Then you might want to read the results of a new study published this morning in Trends in Ecology and Evolution: “Does the Contraceptive Pill Alter Mate Choice In Humans?”
Dr. Alexandra Alvergne and Dr. Virpi Lummaa of the University of Sheffield review “emerging evidence suggesting that contraceptive methods which alter a woman’s natural hormonal cycles” may be messing up straight peoples’ sex lives and married lives. It may also raise “evolutionary questions and concerns,” write Alvergne and Lummaa. It goes like this: the type of man a woman finds attractive varies pretty widely according to her menstrual cycle. Women who are ovulating prefer men who are more masculine and “more… genetically unrelated,” like the guy on the right, above; women who aren’t ovulating prefer guys who are more feminine and genetically more similar, like the guy on the left. Since the pill suppresses ovulation, and since many women are on the pill when they’re dating and sleeping around—or “selecting a mate,” as the docs put it—women may be marrying men they find attractive on the pill but not so much once they’ve gone off the pill.
Which women tend to do once they’re married and want to have children.
Alvergne and Lummaa theorize that all those suppressed ovulations may have dire consequences where sexual compatibility and long-term marital success are concerned. It can’t be pleasant, after all, to realize you’re not as attracted to your spouse as you thought you were once you stop taking the pill. And couples who are genetically similar—the kind of pairings the pill promotes—are more likely to have infertility issues. Which is, um, also bad. And then there’s this: since men have been shown to find ovulating women more attractive, “…the use of oral contraceptives may influence a woman’s ability to attract a mate by reducing attractiveness to men, thereby disrupting her ability to compete with normally cycling women for access to mate.” While their study is sure to be cited by religious nuts waging war on the pill, Alvergne and Lummaa cite all the good the pill has done for women:
Any such effects should be weighed against the multiple benefits that the invention of the pill has brought. This revolutionary contraceptive method has given women unprecedented control over their fertility with the possibility to sample different partners before reproduction, to control their number of children, to reach optimal birth spacing given circumstances or to end reproductive career before menopause if desired, which has had a considerable impact on their social life. For instance, a sharp increase in college attendance and graduation rates for women was observed after the pill was legalized.
Giving women control over their fertility, allowing them to sample different partners, more women going to college—you can see why religious conservatives have problem with the pill. You can download a PDF of the study here. I’ve also sent a some questions to the study’s authors—should women switch to the IUD? should an engaged woman go off the pill to make sure she’s not marrying a too-genetically-similar swish? and what does all of this mean for gay marriage? and the ballot booth that is their [RSVP] envelopes?—and I’ll share their answers with you when I hear back.
48, Loveschild, do you ever tire of making crap up?
Loveschild @48, I’d like nothing more than to have my face buried between Ricky Gervais’s oh-so-feminine buttcheeks. Does that make me unnatural?
That question goes to Fnarf @34 as well.
LC,
Look back at the top, both of those men look like men. They are all masculine, because they are men. Men. Women who are attracted to men, are attracted to them because they are masculine, again because they are men.
The results to this study likely have more to do with the innate desire to create a nurturing environment for any potential fetus. We, well most of us, are programed to nurture, and it makes sense that when ovulating we would find ourselves attracted to men who come across like us. This doesn’t really have any true baring on a man’s masculinity or his ability to nurture.
Besides, it’s the heart of the man, that really matters. Not his physical appearance, looks are only icing and they succumb to time.
I think it would be interesting to study women who have ceased ovulating, because they don’t ovulate.
Hey, LC… I’m attracted to feminine guys. What does that make me? Oh, wait…
This study’s pretty interesting, but the authors do acknowledge a number of weaknesses (most studies reviewed used university students and didn’t take into account preexisting differences between pill users and non-pill users, for example). There’s also no direct evidence that short-term differences in mate preference influence actual long-term mate choice. But that hardly makes for a sensational headline or interesting conversation topic, so….
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=11…
@50, Irena, you’re quite right. The studies cited were mostly looking at initial sexual attaction, the “biology of attraction” or something like that. But they did note the differences between long-term life-partner choices women make versus the sexual attraction let’s-mate-right-now-type choices women make.
@28 – we’re doing some studies on Autism and a couple of our papers are in review right now – yes, you bring up some good points, and when we look at our older data we do have to correct for the earlier misdiagnosis.
