Jul 4
I’m reminded of how fairy tales warn humanity very clearly that stepmothers HATE the children of their new husband’s dead wife.
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I’m reminded of how fairy tales warn humanity very clearly that stepmothers HATE the children of their new husband’s dead wife.
Focusing on women and celebrating what makes them so unique, Evie Magazine helps women seek truth and find beauty...the kind that really mat
By: Jaimee Marshall
Published: Feb 10, 2026
New research shows that women show more indirect and verbal hostility towards women with larger breasts. Does this explain the hate for celebrities like Sydney Sweeney?
For years, it’s been folk wisdom that women with well-endowed chests, from Kate Upton to Sydney Sweeney, conspicuously find themselves the targets of disproportionate hostility compared to smaller-breasted women. The implication being that women find other women with large breasts sexually threatening, which motivates them to cut them down. Empirical research now supports this theory.
Study Finds Women Are More Likely to Target Women With Larger Breasts
A 2024 peer-reviewed study at Texas A&M International University’s Department of Psychology and Communication found that women were significantly more likely to engage in “derogation tactics,” such as verbal and indirect aggression, when shown photos of women with larger breasts. Women with C or D cups were disproportionately more likely to be the victims of verbal and indirect aggression than those with A and B cups.
Because breast size and shape are important physical traits in mate choice, which men find sexually attractive, and women are attentive to men’s interest in them and aware of women with attractive breast features (the famous photograph of Sophia Loren staring at Jayne Mansfield’s well-endowed assets comes to mind), the researchers made some predictions. They expected women would engage in verbal and indirect aggression when women possessed large and firm (non-saggy) breasts, notably if these women had a sexually competitive disposition.
The sample size was 114 Hispanic women, each of whom was shown 12 images of women’s bare breasts varying in size from A cup to D cup and three different levels of ptosis (firmness vs. sagginess). The researchers also measured the participants’ propensity to engage in same-sex competition using an Intrasexual Competition Scale (ICS), a 12-item inventory of statements like “I can’t stand it when I meet another woman who is more attractive than I am.” The women would then rate the statements for agreement on a scale of 1 to 7, with 1 indicating strong disagreement and 7 indicating strong agreement. Higher scores were associated with greater intrasexual competitiveness.
The women were then asked questions designed to measure their propensity to engage in verbal and indirect aggression, such as “How likely are you to be verbally aggressive against the woman?” and “How likely are you to be indirectly aggressive against the woman?” Curiously, levels of ptosis (i.e., how firm or saggy the breasts were) and women’s ICS scores (which have excellent reliability) were not predictive of women engaging in rival derogation. By far the most significant predictor was breast size, with C and D cups disproportionately more likely to be the victims of verbal and indirect aggression over A and B cups.
The researchers found no association between dispositional levels of intrasexual competition or breast perkiness with verbal and indirect aggression. One possible explanation is that the women in the sample skewed young, so markers of youth like laxity and firmness were not as easily discernible or threatening to them as breast size. Women were more likely to derogate women with larger breasts, even if they did not score high in dispositional interpersonal competition, suggesting that seeing women with large breasts makes women more competitive than their baseline disposition would predict. This study suggests breast size alone can provoke hostility, notably in one direction: the bigger the bust, the bigger the hate.
Limitations of the Study
However, the study has some limitations. For one, this study was performed on a small, non-diverse sample: 114 college-aged, predominantly Hispanic women in a university setting. That’s hardly a representative sample that can be generalized to the broader population. There was also a limited range of breast features tested: breast size and firmness. Researchers proposed additional potential features for future study, such as cleavage.
The research participants, all women, were also viewing nude images of other women’s breasts. Since heterosexual women are unlikely to view other women naked in ordinary, everyday contexts, it’s worth replicating the study with clothed women to see if the findings persist. The participants also self-reported their feelings rather than measuring physiological effects such as heart rate or pupil dilation, which capture unconscious responses.
Prior research shows that “priming intrasexual competition by using a partner threat task can increase derogation tactics in women, such as rating them less favorably or preventing their partner from interacting with an attractive woman,” but no priming task was employed in this study. The authors also disclosed that while larger breasts were perceived as threatening in their sample, large breasts are not universally viewed as more sexually attractive. You might get a different result using a different sample.
