High sexual risk makes women monogamous

Conventional wisdom is that men want sex, and women want resources and commitment.

Evolutionary biologists have done questionary-based studies in many countries of the world, and found this to be a universal pattern.

Conventional wisdom sees this as the ‘nature’ of women, and claims that women just are less interested in sex.

And evolutionary biology has concluded that the female preference for resources and commitment, as well as an reduced interest in sex, are genetically encoded parameters.

I have high respect for biology as a science, and have an open ear for conventional wisdom.

But when it comes to female sexuality, the conclusions of the above-cited conventional wisdom and evolutionary biology are misleading.

Women need sexual satisfaction just as men do. And for atheist women with a high degree of self-cognition, sexual satisfaction is, just as for men, the only reasonable endeavor worth living for.

So, why did conventional wisdom and evolutionary biology get it wrong on female sexuality?

Because safety, risk, and sexual market value are not taken sufficiently into account.

For many females in poor societies, the goals of Kreutz Ideology are a luxury they can’t pursue.

A low level of safety and a high level of risk have an enormously dampening effect, not on sexual desire, but on sexual conduct. The same is true for circumstances that cause a rapid decline in sexual market value.

Women are not less sexual than men. They have just become experts in hiding and surpressing their sexuality when the natural and social environment was not conducive.

Women have always been, and still are, more likely to need protection.

When humans were hunters and gatherers, women (especially when they were pregnant) could not run as fast as men when attracted by predators (youtube video see here).

When humans lived in early civilizations, and invented weapons, women were less capable to defend themselves on their own.

And in modern societies with high crime rates, women are much more likely than men to become victims of crime when they move about alone.

If we were to place men into environments of corresponding risk levels, the pattern of male sexuality would also change. The effect of a lack of safety is the same for men and women: a preference for more monogamous relationships that provide safety in addition to, or even instead of, sexual pleasure.

But it’s not just worries about being attacked (by lions (youtube video see here), enemy soldiers, or criminal gangs) that impact on the sexual preferences of women.

For women throughout the ages, having sex has always been associated with the risk of pregnancy. Even from a casual encounter, they could get fertilized, and the course of their lives could be shaped entirely from the consequences of such a single sexual encounter. The man in the same encounter could just forget about it the hour after it has happened.

But pregnancy has a major impact not only because a woman will be burdened with a child. It also causes a sharp decline in the sexual market value of a woman, as a pregnancy undoubtedly reduces her beauty and sex appeal.

Yet another aspect that causes women to be more careful with sexual encounters is reputational pressure. In many countries, women are badly punished for living out their sexuality in occasional encounters (youtube video see here). In most other countries, girls and women who do, are bad-mouthed.

Most men, even many conventional wisemen and scientists fail to understand women.

The fact is, women have a lot of sex drive, not just when they are married or in their 30s, but even as teenagers. Girls and women have a sex drive which easily matches the one of boys and men.