Archive for the ‘gender’ Category
Face it, same-sex marriage law will affect the religious freedom to discriminate
The former Prime Minister of Australia, Tony Abbott, has said recently that if you’re for religious freedom and against political correctness, you should vote no to – same-sex marriage, gay marriage, marriage equality, or whatever way you want to frame the issue.
As far as I’m aware, this isn’t Abbott’s argument, because an argument has to be argued for, with something like premisses and a conclusion. It’s simply a statement, or a pronouncement, much like the pronouncement made on the same topic by another former PM, Julia Gillard, that she was opposed to same-sex marriage. She would subsequently say that ‘her position was clear’ on the matter, and such remarks appeared to substitute for an argument.
Now we shouldn’t necessarily expect our political leaders to talk like philosophers, but I do think we should expect something more from them than bald pronouncements. Gillard, when subjected to some minuscule pressure on the issue, did say, as I recall, that marriage had always been recognised as being between a man and a woman, and she saw no reason to change it. Of course, as arguments go, this is rather weak, amounting, as it seems, to an objection to change of any kind. You could say, for example, that houses have always been made of wood, so there’s no need to change to any other building material.
What was more troubling about Gillard’s justification, though, was what was left unsaid. It is true that in Australia, marriage has always been recognised as between a man and a woman, though that situation has changed recently in a number of other countries. It’s also true, though it wasn’t referred to by Gillard, that through almost the entire history of male-female marriage in Australia and elsewhere, homosexuals have been tortured, murdered, executed, imprisoned, vilified, loathed and scorned, and treated as beyond the pale, with a few notable exceptions of place and time. So during this long history, the question of same-sex marriage has hardly been prominent in the minds of homosexuals or their detractors.
So I return to Tony Abbott’s pronouncement. I want to see if I can turn it into something like an argument. A no vote supports religious freedom and strikes against political correctness. I’ll take the last part first. What is political correctness? Other pundits are also, I note, asking that question. All that can be said with certainty is that Abbott considers it a bad thing. It’s, not, therefore (at least in his mind) ‘correctness’, which carries much the same meaning as ‘rightness’, as in a correct answer. Political correctness somehow negates or inverts correctness, but it’s not at all clear how this is so. I can only surmise that he thinks that something that’s correct ‘politically’ is actually incorrect or not correct. So the word ‘political’ must mean ‘not’. So then I’d have to wonder why Abbott ever became a politician. In any case, I’m left wondering how this odd term can apply to the matter at hand, which is whether to allow gay couples the freedom to marry as other couples do. The ‘political correctness’ question is an obscure and rather tedious semantic quibble, while same-sex marriage is a serious issuing affecting many peoples’ lives, so I won’t pursue the ‘political correctness’ gambit any further.
Abbott’s main point, presumably, is that same-sex marriage adversely affects religious freedom. So how, exactly, would the marriage of people who happen to be of the same gender affect religious freedom? The essential argument is that, since the hierarchy of the Catholic Church, for example, is opposed to same sex marriage, and homosexuality in general, individuals Catholics who happen to be homosexual, and who wish to marry their loved one and don’t wish to abandon their faith, may seek to use the law to force, or try to force, the Catholic Church to marry them. And of course this isn’t just a problem for Catholicism. The Anglican hierarchy tends to be more liberal, but we know that it isn’t uniformly so, and some segments of it are as arch as the most conservative Catholics. And then there’s Islam (and other religions). Of course it would be rare indeed to find practicing Moslems, here or elsewhere, who are openly gay and wanting to marry, but it’s likely that such people do exist, given humanity’s weird and wonderful diversity.
This is in fact an interesting conundrum. The website for marriage equality in Australia has this to say:
No religious institution can be forced to marry a lesbian or gay couple against their beliefs (in much the same way as certain religious bodies cannot be forced to marry people who are divorced).
This seems an overly confident assumption, since the issue has yet to be tested, and it surely will, as it is apparently being tested in the USA by gay couples.
A weaker point being made by the religious is that they will be persecuted for upholding the traditional view of marriage against the new law. But this might be said for anyone who holds a minority view. Clearly, when same-sex marriage law comes into being, it will be supported by the majority of Australians. Indeed it will become law largely because it’s supported by the majority, and the majority is likely to increase, though this is never guaranteed. People who hold the minority view will have to argue for it, and should expect others to argue against it. This isn’t persecution. I personally don’t think they have any strong arguments for their views, which clearly discriminate against homosexuals. Being called out for that discriminatory view, isn’t persecution IMHO.
