After checking my email, I logged out of Hotmail and I was directed to the MSN news site where the news article " Swapping meat for sex: how chimps seduce mates " immediately caught my eye.

Summary
This article is about how German researchers have found that the way to a chimpanzee’s heart is through her stomach. A female chimpanzee is more likely mate more with male chimpanzees who have shared their food with them at least once. Through the results of the research, researchers then believe that the “findings could shed light on human relationships in primitive "foraging" societies”, and that the "findings are bound to have a impact on our current knowledge about relationships between men and women".

Reading the article, I immediately thought about the Sexual Exchange theory. Because sexual access to females are a scarce resource, they can use sex as a resource in exchange for something tangible or intangible that would enhance their social statuses, their well-beings and more. This seemed to be exactly what the female chimpanzees were doing in their choice of mates to copulate with. However, to say that this research would shed light on human relationships in primitive "foraging" societies seems to be loaded with the implication that the Sexual Exchange theory was all there is to the relationships (or perhaps I am reading too much into the statement).

Like discussed in class, I wonder if the Sexual Exchange theory is all there is to love, sex, and/or marriage. Even though the Sexual Exchange theory is a plausible explanation (and may in fact be true for some societies), I find it too 'absolute' and one-sided. It categorizes relationships into a neat little box ignoring the complexities that inevitably come with such relationships. And as mentioned in class and other discussions, it also ignores non-heterosexual relationships.

The Sexual Exchange theory makes it (to me at least) seem that human relationships are objectified and made into a commodity that can be made or broken with merely the 'exchange'. Makes me feel quite... Sad (if I have to classify an emotion).
What do you think?