I have been enjoying the recent book by Frans de Waal called Different: Gender through the Eyes of a Primatologist (Norton, 2022). In my previous blog entry about de Waal, I discussed de Waal's perspective on status hierarchies and egalitarianism. Here I will tackle the main topic of his book: gender and sex.
de Waal threads a tricky path through a topic that is politically charged. de Waal strongly distances himself from those thinkers who would argue, first, that men are, in some fundamental sense, superior to women and, second, that our legal structures should reflect that fact. He uses as a negative example the influential study published in the 1930s by the primatologist Solly Zuckerman called Monkey Hill. The Monkey Hill study seemed to imply that humans, if left to their primate nature, would create a society where life is brutish, nasty, and short. de Waal shows that primates do not generally behave that way, and that the observations from primatology do not limit human nature to the Monkey Hill stereotype. He is inclined toward a more liberal interpretation of the data from primatology. Despite this liberal leaning, de Waal insists that there really are biologically-derived sex differences among us. The title of his book is, after all, Different.
Some thinkers who are opposed to the ideological position of male superiority go so far as to deny that biology has anything to do with human gender. de Waal argues that this position is also extreme and flat out wrong. An example that de Waal uses is Judith Butler's claim from the 1980s that gender is not a (biological) fact but a social construct. de Waal gives many examples from both humans and other primates to show that, in fact, biology matters a great deal. Most of the book probes the relationship of biological nature and cultural nurture. He argues that primates mature so slowly so that their young can learn a complex culture. Our biological nature is to be culturally nurtured. One thesis he puts forward is that among primates the young are attracted to imitate adults of their own sex, and they take on gender roles through self-socialization, not through explicit instruction.
de Waal contrasts humans with those primates to which humans are most closely related: the chimpanzees and the bonobos. [Note: de Waal uses the term hominid to refer to humans, chimps, and bonobos. I think paleontologists would have an issue with that label.] Chimps have a patriarchal and sometimes violent society, while bonobos have a more peaceful, matriarchal society. Even within the more male-dominated chimp social groups, females exert political power and show leadership.
For example, within the group of chimpanzees at the Burgers' Zoo, the alpha female Mama was looked to by the others as the actor who had the interests of the group as a whole most at heart, a group function which de Waal calls the "control role." Warring males within that group would seek Mama out to effect reconciliation.
de Waal agrees (at least in part) with the fundamental conceptual division that is the basis of modern gender studies; namely, that one can differentiate biological sex from socially-defined gender roles. "Gender refers to the learned overlays that turn a biological female into a woman and a biological male into a man" (12). He acknowledges the diversity of sex and gender, such as those persons who are intersex or transsexual, but he maintains, "Nevertheless, for the majority of people, gender and sex are congruent. Despite their different meanings, these two terms remain joined at the hip" (13). In this way, he diverges from gender theorists who believe that gender is completely divorced from sex. Because gender in most cases is intimately linked to the biological fact of sex, de Waal argues that gender is not entirely socially constructed. Margaret Mead is often seen as the originator of the 'gender is cultural' concept, so de Waal quotes from Mead's writings to show her support for his position.
One of de Waal's novel arguments in this debate comes from the study of transsexuals: "The existence of transgender people challenges the notion of gender as an arbitrary social construct. Gender roles may be cultural products, but gender identity itself seems to arise from within" (56). He argues that gender identity is strongly formed early in a person's development and that the existence of transsexuals refutes Butler's social construct theory.
de Waal is sympathetic to the concern about gender inequality, but he rejects the idea that the way to achieve gender equality is to claim that gender is a choice. The focus of efforts toward equality need to be on the second word in the phrase: inequality. "Whether the push for gender equality will succeed doesn't hinge on the outcome of the eternal debate about real or imagined sex differences. Equality doesn't require similarity" (14).
de Waal's perspective is important for evolutionary psychologists and therefore evolutionary literary critics because gender and sexuality are important components of those fields, and he critiques their treatment with deep observational experience. He directly criticizes naive versions of the theory of sexual strategies, which he refers to as the Bateman's Principle. He strongly criticizes the Thornhill and Palmer theory about of rape as a natural phenomenon. While he insists that biology, including in-born tendencies shaped by evolution, is important, he also emphasizes that behavior is highly flexible and dependent on context, especially cultural context.
In the last chapter, (pages 310-311) de Waal lists human psychological patterns that do seem to be strongly governed by our evolutionary biology and those that do not seem to be. For those behaviors that are strongly biologically based, he argues that they are not stereotypical but archetypical. In this category, females are more nurturing of young, and males are more status-oriented and violent. Behaviors that other theorists have attributed to biology, but which do not seem to be, include: leadership skills, tendencies to form status hierarchies, tendencies toward sexual promiscuity, and competitiveness.
de Waal argues that humans do have unique aspects of our evolutionary psychology that are not shared by even our closest primate cousins. First, he argues that pair-bonded male-female relationships are part of our biology. "I believe it is this pair-bond that sets us apart from the apes more than anything else" (275). Second, he points out that it is not rare among many species of primates for females to cooperate with one another, but it is rare for males to do so. "Male teamwork is a hallmark of human society" (231).
de Waal discusses the fact that there are deep and subconscious differences in how all people treat women and men. The people who know this fact best are transsexuals who have experienced interpersonal behavior first as one gender and then as the other. He describes some of their observations but then emphasizes that this discussion is not an endorsement of the biased behavior they describe. "Instead, it highlights how deeply primate sexual dimorphism sticks in our subconscious" (252). One example de Waal offers of this deep inequality is a trolley problem experiment in which the subject can imagine pushing a man or a woman onto the trolley tracks to save five other people. Ninety percent of both sexes would prefer to push the man rather than the woman (180). Women may suffer indignities such as not be taken seriously in a debate in part because of their high-pitched voices, but men are the preferred sex for cannon fodder.
One of the book's theses is that a diversity of sexual orientations and sexual identities are natural. de Waal devotes one entire chapter to the bonobos, whose social groups feature a high degree of female-female sex, and he has a later chapter on same-sex sex throughout the natural world. He rejects the claim that this is unnatural. With regard to sexual identity, he cites research that suggests that, in some transsexuals, brain development leads to brain structures similar to the other sex, thereby indicating a biological basis for a transsexual's early and strongly held perception that he or she has a gender other than their sex.
The final chapter of the book discusses philosophical dualism, the idea that the mind and body are fundamentally separate. de Waal rejects this philosophical position. He believes that it comes from male orientation toward the world. "This dualism is quintessentially masculine, concerned less with the human mind than with the male mind" (313). He finds it ironic that second-wave feminists, by arguing that gender is a social construct, have adopted a form of masculine dualism. Gina Rippon once protested against arguments from biology by saying "Not those bloody monkeys again!" de Waal's response is, yes, those bloody monkeys again.