Having said this, I agree with the conservative journalist Paul Kelly that same-sex marriage law inevitably pits church against state, and that the various religious groups’ freedom to discriminate against homosexuals is at stake. This is, in the west, a part of our growing secularisation against religions that are largely mired in outmoded social conventions. This clash has been going on for some time and is set to continue. The outcome, I think, is inevitable, but it will be a slow, painstaking process.
a smart ploy, with serious overtones for gender equality
This is serious, mum: striking a blow for common-sense and against gender-regulated dress-codes. CREDIT: DEVON LIVE / SWNS.COM
I heard an amusing story on the morning news about young male students in England protesting the absurd imposition of a strict long trousers dress code in all weathers at some local high school, where the girls, of course, are allowed – or rather, required – to wear skirts. It reminded me of my days in high school in the early seventies when we were gathered together, boys on one side, girls on the other, to hear our deputy head launch a tirade against ‘long, scruffy hair’. Of course, he was talking only about boys, who henceforth were banned from having hair below the collar. Of course I couldn’t help but notice that all the girls’ hair, of indeterminate scruffiness, hung below that level. I also noted with interest that the deputy head was completely bald.
More than forty years on I still fume at that arbitrary diktat, such is my rabid anti-authoritarianism, but of course I didn’t then have the courage, or the power, to make a protest. Forty-odd years on and these English schoolboys have staged a protest that’s magnificently rebellious, non-violent, eye-catching, intelligent and humorous, by coming to school in the standard uniform – for girls. Interestingly, the media were on hand to capture the spectacle and to interview the lads, who were articulate and positive about the comfort and style of their skirts. The media presence suggests to me the collusion of parents, and a deal of planning leading up to the big day….
So Dr Google reveals that the boys were from Isca Academy in Exeter, Devon, and accompanying photos reveal the boys’ obvious delight in their ploy. I sincerely hope it was entirely their idea. The protest has had immediate effect, with a new policy on shorts to be adopted ‘subject to consultation’. The problem with this is that there’s a heatwave on now in England, so the boys likely won’t be allowed their shorts until the hot weather is over. I’m hoping they’ll continue with their skirts while the heatwave lasts. That would be the most logical and practical solution. However, the gender-segregating stupidity of our general society, never mind the petty regulations of what looks to be a conservative, elitist Devon school, will probably not permit that. The school itself is using climate change as an excuse for a permanent withdrawal of its long-trousers rule, rather than admitting that the rule is idiotic at any time – though perhaps no more idiotic than most dress rules that segregate the genders.
It seems like a minor issue, but I don’t think so. It goes to the heart of gender equality. Dress codes that clearly separate the genders – and I’m leaving aside the LBGTQ etc minefield – are never a good idea. And this of course includes hairstyle codes. For a start there’s the impracticality. Both codes would have to be equally flexible to suit weather conditions as well as working conditions, and to suit personal choice. It would be manifestly unfair, for example, to restrict the length of boys’ hair when girls’ hair length is unrestricted. And it would be manifestly unfair to impose trousers on boys and skirts on girls when weather conditions will differentially affect the genders because of their uniforms, not to mention differentially affecting their freedom to engage in a range of other activities, for example in the rough and tumble of the playground. To manage this flexibility with two separate, and highly differentiated dress codes, would be virtually impossible. Not to mention that this stark separation doesn’t represent the reality of gender. Neurological studies reveal that there’s no categorical difference between the male and the female brain, only statistical differences, and the variation within female brains and within male brains is far greater than the difference between the genders. This should be seen in our choice of clothing too, but I think we’re still constrained too much by myths of masculinity and femininity, even in our casual dress. We need to keep working on it.
There’s another, more important issue, though, about highly differentiated male/female dress codes. When you have stark differences like these there are always associated values. Differences in type are generally seen as differences in quality. For example, a dress, of whatever design, is rarely viewed in the same businesslike way as long trousers or a suit. Suits radiate a kind of standardised, more or less faceless power, and women rarely wear them and are certainly not encouraged to do so. Of course it’s hard to say what came first – the suit, which then invests the male with power, or the male, who invests the suit with power – but it seems to me the power differential is real, and a more diverse dress code, best encouraged from early childhood, would help to break that down.
And this brings me, finally, to a hot-button issue: the burqa, and also the niqab and other variants. Many of the discussions around banning the burqa have to do with issues such as identification, but this misses the clear-cut point that the burqa, in particular, is a cultural symbol of female inferiority, and nothing else. That’s all it is. That’s what it’s for. And cultures that treat women in this way, with or without their own collusion, are in violation of basic human rights. Cultures that impose the burqa will try to present arguments for its use that are as reasonable as they can possibly make them to a global audience, but they can’t argue with the evidence that the women in those cultures have far less freedom, opportunities and power than the men.
This is the point, for me. Some cultures are better than others, and the best cultures are those more in harmony with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the human values that underpin that declaration. The best cultures are also those most in keeping with what science and history tell us about human nature – and they tell us a lot. If we didn’t have cartloads of information about what kinds of culture or society allow us to thrive, we wouldn’t be able to develop analyses such as the OECD better life index, which currently measures 38 countries through 11 parameters including jobs, safety, community, education, environment and life satisfaction. Australia currently ranks second behind Norway, after being number one for three consecutive years (the OECD is headquartered in Paris).
