Boys Will Be Boys Because They Were Once Cavemen…?
Only last week, a friend explained to me over coffee that (heterosexual) men are “biologically programmed” to prefer women with “big boobs and a big butt.” This “scientific fact” conveyed to me seemed a little problematic, however, I had heard this fact before, and so I didn’t ask how or where she heard this.
I have never doubted the validity of this information. I have read similar behaviour-based-on-evolution-facts with accrediting Ph.Ds scattered throughout the various articles, and so, I had been assuming that the professionals were providing objective, verifiable/falsifiable, scientific fact. How wrong I was…
Sociobiology as a discipline, was established by E. O. Wilson, who spent his career as an ant taxonomist (up until deciding that humans and ants were similar enough to draw parallels to). Moreover, some of the founding ideas of the discipline can be paralleled to the generally discredited studies of social Darwinism by scholars such as Herbert Spencer.(see: http://www.allaboutscience.org/what-is-social-darwinism-faq.htm)
Sociobiology is defined as:
The study of the biological determinants of social behaviour, based on the theory that such behaviour is often genetically transmitted and subject to evolutionary processes. (dictionary.com)
The notion that straight men are genetically programmed to prefer women with big boobs and a big butt because of their perceived fertility is a sociobiological theory and should be treated as such; it should not be portrayed as fact.
“Sociobiology even breaks the standard rules of science since its studies are tautological “just-so stories” with hypotheses that are not verifiable or falsifiable: even the most sophisticated scholarship is never able to offer more than speculation…” (Hasinoff)
Various sociobiological theories come loaded with inferences that are degrading to both women and men, and create excuses for human (especially male) behaviour, however unethical or immoral, simply, “because it’s in our DNA.”
“…Sociobiology maintains a model of gender essentialism: men are driven by psychological and physiological urges ingrained in the era of “cavemen” while women’s domestic labor, nurturing behaviours, and adherence to ideals of white middle-class Western femininity are likewise genetically predetermined.” (Hasinoff)
Sociobiology is problematic for various reasons related to the scientific authority it holds to reiterate historical culturally indoctrinated notions of racism, sexism, and ageism (to list a few).
“Sociobiology is particularly insidious in its legitimation of patriarchy and capitalism under the guise of objective science.” (Hasinoff)
In the 1880s (before the invention of cars or toilet paper) it was understood in the scientific community that it was women’s genetic mental “inadequacies, which made women unsuited for important activities…” due to a “long evolutionary process that selected those women dedicated to their duties in the domestic sphere.” (The Evolution of Gender and Difference)
Today, these same gender roles and sexist notions occur under the scientific cloak of sociobiology, with anecdotes such as “…women are also biologically better suited to cleaning, and must instruct men in the practices of domesticity: “Women have more rods in their eyes, which allows them to spot particles like dust and crumbs more easily…”” (Hasinoff)
Sociobiological anecdotes should be approached with the same wariness and skepticism with which one approaches tabloid headlines; keeping in mind that the not-so-scientific field of sociobiology often manifests potentially dangerous narratives.
According to Hasinoff, sociobiology posits that”…human nature is a direct product of “selfish genes” striving to maximize their reproductive profit…”
Click below for a video of Richard Dawkins explaining the “Selfish Gene.”