Posts Tagged ‘matriarchy’
back to bonobos – and sex
Canto: We’re reading Rebecca Wragg Sykes’ brilliant book, Kindred, an almost up-to-date account (published in 2020) of all the new discoveries about our close relatives the Neanderthals, and the speculations resulting from them. And of course we’re always alert to the slightest mention of bonobos in any works of anthropology…
Jacinta: Yes, we’ve been a bit timid about talking too much about bonobos and sex, but a few mentions in Kindred have emboldened us.
Canto: W’ve seen the odd photo or video of chimps or bonobos with erect penises, and it was a scary but also puzzling sight, but we’ve not really explored the difference between theirs and ours, so now is the time to do so. So here’s some interesting comments linking humans, Neanderthals and our chimp/bonobo rellies:
Anatomically, pelvic dimensions point to vaginas very similar to ours, and as penises are tailored to fit, those too were probably more like living men’s equipment than that of chimpanzees.
Luckily for all concerned, unlike chimps Neanderthal males lacked the genes for ‘penis spines’. While in apes they’re more like tiny hardened pebbles than spikes, their presence does affect copulation: marmosets have sex and orgasms that last twice as long when the spines are removed.
We should probably therefore picture Neanderthal sex as more leisurely and satisfying than chimp-style rapid thrusting bouts. Not forgetting clitorises – organs solely existing for pleasure – unluckily for Neanderthals, like us they probably lacked bonobo-like versions that make face-to-face orgasms easier. But masturbation in some form is pretty much guaranteed, whether during sexual encounters as is found among humans, or more generally for social bonding and diffusing tensions, as in bonobos where it takes place between pretty much anyone.
Kindred, Rebecca Wragg Sykes, p 271
Jacinta: So this makes me want to know more about the bonobo penis, and ‘penis spines’. It sounds like it isn’t ‘made for pleasure’, which helps to explain why female-female sex is the most practised type among bonobos.
Canto: Then again chimps have the same penises as bonobos but they’ve evolved differently. So here we go with ‘penile spines’. First, Wikipedia:
Many mammalian species have developed keratinized penile spines along the glans and/or shaft, which may be involved in sexual selection. These spines have been described as being simple, single-pointed structures (macaques) or complex with two or three points per spine (strepsirrhines). Penile spine morphology may be related to mating system.
This is news to me, but fascinating.
Jacinta: Just up our alley, so to speak. So to elaborate on this last quote, again using Wikipedia (largely), strepsirrhines are a suborder of primates including lemurs, galagos or bushbabies, pottos and lorises. Sexual selection is, I presume, a form of mating system, which Darwin reflected upon in The Descent of Man, inter alia. Macaques are a type of Old World monkey, with 23 known species. Interestingly, they’re matriarchal and frugivorous, like bonobos.
Canto: Apparently they’re a feature of felines – penile spines, that is. In cats, it’s speculated that they may contribute to pregnancy, as they ‘rake the walls of the female’s vagina [during withdrawal], which may serve as a trigger for ovulation’. I’m wondering, though, how that might relate to sexual selection. ‘A spiny dick, nothing turns me on more.’
Jacinta:
It all works below the conscious level, mate. I mean, female bowerbirds hang out with the males with the best display, but I don’t think they’re thinking about sex, especially considering how much of a nothing bird sex generally is. But getting back to bonobos, Wragg refers in the above quote to ‘bonobo-like’ clitorises that make face-to-face orgasms easier than it was for Neanderthals and, more to the point, we H sapiens. How could we have missed this in all our explorations of the bonobo world?
Canto: Hmmm. I blame the prudery of researchers. Including ourselves. Anyway, it probably all gets back to genes and their expression. So we need to explore – but should we look at penises first or clitorises – is that the plural?
