WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.720 --> 00:00:06.980 This session of the 2013 Adelaide Festival of Ideas was recorded by Radio Adelaide, 2 00:00:07.020 --> 00:00:10.500 through the support of the Bar Smith Library, University of Adelaide, 3 00:00:10.600 --> 00:00:14.480 the University of South Australia Library and Flinders University Library. 4 00:00:15.080 --> 00:00:18.600 Good morning ladies and gentlemen, lovely to have you here. 5 00:00:19.200 --> 00:00:23.580 I'm Jennifer Boone, what I was scuttling around looking for just then was my chair notes, 6 00:00:24.240 --> 00:00:28.620 so I could be responsible and brief you to be a responsible audience. 7 00:00:28.620 --> 00:00:32.560 But the main thing is actually to wish you a great welcome, 8 00:00:32.660 --> 00:00:36.540 just to remind you please to turn off your mobiles if you would. 9 00:00:36.760 --> 00:00:40.820 I will do the same thing and I think you've been told at each session 10 00:00:40.820 --> 00:00:44.780 that unauthorised recordings of any kind are not permitted during this session, 11 00:00:44.880 --> 00:00:52.420 but of course we will open the floor to questions in about 30-35 minutes. 12 00:00:52.600 --> 00:00:54.880 So, lovely to have you here. 13 00:00:55.160 --> 00:00:58.100 It's particularly interesting. 14 00:00:58.620 --> 00:01:03.140 For me, I very much wanted to do this session. 15 00:01:03.460 --> 00:01:05.320 I only arrived at the festival last night. 16 00:01:05.420 --> 00:01:06.360 Are you all having a great time? 17 00:01:06.780 --> 00:01:07.180 Yeah? 18 00:01:07.380 --> 00:01:07.660 Yeah. 19 00:01:07.800 --> 00:01:09.240 Sounds like a great program. 20 00:01:11.240 --> 00:01:15.540 And it's kind of one of those, as part of a very brief introduction to the subject, 21 00:01:16.340 --> 00:01:19.840 I'm just back from the Yulewood Writers Festival, which is why I couldn't come any earlier. 22 00:01:20.060 --> 00:01:26.460 And when I was there, I was chairing a session called Inspiring Women on the subject of them. 23 00:01:27.760 --> 00:01:28.600 But it was really... 24 00:01:28.620 --> 00:01:29.720 It was really, of course, what it became. 25 00:01:29.780 --> 00:01:36.180 It was a discussion on the status and position of women in different parts of the world. 26 00:01:36.240 --> 00:01:38.140 So what happened was we had Annie Summers there, 27 00:01:38.260 --> 00:01:40.660 who I think many of you will know is an Australian feminist. 28 00:01:40.740 --> 00:01:41.700 We also had... 29 00:01:42.360 --> 00:01:50.040 There was an Iranian feminist who had lived through what was meant to be the great political revolution 30 00:01:50.040 --> 00:01:52.880 when the Shah was turfed up. 31 00:01:52.900 --> 00:01:56.920 But of course what happened almost immediately afterwards was that women were ordered home 32 00:01:56.920 --> 00:01:57.720 and put under... 33 00:01:59.200 --> 00:02:01.980 Full shador, among other things. 34 00:02:02.160 --> 00:02:07.060 We had an Egyptian woman, one of those who joined the revolution in Tahrir Square, 35 00:02:07.780 --> 00:02:11.860 with the excitement that reigned at that time, only to be told, 36 00:02:11.900 --> 00:02:14.400 as soon as it was over, go back to your home. 37 00:02:14.660 --> 00:02:20.080 She's been briefly disqualified from her position as a professor 38 00:02:20.080 --> 00:02:24.600 because, according to her students, she said something contemptuous of religion, 39 00:02:24.780 --> 00:02:25.980 which, of course, she denies absolutely. 40 00:02:26.900 --> 00:02:28.400 And the third was an Indonesian. 41 00:02:28.620 --> 00:02:33.480 An Indonesian woman who was talking about during the Aceh crisis, after the tsunami, 42 00:02:33.700 --> 00:02:34.720 I'm sure we all remember that, 43 00:02:34.820 --> 00:02:41.740 the incredible fights that went on if women ran from their home without head covering. 44 00:02:42.020 --> 00:02:47.080 And she told a personal story of seven days one woman stood and fought 45 00:02:47.080 --> 00:02:50.620 for the right to get her daughter back, who'd been removed from her 46 00:02:50.620 --> 00:02:52.500 because she wouldn't wear her head covering. 47 00:02:53.720 --> 00:02:57.720 And so I put that in the context of it's a difficult story, feminism. 48 00:02:59.780 --> 00:03:04.300 And it's internationally, it's not really in good state. 49 00:03:04.420 --> 00:03:09.260 And I think even in Australia, we have question marks over different aspects of it, 50 00:03:09.340 --> 00:03:15.140 which is one of the reasons it is so fantastic to have Amy Parrish here today. 