Gender and sexual behaviour are the most common “arenas” for a battle between essentialists and social constructionists’ stance. Are the gender differences and sexuality biologically predetermined or they are socially constructed phenomena? The stand point taken by Essentialism implies that certain phenomena are natural, inevitable, universal and biologically determined (Irvine, 1990 in DeLamater and Hyde, 1998). Berger & Luckmann (1966) stated that sexuality is “grounded in biological drives”, thus our sexual behaviour is driven by those drives (DeLamater & Hyde, 1998).
The opposing camp, social constructionist stance argues that “reality is socially constructed” (Berger & Luckmann, 1996 in DeLamater & Hyde, 1998, p 13). According to Gagnon & Simon (1990) sexuality is created by culture and varies through history and cultures (Delamater & Hyde 1998). Perhaps, sexuality is the reason for existence of two genders (Oliver & Hyde in Baumeister, 2001). Socio-biological theories argue that what shapes human sexual behaviour is the reproductive success.
Hence, the tolerance (or approval) from society towards male or female sexual behaviour lays in biology. Trivers (1972) explains why society tolerates male promiscuity, but disapproves female promiscuity as following (Baumeister, 2001). Because of the unlimited sperm and very limited egg production, it makes sense from the evolutionary perspective that male tries to inseminate numerous females, while females should be careful when choosing a male to inseminate her precious egg.
Also, female’s investment is much larger than male’s, because of the nine months pregnancy where she invests her body’s energy and consequently she is highly selective when choosing a mate. Thus, to ensure that her offspring would be taken care of, she would favour a male who is ready and capable to supply resources (Buss, 1989 in Baumeister, 2001). Consequently, men should favour casual sex and variety of partners, while women should favour smaller numbers of partners and be less enthusiastic about casual sex.
The main reason why men are highly judgemental on women that engage in extra marital affairs is the paternity certainty which is less than one hundred percent. If a woman is impregnated by another man (not her husband), he would invest his resources to somebody else’s child and his genes would not pass to the next generation (Buss et al. , 1992 in Baumeister, 2001). Paternity certainty is one of the major reasons why men prefer virgins in a long-term mating strategy (Buss and Schmitt, 1993 in Baumeister, 2001).
Schlegel (1995) question this view by stating that virginity is valued in relation to the giving of property at the marriage by the bride’s family. These results were based on a survey of the anthropological literature. The bride’s family maintains or increases there social status by “buying” the future husband. Therefore, virginity is greatly value from the bride’s family not the groom’s family or the groom himself (DeLamater & Hyde, 1998).