Although I found The Evolution of Desire to be a fascinating read, one bone of contention I have with the book is that it borders too much on political correctness as opposed to reality. Buss writes rather cryptically throughout the book, and the reader needs to be of a certain cognitive caliber in order to be able to read between the lines. Perhaps Buss was attempting to appease book publishers or female readers who might tend to prefer happy endings about "harmony between the sexes." There can be no true harmony with two distinctly different mating strategies. Anyone who has read The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins understands that genes are "selfish" first and foremost. Although Buss writes that "Fulfilling each other's evolved desires is the key to harmony between a man and a woman," women do not remain fertile forever, and men are happiest with young babes. Houston, we have a problem. Buss also does a clever job at miscalculating the rate of male infidelity by tossing out various numbers throughout the book, but remember that Clark and Hatfield's experiment yielded a 75% rate of acceptance by males to an offer for casual sex. While acknowledging the fact that many males may not have been married at the time, the experiment still demonstrated that at least three-quarters of educated males would readily consent to sex without knowing the partner or the partner's sexual history. There is a definite link between the personality trait of extraversion, and extraverts are also prone to bragging, which might explain why some men admit their infidelity while others do not, but suffice it to say that Buss underestimates at "roughly half." In addition to providing numbers with regards to infidelity, Buss should have also included recent CDC statistics on the rate of sexually transmitted diseases as males need to be aware of the health risks associated with promiscuity. Unfortunately, selection has not favored males who are quite as concerned about their health as many found promiscuity in a female to be "mildly desireable." Females, out of concern for their reproductive health, tend to be more informed about this stuff. Remember that no one is passing their genes on to the next generation if females are infertile, fighting cervical cancer, or sick from AIDS. All in all, I'm glad that Buss did the cross-cultural study and published his findings in the book. Perhaps it will become more socially acceptable that some females, out of concern for their psychological health, would choose NOT to marry or take men quite so seriously.