51 00:03:15.740 --> 00:03:17.640 Because she has a different story. 52 00:03:17.660 --> 00:03:20.480 It's a story which is not about opinion or ideology. 53 00:03:20.620 --> 00:03:22.180 It's a story of science. 54 00:03:23.100 --> 00:03:27.640 She spent 20 plus years studying bonobos, which are, 55 00:03:27.640 --> 00:03:32.840 the lesser known in a way, brother, sister, cousin, but relative, 56 00:03:32.900 --> 00:03:36.960 the other member of the genus, which includes chimpanzees. 57 00:03:36.960 --> 00:03:38.340 We hear a lot about chimpanzees. 58 00:03:38.340 --> 00:03:39.920 We haven't heard so much about bonobos. 59 00:03:41.000 --> 00:03:45.460 Amy, Professor Amy Parrish is a biological anthropologist, a primatologist, 60 00:03:45.640 --> 00:03:48.140 and a Darwinian feminist. 61 00:03:48.460 --> 00:03:54.160 And it is, I'm sure, on that, that she will be explaining what that means 62 00:03:54.160 --> 00:03:56.200 and what the implications are. 63 00:03:56.280 --> 00:03:57.560 And how it actually does. 64 00:03:57.640 --> 00:04:00.920 And I think it's really important to suggest that sometimes, 65 00:04:02.260 --> 00:04:04.820 you do always get what you want if you're a bonobo. 66 00:04:05.240 --> 00:04:05.900 Thank you. 67 00:04:05.920 --> 00:04:06.700 But you welcome her. 68 00:04:12.600 --> 00:04:15.180 Thank you so much for that wonderful introduction. 69 00:04:15.300 --> 00:04:18.760 And thank you to all of you for being here on this gorgeous day. 70 00:04:18.980 --> 00:04:23.420 I have to apologize in advance that I seem to be having a lot of allergies. 71 00:04:23.820 --> 00:04:26.460 So I hope I don't get completely sneezy. 72 00:04:26.940 --> 00:04:27.380 And. 73 00:04:27.380 --> 00:04:28.640 And that I don't lose my voice. 74 00:04:28.820 --> 00:04:31.020 But so far, it's good. 75 00:04:31.140 --> 00:04:33.780 But I just wanted to say in advance, it's not that I'm ill, 76 00:04:33.880 --> 00:04:36.840 but I am affected by the springtime pollen here. 77 00:04:38.320 --> 00:04:40.780 So what does it mean to be a Darwinian feminist? 78 00:04:40.920 --> 00:04:45.280 Often when I'm introduced to give a talk about bonobos, 79 00:04:45.320 --> 00:04:48.640 when it comes to that term, the whole audience laughs. 80 00:04:48.800 --> 00:04:52.140 And I always wondered what seems funny about that. 81 00:04:52.240 --> 00:04:54.440 But I think even to somebody outside of science, 82 00:04:54.640 --> 00:04:56.860 it seems maybe a little counterintuitive. 83 00:04:57.380 --> 00:05:00.680 That science and feminism would go together. 84 00:05:00.880 --> 00:05:03.060 So I want to talk a little bit about that today. 85 00:05:04.040 --> 00:05:07.960 I did my undergraduate research at University of Michigan 86 00:05:07.960 --> 00:05:11.440 at a time when they were beginning to explore 87 00:05:11.440 --> 00:05:14.120 how evolutionary theory could be applied to humans. 88 00:05:14.260 --> 00:05:16.800 And I studied with this woman, Barbara Smuts, 89 00:05:16.800 --> 00:05:20.800 here on the right of your screen, who was working on baboons. 90 00:05:20.840 --> 00:05:23.620 And she'd written a book called Sex and Friendship in Baboons, 91 00:05:23.740 --> 00:05:27.000 where she looked at pairs like this male and female here, 92 00:05:27.100 --> 00:05:27.360 Alice. 93 00:05:27.380 --> 00:05:34.760 And she was interested in how those pair bonds are formed 94 00:05:34.760 --> 00:05:38.300 and what that means and what they're good for. 95 00:05:38.460 --> 00:05:42.740 So I had come from a very feminist and activist-based childhood, 96 00:05:43.020 --> 00:05:46.300 which I'm very grateful to my mother for having provided. 97 00:05:46.780 --> 00:05:49.700 And I did a Bachelor of General Studies degree 98 00:05:49.700 --> 00:05:53.240 because I didn't want to be boxed in to just a Bachelor of Science 99 00:05:53.240 --> 00:05:54.520 or a Bachelor of Arts. 100 00:05:54.580 --> 00:05:56.880 And this allowed me to basically make my own program, 101 00:05:56.880 --> 00:05:58.600 which I highly recommend. 102 00:05:58.820 --> 00:06:01.580 I think universities should be all about exploration 103 00:06:01.580 --> 00:06:04.100 and inspiration and learning new things. 104 00:06:04.340 --> 00:06:06.700 So I was really, really grateful to have that opportunity 105 00:06:06.700 --> 00:06:07.740 to have that breadth. 106 00:06:08.980 --> 00:06:11.640 I went on from there to grad school 107 00:06:11.640 --> 00:06:15.520 with a woman named Sarah Hurdy at University of California, Davis. 108 00:06:15.820 --> 00:06:16.380 Oops. 109 00:06:16.560 --> 00:06:17.120 Sorry. 