Tiger Woods, Part 1: Men and Promiscuity
When asked about his ability to stay loyal to his wife for decades despite all the temptations Hollywood offers, Paul Newman famously responded,”Why go out for hamburger when you’ve got steak at home?” Great quote and all but the unpleasant truth is, sometimes you just want a hamburger, not a steak. Even when steak is available. Even when you can afford a ton of steaks. There’s just an itch that a greasy, messy, cheese-drenched, bacon-topped hamburger can scratch that even the highest caliber steak can’t.
Even among all of the moralists applauding Newman’s quote, if you told them they could have steak for the rest of their lives but never, ever, ever be allowed to eat another juicy, greasy hamburger again for the rest of their lives as tradeoff, how many would take that deal? The ugly truth about men is that we’re hardwired for both quality and quantity, for both gourmet cuisine like steaks and greasy comfort food like hamburgers, for both polygamy and monogamy. Many people get confused about descriptive statements and prescriptive statements; they think that describing how something is in reality is the same as prescribing how things should be in reality.
I’m not excusing or condemning cheating. I’ll leave that to others. It’s a discussion for another day. I’m just saying that the urge to acquire a high quantity of female partners is a part of male nature, shaped by thousands upon thousands of years of evolution.
It’s easy for women to morally judge men for having the urge to bang as many women as humanly possible, but that’s hardly fair. I mean, I’ve gone years on end without ever crying. Most women can’t say the same. Does that make women stupid, weak or inferior because they can’t accomplish something that I as a man find easy? No, because I, being the wonderful specimen of concentrated manhood I am, have never experienced the unique brain chemistry and hormonal surges that happen in a woman’s body to make her susceptible to these types of emotional mood swings and outbursts. I’m built differently. I’m not so vain as to believe that if I did have the same brain construction and was buffeted by the same hormones as a woman, I’d magically comport myself emotionally in a radically different fashion than women have from the beginning of recorded history. Yet women are arrogant enough to believe that if they had the same brain construction and were buffeted by the same hormones as the average male they’d somehow magically behave differently in regards to promiscuous sex than men since the beginning of recorded history.
Women can never understand what goes on in a man’s mind and body when he feels that biological urge to bang as many hot women as he can in a lifetime. “Well I can control my urges, why can’t you?” a female may say. For the same reason I can watch a hundred sad movies without crying and you can’t. Because you’ve never experienced the hormonal surges and the unique brain construction that creates the male sex drive. And most importantly, you’ve never, ever had a raging rock-hard boner in your pants. If you could experience that perfect storm of conditions that create the male sex drive (especially the boner) even for a day, it would explain everything for you. But you can’t. So instead you’ll keep asking the same question over and over: “What drives a man to cheat?”
Now as I said before, explaining something so you can understand it is not the same as excusing it. However if you’re to pass judgment on any aspect of cheating, it should just be the dishonest aspect of it, the lying. Judge the cheater for not playing the game fairly. Judge him for not practicing safe sex with his jumpoffs, thereby risking extramarital pregnancies and infecting his wife with STDs. There are plenty of valid reasons to pass moral judgments on them.
What I disagree with is judging their biology: the male sex drive and the male desire for a variety of young, beautiful sex partners. We can’t control what thoughts pop into our heads. We can’t control our biological urges. What we can control are our actions, such as whether or not you’re going to act on these urges, and whether you’ll do so by lying and sneaking around. Judge the actions, not the biology. And try to understand the origin of the biology.
The Origin of the Male Sex Drive
Now before any commenters start preparing to get really pedantic and nitpicky, let me say up front that I’m about to play very loose with the science and oversimplifying on purpose to get my point across. With that in mind, let’s proceed.
As a thought experiment, picture the early eras of human existence. Imagine there are men and women of every sexual disposition, from high sex drive, promiscuous men and women all the way down to nonpromiscuous, low sex drive men and women. Over successive generations, what would happen?
For the men more than for the women, being a promiscuous man with high sex drive (let’s call him PHSD) would be hands-down the best reproductive strategy to have. A PHSD man has a much bigger advantage as far as passing on his genes through offspring than his nonpromiscuous, lower sex drive male rivals (let’s call them NLSD men). His high sex drive means he’s going to have sex frequently, meaning a higher likelihood of getting some woman pregnant.
