Sperm are from men, eggs are from women

I followed Kodiak's advice to post this in its own thread.
------------------------------

I have read recently an excellent book on sex, "Sperm are from men, eggs are from women", by Joe Quirk. It's an extremely insightful -- and very funny -- look at sex from an evolutionary perspective. It fits in very well with NMMNG and with our efforts in the IM direction. It helped me feel more comfortable in my skin as a man and made more clear all the social brainwashing that we are exposed to regarding sex. It also helped me get a glimpse into the eternal $50 question, what do women think and why.

The book lays out very clearly and convincingly that men and women have very different things at stake when it comes to sex. For us men sex is a more primary urge, and less differentiated, in the sense that we don't care that much whom we screw, as long as we do it. Sperm is cheap. For females sex is a big investment, being linked with nine months of pregnancy and baby care for the next 15 years. Eggs are expensive.

Our reproductive urge is simple: screw as many females, as often as possible. A woman's script is more subtle, and consists of two parts: a) ensure the best available male genes for the baby; b) find a male to stick around and help raise the offspring. Notice that a) and b) usually don't refer to the same man, and they correspond roughly to a) the badass/alpha male and b) NG. Esentially, she wants to marry b) and have babies with a), if at all possible. (Now you understand why your mom taught you to be a NG? It wasn't her, it was her mom and the last 10,000 generations of your female ancestors.)


Coming back to the current discussion. It is not surprising that a woman married to a NG is not all that interested in sex: as long as she is sure that the guy will stick around anyway, why bother? Her interest will change, however, in one of two situations:
1. When the NG becomes an IM/alpha male he moves into the genetically attractive category, so sexually desirable. As long as she sees you this way you'll have all the sex you want -- and more. We have a few guys on this OSG which can attest to that. They are the ones with a big grin on their face.
2. When the NG threatens to leave and not provide for her and the children her nest is endangered. In this case she needs to use sex for emergency maintenance and strengthening of the couple. Once the safety of the relationship is reestablished her sexual interest will diminish again.

By the way, the reason you have such a big dick and that men and women enjoy sex so much is precisely because sex evolved as a bonding tool, keeping the pair together over the unusually long human childhood. (Why does it take so long to raise a human? Look up "obstetrical dilemma".)

Note that all this is not based on conscious reasoning but rather on programming coming from the more primitive brain, things we like to describe as "instincts" and "feeling".

Another consequence is that couples' theraphy is a difficult proposition, since it is typically using rational tools for matters which concern much deeper levels of biological programming. For the same reason you can't "talk" your wife into having sex. It seems much more effective as a man to take care of your own IM process and let her adjust to the new you.

[DoormatNoMore]

Originally Posted by Midnight

Read it. Liked it. Agreed with it. ALL already covered in detail, in DYD years prior for me however, so nothing all that eye opening for me when I read it. That being said, married guys have no "apparent" reason to subscribe to the DYD thing, so maybe in "available book" form, this stuff can start sinkin in with married guys.

What does the abbreviation DYD refer to?

--
DoormatNoMore

Originally Posted by DoormatNoMore

What does the abbreviation DYD refer to?

--
DoormatNoMore

Double your dating, by David deangelo

[DoormatNoMore]

Originally Posted by MovingOnJman

Even with contraceptives and abortion, an egg is still expensive??? Damn!!! Well then again, women do get a limited number of egg cells that will only diminish more and more during each period. What they're born with is what they get. No more. While us men will continue to produce new sperm cells all the time for the rest of our lives. Granted, the number produce will go down a bit as we age, but nothing too signficant, especially since very old men are procreating.

But with the direction biotechnology is going with this genetic engineering stuff, things may change...for women that is. Maybe they'll, well, CATCH UP!!! "Sex ain't that important honey!!!"

Contraceptives and abortion increase the scarcity of eggs that have the potential to become human beings. When supply decreases in the face of fixed or increasing demand, the so-called price increases as well. That means they become even more expensive.

What follows is some gross overgeneralization, but I think it makes its point...

Glass ceiling handwaving aside, the pipeline is tilted in favor of women. More women are going on to college and completing their studies. The higher paychecks the women get from these actions decrease the need for a high wage earning NG.

On the other hand, lots of guys are dropping out of school, taking jobs with no future, getting into trouble, living the dead life of NGS, or spending time in the slammer. That's fewer men around to help raise boys to be IMs. Instead, the boys get their education from Mtv or a gang.

This is why NGs need to step up and become integrated. Let the women compete all they want. Crying "victim" will get us nowhere. We need to start stepping up to compete for our own sake and provide a model for the boys of tomorrow. Otherwise our society is throwing away at worst half of its population.

--
DoormatNoMore

[cabesada]

The assumption is then that there is a descrete sexual atraction " circuit " that exists in the female brain that is trigered by certain behaviors/ attributes by the male that has been selected for and passed on genetically. I don't beleive that this can be proven to be true at this present time but am interested in the book.

Since there are a lot of IMs married and raising kids, I don't buy any of this theory. You're polarizing people, either the bad boy or the wimp. Most people aren't at the ends of the spectrum. To buy into this idea is to say you have no responsibility for looking wimpy to your wife, it's genetics. She wants it that way. Just another way to pass the buck and blame someone else.

