Gowaty - 1992 - Evolutionary Biology and Feminism
Gowaty - 1992 - Evolutionary Biology and Feminism
Gowaty - 1992 - Evolutionary Biology and Feminism
"'Helped
are those who love and actively support the diversity of life; they
shall be secure in their differentness."
from "The Gospel According to Shug" (Alice Walker 1989)
Received May 13, 1991; accepted November 1, 1991.
Address all correspondence to Patricia Adair Gowaty, Department of Biological Sciences, Clemson
University, Clemson SC 296,34-1903.
Copyright 9 1992 by Walter de Gruyter, Inc. New York
Human Nature, Vol. 3, No. 3, pp. 217-249. 1045-6767/92/$1.00 + .10
217
218 Human Nature, Vol. 3, No. 3, 1992
Much feminist writing that describes the proximate mechanics and con-
sequences of societywide, seemingly worldwide power asymmetries
describe in detail the things men do to keep the power advantage over
women. To some readers, especially some men, these descriptions feel
like "male bashing." The responses I have heard from some men have
occasionally struck me as poignant, especially when they say, "But, I
really don't think that way." I want to short-circuit that response and
persuade readers that the arguments offered by feminists may be legiti-
mate, even if everyone doesn't think or feel "that way." Consider an
alternative mechanism for the evolution of patriarchal practices that
does not depend on conscious participation by individuals. This alterna-
tive argument is analogous to one that evolutionary biologists use w h e n
we remark that no consciousness is required to explain the evolution of
animal behavior that appears strategically motivated and tactically exe-
cuted by savvy decision-making n o n h u m a n animals. What we explain
to our students in this case is that the behavior has been subject to
natural selection, a force capable of leaving individuals that appear
conscious, w h e n in fact no consciousness is required for the execution of
the behavior. By analogy to these arguments from natural selection, it
seems just as likely that "the conspiracy theories" that explain the
subordination of w o m e n by men need not be implemented by strategi-
cally motivated, tactically savvy men, only that cultural forces that result
in sexual oppression appear to be the result of individual men in con-
222 Human Nature, Vol. 3, No. 3, 1992
VARIATION
males would seek to control females, and that females would resist
those efforts to be controlled. Male contests over access to females and
the resources females need logically follow after males' efforts to control
females and females' efforts to resist control. Furthermore, these selective
pressures acting on females to control their own reproductive capacities
through access to resources or through physical autonomy should in
turn provide additional selection on males. Variation among males
should track variation among females; the battles of the sexes should
result in frequency dependence of "sexual" traits (Gowaty 1992). What
is remarkable to me is that what seems to have been left out of evolution-
ary biology is a discussion of the multiplicities of strategies of females to
retain reproductive autonomy. I find this ironic, because if the "battles
of the sexes" have any meaning for evolution, that meaning surely
resides in these contests and their frequency-dependent outcomes.
I suspect that failure to make these issues primary in evolutionary
biology is the result of the patriarchal ideology that fosters deceit and
self-deception even in the lives and minds of evolutionary biologists,
whether these biologists are men or women. I do not mean that evolu-
tionary or selectionist thinking is necessarily sexist, just that those who
have been the most prominent contributors (including many women)
have been constrained by sexist and patriarchal constructs. Failure to
expose these logical defects---some seemingly simple and as plain as the
noses on our faces--raises the question of whose interests the continu-
ance of incomplete stories serves, something that I take up again later in
this essay.
Male dominance over females is often seen as a by-product of intense
male-male competition. In a more logically complete discussion of the
relationships of female and male animals, male dominance over females
would not be relegated to epiphenomena associated with male-male
competition (see Smuts and Smuts 1992). Wilson (1975) provides one
example of the many times it has been written that male-male competi-
tive interactions select for dominance among males, and that the con-
tests among males have selected for sexual dimorphism with males
bigger than females. This has been taken to mean that male dominance
over females is a side-effect of male-male competition. My feminist
perspective suggests that the "fact" that in m a n y animal societies all
males have priority of access to resources over females may sometimes
be fiction, and when it is, it should not be explained away as an
epiphenomenal process ancillary to male-male competition; rather, it
should be at least hypothesized as a process of sexual selection in which
males compete with females for control of resources essential to female
reproduction. Perhaps male-male competition is a derivative process
ancillary to competition between females and males (Gowaty 1992;
qmuts and Smuts 1992).
