Women’s intrasexual competition has received significant attention only in the last decades, with even less work investigating women’s defenses against such aggression. Yet, we should expect that women can (a) grasp which perceptually-salient cues evoke same-sex aggression and (b) strategically damp the display of (some of) those cues when aggression risk is greatest, thereby avoiding the potentially high costs of victimization. Women selectively aggress against women displaying cues of sexual permissiveness (e.g., revealing dress) and/or desirability (e.g., physical attractiveness). We find that (a) women (and men) anticipate greater intrasexual aggression toward women dressed revealingly versus modestly, especially if targets are attractive. Employing behavioral and self-report measures, we also find (b) women create outfits baring less skin, select more modest clothing, and intend to dress less revealingly to encounter other women, flexibly damping permissiveness cues depending on individual features (physical attractiveness) and situational features (being a newcomer) that amplify aggression risk.
Dystopian novels such as The Handmaid's Tale (Atwood, 1985) illuminate real-world human sociopolitical dynamics that underscore the processes of sexual and reproductive control at both the systemic and individual levels. Here we utilize this novel as a unique and abundant case study to generate a broader theoretical discussion of feminism and evolutionary psychology. Integrating the function of fiction (Carroll, 2018), we highlight examples in the novel which illustrate the overt and covert attempts by both sexes to control female sexuality and reproductive potential. Examples from the novel are utilized to discuss myriad behaviors underlying the divergent reproductive interest of men and women, and female-female competition that occurs under patriarchal control. Implicit and explicit tactics women use to resist control over their sexuality are outlined, and we argue that the sensitivity to the structure of a society such as (the fictionalized) Republic of Gilead is only possible via evolved cognitive mechanisms that allow humans to detect attempts to exercise power and control over reproductive choices. We present evidence that evolved emotional and motivational systems incentivize feminists today to prevent such a society, and that feminism itself is only possible as a social, political, and intellectual movement based on those evolved cognitive mechanisms.
Public Significance StatementAs evolutionary psychological scientists who identify as feminists in our everyday lives, we analyze a hotly debated feminist novel, The Handmaid's Tale, in the context of evolutionary theory using recent findings from the scientific literature to connect to themes in the novel. We point to patterns of the society's structure and members' behaviors in the dystopian novel and draw upon many areas of research to offer a perspective on the overlap between the goals of evolutionary science and feminism.
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