"A recently published study strongly suggests men succumb to sexual temptations more than women -- for example, cheating on a partner -- because they experience strong sexual impulses, not because they have weak self-control."
"Overall, these studies suggest that men are more likely to give in to sexual temptations because they tend to have stronger sexual impulse strength than women do,"
"But when people exercise self-control in a given situation, this sex difference in behavior is greatly reduced. It makes sense that self-control, which has relatively recent evolutionary origins compared to sexual impulses, would work similarly -- and as effectively -- for both men and women,"
The misery and plight enforced upon women as a consequence of the physiological asymmetry between the genders is one major topic of this blog. The devastating consequences of men's recurrent dishomeostasis experienced as the urge to use female bodies for the removal of body waste cannot be explained by the mere lack of self-control.
The reality of this drastic asymmetry is evident by the fact, that men often obtain the abuse of female bodies not only by payment and manipulation, but also by violence. The latter is enabled by the unfortunate co-evolution of the urge towards abuse with the superior physical strength to force it upon unwilling victims.
The evolution of these devastating strong male urges seems to make a lot of sad sense, when looking only at how it serves procreation. Evolution serves the survival of the species, not the emotional and cognitive wellbeing of individuals.
Female animals willingly copulate at the moment of estrus due to their lacking the cognitive ability to anticipate the consequences of giving birth and raising the offspring.
When the human cognition evolved, this enabled women also to anticipate the experience of pregnancy and child rearing. Some women perceive this is a horror, an abuse of their bodies and a form of slavery. Logically they attempt to avoid this.
The human species would probably have been extinct by now, had not the further biological evolution counterbalanced this by hiding the female estrus and by adding more male urges plus physical strength. Thus pregnancies continued to be caused, no more only by compliance due to ignorance, but also by force upon unwilling women.
In spite of more legal equality in modern western society, even in recent times the plight of women has been perpetuated by two main fallacies. Both fallacies deny the physiological differences and attribute all asymmetry between the genders to education and culture. Both fallacies are based upon the projection of the level of the own urges upon the other gender.
1. The fallacy of the so called 'sexual revolution' is the fallacy of men, who project their higher urges upon women and claim, that women only feel abused due to sexual repression. This dangerous male fallacy has proclaimed that if women were liberated, they would as much as men want to copulate like alley dogs and would as little as men need emotional commitment.
2. The feminist fallacy overestimates men's willpower and unrealistically demands men to have the same easy self-control as women. This is based upon the mistake to project their own lower female physiological urges upon men. More about my suggestion for a more rational feminism in
entry 566.
According to the study, men's problem is not self-control, but the stronger sexual impulse. But it is a banality to state, that stronger urges require stronger self-control. Thus the same ability to exercise self-control does not automatically mean the same success of willpower over stronger urges.
Thus any abolition of the abuse of women requires a change in the attitude and behavior of both genders. This requires a shift of the focus away from both fallacies. Neither the female demand of more self-control by men and nor the male myth of female repression leads to any improvement of women's plight.
The focus needs to be on the full acknowledgment of the disruption and harm caused by the excessive male urges and a subsequent change of both men's and women's attitude and behavior.
1. Men need to acknowledge their instinctive urges for recurrent restoration of physiological homeostasis as asymmetrical and not reciprocal. They need to learn and take for serious, that women have different needs. Men need to accept the biological reality, that the magnitude of male urges cannot and will not be requited by women. Men need to give up the devastating myth of the existence of less consciously felt but equally strong urges as being the women's defect, and the belief in this myth as the justification to overcome this alleged defect by hook or crook as if this would ultimately be beneficial for the women. This is a male delusion with cruel consequences for the victims.
Instead men need to recognize, that the only realistic expression of consideration and responsibility towards women means to refrain from commodifying and objectifying them.
2. Women need to acknowledge, how little men have control over the automatic triggering of their instinctive urges towards abuse, whenever they are exposed to the perception of stimuli from female bodies. This is aggravated, when men are in the state of high dishomeostasis.
Even those decent and nice guys, who have not the least conscious intention to let abuse follow the perception of any unwelcome triggers, need more self-control for stronger stimulation. Whenever they need all their available self-control to cope with these urges, this may leave them depleted of any further willpower, which they need to cope with other urges. This may make it more difficult to resist other behaviors like overeating or smoking. This can be concluded from studies about the depletion of willpower as presented in
entry 524.
(The following may sound like a far fetched speculation: I am wondering, if obesity, alcoholism and other self-harming widespread behaviors of lacking willpower are not partially enhanced by the oversexation of the media and of everyday life. Not abusing women may deplete many decent men of so much of their willpower, that they more easily succumb to other urges instead.)
Therefore women too have a responsibility and a moral obligation to be considerate of men's physiological affliction. Women need to avoid triggering male instincts towards their bodies, unless they are in private with a man, with whom they either have or want a relationship.
Most people would agree, that it is cruel to show a bill of money to a beggar and then tell him to keep his fingers off, because it is not for him to have. This invites the beggar's attempt, if he grabs it, while of course this is not a justification. The beggar needs willpower not to grab it. He would not need willpower, as long as people just pass him by. A woman presenting herself nearly naked or in any provocative attire does the same to any man in dishomeostasis, whenever she wants him to keep off her body.
As unfortunate as it is, the misunderstandings between the genders lead to antagonistic struggles, in which in the end both genders suffer. Men are able to enforce abuse, but women react by materialistic exploitation.
The abuse of women and the exploitation of men can only be abolished by cooperation based upon the realistic acknowledgment of the biological asymmetry. Studies like the one cited are a good beginning, but a much more widespread recognition of the true problem is needed.