Why Women Compete Indirectly With Other Women
Women have a unique evolutionary mating strategy. Rather than engaging in direct physical aggression or violence, women have learned to utilize indirect, non-physical strategies like gossip and rumor spreading as a means of subtly undermining sexual rivals without risking harm to themselves or their children. Due to women’s greater parental investment, aggression must go undetected, ruling out the much more overt male strategy of direct physical aggression and violence.
Women engage in these tactics when a competing attractive woman is directly threatening their relationship. However, they’ve also evolved mechanisms that increase their vigilance to potential threats. Studies show that women “condemn other women who expose their breasts and will view them negatively,” as well as women who are dressed provocatively, such as by showing cleavage.
Because men place a premium on youth and physical attractiveness in selecting mates, women have learned to become attentive to other attractive women and indirectly undermine attractive female rivals through tactics like reputation destruction to reduce perceived threats to their relationship. Attractive female rivals exhibit markers of physical attractiveness like facial femininity, lower waist-to-hip ratios, and larger breasts.
Women are then motivated to spread rumors about such women or increase other forms of aggression, which are effective, especially if the perpetrator is attractive herself. Other tactics include enhancing their own appearance when feeling threatened. Women who are higher in intrasexual competitiveness are more likely to enhance their appearance, have a more positive outlook toward cosmetic surgery, and are more likely to consider women with attractive features as sexually promiscuous.
A 2024 peer-reviewed psychology paper reporting on two studies found that intrasexually competitive women were more likely to advise women to cut off more hair than their attractive peers wanted. The more similar the women were in attractiveness to themselves, the more hair they recommended cutting off, even when the hair was in good condition and the client stated a preference for cutting off as little as possible. The conclusion drawn from these studies is that intrasexually competitive women engage in sabotage when they perceive women to be as attractive as themselves.
Female sexual rivalry is assortative, just like mate selection. In layman’s terms, people mate assortatively, meaning people tend to have an accurate grasp of their “mate value,” where they fall on the social hierarchy of attractiveness, and choose partners that are similar to them. This assortative pattern also pops up in competition with female rivals. Women are more motivated to sabotage other women they perceive as equally attractive or of the same mate value as themselves than women who are obviously more attractive, because they’re competing for the same pool of potential mates.
These studies demonstrate how competitive motives can play out in the background of female-to-female interactions, even when they’re removed from any obvious direct competition for mates. This 2022 study found women condemn other women who appear sexually permissive by dressing in revealing clothing, even when these women are not direct sexual rivals (including their boyfriend’s sister).
A woman is obviously not competing for a man with his sister, but women nevertheless continue to punish this behavior because it’s associated with a greater likelihood for casual sex and lowers its perceived cost. The consequence of that raises competition for attention and reshapes expectations for all women, so they have a vested interest in keeping the cost of sex high. One way they can do this is through enforcing norms by policing women’s behavior. Even if they don’t make sense in a specific context, policed behavior prevents norm drift.
When one woman raises the sexual bar, it pressures other women to follow. So why don’t women just play the game rather than sabotaging or policing other women’s behavior? A few reasons: sexual capital isn’t evenly distributed. Some women have odd proportions or excess body weight, are older, or have fewer attractive features. Assuming women do have the attributes to compete, overt sexualization comes with serious tradeoffs, like a perceived lack of seriousness or authority and higher scrutiny with age. It’s also a valve that, once opened, can hardly be turned off.
How This Plays Out in Popular Culture
Let’s go back to that infamous 1957 photo of Sophia Loren and Jayne Mansfield taken at a Paramount Pictures dinner at Romanoff’s in Beverly Hills. It’s become a piece of Hollywood iconography symbolizing female rivalry, jealousy, and the policing of female sexuality (often by other women). It’s a visual symbol for the woman-on-woman “violence” characteristic of making it in Hollywood. Women, especially legible sex symbols, are typically pitted against each other and feel their fragile sense of relevance and vanity acutely. The photo is, on the one hand, funny, especially in Loren’s retelling as someone earnestly concerned, anxious even, that Mansfield was about to spill out of her top and onto their table. But it’s also sad.
