Interesting article, Ellen, and you make your point. If we go further then we could extrapolate from ‘Feminism has a biology problem’ to ‘woke has a biology problem’! You have confirmed that there are only two genders and that they are distinctive (I hope you don’t get thrown out of Uni for being a biophile).
I wish we would all go one step further to acknowledge that ‘society has an evidence problem’. You are correct that human and animal behaviour are different. So why won’t we acknowledge the importance of a stable family structure to the wellbeing of children which is so well-evidenced? I was made aware of a study which found that stable family structure added up to 15 IQ points to the educational achievement of disadvantaged children. And on a related point, why is the Government ignoring the Sewell report on racism which was well-evidenced and made similar conclusions?
PS Ellen, were you hinting that you are not a feminist? If so, two hats off to you.
Taught in ‘urban’ UK schools for many years. Anecdote alert- growing sense of fluid family structures changing kids in many different ways. No need to be judgmental- life is ,self evidently, just more emotionally complicated when kids crave certainty and continuity. Definitely a sense of some teen boys angry without a Dad around and teen girls increasingly dealing with upsetting ups and downs. Single parent family life is just more exhausting and generally less well off. There is a cost.
I thiink you are probably correct, about the stable family structures, but one would have to admit that it is hard to separate cause and effect in these cases. In other words, people tend to think something it proved because they think it is obviously true to start with, not because the evidence is immensely clear.
Well, there is no doubt on the data, but how to act on them is rather less clear. Sure, married couples are generally richer, more stable, have more resources, and have more positive outcomes. But is it the marriage that causes it, or are the people who are better off, more stable, etc. more likely to get and stay married? If the unmarried married, how much would it help?
It is well established that children in homes with more books have better school results. One US governor apparently made a program of delivering books to all homes – but as it turned our giving a family a box with twenty books did not have any effect on their shcool results.
That reminds me of Scotland’s own bit of cargo cult nonsense, by adopting the Finnish baby box scheme. Obviously a great idea for a poor, newly emerging country several decades ago which has become part of Finnish national identity.
Why would this suddenly improve outcomes in the UK in the 21st century?
I would argue woke doesn’t have a biology problem, because that would imply it is making arguments it doesn’t understand. And while that may be true for some of those jumping on the bandwagon, the movement itself, going back to its Marxist roots, has been doing this for a long, long time: making odd, even counterfactual arguments as a means to divide society. They don’t believe them, they are just finding ways to destabilize. What we call woke is just the latest iteration. From the Bolsheviks in Russia to the Frankfurt school, progressivism has long sought to divide societies because turbulent times create new opportunities for non-traditional ideas and players to gain power. Traditionally they had had to custom-tailor their arguments to a given society, but modern communications, in particularly the internet, have allowed more commonality of ideas across the world.
This is an insightful analysis, which points out that seemingly different movements, over the past 100+ years, use the same techniques and have the same goal of ‘divide and conquer’.
No where she said there are only two genders. Gender is not same as sex because a large part of gender is socially constructed.
Also, I don’t understand the implication of this article. Her argument proves that female are not naturally chaste. They are just more selective, even when it comes to short-term sexual strategy. Also, one primary difference between human and animal promiscuity is that the latter is for procreation purposes. Humans on the other hand, engage in causal sex for pleasure.
Martin Bollis
2 years ago
Kudos to Ellen for stepping into this minefield. Being so far “off message” at Oxford can’t be easy.
The complexity of human society, and the rules that therefore have to govern it’s interactions, have always led us to believe we’re exceptional. The interplay between animal urges, and our capability for rational override of them, is endlessly fascinating and a wonderful field for logical, evidence based study.
So are you saying that we(men) have some natural urge to rape women? What evolutionary advantages a man gains from committing rape in modern world? He’s likely to end up in prison or sentenced to death in some cases. Rape is not about procreation in modern world either. It’s purely related to sexual pleasure. Rape is largely related violence and power too. In order to commit rape, one needs to exert dominance. What explains rape of children and older people? male- on-male rape? Female-on-male rape? Or even rape of animals? What evolutionary advantage someone is getting in all these scenarios?
Last edited 1 year ago by Ubaid Butt
William Shaw
2 years ago
Careful Ellen, you risk being cancelled if you continue with honest and reasoned appraisals of the scientific evidence.
Feelings seem to be more important than facts these days.
