The Sacred Beasts (14 page)

“That I can believe.”

“I found it very surprising, even shocking. We are from different
generations, though. This study actually implies that the oppression American
gay people receive from heterosexuals is less destructive than the oppression
of heterosexual women by men. The authors of this research have even argued
that the power and status differences in heterosexual marriage are not
biologically determined and can be freely changed
because
of the example
of gay couples. My favorite example is the long-term lesbian relationship
between the anthropologists Margaret Meade and Ruth Benedict, both of whom I
read when I was in high school. Meade said publicly that while she was
bisexual, it was the ‘sweetness,’ gentleness and nurturing quality of her
relationships with women that made her prefer women. It was probably the same
for Ruth Benedict. The most famous anthropologist at Columbia University at the
time, she was denied full professor status by her male colleagues.

“The other area in which we have actual scientific information
concerns human sexuality: we know that men and women are radically different,
to say the least, but not in the expected ways. Women without exception are
bisexual whereas men are either gay or straight, never bisexual. The very
recent research I am referring to, and it has been replicated, involves asking
male and female subjects to describe their sexuality as gay, straight or
bisexual, then presenting these subjects with film footage that is heterosexual
or homosexual in content and measuring the actual changes in their genitals
with in-place equipment. The researchers also asked these subjects to report
how turned on they were by the visuals to determine how accurately they could
discern and label their own sexual arousal. The results of this research’s last
portion were unexpected and very fascinating.

“Men described their sexual arousal accurately if they originally
labeled themselves as gay or straight, the clear majority. The men who labeled
themselves as bisexual were in fact gay, according to the physical data. Women,
on the other hand, described their sexual arousal accurately only if they
labeled themselves bisexual or lesbian. Women who labeled themselves as
straight, the majority, always described themselves as more turned on by heterosexual
visuals than they were, and less turned on by lesbian and gay male visuals than
they were. In other words, women are actually bisexual, with only the
minority—lesbian and bisexual women—in the know.”

“I must say, I know plenty of women in Paris who don’t want to
know about that research,” Sylvie says, laughing.

“And this in the international capital of love! In fact, nearly
the whole world doesn’t want to know about it; but with a little courage and a
lot of chutzpah, we will continue our quest for the truth. The truth is that
the sexiest visual of all for straight-labeled men and women was film footage
of an attractive nude woman doing calisthenics on a beach.”

Sylvie dissolves into helpless laughter. “So I
do
have
something in common with men! Go on lecturing. This may be the most amazing
bedtime story yet.”

“Well, after that one you gave me . . . I should add, since I am
lecturing, that this recent research is superior to the famous (or notorious)
research of the past; like Kinsey’s in the 1950s, which only interviewed people
on a questionnaire, and Masters and Johnson in the 60s, who did use equipment
to measure genitals, but mainly their own.

“Now then, where on earth does this sexuality—real and
feigned—come from, and why haven’t we figured it out after some ten thousand
years of civilization? We must look to the chimps again for the answer. As I
told you when I met you, two chimp species are closest to us genetically of all
animals: the bonobos, who are small and arboreal, and the more familiar chimp
species, which is much larger and can live on the ground. The behavior of these
two species could not be more different: they are virtually the reverse of one
another.

“The bonobos are bisexual and more highly sexual generally. They
are matriarchal, and high-ranking females resolve all disputes. With males and
females similar in size, they are less hierarchical, more empathetic, and much
less violent. There are other differences as well: they have larger brains and
greater intelligence as well as more language facility. They walk upright more
easily though, being arboreal, their feet look more like hands. The other chimp
species, living partly on the ground, is patriarchal, heterosexual, extremely
violent and hierarchical, the males much larger than the females. The males
spend most of their time plotting how to increase their rank in the male chimp
hierarchy, become violent when their status is challenged, and must be dominant
over all females to remain in the group.”

“I must say, that behavior sounds awfully familiar. Not the
violence necessarily, since it’s illegal, but all that power play and
domineering. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything else from men.”

“Personally, I find that many men change over
time. Right now, every man you meet starts courting you, which does not
necessarily draw out the best. Most women and many older men are generally
empathetic, responsible and little prone to violence. However, when we apply
what we know about chimps to our human world, we find the unexpected at every
turn.

“Since the human genome has been sequenced, we know that we share
the affiliative portion of the genome, controlling much group behavior, with
the bonobo, not the other chimp. We also know that the tendency to be liberal
or conservative politically is genetic. Let’s think about that a bit. We know
that we share nearly ninety-nine percent of our genetic endowment with these
two chimp species, yet we are closer to the bonobo in group behavior. Of
course, you would never know it from the world we live in: it is clearly
patriarchal, heterosexual and prone to violence, not the reversed life of the
bonobo that is matriarchal, bisexual and non-violent. What can be interfering
with our strongest genetic predispositions? I think you’ve already seen one very
considerable result in the sexuality research: most men know when they are and
are not sexually aroused and most women do not. Obviously, women are conforming
to patriarchal values rather than expressing or acknowledging their actual
nature even to themselves.

