are now for everyday, ordinary women, processing them in a similar way," she said.

Fortunately, the fact that the simple letter-mosaic task swept the effect away suggests that it's an easy habit to overcome, Gervais said. Being in a happy mood is related to global processing, she said, so avoiding blue funks could help you see people in a holistic way, as could simply reminding yourself to step back and look at the bigger picture.

[Secular Sanity]

Yeah, your'e right, C C, we do it, too.

How about men, though? When they're objectified through the media does it affect their self-image, as well? Yep.

"The media’s ability to increase body surveillance was stronger for men than for women." 

For men, there might be a "drench" effect, whereby even a small dose of objectification of men’s bodies has a relatively large effect. In contrast, there might be a cumulative, "drip, drip" effect for women because they are constantly inundated with objectified females in the media." [Source]

Just think about the difference in the amount of exposure to sexual objectification for men vs. women.  This "drip, drip" effect is all around us, C C. Women are way more discrete than most men.  We usually don’t stare at men because that’s an invitation to engage.  Imagine being out with a man and feeling free to stare, judge, and comment on other males.  That would have a profound effect on the one you're with.

If you were born a woman, how would you be different?

When it comes to men, appearance may not be all that important to us, but interaction is, and there’s a million ways to screw that up.  Say the wrong thing and that big nose starts to look a whole lot bigger.

They’re just as susceptible to self-objectification as we are, if not more, but men have more alternative forms of positive or negative compensation.

When you hear the word "overcompensate" you immediately think of men striving for power, and on average, men are more likely to chase status at the expense of family.

He’s not good looking, but he’s nice, faithful, dependable, romantic, successful, rich, generous, smart, funny, blah-blah-blah.

What are some of the ways in which women overcompensate?

She’s not beautiful, but she’s ________?