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To: KMT who wrote (14933)	2/12/2002 9:50:18 AM
From: AC Flyer	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 74559

Well, I realize that my POV will be offensive to some, but I am certainly not ashamed of it. It seems ridiculous to you because you have internal models that are incompatible with the description of male & female reproductive strategies that I describe. I do, however, take offense that you describe it as shallow. That post contains some very powerful and unorthodox concepts, albeit expressed in a simplistic fashion. The principal idea expressed is that we are creatures of our genes. We human animals (apes, actually) exist for their preservation and are nothing more than their throwaway survival machines. This is, of course, heresy to anyone who (a) does not believe in evolution {it tickles my funnybone the way that the creationists insist on talking about "the theory of evolution" as if the mountains of incontrovertible evidence, including intermediate forms, do not exist - an eye could not evolve, etc. - ho ho ho}, or (b) has strong religious beliefs. The second powerful idea expressed is that the vastly different reproductive potentials for males (large) and females (limited) lead to different reproductive strategies for each. (By the way, have you ever asked yourself why we humans have approximately equal numbers of male and female children? Try explaining that politically correctly). Back to male and female reproductive strategies. From a gene perspective, each individual "wants" as many surviving offspring as possible. The male perspective is that the less resources he is obliged to invest in any one of those offspring, the more offspring he can have. This has some obvious consequences. The female perspective is to give her limited number of offspring the best chance of survival to sexual maturity, which requires attracting and retaining a faithful mate who can also supply maximum physical resources (good hunter, etc.) In many species the father does work hard and faithfully at looking after the young. Even so, there is evolutionary pressure on males to invest a little bit less in each child. Females, on the other hand, weed out casual suitors by insisting on a long engagement period. Feminine coyness is common among animals, and so are prolonged courtship or engagement periods. The consequences of male/female reproductive strategy differences are somewhat obscured by cultural overlays in humans (except in Utah and one or two other places around the globe) but the fundamental difference in behavior can still be observed. If you would like a mind-expanding experience, I can recommend: "The Selfish Gene" by Richard Dawkins, the Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University world-of-dawkins.com