“Since political liberalism and conservatism are also genetic,
let’s think about them in terms of the chimp traits we are considering. I think
the clearest examples of political conservatism exist in the U.S. and in the
poorest parts of the world—Africa and the Islamic countries without oil
revenue. Europe, Canada and New Zealand are probably the most liberal.
Political conservatism, like the other chimp species, is less empathetic and
more rigidly hierarchical. It supports the wealthy at the top of the hierarchy
at the expense of the middle class and the disadvantaged, toward which it feels
little or no empathy. Given the progress of science and technology, I have no
doubt that human beings would have eliminated poverty and most preventable disease
long ago, but for the influence of political conservatism. Mirroring the other
chimp species but extant in the human world, political conservatism also
defends patriarchal and heterosexual values. Conservatives make every effort to
legislate or otherwise oppress a woman’s right to control the functioning of
her own body as well as opposing gay civil rights, even protection from hate
crime murder. Conservatism also refuses to allow its views to be questioned by
science, even to the point of trying to prevent evolution from being taught in
public schools. Men are more frequently conservative than women. If this is a
genetic trait, its origin lies in the other chimp species.

“So, we can now define political liberalism in terms of chimp
traits. Liberals are obviously less rigidly hierarchical and more empathetic.
They support strong government programs to help the poor and disadvantaged as
well as maintaining an accessible economic ladder into the middle and upper
classes through universal education. They are much more likely to support
equality for women and gay civil rights. They’re often called the ‘mommy party’
in the U.S. since they favor warfare, or group violence, less frequently. They
also engage in far less violence of the personal, daily variety that may be
quieter and subtler, manifesting itself as racism and xenophobia. Women are
more often liberals. If this attitude is genetic, it displays our endowment
from the bonobos, as does women’s sexuality.

“My greatest concern is that these two genetic predispositions are
at war with one another in our time, which is one of worldwide crises such as
global warming and nuclear proliferation, crises that cry out for the
collective will to find solutions. I have been living in the U.S. for the last
several decades, and I have seen the rise of political conservatism in union
with evangelical churches as a truly horrifying anti-intellectual force that
has succeeded in decimating responsible economic development as well as the
national political discourse that might have led to our vanished collective
will. It has even weakened the progress of science and technology when it is
only they, united with economic enterprise and political accord, that can solve
our problems. In fact, teaching in the U.S. for so many years made me feel as
though I were living in a third-world country, as though the eighteenth-century
Enlightenment vanished shortly after the drafting of the Constitution; whereas,
in obvious contrast, the creation of the American constitution was a joint effort
of intelligent and egalitarian collective political will that clearly shows all
of the ideals of the Enlightenment. The end result, as we find today, is moral
paralysis in the face of the greatest man-made threat to human life and nature
that has ever arisen. The liberal element of our genetic endowment, with its
non-violent resolution of conflict, is clearly . . .”

“Whoa, wait! Just you wait. Didn’t you once tell me that female
bonobos resolved disputes with sex? Is that what you are advocating?”

“The bonobo research does strongly suggest that we can make love
and therefore not war. I don’t know of research that examines whether highly
violent, domineering cultures, countries and periods of history are more
sexually repressive but my guess is yes, they are. There will be a strong
positive correlation. I think this is one of the most striking differences
between Europe today, which is relatively permissive sexually and reluctant to
engage in warfare or militaristic resolution of conflict and, on the other
hand, the U.S., which is the reverse—sexually repressive, war-like, and
domineering.

“However, I am also interested in empathy and non-violent conflict
resolution, intellectual and emotional skills of the bonobos. With more of
these, women and liberal men may have unusual abilities in business and
politics, enterprises in which women still encounter much discrimination and
political liberalism is weak or non-existent. In fact, I doubt whether politics
and industry can ever be responsible and ethical enough to support a long-term
or higher purposes without leading roles for women and liberal men. Of course,
politics and business, utilizing the best scientific information available, are
the only means we have of solving the problems now endangering human civilization
and the planet. Cultures that subjugate women and exclude liberal men from
power, refusing to use their skills—Africa and the Islamic countries—are the
least developed and most consistently violent parts of the world. That’s no
coincidence. You can begin to see this working in studies of the effectiveness
of foreign aid to these countries. If the money is given to women, ninety-some
percent will be reinvested in the family and community. If it is given to men,
only thirty-some percent is reinvested in family and community.”

“Then you are a female supremacist, are you not?”

“Not really. At this moment in the evolution of civilization,
greater power in the hands of one gender injures the other, true enough. But
this is neither necessary nor inevitable: it is an artifact of the system
designed by violent early patriarchy. Strangely enough, I suspect the U.S. is
close to reversing gender roles in terms of opportunity. Girls now graduate
from college more frequently than boys. The higher performance male students
once displayed in math on national aptitude tests has disappeared. Women also
now receive more Ph.Ds in the social and natural sciences than men. There is
even research demonstrating that the reason women don’t earn more Ph.Ds than
men in engineering and hard science is the result of their superior range of
abilities and greater number of professional alternatives rather than inferior
ability or interest. Of course, business and politics lag behind academics so
we are still moving rapidly toward a global catastrophe.”

“OK, OK. Let me put it this way: why am I not living in a tree,
looking for a lover—male or female—who looks like a bonobo chimpanzee? Why
don’t I wish you were covered with fur?”

“I am certainly not saying that instinct trumps learning in all
cases. The most dangerous parts of our chimp genetic endowment come into play
when we encounter intractable problems in which we can’t seem to learn from
experience: poverty and inequity; racism and xenophobia; sexism and homophobia;
war, terrorism and nuclear proliferation; and environmental destruction. The
intractability of problems like these shows the presence of old ape behavior
that we have not discerned and understood clearly enough to change our ways and
solve our problems.”