There's been some objection to that formulation for a long time--I don't think you can attribute it to the sex of a modern researcher. An old tradition (possibly thanks to the glorification of monk-hood) held that women were the dangerous sexual aggressors. (Dangerous to one's morals, as opposed to physically dangerous, of course.)
The reversal in attitude is interesting. I don't think it demands explanation, partly because I'm not confident in how universal those claims about antiquity are, but it seems reasonable that if the pool of available men becomes small thanks to high death or imprisonment rates, competition among women should increase. I wonder how Augustine would have interpreted twerking. "We've always seen African women gather in villages and wiggle their butts in loincloths, especially during rites of passage to signify that they are fertile"
I see that Razib Khan is addressing a related issue, but it's behind a paywall.
I was thinking about Razib interviewing Tania Reynolds about intrasexual competition and will be listening to the podcast soon. I am also a subscriber, and so can extract quotes. I'll let you know. I listened to him on my device before I was a subscriber, so the article may be available that way if you learn by listening, as I do now.
ReplyDeleteI could read the podcast, but I find that tedious because it is speech-replicating, which is hard to read. Reading transcripts is excellent evidence that written and spoken English have different conventions. So I am waiting for it to come as a podcast on my device, as I also don't like to sit at my computer and listen to audio.
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