So, it’s finally happened. Russell Brand, comedian-turned-radical-political-podcaster, is being called out internationally about an alleged, decades-long history of sexual assault, rape, grooming, and predatory behavior toward women and girls. He was called out by an investigative article in the UK’s Sunday Times and a documentary exposé on Channel 4.
 
Here’s the Wikipedia condensed version:

Now, here’s the thing. Russell Brand has been in active recovery from substance abuse disorder—including alcohol and heroin, since he went into rehab in 2002. He’s been clean and sober for more than two decades, and he has shared publicly and generously about his journey in recovery. His book, Recovery: Freedom From Our Addictions, was a best-seller. In 2005, he entered rehab in the US for sex addiction, and since then, he has been very open about the harms of pornography. In his autobiography he wrote about having drawn up an extensive ‘victims list’ of women he had “wronged” as a result of his sexual addiction.

In addition he has shared his history of sexual abuse. When he was a little boy, he was sent to a tutor who, according to Brand, "when I got a question right – by way of congratulation – stuck his finger up my arse and felt my balls."  He told his mother, who told his father, and the tutoring stopped, but nothing was ever done. When he was a teenager, his father took him on an Asian "sex tourism" holiday, and his father rented a prostituted woman to "teach him to be a man." The father stayed in the room to watch.  According to Brand, he was advised to leave his childhood abuse out of the book, but, he wrote, "The reason I left it in was because I thought, if in Chapter Four you see this happen, when in Chapter Twelve, I'm rampaging round having it off with prostitutes, you might see a corollary."

All of this is to say, I believed in Brand's recovery. My first reaction to The Times account was, "Oh, my god! He’s going to own it! He’s going to do something that none of these predators have ever done before! He’s going to model 12-Step accountability, and he’s going to do it on a public stage!  He’s going to walk his talk and set an example for the world!"

My second reaction reinforced my first:   "He's no Harvey Weinstein! He's no Bill Cosby!  The man has reinvented himself!"

Russell Brand is no longer a man-boy, mommy-shocker, BBC clown-prince, bad-boy comedian. He’s a political commentator, and an extremely competent one. He has rebranded himself as a whistleblower who is not afraid to take on the government as well as huge corporations. Some consider him the king of conspiracy theories, but, whenever I have watched his podcast, he brings the receipts, posting and citing all of his sources. Impressive. Oh, and he has attracted something like seven million followers… He is actually giving mainstream media a run for the money.

It is you who are being called to account for your past perpetration. Like the fashion giant, you are just wanting everyone to move on and celebrate who you are today. But, there were very real victims in your past collusion with a toxic, profoundly misogynist culture. And this time, Mr. Brand, it is we the people who have the receipts. There are dozens of videos of your comedy act, your hosting, your game show participation where you parade your history of misogynist predation as if it was a joke. There are videos of you grabbing, groping, kissing women. All of which are criminal acts, you realize. And then there are the women who were part of the BBC investigation. In the week following the publication of the story, there have been a half-dozen more who have come forward. And then there is the video clip from a talk show where you brag about having just exposed yourself to a woman in a bathroom minutes before going on air. In that encounter you called her by a name that was not hers and insisted you were going to continue calling her that and that you were going to "f*** her." She was terrified. It made a great joke on air.

Surely, with all that yoga, meditation, chanting, healthy lifestyle, recovery proselytizing, and especially with all of that whistleblowing, you are going to take responsibility for your actions... After all, you have made millions--millions!—by calling out the sleazy tactics of public figures who are trying to evade public accountability!

We are looking to you not to use the same-old, same-old, banal, corporate playbook of denial, lawyering up to intimidate and discourage potential witnesses, deflecting, and—of course—throwing the women and girls under the bus. We are looking to you not to take the easy way out, the rich man’s way out—which, of course, is to retraumatize your victims by discrediting them. Surely, you’re not going to play the victim, to pretend that these women are all gold-diggers or vindictive exes.  One of them was sixteen when you were thirty!  Surely you are not going to trash the child that she was!

Surely, with all of this, Mr. Brand, you are going to show up and own everything… You can’t possibly be that big of a phony and a hypocrite, can you?  Surely, now, with two daughters of your own, you can’t model this kind of misogyny? With all your pride about your working-class background, you can’t lean into the classism behind “out-lawyering” your victims? Surely, with two decades of sharing your recovery with the public, now that it’s crunch time, you’re going to “walk the talk,” aren’t you…?  Mr. Brand…?  Aren’t you…?

No, he's not.
 
