>Our sexual preferences are not entirely the product of historical social
>power/media manipulation. I reckon they might have something to do with
>procreation, too. Call it a hunch.
>
>A younger woman is a much more likely candidate to help a man's genes
>project themselves into the future than a woman over 50. A man of 50 is
>generally still a reliable source of fertile sperms, and the woman's genes
>do not have as dramatically a lessened chance of making it into the future
>with him. Even if we're all parented out, or don't want children at all,
>our selfish genes would still have a say in our preferences, no?
This will no doubt exasperate the Judy-haters, following Butler's in Bodies That Matter, it's interesting to watch how & when "biological" arguments are invoked - as a last ditch effort to limit the social/discursive analysis of social/discursive phenomena and ground them instead in some unalterable Real. That's just what Rob is doing here - resisting arguments based on gender (and class) relations and shifting attention to the realm of the gene. Last time I looked, genes couldn't talk, though lots of people profess to talk for them.
Doug