What she really implied to begin with? What I get from her article is that females in animal kingdom are promiscuous and not chaste as they were thought to be. However, the promiscuity in animal Kingdom is not same as promiscuity in human beings. We are not same as animals. We have also invented different methods to control reproduction. What is the purpose behind this? From a reproduction pov, promiscuity benefits human male. However, human males don’t engage in promiscuity for reproductive reasons. It’s overwhelmingly pleasure seeking. Polygamy has disappeared in western and most part of the world. A man can only keep one wife in majority of the countries. Sex has clearly being detached from procreation in human beings. Thus, the purpose of being promiscuous in human male or female, is to seek pleasure in modern society.
Last edited 1 year ago by Ubaid Butt
Geoff Cox
2 years ago
Well written and balanced article in my view and it confirms various things I’ve seen and read over the years. From memory, the most recent concerned bluetits. When we see two parents feeding chicks on the nest, the research suggested that in a good number of the nests (25%?), the male was not the biological father. This actually doesn’t matter terribly much as presumably somewhere else another male is raising his chicks. In fact, this is a pretty good arrangement because there is a social order and genetic diversity is maintained.
On the other hand presumably, if only alpha males got to father offspring, a species would evolve incredibly rapidly and narrowly which would make it ultimately less able to survive.
In many species while the rest of the neighborhood is fattening up for winter the alpha class males exhaust themselves competing. They’re far less likely to survive until spring. And no one seems to be studying what the teenagers are doing behind the bleachers during the big game.
I think, as usual, any facile, simple answer to the big questions posed by Darwin’s theory is bound to be wrong.
michael stanwick
2 years ago
It’s no surprise that feminist biologists have little appetite for potentially pessimistic messages from nature.
Feminist biologist? Is that is a scientist who has an a priori commitment to a political ideology? if so, how is the scientific method practised in order to avoid confirmation bias and motivated thinking etc? Cooke is right to refute the patriarchal falsehood that females only want monogamy,…
Also, it would have been helpful to have unpacked the evidence that ‘females only want monogamy’ is a patriarchal statement per se, and also whether patriarchy as a concept exists as a feature of the real world, or is a reified concept.
Last edited 2 years ago by michael stanwick
Terence Fitch
2 years ago
Interesting article which suggests complexity rather than simplification. Another variable is age: males at 17 and males at 50, say? At 17, raging drives but also raging embarrassment, lack of status and acne. Other variables like human investment in large brained offspring requires a group including grandparents etc so ‘morality’ and disapproval of promiscuity? Writing this while helping out with lively 14 month old hence abbreviation! She’s having a nap and so will I….
Martin Smith
2 years ago
In the animal kingdom (domain?), sex is driven by a procreative imperative. In human beings this has been superceded by pleasure pure and simple with procreation as an exception rather than as a rule.
Having heard Lucy Cooke on the radio I detect that this is popular science with an agenda; not always a happy combination and in this case, not a very attractive agenda.
Yes. Not descriptive scientific statements but prescriptive scientific statements. Is and ought being conflated perhaps.
Julie Kemp
2 years ago
Feminism is an ‘ism’ and therefore a default. Femininity is by degree within the grander context of Womanhood. Each sex of a Person is transcended with the ‘right’ mindset and not egotistical fantasies which so easily go to distort and destroy. I praise and reverence the Masculinity of a male person just as i do the Femininity of a female person. In individual balance of forces and intentions grounded in love/respect and mutual complimentarity ‘magic’ happens.
Feminists support women because they are female, not because they are ‘feminine’.
laurence scaduto
2 years ago
There’s humor in all this. For instance the picture of the “experts”, circa 1960, all male, married, homeowners, etc. all sitting around together convinced of the fact that science has proven that women, including their own wives, are definitely NOT screwing the adorable new pool-boy and/or the handsome tennis pro.
And their wives smiling sweetly and agreeing while he man-splains about it over dinner.
Diane Merriam
1 year ago
What other species regularly mate for pleasure instead of just to procreate?
Right. What is the implication of this article? Hookup culture or causal sex is about pleasure. Contraceptives have fully changed the way we used to view sex. No one, either men or women, wants to have kids with causal partners. It basically favors feminists because now they have evidence for why females are not monogamous by nature either. Not implying that costs for women are not higher for engaging in causal sex, but causal sex is not about procreation at all. Even the women who cheat, are seeking pleasure, just like unfaithful male partners.
