By Marlene Zuk University of California Press, 2002 FROM THE DUST JACKET Scientific discoveries about the animal kingdom fuel ideological battles on many fronts, especially battles about sex and gender. We have learned that male marmosets help care for their offspring. Is this heartening news for today's stay-at-home dad? Recent studies show that many female birds once thought to be monogamous have chicks that are fathered outside of the primary breeding pair. Does this information spell doom for traditional marriages? Bonobo apes take part in female-female sexual encounters. Does this mean that human homosexuality is natural? In this highly provocative book, Marlene Zuk argues that these are the wrong questions to ask about animal behavior. Instead, she passionately asks us to learn to see the animal world on its own terms, in all its splendid diversity and variation. A respected biologist and a feminist, Zuk gives an eye-opening tour of some of the latest developments in the study of animal sexuality and evolutionary biology. In numerous intriguing stories about animal behavior-whether of birds and apes or of rats and cockroaches-she exposes the anthropomorphism and gender politics that have colored our perceptions of the natural world. In an engaging, conversational style, she discusses such politically charged topics as motherhood, the genetic basis for adultery, the female orgasm, menstruation, and homosexuality. She shows how feminism offers the tools to examine sensitive issues such as these, if we will only refrain from wielding animals as ideological weapons and using research to champion a feminist agenda. Sexual Selections not only furthers our understanding of animals-it can ultimately change our assumptions about what is natural, normal, and even possible. Marlene Zuk is Professor of Biology at the University of California, Riverside, and coeditor, with J. E. Loye, of Bird-Parasite Interactions: Ecology, Evolution, and Behaviour (1991). TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgments ix Note on species names xi Introduction: an ode to witlessness 1 Part one: Sexual stereotypes and the biases that bind 1. Sex and the death of a loon 21 2. Substitute stereotypes: the myth of the ecofeminist animal 34 3. Selfless motherhood and other unnatural acts 47 4. DNA and the meaning of marriage 61 5. The care and management of sperm 76 Part two: Unnatural myths 6. Sex and the scala naturae (or, worms in the gutter) 93 7. Bonobos: dolphins of the new millennium 1o7 8. The alpha chicken 121 Part three: Human evolutionary perspectives 9. Soccer, adaptation, and orgasms i39 10. Sacred or cellular: the meaning of menstruation 153 11. That s not sex, they re just glad to see each other 168 12. Can voles do math? 184 Conclusion: unnatural boundaries 200 Selected readings 213 References 219 Index 229 INTRODUCTION An Ode to Witlessness ". . . nature, heartless, witless nature . ." A. E. HOUSMAN Shortly after I entered graduate school at the University of Michigan, a fellow student came into my office and flung himself into the chair opposite mine. "I don't understand," he said, "how you can have feminist politics and still be interested in all that stuff over in the museum." The museum was the Museum of Zoology, and the "stuff" to which he referred was the burgeoning field of sociobiology, the study of the evolution of social behavior. It had become a flashpoint for vitriolic debate about the ability of science to draw conclusions about animal behavior in general and human behavior in particular. Both sex, meaning the genetic distinction between male and female, and gender, referring to its social and political associations, were a big part of the controversy from the start. Feminists were quick to recognize that a classic application of biology to oppression had been via the old "anatomy is destiny" route, and sociobiology seemed to some like the same restrictions dressed in trendy new genes. The debate has taken many turns in the years since; some stereotypes have fallen, and some new perspectives have been achieved. One result of the feminist movement is that many more of the scientific participants are now women. The term "sociobiology" became sufficiently politically laden chat it has been abandoned by many scientists, who now tend to call studies of the evolutionary basis of behavior in animals "behavioral ecology" and its counterpart in humans "evolutionary psychology." Yet we are as far as ever from consensus on what feminism and biology have to offer each other and whether-and if so, what-we can legitimately expect to learn about ourselves, particularly about aspects of our sexuality, from studies of nonhuman animal behavior. I am both a feminist and an evolutionary biologist interested in animal behavior. In my work I am interested in mating behavior and the evolution of sexual characteristics, and I am continually struck with the ways in which our biases about gender influence how we view animal behavior. As a feminist, I advocate the social and political equality of men and women. As an animal behaviorist, I want to learn as much as I can about what the animals I observe are actually doing, and why. In both of these aspects of my identity, I find it impossible to ignore that all of us, scientists, social scientists, and the general public, cannot seem to help relating animal behavior to human behavior. The lens of our own self-interest not only frequently distorts what we see when we look at other animals, it also in important ways determines what we do not see, what we are blind to. This book is about seeing what animals do. It is about the connections, legitimate and illegitimate, between learning about them and learning about ourselves. It is for those wanting to see how our ideas about sex have helped and hindered our ability to see animals clearly, for those wanting to know about some of the new frontiers in behavioral research, and for those who wonder how we could ever do science without trying to understand our social predisposition. It is for biologists, including those who never thought feminism mattered, and for feminists who always knew it did. I hope to convince you that the natural world is much more interesting and varied than we are often willing to recognize, but that if we try to use animal behavior in a simplistic manner to reflect on human behavior, we will, in myriad ways, misperceive both. WHERE TO ORDER: California - Princeton Fulfillment Services 1445 Lower Ferry Road Ewing, NJ 08618 USA Phone: 1-800-UC-BOOKS Fax: 1-800-999-1958 Email: orders@cpfs.pupress.princeton.edu Website: www.ucpress.edu ISBN: 0520219740 Cost: $24.95 USD Posted Date: 6/24/2003
URL: http://www.primate.wisc.edu/pin/review/sexual.html
Page last modified:
June 26, 2003
Maintained by the WPRC Library