Emily Martin’s The egg and the sperm: how science has created a romance based on stereotypical male-female roles examines the way that biologists describe what they discover within culturally conditioned discursive constraints about gender. Through close textual analysis, she exposes the rhetorical biases in the myths which are propounded around reproduction: ‘By extolling the female cycle as a productive enterprise, menstruation must necessarily be viewed as a failure’ (Lamphere 1997, 85). Thus, what is a normal part οf being female is described within textbooks as implying that a system has gone awry, making products οf no use, not to specification, unsalable, wasted, scrap. She contrasts this with the way that the sperm is championed in terms οf the numbers οf sperm produced and their seeming resilience; she concludes, None οf these texts expresses such intense enthusiasm for any female processes.
It is surely no accident that the remarkable process οf making sperm involves precisely what, in the medical view, menstruation does not: production οf something valuable. She finds in examining ovulation that ova, produced at birth, tend to be described as if ‘they merely sit on the shelf, slowly degenerating and aging like overstocked inventory’ (Lamphere 1997, 86). In contrast, male sperm production is seen as the continuous production of οf fresh sperm.
What Martin finds fascinating is that sperm production is not described as wasteful. She goes on to describe the way that the ova is represented as passive and waiting for the active sperm to penetrate; drawing on more recent research which shows that the sperm’s force is not sufficient to penetrate the ova’s surface, she demonstrates that the ova plays an active role in reproduction and that the egg traps the sperm and adheres to it so tightly that the sperm’s head is forced to lie flat against the surface. She argues, ‘what we are seeing… is the importation οf cultural ideas about passive females and heroic males into the “personalities” οf gametes’ (Lamphere 1997, 94). This has consequences such as pushing back οf the boundaries οf personhood to the cellular level, which ultimately may produce restrictions on pregnant women’s rights in relation to the fetus.
Another essay relating to reproduction is Sarah Franklin’s essay ‘Making sense οf missed conceptions: anthropological perspectives on unexplained infertility, which attempts to analyze the stories we tell about conception, which she argues are also ‘cultural cosmologies in microcosm’ (Franklin 1992). With the growth οf assisted conception, pre-conceptual care, and in vitro fertilization, she argues that conception is becoming more public. In a similar way, Rayna Rapp analyses the discourses ‘Constructing amniocentesis’ and investigates the power οf medical discourses ‘to intersect and rewrite the languages previously used for the description οf pregnancies, fetuses, and family problems’ (Rapp 1990, pp. 28-42)
This intervention has grave consequences for those forced to decide whether to abort a fetus that is judged to be abnormal by these medical discourses. Rapp demonstrates that this intervention affects groups οf women differently: ‘white middle-class women are both better served by reproductive medicine and are also more controlled by it than women οf less privileged groups’ (Rapp 1990, pp. 28-42).
Another section that contained inspiring essays was the one on ‘Colonizing Gender and Sexuality. Anne Stoler’s essay on ‘Making empire respectable: the politics οf race and sexual morality in 20th-century colonial cultures’ is a careful examination οf the heterogeneous nature οf the cultures οf the colonies, focusing on the way that ‘European women experienced the cleavages οf racial dominance and internal social divisions very differently than men precisely because οf their ambiguous positions, as both subordinates in colonial hierarchies and as active agents οf imperial culture in their own right’ (Stoler 1989, pp. 344-373).
Rather than focusing simply on the role οf white women within colonial cultures, she analyses the complex and shifting relationships between white men and indigenous women and the restrictions on relations between indigenous men and white women. By analyzing this asymmetrical set οf relations, she is able to describe more adequately the gender politics οf colonial cultures. Jean Comaroff’s essay on ‘The Empire’s Old Clothes: fashioning the colonial subject’ traces the difficulty which European missionaries experienced in their confrontation with the seeming nakedness οf Africans. As Camaroff shows, in her analysis οf the Tswana, there was a series οf cultural codings which the Tswana used to ‘clothe’ themselves, and thus make distinctions οf gender, age, and rank, even when they appeared naked to the missionaries.
Camaro describes the efforts οf missionaries to clothe these people in the dress οf ‘the virtuous British poor’ efforts which were resisted by the Tswana, who integrated elements οf European clothing within their own cultural systems οf self-fashioning (Comaroff 1996, pp. 2-7). Barbara Babcock’s essay, ‘Madwomen and white men: a meditation on Pueblo potteries and the politics οf representation,’ (Babcock 1994, pp. 10-15) analyses the changing forms οf women’s pottery in the South-west οf the United States in response to and in resistance to its appropriation by Anglo-Americans. Rather than viewing indigenous potters as simply tailoring their products for an Anglo-American market, she describes the way that female potters carve out particular themes and styles for themselves, some οf which are regarded as ‘decorative art’ and some as destined solely for tourists. She shows that many οf the pots produced contained satiric portraits οf white men, turning them into clowns.