And, actually, in anticipation of this kind of exposure, Brand has already been hiring high-power attorneys to threaten former alleged victims who have attempted to go public with their personal stories of rape and predatory behavior. He’s not owning a damn thing. He appears to feel completely entitled to retraumatize these women with legal threats.

Given the opportunity to respond to the allegations before the article went to press, Brand chose not to. Instead, he made his own video on September 16:

“Obviously, it’s been an extraordinary and distressing week, and I thank you very much for your support and for questioning the information that you’ve been presented with… But amidst this litany of astonishing rather baroque attacks, are some very serious allegations that I absolutely refute… These allegations pertain to the time when I was working in the mainstream, when I was in the newspapers all the time, when I was in the movies. And as I've written about extensively in my books, I was very, very promiscuous… Now, during that time of promiscuity, the relationships I had were absolutely always consensual… What I seriously refute are these very, very serious criminal allegations…”

Brand is revealing his defense strategy: The watchwords will be “promiscuity” and “consensual.” He is parsing his words to avoid libel. He says the “relationships” were consensual. He is not saying anything about the alleged acts. In fact, he has been accused of assault and rape within these relationships. These acts are criminal even if they transpire between married couples. He is leaning into the word “promiscuity,” which is defined as “characterized by many transient sexual relationships.” It’s also defined as “implying an undiscriminating or unselective approach.” “Promiscuity” would indicate that the only one harmed is himself, for dating women not in his league.  These words, “promiscuity” and “consensual” have been carefully chosen to counter the multiple charges of criminal behavior.

Predation, not promiscuity.  Nonconsensual, not consensual. According to the women coming forward, he ambushed women, he assaulted them, he propositioned them in the most intentionally vulgar and demeaning ways. He resorted repeatedly to coercive tactics, including emotional abuse, manipulation, physical intimidation, and force.

In addition to minimizing the allegations in his video, Brand  characterizes the professional investigation as some kind of conspiracy of “news media making phone calls and sending letters to people I know.” That’s actually what’s known in journalism as “research.” He goes on to say that it feels to him like a “serious and concerted agenda to control these kinds of [alternative] spaces and these kinds voices.” Then, to clarify, he adds, “And I mean my voice along with your voice.”  Summing up, he again qualifies his actions as promiscuous and consensual, but absolutely not criminal.   

After this, he went silent for a week as more women came forward and more criminal allegations were made. And then the hammer dropped: Youtube demonetized his channel. What does that mean? It means he can no longer earn ad revenue off his videos on that platform. (It’s estimated that he was making a million a year off Youtube ad revenue.)  In addition, his management company dropped him, his publisher is suspending any planned publications, and the remaining dates on his current tour have been postponed.

Much of what the media portrays as women's sexuality looks suspiciously like dissociative identity disorder.  Marilyn Monroe's seductive behaviors, for example, bear more resemblance to those of a captive child appeasing an adult perpetrator than those of a grown woman engaging in an empowering and mutually satisfying sexual interaction.  And, indeed, why wouldn’t they? 
 
The pop cultural icon for female heterosexuality spent her childhood in eleven foster homes and one orphanage.  Eleven foster homes.  One orphanage.   By her own account, she was a survivor of multiple episodes of child sexual abuse.  Her mother?  Mentally ill and committed to an asylum. Shortly after Marilyn’s fifteenth birthday,  her legal guardian Grace McKee brokered a so-called marriage for her.  In other words, Marilyn Monroe was legally prostituted as a teenager.  Before she was twenty-five, she had already made three attempts at suicide; by thirty-six, she was dead.  Marilyn called her first husband “Daddy,” she called second husband (Joe Dimaggio) “Pa,” and she called third husband (Arthur Miller) “Pops.”  Apparently it wasn’t just her heart that belonged to daddy.

But this profoundly traumatized woman who died such a tragic, early death has become, not a symbol for a movement against child sexual abuse, but an icon of female sexuality.  What does it say about popular culture that its sex goddess was a desperately unhappy, suicidal,  incest survivor with dissociative identity disorders —  a woman who was  raised homeless, abandoned by one female guardian and prostituted by another?   Can anyone really believe that Marilyn Monroe’s sexuality existed independent of her personal history —  that it was not intimately connected with behaviors learned during a childhood in which she was perpetually at the mercy of strangers, and that, rather than being an attribute of empowerment, it was more the strategy of impotence?

What have been described as “seductive behaviors,” were, in fact, an aggregate of cues developed in a perpetrator-victim scenario, and it is instructive for women to note the universality of this code among males who choose to read them at face value.  Ask these same men to imitate Marilyn Monroe’s facial expressions, postures, or speech patterns, and they will be quick to tell you how ridiculous, how childish, how undignified  they feel. 