110 00:06:17.240 --> 00:06:19.660 I'm managing two devices at once. 111 00:06:20.040 --> 00:06:21.240 Here's Sarah down. 112 00:06:21.440 --> 00:06:21.980 Oh, no. 113 00:06:23.160 --> 00:06:23.720 Sorry. 114 00:06:23.840 --> 00:06:24.780 This is my technical. 115 00:06:25.100 --> 00:06:26.520 Here's Sarah here. 116 00:06:26.520 --> 00:06:30.420 She's kind of considered the alpha female of primatology, you could say. 117 00:06:31.100 --> 00:06:33.740 So it was a real privilege to get to work with her. 118 00:06:33.840 --> 00:06:37.440 I started writing to her from University of Michigan and saying, 119 00:06:37.600 --> 00:06:39.580 I'm really interested in bonobos. 120 00:06:39.600 --> 00:06:43.720 I hear that males and females might have unusually friendly relationships 121 00:06:43.720 --> 00:06:46.340 with each other, and I'd like to explore that, 122 00:06:46.420 --> 00:06:49.660 given my undergrad background and thinking about baboons. 123 00:06:49.840 --> 00:06:54.560 And she said that despite the fact that she is the alpha female of primatology 124 00:06:54.560 --> 00:06:56.400 and very famous for her studies, 125 00:06:56.520 --> 00:07:03.580 a primatologist is a primatologist. 126 00:07:04.440 --> 00:07:06.340 And a primatologist is a primatologist. 127 00:07:06.420 --> 00:07:07.100 And a primatologist is a primatologist. 128 00:07:07.100 --> 00:07:07.120 And a primatologist is a primatologist. 129 00:07:07.120 --> 00:07:07.400 And a primatologist is a primatologist. 130 00:07:07.400 --> 00:07:08.080 And a primatologist is a primatologist. 131 00:07:08.080 --> 00:07:08.700 And a primatologist is a primatologist. 132 00:07:08.700 --> 00:07:09.400 And a primatologist is a primatologist. 133 00:07:09.400 --> 00:07:10.520 And a primatologist is a primatologist. 134 00:07:10.540 --> 00:07:12.600 And a primatologist is a primatologist. 135 00:07:12.600 --> 00:07:13.460 And a primatologist is a primatologist. 136 00:07:13.740 --> 00:07:16.120 And a primatologist is a primatologist. 137 00:07:16.120 --> 00:07:17.540 And a primatologist is a primatologist. 138 00:07:17.600 --> 00:07:20.460 And a primatologist is a primatologist. 139 00:07:20.460 --> 00:07:23.700 And a primatologist is a primatologist. 140 00:07:23.700 --> 00:07:25.100 Come and work with me. 141 00:07:25.280 --> 00:07:26.860 And so that's what I did. 142 00:07:26.940 --> 00:07:33.180 I went to UC Davis, and I started writing grants to do some research on bonobos. 143 00:07:33.220 --> 00:07:35.760 And I wanted to study their social and sexual behavior. 144 00:07:36.200 --> 00:07:40.840 And because of that interest in pair bonding, that's where I started. 145 00:07:40.960 --> 00:07:45.340 But for those of you who came on Friday to my talk, you know that I quickly realized 146 00:07:45.340 --> 00:07:53.720 that the most fascinating thing about bonobos was that females have these incredibly close 147 00:07:53.720 --> 00:07:56.760 bonds with each other that they then use to dominate males. 148 00:07:56.980 --> 00:07:58.820 And this is pretty rare in mammals. 149 00:07:58.960 --> 00:08:00.660 And so I got really excited. 150 00:08:00.760 --> 00:08:05.600 And I'm grateful that I had the upbringing that I did and the women mentors that I did, 151 00:08:05.660 --> 00:08:10.300 because it allowed me to have a really broad perspective that allowed me to actually see 152 00:08:10.300 --> 00:08:13.780 that it might be possible for females to have agency and power. 153 00:08:14.320 --> 00:08:15.320 One of my other... 154 00:08:15.340 --> 00:08:20.320 One of my other advisors, who I also love very dearly, Franz Duvall, you know, was very 155 00:08:20.320 --> 00:08:22.740 interested in the direction that I was going in. 156 00:08:22.900 --> 00:08:28.200 And I told him that I was noticing a pattern of adult females inflicting serious blood 157 00:08:28.200 --> 00:08:32.140 drawing injuries on adult males as part of this pattern of dominance over them. 158 00:08:32.340 --> 00:08:34.500 And he said, oh, you know, that's really interesting. 159 00:08:34.660 --> 00:08:35.020 I... 160 00:08:35.020 --> 00:08:42.660 When I studied the same population of bonobos a decade or two earlier, I kept a list of 161 00:08:42.660 --> 00:08:44.880 blood drawing injuries, and I never did anything with it. 162 00:08:44.920 --> 00:08:45.320 I'll send it to you. 163 00:08:45.320 --> 00:08:47.940 And, you know, this is like a handwritten list. 164 00:08:48.180 --> 00:08:49.300 So he sent it to me. 165 00:08:49.360 --> 00:08:50.440 There were 25 cases. 166 00:08:50.760 --> 00:08:56.500 24 of them were adult females injuring adult males, and he never noticed it was a pattern. 