Jacinta: Not sure, I can only cope with one at a time. So here’s something we should never have missed:
Bonobo clitorises are larger and more externalized than in most mammals; while the weight of a young adolescent female bonobo “is maybe half” that of a human teenager, she has a clitoris that is “three times bigger than the human equivalent, and visible enough to waggle unmistakably as she walks”. In scientific literature, the female–female behavior of bonobos pressing genitals together is often referred to as genito-genital (GG) rubbing. This sexual activity happens within the immediate female bonobo community and sometimes outside of it. Ethologist Jonathan Balcombe stated that female bonobos rub their clitorises together rapidly for ten to twenty seconds, and this behavior, “which may be repeated in rapid succession, is usually accompanied by grinding, shrieking, and clitoral engorgement”; he added that it is estimated that they engage in this practice “about once every two hours” on average. As bonobos occasionally copulate face-to-face, evolutionary biologist Marlene Zuk has suggested that the position of the clitoris in bonobos and some other primates has evolved to maximize stimulation during sexual intercourse. The position of the clitoris may alternatively permit GG-rubbings, which has been hypothesized to function as a means for female bonobos to evaluate their intrasocial relationships.
Canto: What can I say?
Jacinta: So this quote, from Wikipedia, compares the bonobo clit to the human one, but says nothing about chimps. I mean, it occurs to me that this enlarged clit, and the pleasure derived from it, would help to explain female-female sexual bonding, leading to social bonding, leading perhaps to matriarchy, if we can call it that. But if chimps have the same-size female pleasure-place, that thesis collapses.
Canto: Good point. So, googling ‘chimp clitoris’ takes me first to an essay from nearly 40 years ago on ‘The external genitalia of female pygmy chimpanzees’, an early term for bonobos. The abstract actually compares Pan paniscus (bonobos) and Pan troglodytes (chimps) as if just to resolve your dilemma:
The external genitalia of four adult female pygmy chimpanzees (Pan paniscus) were examined during a 2-year period. It was found that the labia majora are retained in adults of this species and that, when tumescent, the labia minora effectively relocate the frenulum and clitoris so that they point anteriorly between the thighs. When detumescent, the configuration of the labia minora and clitoris resembles that of immature common chimpanzees (P. troglodytes). It is suggested that the simple, structural relocation of the clitoris from the normal [sic] condition noted in adult P. troglodytes makes possible the homosexual, intergenital rubbing observed in P. paniscus, when ventroventral juxtaposition of the individuals permits eye-to-eye contact. In addition, this change probably increases sexual stimulation of the female during heterosexual, ventroventral copulations.
Jacinta: Wow. So bonobos separated from chimps between 1 and 2 million years ago. And in that time a kind of structural change took place in the positioning of the clitoris. Is that plausible? And what about the swelling?
Canto: Hard to get clear info, but the general genital swellings of chimps versus bonobos differ in one respect – in chimps, they’re indicative of fertility, or ovulation, but bonobos, like humans have ‘concealed’ ovulation. A wonder that this can occur in the relatively short time since the split. Or maybe not, I’m no primatologist.
Jacinta: Apparently bonobos and humans aren’t the only primates with concealed ovulation – it also occurs in Vervet monkeys, but the very concept of ‘concealed ovulation’ is a bit controversial – as if it’s being done deliberately, which would surely be absurd. But it certainly does mean that, in those primates that don’t exhibit clear signs of ovulation, copulation occurs through all stages of the menstrual cycle. It could be a way of preventing males from being aware of their own offspring, thus reducing the infanticidal tendencies found in male, and sometimes female, chimps. As for the position of the clitoris, its shift to a more ‘accessible’ spot for genito-genital rubbing in bonobos is often mentioned as a great development for female bonding, but I can find nothing much on how this anatomical change could’ve happened.
Canto: Well, think of Darwin’s finches in the Galapagos. Certain beak shapes were more adaptive to the particular vegetation on particular islands, and birds with those beak shapes outbred other birds and became dominant, and ultimately the outright winners. With bonobos, okay this different clitoral positioning might not have led directly to those females outbreeding other females, since it might not have made it easier for males to have sex with females (though where there’s a willie there’s a way), but it might have led indirectly to females becoming dominant through sexually stimulated female bonding, allowing the females with the most changed and, to females, most alluring clitorises to choose the most male partners and so produce the most offspring.