This collection as a whole demonstrates the strength οf feminist anthropological analyses; all οf these essays force the reader to reconsider preconceived ideas about herself and her relation to others and about their situatedness. But it is not simply in anthropology that the force οf these essays will be felt. It is clear that the rethinking and reworking οf gender and its interrelation with class and race, which all οf the essays address, will have repercussions in many other disciplines.
Although there are some essays that do not seem to rise above the descriptive, particularly in the sections on the family and work, there are several οf the essays which shine through because οf their perceptiveness about the gendered politics οf the everyday. Kirin Narayan’s essay, ‘How native is a “native” anthropologist?’ is a good example οf the attempt to break down sedimented knowledge within anthropology. She asks why it should be that there is an assumption that a ‘native’ anthropologist should know more about a culture: she states, ‘factors such as education, gender, sexual orientation, class, race, or sheer duration οf contacts may at different times outweigh the cultural identity we associate with insider or outsider status’ (Narayan 1989, 168-95). She suggests rather that we should abandon this sense οf the fixity οf roles and ‘we might more profitably view each anthropologist in terms οf shifting identifications amid a field οf interpenetrating communities and power relations’ (Narayan 1989, pp. 168-195)
In the process οf exploring the role οf informants in anthropology, Narayan discusses the problematics οf mixed-race identity and positioning; she carefully untangles her own complex ‘racial’ origins, forcing the reader to interrogate ethnic and racial stereotypes. What is important are the decisions which are made on the basis οf these ‘racial’ categorizations: as she explains, drawing on Appadurai, ‘”natives” are incarcerated in bounded geographical spaces, immobile and untouched yet paradoxically available to the mobile outsider.’ Narayan discusses the way in which in her fieldwork she found herself distanced from some οf the community she was analyzing, and she calls for a critique οf supposed objectivity in relation to what are personal interactions as well as theoretical investigations.
“Feminists, Meet Mr. Darwin” was the title οf a New Republic article by EP author Robert Wright (1994a), written around the time that his popular book on the subject was published. It encapsulates well the widely held belief that Darwinism and feminism are mutually exclusive. This understanding was largely forged during the Sociobiology debates οf the 1970s, when many authors used evolution to argue against the newly developing women’s liberation movement (Barash, 1979; E. O. Wilson, 1978), and in turn, feminists critiqued their ideas as inherently sexist, providing a justification for traditional gender roles (e.g., Bleier, 1984). During the 1990s, this dynamic continued quite strongly, for example, in headlines such as “New Book Pits Feminists Against Darwinians” (Freely, 1999) or in Steven Pinker’s (1998a) book How The Mind Works: “These [feminist] kinds οf arguments combine bad biology (nature is nice), bad psychology (the mind is created by society) and bad ethics (what people like is good). Feminism would lose nothing by giving them up” . This is fairly typical οf EP rhetoric when engaging with opponents. As seen in the Miller book review cited earlier, review οf an anti-EP book, EP rhetoric often defends by the attack, anticipating the likely alternative positions that may be offered and portraying them as unviable. Evolutionary explanations οf gender and sexuality were largely argued to be the exclusive alternative to social science and feminist explanations, invoking learning, social conventions, and the importance οf patriarchal cultures in understanding gender difference (e.g., Buss, 1994).
Many feminist responses to EP have been highly critical οf the claims made, reinforcing the sense οf opposition (e.g., Fausto-Sterling, 2000; Segal, 1999). In many ways, this is unsurprising: a brief examination οf the basic evolutionary story οf males and females shows a frequently implicit and sometimes explicitly conservative vision οf gender politics. It is argued that, at the base, sperm cells are smaller and more abundant than egg cells, meaning they must compete to achieve fertilization and pass on the DNA they carry, whereas eggs, having invested more resources, can “choose” the “best” male cell to be fertilized by. (Martin 1991) This basic argument is often extended to argue that sex differences in the bodies οf the male and female animals that produce these reproductive cells, and including their behavior toward each other and their offspring, are the consequence οf this basic imbalance. Such differences, it is argued, results in competitive and aggressive males who attempt to mate as often and with as many different females as possible. Females, on the other hand, are often more adapted for nurturing offspring and are more discriminating about their sexual partners (often described as being “choosy” or “coy”), aiming for a “high-quality” male.1 These arguments form the basis οf Darwin’s theory οf sexual selection (Darwin, 1871/1981) and can be found in most evolutionary discussions οf relations between the sexes (Dawkins, 1976; Ridley, 1993a; G. Miller, 2000b). Evolutionary psychologists, like the Sociobiologists before them, tend to argue that as mammals, humans follow this pattern and that such evolutionary pressures have led to widespread differences between men and women.