In December last year, in an article titled “Why Australia needs a debate on the burqa ban”, Andrew Macleod, a business leader, speaker and commentator, wrote ‘I believe every culture can set the customs and norms that they wish.’ This is, of course, fair enough, it’s like saying ‘I believe everyone has a right to their own opinion’, but that doesn’t mean every opinion has to be respected, or is worthy of respect. Particular customs and norms can and should be challenged. Macleod, in his article, takes the ‘when in Rome’ view. You should adapt your behaviour and practice to the norms of the country you’re visiting or living in. I would follow that advice too, but not out of respect – merely out of survival. I wouldn’t want to land up in a foreign jail or be beaten half to death by an angry mob. More importantly – and it’s easy for me because I’m poor and can rarely afford to travel anyway! – I would research any country before visiting it, to ensure that it has customs and laws worthy of respect. I’ve often been urged by friendly students to go and visit their native countries, but, not being a businessman or a seasoned traveller, I haven’t the slightest interest in visiting a country that doesn’t uphold basic human rights, even for a day.
Of course I can’t, and wouldn’t want to, stop people from other countries visiting Australia, and I don’t think an outright ban on the burqa would be a good idea, though I think sensible laws relating to such apparel in certain situations should be enacted. I’d want to ensure also that there is vetting – not to ensure conformity with ‘Australian values’, but in conformity with global human values and rights. You can’t, and shouldn’t try to, coerce people into espousing such values. We need to show by example the value of such values. The OECD only measures 38 countries, and they’re mostly western countries with market economies and established democratic institutions – advanced countries as they’re called. We’re internationally recognised as one of the best of them, and should be able to advertise ourselves as a country whose values are worth adopting, without resort to the breast-beating nationalism that too many Americans, and Australians, indulge in (and such values have nothing discernible to do with speaking near-perfect English).
Do I look too modest in this? Clothing to make the heart sink
on the long hard road to femocracy
Recently, a list of Australia’s 200 richest people was published. It’s been widely reported that of those 200, only 22 were women; just over 10% – a figure that has apparently held good for some years. But while this is a useful first indication of wealth imbalance along gender lines, it would pay to look more closely at the figures, though this is hard to do, given the secrecy surrounding the wealth of some, and the complexities surrounding and conditioning the wealth of others. Quite a few of these wealthy women appear to be heiresses or ‘sleeping partners’ (in a business sense, but who knows?) rather than active business types, and even leaving this aside, I’m pretty sure that if I could do the maths on all these fortunes, the figure for women would amount to considerably less than 10% of the whole.
These are the Australian figures. Would anybody dare to suggest that the figures for female wealth in China, say, would be any better? (information on wealth in China, like just about any other information from China, is virtually impossible to obtain). Or in Russia – currently rated (by New World Wealth) as the nation with the most unequal distribution of wealth in the world? Just as a guess, I’d expect, or at least hope, that the US and some European nations might be ahead of Australia in terms of female wealth, but if so it surely wouldn’t be by much. Ask a group of students who’s the richest man in the world and you’d get a few unsurprising answers, enthusiastically proclaimed. Ask them about the richest woman, and you’d get puzzled looks as they wonder why you asked such a question.
I’m no economist, and wealth per se isn’t an interest of mine, and I’m much more concerned to get women into leadership positions in science and politics, but clearly having 95% or more of the world’s wealth in the hands of the more fucked-up gender is a big problem, and a huge obstacle to the dethronement of patriarchy.
While I’m not pretending this might happen in the near future, it seems to me that the ultimate solution lies in women’s best weapon – collaboration, or ganging up. The pooling of resources – financial, intellectual, practical, even sexual. I’m not talking about war here, but I am talking about a struggle for power, a slow, persevering struggle built of connections and networks, transcendent of nation, culture, class and age. A struggle not against men but against patriarchy. A struggle which, with ultimate success, will leave all of us winners. You may say I’m a dreamer, but why is a world dominated by woman so absurd when a world dominated by men, the fucked-up world we have now, is apparently not?
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/09/01/russia-is-the-most-unequal-major-country-in-the-world-study.html
scumbags behaving badly – not quite a comedy
Vlad the Imp, celebrated poofter-basher and journalist-killer
Jacinta: Let’s talk about power. Imbecilic and nasty macho rulers have disgraced our planet for centuries, and their female counterparts have been few and far between. Let’s take a look at some current fruitcakes.
