Join us as we dive deep into a riveting discussion with Diana Fleischman, a reformed academic and evolutionary psychologist, as well as the author of the upcoming book "How to Train Your Boyfriend". In this episode, we explore a variety of intriguing theories, most notably the concept that humans have evolved to be a "slave race", especially under the lens of evolutionary psychology. Diana brings fascinating insights about status hierarchies, gender dynamics, and the potential evolutionary roots of certain behaviors and preferences. This...
Join us as we dive deep into a riveting discussion with Diana Fleischman, a reformed academic and evolutionary psychologist, as well as the author of the upcoming book "How to Train Your Boyfriend". In this episode, we explore a variety of intriguing theories, most notably the concept that humans have evolved to be a "slave race", especially under the lens of evolutionary psychology. Diana brings fascinating insights about status hierarchies, gender dynamics, and the potential evolutionary roots of certain behaviors and preferences. This conversation will definitely get you thinking about humanity's social and evolutionary history in new ways.
An AI written transcript:Simone: [00:00:00] Hi everyone. I am super excited. We're gonna be speaking with one of our favorite people today, Diana Fleischman, who in addition to being a reformed academic and evolutionary psychologist, is the author of the Not Yet published but upcoming book called How to Train Your Boyfriend. And she's written a ton of other fascinating stuff that you must go down that rabbit hole.
Simone: Trust us, you'll be very, very entertained. We're going to speak with Diana about a wide range of things. We also want her to, and she starts to be the uh,
Malcolm: aria podcast. Yes. Host
Simone: Appia podcast. I furiously. Yes. And we, we honestly want her to start by stress testing one of our weird theories but we also wanna hear all sorts of other things from her.
Simone: So, Diana, welcome first and foremost. Thank you.
Malcolm: So the theory I really want to go over with you is one from our book, the Pragmatist Guide de Sexuality, which is that we are a slave race, and I'll explain what I mean by this.
Malcolm: [00:01:00] Specifically the, the majority of the evolutionary pressure put on human to human social interactions was put on humans who were low within local status hierarchies. First. Most humans, historically were basically near the bottom of a, a social status hierarchy. Very few humans were near the top of the central status hierarchy, and while men in that position definitely had more surviving offspring even when they were in that position.
Malcolm: There was less pressure on them. To behave in certain ways. Like a leader who failed isn't gonna get his genes erased as quickly as a a, a servant or slave who fails, which means that the average human mind is much more optimized around servitude. And this has a few interesting takeaways. One Ayla mutual friend of of, of both of ours this would explain why even in men around 40% prefer to take on sub submissive positions in, sexuality.
Malcolm: But it also may explain the way we relate to [00:02:00] things like deity or society writ large. How like a president will say, well, I'm the servant of the people. Even though the president is technically the highest level position in society, or the head of a company might say, well, I'm the servant of the board.
Malcolm: We really have few concepts of non servitude in our society. So I wanna get your take on this as an evolutionary psychologist.
Diana: So one idea that's very interesting is, Potentially hunter-gatherer societies were less hierarchical than current societies that have very large hierarchies. I've been reading a lot about male and female dynamics, so men tend to be more forgiving of their friends and they also have more stable status hierarchies than women do.
Diana: Mm. Because their status hierarchies are based on more stable characteristics such as strength and prestige over time. So it does make sense for men. To, you know, and I was listening to an interesting conversation with Beau, we guard and Jonathan Palon about, you know, why would a man gain status [00:03:00] by carving beautiful sculptures of a man from history who's high in status?
Diana: You know, these kinds of ideas. So it's possible. Yeah, I do see what you're saying. That yeah, the average man is actually subservient. The average man is monogamous or, or worse. What I'll riff on this with is what I think is even more interesting, I have an idea, is I was talking to Louise Perry and we were talking about like, how evolutionarily novel is prostitution.
Diana: And she said That it was unlikely for women to have been passed around and have sex with multiple men, but it was probably very common in evolutionary history, ancestral history for women to be sex slaves to a specific person. Ah, right. Oh, and so she talks about kind of Stockholm syndrome and women being uniquely impressed upon by Stockholm Syndrome because it is the adaptive thing to do, not just, you know, because of.