167 00:08:56.780 --> 00:08:57.300 Right? 168 00:08:58.280 --> 00:09:00.240 And that's because who would think? 169 00:09:00.320 --> 00:09:00.700 It's right. 170 00:09:00.760 --> 00:09:01.700 It's unnatural, right? 171 00:09:01.780 --> 00:09:02.980 Females don't injure males. 172 00:09:03.200 --> 00:09:05.040 Females don't have that kind of aggression. 173 00:09:05.400 --> 00:09:07.860 Females don't have that kind of motivation. 174 00:09:08.320 --> 00:09:15.040 And so it very quickly became a kind of combination study for me from the biological side and 175 00:09:15.040 --> 00:09:19.080 the feminist side to study these closest living relatives of ours. 176 00:09:19.240 --> 00:09:24.020 And I did it through an anthropology program because I really was interested in what bonobos 177 00:09:24.020 --> 00:09:25.160 could tell us about ourselves. 178 00:09:25.880 --> 00:09:33.500 So I came from this background as an evolutionary biologist of believing that we can understand 179 00:09:33.500 --> 00:09:40.520 our mammalian, our primate, and our human origins and understand our adaptations and 180 00:09:40.520 --> 00:09:45.020 behaviors by looking to other apes and looking at... 181 00:09:45.040 --> 00:09:49.240 How their behavior correlates with their environmental and ecological circumstance. 182 00:09:50.440 --> 00:09:55.080 So to go back to Darwin for a minute, he did recognize that... 183 00:09:55.080 --> 00:09:58.540 Of course, he used the term man, but I'm sure he really meant humans. 184 00:09:59.680 --> 00:10:05.400 We've now seen that humans are variable in body and mind and that these variations are 185 00:10:05.400 --> 00:10:11.880 induced either directly or indirectly by the same general causes and obey the same general 186 00:10:11.880 --> 00:10:14.460 laws as with the so-called lower animals. 187 00:10:15.040 --> 00:10:18.720 We now recognize we're not higher, we're not better, we're not the pinnacle of anything, 188 00:10:18.900 --> 00:10:20.240 we're just one type of animal. 189 00:10:20.320 --> 00:10:25.660 But at least he recognized that we are in that animal kingdom and that we are subject 190 00:10:25.660 --> 00:10:26.820 to the same forces. 191 00:10:27.080 --> 00:10:29.500 And that's still really controversial today. 192 00:10:29.840 --> 00:10:31.880 I mean, in the 80s, when E.O. 193 00:10:31.880 --> 00:10:33.320 Wilson started talking... 194 00:10:33.320 --> 00:10:36.320 Well, actually, even in the early 70s, when E.O. 195 00:10:36.320 --> 00:10:41.940 Wilson started talking about sociobiology, the idea that evolution could affect not just 196 00:10:41.940 --> 00:10:44.980 whether you're tall or short or blonde or brunette, but also... 197 00:10:45.040 --> 00:10:52.080 You know, how you behaved, that was a really controversial thing because a lot of people, 198 00:10:52.160 --> 00:10:56.220 particularly on the left, really wanted to believe that everything about human behavior 199 00:10:56.220 --> 00:11:03.520 is free will and that nothing is in any way, not determined, but mediated, let's say, by 200 00:11:03.520 --> 00:11:04.340 your biology. 201 00:11:04.940 --> 00:11:11.380 And so in gender studies departments, I've often encountered faculty who don't believe 202 00:11:11.380 --> 00:11:15.020 we should have a class called something like sex similarities and differences because they're not 203 00:11:15.020 --> 00:11:18.980 because they would say there are no differences except those that are culturally produced. 204 00:11:19.500 --> 00:11:23.580 And that to me seems like a pretty extreme statement to say there are no differences between 205 00:11:23.580 --> 00:11:25.940 men and women except those that culture produces. 206 00:11:26.200 --> 00:11:31.080 I mean, you know, those kinds of polemical statements I don't think are very helpful 207 00:11:31.080 --> 00:11:32.320 on either side. 208 00:11:32.700 --> 00:11:38.300 So Darwin was really actually fascinated by sex differences between males and females. 209 00:11:38.560 --> 00:11:42.320 You know, Linnaeus got it wrong when he was classifying mallards. 210 00:11:42.360 --> 00:11:44.620 He classified the male and female mallard. 211 00:11:45.020 --> 00:11:47.080 He said, you know, the male and female mallard is different species because they look so different. 212 00:11:47.280 --> 00:11:53.180 So he really wanted to explain why are there differences in size sometimes between males 213 00:11:53.180 --> 00:11:53.720 and females. 