But we’d need a much larger study to directly answer that exact question, as just doing a few phenotypes requires a larger study than you’d think, since many participants in one study end up being in many other studies – filtering those out is critical but reduces the statistical power, sadly.
@49, Kim, thanks. I enjoy it. And so do my kids. And that’s perfect for me.
I should point out some other recent studies show that human evolution has a high correlation of actual mate choice with drinking (ceremonial events, etc), so even though one shouldn’t drink when pregnant, the chances of pregnancy increase when men and women drink.
So, keep the emergency contraception in the bathroom at home and your favorite contraception (condom, etc) in your purse/wallet when you go to a wedding, funeral, holiday party, or a bar. Unless you want a rugrat.
So wait, straight guys are either: ass, tits, or leg men. Straight girls like either girly or neanderthal?
@54 Dan, maybe you’d be more interested in butch guys if you ovulated…
@ 58, Allyn, I’m sure your husband values it as well. Singing is to you, what guitar playing is to me, soul food and self expression. The world needs more music, so keep on singing.
Loveschild: would you care to expand on your definition of what makes a man a man? Just curious ….
Dear uneducated public,
Your individual anecdote that is contrary to the findings of a large-sample scientific study means absolutely nothing concerning the validity of the study. Research selects a representative sample of the population as a whole, but there is variation within the population in any characteristic. General conclusions drawn from research studies do not, cannot, and will not ever claim to represent every single individual in the population; they do, however, say something about groups of people in general.
Love, Science
Allyn, Kim, et al, I agree: the saxophone is a sexy instrument. It suppose it heightens the appeal of a man, but a woman who plays one becomes immeasurably hot!
Allyn @ 29–I’d do Weird Al. He’s very funny and actually quite attractive in person.
While we are on this topic: an article on why women say they have sex.
http://www.straight.com/article-260253/n…
63 To me that is something very obvious to both genders. Mind you, this is about the physical nature not sentiments in which case i totally agree with Kim’s statement about physical appearance in men.
I would understand perhaps a hermaphrodite not knowing that but if you’re born male, even if you’re struggling with homosexuality as an adult, deep down you know what masculinity is.
Dan: why stop with IUDs? I wish more women knew about the non-condom barrier methods of birth control that are available. In the US, that’s diaphragms and the FemCap. They’re like condoms only without the STD-protection or need to educate your boyfriend on proper use and disposal.
After 6 years on the pill and after I was in a great long-term relationship, I started the Fertility Awareness Method (FAM) after reading _Taking Charge of Your Fertility_. http://www.ovusoft.com/
It’s empowering to learn more about my body and feel my rhythms again- coming off the pill was also awful. I realized how much the hormone regulation had affected me. I recommend FAM to anyone in a long-term relationship.
Loveschild:
You are conflating two separate items: sex and gender. Biological sex (as has been discussed on Slog) is not a rigid binary but a continuum between man / woman – and often it is hard to tell the difference. (Just Google androgen insensitivity if you doubt me.) And, if gender is something that everyone recognizes, why isn’t masculinity the same across all cultures and all time? Anytime I hear “But everyone knows what that is,” I think that I have found one of those deeply buried assumptions that shape us and our culture.
If you are at all interested in this, why don’t you read Kate Bornstein’s books on gender ? You may find them interesting …..
massive /facepalm at this article. articles like this are why i stopped reading the stranger, lol.
I am wondering if this is a serious article or if you are trying to bait the lovechilds of the world.
Off topic, so sorry!
I have to second what 70 said about Fertility Awareness Method. I never bring it up casually because the women in the room will all give me warning glances & imply that they are all too fertile to try such a method, or that I’m sitting on a time bomb, but it’s actually shockingly easy to avoid getting pregnant by keeping a chart of your cycle.
I was told bluntly by my doctor several years ago that she no longer fitted women for diaphragms and they were pretty much obsolete, so no diaphragm for me. She pushed a rx for more pills into my hand, which I never filled, and I’ve been FAM ever since.
Uhhh, hate to break it to you all, but the new low-dose pills that most of us use do NOT prevent ovulation 100% of the time. Their effects are more diffuse: the cervical mucus is thickened, the motion of the tubes altered, the endometrial lining and fluid changed, etc. Breakthrough ovulation occurs up to approx. 40% of cycles, depending on which studies you read.
Ergo, this piece is pointless.
oh for fucks sake.
21 – So you’re saying that guys with more feminine features should just fuck other guys?