Diana: Patro locality. So women would've been taken away. Mm-hmm. On average from their families and given to a, a strange man's family. For her to adapt to his [00:04:00] culture and his language and to his customs would've made sense. But the only way you and your kids are gonna survive if you're taken over by a hostile group is through a, a kind of.
Diana: Pleasant submissiveness. I'll say accommodation.
Malcolm: Yeah. Yeah. So there's a few riffs I want to take on the, on the thing that you've said here. One thing that was really interesting is male status hierarchies being more static than female status hierarchies. To add to that, one study that's really interesting is males sort themselves into status hierarchies much faster than women do, because the majority of the way that men sort themselves into status hierarchies is by.
Malcolm: Immediate physical traits like height that they can determine the moment they walk into the room. And the reason for that is because the top man historically was typically the man that could beat up the other men. And that's something that you can quickly observe. Yeah. Which would be partially why the male status hierarchy would be more static.
Malcolm: Another thing that you mentioned was wars of conquest and taking women, one really interesting study here that I, [00:05:00] we talk about in our sexuality book shows that when you have a competition, like a game or, or something like that, that's, I think it's like violent adjacent games, you know, like physical, physical games and it looks like your side is losing males bond more like they feel closer bonds with the people on their team, whereas women begin to bond less with the people on their team when it looks like their team is losing.
Malcolm: Which shows sort of the behavior you're talking about, where it would've really been evolutionarily advantageous if we assume that all the males in a tribe were killed when the tribe was taken over. The final part I wanna riff on, sorry if I'm riffing on too many things here. You just, I taking notes while you're talking.
Malcolm: Some really cool ideas is one of our theories on sexuality, we call the polymorphic human female. So for users, you're familiar with polymorphism, but for users, what it is, is when you have a single genetic code that can be expressed in two behavioral and, and physical phenotypes. So a locus is the classic example here.
Malcolm: [00:06:00] Where when they get above certain population numbers, they change their physiology and behavior patterns. You know, normally they're a grasshopper, but if you rub like their hind leg with a Q-tip, they'll transform into a locus. But even when like baboons, you see polymorphic behavior patterns above certain PO population sizes.
Malcolm: So what we would ar. Argue here is that human females the more sexual partners they have, their body naturally adapts to this and we can see them producing Lex I think it's you, you'll correct me on this. Oxytocin, when they sleep with partners, which is a forced bonding hormone, which would mean that human females bodies organically adapt.
Malcolm: To either bond with the one person they sleep with or bond less with everyone they sleep with because they assume they're in a society where they're being passed around. You can tell me if that sounds crazy, or Simone, you wanna riff on that? No
Diana: no. I, I, I I'm writing something right now called like, you know, playfully you know, disagreeable sluts versus agreeable prudes.
Diana: And and so yeah, I mean this idea is like [00:07:00] hookup culture is really, I. Fine if you know how to disagree with the, with the norm. But if you're agreeable and you're naturally more monogamously inclined as, as the average woman is, then hookup culture is gonna be a, a net bad for you. I'd be really interested in this study cuz I've, I've had this idea for a long time.
Diana: So there's this idea in sort of Christian culture where they tell young people, you're like a piece of tape. The more times you stick to something else, the less sticky you get. And so, I have drafted something but not published. It basically called, I don't wanna be sticky cuz like, when I was younger, when I was like 17, I fell in love with a couple people who were really LOM mate.
Diana: Value just sounds like mercenary, but yeah, lom mate value. Guys like going Guy was like a, like a musician that was unsuccessful. Another guy worked at my grocery store and and I remember feeling so in love with this one guy who I really had nothing in common with. I fell in love very easily until I got past, I don't know, like 10 sexual [00:08:00] partners.
Malcolm: Yeah, we, we we, we cite this as actually probably being a good thing for most women.
Malcolm: You don't want to illogically fall in love with everyone you sleep with, so you're probably in a lot stronger position. So I, I, I really like that. Another thing you mentioned I wanna pull on is a concept of bratty sluts uh, uh, not bratty sluts, but bratty subs.
Malcolm: Sorry. Bratty subs. Bratty subs. So in the kink community there are different ways you can be submissive. And one of these, it's called the brat. And what I think is going on there, and it's very interesting, is what is arousing? The woman is the man exerting his dominance over her. So the bratty behavior elicits.
