Here’s the deal: In late December, psychologist Jesse Bering started a Scientific American advice explaining the evolutionary basis of readers’ dilemmas. His inaugural inquiry came from a middle-aged man who is attracted to young girls, doesn’t do anything about it and wonders why society’s big, bad age of consent laws try so hard to quash the almighty male sex drive. 

In answer, Bering cites research suggesting that such attraction may be biologically adaptive and explains that, historically, age of consent laws have been much more lax. He is  then vilified by everyone from the former SciAm editor in chief to Jezebel.com for being a rape apologist eager to unleash the world’s dirty old men onto the delicate flowers of the Disney Channel. 

Now, I’m a male privilege-accusing, Bechdel test-using feminist — but I don’t agree that Bering is a rape apologist for suggesting that being attracted to young girls may be “natural.” The heart of the matter isn’t sex, but rather the concept of what is “natural” versus what is “moral.”

Evolutionary psychology — which argues that our psychological behaviors have evolved in certain ways to further reproduction —is often decried as pseudoscience that further racism (see: Satoshi Kanazawa’s Psychology Today articles about black women being unattractive). Plainly, the field is controversial, but there’s a difference between explaining a possible reason for one man’s attraction to young girls and condoning the use of that information to harm a young girl. 

Much of our actions today contradict their original evolutionary purposes. Just because we’re all put here to go forth and multiply doesn’t mean we’re forced to do so. And just because the man gets his kicks fantasizing about sixth graders, and may have an evolutionary basis for doing so, doesn’t mean he can act on desires in the face of the body of work showing the negative effect of such relationships.  Refusing to challenge our knee-jerk reactions compresses the dimensions of human behavior; and even if these seemingly dangerous theories excavate some desires societally deemed as “ugly,” we have the choice not to act on said desires.

Call me reductionist, but I believe evolutionary psychology offers one of the greatest opportunities to show true morality, and that what separates us from animals is not divine inspiration, but our ability not to be slaves to evolution, our ability to make choices and transcend against our so-called “best interests” and what a million years of programming told us to do.