Matt Yglesias beat me to this bit of evo psych choadage, but since making fun of this stuff is my official beat, I’m taking it on anyway. As you are all no doubt aware, there’s a lot of choadery disguised as science reporting in the mainstream press because it uses just-so stories to explain how every vicious sexist stereotype you believe is not only not bullshit, but etched into our DNA. This week, it’s one of the top three favorites: Women are money-grubbing whores who only pretend to like sex to get at your wallet. There are enough men (and sadly, women) out there who need to believe this that they’ll buy even the most ridiculous logic bending to get their way, which is exactly what’s going on in this Time article.
It turns out that one of humanity’s oldest professions may be even older than we thought: In a recent study of macaque monkeys in Indonesia, researchers found that male primates “paid” for sexual access to females — and that the going rate for such access dwindled as the number of available females went up.
Non-choads might immediately point out that the big news here, in monkeys are actually hiring prostitutes, is that monkeys have money, which is startling news indeed. Oh wait, they put “paid” in quotes. So what are the females exchanging for sex (because we have to assume that females don’t have sex because they want to, amiritefellas)?
According to the paper, “Payment for Sex in a Macaque Mating Market,” published in the December issue of Animal Behavior, males in a group of about 50 long-tailed macaques in Kalimantan Tengah, Indonesia, traded grooming services for sex with females; researchers, who studied the monkeys for some 20 months, found that males offered their payment up-front, as a kind of pre-sex ritual. It worked. After the females were groomed by male partners, female sexual activity more than doubled, from an average of 1.5 times an hour to 3.5 times. The study also showed that the number of minutes that males spent grooming hinged on the number of females available at the time: The better a male’s odds of getting lucky, the less nit-picking time the females received.
Perfect. I can’t wait until the anti-feminist screeds about how women are naturally stupid sluts start incorporating this new knowledge. Next thing you know, someone will be whining that gold-digging women are also demanding male “payment” for sex in hand-holding and kisses, as well as material goods. What’s the going rate for physical affection? If we stretch this metaphor far enough, any woman who’s gotten a mix tape and then slept with the guy who gave it to her is now breaking her local jurisdiction’s prostitution laws.