The photo is what we might call a “loaded image,” in that it communicates lots of ideas about women in Hollywood, even if they’re not necessarily true for the women frozen in the lens. One such idea is that there’s only room for one big star at a time and that women competing in the same industry with the same level of star power can hardly be friends or allies. It led me to wonder: is this still true today? It certainly was when this photo was taken.
Another iconic image taken on the same night shows rising star Jayne Mansfield approaching Marilyn Monroe’s table, where Monroe reportedly snubbed her. Mansfield was poised as Marilyn’s replacement, often referred to as “the King-sized Marilyn” or “the poor man’s Marilyn,” with the two constantly pitted against each other. Mansfield embraced this public rivalry, leaning into stunts like crashing photo-ops, wardrobe “malfunctions,” and other displays of opportunistic hypersexuality. Mansfield has been pictured sticking her hands inside Marilyn’s handprints in front of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. Both are rumored to have had affairs with President John F. Kennedy, were considered sex icons of their time, and met untimely demises: Monroe in 1962 at the age of 36, and Mansfield in 1967 at the age of 34.
It’s especially fitting, then, to see someone like Sydney Sweeney, a modern successor to that sex symbol archetype, satirize the Loren-Mansfield photo in a recreation with her Euphoria co-star Maude Apatow. The two play sisters on the hit HBO show, with Sweeney cast as the more sexually available sister whose looks have long overshadowed the plain and introverted Lexi (played by Apatow). By recreating the image, they’re playfully engaging in a kind of meta-commentary on female sexuality and competition.
Several waves of feminism after that infamous original photo, female relationships, and Hollywood itself have ostensibly evolved. Today, you hear more about the importance of being a “girl’s girl” than you hear about women tearing each other down. Following the takedown of some very powerful alleged Hollywood predators, the industry has undergone a lot of reform, for better or worse, and largely resulted in female kinship and solidarity. With the rise in popularity of sex-positive feminism and the normalization of sex work, women seem less likely than ever to shame other women for being sexually provocative. But some things stay the same.
Despite building a loyal female audience for years, Sweeney’s ascent into superstardom has landed her in controversy after controversy, including being accused of right-wing or even MAGA sympathies after a family member’s country-themed birthday party captured some family members donning “Back the Blue” merch and red parody hats that looked like MAGA hats. Her refusal to condemn her family was strike one.
Suddenly, she caught criticism for objectifying herself, not for the nude scenes she had been doing for years, but for overtly sexualized ad campaigns selling men’s soap and SNL Hooters skits drawing attention to her body and appeal with men. This escalated, most absurdly, when she was dragged into discourse accusing her of promoting white supremacy over an American Eagle ad that played on a “great jeans/genes” pun. So why does she inspire so much hostility now? Notably, from the female fans who were once her target audience demographic.
If we extrapolate from the research, Sweeney, who has always had a noticeably large chest, should have been receiving hate from women this whole time. But she wasn’t. There was a clear turning point in the past few years, and she didn’t suddenly grow breasts in 2024. Sweeney fits a familiar Hollywood archetype: the woman perceived as indulgently seductive and overeager to appeal to men while possessing highly visible sexual assets. A modern-day Mansfield, if you will, who was always juxtaposed with the more coy Monroe.
This helps account for the discrepancy between similarly voluptuous actresses like Christina Hendricks or Kat Dennings, who are nevertheless read as female-coded and embraced by women. Sydney Sweeney and Kate Upton, meanwhile, don’t seem particularly female-coded or liked by women in the same way. Large breasts may predict woman-on-woman hate, but in the real world, that hostility doesn’t distribute evenly. Hostility seems to peak when those assets are paired with male-aligned career signaling over female in-group affiliation. It concentrates around the women whose bodies are read as performing for men.
That’s why the female affinity for Sweeney, previously known as a sex-positive (implicitly) feminist actress doing indie roles who wasn’t scared to “ugg” it up, did a complete 180 once her image started to cater to male audiences and right-wing aesthetics in a way that wasn’t subverting them but playing into them. It also explains why she’s often compared to other famous women, like Sabrina Carpenter, and why commentary often turns to bemused attempts to deconstruct why one appeals to men and the other appeals to women. The body didn’t change; only the meaning attached to it did. That framing, more than any single trait, tends to trigger subtle, indirect forms of rivalry that have always shaped how women evaluate one another.