Malcolm: The, the dominant display over and over again in the male that allows her to maximally masturbate that aspect of her sexuality.
Diana: Yeah. There's the, the resistance is screening idea, right? So like female elephant, a male will try to mount her and she'll walk backwards like a hundred meters or something.
Diana: Stay on, [00:09:00] he gets to mate, right? And there's other species where I think it is, is an orcas or some other whale where the male drags the female to shallower water. And so there is an, an in courtship, there's an element of coercive behavior. And so the bratty sub is definitely like a a test both psychologically and physically of the dominance of the male.
Diana: This is why women like to be tied up is because it's a perfect It's a, it's a facsimile of being with somebody who's so large and strong and coordinated that they can hold all your limbs immobile. Right. Oh, that's interesting.
Simone: I thought it was a swaddling
Malcolm: instinct. Yeah. Yeah. So we argue something different about tie-ups, which is one of our spicier takes, is that when people are masturbating instincts that Any sort of an instinct, anything that makes them happy, they often misattribute it to sexuality even when it's not necessarily a sexual instinct because that's, that's just how we deal with these feelings.
Malcolm: Like a massage or something like that. Right. And so what we argue might be going on with [00:10:00] bondage it is it might actually be a swaddling instinct that hasn't fully turned off from infants. And the, that specifically, when you look at like cling wrap fetishes and stuff like that, you know, where they like vacuum, vacuum, put something in a bag, vacuum.
Malcolm: Yeah,
Diana: yeah, yeah. But I think
Simone: even, even like rope bondage, I, but here's where it gets really complicated, right? Because like there is definitely a dominance element in there and we are pretty sure that like, while the dominance submission thing is a really big element of what turns people on and off, it's also like, you know, I.
Simone: You can, you can show domination through tying someone up. So like, it can both be like comforting from a swaddling standpoint, but also super big turn on because it is a show of that dominance or it is
Diana: a show of that power. Like yeah. It's, it's very, it's, it takes a lot of skill to do it. I see what you're saying.
Diana: I, I, I, for me, the swaddling instinct thing, yes, there is a relaxing component to being tied up. I used to live with this guy who was like really into BDSM and he would try out his new gear on me cuz I was the smallest person he knew. So I remember he put me in a straight jacket one time during a [00:11:00] party.
Diana: And it was very relaxing because I didn't feel like there was anything I, people could come over and talk to me or not. It was like one of the most relaxing social situations I've ever been in. Right. Honestly, that
Simone: sounds amazing. Why
Diana: does this sound, you wouldn't imagine that right? Whereas I think if you're, I guess you could make the case that for a woman, if you tie her up, the swaddling instinct relaxes her.
Diana: And for a woman has to be relaxed before she gets aroused to some extent. I mean, there's something like that, although the studies that I did back when I was in graduate school on human sexuality is actually if you show a woman a, like a horror film or an. Or thriller, like a man chasing a woman down a dark alleyway.
Diana: She gets sexually aroused faster. Huh. After seeing something like that than she does just in a, in a neutral, relaxed state. Well, doesn't
Simone: that suggest though, that like she's, that maybe there's some kind of like evolved coping mechanism of like, These are signals that I'm about to get raped. Like, yes, exactly.
Simone: Let's not cause physical damage,
Diana: please. That, that's all of the explanations of [00:12:00] really repugnant explanations for why do women show enhanced blood flow and even lubrication in the presence of watching pornography. No matter what it is, you can watch two Bonobos having sex and a woman in blood flow increase.
Diana: Is that it's what does it call that? Like the damage. Reduction hypothesis. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is really nasty. But yeah, the idea is that you're seeing anything sexual going on, it's important to get your v ready for what whatever might happen. Yeah. For bonking, bonking, my my evolutionary psychology mentor when I was in graduate school who died shortly after, he said, he made some joke about like, you know, the best form of four plays to chase her around the table or something.
Malcolm: I love that. Oh my God. Well, here's a fun take that you might like that we had on, on, on these sorts of topics. Which is what's actually going on with the arousal ties to dominance and submission systems, and this we argue, is really more of a case of just evolution being a cheap programmer and reusing a code base it already had.
