COLUMN: Pass the Beer Nuts

From Shawn Klein's "Cunning Linguistics," Fall '92 Purely obvious. In adolescence, the sexes spend countless hours trying to figure each other out. By college, people have a better idea of how relationships operate, but confusion and cynicism are common place. I believe Norm Peterson said it best: "Women. You can't live with them. Pass the beer nuts." Few people have any real understanding of how and why male/female relationships work the way they do. I mean the standard stereotyped stuff: Guys just want to go out and get laid. Girls want a boyfriend. Guys are studs, "the men," and everyone's boy when they get the girls, while women are "easy" and "slutty" if they reciprocate. Men ask for the first date and pay for dinner. They attempt the first kiss and try to move things along at a fast pace. (An unenviable position in these post-Anita Hill days of imminent and definite sexual harassment where men risk life and limb in grave danger --"Is there any other kind?" -- to forward potential sexual forays.) Women, on the other hand, control the pace of hook-ups and rarely pursue men with dire intensity. (To be nose-on-your-face obvious, we all know people who violate these little "rules." There are times when all of us do. But such instances are aberrations. It's not to say that they are incorrect, but rather just that the they occur with little frequency. How many girls do you know that have called a guy out of the blue for a "non-date function" date? Guys do it all the time.) Have you ever taken a step back and tried to understand the underlying reasons why things work the way they do? There are real reasons why male/female relations exist as we know them. It astounded me that barely one class of Intro to Psych was used to try to cover it. Contrary to any of the garbage you've heard on Oprah (my arch-nemesis), we act the way we do for the sake of effective reproduction. Evolution has made us to best carry on the gene pool to subsequent generations. In order to maximize the probability of doing so, men and women have adopted separate "strategies." These strategies are in the very designs of our persons. We do act how we want, but what we want is to a large extent determined by our biology. The differences in the male and female reproductive systems can account for the disparities in the male/female social behavior. Metaphorically, one can say that both men and women think with the little head. Women have eggs. Because they have so few, each could hardly be more precious. When a female is born, she already has all the eggs she will ever have for her entire life. Just a few hundred, that's all. If she menstruates them all away before getting herself some sort of sperm donor she will have exhausted any chance of having children. This is why women get panicky that their "biological clock is ticking." Women are also reproductively-hindered because of the mandatory nine month grace period between successful pregnancies. There can be no screwing around left and right, popping babies out as an after thought. Each time women have sex they risk huge time and reproductive investments. Women can ill afford to waste their efforts, so they must be particularly choosy with mates. The better the man, the better off their children, both in terms of genetics (not that they're aware of it) and how they are provided for. As such, women want men who will really love them. Women don't enjoy being ridden like a Harley on a rough piece of road and then abandoned. They want emotional and physical commitments when the time comes for procreation. Many want men who will, at least in part, provide for them and their children. I know women who will be very successful lawyers one day, but they still want their husband to work. Men have a different strategy to maximize their reproductive success. Men have sperm. Sperm are cheap. Upon ejaculation nearly 300 million sperm are shot out, all just priming for an egg. Nine loads provides enough sperm to impregnate every woman in the world. Also, when a man reproduces there is next to no time commitment at all. Ever heard of "Wham. Bam. Thank you, Ma'am"? For these reasons, men are designed in a way that they can best pass their genes along by mating with many women. Most of what I have said above is pretty straight-forward in the context of our hunter-gatherer days. Now, though, obvious biological evolution has been supplanted in part by cultural evolution. With the advent of birth control women can and do sleep around. With marriage as accepted custom, men are forbidden by society to gallivant from woman to woman. There are a limitless number of effects culture has had in our social systems. But you must remember that our biology is the very basis of everything, ultimately even our culture. While people's actions and thoughts have been modified by our new founded systems of rules and technologically-aided behavior, we will always see evidence of our biology: women can sleep around, but most do not. The divorce rate is 50%, with men cheating on their wives like it's their job. Women are discriminated against in the work place, etc. The list could go on forever, because try as we may, we cannot escape what we are made of. Shawn Klein is a senior Biological Basis of Behavior major from Livingston, New Jersey. Cunning Linguistics appears alternate Fridays.