I cannot believe that this class was a combined women's study class. Malamuth preaches from an evolutionary stand point and tries to convince women that porn and violence against women is not misogynistic, but a natural, adaptive reproductive strategy. Rape is an adaptation rather than a violent crime fueled by hate and contempt for women. Another professor who teaches from evolutionary psychology, if you consider yourself to be a feminist, please boycott these classes.

I took this class over the summer and I can't believe it counts as an upper div. It's pretty easy: pay attention, understand the basic concept of behaviour as an adaptation that differs between the sexes, and you can answer like half the test questions already. The reading isn't that much, some of it is interesting and the rest you can skim.

Prof Malamuth specifically addresses some of the complaints I've seen here; nowhere does he excuse sexual assault, and he explained naturalistic fallacy no less than five times. He specifically does not endorse biological determinism. If you're a feminist you're coming into the class with preconceived notions, so of course you're going to balk when he challenges them. Most of the people I saw asking questions who seemed confused, had forgotten something he had just said or obviously weren't listening.

I went into this class hoping that it would be really exciting and fun, but it was so boring. Basically the whole class is based on research on pornography and mostly on Malamuth's own research. It might be a little intersting, but the way that he conveys it is so boring. Plus we were all bogged down by the crazy amounts of reading he made us do. It was really an unmanageable amount, and we had to know all of the material for our exams. Overall, our exams weren't too difficult, but it was just hard to keep up with the reading that was included in the tests. His lecture style is very resesarch-like and academic rather than talking to us on our level. He also tends to digress and elaborate on things way too much. One whole lecture could have been condensed to about 20 minutes worth of speaking.

His wife lectured for us a couple of times since he was out of town or on religious vacation. I think that she was a better and more interesting prof. Even though they used the same exact Powerpoint slides, she conveyed ideas clearly and concisely in a more interesting manner. He encourages participation, but most people were scared to say anything since he takes a defensive or antagonistic approach to answering questions and defeating any ideas you might have. Easy but tremendously boring class.