Sexual disgust

Women experience robustly higher levels of sexual disgust than men (Al-Shawaf, Lewis, & Buss, Reference Al-Shawaf, Lewis and Buss2018; Crosby, Durkee, Meston, & Buss, Reference Crosby, Durkee, Meston and Buss2020; Tybur, Lieberman, & Griskevicius, Reference Tybur, Lieberman and Griskevicius2009). The target article attributes women's higher general disgust – which differs from more specific classes of disgust such as pathogen disgust, sexual disgust, or moral disgust – to their greater need to promote survival and avoid danger. One hypothesized function of sexual disgust, however, is mate avoidance. Importantly, this avoidance does not center around the avoidance of general danger or threats. Rather, sexual disgust motivates the avoidance of potentially harmful or sub-optimal mates (e.g., mates of lower mate value or mates unlikely to invest in a woman and her children), as well as mates who might be disease vectors (Crosby et al., Reference Crosby, Durkee, Meston and Buss2020; Tybur et al., Reference Tybur, Lieberman and Griskevicius2009). Sexual disgust may, therefore, protect women against death by avoiding these specific categories of mates. However, sexual disgust likely also protects women against reproductive costs including the accumulation of sexually transmitted infections or reputational damage, thus increasing her ability to secure high-quality mates in the future (e.g., Al-Shawaf et al., Reference Al-Shawaf, Lewis and Buss2018). Together, this suggests that women's sexual disgust adaptations are at least somewhat domain-specific and contribute to components of both survival and mating success. It also highlights that a simultaneously broader and more domain-specific conceptualization – beyond the more general formulation of SAT – is needed for an adequate explanatory account of sex differences in disgust.

Fear of rape

Women face dramatically higher risks of sexual coercion and its accompanying hazards to survival and reproduction than men. Sexual conflict theory predicts that sex-specific adaptive problems create sex-specific selection pressures producing co-evolved defenses (Buss, Reference Buss2017; Parker, Reference Parker2009). Women's fear of rape is one hypothesized defense against sexual coercion costs.

Women's fear of rape protects against hazards associated with sexual exploitation including the circumvention of mate choice and physical damage incurred during rape (reproductive and survival costs, respectively; Perilloux, Duntley, and Buss, Reference Perilloux, Duntley and Buss2012). Women's fear of rape tracks the age at which victimization is most likely. For example, women between the ages of 19 and 35 express more rape fear than older women (Warr, Reference Warr1985). Conversely, older women are more fearful of being mugged than being raped (Buss, Reference Buss2021). Formidability mediates women's fear of rape such that women who perceive they could successfully escape an attack display less rape fear (Gordon & Riger, Reference Gordon and Riger1989; Pryor & Hughes, Reference Pryor and Hughes2013).

While women's rape fear was not discussed in the target article, the authors reviewed several findings on women's greater levels of fear responding to social threats compared to men – a domain-general conceptualization. The specificity of findings of women's greater rape fear, such as predictable age gradients and female formidability findings, suggest that explanatory frameworks for women's fear require (1) their contribution to both survival and mating components of reproductive success, and (2) a more domain-specific conceptualization of fear beyond that offered by SAT.

Cultivation of social bodyguards

As a final example, consider the findings that women prioritize the cultivation of bodyguards in mate and friend selection. Women, more than men, prefer social alliances who are physically formidable (Meskelyte & Lyons, Reference Meskelyte and Lyons2022; Snyder et al., Reference Snyder, Fessler, Tiokhin, Frederick, Lee and Navarrete2011) – a sex difference not mentioned in the target article. Bodyguards, we suggest, have been and continue to be critical for women's survival and mating success. They offer unique functions including deterring physical and sexual assaults and reducing damage following assaults. These protections buffer against the survival and reproductive costs of sexual coercion (Buss, Reference Buss2021) – again suggesting that explanatory accounts should consider the specific ways in which women's adaptations contribute to the multiple components of fitness, and tradeoffs therein, beyond the domain-general invocation of survival.