Gender & Sexuality
emjohnson | June 29, 2010Author's Note: The following is an excerpt from my review of Sex At Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality. For additional information see my posts Reexamining Ardipithecus ramidus in Light of Human Origins, Those Cheating Testicles, or Who's Your Baby? as well as Helen's Lament and the Origins of Forbidden Love. Christopher Ryan also blogs at Psychology Today.
When we think of the first swinger parties most of us imagine 1970s counter-culture, we don't picture Top Gun fighter pilots in World War II. Yet, according to researchers Joan and Dwight Dixon, it was on military bases…
emjohnson | March 25, 2010Culture defines who we are but few can explain where it comes from or why we adopt one tradition over another. In the classic musical The Fiddler on the Roof the main character, Tevye, muses on this basic fact of human existence:
Here in Anatevka we have traditions for everything... how to eat, how to sleep, even, how to wear clothes. For instance, we always keep our heads covered and always wear a little prayer shawl... This shows our constant devotion to God. You may ask, how did this tradition start? I'll tell you - I don't know.
The origin of particular cultural traits in human…
emjohnson | March 22, 2010Five years ago Lawrence Summers, then president of Harvard, made headlines when he suggested that women are not as well represented in science because of "issues of intrinsic aptitude." By proposing that women are biologically less capable of succeeding in science he gained the anger of many of his colleagues and continued his reputation for divisive management (African-American Studies professor Cornel West reportedly left Harvard for Princeton based on disagreements he had with Summers).
Now, a report released today on the representation of women in science reveals that, while there are…
emjohnson | February 28, 2010Four years ago today a young researcher at the beginning of his graduate program in primatology sat down with the most intelligent, engaging, and downright beautiful fellow primate he'd ever had the opportunity to share a beer with. Freshly minted with her Master's degree in women's studies (emphasizing public policy), our conversation quickly moved to a discussion of evolution and male vs. female strategies. It's only in hindsight that it seems bizarre to be talking about theories of male promiscuity and female choosiness on a first date. I had recently returned from my first primate…
emjohnson | February 18, 2010(updated below)
Image: Henri Gervex (1852-1929) Doctor Preau Operating at the St. Louis Hospital.Honoured SIR and MADAM,
In researching the history of science one often comes across bizarre claims about the natural world that reveals the limit of knowledge available to researchers of the past. However, sometimes a case comes up that seems to be a genuine mystery even today. Such is the case for this eighteenth-century woman who was afflicted for two years with what her doctor referred to as "hairy crustaceous substances" that were voided in her urine.
On July 16, 1733 a Mr.…
emjohnson | January 21, 2010My friend Henry Gee at Nature Network wrote a few thoughts about how issues of race, gender and communication were discussed at the recent ScienceOnline2010 conference (#scio10 for the Twitter inclined). In his post he raises what he felt were unfair criticisms to his comments about laying ground rules to enforce civil conversation in science blog posts:
I make the point that civility can be encouraged by laying out ground rules - as John Wilkins says on his admirable blog, Evolving Thoughts - and I hope he won't mind my quoting it in extenso:
'This is my living room, so don't piss on the…
emjohnson | January 2, 2010Republican Senator John Ensign of Nevada appeared on CNN Dec. 31 and was grilled tenaciously by Rick Sanchez. For those that haven't been following the issue, Senator Ensign started having an affair with the wife of one of his top aides, Douglas Hampton. When they were found out Ensign's family gave Hampton a "gift" of $96,000 and Ensign arranged for lobbying jobs to help Hampton financially. In the process the Senator almost certainly violated the law against former aides working as lobbyists within one year of their government employment.
According to The New York Times:
Senate ethics…
emjohnson | December 15, 2009Sex workers in Denmark have offered free sex in response to Copenhagen Mayor Ritt Bjerregaard's attempt to discourage prostitution during the COP15 Climate Change Conference. The City Council had postcards delivered to 160 hotels where conference delegates and associates of COP15 would be staying and paid for advertisements in local newspapers that read:
'Be sustainable: Don't buy sex!'
However, prostitution is legal throughout Scandinavia and sex workers have formed unions to protect themselves from exploitation and harassment. In response SIO (Sexarbejdernes Interesse Organisation; or…
emjohnson | November 3, 2009By now everyone has heard of the high school English honors teacher, Dan DeLong, who was suspended for offering students the Seed magazine article "The Gay Animal Kingdom" by Jonah Lehrer as an optional extra credit assignment.
According to the Alton, IL based Telegraph newspaper, DeLong has now been reinstated at Southwestern High School after several hundred students and parents attended a six-hour long disciplinary hearing:
At Monday night's meeting, more than 200 people lined the stairs, sidewalk and office space at the district's small unit office at 884 Piasa Road in the Macoupin…
emjohnson | November 3, 2009Chris Hedges, the American war correspondent who has authored such books as War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning and American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America, has a new article entitled "Opium, Rape and the American Way" published on the website of RAWA (Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan).
