Evolutionary psychology without lots of backing data means very little. The hypotheses are very fun to think of, but there's no guarantee that you've thought of

Evolutionary psychology without lots of backing data means very little. The hypotheses are very fun to think of, but there's no guarantee that you've thought of everything that could have happened a thousand millennia ago(and you probably haven't). Baumeister brought up some very interesting points (that I'm sure riled up a lot of feminist feathers), but there are also holes in his argument, such as the two below. First, there is no mechanism of action that backs up his claim that society uses men as expendable. It's easy to see that it would be adaptive (for the society itself) to use men this way, but there's no guarantee this will happen without a mechanism of action. In fact, society seems to have developed mechanisms (such as monogamous marriage) that act against allowing men to be disposable sources of semen. Second, even accepting everything else, his essential claim that a woman can't increase the number of her descendants by acquiring wealth and prestige is clearly false. All she has to do is find a way to transfer the wealth/prestige to her son(s), who in turn can use it in the ways Baumeister indicated.