And his promiscuous nature means the sex he’ll be having will be with multiple partners, so he’ll likely get multiple women at a time pregnant rather than just one. A nonpromiscuous man who has sex with only one woman in a 12 month period will likely end up only creating one child. Maybe twins or triplets at best. A PHSD man on the other hand can create in a 12 month period far more children. When it comes to how many children a single man can father in a lifetime, his only limit is the number of fertile women he has access to and the amount of resources available to support these children.
So PHSD men over a lifetime can father dozens to hundreds of children, while MLSD men will father far fewer children. Now if the sons of each type of man inherit the same types of PHSD or NLSD genes as their fathers had, early society would end up being overrun with PHSD men in a few generations, and in several more generations it would reach the point where NLSD genes in the male population were weeded out of existence and virtually obliterated by PHSD genes.
Here’s a deliberately exaggerated example of how big a difference you can get in a short time, using a hypothetical illustration with nice, easy round numbers. The numbers are totally made up but the general concepts still apply: Say on average in the days before birth control and laws PHSD men had on average PHSD 10 sons in a lifetime and NLSD men had on average 2 NLSD sons. These 10 PHSD sons each produce another 10 PHSD sons each while the 2 NLSD sons produces another 2 NLSD sons each. Now you have 100 PHSD men vs. 4 NLSD man. Next generation, 1000 PHSD men vs. 8 NLSD men. Following generation, 10000 PHSD men vs. 16 NLSD men. And so on and so on.
But that’s not all. Not only will the PHSD men be impregnating their own women, there is a high likelihood they’ll be cuckolding the MLSD men as well behind their backs, because sexually they have no boundaries or limits. So some of those children the MLSD men are raising will secretly be the offspring of PHSD men and carrying PHSD genes, skewing the ratio even more against MLSD genes.
What these trends mean is that every man alive today is largely descended from men with promiscuous tendencies and high sex drives, and therefore is carrying the genes for both traits inside them. Even though our current societal conditions with legally enforced monogamy and birth control don’t favor promiscuity anymore, the damage has already been done and men with nonpromiscuous genes were weeded out of existence eons ago.
Now I know a lot of naysayers will respond, “Hey, whatever’s the best reproductive strategy must also be the best reproductive strategy for women too. So women should be just as promiscuous and high sex drive as men are, yet they show way more sexual self-control. Therefore what you’re saying is a total cop out.”
The problem with these naysayers is that they’re usually confusing promiscuity and high sex drive and mistakenly believing they are the same thing. They are actually two different things. Being promiscuous means you are indiscriminate about who you sleep with and have no problem sleeping with multiple partners. High sex drive means you just want to have a lot of sex, even if it’s with one person. You can be promiscuous without having a high sex drive, like someone who has sex only 12 times a year but does it with 12 different people. You can be high sex drive without being promiscuous, like someone who has sex 250 times in a year but with only one or two partners. Or you can be both promiscuous and high sex drive.
Promiscuity is not as valuable a reproductive strategy for women as it is for men. Whether a woman sleeps with 1 fertile man 200 times in a year or 200 fertile men 1 time each in a year makes little difference in the peak number of pregnancies she can have in that year, which is only one. High sex drive however is a valuable reproductive strategy for women. The more sex a woman has, the higher her chance of getting pregnant and the more genes she passes on into the next generation. Therefore evolution favors women with high sex drive genes. However it makes no difference if the women has all that sex with one man or a ton of men, the reproductive result is basically the same either way: one pregnancy a year. So evolution doesn’t really favor or disfavor promiscuous women.
This is why you find much more range in the promiscuity urges of women than in the promiscuity of men. Modern men are descended solely from men with promiscuity genes while modern women on the other hand are descended from all types of women from the highly promiscuous to the highly monogamous.
Now here’s where it gets tricky. Although men are hardwired to be promiscuous, selection pressures in human history have also hardwired us to be monogamous at the same time. That’s nature’s cruel trick on men. It’s not just that men want to bang everything in sight. If it was just that, it would be so much easier. Men would just bang everything in sight and never, ever get married, thereby eliminating the cheating issue.
The real problem is as much as we men feel the urge to spread our seed, we also have a strong competing nesting instinct at the same time, and it’s from these two competing instincts, promiscuity and nesting, that you get situations like Tiger Woods.
