Comments on: Virginity & heritability

By: TGGP

TGGP — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 12:41:23 +0000

Oh, but it is. If your parents don’t have any children, you won’t either!

By: nonuthin

nonuthin — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 14:42:12 +0000

How come nobody has made the “celibacy is not hereditary” quip?

By: Shadow of a Doubt

Shadow of a Doubt — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 10:05:15 +0000

Not to throw this towards another wrench in conversation but the "threatening" factor is always there with men, because of a multitude of things including: the hit and run factor, male/male competition (suitors or father/suitor), not the least of which is having a penis. It's precisely this reason why gay men are more repulsive when thought about in comparison to others: it is the harshest +/+ when the other stress complementarity or benign/emotional ("gay" women).

Donna, no one outgrows "good-looking" anything.

What's more interesting to me is that perhaps I am more picky (assuredly am) than most, it seems that a very good looking person can become instantly unattractive just by talking. I know this is the same for both men and women. I imagine a low-achieving male (low salary) who is 9/10 on looks would immediately be thought to be stupid ... and thus instantly less attractive.

Guys have harsher standards immediately for looks. Women have what I would call thresholds, that is, does he pass the question, "Is he bare minimum if the other things are in order."

It's among the most interesting of analyses.

By: thaddeus

thaddeus — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 05:50:43 +0000

Jerry Seinfeld said one of the reasons he had his first encounter of the closest kind so late (19 I think, but he may even have been older) was because he could not stand pressing the issue, so to speak, unless the girl was totally into it. Apparently he did not find himself in such a situation until he was at least 19.
As for girls usually remembering their first encounter of the most intimate kind in mostly negative terms–expected. Most people know this through instinct or just biological common sense, which is why even the most “liberated” parents, both fathers and mothers, get angry at the idea of anybody sexually eyeballing their teenaged daughters but not so much their sons. There’s a lot of lip service paid to the vulnerability of pubescent males being vamped by designing females, but when it actually happpens, most people aren’t too bent out of shape about it. Still, 14 year old boys fathering children by their 30 year old teachers does have a weird out factor, so I’m glad the law is there, theoretically, to intervene.

By: Donna B.

Donna B. — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 23:03:09 +0000

Oh, and what is a wedding reception if not a celebration of mating?

By: Donna B.

Donna B. — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 23:02:20 +0000

I don't think women ever outgrow enjoying a good-looking man. Trustworthiness is hardly ever equated with looks, nor looks with IQ. In my experience, trustworthiness, brains, etc., are what you eventually marry for.

But don't think I don't remember fondly my dance with the brother of one of the groomsmen at my youngest daughter's wedding. He could have been an Abercrombie & Fitch model.

Oh yeah, I had to ask him for the dance. I'm his mother's age, but he's old enough (and Southern enough) to have the grace to dance with me as if I were 18. (He's also savvy enough to realize he's actually preening for the women his age watching him. And their mothers.)

My husband had an old-man crush on one of the bridesmaids too. He's not a dancer, but that's one time he wished he'd learned.

The most amusing (and most applauded) cross-generational crush at that event was the 3 year old ringbearer who cut in on a guy dancing with another of the bridesmaids.

He had observed the cutting in behavior and decided he could handle that. Tugging on the pants leg of the man's Naval Academy uniform, the little guy got their attention and got the rest of that and the next two dances with his chosen girl.

The rituals of mating begin at an early age and retain their lure as long as hip and knee joints allow.

By: agnostic

agnostic — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 18:24:56 +0000

Yet another reason to specialize in college girls!

All this talk makes me feel like dancing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDgxnjgVFi4

By: elaine

elaine — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 14:07:53 +0000

How many women going out to a nightclub even trust "a good looking" dude?

Women 18-27? Waaaay too many
Women 27+? Just about none but the most stupid

By: Shadow of a Doubt

Shadow of a Doubt — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 09:18:15 +0000

Speaking of dating sites and “sausage fests” (I think the use of that word alone would be a great “stay away” indicator for girl if said by a guy) ultimately it comes down to the two-Ts (the t-test if you will): timing and trust. Guys tend to look at themselves like they look at women which is just a horrible comparison; they don’t realize what is most important. Things women care most about physically are height and face, two things which you can’t do much about. ONCE you get them interested, then things like body (the things you can work on) or your joke telling ability [which is probably fixed at that time anyway] might start to help. Which brings us to the Ts. Ironically, like the period, the timing factor is crucial, because timing goes hand in hand many times with friends/meeeting places/convergent break ups. Trust as a factor is always right there. People meet at work often, right? School? They are around each other enough to trust and know what each other person is doing.

How many women going out to a nightclub even trust a “good looking” dude? I’d venture hardly many, and considering they are that whimsical the quality probably isn’t there anyway. I could go on for a long time with this but rest assured that two people with a great potential for match can be easily sabotaged by dealing with former relationships, significant others at the time, or any other multitude of things [emotions] that ruin the timing. The human animal, indeed.

