# Not having sex on the first date **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 9, 2017, 2:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-having-sex-on-the-first-date/786177 "2017-05-09T02:40:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2017, 8:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-having-sex-on-the-first-date/786177/101 "2017-05-14T08:22:41Z")
> [@UltraVires](#): > > Simply put: there is no biological reason for a woman to sleep around. She must be selective so that her one child per year will be sired by the most attractive man, and the man most likely to stay around to bring wooly mammoth back to the cave. > > If she screws around, no guy will stay because he isn’t sure that is really his kid, and he would rather stay with the other woman who is faithful and cooking wooly mammoth. > [@jshore](#): > > [**LSLGuy**](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=20201843&postcount=83) also explained ways in which your evolutionary biology is way too simplified. You are basically taking ideas from evolutionary biology at its infancy and thinking that it hasn’t advanced since then … It has. (Not that I am any expert in it, but even I know that your posts are pretty much a caricature of what is now understood.) I agree with **jshore**. There is no reason a hypothetical caveman would give a shit whether a kid is “his” kid in the bio-evolutionary sense if, at the same time, you’re going to embrace the notion that males want to impregnate everyone they can (the “sex on the first date” thing) since in the latter situation there are going to be a plethora of “his kids” running around the camp and he won’t know who they are. And anthropology tells us that hunter-gatherer societies tend towards general rather than specific care for the feeding and sheltering of children, it tells us that passing along material possessions is/was not a factor until after the dawn of agriculture and settled civilization, it tells us that hunter-gatherer societies (even the surviving ones who don’t exactly have the best of the land and water) don’t live under conditions of scarcity and hard work merely to survive but instead do less work than we do (by a considerable margin) in order to subsist, and that they don’t appear to be /have been bastions of male supremacy and sexual possessiveness. ---
**Author:** ![Stringbean](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d6d6ee/32.png) [@Stringbean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stringbean)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2017, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-having-sex-on-the-first-date/786177/102 "2017-05-14T18:31:20Z")
> [@AHunter3](#): > > I agree with **jshore**. There is no reason a hypothetical caveman would give a shit whether a kid is “his” kid in the bio-evolutionary sense if, at the same time, you’re going to embrace the notion that males want to impregnate everyone they can (the “sex on the first date” thing) since in the latter situation there are going to be a plethora of “his kids” running around the camp and he won’t know who they are. And anthropology tells us that hunter-gatherer societies tend towards general rather than specific care for the feeding and sheltering of children, it tells us that passing along material possessions is/was not a factor until after the dawn of agriculture and settled civilization, it tells us that hunter-gatherer societies (even the surviving ones who don’t exactly have the best of the land and water) don’t live under conditions of scarcity and hard work merely to survive but instead do less work than we do (by a considerable margin) in order to subsist, and that they don’t appear to be /have been bastions of male supremacy and sexual possessiveness. It’s more simple than all this (conjecture) on hunter-gatherer societies. Men are more sexually charged of the two sexes. This fact has been verified a thousand times over whether through brainscans or simple observance. This is an artifact of biology, which presumably evolved rather than appear out of thin air 5,000 years ago when we stopped moving around all the time. We can all offer reams of conjecture on why men prefer sex on the first date over women. The obvious answer is the biological imperative for men to “spread their seed” whereas women have a potentially significant investment should they get pregnant. All in all, women are certainly welcome to sleep with a man on the first date, and have been for decades now. That men are still more open to it must be considered as something deeper than social imposition. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2017, 7:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-having-sex-on-the-first-date/786177/103 "2017-05-14T19:59:11Z")
> [@Stringbean](#): > > Men are more sexually charged of the two sexes. The AVERAGE man may be more sexually charged than the AVERAGE woman. It is definitely not true that ALL men are more sexually charged than ALL women, or even necessarily that MOST men are more sexually charged than MOST women. And there are certainly exceptions, as is usually the case with generalizations. What we know about studies on biologically-built-in differences between the sexes is that there is a lot of overlap between the male and female populations and only a small, albeit statistically significant, difference between the two means. As one of the outliers myself, I have to say I tend to feel erased whenever someone takes one of these generalizations and extrapolates as if they were universal truths. ---
**Author:** ![Ambivalid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/a5b964/32.png) [@Ambivalid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ambivalid)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2017, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-having-sex-on-the-first-date/786177/104 "2017-05-14T20:16:42Z")
I don’t have the link handy but I’ve read studies that looked at the respective testosterone levels for men and women. The results showed that women who had higher testosterone levels reported more of a desire for masturbation and less desire for sex. I think this shows that most women see “sex” as more than simple orgasm; which is what they show an increasing interest in as testosterone levels increase. ---