Canto: I wouldn’t say imbecilic – people who get to these positions always have smarts, but often not the kind of smarts that we hopeful underlings value. Okay, let’s go to Poland. Andrzej Duda is Poland’s President, though not its King. That title belongs to another dude, who’s been dead for near on 2000 years (and some say he never existed), and that dude’s mum is Queen. Both in perpetuity, presumably. It’s not known exactly what powers have been conferred on this duo, but a recent ceremony installing the new but very old King, and attended by Duda, gives an indication. During the ceremony, this statement was made:
Rule us, Christ! Reign in our homeland and reign in every nation – for the greater glory of the Most Holy Trinity and the salvation of mankind.
I’m not sure how Poland’s neighbours have responded to this clear threat to their sovereignty, but surely the international community should be on high alert about Poland’s intention to conquer the world via this apparently indestructible dictator (it seems their Queen owes her status solely to being the King’s mum). We shouldn’t let the ambitions of ISIS entirely dominate our thoughts at this time. Duda is, needless to say, a devotee of the most patriarchal organisation in the western world, an organisation that has been intent on world domination since its formation.
Jacinta: And many women in the country are going bunta about the Catholic-diseased government’s plan to ban abortion outright and to impose heavy penalties on non-compliance. Though I should point out that the current PM of the ruling ‘Law and Justice’ Party (PiS) is female, and that’s where the real power lies. The President’s position is largely ceremonial.
Canto: Yeah, like the female cheerleaders for cloth bags in Islamic countries.
Jacinta: Yeah, chuck out the muslin, Muslims. Are they made of muslin? That’d be kind of poetic injustice, wouldn’t it.
Canto: Okay, let’s move south south-east now. Recep Erdogan is the current boss of Turkey, and hopes to be so until 2029. He’s a real macho, a former Islamist who saw the error of his ways after a spell in jail in 1998. Professing to be a moderate conservative, he created the Justice and Development Party (ADP) and led it to victory in a number of elections. So, after terms as Prime Minister he became President in 2014 and has since been expanding the power of that position, previously a ceremonial one.
Jacinta: Watch for any party with ‘justice’ and law’ in its title. They tend to be hard-liners. It’s unlikely that Turkey’s disgusting record of violence against women will improve under this bullish nationalist, who of course opposes abortion in all but the most extreme circs. Honour killing, sex slavery and domestic violence are massive problems in this country, where women are under-educated, under-employed, under-paid and under-valued. Turkey is, or was, keen to join the EU, but it’s opposition to admitting the truth about their Armenian genocide is just one of many obstacles. The position of women in Turkey is another. The recent failure to remove Erdogan seems to have hardened his sense of destiny, so he’ll be cracking down on all dissent and boosting his power in a typically macho way.
Canto: So now let’s head north again and vastly east to the supersized nation of Russia, spearheaded by Vlad the Imperator – not to be confused with the historical Vlad the Impaler, as there are some minor differences in their manner of disposing of their enemies.
Jacinta: Yeah, Vlad the Imp is another macho authoritarian leader unwilling to brook criticism or even scrutiny. Reporters without Borders has ranked the country 148th in terms of press freedom, and the deaths and silencings of independent journalists over the past twenty-odd years have underlined the brutal corruption within the Imp’s regime.
Canto: Sounds very Czarish. But at least women aren’t shat on quite so much there – unless they happen to be journalists.
Jacinta: Yes women are highly educated and highly integrated into the workforce, and two income families are the norm, but clearly the Imp’s a social conservative….
Canto: Right, so worse than your common or garden murderer then?
Jacinta: Well, as usual with these macho types, he’s dizzy with homophobia. He’s bosom buddies with a gang of thugs called the Night Wolves, whose principal raison d’etre is to smash the shit out of homosexuals.
Canto: Strange how some people make use of the only life they have on this planet.
Jacinta: So we seem to be in the grip of a wave of macho thuggery, and all we can do, sadly, is patiently chip away at it, through mockery, smart undermining, argument, evidence, and a kind of faith in a better world. Meanwhile, on with the horrowshow.
Canto: So we head south to China. Of course it has a sorry history of foot-binding and other forms of mistreatment, though probably no worse than elsewhere in the partiarchal past. China is now being transformed more rapidly than possibly any other country in history, and the world is waiting for its profoundly anti-communist government to rip apart at the seams, though there’s little sign of it as yet. The current General Secretary of China is Xi Jinping, a conservative hard-liner who relishes the abuse of human rights. Under him are the members of the standing committee of the Politburo, all men of course. While we know virtually nothing about these characters, we have fairly reliable information that the Chinese dictators slaughter more people annually than are killed by government decree in the whole of the rest of the world put together. In fact, I find China’s very lengthy record of human rights abuses too unbearable to read, and the Tiananmen Square massacre is still fresh and raw in my mind.
Jacinta: Okay so let’s reduce it to statistics – where does Reporters without Borders place China in terms of press freedom? And what about the treatment of homosexuals – always a good sign of macho infantilism?
