Eivind Berge #fundie eivindberge.blogspot.no

Sex Difference Explained by Steve Moxon
I have been getting some stupid comments lately claiming that "Evo psych hasn't been taken seriously since around 2009." Well, that is nonsense, of course, and as luck would have it, now there is a brand new publication on the subject by Steve Moxon. An entire monograph, in fact, written from an MRA point of view and with an up-to-date bibliography:

Sex Difference Explained: From DNA to Society – Purging Gene Copy Errors
Abstract

This is a ‘layman’s guide’ – for, the interested rather than the merely general reader – to recent major scientific insights that together reveal a comprehensive, holistic understanding of the sexes: what actually distinguishes them and why. A much needed overview drawing together hitherto disparate topics outlining how several principles mutually relate; it’s a simplified distillation and update of the several topics that are the subject of other review papers, which provide more detailed and precise accounts and further sources.

No prior knowledge is assumed, so any other than common-knowledge scientific terms are either explained or replaced with less formal terms (where they are not too imprecise). Notably, instead of the formal, easily confused terms intra-sexual / inter-sexual, the terms within-sex / between-sex (or same-sex / cross-sex) are used. The word 'sociality', is also used despite its unfamiliarity; because it's useful shorthand for social system / dynamics. The term gender (sic) is specifically avoided - other than in 'scare' quotes since it is an ideological rather than scientific term.
And the blurb:
In SEX DIFFERENCE EXPLAINED: From DNA to Society – Purging Gene Copy Errors, Steve Moxon argues that all major aspects of male-female human sociality necessarily stem from biological principles; which all arise in solving the core problem faced by all life-forms: the relentless build-up of mistakes in the repeated copying of genes. The 'genetic filtering' to deal with this is the function of the male: why males came into being, and why men so fiercely compete with one another to form a hierarchy.

The female contribution is carefully to choose only the most dominant/prestigious males, cross-checking that indeed they do possess the best gene sets. This ensures genetic mutations and other errors that would seriously compromise reproduction are purged from the local gene pool.

Pair-bonding serves to exclude lower-ranked, whilst allowing access by still higher-ranked males; and to provide a serial father of children, thereby in effect projecting forward in time a woman's peak fertility, compensating for her deteriorating store of eggs, and consequent declining fertility and attractiveness.

With men tied to a hierarchy, women evolved to 'marry out' to avoid in-breeding. In preparation for this, girls have a very different social organisation, rehearsing for when later they have to make close bonds with non-kin, stranger-females for mutual child-care. This explains why female grouping is so tight and exclusionary, whereas males group all-inclusively.

Moxon sees the underlying sex dichotomy as being perfectly complementary, with the sexes of equal importance in what amounts to a symbiosis.

The book is not only available from Amazon in paperback and Kindle editions, but also open-access, with the full text downloadable at New Male Studies Publishing.

I will start reading it now and then post a review, and I encourage you all to do the same.

Norwegian readers should also check out this article by Terje Bongard:

Det menneskelige grunnfjell: Følelser som tilpasninger til et førhistorisk liv

And if anyone wants to argue that evolutionary psychology is wrong, please state some actual arguments, because it is plainly false that is not taken seriously by the scientific community.

13 comments

Confused?

So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!

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