What a man, what a man, what a man, what a mighty good man. Via gari.baldi @ Flickr
A drably colored peahen has her pick of peacocks with whom to mate. The peacocks flash their gaudy plumage, just begging to be the one she chooses. In the animal kingdom, females set the rules, and males will do whatever it takes – elaborate dances, fancy ornamentation, serenades – to make them happy.
Charles Darwin was the first scientist to recognize that it’s almost always a species’ females who select mates; he outlined his theory of sexual selection in The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex. The males compete with each other, and for the females’ acceptance. But even as recently as the 1970s, people balked at the notion of female choice. According to Evolutionary biologist Michael Ryan, “One writer even said that all you had to do was look at our own species to see that females had no input whatsoever in mating decisions.”
Here in the human world, we women are the ones doing most of the “peacocking.” Dyeing our hair, painting our faces, wearing uncomfortable yet “sexy” outfits, getting breast implants. Oh, sure, women do those things “for themselves,” not to attract men! But why would doing those things be personally satisfying if not partly because they are accompanied by social approval and patriarchal praise? How often do you see a really hot man with a plain Jane on his arm? How often do you see the reverse?
How did we humans manage to flip sexual selection completely on its head? I know the answer is “patriarchy, duh,” but I’m still curious about exactly how. Women’s eggs are scarce and men’s sperm abundant, just like in the animal kingdom. Maybe our advanced intelligence allowed men to strip women of their perceived selection power, using their superior physical strength to enforce the rules.
From Socialogical Images comes this German advertisement for Men’s Health (reads “It’s all about men”) that suggests they think everything a woman does is done in an effort to attract them, and that women’s masochism is funny and flattering (but still loathsome).
Early and often, women are hit with the message that they’re nobody until a man – any man – chooses them. See: the offerings “for women” at your local cinema. Knowing that we human females are relatively alone among our non-human sisters adds an extra layer of meaning to the word “backwards.”
For further reading: Animal Attraction
One contributing factor may be that women outnumber men, at least in many Western countries. But that can only explain so much.
Michael Ryan hits it right on the head: when women have no choice in mating situations and their very existence relies on their ability to mate advantageously–which is the norm in most of the world and throughout history–it makes sense that women are the ones who must compete.
But men are so superior to us and we have to make ourselves perfect to deserve their sperm so we can fulfill our mission in life by having their glorious babies!
I’ve wondered a lot about this, too, and I’ve been unable to come up with an answer. When I rack my brain for ideas, all I can come up with is clips of male comedians saying that we have it easy because all we have to do is look pretty while they have to get a Big Important Job, and a Big Fancy Car and shell out money for our upkeep, which sucks and I’m glad I’m not a dude but in exchange for all that suckitude they still get their pick of us while I’ve got other chicks telling me I should fight for whichever loser is willing to entertain the thought of being with me and all I know is I’m not spending two hours a day putting my hair up for some douche.
Sarah, I don’t know what my point is either.
But my belly button is hairy and I got exhausted waxing my face Sunday so I quit once I thinned out the muttonchops a little bit and even if some guy was willing to pay for someone else to wax my face, I’d feel guilty letting him and besides, if I wasn’t morally opposed to that kind of thing I would still have to come up with the “start up funds”for the kind of upkeep it takes to attract the kind of guy who’s willing to pay for that kind of thing so I’ll just stick to my usual scruffy broke guys who think it’s funny when I talk about how I just had a beard two hours ago and might shower later, whatever. They’re more fun anyway.
Human beings have economics. In the animal kingdom, all this sexual selection stuff gets sorted out by accident. With human beings, we’ve got enough brains on us to recognize a valuable commodity when we see it, and to take advantage of that value.
So, women’s sexuality–because it’s actually way more valuable than men’s–gets turned into a commodity and strong-armed into submission, so that it can be properly marketed and sold.
It really is the socio-economic factor that makes us different from every single other animal in the kingdom–so, that’d be my guess, anyway.
@cate3170: Yeah, especially because in most Western societies, women outnumber men by like, 105 to 100, which isn’t all that much. And it usually evens out by the time you get to adulthood.
