Girls, boys, and chimpanzees

I would like to open this post with a few defensive remarks, that may, perhaps, forestall the angry mob that will probably show up to throw me off of Scripps.

First off, I am, in fact, a real live feminist. I have worked for feminist organizations, I am a card-carrying member of a few more. I have public appeared as a contraception superhero in the pursuit of women’s rights—and that meant a plastic cape, in July, in Georgia. It was over 100 degrees. Let no one doubt my commitment to equal rights for the fairer sex.

Second, natural does not equal good, nor does unnatural equal bad. Humans do all sorts of fantastically unnatural things all the time, like flying, that I approve of. Creatures in the natural world regularly do things, like murdering their step-children,that I think are a poor model for human behavior.

That said, I was absolutely shocked at the number of people who, in response to our readings on gender theory said they couldn’t understand why humanity decided to divide along “arbitrary” gender lines, male and female, rather than, say, by eye color.

May I offer the following answer: Duh. It is because people, like the vast majority of vertebrates, come in males and females. There is a very, very simple reason for that: sexual dimorphism works.

This requires a bit of background: Imagine, for a moment, that you are God, and in the process of designing the humble rabbit. (This is not how evolution works, or course, but work with me). You have two basic options for reproduction: sexual or asexual. Curious, you decide to try both out. You make two species, absolutely identical except for their mode of reproduction, and drop two of each on a field. Let’s call them SexBunnies and CloneBunnies.

For the sake of simplicity of math, let’s say you haven’t got around to inventing carnivores yet, the field can hold exactly 200 rabbits, and they can reproduce 2 rabbits per pregnancy, once a month. You set them down in mid-December (you haven’t got around to inventing seasons yet either).

January comes along, and the set of SexBunnies has a pair bouncing baby bunny, that the female carried. The CloneBunnies, on the other hand, don’t have to find mates, so they both get to have a pair of baby bunnies! There are now 4 SexBunnies, and 6 CloneBunnies By February, expect 4 new SexBunnies—and 12 more CloneBunnies. Come April, the field will be nearly full—with 32 SexBunnies, and 162 CloneBunnies.

So why do animals sexually reproduce at all, if it is so much less efficient? Because sexual reproduction has several huge advantages, like increased genetic variation, so that when Bunny Pox hits your field, there is a higher chance that a few of your SexBunnies are naturally resistant. However, another huge advantage is sexual dimorphism leads to efficient distribution of labor between the two sexes.

You see this distribution among tons of animals. In many species, especially among birds, males and females look entirely different (though boys tend to be the pretty ones). In communal, food-sharing societies, like that of primates, there tend to be different roles for males and females.

So why is it that humans have sexual dimorphism? Because it works. Because seven million years ago, when the first anthropomorphic primates of the Hominini tribe evolved, life was hard. Really, really f***ing hard. Difficult in a way that modern humans, who have antibiotics and refrigeration and buildings and wheeled vehicles and agriculture and domestic animals and weapons and fire cannot even begin to imagine. Most of the bipedal primates died off. For a long time, Homo Sapiens teetered on the brink of extinction—at several points, there may have been less than a thousand members of our species. Thue hunter-gatherer lifestyle is one of ceaseless work and constant near-starvation.

So why is that men tend to be stronger and taller than women? Because all that muscle mass is difficult to maintain, and it takes tons of calories. If your entire species is muscled like that, everyone dies of hunger. If only half of the species has it, you need less food, and have a better chance of surviving—so men became the hunters. Why is it that women are traditionally in charge of childcare? Because we have uteruses and produce breastmilk—it isn’t as if we could leave the baby at home with our husbands and a bottle of formula. Pulling even a small percentage of your labor force of the vital work of food production to carry and raise children is dangerous—so only half the species tends to do it, and not all at the same time.

There are actual, real, measurable, biological difference between men and women and those differences exist for a reason—and that reason is not some vast conspiracy to make people with breasts feel bad. It is because sexual division of labor creates increased survival rates, so evolution selected for it—to this day, men tend to better at spatial-awareness tasks and women tend to have a better sense of taste (in food, not fashion) because men hunted and women gathered.

Note that I said tend. Of course, there have always been variations. We reproduce sexually, we produce varied offspring—that is one of our strengths as a species, in terms of survival rates. It is also fairly clear that some things, like which sex gets to wear pointy shoes, are totally meaningless cultural constructions. Other constructions of male-female difference, though, cultural or not, exist because they worked.

The world is different now. I don’t need the special advantages of maleness to be an accountant or a surgeon or a programmer. (For that matter, wouldn’t actually need these advantages to be hunters—I am sure there were a few prehistoric girls that grew up eschew childrearing and hunt mammoths, but I am talking about maximum efficiency here). Men don’t need estrogen to be able to rear babies or teach preschool or be nurses. For the very first time in human history—in the history of primates, really—sexual equity can actually increase the chances of our species surviving. That is really, really awesome. Amazing! Astounding! A true testament to infinity diversity of life!

Nevertheless, pretending that there are no differences between men and women (and for that men transgendered individuals—they probably serve a useful evolutionary purpose too), or that these differences have no biological basis is intellectually dishonest, and probably ultimately unhelpful. In my opinion, it is also morally questionable.

I should be able to make a real moral/ethical argument that I, as a human being, simply on the basis of my humanity, deserve the same rights and responsibilities as a man, regardless of the fact that the average man can do more pull-ups than me. I should not need to make recourse to the silly argument that I only can do less pull-ups because I am a helpless victim of cultural conditioning that taught me that pull-ups weren’t feminine. Yes, that cultural pressure probably does exist, but it ought to be irrelevant to my argument. Similarly, I can make a decent argument that we shouldn’t kill each other without needing to make recourse to the bible.

In short, men and women are different—but that doesn’t need to matter. Accept it, marvel at it, and move on. Don’t pretend it isn’t real!

I will now await the angry mob.


Oh, and while I am pissing people off anyway, only captive bonobo chimpanzees regularly have sex for fun and live in "peaceful", female-dominated societies, probably because they are bored and slightly crazy. In the wild, they are even more violent than regular chimps. Leave the poor bonobos out of it.