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PDF | Physical features that are desired by the opposite sex may drive competition between members of the same sex to gain access to potenti
Abstract
Physical features that are desired by the opposite sex may drive competition between members of the same sex to gain access to potential mates. Women's breasts are considered sexually attractive to men, and it has been shown that women may engage in competitive tactics to compete with or derogate women with ideal physical traits (i.e., physically attractive features). In the current online study, we investigated Hispanic women's (n = 114) perceptions of breast stimuli that had been manipulated to display four levels of breast size (A-, B-, C-, and D-cup) and three levels of ptosis (i.e., levels of sagginess: non, low, and high) and their likelihood of engaging in rival derogation tactics, such as verbal and indirect aggression. The findings demonstrated that women were more likely to engage in rival derogation towards women with larger breast sizes. Women's dispositional level of intrasexual competition did not play a role in rival derogation tactics. The results are in line with previous research suggesting that women's rival derogation tactics are likely to be targeted towards women with attractive features that are desired by men.
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Here, we identify a novel reason why women are often criticized and condemned for (allegedly) sexually permissive behavior due to their choi
Highlights
Potentially sexually permissive women are negatively judged across traits (Study 1).
Negative mating judgments “leak” into non-mating-related judgments (Study 1)
Controlling for mating judgments reduces negative non-mating judgments (Study 1).
Women mentally represent other women's judgments of permissive rivals (Study 2).
Abstract
Here, we identify a novel reason why women are often criticized and condemned for (allegedly) sexually permissive behavior due to their choice of clothing. Combining principles from coordinated condemnation and sexual economics theory, we developed a model of competition that helps explain this behavior. We hypothesized that women collectively condemn other women who appear to be sexually permissive (based on their choice of clothing). Study 1 (N = 712) demonstrated that women perceived a rival with visible cleavage more negatively. These perceptions were ultimately driven by the belief that “provocatively” dressed women are more likely to have one-night stands. Study 2 (N = 341) demonstrated that women criticized provocatively dressed women, even when these women were not direct sexual rivals (e.g., her boyfriend's sister). Our findings suggest that future research should investigate competition outside of mating-relevant domains to understand women's intrasexual competition fully.
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Intrasexual competition between women is often covert, and targets rivals' appearance. Here we investigate appearance advice as a vector for
Highlights
Women use competitor manipulation as a form of intrasexual competition.
Highly competitive women advised hypothetical salon clients to cut off more hair.
Women told clients of similar attractiveness as themselves to cut off the most hair.
Female intrasexual competition may be assortative with respect to mate quality.
Female intrasexual competition manifests without any contextual cues to mating.
Abstract
Intrasexual competition between women is often covert, and targets rivals' appearance. Here we investigate appearance advice as a vector for female intrasexual competition. Across two studies (N = 192, N = 258) women indicated how much hair they would recommend hypothetical clients have cut off in their hypothetical salon. Clients varied in their facial attractiveness (depicted pictorially), the condition of their hair, and how much hair they wished to have cut off. Participants also provided self-report measures of their own mate value and intrasexual competitiveness. In both studies, participants' intrasexual competitiveness positively predicted how much hair they recommended clients have cut off, especially when the hair was in good condition and the clients reported wanting as little as possible cut off – circumstances wherein cutting off too much hair is most likely to indicate sabotage. Considering data across both collectively, women tended to recommend cutting the most hair off clients they perceived to be as attractive as themselves. These data suggest that just like mating, intrasexual competition may be assortative with respect to mate value. They also demonstrate that competitive motives can impact female-female interactions even in scenarios which feature no prospective mates, and are nominally unrelated to mate guarding or mating competition.
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It's wild when you get told that this is a myth and never happens. As if everyone who watched Mean Girls scoffed and said how completely unbelieveable it was.
Female intrasexual competition is like Fight Club: you have to fight, but you're not allowed to talk about it.
Neuro-Dominance System: Women and Testosterone
If the reader thinks "High TES" in a woman means she has a beard and roid-rage, the system falls apart.
Here is the NDS 5.0 explanation for the "Testosterone in Women" question.
Short Answer: Yes, it is crucial.
Testosterone is the "Agency Hormone" for women just as much as it is for men.
While men have 15-20x more testosterone by volume in their blood, NDS measures Neural Sensitivity and Behavioral Expression, not just raw blood volume.