By: Jason Malloy

Jason Malloy — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 08:39:30 +0000

I can’t speak to high-schoolers, but data from adult break-ups don’t support higher emotional recovery time for women. There is no gender difference.

By: Peter

Peter — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 06:39:50 +0000

I've known a couple of girls who were in love with their boyfriends and slept with them. When the girls were dumped some time afterwards, they were just devasted. One girl was 18 and spent a semester in college lying in bed and did very badly. The other girl was 17 and in high school and similarly didn't do well in school for some time.
Their boyfriends however were just fine.

You will see this sort of behavior among older people too. Take two 30-year-olds who've been dating for several months. If they split up, the woman will spend the next six months sobbing in front of the TV watching Lifetime and scarfing down Ben & Jerry's, occasionally venturing out with her girlfriends to swap stories about how all men are pr*cks. The man, meanwhile, is back out in the nightclubs within a week.

It is this gender difference in reactions to breakups that is part of the reason why sites like Match.com and eHarmony have too many men and too few women, and why singles' bars are your proverbial sausage party. Too many women have simply taken themselves off the market to recover from breakups. It's not the whole story, of course.

By: deadpost

deadpost — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 05:45:06 +0000

Doesn’t the first virginity loss differs by ethnicity and culture?

— are there known human population differences in the genes responsible, like Rushton’s rule says?

By: Jason Malloy

Jason Malloy — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 21:37:11 +0000

But it doesn't quite fit with the anorexia/bulimia theory, does it? Or am I confused again?

I meant that girls who have earlier puberty are more likely to develop eating disorders, not that eating disorders cause early puberty.

By: elaine

elaine — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 21:34:37 +0000

I know it’s not uncommon among high school girls who run cross country for their periods to stop or to become irregular. Sometimes this happens with swimmers as well. I thought I read that extremes of exercise delay menstruation or cause it to stop.

By: Donna B.

Donna B. — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 20:16:21 +0000

“I vaguely recall a hypothesis that body weight disorders were so common among young teen girls because they were subconsciously trying to suppress ovulation (bulimia and anorexia are associated with earlier puberty).” –Jason Malloy

I distinctly remember my daughter’s pediatrician telling us that my daughter’s higher than normal exercise level (ballet mostly) was likely responsible for her not yet having periods at 14. She thought she was the only girl in the world who wasn’t having one. That explanation would seem to fit with the higher age at menarche of hunter-gatherers.

But it doesn’t quite fit with the anorexia/bulimia theory, does it? Or am I confused again? I also vaguely recall that humans did not do physically well (nor did their domesticated animals) for some time after agricultural and permanent settlements appear. The physical record shows them becoming shorter and smaller. Did the age at menarche change with the diet?

By: as

as — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 19:43:19 +0000

By: Jason Malloy

Jason Malloy — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 18:35:17 +0000

It’s true that young females in developed countries have logical reasons to worry about sex. But what puzzles me is that the anxiety doesn’t seem to primarily be about an economic calculus. At least not a conscious one. Just sort of a confused haze of anxiousness. It seems like the sort of thing that would have a biological root, and perhaps it does, but the circumstances are very different from, e.g. what the EEA would’ve featured. Age at menarche among hunter-gatherers is much later, 16-18, and if I recall correctly there isn’t a similar lag time; sex comes soon after (or even before) menarche.

Are females still going through their “psychological puberty” at 16-18 (when they typically lose their virginity), even though the modern environment has pushed their physical development as low as 10? I vaguely recall a hypothesis that body weight disorders were so common among young teen girls because they were subconsciously trying to suppress ovulation (bulimia and anorexia are associated with earlier puberty).

By: agnostic

agnostic — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 16:49:32 +0000

That inversion of the standard story is part of a much bigger picture, of course: that girls mature earlier than boys across the board.

By: agnostic

agnostic — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 16:47:54 +0000

suggesting boys are psychologically ready soon after puberty. But this almost never happens for females.

Natural selection would not give us people who were physiologically ready to carry out some important function, and yet psychologically not ready to do so, however we define that.

There's no lag between ability to digest food and being psychologically read to eat -- having the thoughts, feelings, etc., that drive us to eat.

In fact, you could stand this reasoning about "psychological readiness" on its head -- that boys are *not* psychologically ready for sex right after puberty, since they'll give it away for free with no questions asked, whereas girls that age are incredibly discriminating and risk-averse (compared to when they slut it up around age 22 - 23).

Boys aren't thinking of the consequences at all, and so feel fine, while girls are imagining just about everything that could go wrong, and so are a nervous wreck. It's clear that girls have lower time preferences in this case, and that's how we define "being ready" or "being responsible" in all other contexts -- worrying about and looking toward the future.

By: Donna B.

Donna B. — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 11:04:41 +0000

Older women who “train” young boys are doing the younger female population a great service, IMHO.