By invoking a bullshit evo psych theory predicated on the ridiculous presumption that only men really enjoy and crave sex. T. Byram Karasu may bring all sorts of pedigrees to his argument, but that doesn’t matter. It’s still choad science that has no relationship to real science. It’s hard to even get a handle on how stupid Karasu is being.
Sex addiction is simply a new name for the old evolutionary concept—the innate urge to impregnate as many females as possible. In this sense, every man is a sex addict or was one at some point in his life…..
Unlike addictions to alcohol, cocaine, and cigarettes, in which the craving is induced by external elements, sexual craving, by its nature, is an innate and natural phenomenon. And sex addiction is a specific situation—the frequency of erection and the intensity of orgasm—dependent on the person’s blood-level of testosterone. Man deals with that according to his physical, social, and financial conditions…...
At the least advantageous end of the spectrum, a man simply masturbates. In the best circumstances, women throw themselves at him. But in between these two extremes reside garden-variety marriages wherein the wife may complain about the husband’s sexual demand, and the man may seek lovers and/or prostitutes.
I don’t actually have a problem with denouncing the concept of “sex addiction”. I’ve done it many times myself. But nor do I think there’s a whole lot of reality in the idea that men and only men are these enormous victims of their outrageous desires that largely asexual women cannot even begin to understand. Or that a woman’s expectation of monogamy from a man in exchange for monogamy from her is some sort of horrible oppression that stems from women’s inability to understand that men like sex.
Back when bullshit, evidence-free assertions about human sexuality from evo psych bullshitters began in the 60s or roundabout, there wasn’t any hesitation from these men in making wish fulfillment assertions about how men are naturally promiscuous and women are naturally monogamous, and therefore the only real relationship model that will work is one where men get to sleep around and women have to put up with it. Nowadays, there’s a hesitation to come right out and say that women are naturally monogamous—-probably because the immediate problem of who do “naturally” promiscuous men sleep with will come up—-but that’s the insinuation of articles like this. Feminists have forced evo psych bullshitters like Karasu to tacitly accept that women have a minimal, easily satisfied sex drive (he even painfully accepts that perhaps women might not want to castrate their husbands because we’d like to get laid oh so occasionally), but at the end of the day, they prefer to think of the world as one where men are just insatiable sexual creatures, and women put up with it because we are all prostitutes at heart, and we get paid off in actual cash or in wifely security.
I don’t like the framework around “sex addiction” not because I think that every man is a natural dog who will fuck every woman he sees if given the chance, and that women are fools to expect otherwise (or have the duty to milk our men 3-5 times a day to stop him—-most men wouldn’t want that, either). I don’t like it because the framework demonizes sex itself, even as those who push it deny that. Do I think people act out with sex? Sure, but it’s usually in service of some other neurotic need. Call Tiger Woods a “sex addict” distracts from the more mundane reality. His type isn’t actually that uncommon—-ego monster plus a huge Madonna/whore complex. (Hard as it for the “all men are just dogs” crew to believe, but some men with serious Madonna/whore issues will even lose sexual desire for their wives or girlfriends, because they’ve been so conditioned to think fucking a woman is degrading her that they can’t bring themselves to degrade someone they genuinely love.) The cure for a Madonna/whore complex is a little feminism, to stop thinking of sex as something men do to women that’s degrading, and to think of it as a mutual sharing of pleasure between individuals, an understanding evo psych bullshit wards off. In fact, while theories like Karasu’s tend to offer the belief that men will fuck anything that moves on the surface, they encourage Madonna/whore complexes by painting women as either wives or prostitutes, but always women who trade sex for goodies.
The cure for ego monster behavior? Beats me. Really seeing the people around you as human beings—-something that evo psych bullshit also wards off, by actively fighting off seeing the real complexity of human nature—-is probably really hard to do when you’re a world famous celebrity and no one around you sees you as a real human being, either.
I will say this to evo psych bullshitters: Generalizing your experience (women not wanting to have sex with you unless you compensate them somehow) to all men and women tells people more about you than about all men and women.
------
Registration is now required! We're still in the process of getting it all squared away, so for the moment don't forget to Login or Register using the links in the upper left menu before starting to write your comment.
So I can definitely appreciate videogame habituation and surfing habituation, but gambling habituation is as foreign to me as Sanskrit.
OK, evo-psych bullshit, but don’t these guys ever talk to real people?
I just feel like evo-psych guys are Nice Guys(tm) who never have sex and only talk about sex with other Nice Guys (tm) in terms of the latest buddy flick and beer commercials.
They never seem to consider the fact that men exist who want to get married, who are happy to get married, and who don’t seem to be obsessed with having sex with everyone they see/raping women.
Women never really exist.