A friend advised me once to mute my language and opinions because the women in HBES (Human Behavior and Evolution Society) have very long memories. His advice reflects the existence of female social power; applying it possibly means that I should ignore Angier's thoughts in a strategy similar to that used by many husbands who drop their mental shades when outmatched by their mate's verbal productivity. Female linguistic advantages often balance male physical strength but is usually ignored in our debates about social power. For example, there are no laws against nagging and plenty against physical abuse although the harm from either excess and in either direction can be substantial.

However, Angier is right about some things but ignoring Angier means that I also ignore my colleagues in life, many of whom are female and who are keen thinkers about nature, evolution, and human society. I refuse to disrespect them and other women who are interested in evolutionary accounts of our nature and who are more open to different types of explanations and suggestions about human conduct. I offer the following thoughts, my own "story."

The Nature of Our Explanations:

First, we can all be embarrassed about explanations of our origins in the "stone age." The primary reason is that nearly any of us fabricates common sense accounts of why we do one thing or another; we started as small children when our mothers asked why we failed to clean our room. Evolutionary explanations have a special label that was derived from Rudyard Kipling and are called "just so" theories." Putting an African scene behind the tale does not mean that we are correct and new evidence often challenges even the most convincing popular explanations. We evolutionists freely create our own favorite explanations but usually preface them formally as "conjecture" and casually as "I have a story." Failing to observe such cautions eventually rusts our credibility.

Further, we are not going to conduct much research in regard to our evolutionary origins. There is no way for us to recreate all the antecedent conditions and actors and replay history while manipulating one factor at a time. Neither history nor ethics committees allow it. Inevitably, we are often restricted to conjectures about historical information that we gather in much the same way that we sometimes gather food -- it grew on its own and we pick it up if it looks useful. We sometimes make predictions on the basis of "if things used to be this way, what effects would we still see today?"

For example, our African female ancestors had lighter leg bones and rotated ankles in comparison with the males. These details led scientists to infer that women came to ground from the trees long after the males did. Modern observers next watched American children on playgrounds; the girls at age 6 climb higher on monkey bars than boys of the same age. Finally, giving young children in Israel or the United States a simulated escape game revealed that girls more often than boys choose to climb trees and climb further out on the branches. Israeli girls climbed higher on the simulated Acacia tree after a coincidental but real terrorist attack in Tel Aviv or Jerusaleum.

This sequence -- reported by Richard Coss (rgcoss@ucdavis.edu) at the Human Behavior and Evolution Society this past summer -- reveals only one aspect of our mental architecture. Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan would perhaps have referred to these traits -- whether tree climbing or the gymnastic talent of young girls -- as "shadows of forgotten ancestors." As you can see, evolution is a bit different from other sciences where we can duplicate the original conditions and despite the work of Coss and other diligent scientists, the scope and frequency of scientific statements become very limited in evolutionary accounts of human origins.

Finally, our evolutionary history -- especially that which may direct our most interesting, persistent characteristics -- may have had its impact a long time before we scratched in the dirt 200,000 years ago. All of us know but often neglect to acknowledge explicitly all the likely contributions that our nurture made to our nature, contributions that occurred millions of years before the rapid alternations of frozen and balmy conditions during the Pleistocene that may have finally catalyzed human talents to plan, to talk more creatively, and to anticipate the future. For example, we appear to share neural mechanisms -- such as a preference for the color blue -- with birds, frogs, and lizards in addition to having a few newer ones that might be somewhat unique to humans and other apes. There are, as Paul MacLean implied, many "Environments of Evolutionary Adaptation" that stretch back perhaps 3.5 billion years and probably contributed to our physical structures and our daily social routines.

The Excluded Middle

Most of us in the sciences and in clinical work -- whether evolutionary psychologists or sociobiologists -- dislike concepts that have no middle range. Those concepts are misleading and fail to alert us to the fine details that occur between the comparatively boring extremes. Along these lines, "men" and "women" summarize two distributions of events, crudely defined on the basis of external anatomy that itself is not always a clear reflection of sexual membership. For example, there are some genetic "males" who are born with non-functional vaginas and who develop breasts and outstanding physical beauty, sometimes becoming models for the fashion industry while retaining behavioral preferences for poker, cigars, and football. None of these possibilities should surprise anyone; nearly everyone knows that the human brain is sexually uncommitted until "tuned" in a male direction by testosterone or female by a complementary set of chemicals just recently discovered to be essential factors in feminization.

One of my best friends is a second example. Maryann, in her early 30s, manages a local bank but also tells the guys how to repair the MAC machine and how to tune her automobile. She buys her husband tools but uses them more often than he does. Maryann has built things since early adolescence and remembers her father's locking up his tools in order to slow her down. She also left a trail of men who didn't like her beating them at sports. She's a doting mother and loyal wife but also believes that "life, especially in games, is about cheating, that you can't win without cheating." I also know nurturing males and personally find male bonding routines -- including football, golf, baseball, and beer -- boring. Even David Buss does not find traits that are true universal separators of men and women, there is always some percentage of individuals who have preferences that are contrary to the group's average. Each of us, of either presumed sex, is a mosaic of traits.

Mating: Men and Women -- Two Expressions of the Same Pattern

Angier is correct to accuse me and other guys of preferring younger females -- but I'm not having much luck. There is too much skin for my face and my back now has more hair than my forehead. Women are like us guys and also seek partners who are younger than I am, who seem like good parental material, qualities that include health and strength but also the more "feminine" traits of consistency and good social skills. Younger women not only appear physically to be more reproductively desirable, they also signal a willingness to negotiate, to follow, and to delay some of their social and economic goals for about 4-5 years needed to conceive a child and get them moving freely. Many of our mothers didn't quit after just one but continued their existing contract -- and relative subservience -- into their 30s, having another child every few years.

