By RICHARD DAWKINS
Added: Tue, 08 Feb 2011 12:45:11 UTC

I recommend reading the comments that follow this article on the goings on at a regional meeting organized by American Atheists this January. The early comments are mostly sympathetic to the woman who objected to being called 'female', and several are outraged by the so-called 'Million Dollar Challenge' (see below). Then gradually, more and more people join in on the other side, and show the original article up for the hysterical twaddle that it is.

One particular bone of contention is the 'Million Dollar Challenge'. A lecturer offers all the male students in the audience the following wager. You undertake to pay me a million dollars if, by the end of the day, you fail to find a woman who, having never met you before and knowing nothing about you, will consent to have unbribed sex with you. If you succeed, I pay you a million dollars. The lecturer then offers the corresponding bet to all the female students in the audience. The empirical result is that men almost always decline to take the bet. Women almost always would accept it. Of course the bet is hypothetical. And of course the women who would take the bet don't actually put it into practice. The point is simply that we all have the same folk psychology: everybody knows that there is a huge sex difference in willingness to have sex with a previously unknown partner. Women are far more likely to be choosy. Men far more likely to be a pushover.

This was demonstrated in a famous experiment by Russell Clark and Elaine Hatfield. Male and female students were hired to go out on a campus and approach perfect strangers of the opposite sex with these words: "I've been noticing you around campus. I find you to be very attractive." There followed one of three questions, of which the most interesting was, "Would you go to bed with me tonight?" The striking result was that, of the women approaced in this way, not a single one said yes. But of the men approached 75% said yes. Of the minority of men who said no, some did so apologetically, offering excuses such as "Sorry, but I am married" or "I cannot tonight but tomorrow would be fine."

The Million Dollar Challenge is an informal demonstration that ordinary folk psychology is well aware of this sex difference. People don't need Clark and Hatfield's demonstration, although I, for one, am surprised by the sheer magnitude of the effect.

When the Million Dollar Challenge was offered at the American Atheists meeting, it deeply offended some feminists, as can be seen from the article cited, and by the comments that follow. Why? Isn't the sex difference in availability simply a fact, demonstrated by experiment and dramatised as folk wisdom by the Million Dollar Challenge? Why does the recounting of a fact give offence, if it is true? Part of the reason seems to be the old fallacy that if something is 'biological' it is inescapable and can be used to justify bad behaviour. Needless to say, that is nonsense. Paradoxically, one objection to the Million Dollar Challenge is precisely that it doesn't tell us anything we didn't know already.

And why on earth should women object to being called 'female'. Especially women who blithely refer to men as 'dudes'.

Richard

TAGGED: DEBATE POINTS, PSYCHOLOGY