Interesting:
and perhaps also on a similar note:
1. Friendships and Social Dynamics
- Sex-Differentiated Friendship Structures: Male friendships are typically less emotionally close, looser, and multi-male, often described as "shoulder-to-shoulder" relationships that focus on coalitional and social support, and shared activities. In contrast, female friendships are generally more emotionally intense, close, and dyadic ("face-to-face"), emphasizing emotional support and detailed discussions. Men also tend to stand at an open angle (around 120 degrees) when conversing to avoid confrontational cues, whereas women are comfortable facing each other directly.
- Fragility and Intimacy in Female Friendships: Female friendships tend to be shorter-lived and more fragile due to their emotional intensity and the sharing of intimate details. This shared information can become "ammunition" if the friendship breaks, leading to significant grief.
- Adaptive Reasons for Female Friendship Styles: Possible adaptive explanations for the depth and dyadic nature of female friendships include the high stakes of allo-parenting (shared childcare requiring high trust) and patrilocality (females often leaving their natal groups to join a partner's kin, necessitating the formation of kin-like bonds with non-kin).
- Social Signalling and Alliance Manipulation: Women use detailed self-disclosure, including sensitive social information or secrets, to build trust and closeness, signalling "you can trust me". Venting, which involves complaining about a third party in an agitated or frustrated manner, is a key tactic for women to manipulate alliances. This allows them to harm the target's reputation without appearing aggressive or manipulative themselves. Sharing privileged information with a close friend can also bolster that friend's perceived value within one's social network.
- Friend Guarding: Similar to mate guarding, friend guarding serves as an adaptive function, signalling the value placed on a friend. However, it requires careful "calibration" to avoid being perceived as too needy or jealous. People, particularly women, are often hesitant to introduce friends from different groups due to the fear of being displaced. This emotion, often stigmatised, is widespread in social animal species (e.g., horses, cows, dolphins, lions) and likely serves an adaptive purpose to prevent the loss of valued relationships.
2. Reputation, Competition, and Attractiveness
- Chastity and Fidelity as Female Reputation: For women, a reputation for chastity and fidelity is paramount and extremely difficult to restore if compromised. This is because women cannot easily "show everybody how little sex they're having". In contrast, male reputational challenges (e.g., lack of income) are generally easier to refute (e.g., by demonstrating wealth).
- Female Aggression and Insults: Accusations of sexual promiscuity are a common form of female-on-female aggression and can even lead to physical altercations. Women value trustworthiness and loyalty in friends, qualities that are difficult to assess.
- Attractiveness and Rivalry: Highly attractive women can evoke more aggression from other women, as they are perceived as formidable mating competitors. Conversely, women seen as promiscuous are often viewed as less valuable and more easily targeted for aggression by rivals.
- "Slut Shaming" as a Mechanism: "Slut shaming" is posited as a price enforcement mechanism that aims to prevent women from lowering the perceived "price of sex" for all women. It enforces more restrictive sexual norms and raises the value of sexual resources in the "biological market".
- Female Competition: Safe, Subtle, and Solitary: Dr. Benenson highlights that female competition is distinct from male competition, characterised by being safe, subtle, and solitary.
- Safety: Women, needing to survive to care for offspring through gestation, lactation, and long-term child-rearing, avoid dangerous confrontations that could lead to injury or death.
- Subtlety: Women employ indirect tactics such as non-verbal cues, derogatory gossip (often presented sympathetically), and social exclusion to avoid retaliation. These behaviours are observed in girls as young as three years old.
- Solitary ("Scramble Competition"): Female competition often takes the form of individuals independently striving for resources without direct confrontation. Examples include seeking the "best dress" for a prom or outperforming others in academia while downplaying achievements as "luck." This contrasts with men's preference for public, conspicuous contests.
- Egalitarian Ethos and Its Implications: There is a strong, internalised expectation among women that everyone should be equal, leading to a strong dislike of "showing off" or bragging. Women who appear to strive for superiority risk exclusion from their social groups. This pressure primarily originates from other women. This apparent egalitarianism can be a self-serving strategy for women who are not at the very top, effectively flattening the competitive field and bringing down high-status rivals. Women are also more likely than men to feel worse about another woman's success (e.g., expensive car, beautiful house, high-status job).