Apparently behaviors that are seen as natural and even desirable for women, are read as degrading and absurd for men.  The mystique of femininity or the bald facts of dominance?   The sexual behavior for women that patriarchy wants to idealize is identical to that of an enslaved child. 
 
At a recent auction of her personal belongings, a pair of Marilyn’s rhinestone-encrusted, stiletto-heel pumps was sold  for $48,000.   A high price to pay for shoes, but cheap compared to the cost of walking in them.

Xaviera Hollander’s memoir is similarly illuminating.
 
In 1972, The Happy Hooker by Xaviera Hollander burst onto the scene, becoming an international bestseller and launching its author into instant celebrity. The book seemed to offer proof positive that the so-called “Sexual Revolution” of the 1960’s had indeed succeeded. The publisher crowed, “Far from the conventional image of the prostitute, Xaviera is well-read, articulate, fluent in half-a-dozen languages, and bursting with charm and joie de vivre.”
 
In the book, Hollander recounted in titillating prose her experiences as a prostitute and then as a madam in New York City. It didn’t hurt sales that her appearance corresponded with the stereotype of the “blonde bombshell,” and the fact that she was from the Netherlands lent her an air of European sophistication. Hollander was lauded as a completely liberated woman whose apparently insatiable sexual appetite was nothing more than the natural expression of a healthy libido. The one episode in the book where she was beat up and very nearly murdered by a john is treated as an unfortunate and fluke event, in what was otherwise consistently characterized as an empowering and fulfilling profession.
 
The Happy Hooker sold fifteen million copies, and was made into a movie starring Lynn Redgrave. Hollander went on to write a sex advice column for Playboy, and several more books about her sexy escapades. Then, in 2002, she published a memoir that was very different from her other books. Titled Child No More, this book did not make any best-seller lists or attract any movie deals. It was, in fact, a Holocaust memoir.

Meanwhile, Hollander’s father, whom she barely met, was interned in a different camp. Also caught smuggling food, he was beaten, tortured on a bamboo rack, and subjected to electrical shock administered to his genitals.
 
The war ended and the camps were liberated, but before Hollander and her mother were reunited with her father, she suffered another traumatic experience. Climbing a dead tree, she took a fall that resulted in her groin being impaled with a dead tree branch. Taken to the hospital, she remembers there were two doctors, who playfully told her to choose which one would treat her.  Unknowingly, she chose her own father. He also failed to recognize her. 
 
He apparently performed surgery on her torn vulva, and Hollander’s memories of this episode are bizarre. She remembers his “hypnotic power,” as “magic seemed to flow from his hands as they brushed my most private region.” Whether he was sexually inappropriate or she was overlaying previous trauma memories, she would write, “… there was that peculiar attraction at first sight. And in the years that followed, the precocious eroticism his loving, skillful hands had aroused in me would develop into a powerful emotion, little short of obsession.” (Hollander, p. 71)

Such were the formative years of the “Happy Hooker:” imprisonment in a concentration camp where all the males were enemies,foreigners, and sadists, constant witnessing of torture and murder of utterly subordinated women, separation from her mother, starvation, and then an episode of genital trauma associated with incestuous affect.
 
How much of her eagerness to please men sexually could be attributed to a post-traumatic, generalized Stockholm Syndrome? Was the peculiar form of mouth torture that she noted a result of women not smiling enough at their degradation, of not appearing “happy” enough at their sexual violation?  Hollander noted that, in the camps, it was clear that some women were not starving and were visibly better off than others. Later, she would understand that these were the women who were prostituting themselves.  How deep an impression did that information make? Could her celebrated hypersexuality have been a response to inappropriate sexualization as a toddler—either in the camp or at the hands of a father whose lack of sexual boundaries was a constant source of conflict in his marriage?
 
In Hollander’s own words, “A child’s character is like clay, and my confinement in that hell behind the bamboo wall certainly molded my character.”

In a recent gay-and-lesbian theatre newsletter, there were two notices about Oscar Wilde.  One was recruiting petitioners for a campaign to obtain an official pardon for Wilde, and the other was recruiting support for an Oscar Wilde celebration.
 
I strongly object to Oscar Wilde's being marketed as some kind of figurehead for gay and lesbian theatre activists.  And I object to gay men's attempts to unilaterally define what is touted to the media as coalition culture.  And I object most strongly of all to what I call lesbian "theatre wives," who, for the questionable privilege of a male-funded theatre roof over their heads are willing to table women's issues in favor of those which speak to the interests of their theatre husbands.
 
