The female side of this is pretty well worked out, and addressed by Louann Brizendine ( The Female Brain). Think about how vulnerable the female animal becomes in nature, both pre- and postpartum, in order to reproduce. Females who allowed insemination by a male who could be predicted to stick around and provide support and protection would greatly increase chances of survival of the mother-infant by virtue of commitment of the trustworthy male. Brizendine discusses the neurophysiologic bases for the learned ability in females to gauge trustworthiness, which is based largely on reading facial cues – symmetry, eyes, mouth. Cultural meanings support this: crooked, twisted grin, darting or evasive eyes. Visualize stereotypical faces of hucksters and villains vs. “good guys”. The wife whose husband’s face is blocked by the morning paper doesn’t just feel ignored, she’s anxious because she can’t read his expression.

Males don’t get forced into positions in which extreme physical vulnerability is signaled by pregnancy, birth, and the presence of an attached infant, so they don’t have to risk reliance on others for survival to the extent that females do. The male strategy has focused on power, control, deceit, manipulation, and aggression to command resources needed for survival. Accurately reading trustworthiness becomes less valuable.

Crotch gazes by males? Who knows? But there are some likely explanations.

1) Certain past selective environments might have favored characteristics or prominence of the male reproductive organs. For example, females may have selected differentially for more visually prominent organs based on expectation of certain rewards or on simple excitement. If true, then males checking each other’s organs might constitute assessment of their competitive prospects for mating based on a perceived advantage due to prominence, and assessment of how much need there is to invest in compensatory behaviors, like getting big biceps or a Hummer.

2) The crotch gazing at other males may simply be a covert expression of the homosexual drive latent in every male.

Go back and read the first letter by Zandru (p. 4), then the post by Robert Dunkle (p. 5), also nerdnam’s (p. 3), then GK’s piece again.

GK is conflicted (that’s OK, right?) and takes some shelter from his uncertainty in wryness, satire and irony that is just ambiguous enough that he can avoid being taken to task – not much substance beyond Oh, to be human! (and that’s a little less OK).

Evolution saddled us with strong drives toward systems of mating and parental care that involve, among much else, contractual monogamy - but under conditions which no longer hold. As GK apparently knows, we aspire, shall we say, to more than lifelong contractual monogamy, even if not so eager to admit it.

That is, our beliefs about the way children must be raised stifle adult self-actualization. The tragic truth for all of us is that children actually don’t need one male and one female parent stuck in lifelong contractual monogamy (which seems to be a recipe for an unhappy household); they need healthy attachment to stable, loving figures who will not abandon or abuse them, something entirely different.

GK just needs to take a tip from the straight-shootin’ DurianJoe (p. 4): “Moreover -- and pardon my Colonialese -- frak what Nature wants. If Nature had its way, there would be . . . only the law of the jungle, and . . . .Large men would knock down small men and take their belongings; the weak would starve.”

That is, if Nature has its way, we’ll be stuck with conservatism, capitalism and contractual monogamy. Frack that!

as everyone is to some degree, you are vulnerable to anxiety. You medicated the symptoms for 13 years with nicotine, but all meds have their side effects, and you wisely gave up smoking, but didn’t deal with the anxiety. You instinctively substituted another substance (food) to manage the anxiety, but it has side effects as well (get it – “side” effects? damn!). Unmanaged worry (hyperarousal) set you up to do battle with (that is, overreact symptomatically to) every antigen that came along. Yoga helped because relaxing somatically calms the mind.

Anxiety is very effectively helped by cognitive-behavioral therapy. It’s no big deal, and it’s not about “mental illness”. It’s about re-working how things are evaluated and interpreted, like, whether the vicious ranting of petulant letter writers is really about you or about them; or oh, say, the importance of a mother’s approval to a 31-year-old.

Rebecca? At 31 years of age, you had to lie to your mother about the yoga injury, or else . . . . . . . . . ?

Autonomy and anxiety tend to be inversely related.

Followed a bit farther, Mr. Kamiya’s analysis may lead to a view of the phenomenon “conservatism” not as ideology or ideas at all but, as hinted at, a means to gain power and control by preying on fear.

There is (barring serious psychopathology) a nagging anxiety that accompanies the uncertainty stemming from arrested moral development and associated antisociality, or unexamined and unprincipled behavior – something like Am I good? Am I OK?

Conservatism sells a false sense of escape from this anxiety using a lie, a classic psychological defense mechanism (reaction formation) in which an undesired part of self (venal, antisocial, untrustworthy) is protected against, denied, by adopting the façade and role of its opposite: moral, upstanding, righteous. We allow this process, this dog-and-pony show, to be constructed as ideology or political discourse.

The protectors, perpetuators and beneficiaries of inherently unjust and oppressive systems (capitalism, patriarchy, classism) insistently construct themselves as moral for good reason. Like church attendance, it can be deconstructed as See? I am good. which deconstructs as I cannot tolerate the anxiety stemming from the nagging awareness of my antisociality.

Tough choice: work through the discomfort of guilt and the fear of needed changes in behavior, or avoid all that and get instant relief by simply labeling yourself the “moral majority” and then continue to reap the fruits of your antisocial behavior.

It’s a hell of a product. And a bargain, as Mr. Kamiya noted.