The Tyranny of Biology

We're already a week into January, so it seems like I'm overdue to consider a question that lurks in the background of all of this month's discussion: where does patriarchy come from?  How has it come to permeate all aspects of our culture (and virtually every culture in the world)?

Bad Genes

In its most essentialized form, I think answering the question about the origins of patriarchy is really a reproduction of the broader "nature versus nurture" debate regarding all human behavior.  I have some big reservations about constructing nature and nurture as a dichotomy, but to set that point aside for a moment, I think there's fairly persuasive evidence that patriarchy exists as something more than an intellectual construct.

For one thing, the rest of the mammal cohort is replete with examples of social groups and interactions dominated by strong males.  Prides of lions, for instance, are led by a single male lion that mates with several females.  Perhaps more telling, dominance hierarchies that influence reproductive opportunities abound in our closest evolutionary relatives - chimpanzees, macaques, gorillas, and most other primates.  So well established is this natural foundation of the strong male that assumes a leadership role that much of the language we use to discuss male dominance in the human world is drawn from allusions to animals; strong men who exhibit typically masculine traits (confidence, aggression, physical strength) are praised as "top dogs" or "alpha males."

Even more convincing to me is obvious connection between gene propagation and male dominance.  All traits exist and prosper to the extent that those traits encourage behavior that increases the likelihood of reproduction; males that assertively control the reproductive process by exerting their will over females and less "masculine" males are much more likely to transmit their genes, thus replicating and intensifying this competition for control over weaker members of the species.  To return the example of lion prides, when one alpha is replaced by another, the new alpha proceeds to kill all the offspring sired by the previous alpha (talk about control freaks, right?)... On a Fresh Air Interview last year, I heard Gloria Steinem define patriarchy as the male attempt to control the reproductive process.  She didn't elaborate, and at the time I thought it seemed a little nebulous.  But as I reflect on the provenance of patriarchal behavior and its evolutionary origins, the connection between its countless manifestations and that original evolutionary imperative seem quite persuasive.

Our Better Angels

As a concluding thought, I think it's worth addressing the "so what?" that some of you might be feeling right now.  Many people are comfortably dismissing without interrogation a lot of human behavior because it's just "human nature."  Biology carries with it a certain sense of inevitability; the weight of our genes and the ways that they interact with our behavior seem inescapable, and therefore not worthy of our thoughtful resistance.  Why fight nature, right?

Well, it seems to me that pretty much the entire project of human civilization has been one long, slow effort to overcome the cruelest aspects of our genetic programming.  If all behavior that came naturally to people were tacitly accepted, then there would be no need to regulate with laws.  Biology is not insurmountable; one could even argue that in a modern world where reproductive decisions don't have to hinge on immediate questions of survival, we have the opportunity to intentionally direct our evolution in a better direction.  Patriarchy exists because pushy assholes have been the most successful at transmitting their genes.  If we could change that, then perhaps everything else might change too.