**Author:** ![Fotheringay-Phipps](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/d9b06d/32.png) [@Fotheringay-Phipps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fotheringay-Phipps)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2017, 1:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-having-sex-on-the-first-date/786177/105 "2017-05-15T13:33:08Z")
> [@AHunter3](#): > > I agree with **jshore**. There is no reason a hypothetical caveman would give a shit whether a kid is “his” kid in the bio-evolutionary sense if, at the same time, you’re going to embrace the notion that males want to impregnate everyone they can (the “sex on the first date” thing) since in the latter situation there are going to be a plethora of “his kids” running around the camp and he won’t know who they are. And anthropology tells us that hunter-gatherer societies tend towards general rather than specific care for the feeding and sheltering of children, it tells us that passing along material possessions is/was not a factor until after the dawn of agriculture and settled civilization, it tells us that hunter-gatherer societies (even the surviving ones who don’t exactly have the best of the land and water) don’t live under conditions of scarcity and hard work merely to survive but instead do less work than we do (by a considerable margin) in order to subsist, and that they don’t appear to be /have been bastions of male supremacy and sexual possessiveness. ISTM that this post - and many others like it - show a basic though common misunderstanding of fundamental principles of evolutionary biology. Traits are more likely to become increasingly prevalent if they tend to perpetuate themselves by increasing the likelihood that they will be passed on to another generation (whether by increasing survival or by increasing reproductive success). It has nothing to do with whether the creature possessing these traits consciously cares about passing on its genes. The same principle also drives the evolution of animals who obviously don’t have the slightest clue that anything they do leads to reproduction or passing on their genes and wouldn’t consciously care anyway. It’s an automatic process. If Creature X is driven by instinct to do Y, and Y increases the likelihood of having more offspring carrying those genes, then Y will become increasingly prevalent over time in the population of Creature X. To talk about whether or why anyone would “care” about whether their genes are passed on is to miss the boat completely. Whether anyone cares is not part of the equation at all. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2017, 3:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-having-sex-on-the-first-date/786177/106 "2017-05-15T15:52:46Z")
Agree technically. But as conscious beings, even totally instinctive behaviors intrude on consciousness. My desire to eat or pee every so often is utterly instinctive. My innards want that; \*I \*don’t. But I have a mental experience of those inner urges; somehow a message gets from gut or bladder up to the level of consciousness. Where, within reason, I can consciously respond or postpone responding. It seems a pretty well-established statistical fact that step-parents are far more likely to abuse step-children than they are their bio-kids. They need not be aware of \*why \*they’re doing it even though they are acting on the impulse \*to \*do it. Similar logic can (not must) apply to first dates, monogamy, cheating, mate choice, and all the rest of reproductive politics. Bottom line: You’re not consciously picking behaviors to maximize passing on your genes. Rather the converse: your genetic heritage is simply controlling which messages dribble up from your subconscious to be acted upon. As a conscious creature you can watch, and comment on, and partly control, the show you’re acting out. Less conscious creatures will just act it out, unaware of their actions. ---
**Author:** ![Fotheringay-Phipps](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/d9b06d/32.png) [@Fotheringay-Phipps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fotheringay-Phipps)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2017, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-having-sex-on-the-first-date/786177/107 "2017-05-15T16:03:46Z")
Right. But it doesn’t work in reverse. If you’ve been programmed to have Preference X because it maximizes you passing on your genes, it might manifest itself as a conscious desire to pass on your genes. But it doesn’t have to. So even if you’re completely certain that you have no desire to pass on your genes, that doesn’t mean that Preference X is not the result of it being a gene-passing maximizer. The specific argument I was responding to was that there “_is no reason a hypothetical caveman would give a shit whether a kid is “his” kid in the bio-evolutionary sense_”, and the like. My point is that even if this caveman was completely ambivalent about this (if he even understood it to begin with) it makes no difference to the evolutionary pressure in favor of gene-passing maximizers. Bottom line: when you’re discussing whether evolutionary pressure would favor Preference X, then what’s relevant is whether in fact it does maximize the likelihood of the gene being passed on. Whether the possessor of this gene “cares” about it is completely irrelevant and should not be introduced to the discussion. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2017, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-having-sex-on-the-first-date/786177/108 "2017-05-15T20:19:30Z")
If the aggregate behavior of sexual possessiveness and jealousy is more detrimental to the survival of the group as a whole than bonobo-esque free love, the genes in question are more likely to be passed on in the latter situation. And we have at least some evidence that suggests that for most of the time that homo sap has been trodding the ground, we spent it as hunter-gatherers and were not in fact highly sexually possessive and did, in fact, do general childcare rather than specific childcare. ---
**Author:** ![Fotheringay-Phipps](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/d9b06d/32.png) [@Fotheringay-Phipps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fotheringay-Phipps)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2017, 8:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-having-sex-on-the-first-date/786177/109 "2017-05-15T20:25:49Z")
That’s a completely separate point from the one being made earlier, which was that “_There is no reason a hypothetical caveman would give a shit whether a kid is “his” kid in the bio-evolutionary sense …_”. I was responding to that earlier point. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2017, 8:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-having-sex-on-the-first-date/786177/110 "2017-05-15T20:53:42Z")
> [@Warm\_blood](#): > > Your response as about as much relevance to my comment as telling me the sky is blue. In other words, you said a load of nothing. > > Don’t partake in activities you condemn others as immoral for doing and don’t shame others for doing the same things you do. It’s that simple. Given the differences between gender, I don’t think it is this simple. To use an extreme example, a woman can wear a dress, yet simultaneously say, “I refuse to date a man who wears a dress.” ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2017, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-having-sex-on-the-first-date/786177/111 "2017-05-15T21:24:51Z")
> [@Fotheringay-Phipps](#): > > That’s a completely separate point from the one being made earlier, which was that “_There is no reason a hypothetical caveman would give a shit whether a kid is “his” kid in the bio-evolutionary sense …_”. > > I was responding to that earlier point. I realize that, and I acknowledge your point about my point. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-having-sex-on-the-first-date/786177.md?page=5)