10 thoughts on “Just so”

1. Pr Q will have to do a little better than feeble snarks if he wants to bring down the towering structure of Darwinian socio-biology.

   I have always maintained that humans are the least Darwinian animals, esp as far as sex is concerned. But they are Darwinian for all of that.

   Humans are hard-wired for sexuality, not necessarily fertility. Just as they are hard-wired to for survivability, not necessarily longevity. And they are hard-wired for sociability, not necessarily intellectuality.

   In all these cases the hard-wiring is for the process (pleasure from bonking or eating or talking) not the outcome (utility from breeding, fuelling, cognizing).

   It is no mystery to evo-psycho that women may unconsciously send out contradictory signals in sexual matters. They have contradictory interests in mating. They are wired to have sex all the time with any desirable mate. But they are selective about their breeding.

   Hence their ovulation is concealed. But their excitation is disclosed. A little bit of long-range advertising may be helpful in keeping up demand in the off-peak season. “Look, but dont touch” is in any case not uncommon motto for the feminine of the species.

   If Pr Q had bothered to drill down a little further he would have noticed that key close -range observable indicatrs of female mating availability tend to be more apparent at ovulation.

   Earlier studies show that women’s peak sexiness, as guaged by close-range indicators like facial expression and pheromone scent molecule levels, coincides with high fertility or ovulation.

   This is because genuine signals of sexual availability, such as subtle changes in smell and facial expressions, can be detected only close up.

   The implication is that sexy walks are not all that serious.

2. I did drill down. This is a classic example of an auxiliary hypothesis being modified as an immunising stratagem (effects previously regarded as universal now being claimed, with no theoretical foundation at all, to be distance dependent).

   Note that one of the classic indicators claimed in this literature, the waist-hip ratio, is best observed from a distance similar to that required to observe gait.

3. much as i enjoy hypothesizing on the influence of the unconscious on superficially intellectual endeavors, here is a subject where ieds abound, and i’m not feeling brave or foolhardy today.

   however, i will congratulate you, jack, on what seems to be a good horse-back analysis of the subject. you can have all the credit, though, if female types enter the discussion with flashing eyes and razor tongues. “it wuzn’t me, he did it!”

4. I have to say that it appears to be a discussion from a totally male viewpoint. It may come as a surprise but the female movements are likely to have nothing to do with the male but with the female and her comfort levels. Just because a male is focussed on attraction is not to assume that the female has the same focus – although it can be a conscious strategy.

   Commitment of a man to raising a child is an altogether different task for a woman and far more important in evolutionary terms.

   This study raises far more questions than the simplistic notions discussed by the researchers and their male centric assumptions.

5. “It may come as a surprise but the female movements are likely to have nothing to do with the male but with the female and her comfort levels.”

   Totally owned. Well spotted al loomis.

6. I am glad that taxes are going to this cutting edge and vital research, I think it is a wonderful sign that all the ‘hard’ science disciplines can be ornamented with such useful adumbrations to our stock of knowledge. My aged granny may be able to help, she always maintained that women choose the men that choose them. Measuring knee separation metrics is brilliant. Sadly I have to bring a note of discord to this subject – to the commentator suggesting that we are not hardwired for fertility – how do you explain the fact that our species is in pestilential excess( in the Darwinian sense) on the planet today.

7. I haven’t bothered to look into this too deeply, but it seems from the way it was written up in the popular press that they didn’t follow the same women through an entire ovulation cycle.

   This would mean that if certain women just tended to walk more ‘sexily’ than others, and for the sample most of these happened to be in the non-fertile phase of the cycle, the connection would be spurious.

   Depending on how the samples were drawn, this could be less surprising than you might think. I read many years ago that women in all female institutions (group houses, nurses homes, uni colleges) tended to attune their cycles so that each of them tended to be around the same point at any given time.

8. 2 tanners Says: November 10th, 2007 at 6:27 am

   I haven’t bothered to look into this too deeply, but it seems from the way it was written up in the popular press that they didn’t follow the same women through an entire ovulation cycle.

   Res Symons – yes, the same guy – raised this objection to the study’s latiudinal, rather than longtitudinal, experimenal design. It might well have been that a given woman’s walk would have got sexier still as she progressed through her cycle towards ovulation.

   But this is piling speculation on to justifification.

   Having said that I dont want to go out on a limb defending Evo-psychology. I prefer the original more hard-boiled socio-biology. And this because is silly to discount the socially constructed and only count the biologically conserved. Both are fundamental factors regulating behaviour and both interact with each other.

   The environed culture can, over a long period of time, select adaptive features in an endowed nature. Our endowed nature is, over the short term, conditioned by the environed culture. Our nature evolved an innate cultural flexibility.

   Also evo-psycho tends to stress the universality of human nature. But the striking thing about H. Sapiens is his “diversality”. Apart from dogs we are the most heterogenous higher order species. And dogs are diverse because the took after their masters.

   In general Darwinian hereditarians would do better for knowledge and themselves if they avoided the stereotype of genetic determinism.

9. Jill Rush, The “study” was led by a woman.

   On the BBC website that reports it:

   Dr Provost said: “If women are trying to protect themselves from sexual assault at times of peak fertility, it would make sense for them to advertise attractiveness on a broad scale when they are not fertile.�

   This is unbelievable! What she is saying is that women who walk with a sexy gait are in reality inviting frequent sexual assault. Never mind that the hip structure has evolved to facilitate the giving of birth rather than the inviting of sexual attention!

   I used to think that New Scientist was a good mag!

10. How sad Melanie that a woman can put together something so superficial about other women or has so little insight into the nature of instinct.