The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Chattel

Men take a proprietary view of women’s sexuality and reproductive capacity. In this chapter, we (a) argue that sexually proprietary male psychologies are evolved solutions to the adaptive problems of male reproductive competition and potential misdirection of paternal investments in species with mistakable paternity; (b) describe the complex interrelated design of mating and paternal decision rules in some well-studied avian examples; (c) consider the peculiarities of the human species in this context; (d) characterize some features of human male sexual proprietariness, contrasting men’s versus women’s perspectives and actions; and (e) review some of the diverse consequences and manifestations of this ubiquitous male mindset.