Here is why a woman can be High TES without being a "freak exception" or a biological anomaly:
1. The "Receiver" Theory (Sensitivity > Volume)
Imagine Testosterone is a Radio Signal.
Men: Have a massive broadcasting tower (High Volume).
Women: Have a smaller tower, BUT...
A woman with High Androgen Sensitivity (lots of receptors in the brain) will react to her smaller amount of T with the same behavioral outcome as a man.
She will be competitive.
She will seek status.
She will have a high libido.
She will have "thick skin" (low Neuroticism).
In NDS, "High TES" means: "This brain prioritizes Agency and Conflict over Consensus." A woman does not need male levels of T to have a brain that prefers winning over getting along.
2. What "High TES" looks like in Women vs. Men
The behavior expresses itself differently because of the biological container.
High TES Male: Physical aggression, loud voice, posturing, risk of violence. (The "Gorilla").
High TES Female: Social dominance, relentless career ambition, verbal sharpness, negotiation skills, "I don't cry at work." (The "Queen Bee").
Example:
Margaret Thatcher or Anna Wintour.
These are not "biological freaks." They are women on the right-tail of the female T-distribution (or sensitivity). They are dominant, disagreeable, and status-seeking. That is High TES.
3. The "Estrogen Masking" Effect
This is why people get confused.
A woman can have High TES (Ambition/Dominance) but also High Estrogen/Oxytocin.
Result: She looks feminine, she is a mother, she is nurturing... but if you try to cross her, she will absolutely destroy you.
Fictional Example: Daenerys Targaryen. She is small and feminine, but her drive to conquer is pure High TES.
Fictional Example: Ellen Ripley (Alien). High agency, high conflict tolerance.
4. The "Disagreeableness" Factor (The Big Five)
Scientifically, Testosterone correlates with the trait "Disagreeableness" (the ability to say "No" and fight for your interest).
Low TES Woman: "I'll do whatever the group wants, I don't want to make a scene." (High Agreeableness).
High TES Woman: "I disagree. This is how we are going to do it." (Low Agreeableness).
This personality trait is common. It is not an exception.
5. The NDS "Relative" Rule
In NDS, we grade on a curve relative to the sex.
A High TES Woman might have lower serum T than a Low TES Man.
BUT, compared to other women, she functions as the Dominator.
In her social group, she is the one making the decisions. In her relationship, she might wear the pants (or share them equally).
For all the Tumblr talk about "patriarchy" and how women are super oppressed and must dismantle the "violent" structure of marriage and family, I have yet to see them show an actual example of it, specially pertaining to Western culture. I want Tumblr to explain how women are oppressed in a way that doesn't sound like some insanely paranoid shit.
The only culture that has allowed Feminism to happen in the first place is Western culture, and those Asian cultures most influenced by the West.
The very cultures that Feminism hates the most are the ones that gave Feminists what they demanded. The cultures that Feminists most defend are those that most oppress women.
Which reminds one of how Feminists demanded that men stop catcalling women in the streets or approaching them at bars, and now Feminists are complaining that they got what they demanded.
It's almost as if the thought-leaders of Feminism are liars working against the best interests of their foot-soldiers and women in general. Like some sort of sabotage strategy in a big biological game of intrasexual competition.
The real winners are the rich.
Intrasexual competition between women is often covert, and targets rivals' appearance. Here we investigate appearance advice as a vector for
Highlights
Women use competitor manipulation as a form of intrasexual competition.
Highly competitive women advised hypothetical salon clients to cut off more hair.
Women told clients of similar attractiveness as themselves to cut off the most hair.
Female intrasexual competition may be assortative with respect to mate quality.
Female intrasexual competition manifests without any contextual cues to mating.
Abstract
Intrasexual competition between women is often covert, and targets rivals' appearance. Here we investigate appearance advice as a vector for female intrasexual competition. Across two studies (N = 192, N = 258) women indicated how much hair they would recommend hypothetical clients have cut off in their hypothetical salon. Clients varied in their facial attractiveness (depicted pictorially), the condition of their hair, and how much hair they wished to have cut off. Participants also provided self-report measures of their own mate value and intrasexual competitiveness. In both studies, participants' intrasexual competitiveness positively predicted how much hair they recommended clients have cut off, especially when the hair was in good condition and the clients reported wanting as little as possible cut off – circumstances wherein cutting off too much hair is most likely to indicate sabotage. Considering data across both collectively, women tended to recommend cutting the most hair off clients they perceived to be as attractive as themselves. These data suggest that just like mating, intrasexual competition may be assortative with respect to mate value. They also demonstrate that competitive motives can impact female-female interactions even in scenarios which feature no prospective mates, and are nominally unrelated to mate guarding or mating competition.