Oscar Wilde is a case in point.  His "culture" - arrogantly classist, misogynist, pedophilic - shares nothing in common with lesbian-feminist values, and as lesbians we need to be knowledgeable about the facts before we join our gay brothers in celebrating as a martyr someone whom many of us would consider a criminal.

According to the record, Wilde was sent to jail because of his sexual exploitation of working-class and poverty-class child prostitutes.  It was they who presented the testimony against him, and it was their evidence that sent him to prison.
 
Furthermore, it was Wilde's homophobia that set the whole legal process in motion in the first place!  His lover's father "accused" Wilde of homosexual behavior, and Wilde, in a fit of pique and egged on by his narcissistic lover, sued the man for libel - in other words, for lying.  Hardly a stand for gay rights!
 
And here is Wilde retaining an attorney for his suit: 
 
Sir Edward Clarke advised him, "I can only accept this brief, Mr. Wilde, if you can assure me on your honour... that there is no and never has been any foundation for the charges that are made against you."  Wilde stood up and declared the charges "absolutely false and groundless."  It is important to remember that Wilde was prosecuting, and that Clarke, like most attorneys, was not interested in taking on an unwinnable case.   To his credit, Sir Edward continued to defend Wilde through his subsequent trials, even after he discovered how his client's deliberate duplicity had placed him on the losing side of a sordid and sensational case which became known as the "trial of the century."  The suit proved such a professional embarrassment to him, Clarke omitted any mention of it in his memoirs.
 
And what about his family?  Wilde was married with two children at the time that he instigated the frivolous libel suit.  It was an action taken without consulting his wife and without the funds to pay the legal fees.  Foolishly, Wilde trusted his lover to cover the costs.  After his incarceration, his creditors moved in, and his family's possessions - even the children's toys - were ruthlessly auctioned off.  His wife, compelled by the scandal to leave England, found that it was necessary to change her name and her sons' names even to obtain lodging in a foreign hotel. 

Although Constance Wilde was strongly advised to divorce her husband, he importuned her from prison, and she decided against taking such action.  In fact, she continued to demonstrate   extraordinary consideration towards the man who had shown so little for her and for their children, traveling in poor health from Switzerland to Reading Gaol in order to convey in person the news of Wilde's mother's death.  After his release from prison, Wilde proceeded to violate all of the agreements he had made with her to protect the family from any further notoriety.
 
As a footnote to the marriage, Wilde had not had sexual relations with Constance for several years.  The reason he had given was that his syphilis, which he had contracted from a prostitute during his student years and had believed to be cured, was, in fact, still virulent.  There is no evidence that Wilde ever shared this information with any of the boys with whom he had sexual relations.
 
Wilde was brought to bankruptcy while in prison when his lover's father brought suit to recover his damages from the ill-advised libel suit.  Not only did Lord Alfred, Wilde's lover, renege on his agreement to cover these costs, but as Wilde reminded him in his famous letter "de Profundis," this parsimony was all the more reprehensible, because Wilde had squandered many times that amount on Lord Alfred.

But, back to the trial...  Needless to say, the man that Oscar Wilde was suing did everything he could to prove his innocence - as most people will do when they are being sued.  And so, not surprisingly, he produced as witnesses a number of the child prostitutes whose "services" had been procured by Wilde.
 
And at this point, a number of my gay brothers will insist that I make a distinction between "child prostitute" and "teenaged prostitute."  I confess that the distinction is lost on me, and I will leave it to those for whom qualifiers of age, class, geography, period in history, etc. provide a certain rationale, if not outright justification, for a practice which is apparently so intrinsic a part of gay male culture and so violently antithetical to lesbian-feminist values.
 
Some gay brothers will also jump to Wilde's defense, claiming that the boys were being paid by the defendant to testify, either that, or cooperating with the state in order to avoid prosecution.  That some of these boys had histories of blackmailing their "clients" has also been used to discredit their testimony.  Leaving for a moment the fact that Wilde admitted to friends on several subsequent occasions that the charges had been true, let us look at these objections.

Why shouldn't these boys protect their interests against a class of sexual predators who had chosen to victimize them specifically because of their disenfranchisement both as children and as members of a profoundly oppressed underclass?  Why should anyone be surprised that Wilde's affectionately engraved cigarette cases should find their way to the pawnshop?  If, as a function of his privilege, Wilde chose to romanticize his sexually exploitive transactions - such sentimentality was hardly a luxury his victims could afford.  When wealthy members of an elite class pay bargain prices for the sexual services of children, based on the poverty-class economy of these children, -can they be surprised if the more enterprising of these boys turn around and charge them premium prices for privacy based on their economy of privilege?
 
