Why is it unlike most mammals human females don't have a mating season? Biology or evil patriarchy?

are negligle because cloning can never be a wide-spread substitute for male-female mixing of chromosomes. Think about it. Why has almost all life on our planet evolve with two genders? Because it is the most efficient way for the species to evolve (ie, pass on new desireable traits and avoid genetic defects). I know there are some feminists who think the world would be better off without men, but I for one kind of like the way nature does things.

this seems a little odd:

One of them is that the sperm are smaller than the egg and for most male animals that translates into not having to invest as much energy or work into the babies.

Eggs weigh more? I have trouble believing the relative size of eggs and sperm are relevant.

Yep.

Just find Camille Paglia's now buried article from two days ago and you can skip this gibberish.

Salon is positing itself at the forefront of the resurgence of male-bashing feminism.

Sexism goes both ways, girls.

Take thousand year for produce new improve penis like duck that can make happy happy and remove cork from wine bottle too. Think me this is extreme sad when Svutlana is use for new improve Blackberry model every few month.

Biological imperative is to sex what kitchen is to fast food restaurant meal--maybe essential, but who want for think about because for sure it is ugly.

I'm always down with the science but the "flesh-eating sperm" byline is a bit hyperbolic and, well, gross.

Primates generally have a menstrual cycle instead of a a once or twice a year estrus (heat). The important difference with humans is that females are able and willing to have sex at any point in their cycle--not just when they're fertile.

One explanation I've heard for this is that it evolved along with the long human childhood--a female who was able to mate all the time could keep her baby-daddy around to help with the children instead of wandering off in search of a hotter female. (Stop those cynical laughs--it might have helped. No one ever said evolution comes up with sure-fire solutions every time.)

Old habits die hard. I keep checking in on my old friend, Salon. But Salon has changed. Salon has been PC'd and wussified beyond recognition. Thanks for nothing, Joan.

Feature article: what do Americans have against sodomy? Real simple: it is fucking gross. If that's what you want to do, fine. But PLEASE keep it to yourselves. Now, I will be called a homophobe for that. But when gay sex columnist Dan Savage writes "I would rather die, literally, than eat pussy," does anyone call him a gynophobe? I mean, other than, me? I doubt it.

But back to "Hard Drive."

And gee, we want sex. And will lie to get it. Well, some of us anyway. Why do men lie? Because it works. Why do women fall for it over and over? A serious asshole like Mystery takes money off chumps who want to learn how to have a little game. Why would that be? Because you can ask any man on earth and he will say "Women always go for the assholes." Because that is the truth. An unfortunate truth, but truth is truth. And it is not all men's fault, girls.

I highly recommend http://www.intellectualwhores.com/ for a breakdown and analysis of this phenomenon.

As far as lying goes, what is make-up, push-up bras, high-heels, and so on? Doesn't everyone lie a little to find a mate as high on the evolutionary scale as possible?

Testosterone poisoning? Thanks, Alan. Why no mention of estrogen poisoning? Just as real a phenomenon. And I think Salon is in the terminal throws of it.

QUOTE:

"They invest less than females in reproduction, but pay for it (among humans, sometimes literally) by working harder to have sex in the first place.

So they are likely to end up evolving to chase after sex in a way that females might not. The pickup artists illustrate the way that men are likely to invest a lot of their money and time in going after plain old sex.

Males are under more evolutionary pressure than women to stand out from the crowd. Every study shows that men are more likely to do risky things of all kinds. Women simply have a little more common sense when it comes to drinking, driving, guns -- that sort of thing.

In animals like gorillas and chimpanzees and dogs, it's much more clear-cut -- the alpha male has to beat everybody else up. Then he gets access to all the females. You can see similar stuff happening with humans, but instead of the tough guys, it's the artists, rock stars and actors who get all the attention."

One of the best articles I've ever read that presents rape as a rational response to the "facts"

Why should I waste my time and money taking seduction classes, taking a female on a date or competing with artists, rock stars and actors.

Thanks for the tip.

I have not seen anything in biology and evolution (a field I have worked in) to convince me that behavior is not largely determined by psychological role-playing, as opposed to anything biological. The usual discussions about "pick-up artists" need to be weighed against the fact that

a) I know few actual pick-up artists in real-life

b) I know as many female pick-up artists as male.

I would hope that any discussion about sexual roles and biology that was purporting to be scientific would do more than bandy about stereotypes without reference to actual scientific methodology. It is easy to generate hypotheses - testing them, especially in questions of psychology, is not as easy.

This article is so awful that I don't even know where to begin. I sure hope that T C-F was drawing this idiot woman out for riducule, and not buying into any of it.

The animal examples alone: I'll advance you a sexchange-wrastling sea-worm and counter with an emasculated male sea-horse; you come up with an alpha male gorilla, I'll get you back with an alpha female baboon or male-mimicking female hyena. Citing some animal somewhere that does something odd or other (and it is the oddities of nature that make it so wonderful) says nothing, nothing at all about humans. Sorry, there isn't even an analogy there.

Everybody getting hung up on human females not going into heat (and damn but every male undergraduate exposed to a little biology always comes up with that fantasy, along with the why don't human females have 6 or 8 breasts oooh? one) should just check out a little Bono Bono biology. Or even basic Chimp biology, search on "Oestrus" or "Estrus," a non-fertile sexually "receptive" (god I always loved that concept) phase. Not that it matters, humans did not evolve from chimps or Bono Bonos. Goddamn.

I would love to parse every crazy stupid wrong thing she says out line by line, but that would be like a whole book, and there is now way she deserves it. There is so much so wrong with almost everything Faye Flam (Flim Flam?) says, I have to question the sanity of the Philly Inquirer: this stands to science reporting like the (now lost and lamented) World Weekly News stood to reality.