214 00:11:54.060 --> 00:11:59.380 Because we're a mammal, we tend to think that when there is a difference in size that it's 215 00:11:59.380 --> 00:12:01.740 more natural or typical for males to be bigger. 216 00:12:01.900 --> 00:12:06.260 If you look across the animal kingdom, it's actually much more common for females to be 217 00:12:06.260 --> 00:12:07.040 bigger than males. 218 00:12:07.180 --> 00:12:11.720 So when you see a spider web with a little spider and a big spider in it, the big spider 219 00:12:11.720 --> 00:12:12.660 is usually the female. 220 00:12:13.960 --> 00:12:14.900 Of course, there are. 221 00:12:15.020 --> 00:12:16.360 There are all kinds of differences in shape. 222 00:12:16.520 --> 00:12:21.320 Not always, as this jellyfish cartoon shows, but often there are differences in shape. 223 00:12:22.460 --> 00:12:22.980 Coloration. 224 00:12:24.280 --> 00:12:26.720 These kinds of differences are... 225 00:12:27.480 --> 00:12:30.840 I've actually been displayed at by a peacock, and I thought, you know, actually, you're 226 00:12:30.840 --> 00:12:31.780 going in the wrong direction. 227 00:12:33.220 --> 00:12:38.640 These kinds of differences are not as controversial as when you get to behavior, right? 228 00:12:38.720 --> 00:12:43.300 And I like this cartoon from Gary Larson where the female octopus has been waiting back at 229 00:12:43.300 --> 00:12:44.940 home and the male comes back. 230 00:12:45.020 --> 00:12:47.800 And he's like, oh, I'm going to go back to the cave all covered in suction marks. 231 00:12:48.120 --> 00:12:52.360 And, you know, because it just embodies so many stereotypes that we have about male and 232 00:12:52.360 --> 00:12:53.080 female behavior. 233 00:12:53.400 --> 00:12:55.180 So females are the homebodies. 234 00:12:55.300 --> 00:12:57.220 They're attached to one particular male. 235 00:12:57.380 --> 00:12:59.220 They don't want him to mate with anybody else. 236 00:12:59.560 --> 00:13:03.220 He's interested in sexual variety, and he's out there pursuing that. 237 00:13:03.340 --> 00:13:06.280 And there's this kind of conflict between them because of that. 238 00:13:06.480 --> 00:13:10.460 And these are really interesting things to explore from an evolutionary perspective. 239 00:13:11.580 --> 00:13:15.000 Well, Darwin focused on two specific areas. 240 00:13:15.020 --> 00:13:21.380 In his thoughts about these sex differences, he looked at male ornaments, really pretty 241 00:13:21.380 --> 00:13:25.600 colors, flashy patterns, long tail feathers, those kinds of things. 242 00:13:25.740 --> 00:13:28.340 And he said those evolved because females like them. 243 00:13:28.700 --> 00:13:33.660 So he did recognize, in some sense, female agency, and at least females had a part in 244 00:13:33.660 --> 00:13:34.220 the process. 245 00:13:34.460 --> 00:13:37.400 But, you know, it was sort of this who knows why they like yellow? 246 00:13:37.520 --> 00:13:41.200 Who knows why they like triangles or, you know, neck bands? 247 00:13:41.380 --> 00:13:44.480 You know, it was just kind of a female aesthetic whim. 248 00:13:45.020 --> 00:13:45.120 Right? 249 00:13:45.160 --> 00:13:48.000 But at least he recognized the females did make some choices. 250 00:13:50.340 --> 00:13:55.460 Male weapons, on the other hand, he thought evolved because males compete over access 251 00:13:55.460 --> 00:13:56.120 to females. 252 00:13:56.300 --> 00:14:00.600 So males would fight with each other with their horns or their canines or their body 253 00:14:00.600 --> 00:14:03.800 armor in order to try to acquire females. 254 00:14:04.060 --> 00:14:09.780 And so those were the two components of sexual selection theory that stood all the way from 255 00:14:09.780 --> 00:14:13.000 the mid-1800s until the 1990s. 256 00:14:13.000 --> 00:14:14.680 Nobody bothered to kind of... 257 00:14:15.020 --> 00:14:19.400 revisit that or expand it or ask if there was anything more to the picture. 258 00:14:19.740 --> 00:14:25.560 Even though Darwin recognized these two components, he was really focused on the male part of 259 00:14:25.560 --> 00:14:26.160 that equation. 260 00:14:26.520 --> 00:14:30.640 So, you know, it was really about the struggle between males to possess females. 261 00:14:31.820 --> 00:14:36.200 But everything was on the line for males in terms of this kind of possession. 262 00:14:36.620 --> 00:14:42.860 And so when we look at Darwin's work, although he is responsible for having acknowledged 263 00:14:42.860 --> 00:14:45.000 female choice, we also have to say, well, he's not. 264 00:14:45.020 --> 00:14:50.820 He was incredibly focused on the male-male competition aspect of this pattern. 