Canto: China’s ranked at number 176 in terms of press freedom, out of 180 countries listed. Just above Syria, North Korea and other such havens. On the other hand, attitudes to homosexuality aren’t particularly hostile, though legal changes have a time lag on the west. Clearly the dictators don’t see it as a major threat – they don’t seem as murderously imbecilic as Vlad the Imp on the subject. So where next?
Jacinta: Well for our final stop let’s head further south to the Phillipines, whose molto-macho leader seems to love the headlines…
Canto: Actually, when I looked up macho Filipino pollies, the list of sites all dealt with one Ferdinand Marcos.
Jacinta: Interesting point – the current Prez of the Phillipines, a macho scumbag by the name of Rodrigo Duterte, is naturally a great supporter of scumbags of the past, and wanted to honour the former dictator – the second most corrupt polly of all time, just behind Scumbag Suharto, according to the anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International – with a state funeral, but due to receiving plenty of blowback in the country he opted to return the dead scumbag corpse in secret. Now, many argue that Duterte is a reformer who doesn’t belong to the any of the super-rich families who basically own the Phillipines, but his murderous war on drugs shows he’s no friend of the poor either. He has obviously given sweeping powers to the police – always a focus of macho brutality everywhere, with the odd honourable exception – with the inevitable corrupting result. Extra-judicial killings are now a daily occurrence in Filipino cities, and who knows what the death toll will end up being. He’s also flirting with martial law, but that’ll have to wait until his power is consolidated. I’ve no doubt, though, that that’s what he wants for his country.
Canto: He’ll sell his soul for total control?
Jacinta: It’s the ultimate macho fantasy, lived out by Attila, Genghis Khan, Nobunaga, Hideyoshi, Leopold II, Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler, Pavelic, Ho Chi Minh, Tito, Mao Zedong, Brezhnev, Kim Il Sung, Pinochet, Suharto, Amin, Pol Pot, Mobuto, Hussein, just to name a few.
Canto: Yeah, but let’s face it, women would be just as bad if they were allowed to live out their macho fantasies…
touching on the complex causes of male violence
A bout of illness and a general sense of despair about blogging has prevented me from posting here for a while. For my health and well-being I’ll try to get back on track. So here’s a brief post on my hobbyhorse of the moment.
It surprises me that people could try to argue with me about the violence of men compared to women, trying to explain it away in terms of physical size – I mean, really? And then, when this doesn’t fly, they point to individuals of established combativeness, the Iron Lady, Golda Meir, and why not mention Boadicea, or [place name of fave female serial killer here]?
And it really demoralises me when this argumentative cuss is a woman. I mean I love a feisty female but really…
It reminds me of a scenario from my not-so-youth, when I briefly hung out with a perverse young lass who insisted with unassailable feistiness that men were clearly more intelligent than women (by and large, presumably). It certainly made be wonder at how intelligence could be turned against itself. But was it intelligence, or something else?
But let’s get back to reality. Men are more violent than women in every country and every culture on the planet. This is a statistical fact, not a categorical, individual claim. Of course there are violent women and much less violent men. That isn’t the point. The point is that you cannot sheet this home to sexual dimorphism. Two examples will suffice. First, look at death and injury by road accident in the west – in countries where both men and women are permitted to drive. The number of males killed in road accidents is considerably higher than females in every western country. In Australia males are almost two and a half times more likely to die this way than females, and in some countries it’s more, but it’s everywhere at least double. The WHO has a fact sheet On this, updated in November 2016:
From a young age, males are more likely to be involved in road traffic crashes than females. About three-quarters (73%) of all road traffic deaths occur among men. Among young drivers, young males under the age of 25 years are almost 3 times as likely to be killed in a car crash as young females.
The second example is youth gangs, including bikie gangs. These are, obviously, predominantly male, their purpose is usually to ‘display manhood’ in some more or less brutal way, and, again obviously, they can’t be explained away in terms of size difference. Other causes need to be considered and studied, and of course, they have been. Some of these causes are outlined in Konner’s book, but I can’t detail them here because I’ve lent the book out (grrr). An interesting starting point for thinking about the social causes of male violence is found in a short essay by Jesse Prinz here. Prinz largely agrees with Konner on the role of agricultural society in sharpening the male-female division in favour of males, but I think he oversimplifies the differences in his tendency to apply social explanations, and he says nothing about gene expression and hormonal factors, which Konnor goes into in great detail. It seems to me that Prinz’s line of reasoning would not be able to account for the reckless, life-threatening behaviour of young male drivers, for example. While there is clearly something social going on there, I would contend that something biological is also going on. Or something in the biological-social nexus, if you will. Clearly, it’s a very complex matter, and if we can uncover hormonal or neurotransmissional causes, that doesn’t rule out social factors playing a regulatory role in those causes. Social evolution, we’re finding, can change biology much more quickly than previously thought.
women in science, solutions, and why nobody reads my blog, among other things
Okay I’ve written facetiously about getting rid of men, or seriously (but facetiously) reducing their proportion of the populace, but in future I want to look at real solutions to a problem that I think is already being addressed but far too patchily and slowly – the problem of male power and dominance. The general solution, of course, is the ascent of woman, to paraphrase Jacob Bronowski via Darwin, and how to promote and quicken it. (Incidentally I’ve just discovered that ‘The Ascent of Woman’ is a four part documentary on women’s history, recently produced for the BBC by Dr Amanda Foreman – look forward to watching it).