Next Installment: “Tiger Woods: Men and Monogamy“
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The double standard is what stands out large with the Tiger Woods’ affair. Men are being pilloried all the time for cheating on their spouses – but when’s the last time we saw a women getting the full shaming treatment? There are lots of high-profile women taking money for endorsing product, which is the only reason an otherwise private matter between spouses can be admitted into a public arena. Are we supposed to believe not a single one has cheated on her husband? I doubt it somehow. I can think of several women promoting cosmetics that have likely cheated or been party to an adulterous affair, and there’s not a peep.
The last women publicly noted for cheating that I can recall was Princess Diana – and she was cheating big-time, even stalking. Still she didn’t get the viciousness being doled out to Tiger Woods and other men singled out for public crucifixion.
I smell a very filthy feminist plan to reduce men to the position of Hester in ‘The Scarlet Letter’. Women can be total sexual libertines, but if a man should stray from the straight and narrow, then it’s time for another round of ritual shaming.
The hell with feminists and their perverted view of history. May any man who cheats be treated the same way as any woman. I for one cannot condemn any man for cheating.
there is an evolutionary theory that states that in more stable and civilized societies promiscuity is a DISadvantage for women. if we assume that males on the whole behave like bees bounding from flower to flower, a woman is benefitted by establishing stable relationships. If she’s as promiscuous as men she establishes no connection to her mate giving them no incentive to stick around and help raise her children.
There’s also the belief that female promiscuity increases paternal doubt which ironically increases the number of possible male caretakers. But this is probably equal to the rate of males given to cuckoldry.
But here’s the added irony. Increased cuckoldry can contribute BOTH to female promiscuity AND male promiscuity because it ensures security for the female and the survival of his progeny for the male. On a primitive level, of course. Even the rollingest of stones will try to be a papa for at least a couple of months to ensure his seeds fitness. But if i’m confident that some chump will show up and handle my business for me (and i’ll still be able to come back around a year later to make another deposit) I’m hitting the bricks TOOT-SWEET!
Son no matter which way you parse it there is NOTHING in the animal condition that mitigates males promiscuity (i would argue that societal mores have a negligible effect in the long run).
So get off our backs ladies. You can’t love a man’s strength, confidence, independence and virility and not accept the logical causes and consequences of them.
“Love the Tiger.”
Mongo, could it be that women are a lot more careful when they’re unfaithful? After all, as Ruff points out, they have more to lose than men. A man can walk away from his children and continue to spread his seed, a woman generally can not. So is feminism the reason women don’t get the shame treatment or is it that they are a lot more discrete because their biology forces them to be?
T, as always I agree with much of what you write but then disagree strongly with one small thing. Your whole comment about, um, the hard raging boner and how women just can’t understand it is off. If anything, a man is able to control his arousal much better than a woman because men’s arousal usually comes fairly easily (no pun intended, seriousy), and from a young age they learn to “down boy” themselves. A woman’s arousal is so much more powerful, and a woman turned on by a man will almost definitely submit to him regardless of the consequences because it’s such a rarer event. A man is told throughout his life, and shown through the stories of men like Tiger Woods, that if you don’t control your appendage, your whole life can fall apart. A woman gets no such warning, believe me. How many articles exist about a woman’s affair helping or saving her marriage? How many exist for men? Even with men like Roissy spreading the idea that women are all just cock-hungry sluts waiting to be taken by the right Alpha, the truth is that we’re still considered the gentler, sweeter sex out in the world. The idea that a man’s arousal is so powerful just isn’t true when compared with a woman’s.
.-= Karol´s last blog ..Obama bans terms `Islam` and `jihad` from U.S. security document =-.
In you example of PHSD men you completely neglect the importance of the father staying around to raise the child and protect it. No point fathering 10 kids if only 2 of them make it to adulthood and manages to breed.
Plus PHSD men tend to be a strategy for failure if the market becomes flooded with them. The average NSLD men will out perform the average PHSD men in that marketplace.
There is a natural dynamic that balances your PHSD and NSLD numbers.
.-= Athol Kay: Married Man Sex Life´s last blog ..Smoking = Pond Scum Semen =-.
Athol – I didn’t neglect it. It’s covered in part 2, Men and Monogamy, the explanation for the nesting instinct.
I’m afraid I don’t follow. Can you elaborate?
