But he also believes that Kristen Hawkes has fought too hard for the grandmother hypothesis, even neglecting critiques of her evidence. It survives, he says, because it is sexy, not because it is right. “By throwing men under the bus, it seemed to be a radical new idea and people clung to that,” he tells me. Donna Holmes, an expert on the biology of aging based at the University of Idaho, agrees with Gurven on this point. She tells me that she has clashed with Hawkes over the grandmother hypothesis, and that she’s still not convinced by it. “It was provocative and fresh. It made feminists
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I love it when people criticize ideas in ways that imply that marginalized people have vastly more power than they actually do. It's very transparent