The relationship between the john and the prostituted boy  is not a mutual one.  It is the standard method of operation for colonialists, enslavers, and pimps, to brutalize the members of an underclass created by economic and sometimes social violence, and then to point to their brutalization as a rationale for the conditions to which they are subjected.  This circular and self-serving logic is in play when Wilde's defenders attempt to discredit his victims as "blackmailers and thieves." 
 
Wilde gave a speech during the trial, which is often cited as a testimonial to his gay pride.  In fact, he gave the speech as an attempt to prove that his relations with Lord Alfred were not gay, but rather a platonic bonding between an older man and a younger man.  The context in which he framed his famous "love that dares not speak its name" speech was profoundly homophobic.

"People thought it was dreadful of me to have entertained at dinner the evil things of life... It was like feasting with panthers; the danger was half the excitement.  I used to feel as a snake-charmer must feel when he lures the cobra to stir from the painted cloth or reed basket that holds it and make it spread its hood at his bidding and sway to and fro in the air...  Their poison was part of their perfection." 
 
To what does "poison" refer if not their class antagonism towards Wilde and his kind?  And what a patriarchal reversal of the power relations!  It is remniscent of the rhetoric used against incest victims, characterizing them as promiscuous and vampiric.
 
One of the boys who testified had not been procured for Wilde.  He had been employed as an office boy at Wilde's publishing firm, and Wilde had cultivated the friendship by exploiting the boy's interest in his writing.  The boy testified that he had been ignorant of Wilde's intentions, that he was traumatized by the sexual contact, and that he was subsequently fired from his job for his association with Wilde.  His emotional confusion about his victimization by a "benign" perpetrator was used against him in court as proof that he was crazy.
 
After his conviction, and halfway through his two-year prison sentence, Wilde wrote the following words in a petition to the Home Secretary.  No doubt the homophobia is exacerbated by his desire to win a pardon, but Wilde's attempt to characterize his homosexuality as a disease or the result of bad company is cowardly to say the least:

Frans de Waal, Dutch primatologist extraordinaire, has written a book that I found important enough to write a blog about. It’s titled Different: Gender Through the Eyes of a Primatologist.
 
        Calm Down...
 
And before you go all ape on me, let me say that Dr. de Waal does not justify human gender relations, nor does he think that things are fine as they are. He tells us upfront that the whole idea of one sex being mentally superior receives zero backing in modern science. Male supremacy is not a natural order among primates. In fact, he tells us, typical primate society is, at heart, a female kinship network run by older matriarchs. But, on the other hand, de Waal is not a proponent of neo-creationism either. He is clear that humans are subject to the laws of nature, and that evolution did not screech to a halt when humans arrived. Humans are animals, and—specifically—we are primates. Hence the relevance of studying and understanding primate behaviors.

De Waal’s disclaimers:  He is looking at human behavior that is related to primate behavior, and in doing that, he is going to look at the literature on human behavior. He does not trust self-reports, but prefers the studies of tested and observed actual behavior. Omissions, he warns, will include: economic disparity, household labor, access to education, and cultural rules for attire. Now, obviously, these are huge influencers in the ways that gender plays out in human societies, but they are not universal for other primates… hence the omission. And, yes, I still think his book is valuable.
 
So enough taxiing down the runway. Let’s get to it…
 
                                                   Nature or Nurture?
 
So, right out of the gate, “Is it nature or nurture?”
 
Many humans assume that we socialize our children via the toys we select for them. But de Waal comes to a different conclusion from studying young primates: Play cannot be dictated. Confronted with a pile of random toys, young female primates overwhelmingly prefer plush toys and young males are attracted to things with wheels. Given a toy train, a young female will swaddle it and carry it around like a baby. According to the author, there is “consistency in finding a sex difference in the preferences for toys typed to their gender,” and he concludes that “the strength of this phenomenon points to the likelihood of a biological origin.” Notice the extreme carefulness of the language here. He must know the same people I do.  One of the most dramatic differences is in the play itself. The males enjoy roughhousing, but the females do not. They enjoy a form of play that has a storyline. Because of this, the two sexes practice segregated play.

So, does this mean nature trumps nurture? De Waal answers the question with another question: “Is a percussive sound made by the drummer or the drum?” Obviously, the answer is “both,” because on their own neither makes the sound. One could say the environment “plays” on our genes, as it were. This is “interactionism,” which assumes a dynamic interplay between genes and environment. Interactionism is not popular, because it does not offer easy answers. I’m going to say that again: Interactionism is not popular, because it does not offer easy answers.
 
