this post was submitted on 02 Dec 2023
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I'm not going to speak about humans because that's too contentious. But anthropology has lots of study of primate partner selection and genetic outcomes. Were they measure based on reproductive success. If you look at the genetic data, you'll see that there is a bimodal approach to sexual selection in primates.
The old trope is: males maximize the reproductive success by having a diverse set of partners, and investing in only a few. Females maximize the reproductive success by having relatively few partners and maximizing investment in a few offspring. But in both scenarios diversifying the genetic material gives you a higher probability of a successful outcome. Interestingly in primates teste size is directly related to the promiscuity of the species. So bonobos have very large testes, and orangutan's relatively small testes. Because they have less sperm competition.
If this kind of research interest you, I highly recommend taking a look at an anthropology primate sexual selection course, or at least the reading for one.
So where people get into a lot of contentious trouble is humans have opinions, and the research done on primates does not necessarily correlate with the behavior of humans, and it's easy to take some research and make broad sweeping generalizations about behavior and etc.
So this is where applying the bimodal sexual incentives, the manosphere latched on and said, it maximizes the reproductive success of a female to find a stable social partner, but to get diverse hybridized genes from short-term sexual partners. i.e. the abd boy attraction is due to this bimodal sexual preference. I have no idea if this actually applies to humans, it's an interesting theory, but no research ethics board is ever going to allow for a study on this.
Interestingly there were species of birds that were thought to be monogamous, but with the advent of cheap genetic testing, proved that the bird species followed this bimodal sexual model even though they had a nominal social partner. Super interesting data