I do believe that there were eventually evolutionary reasons that began to select for more monogamous men who were providers. But by that point the damage was done and nearly all of the male population now had PHSD tendencies. So at that point what began to be selected for was not true NSLD men, who were already mostly extinct, but rather the most monogamous, best providers out of the remaining PHSD men.
“Mongo, could it be that women are a lot more careful when they’re unfaithful? After all, as Ruff points out, they have more to lose than men. A man can walk away from his children and continue to spread his seed, a woman generally can not. So is feminism the reason women don’t get the shame treatment or is it that they are a lot more discrete because their biology forces them to be?”
I think that’s an unlikely explanation. Women aren’t being outed because the media is genuinely reluctant to do it – and the media is captured by female wants and desires, and the fear of female disapproval.
Case in point. The recent ‘Iris Robinson’ scandal in Northern Ireland involved a female member of parliament – also the wife of the province’s premier – diverting public money to her young lover. It’s a well documented scandal and one that ranks with the best of them. But unless you live in Northern Ireland, or perhaps Britain, chances are you never heard of it. Why is that? She wasn’t careful, she cheated on and politically embarrassed her husband, and she defrauded tax-payers – yet a large part of the local media commentary focussed not on her, but on her husband’s political credibility! No mention of him as being the wronged party by a cheating spouse.
Clearly the media have separate scripts on how they report sexual infidelity depending on the offender’s sex. I live in neither Northern Ireland or the U.K., but whenever prominent British male politicians get caught cheating, the story always finds its way into my local press. The Iris Robinson affair was never reported here – and it’s up there with Berlusconi’s dalliances, only there’s actual proof.
I bet a lot of historical male promiscuous activity involved formal or informal polygamy with resources provided to the offspring.
There are animals where the male will have opportunistic sex with females and then not provide for the offspring. In these cases, the males don’t care what the females look like. This just isn’t what human males do. Human males are picky, although not as picky as human females. For what ever reason, once a baby comes, men will typically provide some level of parental investment so it probably pays to be somewhat picky in your partners even if you are being promiscuous.
Mongo, I’ve heard of Iris Robinson but that’s because I’m an Anglophile and follow the British press. But why would most of America have heard about her? She is nobody to us. And if she were a man she’d be nobody just the same. A better example, actually, is Susan Sarandon who is currently seeing a 30 year old or something and it looks like she cheated on Tim Robbins. But some stars just escape wrath; look at Morgan Freeman out openly with his step-grandaughter. I maintain we know less about the affairs of women because they get caught less.
.-= Karol´s last blog ..Obama bans terms `Islam` and `jihad` from U.S. security document =-.
[...] T. aka Ricky Raw – “Tiger Woods, Part 1: Men and Promiscuity” [...]
“So instead you’ll keep asking the same question over and over: “What drives a man to cheat?””
I’m a man and even I don’t understand. When you get married, you make a voluntary commitment to stay loyal. If you don’t want to make that commitment, don’t get married. Very simple.
Personally, I have never had an urge to sleep with as many women as possible, regardless of what biology has to say on the matter. I have always wanted to be with just one woman. So that makes me even less able to understand.
I hear you blahbalicious. but there’s a difference between understanding a different point of view or feeling and agreeing with it (or feeling it yourself).
What I can’t understand is how a person can’t at least understand a logical rational scientific argument. Personally, i feel the urge to bang more than one person is pretty natural and common. Having said that, I ALSO understand that millions and millions of men feel no so urge. I mean, i’m sure even in the animal kingdom there are examples of specific animals in a given polygamous species that don’t engage polygamy to the degree that others do. We’re painting with broad brush strokes here. But I do understand your point about voluntary commitment.
Your confusion is not so much about the natural and biological urge. That just cannot be denied nor disputed. The question is, why do people who enter into a VOLUNTARY contract do so when it clearly doesn’t suit them or their desires?
The answer is part nature and part nurture.
Social pressure and traditon play a huge roll in this. I mean if you can wrap your head around a gay man entering into a heterosexual marriage for whatever reason he does then i don’t think it’s difficult to understand how the same forces can act on a heterosexual man entering into a heterosexual marriage.