“Every human tendency, regardless of whether we rate it as natural, can be amplified, weakened or modified by culture. If the gallons of ink spilled on the biological basis of altruism, homosexuality, and intelligence has taught us anything, it’s that every human trait reflects an interplay between genes and environment.”
 
Okay, let’s take language.  Adopted babies will speak the language of their adoption… obviously a cultural/environmental phenomenon. On the other hand, human language faculty is unique among primates, and that uniqueness is biological. So… nature and nurture.
 
Another quick example:  The Pill. It changed the biology of females so radically, that the entire cultural playing field was and still is (I hope) permanently reshaped.

Here’s another useful term: “learning predisposition.” What that means is being programmed to learn certain things at a particular time in our life. Like the way baby ducklings imprint. At a young age, they learn to identify with the species to which their mother belongs and follow her around—an obvious plus for survival. But when the mother duck is absent, these ducklings can imprint on a human caregiver, or a dog, or a goose, which may be less adaptive, but does result in a plethora of adorable Youtube videos. 
 
By the way, primate infants are extremely vulnerable, and newborns will die within twenty-four hours without intensive caregiving. Yes, males could provide some of this caregiving, especially with older babies, and sometimes they do take on that role with orphaned chimps… but there is only one sex that is 100% guaranteed to be present at the time of birth: the female. (Because, duh, she’s having the baby. Also, human fathers are the only primates who understand the mechanics of biological fatherhood. The concept is lost on male chimps and bonobos.) Because of this, it’s an obvious choice on the part of evolution to equip females with built-in “learning predispositions” for caregiving. “No person currently walking the earth could have gotten here if it weren’t for ancestors who survived and reproduced. No exceptions. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be here. Their genes are not in the gene pool.” (Consider the offspring of a female with a genetic makeup completely lacking in maternal predispositions. Brilliant as she might be, her offspring are not likely to survive, and her brilliance dies with her… unless she can write for a species that can read.)
 
The author makes the point that human gender roles are subject to similar “learning predispositions,” but, at the same time, he notes, “Roles may not be biological, certainly in all their details, but they are culturally acquired with a speed, eagerness, and thoroughness that hints at a biologically driven process.” Interactionism. See, we can get through this.

We just looked at maternal caregiving.  What about other expressions of gender? Let’s look at neuroimaging studies. (“Neuroimaging” means producing images of the brain by noninvasive techniques. It enables studies of a living brain, as opposed to dissection.) So… neuroimaging studies of humans indicate that imitating people of one’s own sex activates reward centers in the brain. Primate science. Evolution equipped our young with a feel-good bias to conform to the gender associated with their sex. Why? Because in primate societies the roles for males and females are very different throughout their lives. We know from studies that male chimps and bonobos strive for status and territory. We know from studies that the female apes protect and nurture their young for years. (See above.) And we also know that ideology has nothing to do with it. We know this is about sex at birth. It’s about preservation of the gene pool, which means optimizing the chances for the offspring to survive. And primate babies, including humans, take a long time to grow up.
 
“Children self-socialize via selective attention, imitation, and participation in particular activities and modality of interaction.” In primate societies, for example, chimp daughters watch and learn how their mother’s extract termites (to eat). This is a sex-segregated skill related to their role as feeders and nurturers of their offspring. Likewise male chimp infants seek male models. At first glance, teaching and learning may appear to be purely cultural and not biological in origin, but let’s not forget those internal reward centers for same-sex imitation. Primates are wired to copy those with whom they bond and identify, i.e., the members of their sex. The drummer and the drum.

De Waal notes that most differences across the sexes are bimodal (either male or female) but differences between genders present across a spectrum. Our current culture has become deeply polarized around this issue. We either want to staple a rigid set of gender roles firmly to biological sex, which is overwhelmingly bimodal, or else we want to flow with the fluidity of gender and downplay biological sex altogether, declaring it to be irrelevant. We do this at our peril, because in patriarchy, this approach has disastrous consequences for females. The consequences of gender role enforcement are also disastrous. But this is what we do, because interactionism is hard.
 