Jacinta: Female rather than male choice. Or even females ‘sexually assaulting’ males? Definitely sounds interesting. But as always, more research is required…
References
Rebecca Wragg Sykes, Kindred: Neanderthal life, love, death and art. 2020
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3985376/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strepsirrhini
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macaque
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonobo
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/bonobo-sex-and-society-2006-06/
a bonobo world 61 or so: some more species
Gibbons – beautiful and imperilled
Canto: So if only we could quicken the modern world, which is so fast leaving behind the benefits of brute strength and embracing the strength of collaborative smarts… Well, maybe not that fast… We’d experience ourselves the loving fruits of bonobo-humanism.
Jacinta: Yeah, too bad. So let’s look more closely at other female dominated species, like elephants. They tend to value experience, so their family units have a female head.
Canto: Except that, they split into female and male groups, don’t they?
Jacinta: Well, they have these female family units, ranging from 3 to 25 members. The males presumably have their groupings, but sometimes they come together to form large herds or herd aggregations – huge numbers. Males can also be solitary, which virtually never happens with females. Of course it’s the females who raise the young, but there can be a lot of group solidarity.
Canto: It seems that the grouping changes more or less perpetually, seasonally, daily, hourly.
Jacinta: Yes, that’s a fission-fusion society, common among primates too – such as Homo sapiens at work, school, uni etc. But over time, the matriarch becomes more important, and presides over a wider network as she gets older. They play follow the leader as she has accumulated knowledge on the best watering holes, the paths of least resistance.
Canto: So elephants have it all worked out. What about those orangutans, what’s going on there?
Jacinta: Well apart from imminent extinction, there’s little to say. They’re solitary, though the Sumatran orang-utans are a little less so than those in Borneo, due to more food being available. The males exhibit hostility to each other and try to avoid each other, though they’re not territorial. They only hang out with females until they get their end away, and the females raise the offspring until they’re old enough to go solo.
Canto: So I wonder why the males are so much bigger than the females?
Jacinta: Yes they can be well over twice the size of the females. I haven’t found any explanation for it. They don’t have a harem of females to prove their rugged manliness. Apparently those big cheek pads help to attract the girls, but their huge bulk seems a bit superfluous.
Canto: Maybe it’s like whales – they grow big because they can. But then, the more you grow, the more you have to eat, presumably. A bit of a mug’s game.
Jacinta: Tell that to the elephants. Or those old ginorosauruses. Basically, if you’re as huge as an elephant, who else is going to attack you or compete with you? Apart from blokes with guns. But we were talking about sex. Or at least gender. Gorillas are proving a lot more complex than originally thought in their social structure – quite multilayered, not quite the chest-beating alpha male and his harem, more like human extended families. Matriarchies within patriarchies perhaps.
Canto: And what about gibbons – just to round out the primates. I know nothing about them.
Jacinta: Well, apparently these South-East Asian apes are monogamous, unlike other primates (except maybe humans, but I’m reluctant to rule on that). In fact only 3% of mammals are monogamous, according to a fact sheet I found (linked below). So that makes for family groups of two to six, just like our nuclear family, unless you’re a Catholic. Gibbons are considered as ‘lesser apes’, family Hylobatidae, unlike we great apes, family Hominidae. Physically, they’re by far the smallest of the apes, depending on particular species, but weighing at most about 12 kgs. These small family groups defend their territory aggressively – none of this fission-fusion stuff. They’re quite good at bipedalism, and present a good model for bipedalism in humans, but they’re also fantastically acrobatic tree-swingers, with the longest arms in relation to their bodies of any of the primates. They also have a nice healthy herbivorous diet.
Canto: They sound like a good human model all-round, and maybe a model for gender equality?
Jacinta: Well, yes, but I do prefer female supremacy. Gibbons are apparently the least studied of all the apes. There are 12 species of them, but many species are very near extinction, a fact not much known by the general public. Orangutans clearly get much more attention.
Canto: Okay so let’s look further afield – before coming back to human cultures to see if there are any matriarchies worth emulating. What more do we know about dolphins and other cetaceans?
Jacinta: Well, as you know dolphins live together in pods of up to 30, though sometimes where there’s an abundant food source they can form massive superpods of over 1000. And as we’ve learned, they engage in sex for fun.
Canto: I suppose also they could form superpods in the face of predators, like schools of fish.