Malcolm: So [00:13:00] specifically in mammals, when you have social hierarchies, a very common. Thing is that mammals will display sexually to show their position was in that dominant hierarchy. Yeah, and what's really fascinating here is in like spotted hyenas where the females are the dominant animal and, and females have pseudo penises in, in spotted hyenas an erection will be a sign of submission instead of like showing yourself to get mounted.
Malcolm: And so what's really interesting here is what we argue is probably going on. Is that humans needed to show their position within their social hierarchy and a system they already had on hand was their arousal system. So biology just like copied the code from that system to instigate dominance and submission behavior and pre-code that behavior.
Malcolm: And that's why it causes arousal, not. Always are necessarily because of these more rape hypotheses. What are your thoughts on that?
Diana: Well, so there's a lot of species in which males show submission to each other by bending over or [00:14:00] even being the receptive animal in an anal sex kind of interaction.
Diana: That to me, I, I wrote a behaviorist account of that once, which is that what's it called? I can't remember the behaviorist term, but there are, you know, like, let's say there's two behaviors. Let's say if you're a dog that beats up on your other dog. So the dog can either play with a toy across the room, or it can beat up on the other dog.
Diana: Those behaviors are like mutually exclusive and like, a, a more dominant animal beating you up or having sex with you. Those are mutually exclusive. So what you're incidentally doing, if you bend over and show a submission behavior or let the other animal mount you, is you're rewarding not beating me up.
Diana: Oh,
Malcolm: oh, with Sack. Right. That's a really interesting take. I like that.
Diana: So, that's one interesting thing, but, but also, yeah. In terms of dominance yes. It's, it's always better if you look at all these different animals. There's a very interesting paper about cooperation and they expand the notion of cooperation past what we would normally think.
Diana: And they also say, let's say two bucks are sizing each other up, [00:15:00] and they look at each other's like, Antler size and one decides to forfeit because the other one has bigger antlers. But a a an actual physical altercation is costly for both of them. So actually that is a form of cooperation. Even though their interests are actually not well, their interests are aligned and that they both don't, they don't, don't wanna fight unless it's really necessary to figure out who's who's dominant.
Diana: Yes. So you could also see that in terms of sexuality, Physical altercation is, is very costly. And so a sexual altercation is, is generally always preferable if you wanna show that you're submissive. And it also has, as I said, the added benefit of rewarding the dominant animal for not beating
Malcolm: you up. Yeah.
Malcolm: So, just a, just a quick note here for, for listeners and quick biology lesson. What she described there is called honest signaling. And it's a useful concept in biology that can also be applied to other areas of your life, which are types of signals that you can show people that cannot be easily faked.
Malcolm: So like if you were signaling wealth, something like jewelry, which can be rented is a very easy thing to fake. While something like a house [00:16:00] is a very hard thing to fake and a much more honest signal of wealth. But Simone, you haven't talked much. What are, what are your thoughts on all this?
Simone: Sorry. I thought you were about to be like, and this is why you should offer sex to your boss at the office so that you can get promoted and make sure that you're not trying to supplant them.
Simone: Wow. Okay.
Diana: This is moisten night. So this is my, my pregnancy ring because it's oh. Cause your fingers are swollen, right? I don't fit into, yeah. I'm too swollen to wear my normal one. And this is like a $300 ring or something like that, but a diamond this size. Because they're indistinguishable to like the naked eye or whatever, or even to many jewelers would be, I don't know, 10 grand.
Diana: So yeah. Yeah. I, I love, I love fake, fake fitness when it comes to
Simone: jewelry. Also, moison eight is more sparkly. So like, I almost feel like it's more effective signaling. It's, it's, it's gorgeous. Amazing. Yeah. I mean, what I'm really curious. About is, you know, there is this, this surprising and, and this shows up in ALA's data, it shows up in the data that we did.
Simone: Abundance of people who are submissive, not just women, which of course, like the majority of of women are, are submissive, but also [00:17:00] men. Well, what, what are other compelling reasons for there being so many. Submissive men, but
Diana: bottom bottom's also outnumber tops. I remember Mike Bailey having a drink with him several years ago, and he was saying that gay men joke that like you go out to a gay bar, which gay bars are not as common as they used to be.