Interesting article, Ellen, and you make your point. If we go further then we could extrapolate from ‘Feminism has a biology problem’ to ‘woke has a biology problem’! You have confirmed that there are only two genders and that they are distinctive (I hope you don’t get thrown out of Uni for being a biophile).
I wish we would all go one step further to acknowledge that ‘society has an evidence problem’. You are correct that human and animal behaviour are different. So why won’t we acknowledge the importance of a stable family structure to the wellbeing of children which is so well-evidenced? I was made aware of a study which found that stable family structure added up to 15 IQ points to the educational achievement of disadvantaged children. And on a related point, why is the Government ignoring the Sewell report on racism which was well-evidenced and made similar conclusions?
PS Ellen, were you hinting that you are not a feminist? If so, two hats off to you.
Taught in ‘urban’ UK schools for many years. Anecdote alert- growing sense of fluid family structures changing kids in many different ways. No need to be judgmental- life is ,self evidently, just more emotionally complicated when kids crave certainty and continuity. Definitely a sense of some teen boys angry without a Dad around and teen girls increasingly dealing with upsetting ups and downs. Single parent family life is just more exhausting and generally less well off. There is a cost.
I thiink you are probably correct, about the stable family structures, but one would have to admit that it is hard to separate cause and effect in these cases. In other words, people tend to think something it proved because they think it is obviously true to start with, not because the evidence is immensely clear.
Rasmus, the studies around this are comprehensive in agreement; the reluctance to act on them is connected with a fear of shaming people and the push for adult rights. Here’s a taster:
https://ifstudies.org/blog/children-first-why-family-structure-and-stability-matter-for-children
Well, there is no doubt on the data, but how to act on them is rather less clear. Sure, married couples are generally richer, more stable, have more resources, and have more positive outcomes. But is it the marriage that causes it, or are the people who are better off, more stable, etc. more likely to get and stay married? If the unmarried married, how much would it help?
It is well established that children in homes with more books have better school results. One US governor apparently made a program of delivering books to all homes – but as it turned our giving a family a box with twenty books did not have any effect on their shcool results.
It’s not about possessing books. It’s about developing a culture of reading.
Exactly – that was the point!
That reminds me of Scotland’s own bit of cargo cult nonsense, by adopting the Finnish baby box scheme. Obviously a great idea for a poor, newly emerging country several decades ago which has become part of Finnish national identity.
Why would this suddenly improve outcomes in the UK in the 21st century?
I would argue woke doesn’t have a biology problem, because that would imply it is making arguments it doesn’t understand. And while that may be true for some of those jumping on the bandwagon, the movement itself, going back to its Marxist roots, has been doing this for a long, long time: making odd, even counterfactual arguments as a means to divide society. They don’t believe them, they are just finding ways to destabilize. What we call woke is just the latest iteration. From the Bolsheviks in Russia to the Frankfurt school, progressivism has long sought to divide societies because turbulent times create new opportunities for non-traditional ideas and players to gain power. Traditionally they had had to custom-tailor their arguments to a given society, but modern communications, in particularly the internet, have allowed more commonality of ideas across the world.
This is an insightful analysis, which points out that seemingly different movements, over the past 100+ years, use the same techniques and have the same goal of ‘divide and conquer’.
No where she said there are only two genders. Gender is not same as sex because a large part of gender is socially constructed.
Also, I don’t understand the implication of this article. Her argument proves that female are not naturally chaste. They are just more selective, even when it comes to short-term sexual strategy. Also, one primary difference between human and animal promiscuity is that the latter is for procreation purposes. Humans on the other hand, engage in causal sex for pleasure.
Kudos to Ellen for stepping into this minefield. Being so far “off message” at Oxford can’t be easy.
The complexity of human society, and the rules that therefore have to govern it’s interactions, have always led us to believe we’re exceptional. The interplay between animal urges, and our capability for rational override of them, is endlessly fascinating and a wonderful field for logical, evidence based study.
Naturally it is therefore anathema to the woke.
So are you saying that we(men) have some natural urge to rape women? What evolutionary advantages a man gains from committing rape in modern world? He’s likely to end up in prison or sentenced to death in some cases. Rape is not about procreation in modern world either. It’s purely related to sexual pleasure. Rape is largely related violence and power too. In order to commit rape, one needs to exert dominance. What explains rape of children and older people? male- on-male rape? Female-on-male rape? Or even rape of animals? What evolutionary advantage someone is getting in all these scenarios?