New research reveals that guitar skills in extreme metal music are more linked to male competition and status than to attracting mates. The
“Heterosexual men who play extreme metal guitar do not seem to be doing it to attract women, as has been suspected about musicians of other genres,” DeLecce told PsyPost. “Instead, it seems they are trying to impress and/or intimidate other heterosexual men with their skills.”
Link to paper
One sex cannot be understood except in light of the other. Men and women have co-evolved, each shaping the other both physically and psychol
By: Paula Wright
Published: Feb 19, 2023
If any man could draw up a comprehensive, infallible guide to navigating this treacherous territory, we would certainly erect a statue to his everlasting memory. There is a Twitter account dedicated to exploring and enumerating precisely the distinctions and differences between the acceptably erotic and the intolerably sexist. It’s called @SexyIsntSexist. It is, of course, under the control of a woman.” Neil Lyndon. Do men really understand what sexism is? The Telegraph 20/5/14
I created Darwinian Gender Studies (DGS) in 2008 as a cross-disciplinary area of study and research which utilises insights across the evolutionary behavioural sciences, including but not limited to, evolutionary psychology, biology, anthropology, ethology, palaeoanthropology and cultural evolution. It represents the consilience of the natural and social sciences, as envisioned by E. O. Wilson.
Back then, my planned PhD thesis was to be in developing an evolutionary, bio-cultural model of ‘patriarchy’ which challenged the premises of the feminist conception of patriarchy. Even in 2008, the project foresaw that political correctness, social justice and toxic feminism were taking us deep down the postmodern rabbit hole. My goal was to build bridges of understanding between the sexes not walls of fear and mistrust, which is what feminism does today. To learn about humans and humanity; what we are, and what we are not.
Two things we are, which we cannot cease to be and remain human, are a sexually reproducing, moderately sexually dimorphic, pair-bonded species. These are basic facts of our human nature which cannot be erased by social engineering.
Within DGS, I interrogate orthodox feminist concepts, such as patriarchy theory, objectification theory, gender, power, mating strategies, and sex differences and similarities, using humour and evolutionary explanatory models such as natural and sexual selection, parental investment theory, female choice, signalling theory, life history theory, intersexual competition and intrasexual competition.
History has demonstrated many times, that whenever our species attempts to take control of biology and bend it out of shape to ideological goals, human tragedy always follows. It’s a lesson we still don’t seem to have learned, as in spite of overwhelming evidence, many people still hold fast to the idea of an endlessly flexible human nature, and indeed, human nature is flexible, but a blank slate it is not. Neither however is it a crude caricature of immutable deterministic drives and instincts as often painted within the straw man of biological determinism. Human nature is very much mutable, but not infinitely or arbitrarily so, and here lies the nub: Within what may seem like infinite variations of human action and reaction to what life throws at us, our predispositions on an average scale are actually predictable. There are enough constants within this calculus to recognise the existence of an unmistakably human nature. This nature will vary and recalibrate between individuals and ecologies (variation is one of the engines of evolution) but these variations dance around a constant, evolutionary fire.
“Those who journey from political correctness to truth often risk public disapprobation, but it is notable that most never lose their tolerance or humanity. They may question the politics of race, but not that racism is bad; they may question campaigns about women’s pay, but not that women and men deserve equality of treatment.” Browne, A. (2006) The Retreat of Reason: Political correctness and the corruption of political debate in modern Britain. Civitas
I was, and am, standing on the shoulders of many female evolutionary scientists and philosophers who came before me such as Barbara Smuts, Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, Anne Campbell, Helena Cronin, Griet Vandermassen, Catherine Salmon, Maryanne Fisher, Bobby Low, Helen Fisher, and many more. Over the last 50 years, their scholarship has revealed that, far from feminist fears to the contrary, evolved sex differences do not equate to inferiority. Via evolution, we in fact see true equality expressed in discrete and fascinating ways.
