The dynamics of the sex trade reveal this particularly starkly. Women make up the overwhelming majority of sex-sellers, for the simple reason that almost all sex-buyers are men (at least 99 per cent across the world), most men are straight, and the industry is driven by demand. Sex-buyers are people who seek sex outside of a committed relationship, usually with a person they have never met before, and this kind of sexual encounter is far more likely to appeal to those who score higher on the inventory of what psychologists term “socio-sexuality”: a desire for sexual variety.

One of the most well-supported findings within the cross-cultural study of human sexuality is that men are, on average, higher in socio-sexuality than women. This makes intuitive sense within an evolutionary framework since, while it may be advantageous for fathers to hang around after conception to increase the mother and baby’s chances of survival, it isn’t always necessary. A man who can game the system by abandoning a woman after impregnating her, and then ride off into the sunset to impregnate more women is successfully spreading his genetic material. He carries the risk of retribution, including violence from the woman’s male kin, but the benefits may sometimes outweigh the risks.

Our female ancestors had to bring up their children in a dangerous environment, which usually meant keeping a male partner around, both for material support and for protection from other men. Our male ancestors, meanwhile, “recurrently faced an adaptive problem no woman in the history of human evolution has ever faced – investing resources in the mistaken belief that a child has sprung from his own loins and not from those of an interloper”. In our evolutionary history, men who unwittingly devoted themselves to raising children who weren’t genetically related to them were at a selection disadvantage, while those who practised what biologists call “mate guarding” could be certain that their children were their own.

Although women experience jealousy just as often as men do, the male expression of this emotion is most destructive: 50 to 70 per cent of female murder victims are killed by men motivated by sexual jealousy, whereas only 3 per cent of male murder victims are killed by romantic partners or ex-partners. The disproportionate institutional power that men have historically held means that male sexual jealousy is also embedded in cultural and legal systems. In much of the Middle East and West and Central Africa, men are permitted to take multiple wives, but women must remain monogamous. Even in the modern West, where this sexual double standard is no longer formalised in law, it still shows up in myriad ways.

The invention of hormonal birth control may have reduced the biological necessity of mate guarding, but it can’t undo evolution. If you take a group of married men, hook them up to machines that monitor heart rate and other physiological responses, and ask them to imagine their wives having sex with another man, they are sure to show an intense physical stress response, whether or not their wives are imagined to be on the contraceptive pill. Although cultural variation demonstrates that it is possible to encourage or discourage an instinctive emotion like jealousy through the use of social pressures, it is very hard to override adaptations that are deeply embedded in the human mind – this, in the end, is the core tenet of evolutionary psychology.

Bad Men is a popular-science book, rich with lively detail, but it can also be read as a self-help book informed by evolutionary research. Plenty of Buss’s insights will be useful to anyone attempting to navigate the modern dating landscape. For example, it apparently really is true that men who own sports cars are more likely to cheat on their partners, as are women who wear a lot of make-up. It is also true that a man who is reluctant to introduce a partner to his friends and family is probably attempting what Buss coyly terms a “short-term mating strategy”, or what others might refer to as a “fuck and chuck”. Most stereotypes about human mating are borne out by the data.

But there are also more important insights to be gleaned from the second half of the book, which is concerned with violence, overwhelmingly inflicted by men on women. An unfortunate effect of the feminist rejection of evolutionary psychology is that most feminists have stepped away from the discipline and so play only a minor role in shaping it. Yet the discipline can still be put to feminist ends. Refusing to acknowledge the existence of psychological differences between the sexes is not only hard to justify scientifically, it also denies us the opportunity to take advantage of a body of knowledge that could be truly useful, particularly for the young women who are most at risk from sexual violence.

Bad Men is well worth reading for its practical advice, which includes – among much else – strategies for victims of stalking, as well as a lengthy description of the psychological characteristics of men most likely to rape (impulsivity, disagreeableness, promiscuity, hyper-masculinity and low empathy). Buss makes a scientifically informed case for recruiting more female police officers to investigate sexual crime, and explains why women’s intuitive fear of strangers in dark alleys is perfectly rational, demonstrating that, at a policy level, evolutionary psychology could be used to argue both for major reforms to the criminal justice system, and for minor changes, such as improved street lighting.

Despite these helpful recommendations and his attempts to signal friendliness by quoting icons such as Kimberlé Crenshaw and Susan Brownmiller, Buss is bound to be either condemned or ignored by most feminists, given that recognising the natural origins of male violence is such a dismaying prospect. Nevertheless, while this might not seem an obvious choice of feminist reading matter, I would press this book into the hands of any teenage girl. “Men’s sexual violence toward women remains the most widespread human rights problem in the world,” writes this unlikely feminist ally. “A deep understanding of the co-evolution of sexual conflict in humans will not magically solve all problems. But I am convinced it is the light and the way.”

Bad Men: The Hidden Roots of Sexual Deception, Harassment and Assault David M Buss