Also, science hasn’t always been scientific. Like many of us, science has found interactionism too hard. It has tended to ignore sex differences for a long, long time. In other words, ignore women. Finally, mercifully, this is starting to change. This neglect has been catastrophic for women, from barbaric male-dictated birthing practices, to male-modeled crash test dummies, to failure to study the impact of medications and vaccines on women’s reproductive systems. Remember thalidomide and the courageous woman in the FDA who, at great risk to her career, insisted on fetal studies of the drug before she would license it? Turns out thalidomide was responsible for a nightmare array of birth defects, and the horror of it was that it was being prescribed specifically as a sleep sedative to pregnant women who were struggling with insomnia related to the pregnancy!

 Being a scientist, De Waal puts forward a theory about the science of transgender identity and behavior: “One speculation is that in a fraction of human pregnancies, the body takes off in a different direction than the brain. A fetus’ genitals differentiate into male and female during the first few months of pregnancy, whereas the brain differentiates by gender in the second half of pregnancy… Gender identities are probably shaped in the womb from hormonal exposure. Experience after birth seems to have little impact. This could explain why no amount of conversion therapy, combined with prayer and punishment, changes the minds of transgender persons… Not every human trait is malleable.”
 
Here, he is actually drawing on science. Human brains are not gender neutral. Again, nature or nurture?  Are our brains different because of hormones or experiences? Or both? Currently we don't know, but it’s a thoroughly established fact our brains are sexually dimorphic. What does that mean?  Sexual dimorphism is the “systematic difference in form between individuals of different sex in the same species.” Specifically, some parts of the male and female brain differ from each other in size or appearance. And before you accuse me of “neurosexism” or come at me about “lady brains,” there are more than 20,000 scientific articles documenting sex difference in human brains. Should it be unthinkable that this dimorphism might have some evolutionary connection?  I’m going to keep an open mind on the subject, and I found De Waal’s speculation interesting.

So what about homosexuality? The bonobos, as noted, are extremely sexually active, and their partnerings are often with members of the same sex. In fact, three quarters of bonobo sex could not result in procreation (same-sex, too old, or too young partners). Interestingly, the levels of oxytocin, the “love drug,” are higher in the urine of female bonobos after sex with another female. Enhanced oxytocin production has been seen as a hormone to facilitate childbirth, but possibly its bonding function in some primates is significant. (Footnote: As De Waal points out, there are no species other than humans that are truly "homosexual," as in exclusively attracted to members of one's own sex. And, yes, that includes those famous male penguins at the Central Park Zoo.)

What about the chimps?  Same-sex partnering among chimps was thought to be rare until recently. Today it is reported as frequent. What changed? Definitions and attitudes.  Today studies include sociosexual behavior, which is defined as “physical interaction involving contact with the anogenital region except for mating/copulations."  In the past, these behaviors had been dismissed as  “reassurance” or “reconciliation,” or “gestures.” Today they are acknowledged to be sexual.

Nature or nurture? The author explores the literature about brain studies exploring structural differences in the brains of gays and lesbians. He sites the work of Ivanka Savic and Per Lindström, who were studying human brain symmetry, which has no relationship to behavior, is fixed at birth, and is not altered by life experiences.  Their work indicates that sexual orientation may be forged in early infancy or even in the womb. But the primate culture of the great apes certainly doesn't discourge same-sex partnering.

                                         Violence Against Women
 
Much of de Waal’s focus is on primate violence in general, and, human violence against females in particular. Studies show that primates resolve conflicts, sympathize with each other, and seek cooperation. Both human children and primates demonstrate spontaneous altruism without enticements. Bonobos are taken as proof that violence is not hard-wired in, and most of the time both chimps and bonobos live in harmony. That actually goes for humans, also. Philosopher Mary Midgeley, who wrote about the relations of humans and animals, notes that humans are ultra-social, with communal values, even though we have a body of literature by men and for men depicting us as greedy individualists with only a veneer of goodness.  Propaganda?
 
There are no confirmed reports of bonobos killing each other, but there are many cases where chimps have ganged up and murdered male members of their tribe, sometimes brutally. Remember, the bonobos are sexy, peaceful, and female dominant. Male chimps also commit infanticide, and female chimps copulate widely to ensure protection of the young. Yes, these females have sex for excitement, attraction, adventure, and pleasure, but always behind it lies the threat of infanticide. If a male is bonded with the female through sex, he is less likely to murder her baby. (Again, he has no notion of fatherhood.) And, sadly, we have to include humans as among the species that commit infanticide. (Others include lions, dolphins, bears, prairie dogs, and owls. I know… dolphins?) Our infanticide? Step-fathers murder step-children with more frequency than the biological fathers. War is a large-scale scenario where the older father figures routinely send out the younger males to kill other younger males and to be killed. Why? Less competition for these aging males.
 
