AHunter3–“is it your intention to assert that the generalizations you are making are reflections of built-in biological inclinations, as opposed to cultural/societal ways of organizing sex, sexuality, and reproduction? (your references to the “male nervous system” seem to imply this)…If so, how do you defend arriving at this conclusion? Have you seriously considered and then rejected the cultural/societal hypothesis regarding these differences? If so, on what basis?”
Right at the start, I’ll own up to the fact that I cannot cite any scientific studies relevant to my post.
I am a philosopher. (The bar is fairly low: see the works of Paul Kurtz.) I say that only to elaborate upon (not prove) my claim that I think about rather abstract things habitually, and take seriously my thinkings.
I’ve arrived at the attitude that, if it makes sense that a certain set of behavioral dispositions would be “hardwired” by natural selection, that is more likely to be the case than some version of the cultural learning model. Why, would make for quite a lengthy discussion indeed. So I don’t present this as a scientific matter, but as the intuitions of an informed layman.
It makes sense to me that highly-mobile, strongly motivated impregnators would move to the fore (which is what “evolve” means), ahead of those that are less mobile and less motivated. It makes sense that tough, rapacious, orgasm-driven simians would come to typify the male. Which leaves the remaining sex to balance the equation, so to speak.
In a very general way, isn’t this what we actually see–dressed up and prettified? (And remembering the compromises that society has imposed.)
Have generations of social learning theory, of the belief that human dispositions are unlimitedly mutable, of the belief that cultural mores are “taught” and can be untaught, made us better and happier? Do we value persons not ourselves more–or less? Have commitments become easier to keep–or easier to walk away from? Is intimacy with others more an attainable goal–or more a disheartening phantom?
This is not a general polemic against the modern world, much less against personal freedom from imposed gender-role expectations. I do suggest that “love” fails for both men and women insofar as they pretend that their dispositions and urges don’t exist, as opposed to admitting that they do, when they do, and choosing to control them even at some cost.
Now that the OP has provided more detail, I’m not sure this level of generalization is helpful to him, in any event.