Male aggression against females in primates, including humans, often functions to control female sexuality to the male’s reproductive advantage. A comparative, evolutionary perspective is used to generate several hypotheses to help to explain cross-cultural variation in the frequency of male aggression against women. Variables considered include protection of women by kin, male-male alliances and male strategies for guarding mates and obtaining adulterous matings, and male resource control. The relationships between male aggression against women and gender ideologies, male domination of women, (...) and female sexuality are also considered. (shrink)

Understanding female sexuality and mate choice is central to evolutionary scenarios of human social systems. Studies of female sexuality conducted by sex researchers in the United States since 1938 indicate that human females in general are concerned with their sexual well-being and are capable of sexual response parallel to that of males. Across cultures in general and in western societies in particular, females engage in extramarital affairs regularly, regardless of punishment by males or social disapproval. Families are usually concerned with (...) marriage arrangements only insofar as those arrangements are economically or politically advantageous, but females most often have a voice in arranged marriages. Extended families also concentrate on a couple’s future reproduction rather than on sexual exclusivity. Although marriage for females is often compromised by male or family reproductive interests (which may not in fact differ from female interests), females appear to exercise their sexuality with more freedom than has previously been suggested. Notions of human females as pawns in the male reproductive game, or as traders of sex for male services, should be dispelled. (shrink)

In this rewarding book, Laurie A. Finke challenges assumptions about gender, the self, and the text which underlie fundamental constructs of contemporary feminist theory. She maintains that some of the key concepts structuring feminist literary criticism need to be reexamined within both their historical context and the larger framework of current theory concerning language, representation, subjectivity, and value.