The Caveman Mystique: Pop-Darwinism and the Debates over Sex, Violence, and Science
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Has evolution made men promiscuous skirt chasers? Pop-Darwinian claims about men's irrepressible heterosexuality have become increasingly common, and increasingly common excuses for men's sexual aggression. The Caveman Mystique traces such claims about the hairier sex through evolutionary science and popular culture. After outlining the social and historical context of the rise of pop-Darwinism's assertions about male sexuality and their appeal to many men, Martha McCaughey shows how evolutionary discourse can get lived out as the biological truth of male sexuality.Although evolutionary scientists want to use their theories to solve social problems, evolutionary narratives get invoked by men looking for a Darwinian defense of bad-boy behaviors. McCaughey argues that evolution has nearly replaced religion as a moral guide for understanding who we are and what we must overcome to be good people.Bringing together insights from the fields of science studies, body studies, feminist theory and queer theory, The Caveman Mystique offers a fresh understanding of science, science popularization, and the impact of science on men's identities making a convincing case for deconstructing, rather than defending, the caveman.
Acknowledgments VII"Welcome Back to the Caveman Times": An Introduction 1Sperm Wars, Sex Wars, and Science Wars 21Downsized Cavemen Going Apeshit 21Moral Disdain for Men 25Sperm Wars 27Sex Wars 32Science Wars 34Homo Resurrectus: The Theory of Evolution as a Moral Answer for Men 41Darwin's Theory and the Crisis in Morals 41Darwinism as the Second Coming 45Darwin's Soldiers: A Salvation Army 49The Scientific Truth that Will Set Us Free 51Moral Answers for the Moral Animal 54Science and Certainty 57The Caveman as Resurrection 60Homo Habitus: Evolution, Popular Culture, and the Embodied Ethos of Male Sexuality 63The Caveman in Popular Culture 63Caveman Therapy 66Caveman Desires 70Caveman Edutainment 72Moral Lessons for Cavemen 75The Caveman as Embodied Ethos 80Homo Sexual: Perverting Evolutionary Stories of Male Sexuality 85How to Pervert Evolutionary Theory 85Evolution and EvolutionaryTheory Are Already Perverted 89Heterosexual Masculinity as the Origin of the Origins of Heterosexual Masculinity 92Homosexuality as Heterosexuality ... as Homosexuality 98Setting the Evolutionary Record Queer 101Do Gay Brains Make Better Politics? 103Learning to Live with Perversion 106Homo Textual: A Missing Link between Science and Culture 111Popularity and Reality 111Evolutionary Theory and Scientific Certainty 115Evolutionary Insights for a Change 120Beyond the Grand Narrative of Science 126Beyond the Science Wars 127A Great Leap Forward 132Notes 141Index 159