Jacinta: Yes, possibly, though they wouldn’t have too many predators, unlike small fish. Interestingly these superpods can be made up of different cetacean species, so this would obviously benefit the smaller species. And individual dolphins can switch from pod to pod quite freely. Something like fission-fusion, but with greater flexibility. Researchers find this flexibility a sign of high intelligence.
Canto: Ahh, so that accounts for the stupidity of conservatives.
Jacinta: Some dolphin species are a bit more hierarchical than others, and you can see plenty of bite marks on bottlenose dolphins, evidence of fights for dominance.
Canto: And I recall a big hubbub a few years ago when those delightful creatures were discovered torturing and killing some of their own. But then, they are male-dominated, aren’t they?
Jacinta: They are, sadly. Males of all species are largely arseholes (well, not literally). But they certainly engage in a lot of play, I mean dolphins generally. Maybe they’ll evolve one day into a higher form of female-dominated life, but I doubt it. They’ll have to realise how fucked-up they are as a species to do that, like some humans have realised – but not enough.
Canto: Okay, so dolphins are out as a model. What about other cetaceans? I somehow suspect that orcas won’t fit the bill.
Jacinta: Next time. And we’ll look at some human models, if we can find them.
References
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/six-facts-about-elephant-families-9015298.html
https://seaworld.org/animals/all-about/orangutans/behavior/
http://www.gibbons.de/main2/08teachtext/factgibbons/gibbonfact.html
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!
matriarchy – surely it couldn’t be worse than patriarchy?
In one of the international English classes I occasionally teach, we have an opportunity for debate. Here’s a debate topic I’ve thought up but haven’t yet tried out: If 90 to 99% of the world’s business and political leaders were female, instead of male as they are today, would the world be a better place to live in?
It’s not a question that’ll find a definitive answer in the foreseeable future, but my strong view is that the world would be better.
Why? I’m not entirely convinced that women are the gentler sex, and I’m very wary of succumbing to a facile view of women as inherently more calm, co-operative and conciliatory, but I think that on balance, or statistically, they’re more risk averse, less impulsive, and, yes, more group-oriented. Whether such tendencies are natural or nurtured, I’m not at all sure. It’s a question I intend to investigate.
So to stimulate myself in pursuing the subject of patriarchy and its obverse I’m reading Women after all: sex, evolution and the end of male supremacy, a rather optimistically-titled book by an American doctor and teacher, Melvin Konner. It’s one of many sources of information I hope to access in the future. It argues that there are fundamental differences between males and females, and that females are the superior gender. I’m not sure about the ‘fundamentals’, or categorical differences, but I agree that the current differences can and probably should be interpreted in terms of female superiority. Certainly, given the needs and responsibilities of humanity in this time, woman appear to have more of the goods than males for facing the future. After all, if we look back at the last 6000 or so years of human history, it’s dominated by male warfare, and if we look at today’s most violent and brutish cultures, they’re clearly the most patriarchal.
Of course if you believe that women and men are fundamentally different, as Konner does, then it becomes straightforward to argue for women being in control, because it’s highly unlikely, indeed impossible I’d say, that these fundamentally different genders are precisely equal in value. And given the devastation and suffering that men have caused over the period of what we call ‘human civilisation’, and given that women are the (mostly) loving mothers of all of us, it seems obvious that, if there is a fundamental difference, women’s qualities are of more value.
On the other hand if you’re a bit more skeptical about fundamental differences, as I am, and you suspect that the idea that ‘absolute power corrupts absolutely’ is as applicable to women as it is to men, you’ll feel rather more uncertain about a profoundly matriarchal society. And yet…
I draw some inspiration for the benefits of matriarchy from the closest living relatives of homo sapiens. There are two of them. The line that led to us split off from the line that led to chimps and bonobos around 6 million years ago. Chimps and bonobos split from their common ancestor much more recently, perhaps only a little over a million years ago, so they’re both equally related to us. Chimps and bonobos look very very alike, which is presumably why bonobos were only recognised as a separate species in the 1930s – quite extraordinary for such a physically large animal. But of course bonobo and chimp societies are very very different, and vive la différence. I’ve written about bonobo society before, here and here, but can’t get enough of a good thing, so I’ll look more closely at that society in the next few posts.
I think I’d rather be a bonobo