Perhaps unsurprisingly, a theory that sees murderous baby-eating males outsmarted by maternally driven sexual hedonism was considered somewhat heretical at first.Hrdy’s ideas have been attacked by evolutionary psychologists blinded by Bateman and even the Vatican, which once sent a ‘hostile’ envoy to a conference she gave on the meaning of sexual intercourse. Others chose to simply belittle the Harvard scientist and her work. Hrdy recalls one male colleague’s ‘mortifying’ response to her theory: ‘So, Sarah, put it another way – you’re horny, right?’ A wave of supporting evidence has now seen
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