The Uncomfortable Science Of Sex Differences - Steve Stewart-Williams - #1120

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Are Men and Women Compromising on Sex?

At 1:11:49 · chapter starts 1:11:44

Stewart-Williams explains the sex difference in sociosexuality — interest in no-strings-attached sex — with an effect size of around Cohen's d=1, making it one of the larger psychological sex differences. The evolutionary rationale traces back to reproductive variance: males that seek multiple partners can dramatically increase their offspring count; females cannot. He then makes a key correction to a common assumption: men being more interested in casual sex does not mean women are less interested in committed relationships. Both sexes are comparably invested in long-term pair bonds; women simply lack the additional layer of desire for casual variety. The natural experiment provided by gay men and lesbians ^{[1] — Steve Stewart-Williams "Gay men have more casual sex than straight men; lesbians have less than straight women. This isn't a coincidence — it's a natural experimen…" 1:11:35 Play} makes this vivid: gay men have more casual sex than straight men, while lesbians have less than straight women, showing exactly what each sex's baseline motivation looks like when the opposite-sex compromise is removed. The Ashley Madison data — 20 million male users versus 1,492 female users despite free membership for women — is cited as a real-world illustration. Men are also more turned on by visual stimuli, partly because youthfulness is a stronger fertility signal in women due to menopause.