XDA

This Blogsite's faithful readers (both of them) want an explanation about the call that men won the battle of the sexes. OK, here we go.

There are, in animal behavior studies and in Sociobiology (the stillborn new science), concepts about what are the best ways to raise children that have children (reproductive strategies) and about what are the best ways to attract a mate (mating strategies). These two strategies are linked. Birds, for example, produce young that are first encased in fragile eggs and then are helpless for months. Most mammals, but not us, produce young that can get up and run with the herd in a matter of hours or can stay in the den or troop behind the mother without bothering her except for periodic specialized feeding. Bird mothers need help raising the chicks, at least for the season. Most mammal mothers don't need help raising the young and don't want the male around for other reasons. Because of the different reproduction strategies (female birds need a faithful partner; female mammals just need some sperm) the mating strategies are different. Female mammals want the best sperm and the male mammals sort themselves out with displays or fighting and the winner gets the girls. Female birds want a partner and mate and the choosing process and bonding period go on a little longer (not that male birds don't also fight and display). When our ancestors came down onto the African Savannah and began to move standing up, the female pelvis shrunk, because it works better small, while at the same time the brain of the proto-humans grew (nobody really knows why--it could be that we were using our hands for other than locomotion and social interaction rewarded bigger brains or it could be as simple as proto-human females liked big foreheads and sexual selection took over and big brains were the end by-product). So the females were faced with an ever smaller birth canal and an ever enlarging cranium coming through. The solution to this problem was neotony (the retention of juvenile features). The baby born to the proto-humans was ever more helpless. The proto-human female's reproductive strategy became more and more birdlike. They needed faithful partners. The ability to have sex at any time was one result of the changed strategy as it kept the partner around to help raise the baby.

So, for women, they wanted a faithful mate to help with babies. For men, they were willing to help but there was nothing wrong with spreading their sperm around as much as possible (especially if another male could be tricked into raising the resulting baby as his own). So men want sex, women want love and commitment. Hooking up, group dating and friends with privileges are strategies for sex without love and commitment. They are exactly what the males want and not at all what the females want. Therefore, we won.