However, before continuing I want to issue a plea for help. My blog, which I’ve been writing for many years now, has never had much of a readership, due probably to my inability to network, or even communicate much with others (I’d rather not think it’s anything to do with my writing skills). However, last month even that minuscule readership virtually collapsed, as I recorded my lowest number of hits since my first month of blogging. I’ve soldiered on, but now at the end of September I find this month’s numbers even worse. I feel I need to make a decision about the blog’s future – How do I increase the numbers? Does the blog need a makeover? Can I blame the attention-span of others? I find if I write short pieces, they don’t really cover anything in depth, but I know also that the in-depth pieces, the ones I work on hardest, often get the least attention. Should I just give up and go back to journal writing? At least that way I won’t be faced with the world’s indifference…
Anyway, enough about me – it’s interesting that when you start focusing on an issue, you hear about it everywhere, everybody seems to be talking about it. Today, listening to a podcast of the ABC Science Show, I heard that teenagers are our biggest killers, worldwide, predominantly through motor vehicle accidents. And of course we’re talking largely of male teenagers. The researcher announcing this was female, and, typical female, she was complaining about us tackling this old problem (this has been the global situation for some sixty years) in the same old piecemeal way, rather than though global collaboration in researching and trying to figure out workable solutions to what is clearly a global problem. It was clear from this passionate speaker (and mother of teenage children) that with more females leading research in this and other fields, we’ll get more collaboration and quicker and more effective solutions. And when Robyn Williams, our honourable Science Show anchor, asked the researcher a double-barrelled question – is this teenage problem a male one, and should teenage boys be banned from driving? – her honourable response was ‘yes, and yes’.
The question is – would a law specifically targeting boys/young men as drivers ever be implemented? Of course, many males would describe it as discriminatory. And of course it does discriminate, because the statistics are clear. But why, a young male might ask, should I be treated as a statistic? I’m not like other young men.
It’s a valid point, and I can’t see an obvious way of screening out the potentially safe young men from the potentially dangerous ones. So all we could acceptably do is raise the driving age for all, preferably globally, which would effectively discriminate against the statistically safer drivers, the females. Still, I like the idea of a push, led in the main by women, for a discriminatory driving age policy backed by science. It would raise the profile of the issue, bring women together in an excellent cause, potentially save lives, and feature as another small episode in the ascent of women.
Of course it wouldn’t solve the terrible wee problem of young kids stealing cars and killing and maiming others and themselves for pumped-up kicks…
beyond feminism – towards a female supremacist society
Canto: I’ve decided to declare myself as a female supremacist.
Jacinta: Really? I thought you had nothing to declare but your genius. So you’ve come out at last?
Canto: Well it’s not as if I’ve been stifled in the closet for years. I’ve rarely thought about it before. I’ve always considered myself a feminist, but recently we’ve been looking at female-male differences, and it’s been making me feel we need more than just equality between the sexes.
Jacinta: You’ve got a hankering for that bonobo world, haven’t you? Females ganging up on you and soothing your aggressive macho emotions with a bit of sexual fourplay.
Canto: Well, yes and no. I first learned about bonobo society almost twenty years ago, and of course it excited me as a model, but then the complexity of human societies with all their cultural overlays made me feel I was naive to imagine a non-human society, without even its own language, could teach us how to improve our own. And the sex stuff in particular – well, that really got me in, but then it seemed too good to hope for. Too much self-serving wishful thinking, to model our society on a bunch of oversexed, indolent banana-eaters.
Jacinta: Do they have bananas in the Congo?
Canto: Absolutely. They have a town there on the Congo River, called Banana.
Jacinta: Oh wow, sounds like heaven. I love bananas. Let’s go there.
Canto: Anyway, now I’m thinking that a female-supremacist society is what we need today, though not necessarily based on bonobos….
Jacinta: That’s disappointing. I think it should be based on bonobos. Bonobos with language and technology and sophisticated theories about life, the universe and everything. Why not?
Canto: Well then they wouldn’t be bonobos. But do you want to hear my reasons for promoting female supremacy?
Jacinta: I probably know them already. Look at the male supremacist societies and cultures in the world – in Africa, in India, in the Middle East. They’re the most violent and brutish societies. We can’t compare them to female supremacist societies because there aren’t any, but we can look at societies where discrimination against women is least rampant, and those are today’s most advanced societies. It might follow that they’ll become even more enlightened and advanced if the percentage of female leaders, in business, politics and science, rises from whatever it is today – say 10% – to, say 90%.