These women (and many men) have illuminated the role females play as potent agents of evolution via the phenomenon of female choice. This is sadly still an unsung revolution – unsung by feminism, not evolutionists – as it shattered the male perspective biases that once dominated biology and Darwinism. These women did this, not with rhetorical declarations of war against ‘patriarchy’ but with logic and critical thinking.
When it comes to the principles of natural selection – the struggle to survive – men and women differ very little. Rather, it is in the principles of sexual selection – the struggle not just to survive but thrive enough to have offspring and allow them to thrive also – that the main differences start to become manifest. It is a categorical fact that none of these differences equates to any moral inferiority. No genuine evolutionary scholar would ever make such a claim.
Feminists have long claimed that logic is an exclusively male trait. So much so that to counter the “male” scientific method they felt the need to create “female” method – social constructionism - which ironically invokes every negative female stereotype they claim to want to refute. They did this not because social constructivism was a better tool – it is untested – but because it was the binary opposite of the scientific method.
Women, in fact, have nothing to fear from logic. Yet feminists do fear it, as philosopher Janet Radciffe Richards notes in her book The Sceptical Feminist,
“…in spite of girls doing better at school than boys, feminists are still woeful at rationality…feminism has some tendency to get stuck in the quagmire of unreason from time to time [but] it cannot be denied that adopting an anti-rational stance has its uses; it can be turned into an all-purpose escape route from tricky corners”
They also fear it because it falsifies the very premises feminism rests on – especially female inferiority.
This is a description of all feminisms today: radical, intersectional and all other tribes battling for dominance in the victim narrative – including ideological men’s rights, MGTOW and “red pill” groups. All feminisms eschew logic and reason for dogma and ideology and all are in thrall to the flying patriarchal spaghetti monster in the sky. Ask a question about female oppression, you already know the answer: it’s the patriarchy, stupid. And ideological men’s groups have their own version of patriarchy, known as gynocentrism. Both concepts are intellectually myopic.
I created DGS all those years ago because I wanted the opportunity to have a role, however small, in helping us better understand ourselves as a species.
It is true that as a woman I am perhaps more interested in the unique selection pressures women face due directly to their sex. As an evolutionist and a realist, however, this bias does not make me blind to the fact that men face their own unique selection pressures due explicitly to their sex.
The truth is, one sex cannot be understood except in the light of the other. Men and women have co-evolved, each shaping the other both physically and psychologically via sexual selection. Men desire power and resources because women desire men who have power and resources. And female conflict, well that doesn’t look like male conflict, and so often goes unseen, especially by feminists.
From an evolutionary perspective, feminism can be categorised as the study of the conflict between the sexes – intersexual conflict – aka the “battle of the sexes” with a particular interest in proximate, conscious mechanisms of how men can oppress women and how this oppression can be countered. But this is only half the story. Evolutionists posit that to really understand intersexual conflict one must also analyse intrasexual conflict. We do this because we observe across species that competition within a sex is always far more intense than between the sexes. An evolutionary lens also broadens the enquiry to include an analysis of ultimate, unconscious mechanisms of not just how, but why, men pursue the goal of power and resource control. What do men want to do with power? To create strong alliances, subdue rivals, protect against enemies and attract mates.
Much is known about male intrasexual competition. We have had 2000 years to work it out – its role in shaping cultures and empires – for better or worse. Far less is known about conflict - and conflict resolution - between women; female intrasexual competition (FIC). It is the pink elephant in the feminist room. Do we have the same amount of time to understand female intrasexual competition? For better or worse? I don’t think we do. The epidemic of female-on-female bullying in nursing has long been acknowledged in academia, yet nothing is done about it. In the UK it costs the NHS billions of pounds in workplace attrition, sick leave and low efficiency. It can also cost lives, as a “culture of bullying” was highlighted in the official reports on two scandals in UK maternity wards where both infants and mothers lost their lives.
In another example observe the rise of intragender conflict in the West. Third-gender people exist in many cultures, but only in the West are males who identify with the female gender trying to use it as leverage to get access to sex-based rights and privileges. Then we have feminism itself a battleground fraught with female intrasexual competition, which is often mistakenly called “internalised misogyny”. Women too, it seems, want to create alliances, subdue rivals and attract the best mates.