265 00:14:51.420 --> 00:14:54.980 He didn't say much about the dynamics between the sexes. 266 00:14:55.000 --> 00:14:59.460 But what he did say is really, really important and sobering. 267 00:14:59.680 --> 00:15:04.640 He said that, of course, he thought it was just in the so-called savage state, but really 268 00:15:04.640 --> 00:15:06.500 it was the human condition. 269 00:15:06.600 --> 00:15:08.660 So let's just fill that in for him. 270 00:15:08.780 --> 00:15:14.920 In the human condition, man keeps woman in a far more abject state of bondage. 271 00:15:15.020 --> 00:15:17.500 Then does the male of any other animal. 272 00:15:17.760 --> 00:15:21.720 And that is really saying something when you know about other animals. 273 00:15:22.020 --> 00:15:28.140 So, I mean, there are species of fly that have special appendages so that they can pierce 274 00:15:28.140 --> 00:15:32.600 through the wings of a female that they've pinned to the ground to keep her from escaping 275 00:15:32.600 --> 00:15:34.420 while he forces her into copulation. 276 00:15:34.600 --> 00:15:40.460 That also disables her so that she's not able to fly afterwards and mate with any other 277 00:15:40.460 --> 00:15:40.880 males. 278 00:15:41.340 --> 00:15:44.840 Male mallards often drown females in the process. 279 00:15:45.020 --> 00:15:46.540 And that's all because of forcing them into copulations. 280 00:15:48.380 --> 00:15:55.220 Female bee-eater birds can't leave their nest chambers without being escorted by their pair-bonded 281 00:15:55.220 --> 00:15:59.600 male because otherwise sometimes they're forced to the ground by as many as nine other males 282 00:16:00.180 --> 00:16:01.660 trying to force them into copulation. 283 00:16:02.040 --> 00:16:10.920 So to say that human females have it the worst is really, really a stark thing, I think, 284 00:16:10.920 --> 00:16:11.480 to consider. 285 00:16:13.100 --> 00:16:13.740 So. 286 00:16:13.740 --> 00:16:18.780 So when you think about humans, a biologist might look at this picture of this beautiful day 287 00:16:18.780 --> 00:16:24.800 when this man and woman joined together, sometimes each taking their individual candle 288 00:16:24.800 --> 00:16:29.180 and not only lighting one, but then extinguishing their own individual candles. 289 00:16:30.140 --> 00:16:35.700 Not just in a symbolic way, but really if you look at it, if you step back from it from a biological way, 290 00:16:35.820 --> 00:16:42.900 you would say, okay, this is an institutionalized state-sanctioned practice that basically formalizes a trade. 291 00:16:43.740 --> 00:16:49.520 Women offer to be sexually monogamous and therefore to give males prescriptive paternity certainty. 292 00:16:49.780 --> 00:16:57.160 And in exchange, women get access to resources that the patriarchy has structured so that males broker them. 293 00:16:57.480 --> 00:17:02.140 So even though we're very closely related to primates, 294 00:17:02.140 --> 00:17:05.360 and that makes it a good reason to look at primate social systems, 295 00:17:06.140 --> 00:17:09.300 in terms of ecology, we're very similar to birds. 296 00:17:09.340 --> 00:17:13.000 We give birth to helpless young that lead a lot of care and attention 297 00:17:13.000 --> 00:17:14.540 in order to be reared successfully. 298 00:17:15.300 --> 00:17:17.560 It might be possible to do it on your own, 299 00:17:17.600 --> 00:17:21.540 but it's a lot easier and a lot better if you have someone to help you. 300 00:17:21.620 --> 00:17:28.000 That could either be a male or your kin, but the way that everything's set up, it's most often a male. 301 00:17:28.560 --> 00:17:37.200 And so women are stuck in this situation where often they have to go through males to get the resources they need. 302 00:17:37.560 --> 00:17:41.640 Birds have a similar problem. They give birth to broods of chicks that are very helpless. 303 00:17:41.960 --> 00:17:42.980 If the male is not able to get the resources they need, they can't get the bird. 304 00:17:43.000 --> 00:17:48.300 If the male does not participate in helping to rear those chicks, then often you lose the whole brood. 305 00:17:48.380 --> 00:17:52.380 So female birds and female humans face some of the same kinds of constraints, 306 00:17:52.660 --> 00:18:00.260 and therefore it's relevant to look at what kinds of ecological variables relate to the kinds of behavioral patterns that we see. 307 00:18:01.900 --> 00:18:03.420 Well, Darwin was a Victorian. 308 00:18:04.120 --> 00:18:06.020 He was a product of his times. 309 00:18:06.120 --> 00:18:10.740 He wasn't the first, and he's not the last, to believe that females aren't very sexual. 