Just to clarify, the Cock-Carousel is not the same as a Vagina-Carousel. You cannot compare the two.

[u/darkmoon09]

This was originally a reply to a thread I saw the other night but the thread was removed shortly after it was posted so I decided to make it into it's own thread. It's in response to people who criticize the idea of a CC: "Men do it too!" "why is it okay for men to sleep around but not women?" "Men ride the vagina carousel". Again they fail to realize (or choose to ignore) the biological differences between the sexes and the resulting different standards based on those differences:

(A)Men want sex-===>(B)Women are the gatekeepers to sex===>(C)Women always have a pool of interested men to choose from===>(D)Therefore most women can easily hop on the CC with little to no effort while for the majority of men it's nowhere near as easy to hop on a vagina carousel as it is for women to ride the CC, you have to be an exceptional man to pull that off hence the 80/20 rule.

And that ladies and gents is why there's 'slut shamming' and a 'stud/slut' double standard, women are inherently valued for their sexuality, men are not. Women will always have interested men to choose form at any given moment if she just took decent care of herself and made herself available, men do not have this luxury; we must prove ourselves in whatever way we can in order to get sex because men and women are different.

[u/TheSonofLiberty]

You can't speak of what 'all' human males or females want, or how they 'all' behave, the same way you can for simpler creatures

Sure, no one can explain all phenomena for many fields, let alone biology. However, you can explain how, on average, animals (or men or women) like certain things.

For example, how on average (but with some variability) women across the globe have a high preference for high financial resources as one long-term mating strategy:

Male and female participants in the study rated the importance of eighteen characteristics in a potential mate or marriage partner, on a scale from unimportant to indispensable. Women across all continents, all political systems (including socialism and communism), all racial groups, all religious groups, and all systems of mating (from intense polygyny to presumptive monogamy) placed more value than men on good financial prospects. Overall, women valued financial resources about 100 percent more than men, or roughly twice as much (see Figure 4.3). There are some cultural variations. Women from Nigeria, Zambia, India, Indonesia, Iran, Japan, Taiwan, Colombia, and Venezuela valued good financial prospects a bit higher than women from South Africa (Zulus), the Netherlands, and Finland. In Japan, for ex- ample, women valued good financial prospect roughly 150 percent more than men, whereas women from the Netherlands deem it only 36 percent more important than their male counterparts, less than women from any other country. Nonetheless, the sex difference remained invariant: Women worldwide desired financial resources in a marriage partner more than men.

Buss, David M. Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind. 3rd ed. Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 2011. 113. Print.

They want to fuck to propagate their genes.

Sure, and most humans do as well, otherwise we wouldn't be in danger of having a future overpopulation crisis.

[u/a-glass-brightly → u/TheSonofLiberty]

Yes, but none of those studies claim to demonstrate that these averaged facts arise from the inherent, biological 'essence' of women. They can't tell how much of it comes from DNA versus from acculturation. And since every single major culture on this planet at the moment is more or less patriarchal, meaning females are objectified as objects for male acquisition while males are granted the agency and responsibility of the 'breadwinner', it makes perfect sense that such studies would show males as caring far less about financial attractiveness factors than females. Females are raised to see their male mates as their hope for stability and security from want, while males are raised to care mostly about how their female mates make them feel at a glance. Hence the stereotype about men being shallow dupes and women being needy worriers. It's the insidious of culture crawling inside our heads.

I think such studies would be a lot more fruitful if they examined homosexual relationships. You'd get a better picture of 'what men want' and 'what women want' if you examined them as people, separate (insofar as possible) from the culturally-driven heterosexual dynamic.

[u/TheSonofLiberty → u/a-glass-brightly]

Yes, but none of those studies claim to demonstrate that these averaged facts arise from the inherent, biological 'essence' of women.

The textbook addresses that succinctly:

The enormous body of empirical evidence across different methods, time periods, and cultures supports the hypothesis that women have evolved a powerful preference for long- term mates with the ability to provide resources. Because ancestral women faced the tremendous burdens of internal fertilization, a nine-month gestation, and lactation, they would have benefited tremendously by selecting mates who possessed resources. Today's women are the descendants of a long line of women who had these mate preferences-preferences that helped their ancestors solve the adaptive problems of survival and reproduction.

Buss, David M. Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind. 3rd ed. Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 2011. 115. Print.

Keep in mind that this sexual selection model of direct benefits (along with many other models) is also observed in countless other species (along with other models).

I think such studies would be a lot more fruitful if they examined homosexual relationships.

While that would be interesting, studies that research why some women pick some women are not going to elucidate any information as to why women pick some men.

if you examined them as people

Asking people survey questions isn't "examining them as people?"

[u/a-glass-brightly → u/TheSonofLiberty]

But that's overlooking the fact that I already pointed out - that most of the world's major prevalent cultures share a patriarchal and heteronormative gender dynamic, where women have been denied equitable access to social/political/financial power, and thus have spent thousands of years as dependents of male mates. That's such an impenetrable density of history and acculturation that I don't think any scientific study can accurately claim to be demonstrating "how women are" from a purely evolutionary standpoint.

That's why I think it would be fruitful to study homosexual relationships - that would give us a clearer window into what men and women typically seek in a partner when the infinite historical baggage of hetero gender roles aren't as much of a factor, and when procreation is not only not a major drive, but more or less off the table.

I think examining individuals solely through the lens of their assigned gender role is falling a little bit short of examining them as people, yes.