Using FIC as a lens to look anew at hot feminist topics such as the beauty industry, cosmetic surgery, anorexia, and the endless wars of attrition between the many tribes of feminisms brings fascinating new insights, as all these phenomena seem to be expressions of female competition not male oppression.
Nonetheless, there is still a comfortable consensus among all feminists that the beauty ‘ideal’ is a tyranny perpetrated upon women by the patriarchy. “Feminists down the ages have argued that the oppression of women is played out on their bodies, their clothes, their style of adornment. To politicise dress has been one of the enduring projects of the women’s movement.” (Walter, N. 1999) Naomi Wolf tackled this concept in her seminal book The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women. It suggested that this patriarchal strategy is one of ‘divide and rule’ as it “creates a climate of competitiveness among women that divides them from each other.”
Competitiveness is the keyword here. Perhaps the idea of sanctioning the idea, nay the fact, of female intrasexual competition seems frightening for feminists because on the surface of it, it threatens the very notion of a ‘sisterhood’. Yet we know that men are murderously competitive with one another, as homicide rates attest, and this does not seem to threaten their notion of ‘the patriarchy’.
The evidence actually shows that the beauty myth may not be a tyranny perpetuated on women by men, but on one other - if it is a tyranny at all! And it reveals a much more complex and fascinating picture of female agency which goes far to liberate women from the doctrine of passive femininity.
The fact is, women are fiercely competitive with one another, but as the existence of feminism attests, this does not stop women at least trying to cooperate to face challenges, though, as feminism also shows, its own willful ignorance of human nature means feminists cannot agree on anything for long. This explains the many tribes within feminism, and the fiercely defended hierarchies that exist within feminism itself.
I do not deny that these revelations are tricky for feminists to negotiate, but that is no reason for not taking them on. That female intrasexual competition exists is not in doubt. The degree of it however will vary from culture to culture. We know dominance hierarchies exist in many species and all apes. Humans add to the mix competence hierarchies which allow for the utilisation of innate talents and the division of labour which has allowed our species to become far more than the sum of its biologically determined parts.
We also know females have a large role in the construction and maintenance of such hierarchies, for better and worse. Women are individuals and as such are often not united in their interests. An individual’s environment is crucial to how they calibrate their own needs. Yet, ironically, the collective structure of feminism, suppresses the evolutionary mechanism of individual female choice. The epithet “choice feminism” is regarded with contempt by most feminists today.
“If we do not know what we are capable of…then we do not know what to watch out for, which human propensities to encourage, and which to guard against.” Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors.
Further reading: Griet Vandermassen Sexual Selection: A Tale of Male Bias and Feminist Denial ; Griet Vandermassen: Who’s Afraid of Charles Darwin: Debating Feminism and Evolutionary Theory; Anne Campbell: A Mind of Her Own: The Evolutionary Psychology of Women ; Sarah Blaffer Hrdy: Mothers and Others: The Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding ; Sarah Blaffer Hrdy: Mothernature ; Susan Pinker: The Sexual Paradox: Men, Women and the Real Gender Gap ; Christina Hoff Sommers: Who Stole Feminism? ; Cindy Metson & David Buss: Why Women Have Sex; Women reveal the truth about their sex lives, from adventure to revenge (and everything in between) ; E.O. Wilson: Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge ; Jerome H.Barklow (ed): Missing the Revolution: Darwinism for Social Scientists
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We recognize that the evolution of peafowl, bees, seahorses, angler fishes and marsupial mice has resulted in males and females whose physiology and behavior development has influenced and responded to each other. Yet somehow, that female and male humans behave as they do as a result of the other is somehow unreasonable or even "sexist." Like creationist Xians, this is a denial of evolution and of humans as members of the animal kingdom.
It seems like the "god did it" dragon of "tHe PaTrIaRcHy," then, was conjured to fill the gap in the combination of denial of biological sex-based differences (directly responsible for the formulation of gender ideology; and itself a denial of evolution), and denial of intrasexual competition between women ("On Twitter, women are more misogynistic than men") in order to obscure female agency.
If "gender studies" had been based on science instead of Marxian psychosis and postmodern fantasy, it might well have been harder for the Queer Theorists to find a solid ideological foothold and enthusiastic collaborators.