Diana: It's like a hundred bottoms for every one top. No. Yeah, so bottoms are way more common. I don't know about like versatiles or, or switches. I mean, there's a variety of other reasons that could be the case though, cuz like females with the default sex, if homosexuality is the result of some kind of Difficulty, let's say in the the programming for masculinity than you would expect that, you know, it's, yeah.
Diana: We default more toward female tend diseases. Lordosis or like female receptive behavior is much easier to code cuz it just involves kind of like bending over than, yeah. Than copulation or topping, which is much more complicated and involves a lot more motivation.
Malcolm: Right. Well it's also fairly risky. So you have a female mimicry.
Malcolm: Which you [00:18:00] see in a lot of species, and that could be what we're seeing here. Oh, you mean
Simone: like sneaky copulation?
Malcolm: Yeah. Sneaky copulation. Yeah.
Diana: Okay. So guys, you guys do curse on this podcast
Simone: a curse. We can, we can curse.
Diana: It's called sneaky f*****s.
Malcolm: Yes, sneaky. So essentially what happens in, in some animals for listeners, and this may or may not have relevance to the world today.
Malcolm: So some males especially in highly gender dimorphic species, so like, you'll see this in like some crabs where like some males are like three times the size of other crabs. Yeah. Occasionally males will be born the size of a female crab and the big males don't notice them, and they will in enter these other crab communities sneakily in other species, you will see males adopt female behavior or even take on.
Malcolm: Gay roles to enter sort of the trust circle of other males and then sleep with the women in, in that animal's harem, I guess you could call it.
Diana: Yeah. The Sunfish has got three [00:19:00] morphs, which is the, the regular male that has the territory that guards the territory. A tiny little male that sneaks in and then the male that looks just like a female that sneaks in more effectively.
Malcolm: And this is, so we had a podcast where we argue that the, the red pill in a way and the way they're approaching women creates thoughts. I actually t hts I actually believe that in the same way the extremist feminist community, one of the reasons why whenever you do surveys in that community you see such high rates of rape is they are essentially.
Malcolm: Bringing in these female mimicry guys who are going to pretend to have this like ultra white nighty perspective on the world. Mm. But in, in animal kingdoms, those are the, the types of males that are most likely to rape or one of the most
Diana: likely course males. Yeah. I remember, I mean, I, I did a deep, I I did, I did work on this 10 years ago on bisexuality and about evolutionary explanations for homosexuality, and I taught.
Diana: Human sexuality.[00:20:00] I remember a deep dive on this in a lecture and chapter that I read in my twenties, and this guy was talking about how gay men have, you know, very reduced rates of reproduction, obviously compared to straight men. And then it doesn't actually seem like this kind of sneaky f****r strategy.
Diana: Maybe you're talking about something different, but it doesn't
Malcolm: actually No, no, I'm not talking about gay men. I'm, I'm actually specifically talking about white nighty guys. So these are guys, oh, feminist guys. Yeah. An extremist like feminist perspective, you could say that like no rational guy looking at the world today would adopt to get into these, I guess people would call them like hardcore SJW spaces.
Simone: But it is related. Basically they're creating an incentive to create sneaky f*****s essentially.
Malcolm: Well, I mean, it's, it's a population strategy that is, that is premised upon dishonesty. Yeah. I mean, that's how they're getting into these communities by being dishonest about their lived experiences, because that's what you need to be as a guy often to enter these communities.
Simone: Well, that's, that's what I'm saying is the communities create that requirement. Like [00:21:00] you have to be sneaky to get in, so it creates
Malcolm: people being a real
Diana: thing. So we'll see. Yeah. I mean, I guess you could also say that these communities, like the, there's a very advantageous sex ratio. And there's a variety of good, good reasons to try to get, get into them.
Diana: Yeah, I'm pretty agnostic about that, given that I'm not in those communities myself.
Simone: Yeah, we just,
Malcolm: I, I have loved this episode. And I would love to do another episode with you if you are open to that. Yeah, for
Simone: sure. Yay. Okay then we are going to, we'll record it right now. Yeah. Okay. We're gonna record it right now.
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