I’m off the pill. Prefer guy on the left. Love my husband the same whether I’m on or off hormones. I think this is probably bullshit.
48 – You know, people like you really make your fear of gender-noncomformity painfully fucking obvious when you make statements like that. If anything you ever said about “saving” people from homosexuality was true, you wouldn’t be calling people out on whether they’re “real” men or “real” women based on the traits God gave them or what they happen to be attracted to, or any other factors like behavior or interests or other inconsequential bullshit. No, you’re always the people who are the first in line to point and someone and cry “homosexual!” if they’re the slightest bit non-conforming.
Why? Because what you’re saying isn’t about “love” or spirituality: you’d just be lost without someone to hate.
64 – Yeah, but there’s a difference between a study about what women think of some pictures and drawing the conclusion that hormones have the power to brainwash an epidemic of women into marrying guys they aren’t attracted to.
I think I have experienced this. Explains why “Hmm.. you need to shave…” sometimes means your face is hairy and sometimes means fuck me.
@ 70 & 73,
FAM is the Rhythm Method. Good luck with that. You’re going to need it.
@ Loveschilde,
Considering the popularity of manga/anime drawings of the most femme looking men and boys ever created are hugely popular amongst a demographic of girls not on the pill, I’d say your theory that “nature” wants women to go after manly men is pretty much bunk. Ditto, Edward Cullen and company. Not exactly a butch, he-man is he?
@ Original Monique,
They said being on the pill made women more attractive to men who shared similar genes and there is evidence that Autism has a component of heredity, so you might be on to something. It could be more women are breeding with men who are too genetically similar to them. However, I personally think Autism is over diagnosed. It seems nowadays everybody and their brother Bob is diagnosed with something in the range of Autism. I have a feeling in a few years the diagnosis will go out of fashion with psychiatrists/psychologists just like the fad to diagnose people with repressed memories did.
Mate selection is so messed up by so many factors that it’s hard to believe that this difference is telling. It’s apparently measurable, but it’s just one more statistically significant factor out of many.
That said, anecdotal counterexamples (eg, “My experience is different”) do not bear on the significance of a statistical tendency.
In the 1970s, it was increasingly common to say that sexual attraction was cultural. Any fool could tell that what counts as “attractive” varies across cultures. Politically, a cultural explanation of human differences had the considerable merit of cutting racism and sexism off at the knees. Marx taught that humans were defined by their societies, Freud taught that individuals were shaped by their parents, Mead taught that people are naturally happy, and Skinner taught that behavior is learned. Doctors prescribed hormones as contraceptives with little thought that altering someone’s hormones might alter their behavior, especially their sexual behavior.
Turns out that it does.
Oh man, this whole set of responses is stereotype heaven! And look! Here’s one more! I am an artist and an academic. Only very very rarely in my life have a found a manly-man hunka hunka burnin’ love attractive. Perhaps it has to do with the fact that guys who look like that don’t seem to spend much time doing the things I like to do. Sentences comprising single-syllable words, clumsy eating and lovemaking habits, sneering put-downs of the natural world (other than to drive down a deer in the road) — uh….no thanks. And to imagine that my anti-Neanderthal attitude puts me into lesbian territory, Loveschild, cracks me up!
So this may influence, at an absolute maximum, about 5% of the factors that determine people’s attractions to each other. Call me when it’s something serious.
@40
thanks so much for saying that, It drives me up the wall when people look at statistics and say “Well I’m not like that, so it must be bullshit.”
it’s as if they lack even a rudimentary understanding of what statistics represent, and it can really make a rational conversation difficult.
More importantly there are studies showing that not only does hormonal birth control reduce libido while women are taking it, if taken for too long it can PERMANENTLY reduce female libido.
Condoms, condoms, condoms. And whatever happened to the diaphragm and cervical cap? Those can be used with condoms. And for women in committed relationships, learning the sympto-thermal method paired with barrier methods on fertile days, and once a woman has decided no more kids a non-hormonal IUD or the new natural plug method of birth control are the best options.
80
the epidemic of autism stems from parking kids in front of tv and computer and feeding them brain killing crap.
Some more Loveschild posts that show that she has been spending too much time reading and commenting on Slog and not enough time hanging out with real-life straight people.