The warlords we champion in Afghanistan are as venal, as opposed to the rights of women and basic democratic freedoms, and as heavily involved in opium trafficking as the Taliban. The moral lines we draw between us and our adversaries are fictional. The uplifting…
emjohnson | October 28, 2009As a species we are consumed by love. Ask yourself, how many cultural productions (films, stories, songs, dances, arts) do not have love, the loss of love or the absence of love as their central theme? Would you be satisfied with what was left over? That fact that love has so much power over us is just one reason why evolutionary research is so fascinating.
A well-worn trope of human culture is mens obsession with female infidelity. Othello. Madame Bovary. Desperate Housewives. These are just three Western examples of this concern that are paralleled in nearly every society throughout…
emjohnson | October 26, 2009In a new understanding of the term power grab, researchers have shown that the supporters of a political candidate literally have their power taken from them after they lose an election. In a new study by Steven J. Stanton and colleagues in the open-access journal PLoS ONE, researchers asked 163 Republican and Democratic voters (57 of whom were men) to provide saliva samples both before and after the 2008 election between John McCain and Barack Obama. What the researchers determined was that Republican men showed significant reductions in testosterone after they learned that their candidate…
emjohnson | October 21, 2009Female chimpanzee with her infant requests meat after a successful hunt.
Image: David Bygott / Tree of Life Web Project
Owen Lovejoy's recent paper about Ardipithecus ramidus and human origins (see my detailed critique here) bases its argument on the male provisioning observed in chimpanzees. However, what went unacknowledged in his theory was the inherent gender bias it represented. A perfect example of this was observed in April with the release of the very study on provisioning behavior that Lovejoy used as the basis for his idea.
From the press introductions alone, you would have…
emjohnson | October 18, 2009Grand evolutionary dramas about human origins capture our imagination and the stories provide context as to how we view ourselves. They are the scientific version of creation myths. However, unlike Adam and Eve being fashioned in the garden or humanity being vomited up by the giant Mbombo (as the Bakuba people of Congo believed), scientific origin stories are rigorously critiqued based on the best available evidence.
Friedrich Engels, a sociologist and future collaborator with Karl Marx, wrote one of the earliest scientific human origin tales in 1876. In his essay "The Part Played by…
emjohnson | October 18, 2009Classical literature has judged Helen of Troy harshly. Because she chose Paris after having children with Menelaus, her chroniclers condemn her for the destruction of a great society. In Homer's Odyssey the bard writes:
Helen would never have yielded herself to a man from a foreign country, if she had known that the sons of Achaeans would come after her and bring her back. Heaven put it in her heart to do wrong, and she gave no thought to that sin, which has been the source of all our sorrows.
This has been the tradition in Western society. An open female sexuality has been viewed as…
emjohnson | October 16, 2009Three products that profit on male insecurities (Enzyte, Viagra and Tiger Penis Wine)
Note: the third image is from a campaign to encourage people to stop, not an actual ad.
In my earlier posts I explored why women experience menopause and discussed the Grandmother Hypothesis as a leading explanation. There is accumulating evidence that suggests reproductive senescence in women is an adaptation promoting inclusive fitness. However, there are many claims that menopause also occurs in men. There's even a fancy name for it: andropause.
A quick Google search reveals an onslaught of online "…
emjohnson | October 15, 2009There may need to be a significant revision in the recent description of one of humanity's oldest ancestors. Ardipithecus ramidus (or "Ardi" for short), the 4.4 million year old hominid fossil discovery, has been a godsend to paleoanthropologists (pun intended). But one of the key researchers has made what could be a serious error in his interpretation.
Christopher Ryan, who writes for Psychology Today at his blog Sex at Dawn (also the title of his forthcoming book) has discovered evidence that could undermine Owen Lovejoy's argument about human sexual evolution ever since Ardi:
In a…
emjohnson | October 13, 2009In my earlier post I discussed the "Grandmother Hypothesis" as an explanation for human reproductive senescence, or menopause. A problem arises in understanding why women forgo one-third (and sometimes as much as one-half) of their reproductive lives, a condition unique in the natural world. Could this just be a neutral mutation, an artifact of longer human lives, or might it be a product of natural selection? If the latter, what selection pressure(s) could result in this unique human adaptation? The grandmother hypothesis posits that women who stopped ovulating in their golden years were…
emjohnson | October 12, 2009
"Babul" performed by Shubha Mudgal is a gorgeously produced music video that emphasizes the heartbreak of female domestic violence as seen through the eyes of a child.
According to Amnesty International:
In this video about female domestic abuse, a child walks through a party in which all the adult couples seem happy as they socialize. But as she looks at three of the couples, she sees the humiliation and violence with which each woman has been treated prior to arriving at the party. The video was produced by Breakthrough TV an organization dedicated to dealing with social problems in…
emjohnson | October 12, 2009Whether they're referred to as hot flashes, power surges or personal summers, the experience of menopause is not fun. But could it be the result of human evolution?
One of the most fascinating areas of research in evolutionary studies is the question of reproductive senescence. Why do women go through menopause? Chimpanzees and bonobos, our closest evolutionary relatives who we share 99% of our DNA with, are reproductive throughout their lifespans but human women can spend the last third of their lives infertile. Why?
Biologist Virpi Lummaa, whose recent work on evolutionary theory and birth…