Civilizing the male mammal

Do we need a primatologist to understand Texas?

One volunteered to help, with a Guest Post.

There is something unintuitive and contradictory about two political happenings in Texas. Texas' governor bans abortion while simultaneously asserting individual body autonomy regarding the COVID vaccine. Doesn't he notice the contradiction? Texas is more understandable when we consider the unconscious impulses wired into the instincts of men. Texas leaders are thinking like the primates that they are.

Hogan Sherrow offered a Guest Post last week noting that most primate males attempt to monopolize their access to females, and much of their status-seeking and domination activity is done to try to control female reproduction. Today's Guest Post returns with an observation that social animals sometimes work as a group to put checks on domination behaviors. 

Hogan Sherrow is a Fulbright Scholar and has a Ph.D. in Evolutionary Anthropology from Yale University. He has studied the behavior and ecology of humans and other animals on three different continents, specializing in the evolution of political behavior, tribalism, leadership, and aggression. Hogan now consults for individuals, organizations, and campaigns, here in the Rogue Valley as Owner of You Evolving, LLC, www.you-evolving.com.

Guest Post by Hogan Sherrow

Texans and the Taliban II: Reining in Bad Male Behavior

In my previous post I explained how, from an evolutionary perspective, the attempts by the Taliban and the Texas government to control women’s bodies and reproduction are not only not surprising, but predictable. Akhund’s Taliban and Texas Governor Abbott’s administration are doing what males have been doing to females for millions of years and what men have been doing to women for millennia. 

I normally don’t embrace the phrase “stone age” when referring to mind-sets of modern humans, but both the Taliban and Abbott’s administration are stuck in the stone age. They seem to have ignored thousands of years of culture and the understanding that women are every bit the equals of men. They treat women like females, instead of women. The distinction between male/female and men/women is an important one. The former refers to a biological distinction that applies to both humans and non-human animals, while the latter only refers to humans and is a cultural distinction that is gendered. The distinction is important when comparing human and non-human animal behavior.

Since we understand that these males in power are acting out primal, mammalian, male behaviors, we must call out the “bad actors” in public, condemn their behaviors, the laws they write, and the policies they institute. The key to achieving that is a system of checks and balances. Checks and balances are actually as natural and primal in social mammals as the drive to achieve status, and the propensity of males to try to control female behavior and reproduction. In the African apes, attempts to rein in bad actors take many forms. In chimpanzees and bonobos, coalitions work together to keep bellicose individuals in check. Among gorillas, males who are too aggressive or violent are abandoned by the females of their groups, as a physical “vote of no confidence.” In our closest relatives, and in our own species, checks and balances have evolved to keep powerful individuals from abusing their status. In the cases of the Taliban and Texas, they have never been more important.

In the case of the Taliban, changing their behavior might be nothing more than a pipe-dream. The men who run the Taliban have operated as a lawless gang for over a generation, using their religious beliefs to justify their primal behaviors, ruling with an iron fist, trampling the rights of women and brutalizing their opponents. However, if the Taliban is going to become the recognized government of Afghanistan and move out of the stone age, the international community has an obligation. We must require they institute a parliamentary system, where alternative voices can be represented. I acknowledge it won't be easy, but it is necessary. The international community needs to hold them accountable as a grown-up government.

In Texas checks and balances exist on paper but aren't working in practice. For decades Republicans in Texas have been gerrymandering voting districts, limiting voter access, and stacking the courts with partisan, activist judges. The result is that Governor Abbott and his allies are unchecked, and have instituted extreme, stone-age laws and policies that reflect instinctive impulses, unmediated by cultural restraints. Our country's founders set up a system of checks and balances because they understood that primal behaviors needed to be restrained so the powerful would not become tyrants. They established a structure that would cause ambition to check ambition, so powers would balance.

Checks and balances require those formal foundational structures, but they are strongest when they include diverse experiences and perspectives. By including more voices, from diverse backgrounds, ethnicities and genders in decision making, we help check the status-seeking behaviors inherited from our primate ancestors. Diverse perspectives also help keep extreme, stone-age views from taking root and dominating laws or policies. It is through the diversity of perspectives that we truly flourish as a representative democracy. Social relations get beyond a struggle of physical strength or inherited status. The powerless have socially sanctioned rights, guaranteed by the strength of the whole polity. We emerge from the stone age and join the modern world.

Texas is a perfect example of what happens when checks and balances fail, and the results have been unfortunate and predictable. The male-dominated government returned to stone-age behaviors, using religion as justification for passing new, draconian laws designed to dominate and control women. 

Despite the clear threat to their individual freedoms and their health, there are some women who continue to support these stone-age laws and policies. That paradox will be the focus of my third Guest Post in this series.

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