I need you to explain/justify your assertion that women’s sexuality is “way more valuable than men’s.” More valuable in what way? To whom? You say it as if it’s a foregone conclusion, an fact outside of history, and I can’t accept it at face value.
To be clear: my comment was directed at braak.
Oh, okay. What I mean is, from an evolutionary standpoint, a species is capable of breeding at a rate directly commensurate with the amount of females in the population, while only indirectly commensurate with the number of males. So, men are much less important in the whole offspring equation than women.
Maybe female sexuality being more valuable than men is kind of misleading; really what I mean is that female procreative capacity is more important than the corresponding male capacity, which is what led (I theorize) to the commodification of women’s sexuality. That is to say, access to sexual activity with women was controlled by men, rather than the other way around, because of the fact that access to women was the important thing.
Also: that animated tag-cloud-sphere thing on the right is really cool.
braak:
1. There are so many problems with equating female sexuality and reproductive capability, I don’t even know where to start, so please choose your terms carefully.
2. Access to (the right kind of) women and their reproductive capability was controlled by (some) men because it was a way of controlling/directing their financial resources (to legitimate offspring). In this model, women weren’t really competing for mates, they were being hoarded or handed out like cigars.
3. You seem to be working off the faulty, evo-psych-y assumption (as so many do) that men choose (consciously or unconsciously) sex partners based on said partners’ evolutionary “fitness” to bear/raise offsping. I wouldn’t buy that theory for a wooden nickel.
“female procreative capacity is more important than the corresponding male capacity”
Right, which is true across species. But in non-human species, that results in female power/choice over the males who do the primping and preening. In ours, it’s the females who somehow ended up primping and preening for the less-important (from a reproductive standpoint) males.
1. Okay, as I said, I agree that this was a poor choice of words.
2. Under a model like this, wouldn’t misogyny and patriarchy in early agrarian civilization be limited to class? If only some women and their reproductive ability are being controlled by some men–particularly those that had financial resources–then wouldn’t you expect patriarchal systems to be confined to monied groups, rather than widespread even among poor populations?
3. I’m not really selling the theory, for any kind of nickel, so I guess that’s fair. But I also think that’s a mischaracterization of my position. Actually what I’m saying is that many social phenomena that are presently outdated (things like classism, racism, misogyny) actually provided an evolutionary edge back in caveman days. I doubt that these principles are or were ever ingrained–I’d suppose they were transmitted by early artistic/literary vectors–but I think that social factors like patriarchy have to come from somewhere, and a biological base for early patterns of human behaviors doesn’t seem completely unreasonable.
@Sarah: Yes, because we have economics. And not just squirrel economics like “hoard the nuts,” or something, but economics based on forecast, short and long term planning, complex power distribution, &c. So…okay, well, first of all peacocks aren’t group animals the way large primates are, so a lot of behavior patterns are going to be weird. But generally, a peacock isn’t going to evaluate long term threats and losses against short term activity–mostly the only idea he’s got is, “Hey, a peahen.” So, he’s not using or creating social power structures in order to protect the female of the species, and therefore those power structures don’t exist to be parisitized by other peacocks that want to control and restrict sexual access to the peahens.
But even if he were an ape or…well, not bulls or lions, because they actually do just tend to kill off all the other males in order to have free reign with the females…well, even if he were an ape, while there might be rudimentary social structure instincts designed to protect the females of the species, those power structures aren’t complex enough, and the apes aren’t planning long-term enough, in order to take control of them.
braak:
2. Only if you assume there to be a single, perfectly uniform hierarchy of class, rather than multiple, shifting and interlocking hierarchies based on different types of “capital.” Which I don’t.
3. Racism as evolutionarily advantageous. Wow, chief. I’m pretty sure you don’t mean it the way it reads, but still: wow. Quite apart from that, you’re again conflating (as evo-psych proponents do) economic/social advantage with evolutionary advantage.
Well, tribalism was evolutionarily advantageous (I think), so I suppose racism may have arisen from that. Still, that doesn’t mean racism as we know it today has anything to do with evolution.
[...] let’s talk about patriarchy. Yesterday, a friend of mine made a post, asking why peacock behaviors differ from human behaviors: in [...]
How about this?
Sexual selection has been turned on its head because women were trying to attract the men they actually wanted, instead of the men that they were eventually sold to.
