Originally published at: Manosphere grifters misuse evolutionary psychology to promote anti-feminist views | Boing Boing
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Evo-psych may have credibility inside academia, but in the wider world this pack of bitter man-child misogynists turned use of the term into an occasion for eye-rolling at least a decade ago.
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So what’s new. Evo-psych has always been misused by the press and people trying to latch their political ideas to it.
Evo-psych is an analysis that is useful in very limited circumstances- Its core insight, that humans are animals that evolved, and therefore have within us traces of that evolved nature which influences our behaviour, is sometimes useful when de-tangling real experimental results. But like so much other fashionable nonsense, it cannot be applied to every situation, and people are prone to looking at the evidence then constructing an analysis that shows how the theory fits it (sidelong glance at the post- crowd who do the same thing). This is what gives it a reputation of being nothing more than “Science-flavoured Just so stories”.
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Evolutionary psychology really only makes sense at the macro level. In individuals or even groups of individuals, other factors are going to be much more salient in explaining behavior patterns.
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I had no idea this shit was still a thing.
Coupled with all those other acronym nonsenses…
I got nothing. Knobheads.
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They cite reputable, published academic work still using terms such as “cuckold,” and argue that “The standards of scientific writing should dictate the abandonment of a term which has traditionally been gender-biased and morally loaded, and is now increasingly politically charged.” Other morally-loaded terms they suggest that academics should abandon include “genetically superior men,” “infidelity,” and “promiscuity.”
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If someone brings in evolution or survival of the fittest as a justification of human actions, I bring up how common cannibalism is in evolution, and how inane it is to use evolutionary arguments to justify human behaviors.
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Hmm. So of course evolution is at its core a process to do with what tends to survive and spread. It’s not a moral guide for anything, any more than the fact that entropy tends to increase means we should be lighting more things on fire.
And yet…what is really unusual about Homo sapiens and undoubtedly part of why we have exploded everywhere is how very diverse and flexible our behaviors are. And it’s really tempting to lean on that sometimes. Like “LGBTQ+ is part of human diversity, and diversity is what our species is all about” kind of thing. I guess I should think more about if that’s playing into naturalistic fallacies then. 
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I think diverse individuals have led to significant jumps in society/culture/technology, and that’s often a good thing. That’s often a better framework than the biological lens. If Alan Turing, among others, was never around, my ancestors might have perished under Nazi rule, and at the very least we might be writing and posting letters on typewriters to the discussion page of the BoingBoing Gazette. Someday an AI might be smart enough to negotiate alternative histories so we could prove that.
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Somewhere online, I saw the suggestion that it would be much more accurate if we switched the two labels “Pickup-artists” and “Garbage men”.
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So of course we are an incredibly social species, and like others, it’s not just possible but routine for someone to make contributions to society independent of how well they push out babies.
But…it occurs to me that unlike say ants or bees, we’re also one where sex and sexuality are themselves not just reproductive but have larger roles in forming and sustaining relationships. And it makes me wonder if maybe our diversity there isn’t just because it isn’t a handicap, but is an actual positive, something that expands the ways different people can relate and contribute. Which seems to me to like a sort of key innovation of humanity, how many different ways there are for us to live.
Of course how we treat people shouldn’t depend on the answer, and this is just me speculating and maybe making up my own just-so story. But I do think it would be interesting to know how we got where we are, and if it’s really been looked at versus taking everything through a reproduction-centric lens.
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… went looking for a “Game of Thrones” joke but prayers to the Red God seem to be basic non-funny things like “Lord, cast your light upon us” 
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Two things come to mind for manoblock heads.
It doesn’t explain the existence of queer people throughout history- and in so many other species.
And - sorry red pillers - The Matrix was a transgender story.
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A lot of TESCREAL types seem to be in the manosphere too. (The T stands for TERF, right? /s)
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I still remember the day some dude told me women with many sexual partners are somehow, someway, receiving genetic material from the male partners and that it changes a woman’s DNA permanently. I asked how it works for bisexuals, but he did not think bisexuality existed? I told the guy it was the dumbest thing I’d ever heard, and that biology doesn’t work that way and went on my way.
Like that level of stupidity blew my mind. Then I started seeing it on places like r/badwomansanatomy and being called out there. I had no idea these guys believed this. It’s literally one of the stupidest things I have ever heard of.
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I do wonder if they actually believe this kind of thing, or it they’re using it as an excuse to hold onto the shitty belief that women should have less rights then men… but at the end of the day, they are showing us who they are and we should believe them.
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His member was enveloped by a woman’s DNA. Every time he had sex he absorbed female DNA and became less male.
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It’s frightening these people exist. This is just a belief to wrap their bigotry in.
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For a nice takedown of Tony Robbins, one of these bros citing evolutionary psych, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUP86fStX6Q. Among the many distasteful and alarming things about him is his dishing out of relationship advice to couples, sometimes in real-time, with only a superficial knowledge of them. He has no qualifications in counseling or therapy.
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