The eggs develop there, and as the theory predicts, it is the female sea horse who courts the male. There are about thirty species of birds, of which the phalaropes and jacanas are the best-known examples, in which the small dowdy male is courted by the large, aggressive female, and it is the male that broods the eggs and rears the chicks.'
Phalaropes and other seducer-female species are the exceptions that prove the rule. I remember watching a whole flock of female phalaropes badgering a poor male so intensely he almost drowned. And why? Because their mates , were quietly sitting on their eggs for them, so these females had nothing better to do than look for second mates. Where males invest more time or energy in the care of the young, females take the initiative in courtship, and vice versa:'
In humans, the asymmetry is clear enough: nine months of pregnancy set against five minutes of fun: (I exaggerate:) If the balance of such investment determines sex roles in seduction, then it comes as no surprise that men seduce women rather than vice versa.
This fact suggests that a highly polygamous human society represents a victory for men, whereas a monogamous one suggests a victory for women. But this is misleading. A polygamous society primarily represents a victory for one or a few men over all other men. Most men in highly polygamous societies are condemned to celibacy.
In any case, no moral conclusions of any kind can be drawn from evolution. The asymmetry in prenatal sexual investment between the genders is a fact of life, not a moral outrage: It is 'nat-POLYGAMY AND THE NATURE OF MEN
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ural: ' It is terribly tempting, as human beings, to embrace such an evolutionary scenario because it 'justifies ' a prejudice in favor of male philandering, or to reject it because it 'undermines ' the pressure for sexual equality: But it does neither: It says absolutely nothing about what is right and wrong: I am trying to describe the nature of humans, not prescribe their morality. That something is natural does not make it right: Murder is 'natural ' in the sense that our ape relatives commit it regularly, as apparently did our human ancestors: Prejudice, hate, violence, cruelty—all are more or less part of our nature, and all can be effectively countered by the right kind of nurture: Nature is not inflexible but malleable: Moreover, the most natural thing of all about evolution is that some natures will be pitted against others: Evolution does not lead to Utopia: It leads to a land in which what is best for one man may be the worst for another man, or what is best for a woman may be the worst for a man. One or the other will be condemned to an 'unnatural' fate: That is the essence of the Red Queen 's message: In the pages that follow I will again and again be trying to guess what is ' natural' for humanity: Perhaps my own moral prejudices will occasionally intrude as wishful thinking, but they will do so unconsciously. And even where I am wrong about human nature, I am not wrong that there is such a nature to be sought: THE MEANING OF HOMOSEXUAL PROMISCUITY
Most prostitutes are female for the simple reason that the demand for female prostitutes is greater than for male ones: If the existence of female prostitutes reveals the male sexual appetite in its naked-ness, then so, too, does the phenomenon of male homosexuality.
Before the advent of AIDS, practicing male homosexuals were far more promiscuous than heterosexual men: Many gay bars were, and are, recognized places for picking up partners for one-night stands.
The bathhouses of San Francisco catered to orgies and feats of repeated sex, assisted by stimulants, that boggled the mind when publicly discussed during the early years of the AIDS epidemic: A
Kinsey Institute study of gay men in the San Francisco Bay area found that 75 percent had had more than one hundred partners; 25
percent had had more than one thousand:'°
This is not to deny that there are many homosexuals who were and are less promiscuous than many heterosexuals: But even homosexual activists admit that, before AIDS arrived, homosexuals were generally more promiscuous than heterosexuals: There is no single convincing explanation of this. Activists would say that homosexual promiscuity is caused largely by society ' s disapproval: Illegitimate, 'shameful' activities tend to be indulged to excess when indulged at all: The legal and social difficulty of forming gay
' marriages ' mitigates against stable relationships.
But this is not persuasive: Promiscuity is not confined to those who indulge in gay sex clandestinely. Infidelity is acknowledged to be a greater problem in male gay 'marriages' than in heterosexual ones, and society 's disapproval is far greater of casual than of stable homosexual relations. Many of the same arguments apply to lesbians, who show a striking contrast: Lesbians rarely tend to indulge in sex with strangers but instead form partnerships that persist for many years with little risk of infidelity. Most lesbians have fewer than ten partners in their lifetimes.'
Donald Symons of the University of California at Santa Barbara has argued that the reason male homosexuals on average have more sexual partners than male heterosexuals, and many more than female homosexuals, is that male homosexuals are acting out male tendencies or instincts unfettered by those of women.
Although homosexual men, like most people, usually want to have intimate relationships, such relationships are difficult to maintain, largely owing to the male desire for sexual variety; the unprecedented opportunity to satisfy this desire in a world of men; and the male tendency toward sexual jealousy: : : : I am suggesting that heterosexual men would be as likely as homosexual men to have sex most often with strangers, to partici-pate in anonymous orgies in public baths, and to stop POLYGAMY AND THE NATURE OF MEN
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off in public restrooms for five minutes of fellatio on the way home from work if women were interested in these activities:'
That is not to say that homosexuals do not long for stable intimacy or even that many are morally repelled by anonymous sex.
But Symons 's point is that the desire for monogamous intimacy with a life companion and the desire for casual sex with strangers are not mutually incompatible instincts: Indeed, they are characteristic of heterosexual men, as proven by the existence of a thriving call girl or 'escort' industry that, at a price, supplies happily married businessmen with sexual diversions while they are traveling.
Symons is commenting not on homosexual men but on men—average men: As he says, homosexual men behave like men, only more so; homosexual women behave like women, only more so.'
