‘Boys will be boys’? Is ‘masculinity’ honed by evolution?

‘Boys will be boys’? Is ‘masculinity’ honed by evolution? How many times have you heard the saying ‘boys will be boys’? The phrase has permeated everyday discourse, implying a predetermined ‘male nature’, yet it has its roots in evolutionary psychology. After all, if males are genetically encoded to be philanderers, aggressors and dominators, such behaviours must have provided a selective evolutionary advantage throughout the past. Indeed, much academic literature attributes innate masculinity to evolutionary history and particularly sexual selection. Darwin’s theory of sexual selection is an evolutionary mechanism involving the competition between individuals of one sex to be chosen as a mate by the other sex. In this way, sexual selection is dependent upon evolutionary mechanisms that are ‘non-essentials’ for the survival of an organism except for the purpose of attracting the opposite sex - ‘secondary sexual characteristics.’ In popular culture, sexual selection has been utilised to place an evolutionary spin on the saying ‘nice guys finish last’ - implying men hone such masculine behaviours to make themselves prime mating material. This might sound niche - after all, the intricacies of Darwinian theory aren’t often discussed around the dinner table. Yet this hypothesis isn’t just confined to university lecture halls and dusty textbooks. Intertwined with personal narratives, (mis)interpretations of sexual selection dominate the ‘manosphere’ (extremist anti-feminist online communities) threatening to provide a veneer of scientific legitimacy to their misogynistic ideology. For example, a belief in female hypergamy - the notion that women are overly sexually selective in order to ‘marry up’ - underlines a common ‘manosphere’ tendency to view ‘deserving’ men as rejected by excessively ‘fussy’ women, thus exacerbating their resentment of the opposite sex. Much of the scientific literature in support of Darwinian sex roles is reliant upon the Darwin-Bateman paradigm. In 1948 geneticist Andrew Bateman, seeking to reinvigorate Darwin’s theory of sexual selection, carried out an infamous mating experiment in the fruit fly which demonstrated a stronger correlation between mating and reproductive success in male fruit flies compared to females (21% of males failed to provide any offspring compared to a mere 4% of females). This led Bateman to highlight a dichotomy between the two sexes with regard to their sexual behaviour: namely, an ‘undiscriminating eagerness in the males’ and ‘a discriminating passivity in the females.’ What could underline this difference? Well, according to Bateman this biological imperative is rooted in the microscopic - namely, the discrepancy in size between gametes - female’s large eggs and male’s smaller sperm: otherwise known as anisogamy. To use anisogamy as an explanation for male aggression is to assume that, because sperm production is ‘cheap’ for males but egg production is energy-expensive for females, the sexes have different evolutionary priorities in mating: males want to inseminate as many females as possible whilst females are picky in their mate selection. Consequently, alpha masculine behaviours may be presented to aid desperate males in their quest to seduce selective females. But is this scientifically legitimate? Primarily, the assertion that male reproductive investment is ‘cheap’ suggests such investment is devoted merely to the production of sperm, ignoring the basic fact as argued by anthropologist Agustín Fuentes, ‘mating is part of a larger social reality’ in which males expend energy in the courting process, not solely in the act of insemination. Secondly, even if males could simply wander up to females and inseminate them, males produce an average 100 million sperm per ejaculation - a fact which complicates the energy investment picture since - whilst the cost per gamete for females is higher - males produce more gametes in one go. Indeed, studies of female birds show 90% are sexually promiscuous during a breeding season, defying the monogamous tendencies ascribed to them by Bateman. Darwinian theory has long been manipulated in the political sphere. In the 19th century, Social Darwinists utilised the term ‘survival of the fittest’ to imply an innate hierarchy used to justify racism, imperialism and eugenics. Now we witness evolutionary biology being co-opted by misogynistic extremism. Evolutionary psychology is a fascinating field, but academic work must be analysed lest it bestows extreme views with token legitimacy.