Careful Ellen, you risk being cancelled if you continue with honest and reasoned appraisals of the scientific evidence.
Feelings seem to be more important than facts these days.
What she really implied to begin with? What I get from her article is that females in animal kingdom are promiscuous and not chaste as they were thought to be. However, the promiscuity in animal Kingdom is not same as promiscuity in human beings. We are not same as animals. We have also invented different methods to control reproduction. What is the purpose behind this? From a reproduction pov, promiscuity benefits human male. However, human males don’t engage in promiscuity for reproductive reasons. It’s overwhelmingly pleasure seeking. Polygamy has disappeared in western and most part of the world. A man can only keep one wife in majority of the countries. Sex has clearly being detached from procreation in human beings. Thus, the purpose of being promiscuous in human male or female, is to seek pleasure in modern society.
Well written and balanced article in my view and it confirms various things I’ve seen and read over the years. From memory, the most recent concerned bluetits. When we see two parents feeding chicks on the nest, the research suggested that in a good number of the nests (25%?), the male was not the biological father. This actually doesn’t matter terribly much as presumably somewhere else another male is raising his chicks. In fact, this is a pretty good arrangement because there is a social order and genetic diversity is maintained.
On the other hand presumably, if only alpha males got to father offspring, a species would evolve incredibly rapidly and narrowly which would make it ultimately less able to survive.
In many species while the rest of the neighborhood is fattening up for winter the alpha class males exhaust themselves competing. They’re far less likely to survive until spring. And no one seems to be studying what the teenagers are doing behind the bleachers during the big game.
I think, as usual, any facile, simple answer to the big questions posed by Darwin’s theory is bound to be wrong.
It’s no surprise that feminist biologists have little appetite for potentially pessimistic messages from nature.
Feminist biologist? Is that is a scientist who has an a priori commitment to a political ideology? if so, how is the scientific method practised in order to avoid confirmation bias and motivated thinking etc?
Cooke is right to refute the patriarchal falsehood that females only want monogamy,…
Also, it would have been helpful to have unpacked the evidence that ‘females only want monogamy’ is a patriarchal statement per se, and also whether patriarchy as a concept exists as a feature of the real world, or is a reified concept.
Interesting article which suggests complexity rather than simplification. Another variable is age: males at 17 and males at 50, say? At 17, raging drives but also raging embarrassment, lack of status and acne. Other variables like human investment in large brained offspring requires a group including grandparents etc so ‘morality’ and disapproval of promiscuity? Writing this while helping out with lively 14 month old hence abbreviation! She’s having a nap and so will I….
In the animal kingdom (domain?), sex is driven by a procreative imperative. In human beings this has been superceded by pleasure pure and simple with procreation as an exception rather than as a rule.
Animals copulate because they want to. They don’t do it because they want babies. That just happens.
In fact they may not make the connection.
Of course.
Having heard Lucy Cooke on the radio I detect that this is popular science with an agenda; not always a happy combination and in this case, not a very attractive agenda.
Yes. Not descriptive scientific statements but prescriptive scientific statements. Is and ought being conflated perhaps.
Feminism is an ‘ism’ and therefore a default. Femininity is by degree within the grander context of Womanhood. Each sex of a Person is transcended with the ‘right’ mindset and not egotistical fantasies which so easily go to distort and destroy. I praise and reverence the Masculinity of a male person just as i do the Femininity of a female person. In individual balance of forces and intentions grounded in love/respect and mutual complimentarity ‘magic’ happens.
Feminists support women because they are female, not because they are ‘feminine’.
There’s humor in all this. For instance the picture of the “experts”, circa 1960, all male, married, homeowners, etc. all sitting around together convinced of the fact that science has proven that women, including their own wives, are definitely NOT screwing the adorable new pool-boy and/or the handsome tennis pro.
And their wives smiling sweetly and agreeing while he man-splains about it over dinner.
What other species regularly mate for pleasure instead of just to procreate?
Right. What is the implication of this article? Hookup culture or causal sex is about pleasure. Contraceptives have fully changed the way we used to view sex. No one, either men or women, wants to have kids with causal partners. It basically favors feminists because now they have evidence for why females are not monogamous by nature either. Not implying that costs for women are not higher for engaging in causal sex, but causal sex is not about procreation at all. Even the women who cheat, are seeking pleasure, just like unfaithful male partners.