"An Evening on Evolutionary Biology: An overview covering Feminism,

"An Evening on Evolutionary Biology: An overview covering Feminism, Transgender, Homosexuality and Honor Killings." When 'modern' feminism first swept around the corner I expected a strong ally— how wrong can you be! Vilified as a 'genetic determinist' because I actually believed that 350 million years of natural selection acting on the two sexes had generated a gene or two affecting social traits differently. I also saw the absurd position they had backed themselves into—trying to model the superior sex on the inferior one. So women could be just like men—just as stupid, socially blind, logically biased, over- confident, unconscious and murderous. That's an intellectual advance? No, an evolutionary feminism based on the underlying sex-blind variable of relative parental investment has very different implications and there is a world of fascinating sex differences that support it. Transsexuals are a brand new set of morphs—made possible by biotechnology, mostly hormonal—that are neither fully male nor fully female but are already occupying new niches. Homosexuality is of special interest since it presents an evolutionary puzzle. How does an emphasis on reproductive success lead to an appreciable frequency of non-reproducers? Fifty years of research has produced some astonishing findings. Finally, so-called Honor killings also appear to contradict evolutionary logic directly. How on earth could you be selected to murder your own grown daughter (or less often, son)? It turns out that under certain well-defined conditions, you can. It is important in life to understand the deeper forces that may be propelling abhorrent behavior. Forced copulations—or in the human case, rape—have been favored under a variety of conditions in many species. Does that mean I favor rape of women? No way. EFTA00642886