ABSTRACT
Anyone questioning the natural and, therefore, privileged status of heterosexuality today is likely to meet up with an evolutionary narrative: “After all, how could the human species have survived without heterosexuality?” Chapter 2 showed that science, and Darwinism in particular, replaced Christianity as an authoritative account of human nature used to settle political disputes. Furthermore, chapter 3 argued that popular cultural knowledge about heterosexual masculinity is increasingly informed by evolutionary accounts of human nature that are generated formally by scientists and then passed along in the popular press. The caveman narrative, when presented as an authoritative science of who men are, can make men feel like cavemen—that is, primally and rampantly heterosexual.