But ultimately this comes down to biology/psychology. These instincts and urges are primal. They’re buried deep in the sense that we’ve layered thousands of years of civility and social contract on top of our base urges. But those urges aren’t very far. The fact that people get violent and horny whenever they drink is proof of that. All alcohol does is suppress inhibition, which is to say that there is something in place that keeps us from doing what other animals do.
Now perhaps you’ve done a better job of internalizing the social contract. This isn’t to say that you don’t truly love your wife. But i also don’t believe that adulterers don’t love their wives. Some people don’t sanctify the marriage vows as much as others. Some do but later do some mental gymnastics to justify their actions. i mean, 85 lb anorexics think themselves fat.
Personally, i’m with you. It’s a voluntary commitment. Respect the commitment that you, yourself made.
At the same time, i could TOTALLY see myself fucking around if i thought i could get away with it.
True, why have beans every day!
woods incident is really not encouraging!
I believe his success in golf also brings him money & power.
When you have power & $$, you will want more…a tendency to want more I guess. Anyway, all the best to Tiger.
Jack
Publisher, Golf-Swing-Tempo.org
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I think comparing crying and promiscuity is ridiculous. First, there are women that haven’t cried in years, and even for women who do, we can control it, it’s not difficult, even when presented with dramatic movies. Everyone feels the need to cry. However, not everyone including men, feels the need to go out ad bang everything that walks. It is sickening to hear men excuse promicuity as it just being their nature. If this is true, and we are doomed to act out our biology, then look at this: women are supposed to be, in contrast, monogamous by nature right? Ok, if we are controled by biology/evolutionary traits, how do you explain the surge of women only interested in short-term sexual relationships? (Yes, many of these women abound). I tell you how I explain it. Whether we are wired for promiscuity or monogamy is entirely individual. Some people are more evolved, and know that sleeping around in this day in age would do more harm than good, regardless of what evolutionary theory suggests. Incest was supposedly practiced to populate the earth as well, would that be acceptable today? No. So why is male promiscuity? How are women wired for monogomy and men for promiscuity, when we are supposed to go together? Guess we’re not. If you read studies on cheating, the percentage of women who cheat are only slightly behind men. Don’t think men are the only ones who yearn to “play.” You’re fooling yourself…
Nothing to mitigate promiscuity?
I’d say there is…herpes. Or HIV. You know, the std’s that condoms won’t save you from.
See, this is nature’s way of discouraging promiscuity. Haven’t you noticed that animals cannot contract STDs? It is because animals are supposed to be promiscuous. They’re animals. People can contract STDs because people were supposed to have evolved. We’re not animals. We no longer have an evolutionary reason to sleep around. We are tempted to, hell men and women alike. But honestly, no matter how you try to justify it, we are not meant to sleep around. Period.
T – try Google searching on animals and STDs. Here’s an article to get you started.
http://discovermagazine.com/20.....s-get-stds
Animals can’t contract STD’s and get much fewer diseases because they are still exposed to the three main evolutionary traits, unlike humans who are probably de-evolving I spose. It’s a health and humanities thing as much as a promiscuity thing I think.
If a man wants to sleep around, go for it. But not in a committed relationship. If you can’t control those urges, then you shouldn’t place yourself in a situation that will force you to lie and hurt someone else. And even if you get away with it, it’s still morally wrong. I spose it’s just one of the things we will have to endure, unless we plan on dying alone. Or unless we all just turn gay. But woman who always complain about it really do piss me off, I must admit I’ve never met a woman who has an understanding and acceptance of our biological ‘hard-wiring’. (That I know about mind you, I’m sure they’re out there).
I mean there is porn though, so as pathetic as it sounds, there is that small sate of monogamousness.
Yeah, I’ve heard that some scientists believe chimps gave us HIV, some believe that HIV mutated out of a completely different virus…the truth is, they really don’t know. You honestly can’t believe everything they say. These are all just theories. Just like the assertion that ‘men are naturally promiscuous.’ It’s all theory. How exactly do you prove an evolutionary standpoint? As far as I know we don’t have time machines.
And yes, women will complain about it, just like men complain if they get cheated on. Sure, women may not be a prone to do it, but we get ‘urges’ too. And guess you can’t expect us to control it! You don’t know what it feels like. From a LOGICAL standpoint, does it really make since that one entire gender is engineered for promiscuity, and the other isn’t?? I mean, let’s be real, here. Stop trying to delude yourselves. Get over it, or move somewhere where polygamy is allowed.