310 00:18:11.240 --> 00:18:12.400 So, um, 311 00:18:12.400 --> 00:18:14.400 he would write things like, you know, 312 00:18:14.420 --> 00:18:18.760 the female is with the rarest exception, less eager to mate than is the male. 313 00:18:19.060 --> 00:18:24.760 She's coy, and she may often be seen endeavoring for a long time to escape. 314 00:18:25.100 --> 00:18:29.280 And I love this drawing which comes from Merida Small's book, Female Choices. 315 00:18:29.440 --> 00:18:32.980 She's a primatologist who works on a species of macaque, 316 00:18:33.080 --> 00:18:37.880 where she sees females mating with eight males in a row, 317 00:18:38.020 --> 00:18:41.380 and wonders how this can possibly fit in with 318 00:18:41.920 --> 00:18:46.300 Darwin's ideas about this kind of coy, choosy, reluctant female. 319 00:18:46.840 --> 00:18:51.900 At one point Darwin had said that often a female isn't picking the male 320 00:18:51.900 --> 00:18:52.900 she likes the best. 321 00:18:53.000 --> 00:18:55.760 She's picking the male that's least distasteful. 322 00:18:56.180 --> 00:18:56.320 Right? 323 00:18:57.340 --> 00:18:58.900 It kind of reminds me of this, 324 00:18:59.000 --> 00:19:01.720 at least what we hear in America, which might be totally incorrect. 325 00:19:01.880 --> 00:19:04.740 This idea that in England, women were encouraged, you know, 326 00:19:04.760 --> 00:19:06.880 during sex to just lay back and think of England. 327 00:19:07.120 --> 00:19:07.400 Right? 328 00:19:07.760 --> 00:19:10.660 That's your patriarchal, or sorry, 329 00:19:10.660 --> 00:19:17.240 Sorry, your national duty, rather, to just participate in this really unseemly activity for the good of the nation. 330 00:19:18.000 --> 00:19:24.120 And, you know, if you look around the animal kingdom, you don't find much evidence to support that, 331 00:19:24.180 --> 00:19:28.360 that females are coy and passive and especially not non-sexual. 332 00:19:29.120 --> 00:19:36.160 And yet, everybody seemed to accept that at face value for this basically 150-year period. 333 00:19:36.160 --> 00:19:43.060 This man, David Buss, was an evolutionary psychologist at University of Michigan when I was an undergrad. 334 00:19:43.560 --> 00:19:45.500 And he's now at University of Texas. 335 00:19:45.620 --> 00:19:47.460 He's what's known as an evolutionary psychologist. 336 00:19:48.140 --> 00:19:52.280 This is a group of academics who's really interested in sexual selection theory. 337 00:19:52.560 --> 00:19:56.280 But they believe that there are human universals. 338 00:19:56.280 --> 00:20:02.420 We've evolved so that all men want as much sex as they can get with young, fertile women. 339 00:20:02.500 --> 00:20:05.660 All women want the richest, most high-status men. 340 00:20:06.160 --> 00:20:09.900 And they really ignore environmental or ecological variation. 341 00:20:10.160 --> 00:20:12.020 So they just think these things are hardwired. 342 00:20:12.240 --> 00:20:17.140 And therefore, there's kind of an essential essence to being a male or to being a female. 343 00:20:17.700 --> 00:20:24.620 One of his studies that I have particular problems with was a study that he did where he had a very attractive man 344 00:20:24.620 --> 00:20:30.140 stand in the middle of campus and basically solicit women as they were walking by to go to class. 345 00:20:30.400 --> 00:20:35.720 And he might say anything from, would you go have a cup of coffee with me? 346 00:20:35.720 --> 00:20:37.160 Or could I take you to dinner? 347 00:20:37.280 --> 00:20:38.380 Or could I have your phone number? 348 00:20:38.440 --> 00:20:41.900 To would you go back right now and have sex with me in my room? 349 00:20:42.180 --> 00:20:46.180 And he did the same thing with a woman, an attractive woman standing in the middle of campus. 350 00:20:46.360 --> 00:20:56.340 And his data showed that women were, I think, never agreed to go back to the man's room and have sex right then. 351 00:20:56.480 --> 00:21:00.120 And, you know, sometimes agreed to some of the other choices. 352 00:21:00.420 --> 00:21:05.700 Whereas men were more likely to agree to going back and having sex than to something like going on a date. 353 00:21:05.720 --> 00:21:13.040 And he thought that this really confirmed this kind of universal difference between the sexes. 354 00:21:13.120 --> 00:21:17.840 And, you know, of course, what he was really measuring is differences in the cost to men and women, 355 00:21:17.920 --> 00:21:25.240 the cultural costs of being seen to be sexual and perhaps promiscuous, 356 00:21:25.240 --> 00:21:29.940 even though that's a word we try not to use anymore because it just means you're having more sex 357 00:21:29.940 --> 00:21:32.200 than whoever's using the word thinks that you should have. 358 00:21:32.640 --> 00:21:33.860 It's not very empirical. 