Reddit Reddit reviews Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature

We found 2 Reddit comments about Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.

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2 Reddit comments about Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature:

u/Work_High_not_Hard · 179 pointsr/Amateur

Hurrr durrr innate attraction to sexual organs is a social construct.

Edit: no, I didn't say their primary function wasn't feeding young, but there's so much rebuttal to that line of argument for their main function, that nobody in biology uses it.

The truth is that breasts are an example of Fisherian runaway selection. Like a peacock's tail, large breasts are evolutionarily disadvantageous, especially considering that the majority of the time they aren't lactating. But Fisherian runaway selection invokes an "evolutionary positive feedback loop" whereby disadvantageous characteristics are perceived to be sexually attractive because they imply other genetic virtues (like being innately good at fighting or something, I dunno, use your imagination).

There's a book by evolutionary psychologist, Geoffrey Miller called The Mating Mind, which explains that feeding young is a distant secondary function to adult human breasts after their sexually attraction - in a nutshell;
• unlike body parts like hands and eyes which change size relative to the rest of the body, breasts are enormously varied in their structure and their function is independent to their appearance, just like faces
• like all sexual organs, they're composed of soft tissue that engorges with blood during arousal
• on your claim that I've "been conditioned my whole life to find breasts attractive", there is no society on earth in which breasts aren't found attractive (on women of fertile age), it's been studied to death.

tl;dr the main function of breasts is to be indicators of sexual virtue, not to feed young, and I've never heard of an evolutionary psychologist argue otherwise.

u/double-happiness · 1 pointr/MensLib

Just since we're talking about this sort of stuff, and you seem to know a lot about it, have you ever read this? If so, any views on it?