Canto: Yes, well you’re pretty much on the money. It’s not just broader societies, it’s workplaces, it’s schools, it’s corporations. The more women are involved, especially in leadership roles, the more collaborative these places become. Of course I don’t deny female violence, in schools and at home, against children and partners and in many other situations, but on average in every society and every situation women are less violent and aggressive than men. In fact, all the evidence points to a female-supremacist society being an obvious solution for a future that needs to be more co-operative and nurturing.
Jacinta: So how are you going to bring about the female-supremacist revolution?
Canto: Not revolution, that’s just macho wankery. I’m talking about social evolution, and it’s already happening, though of course I’d like to see it speeded up. We’ll look at how things are changing and what we can hope for in some later posts. But the signs are good. The feminisation of our societies must continue, on a global level!
bonobos and us – lessons to be learnt
Let’s be sexy about this
Bonobos separated from chimps maybe less than a million years ago, according to some pundits. We haven’t yet been able to determine a more precise date for the split. So which species has changed more? Have chimps become more aggressive or have bonobos become more caring? Is there any way of finding out?
It’s not just about genes its about their expression. It will take some time to work all that out. Brain studies too will help, as we move towards scanning and exploring brains more effectively and less invasively.
But surely we seek not just to understand the bonobo world but to change our own. Who wouldn’t want a world that was less violent, less exclusionary in terms of sex, more caring and sharing, without any loss of the dynamism and questing that has taken us to to the very brink of iphone7?
That last remark will date very quickly… Nah, I’ll leave it in.
So we can learn lessons, and of course we’re already on that path. Advanced societies, if that’s not too presumptuous a term, are less patriarchal than they’ve ever been, without losing any of their dynamism. On the contrary, it can easily be seen that the most male-supremacist societies in the world are also the most violent, the most repressive and the most backward. Some of those societies, as we know, have their backwardness masked by the fact that they have a commodity, oil, that the world is still addicted to, which has made the society so rich that their citizens don’t even have to pay tax. The rest of the world is supporting tyrannical regimes, which won’t change as long as they feel well-fed and secure. Not that I’d wish starvation and insecurity on anyone, but as Roland Barthes once said at one of his packed lectures, the people standing at the back who can’t hear properly and have sore feet must be wondering why they’re here.
Maybe a bit of discomfort, in the form of completely shifting away from fossil fuels for our energy needs haha, might bring certain Middle Eastern countries to a more serious questioning of their patriarchal delusions? Without their currently-valuable resource, they might wake to the fact that they need to become smarter. The women in those countries, so effective on occasion in forming coalitions to defend their inferior place in society, might be encouraged to use their collective power in more diverse ways. That could be how things socially evolve there.
Meanwhile in the west, the lesson of the bonobos would seem to be coalitions and sex. We’ve certainly arrived at an era where sexual dimorphism is irrelevant, except where women are isolated, for example in domestic situations. The same isolation also poses a threat to children. The bonobo example of coalitions and togetherness and sharing of responsibilities, and sexual favours (something we’re a long way from emulating, with our jealousies and petty rivalries) should be the way forward for us. Hopefully the future will see a further erosion of the nuclear family and a greater diversity of child-rearing environments, where single-parent families are far less isolated than they are today, and males want to help and support and teach children because they are children, not because they are their children…
bonobo society, or how to dominate males when you’re smaller
A BONOBO FAMILY IN A FOREST CLEARING IN WAMBA, ZAIRE.
CREDIT: 1996 FRANS LANTING
Bonobo society has been closely observed both in captivity and, with much greater difficulty, in the wild, and it’s worth comparing it to that of their close relatives, chimps. It’s clear that, though aggression does exist in bonobo society, it isn’t anywhere near as prevalent as in chimps. This is obviously related to the use, mentioned previously, of sex to reduce tension and aggression in situations which would normally lead to competitive activity. It’s the ‘make love not war’ social system that has caught the attention of many beyond ethological researchers.
Now, it’s clear that aggression in all primate societies comes predominantly from males. Looking at human societies, the statistics are universal. There is no human society on earth where the homicide and/or assault statistics are dominated by females as perpetrators. Up until very recently it was males who went to war, and today it’s overwhelmingly males who joing gangs, go hoon driving or join terrorist cells, just as in earlier times it was men who journeyed off to the adventure of the crusades or joined Boney’s army to devastate Europe. As Melvin Konner convincingly argues, this strongly indicates a biological or genetic basis for male aggression. Much of it seems to be about the expression in males of androgens, the male sex hormones. Now with the way we’re going today in genetics and biochemistry we may in the future be able to tweak the production of androgens to offer a biological solution to male violence – which is already in decline in developed countries. However, their are other solutions, and Bonobo society represents one.
