The evolution of sex and marriage

"In one of his last appearances, Sir John Betjeman was asked whether there was anything in life that he regretted. The frail laureate didn’t hesitate: “I haven’t had enough sex.” Probably nobody has. Betjeman was an entirely typical British pensioner. In 2006, 1,500 of them were polled and asked what in their lives they would change if they could have their time again — 12% said they would give more time to study, 16% would start their own businesses, 21% marry a different spouse and 40% put more into savings. But 70%, granted a rerun, would have more sex. Not more children — just more sex...

Having bigger brains, we humans are uniquely able to override our instincts and practise self-restraint. But what we more commonly practise, and use our brains for, is self-aggrandisement. There is no “enough”. Even the wealthiest men need to be wealthier still. What distinguishes us from stickleback, stag or bowerbird is just a matter of sophistication...

Quite recently I went to a theatre in a Norfolk village and had to defend my trousers. They were old and comfortable, as trousers should be. They were also a pretty shade of pink. A young military type commented: “Glad to see you’re in touch with your feminine side.”

What’s the problem? My wife wears a lot of blue, and nobody thinks she’s butch. Why should pinkness be so irreversibly feminine? A rational explanation for this was proposed when neuroscientists at Newcastle University tried to track its evolution. The university’s professor of visual neuroscience, Anya Hurlbert, saw the explanation in the hunter-gathering of our earliest ancestors. Women in prehistory were the principal gatherers of fruit and would have been sensitised to the colours of ripeness — ie, deepening shades of pink. Men, on the other hand, would have looked for good hunting weather and sources of water — blue... [Ed: As usual, Cecil has the best take on the de rigueur "did pink use to be a boys' colour" retort - the study isn't very strong (where're the Papuans when you need them?!

This also doesn't explain why girls can wear blue, but I have a theory about that - which also explains why there're fewer female-male transsexuals than male-female ones]

Many critics cite cultural expectations — in other words, gender stereotyping — as the likelier cause. But this begs the question: where did the “cultural expectations” themselves come from?...

Nobody becomes poor overestimating man’s desire to please woman. We may construct feminist, socialist or anti-consumerist ideologies, but the animal within us will not lie down...

What I have been describing is “marriage” and “the family” — two institutions upon which feminists have been training their fire for more than 40 years. Some of them simply want a better deal for women. Others want to smash capitalism, of which the “patriarchal” family is the base unit. But, through all the dogma and the dialectic, one fluffy little comfort word has fallen from the lexicon. We may bestow it glibly upon anything from a sexual partner to a biscuit, but it is indispensable, cherishable and necessary. Love — 2 billion Google hits, against feminism’s 13m."