Evolutionary Biology and Feminism 233
DECEIT, SELF-DECEPTION,
A N D PATRIARCHAL REVERSALS
FEMININITY
Women are always the limiting resource for male reproduction, which
means that men will always be attracted to w o m e n - - w h e t h e r w o m e n
are juvenilized or hobbled or not. The traits and strategies of men will
track the traits and strategies of women. Or, individual men will adopt
conditional strategies, finding some w o m e n attractive in some circum-
stances and other w o m e n attractive in others.
Some say, "There's no accounting for taste." I think there is, and I
think women--individually and collectively---can affect the expression
of preferences of men. Empirical evidence of this fact is in the perceived
attractiveness to some men of the many w o m e n w h o forego makeup
and wear sensible shoes and even trousers. Femaleness, frank female-
ness, is attractive to many men. I think it is possible for w o m e n individ-
ually or collectively to avoid the traps of hobbling femininity and juve-
nilizaiton without incurring devastating effects (either economically,
sexually, or reproductively). Certainly in our culture it is now possible
for many middle-class professional w o m e n to emphasize their o w n
abilities to garner resources for themselves, rather than to display vul-
nerability via hobbling or juvenilization. Whether I am right about this
or not, my point is that evolutionary biology suggests strategies for
feminists in our efforts to gain, regain, and maintain autonomy for
women.
The combined perspective of evolutionary biology and feminism also
suggests research in human behavior. Below I describe some of the traits
that I think will characterize an inclusive evolutionary biology, and I
briefly describe a question I think amenable to testing.
! thank Jane Lancaster first for facilitating my writing about these issues; I've
intended to do this since 1983. I thank the bluebird watchers in my lab, Nancy
Buschhaus, Dale Droge, Nadine Nienhuis, Jon Plissner, and Steve Wagner, for
reading and commenting on my first draft. I thank Gabe Acebo, Lee Drickamer,
John Endler, John Gittleman, Russell Gray, Marion Petrie, Vicki Sorbel, Bob
Warner, and Darrell Yardley for useful comments on a second draft. My greatest
debt is to readers Jeanne Altmann, Gordon Burghardt, David Crews, Jerry
Downhower, Jane Lancaster, Barbara Smuts, Judy Stamps, and Marlene Zuk,
whose critical insights improved my efforts enormously. Most of all I thank
Gabe Acebo for his continuing creative support. I wrote this article while funded
by a Research Scientist Development Award (NIMH).
Patricia Adair Gowaty studies the evolution of social behavior, particularly mating systems
and sex allocation, primarily in birds. She is most well-known for her long-term studies of
eastern bluebirds, which began in 1977 and are on-going. She was an undergraduate at H.
Sophie Newcomb College of Tulane University (1963-1967). In the late sixties and early
seventies, while employed at the Bronx Zoo (New York Zoological Society), she belonged
to a feminist "consciousness-raising" group. She started graduate school in 1974 at the
University of Georgia and received her Ph.D. from Clemson University (1980). She had a
postdoctoral position at the University of Oklahoma (1982-1983) and a visiting faculty
position at Cornell University through the Visiting Professorships for Women NSF pro-
gram (1983-1984) before returning to her bluebird study sites at Clemson in 1985. She has
supported herself and her research efforts throughout her academic career on a series of
awards and grants. She is currently (1990--1995)supported by a Research Scientist Devel-
opment Award from The National Institute of Mental Health.
246 Human Nature, Vol. 3, No. 3, 1992
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