How about this one: The woman finds a guy she falls for, settles down and has kids with him. Let's say she finally notices that he's a bit afraid of her. Let's say this makes her angry and disappointed. Women smell fear on men like dogs do. This makes for un untruthful life, as he capitulates to her and doesn't have a clear sense of himself. Why would she still be interested in sex with a guy like that?

You're passing off disfunction as a biological imperative. Just passing the buck.

[JVM]

I am with JohnBigBoote about going to extremes.

Let´s not forget something that I feel is an undercurrent in this forum:

IM doesn´t mean bad boy. IM is not the opposite of NG. "The opposite of crazy is still crazy"

I sometimes feel we are so eager to get our balls out that we get way too close to equate an IM to a jerk, bad guy, head of the gang, "nobody messes up with me", "I´ll fuck every woman I see", plain stupid arrogant idiot kind of person. Erm... well, basically all we were not. Maybe too close to the image of the guys that bullied on us or took "our girls, our jobs, our successes".

An IM, the way I see him, doesn´t need to prove anything to anyone, not even to himself.

Just so we don´t start going black or white about everything.

J

[DoormatNoMore]

Originally Posted by Pinseeker

Double your dating, by David deangelo

Ah, thank you, integrated sir.

(scribbles note to add to reading list)

--
DoormatNoMore

[Glimmung]

Originally Posted by MovingOnJman

Even with contraceptives and abortion, an egg is still expensive??? Damn!!! Well then again, women do get a limited number of egg cells that will only diminish more and more during each period. What they're born with is what they get. No more. While us men will continue to produce new sperm cells all the time for the rest of our lives. Granted, the number produce will go down a bit as we age, but nothing too significant, especially since very old men are procreating.

But with the direction biotechnology is going with this genetic engineering stuff, things may change...for women that is. Maybe they'll, well, CATCH UP!!! "Sex ain't that important honey!!!"

While it is true that contraceptives change the picture in the present, our instincts harken back to millions of years ago. We look at wider women's butts as a sign of fertility because they will more easily produce a baby, even though Cesarean sections are now available.

-G

[Glimmung]

On the same note, another excellent book is The Red Queen by Mark (or Matt?) Ridley. A couple of chapters toward the end, "Polygamy and the nature of men" and "Monogamy and the nature of women" are especially recommended.

-G

[joequirk]

I'm delighted NMMNG is using evolutionary psychology to help men succeed with women and has started a discussion about my book and blog. Thanks Hans, for getting the debate started.
In answer to some of the posts: Of course all men don't fall into 2 catergories: Bad Boy and Nice Guy. We are all the descendants of men who succeeded at the whole range of roles, so we all inherit genes for the urges to act like any kind of man. Yet we wait for our social environment to dictate what kind of strategy is best to pursue. I myself have been treated like Nice Guy and Bad Boy by different women who evoke different sides of me. The point is that women inherit different breeding strategies because of two different reproductive needs: good genes and good nests. The best nest might come from her husband. The best genes might come from somebody else's husband. It's hard to get both in the same man.
These urges separable in women's brains. What turns a woman on about a one-night stand is often the opposite of what excites them about a potential husband. I explain these differences in my presentation.

[cabesada]

Hey Joe how do you feel about the debate about massive modularity in regards to evolutionary psycholgy?

[Academic Angst]

Don't underestimate the power of social structures that evolve over history. Evolutionary psychology and other biosocial theories can only explain so much: cross-cultural studies have demonstrated as much. For instance, our modern conceptions of adolescence and childhood would be considered absurd in 17th century Europe, but they're seen as entirely "natural" today.

Wow, Joe Q, thanks for dropping in. Big fan man, big fan! I bought the book from Powell's in Portland, you mention reading there on your website -- a signed copy, at that! Glad I could contribute to your future Lexus, although 1986 Toyota is cool too.

OK, to bring the discussion back to the original reason I posted it. I was sharing my newly gained insight into sex dynamics and possible reasons for sex problems in our NG relationships. John B, let me see if I get your point correctly. I seemed to imply that our wives or partners selected us NGs for being NGs, to provide a safe stable "nest", without necessarily being attracted to us. That is surely one category of relationships, and it may explain those where sex was absent from the beginning. There is another category, much more common, where things started great with lots of passion, but things changed course at some point along the way. We were "it" in the beginning, we made all her bells ring, had a heavenly honeymoon that lasted a whole year, fucked like bunnies, the works. Then a year or two or five later things changed, we settled and for a variety of reasons let our NG take over, centered our emotional life around her, put our balls in a safebox and gave her the key. That's also when the sex life went south. Now it's up to us to shed our NG shell, within or without the relationship -- many on this board did it successfully. So the issue is not whether we are born one way or another, but how does our woman see us, what image do we project in her mind at a given time, what strings are we pulling in the primitive part of her brain, and how does this affect our sex life, and by extension the entire relationship dynamics -- today.

I don't think the issue is "bad boy" vs IM, and IM who has it together will be as attractive as they come for a woman from this evolutionary perspective.

[yaki]

I'd really like to read your book Joe. Any chance you'll publish it as an ebook soon??
Should be very easy and cheap to do, and you can sell it through a free or cheap paypal account.
I'd certainly appreciate it.^^