- Social Media's Role: Girls and women are significantly more prone to social media addiction, which exacerbates the pain of social comparison and the constant need for validation, driven by the desire to know "people like me".
3. Mate Preferences, Body Image, and Wardrobe Strategies
- Female Mate Preferences: Women generally seek men of higher status who can provide resources, security, and contribute to the well-being and status of their children. Having a supportive husband is a significant benefit for women, particularly in modern societies where kin support may be limited.
- Body Shape as a Signal: For women, body fat distribution significantly impacts social perception. Fat carried in the hips and thighs (hourglass shape) can signal youth and future reproductive value, while gut fat is more stigmatised and associated with negative health outcomes.
- "Dad Bod" Phenomenon: For men, the "dad bod" (male-typical gut fat) can be associated with positive perceptions of being a good father, implying a potential shift of energy from mating effort to parental investment.
- Wardrobe as Strategic Communication: Women's clothing choices are highly strategic. They aim to signal sexual availability and attractiveness to men while simultaneously avoiding aggression and exclusion from other women. Dressing immodestly, especially when entering new groups, can be perceived as threatening by other women, as it can lower the perceived "market value" of reproductive resources. Women flexibly adjust their clothing based on context and perceived risk of aggression from other women.
4. Sexual Strategies and Societal Morality
- Committed vs. Uncommitted Sexual Strategies: Humans naturally vary in their sexual strategies: some prefer committed, long-term relationships with heavy parental investment, while others prefer more casual sex with multiple partners.
- Strategic Opposition to Sexual Freedom: Individuals with committed sexual strategies benefit from social environments that restrict casual sex. This often underlies opposition to abortion, birth control, marriage equality, and recreational drugs, as these are perceived to enable uncommitted sexual behaviours. Research suggests that while "moral" reasons are stated, a deeper motivation is the strategic advantage gained by limiting others' sexual freedoms. Religious adherence can often align with and reinforce these restricted sexual strategies.
- Casual Sex and Self-Esteem Stereotypes: A prevalent stereotype, particularly in American society, is that women (but not men) who engage in casual sex have low self-esteem. This stereotype has severe negative social and economic consequences for women. Despite individuals reporting enjoyment of casual sex, the stereotype persists, even though research shows no actual correlation between casual sexual behaviour and self-esteem. A "sociometer" perspective suggests that individuals pursuing and achieving their desired adaptive goals (e.g., casual sex if that's what they want) should, in fact, experience high self-esteem.
5. The Role and Challenges of Men in Modern Society
- Evolving Male Roles: While men's traditional roles (warfare, big game hunting) have largely been supplanted by state institutions and modern conveniences, men remain crucial for physically demanding, risky, and cooperative tasks (e.g., firefighting, large-scale environmental solutions).
- Male Sociality: Boys and men exhibit strong group bonding, an ability to engage in conflict and reconcile, an admiration for competition, and a tendency to create "enemies" which can foster group cohesion. This "anti-social" behaviour is often highly social within male groups but perceived as disruptive by broader society.
- Educational Disadvantage: The current educational system is often geared towards female learning styles (conscientiousness, sedentary behaviour), which can put boys at a disadvantage, contributing to underperformance and higher dropout rates. Boys often thrive in project-based, deep-dive learning. Boys from single-mother households particularly underperform in educational outcomes compared to girls from similar backgrounds.
6. The Importance of Understanding Sex Differences
- Both Dr. Krems and Dr. Benenson emphasize that denying or downplaying sex differences is a disservice to both men and women. Such denial prevents an accurate understanding of human nature, hinders effective solutions for societal problems, and overlooks the adaptive wisdom inherent in sex-specific traits and behaviours.
- Health Implications: Sex differences are critical in understanding disease prevalence, physiological responses, and the efficacy of treatments. For example, women live longer and take better care of themselves, have a lower pain threshold, a stronger immune response (though with more side effects to vaccines), and are more susceptible to certain diseases like autoimmune conditions. Men, conversely, are more prone to cardiovascular diseases, ADHD, and "deaths of despair".