359 00:21:34.120 --> 00:21:35.700 But, I mean, really, you know, it's not a very empirical thing. 360 00:21:35.720 --> 00:21:39.860 But, you know, if you could have said to that woman, you know, will you come back and have sex with me right now? 361 00:21:39.960 --> 00:21:41.700 And nothing bad will happen to you. 362 00:21:41.740 --> 00:21:42.360 You won't be hurt. 363 00:21:43.440 --> 00:21:44.580 Nobody will find out. 364 00:21:44.600 --> 00:21:46.000 Your reputation will not be ruined. 365 00:21:46.160 --> 00:21:47.460 You won't be sanctioned, et cetera. 366 00:21:47.580 --> 00:21:50.180 You'd probably get more women saying yes. 367 00:21:50.240 --> 00:21:56.360 So what he was really measuring were cultural, culturally induced differences, not biological differences. 368 00:21:56.980 --> 00:21:58.660 And I don't mean to just single him out. 369 00:21:58.720 --> 00:22:01.360 I could go on all day about the evolutionary psychologist. 370 00:22:01.960 --> 00:22:05.700 This is another one from, he's now at MIT. 371 00:22:05.720 --> 00:22:07.720 Or, no, now he's at Harvard. 372 00:22:07.760 --> 00:22:08.460 He was at MIT. 373 00:22:08.620 --> 00:22:16.080 Steven Pinker, who has written a dozen books or so, where he seems to accept that men are more sexual than women. 374 00:22:16.200 --> 00:22:18.640 And there's a good biological explanation for that. 375 00:22:18.820 --> 00:22:25.020 A prehistoric man like Fred Flintstone here, if he sleeps with 50 women, he could have 50 babies. 376 00:22:25.280 --> 00:22:29.640 Whereas there's absolutely no advantage to poor Wilma over here to sleeping with 50 men. 377 00:22:29.820 --> 00:22:32.260 She would have just as many kids as if she slept with one. 378 00:22:32.480 --> 00:22:35.560 Nobody bothered to test that to see is there any advantage. 379 00:22:35.560 --> 00:22:38.740 That you would have a greater advantage to having multiple sires of your young, 380 00:22:38.940 --> 00:22:41.540 to looking for genetic diversity in your offspring, 381 00:22:41.880 --> 00:22:49.140 to maybe getting more investment in your young by having multiple potential fathers for the sons. 382 00:22:49.220 --> 00:22:52.540 It was just kind of, you know, just accepted at face value. 383 00:22:53.880 --> 00:22:57.080 And it's come to be known as the copulatory imperative, 384 00:22:57.680 --> 00:23:01.160 this idea that men are just sort of half men, half beasts, 385 00:23:01.280 --> 00:23:04.180 they're driven by their genes, there's nothing they can do about it. 386 00:23:04.240 --> 00:23:05.540 And, of course, that's less than a hundred percent true. 387 00:23:05.540 --> 00:23:11.080 led to a lot of hostility from feminist scholars and others in the general population who think 388 00:23:11.080 --> 00:23:17.140 this is really a bad practice to essentialize male and female differences, to suggest that 389 00:23:17.140 --> 00:23:23.480 something is natural and therefore okay, or natural and therefore inescapable. And plus, 390 00:23:23.560 --> 00:23:30.660 it's just actually not true to boot. And then, you know, in the broader social science community, 391 00:23:30.660 --> 00:23:35.940 I've encountered so much hostility to thinking that evolution could have anything to do with 392 00:23:35.940 --> 00:23:42.260 human behavior. This book, Against Love, which is written by Laura Kipnis, is a polemical kind 393 00:23:42.940 --> 00:23:49.980 of treatise on why monogamous marriage is bad. And you don't have to get very far into the book 394 00:23:49.980 --> 00:23:54.840 before she brings up the bonobo. And I don't have on my glasses, but I think it's about the third 395 00:23:54.840 --> 00:24:00.020 line, or it starts on the second line, despite all of those enlightening, 396 00:24:00.020 --> 00:24:00.640 significant, and fascinating things that we've seen in the book, it's a very interesting book. 397 00:24:00.640 --> 00:24:04.140 Studies of sexual behavior in the bonobos and the red-winged blackbirds, 398 00:24:04.360 --> 00:24:08.600 claiming to offer important insights into the nuances of human coupling, 399 00:24:09.460 --> 00:24:15.760 hearkening back to some remote evolutionary past for social explanations, does seem to be a 400 00:24:15.760 --> 00:24:21.460 smokescreen for other agendas. And that's the deeply held suspicion that somehow, if you're 401 00:24:21.460 --> 00:24:27.060