The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating

by David M. Buss

Although these findings support the evolutionary hypothesis that men prefer younger, and hence more fertile, women, this perspective actually leads to a very counterintuitive prediction—namely, that young adolescent males should prefer women who are slightly older than they are. Scientific studies bear this prediction out. Adolescent males age fifteen, for example, express a desire for females who are seventeen or eighteen.10 What is fascinating is that this attraction is almost entirely unreciprocated.

Homosexual proclivities reveal fundamental differences between men and women in the centrality of casual sex. Symons notes that “heterosexual men would be as likely as homosexual men to have sex most often with strangers, to participate in anonymous orgies in public baths, and to stop off in public rest rooms for five minutes of fellatio on the way home from work if women were interested in these activities. But women are not interested.”