I totally posted this on my facebook. Thank you so much for writing this. I’ve been noticing the backwards selection of sex in nature compared to humans myself. I haven’t been a committed feminist for long (a little over a year), so I still find myself falling into the patriarchal pitfalls due to being single- I’m too fat, I’m not pretty enough, I’m not good enough for a man to choose me.
And taking initiative has always proven fatal for me since I “scare them away” with being so overt. I’ve actually been told that being so upfront in what I want sexually is a turn off for guys. But it’s okay for them upfront with me. *rolls eyes*
Anyway, I will forever look at this blog when I’m feeling down about myself, and remind myself that it isn’t me- it’s patriarchy.
I’ll never forget one of my highschool girl friends telling me that I was too picky about guys and that I should lower my standards and this would result in getting a boyfriend.
I was taken aback for two reasons:
1) I didn’t even want a boyfriend
2) Why should I have lowered my standards just so I could have the ‘honor’ of being some jerkbag highschool boys girlfriend?
Unfortunately I still get this now. People think I’m ridiculous because I want all of the same things guys expect from women in a man (i.e. good looks coupled with intelligence and personality). God forbid I should want something more than to be like those hot tv housewives who settle for fat losers :\
To keep with the evolutionary theory, I would suggest looking into Robert Triver’s theory of relative parental investment, which in a nutshell says:
For the sex that invests most heavily in reproduction (usually female), the principle constraint on reproduction is access to resources (food, water, habitat such as nesting grounds, etc.). For the sex that invests less heavily in reproduction (usually male), the principle constraint on reproduction is access to the sex that invests more heavily.
[to clarify, "invests more heavily in reproduction" is regarding gamete production, not caring for offspring, as this was formulated to explain mate selection in animals, not just people]
This is what a lot of you have been talking about, however, it is important to note human females can only reproduce for a certain amount of time (until menopause). Cross culturally, regardless of other socially constructed definitions of beauty a culture may have, all cultures value signs of youth, and regard them as beautiful. This is evolutionarily advantageous. Males are attracted to females exhibiting signs of youth because that youth signals greater fertility and longer potential for reproduction.
This is also why it is common to see women with men much older than them, again, cross culturally. Women do not value signs of youth as much because there is no male equivalent of menopause.
That is already probably more than you wanted to know, but if for some reason you want more, let me know and I can probably point you to some of this original research and/or theory work.
@Ariel: Damn right it’s them. I’ve been on both sides of it. I’ve been informed that I’m not feminine enough and that I’m too forward, but I’ve also met guys who appreciated my being direct because they have difficulty living up to their own assigned gender roles and being the initiator all of the time. I’ve even been told by some guys to be more direct.
So whatever you think is the reason guys don’t like you, just remember it’s none of those things. It’s the luck of the draw and at the moment, your luck sucks. Not you.
@Smoslyn: I don’t get this from my friends (actually I had one friend say something to that effect when we were like, sophomores in college, so I like to think she’s gotten over that) but I’ve gotten that from older female relatives so I just quit discussing men with them altogether, even in passing, even hypothetically.
Amanda, that’s very interesting. I appreciate all the input.
Amanda’s right, but I disagree on a couple points. First, before the Enlightenment, a woman reaching menopause was extremely rare. From a standpoint of evolutionary behavior, I doubt this was the cause of the youthful standard of beauty. More likely, male competition to “acquire” females resulted in mating closer to puberty.
Second, “invests more heavily in reproduction” does indeed refer to rearing the offspring in addition to the gamete costs. Species in which the male is more involved in rearing the young generally see less differences between the sexes. In the rare species in which the male raises the young, the female is sometimes the member who does the mating dances and such.
In terms of modern society, I would argue that the norm has come from the patriarchal society of Europe in which wealth is passed down to the sons, while it is up to the daughters to become appealing to a desireable male. In this case, it is the male who expends resources to raise the offspring, not the female.
Through this framework, I would argue that progress has been made, largely through the efforts of the feminist movement. That women are able to summon resources similar (if not always equal) to men allows a more even ground on who is responsible for wooing the other, and while perhaps the preening is not equal, in our society, it is the norm that each member of a coupling has chosen the other.