Bonobo society is very close-knit. Male bonobos develop close lifelong ties with their mothers. There’s no relationship with the father, who’s unknown, as the females engage in sex with multiple partners more or less indiscriminately. Of course males will compete with other males for sexual partners, but even this aggression is damped down by sexual relations between males. It’s as if the button has been found to switch off escalating aggression, and that button is connected to the genitals. It would be intriguing to discover what’s going on in the brain, with neurotransmitters and hormones, during this rise and fall of aggressive emotions.
Sex doesn’t just reduce aggression though. It virtually creates the bonobo social structure. As with chimps, bonobos have a fission-fusion society, breaking off into smaller ‘unit’ groups for hunting and foraging in the forest and coming together in larger groups at other times. Individual associations, apart from the mother-offspring dependency, are casual and changeable. However, the larger group, or community, has its limit, and keeps itself separate from other bonobo communities. Another feature of bonobo society is that females emigrate from their birth groups at around 8 years of age, moving to group of virtual strangers, where they have to work to build relationships, particularly with older females. The female-female bond is a central feature of bonobo society and these bonds become much stronger than in chimp society, in spite of the fact that these females, having come from other groups, are less genetically related than the males. This bond is cemented by sex, which creates loosely hierarchical coalitions, with one female dominating, mostly through reproductive success – especially in the production of males. Sisterhood is powerful, and it’s not necessarily about genetics. It’s a great lesson for our society, if we can get over the idea, so prevalent but hopefully fading, that we’re unique in a more unique way than any other species is unique, that we’re civilized, and that we have little or nothing to learn from our primate cousins.
And there’s so much more to learn, as we’ll see.
Resources:
http://pin.primate.wisc.edu/factsheets/entry/bonobo/behav
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/bonobo-sex-and-society-2006-06/
M Konner, Women after all: sex, evolution and the end of male supremacy
bonobo society, sex and females
sexual dimorphism – a difference on average, but massive individual variation
Men are bigger than women, slightly. That’s how things evolved. It’s called sexual dimorphism. It happens with many species, the genders are different in size, shape, coloration, whatever. With humans there’s a size difference, and something of a shape difference, in breasts and hips, but really these aren’t significant. Compare, say, the deep-water triplewort seadevil, a type of anglerfish, in which the female is around 30 cms long, and the male a little over a centimetre. The difference in mass would be too embarrassing to relate.
Among our primate cousins the greatest sexual dimorphism, in size as well as other features, is found in the mandrills, with the male being two to three times the size of the females. In some gorillas there’s a substantial size difference too in favour of the males, and in fact in all of the primate species the male has a size advantage. But size isn’t everything, and the bigger doesn’t have to always dominate.
Female bonobos are smaller than the males, even more so than in humans, yet they enjoy a higher social status than in any other primate society, probably including humans, though it’s hard to compare, since humanity’s many societies vary considerably on the roles and status of women. So how have females attained this exalted status within one of the most highly socialised primate species?
Bonobos and chimpanzees are equally our closest living relatives. It isn’t clear when exactly they separated from each other, but some experts claim it may have been less than a million years ago. Enough time for them to become quite distinct physically, according to the ethologist Franz De Waal. Bonobos are more gracile with longer limbs and a smaller head, and they have a distinctive hairstyle, with a neat parting down the middle. They’re also more easily individuated by their facial features, being in this sense more like humans. And there are also major differences in their social behaviour. Male chimps are dominant in the troupe, often brutally so, whereas bonobo society is less clearly hierarchical, and considerably less violent overall. De Waal, one of the world’s foremost experts on both primates, became interested in bonobos primarily through studies on aggression. He noted that sometimes, after a violent clash, two chimps would come together to hug and kiss. Being interested in such apparent reconciliations and their implications, he decided to look at reconciling behaviours in other primates. What he discovered in bonobos (at San Diego Zoo, which in 1983 housed the world’s largest captive colony) was rather ‘shocking’; their social life was profoundly mediated by sex. Not that he was the first to discover this; other primatologists had written about it, noting also that bonobo sex was far more human-like than chimp sex, but their observations were obscurely worded and not well disseminated. There are other aspects of the physical nature of sexual relations in bonobos that favour females, such as female sexual receptivity, indicated by swelling and a reddening of the genital area, which pertains for a much longer period than in chimps. Female bonobos, like humans and unlike other primates, are sexually receptive more or less all the time.
This isn’t to say that bonobos are oversexed, whatever that may mean. Sexual relations are far from constant, they are casual, sporadic and quickly done with. Often they’re associated with finding food, and it seems likely that sexual relations are used to reconcile tensions related to food availability and other potential causes of conflict.
So how does this use of sex relate to the status of females in bonobo society. I’ll explore this further in the next post.
bonobo relations – more than just sex