Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Born Sluts and Instinctive Doormats

Which of the following quotations is the odd one out?

  • Clear evidence of women’s promiscuity throughout evolutionary history is in the size and shape of men’s genitals and what men do with them. (Satoshi Kanazawa)

  • For any woman, the need to submit, to surrender, to place all your trust and faith in another is a natural and useful instinct—despite assumptions to the contrary by the prevailing culture. (The Submissive Wife)

  • There is a female instinct to want to be saved by a man who sweeps them up, marries them and causes them to live happily ever after. In a tempered form, this instinct mightn't be such a bad thing; many men do have the corresponding impulse to play the rescuer role.("Still not getting it" at OzConservative)

  • Your prince may not ride up on a white horse, but it's not too much to ask to spend your life with someone attractive who makes you feel like a princess. Being loved by a man is your birthright as a woman. Mating is one of the oldest, ingrained human instincts. While self-sufficiency is admirable, it doesn't fulfill your need to be held and touched, to be intimate with a man. Acting as though you don't crave a leading man in your life doesn't make it so, but it does contribute towards keeping you single. (The Surrendered Single by Laura Doyle)

Whichever quotation you picked, you were wrong. It was a trick question. They're all bollocks.

If you find that unfair, here's a small concession. The last, from Laura Doyle's The Surrendered Single, only implies that women have an instinctual need to find either Mr Right or Mr Adequate and get themselves married. The other three - and the linked pages - make quite explicit claims about what is innate behaviour for women. They all use evolutionary just-so stories to support the authors' views of what women should be and how women should behave.

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