I think that study is a load of BS. Women’s sexuality is much more complex than mere biological factors (although they play a part). Speaking as a woman who has been on and off the pill for many years, I have always gravitated towards slightly feminized men (like the “puppy” on the left). I think it is because I value intelligence and personality over more masculine looks. (I’m not attracted to men who are too feminine, though–like I said, it’s complicated). Whether or not I feel attracted to a man involves a huge mixture of factors–physical looks, intelligence, social skills, how he dresses, what he does for a living, etc.
As for women being perceived as more attractive off the pill, that doesn’t make much sense to me. When I went off the pill, I got acne and yeast infections, my breasts “deflated,” and I had more mood swings (along with painful periods). When I went back on the pill, all those nasty things disappeared. Which, I’m pretty sure makes me more attractive. Interestingly, being on the pill hasn’t changed my libido one way or the other.
I haven’t been on the pill in more than 20 years, and I much prefer the guy on the left. But all bets are off if a guy can’t make me laugh – I don’t care if it’s Johnny fucking Depp, if he’s a humorless turkey, he’s on the curb.
Oh, and Fnarf @34 – snap. Except Sean Bean is from Sheffield. *drool*
I have heard that the actual scientific basis for this study is that a woman’s sense of smell changes slightly when hormonally adjusted, such as when on the pill. As smell is such an important component of attraction, this makes sense. As a pregnant woman, I can say definitively that not only is my sense of smell very much enhanced, I’m also less attracted to men (or lady-men, for that matter) in general. Interesting.
Yeah, so I’ve always found this interesting… I 100% of the time find the more feminine looking guy more attractive. Actually, it’s more that I always find the “more masculine” guy just hideous. We took a poll of the room in my animal behavior class, and I was one of 2 girls that chose the more feminine one. Just thought it was interesting: what would account for my liking more androgynous looking guys?
@21 and btw, this is true whether I’m on or off the pill. Was true before I went on the pill, will be true when I get off of it. More feminine guys are just more attractive.
Is it me or does the guy on the left look an awful lot like the guy on the right? They could be brothers. In a dark bar what girl–ovulating or not–could tell the difference? Maybe it all comes down to whether she met him on a sunny day or in the aforementioned dark bar. Being post-menopausal the reaction I have is “Who cares?” I’m not attracted to either. I like older men.
Is it me or does the guy on the left look an awful lot like the guy on the right? They could be brothers. In a dark bar what girl–ovulating or not–could tell the difference? Maybe it all comes down to whether she met him on a sunny day or in the aforementioned dark bar. Being post-menopausal the reaction I have is “Who cares?” I’m not attracted to either. I like older men.
Loveschild – I tend to be most attracted to femnine men and to masculine women. So sue me. (I’m straight, attraction is a relative term. But I prefer hanging out with masculine women.)
@70 and @73, I’m sure I could be completely successful at FAM. I’d just never ever have sex when I’m in the mood. Can I tell where I am in my cycle? Hell yes. If I’m in heat, men look and smell hot. Otherwise, meh, they just look like people. Of course, the pill completely sucked for me and my husband. Condoms rock.
Sure, sexual attraction is determined by much much more than whether or not a woman is ovulating.
This study doesn’t claim that ovulation alone explains attraction. So those of you whining “this only explains .01% of why I’m attracted to someone”…you are probably right. But don’t discount it or toss it solely based on that.
Picking behavior apart, bit by bit, is what Science does. No one can design a controlled study that simultaneously takes into account all traits that influence our mating choices. We have do study them one by one, or a few at a time, and then put everything we know together.
And read the discussion again. They’ve got a ton of caveats and disclaimers. I don’t think they are trying to overstate their results.
It would be like studying taste preferences. Someone might study why we like sweet things and their impact on our health. Of course, this doesn’t explain why we like salty foods,or how much we like salty foods, or if salty foods have a bigger impact on our health than sweet foods. But does that mean we SHOULDN’T study sweets?
ps. hate the pill. never could find one that agreed with me. creeped me out.
What worries me more is that, You can’t keep putting something into your body and expect it not to change it eventually. Yeah, were okay now, but I’m worried more about future generations and how it’s going to altar our bodies. I think it is possible that a lot of people in the future will become sterile because, over time as our enviroment changes Our body does to. When you take the pill you are blocking something natural from happening so eventually it won’t happen at all. Who knows what else is going to end up happening later on. Like I said it isn’t the generations now I’m worried about it is the ones after us. You can’t put something in your body like that and expect for it to not have long term effects eventually. Years from now, I guarentee that something will come out that is more serious than any of us even know. That goes much deeper than liking a more feminine man.