Female chimps receive more favors when they are in estrus, which is marked by highly visibile swelling of their genitalia. They barter sex for favors. The female bonobos, on the other hand, never threatened with infanticide or male violence, simply claim what they want, which happens to be an enormous amount of sex… with both males and females.

The author notes that female sexuality among both species is as proactive and enterprising as that of the males… but for different evolutionary reasons. And here is a fascinating side note about the bonobos:  During sex, the male will stop thrusting and dismount  if the female is avoiding eye contact or signals boredom by yawning or grooming. The bonobos demonstrate a clear grasp of the female’s right to change her mind. Sigh.

Which takes us back to the subject of human male violence against females: “If there is one aspect of social life that is gender-biased, it is physical violence. Males are its overwhelming source, and it applies equally to most other primates.” Statistics show that 22.1% of women and 7.4% of men have been victims of male violence. 13.5% of all human homicides are male-perpetrated, sex-based hate crimes against women. HOWEVER, these stats don’t take into account the massively under-reported incidence of “domestic violence.” With this epidemic murder of females, humans really stand out from other primates, even the chimps. 

Chimps do physically abuse and harass females, but they do not rape or murder them . And, of course, the male bonobos learn early that they will get the you-know-what slapped out of them by the adult females if they even THINK about messing with them. Also, the bonobo females travel together and sleep within earshot of each other, both of which are huge curbs to male violence. Groups of both bonobos and chimps are sex-segregated: “Males and females dwell in different worlds, each with its own set of issues.” Among primates, males compete with males and the females compete with females. (Among the chimps, the male bonding is stronger and they prefer it.) The sexes only meet occasionally and mating is done in the open, where others can interfere.
 
On the other hand, humans integrate the sexes into a single framework… often the “nuclear home.”  This arrangement facilitates male control and abuse. (This level of sex integration is relatively recent, having intensified during the Industrial Age.) The author reminds us that during COVID, where people were compelled to isolate within their homes, reports of domestic violence tripled.

So, rape.  Male orangutangs rape, and so do male ducks. Oh, and male scorpion flies. And then, of course, human males. What percentage of men are rapists?  Speculation varies… 1 in 5? 1 in 10? 1 in 20?  The frequency and prevalence of rape are staggering in our species. Some will say that rape is an evolutionary “adaptive strategy” to maximize fertilization, but if this is so, then why is it so extremely rare among all the species on earth? And it’s not “adaptive.” If it were, there would be no raping of girls, wives, post-menopausal women, or males. But here we are… Furthermore, tribal studies show an intolerance of the behavior, because in tribes there is physical proximity of kin, less female dependence on men, and less male bonding. Possibly, if chimps were forced out of tribes and into suburban cages with a lone female partner, they would begin to rape and murder females. Nature or environment?
 
But De Waal is careful to point out that biology is not irrelevant in considering violence against women. Sons, as he says, are not daughters. Sons will grow up more prone to violence. Sons will have more bodily strength.

Let’s take a sec with this, because it’s a huge part of the current gender controversies. Are human males stronger? So… “constitutional body strength.”  1% of women can lift 110 pounds directly off the ground. Two thirds of men can. Hand grip strength is another test that bypasses athletic training and fitness. 90% of young females fall short of 95% of men. Significant and documented difference.    
BECAUSE this is true, De Waal posits, we need to teach emotional skills and attitudes, and we need to offer healthy outlets for aggression. And, I would add, a good long look at alternate living arrangements that ensure safety for women and children.

                                                  How Primates Interact
 
Among chimps and bonobos, the males are pack animals, while the females prefer serial one-on-one friendship. The boys enjoy quarrels about rules, but quarreling ends the game for girls. They distance themselves from adversaries, while the males adopt a “nothing personal” attitude. In fact, male opponents actually seek each other out.
 
All social mammals practice reconciliation. Among chimps, 47% of the males reconcile. Only 18% of the females do. The males are opportunistic and keep their options open. Four out of five female conflicts go unreconciled. In sum, the males are good at making peace. The females are good at suppressing conflict. On the other hand, female bonobos don’t hold grudges and can actually make up in the middle of a fight. In conflict, two female chimps will be screaming in anguish. When male chimps fight, only one party screams—the loser.
 
Sadly, we resemble male-bonded apes more than the matricentric bonobos. Also sadly, primate dimorphism tends to stick in our subconscious. We respect height, muscularity, and low voices. (I’ve seen that in theatre for decades.) How can we change this? De Waal recommends an appreciation for the evolutionary roots of these biases, not a denial of them. Amen. Hence the blog.