Many οf the EP claims that were most prominent in the media were related to this central issue οf gender difference, particularly as expressed in terms οf (hetero)sexual relationships. Indeed, EP, alongside most recent evolutionary theorizing, has had little to say about non-heterosexual sexualities, or indeed any nonreproductive sexual behavior, largely because they struggle to find direct evolutionary explanations for it (e.g., Pinker, 1998, pp. 468, 473).2 The nature οf heterosexual attraction—what men (or women) “really want” in an ideal partner—was a central theme. Evolutionary psychologists argue that because οf sexual selection, men and women behave differently in relationships and want different things from their partners: For men, features such as youth and beauty (signals οf fertility) are preferred, whereas women have preferences for older, richer, socially dominant men (better resources for supporting children). The potential evolutionary roots οf (particularly female beauty) were explored as a consequence οf this (Etcoff, 1999), as were differences in sexuality, such as male preferences for casual sex (Buss, 1994). Many οf these arguments were presaged on an underlying assumption that monogamous, male-female pair bonds are the basic, “natural” human relationship required for the successful raising οf children.
Evolutionary psychology (EP) ideas were also used to explain gender inequalities in the workplace, arguing that the underlying reasons for the continuing “glass ceiling” were rooted in biological sex differences (Browne, 1998). Because οf sexual selection, it was argued that men are inherently more aggressive, competitive, and likely to take risks, meaning that men would seek out higher status more aggressively, leading to their progressing up the career ladder more quickly and successfully than women. In addition, these differences lead to the domination οf certain professions (such as nursing or firefighting) by one sex or the other. Therefore, policy attempts at equal opportunities were argued to be misguided, counterproductive, or doomed to failure (Cronin & Curry, 2000). Perhaps the strongest opposition between feminists and evolutionary psychologists was seen in controversies surrounding an EP explanation οf male-female rape (Thornhill & Palmer, 2000). Thornhill and Palmer proposed that rape was a “sexual strategy” used by young, low-status men who stood little chance οf finding a partner consensually. As part οf their argument, feminist explanations οf rape (in terms οf men asserting power and dominance over women) were strongly rejected, and they recommended that rape could be best avoided by women’s not dressing in a “provocative” manner—arguments that in turn drew further fire from feminists.3
In her classic work on the history οf primatology, Donna Haraway (1986, 1989) famously argued that “primatology is politics by other means” (1986, p. 77). From the early 20th century, when “great white hunters” gradually became naturalists, through laboratory, ape language, and back again to field studies οf primates, researchers have often cast the activities οf our closest relatives as versions οf our own society. More recently, historians have started to investigate relationships between the sciences οf animal behavior and the human societies that have produced these studies (e.g., Crist, 1998; Sleigh, 2002). This work has increasingly shown how arguments about other animals can function as stories and myths about ourselves. This is particularly pertinent for studies οf primates, our closest evolutionary relatives, who not only look and act but may even think like us, inviting speculations about human origins. As Haraway (1986, p. 87) put it,
Primatology is a contested field within Western cultures for defining what it means to be human. As such, it is a major social practice for Western 20th-century people to construct and negotiate the boundaries between human and animal, gender and sex, Western and other, culture and nature, whole and part.
Such studies οf primates, and οf other animals, have provided us with allegories and mirrors for negotiating who we are and what “human nature” might, or might not, be. Indeed, when human nature is itself the subject οf inquiry, the answers become even more fiercely contested because they have a direct bearing on how we do and should relate to each other. These histories have also shown us the ongoing power οf appeals to “nature” in supporting arguments about how people, society, and politics should be, a theme also explored in the other contributions to this special issue οf History οf Psychology. Recent work by Hansen (2006) has shown how the term human nature continues to hold symbolic power in today’s mass media, both to invest arguments with authority and legitimacy and as an idea to be actively challenged.
Footnotes
- High quality can mean a variety οf things, from an organism’s being physically healthy and strong to the idea οf its having “good genes” (see Ridley, 1993a, pp. 127–163).
- However, there may well be more indirect evolutionary pressures involved here; for a more nuanced EP discussion οf sexuality, see G. Miller (2000b, pp. 217–219).
- For a more detailed analysis οf how Thornhill and Palmer’s (2000) work was rhetorically directed against feminism and social science explanations οf rape, see Collins (2000).
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