Review: The Sexual Evolution

 Way back in the 2000s, during a club ride, Dick Matthews turned to me at lunch and said, "I don't think I've ever seen a D rider eat! Maybe they treat eating the way the rest of us treat sex --- it has to be done in secret and in private, and nobody can see you do it."

On Page 186 of The Sexual Evolution, I came across this passage:

The taboos that we often find associated with sex in most cultures are instead attached to eating among the Trobriand peoples. Eating is always done alone, usually at home, and with one's back turned toward any others who may be present. It is considered very rude to eat in front of others, and those who are spotted eating suffer embarrassment.

When it comes time for selecting a mate, Trobriand courtship is pretty standard. Couples spend time together talking and having fun; they have sex, of course, and spend the night with each other. To signal their interest in marriage, the woman stays in the man's home after sunrise, instead of scurrying home before breakfast, as usually expected. If the young man's mother accepts her son's choice of bride, she brings them a cooked breakfast and --- gasp! --- they eat together. The sharing of a meal together signifies the consummation of the marriage, and the married couple will eat together for about a year. At that time, the marriage either dissolves or is declared permanent, but either way, they go back to eating separately.

Maybe I should stop writing now --- if the quotation above doesn't get you to read this book, why would you bother reading anything else I have to say about this book? Ok, Nathan Lents, the author of the book is a professor at CUNY and identifies as gay. He has an agenda when writing this book, which is to show that the development of sexuality amongst animals is widely diverse, and the current political agenda to fix gender into 2 is artificial and has no backing in nature.

To do this, he first turns to the animal world, and describes, for instance, the bluegill sunfish, which have 2 sexes but 3 (or maybe even 4, depending on how you count) genders. There's the female which lays eggs, then there's the large male that builds a dwelling (which usually exists amongst other sunfish dwellings, and the more central dwellings are considered more desirable since the eggs that get eaten by predators will tend to be the ones at the periphery) to attract the female to lay eggs. Then there's the small male, which in its early years basically hangs out and when the large male is distracted, sneaks in to fertilize the eggs a female may have laid. The small male grows to become a medium sized male (and never becomes a large male), and those actually try to cohabit with a large male as a cooperator, helping chase away predators in exchange for some fertilization rights. This illustrates the author's contention that gender roles can be different (these are all in the same species), and there's nothing binary about gender roles even when the actual sex is binary.

There's a huge exploration of various animal behaviors, which is fascinating and full of fun reading all in its own right. The author draws example after examples of birds exhibiting homosexuality, forming same sex dyads in many cases, and he offers hypothesis as to why that is so. The exploration of great apes and the comparison between the common chimpanzees and bonobos (which many people are no doubt familiar with) also illustrates the concepts.

The book is not divorced from politics. Frequently the author will note that societies run by females are naturally much better for everyone, even the males. The example of the Silverback Gorilla is that even though the dominant male essentially gets the harem all to himself, he had to do so by fighting (and killing) his way to the top, and most males never get there. Even after he gets there, he will eventually be disposed of by an up and coming new alpha, so his life is harsh as well. By contrast, life is much better amongst the bonobos, with everyone sharing in food and getting plenty of sex. (The author does note that the bonobos evolved in an environment where food sources were plentiful)

Then there's the exploration of human sexuality amongst many cultures, of which the Trobriand is just one of many discussed and explored. You sense that the author feels sad that of all the cultures to win the globe it's really sad that the most repressive sexual cultures of the Abrahamic religions were the ones that dominated.

In any case, the book is dense, takes a long time to read, not because it's badly written but because there's so much stuff here to learn and think about. In retrospect I should have just bought the kindle version instead of being cheap and checking out this book from the library. Recommended!