DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’m young now, but haven’t found love yet, and I’m scared I never will. I just wanted to know, is it scientifically impossible for a postmenopausal woman to find true love/sexually please a man? Because studies and evolutionary psychology seems to think so.
And, is it scientifically impossible for a woman with a rectangle body type to do those things? Be honest with me, because I sometimes don’t believe men who are positive about these types of women.
Signed, Screwed Over by Evolutionary Psychology
DEAR SCREWED OVER BY EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY: Here’s the thing about evo-psych, SOEP: the people who yell about it the most tend to know the least about either evolution or psychology. A lot of evo-psych is basically Flinstonization, pretending that evolution just happens to set things up for 21st century social mores and that how we meet, mate and otherwise conduct our lives is somehow completely immune to influence by culture and circumstance and other social pressures, while also ignoring… pretty much everything else.
I mean, which is more likely: that women used to prioritize marrying men who were financially well off because they evolved with an uncontrollable instinct that pushes them to look for someone with the wherewithal to provide for offspring… or because women were culturally (and legally, in many cases) prohibited from owning property, having access to capital and credit or even their own bank accounts until 1974?
So my first suggestion is to quit looking at “science” – and my use of scare-quotes is deliberate here – that says something is “impossible”. To start with, there’s a long and glorious history of things that are science has “proven” to be impossible that were… well, demonstrably not true. Doubly so where women were concerned. Considering how many times doctors have “discovered” the true size and shape of the clitoris, I take a dim view of folks who will insist that science “proves” that it’s impossible for women of a certain age or body type or what-have-you to find love.
The question of whether a post-menopausal woman could find true love or please a man sexually is honestly absurd on it’s face. I mean… did going through menopause line the inside of her genitals with sandpaper, cause her hands and feet to fall off and her mouth to slam shut?
But surely nobody could possibly love or desire a woman who – in MRA parlance – “hit the wall”, right? Dunno, but Cindy Gallop, Cher, Megan Mullalley, Mariah Carey and Gabrielle Union all say “hello”. Like the bumblebee that supposedly shouldn’t be able to fly, they’re all out there ignoring that their relationships are supposed to be “impossible”.
The same is true with body types. Just as women are fully capable of finding dudes who don’t look like Greek statues to be smoking hot, men as a group find many different body types to be desirable. The idea that men are “programed” by evolution to “only” like bodies whose measurements fit within a certain ratio is horses--ttery of the first order.
Are there body types that tend to be more popular? Of course. But that’s always going to be true… and which body types are currently a la mode varies. Compare the supermodels of today to the models of the 60s and 70s, the bombshells of the 50s vs. the 90s and so on. Hell, look at classical art and see how often the “ideal” body has changed due to any number of factors, from fashion to class and wealth.
I’m not entirely sure where you’re getting this information – though I’ve got some suspicions – but I’d suggest that maybe you’ll be happier hanging out in other places, with a better class of person than whomever really wants you to think that you should be grateful for whatever scraps of attention they deign to throw you.
You’re not cursed, you’re not damned, you haven’t been f--ked by the fickle finger of fate and evo-psych, especially what you’ll find online, is 90% bulls--t, 8% actual science and 4% inability to understand math or statistics.
Oh, and one more thing. Someone being positive about “these types of women” as you’re calling them isn’t lying to you. You are falling for a fallacy that YouTuber Natalie Wynn refers to as “masochistic epistemology” – the belief that whatever hurts is true, and it must be true because it hurts. This is, to use the technical term, bulls--t, and you should seriously examine the agenda of whomever told you that any of this was valid. Whatever it is or was, I can promise you: it wasn’t a deep and abiding commitment to truth or scientific rigor.
Good luck.
Please send your questions to Dr. NerdLove at his website (www.doctornerdlove.com/contact); or to his email, doc@doctornerdlove.com