Apart from their wrinkled skin and thinning hair, I'm also not much drawn to women of my generation nor they to me, perhaps because we've all lived too long to bow a knee in order to execute the complex adjustments required for prolonged, intimate partnerships. They don't often signal that readiness, to follow my lead, to give up their independent checking accounts, separate vacations, white rugs and velvet wall paper in the bathroom, and entrepreneurial dreams. And our relative economic success during these prosperous and stable years means that neither of us has to cling to the other for survival. Nonetheless, I and many older males seem to miss the roles of our younger days and spend hours and dollars to have a woman serve us breakfast in a diner when we are all capable for cooking for ourselves. We also fall in love with nurses and dental hygienists perhaps for similar reasons. And we, like our partners, will sacrifice some of our preferences for cooperation and liveliness and smooth skin in return for a female with greater economic resources. The interesting dilemma is that women with substantial cash still want a guy with even more. Thus, very wealthy women -- by their own standards -- have a difficult time getting partners and very poor males, also because of female preferences, have the same amount of difficulty.

Tuning

My own preference but one that is not representative of most evolutionists, is to downplay social learning as a cause for much of anything. Ed Wilson's concept of "epigenetic rules" means that the conversations between genetic constraints and environmental opportunities is constantly ongoing and is not limited to bacteria and does not end when we graduate from secondary school. Such rules come to play when we change niches by earning a living in ways that we enjoy, discovering friends that reciprocate our interests and needs, and by periodically doing something outrageous, perhaps better than anyone else has ever done. A new automobile, platform shoes, hair styling, tennis or piano lessons, physical conditioning, taking a lover -- all events that interact with our genes to "tune" us and make us believe that momentary spark, that we are the best that we can be and that we can all be above average.

"Tuning" is perhaps a useful concept for all of us and describes some of the social exchanges between us. Roller derby -- a dome of female-on-female aggression -- is not surprising and neither was a recent conference, sponsored by the Pennsylvania Psychiatric Society, on "The Aggressive Woman." Neither are men who choose to become nurses or teachers. The following interchange comes to mind:

Two graduate females -- apparently in the Women's Studies program at CUNY -- were chatting about Charles Crawford's talk on evolution that he gave recently at Hunter College. One of them had earlier asked him about female and male dominance and briefly argued with him on behalf of female power. Crawford handled them with the "Moralistic Fallacy," that we want something to be true, therefore, we assert that it IS true.

I later approached them at our break with, "Did you read Meredith Small's book, 'Female Choices'? It demonstrates pervasive female influence in social relationships in a number of species." Eye contact was established. I may have been wrinkled and stooped but was still a prospective ally.

"If you have time for a 'story' -- we evolutionists all have different ones and this is my own.

"Little girls function in teams up until middle school. Their social group gives them options, information, and protection even if also enforcing conformity.

"Little girls, however, at age 14 quadruple their frequency of depression (male depression doubles at about the same age) and about the same time leave their supportive gang for one male.

"It's risky, even if they check with all of their friends first about him.

"The girl signals her availability by stooping a bit, rolling her shoulders forward, shifting her vocal quality, and tossing her curls. She advertises a willingness to surrender her array of options in return for an exclusive partnership.

"She also accepts -- without necessarily liking it -- a price of taking male directions in some arenas while controlling him in others.

"She lives with this bargain with one guy until their child is ambulatory.

"She may then find a new contract or stay in the original relationship -- taking directions, being guarded -- in return for physical protection and financial supports. In any event, many women will in their mid 30s begin to stand tall again, resist directions, and seek their former associates. They start art classes, go to casinos, run for political office, and start their own businesses.

"Fortunately, George, Harry, or Bruce -- often a bit older than her -- may become less domineering, adventuresome, and controlling at about the same time. He starts to nod at little children in strollers in malls and to enjoy time with his own kids. If he is on time with his own changes, she may opt to stay with him."

"So much for my story; its details will be different in different niches. For example, with more generous economic resources women will tend to achieve more overt independence of male rules. At the same time, mating partnerships may become more expendable for either party. There's also the possibility that older men are attracted to younger women not only by vitality indicators such as unwrinkled skin and a lively manner, but also because younger women are more likely to generate signals of cooperation and submission.

Radiance shown on their faces.

"Oh, THAT makes sense! My Italian aunt is EXACTLY like that ..."

"Tuning" has many aspects. For example, the intensity of female mate preferences have been shown to vary during menstrual cycles -- "hunks," more rugged and symmetrical but less trustworthy males, are most attractive when she is fertile. She herself becomes more physically symmetrical, and therefore more attractive because her left side better matches her right side, during ovulation She -- if average -- will wear more jewelry and shorter skirts while being more apt to experience an "extra pair copulation" and be more likely to have an orgasm while so doing. In this instance, tuning occurs on a 4 week schedule.

I wonder how much tuning, specifically expressed as "time-of-life," contributes to the political arguments between men and women, if younger females are generally less zealous about such debates and younger males are less apt to tolerate them. Things often change -- perhaps secondary to changes in relative testosterone and estrogen levels in both men and women -- in the 30s and 40s. For example, Mary Leakey worked ever more alone during her marriage to Louis, gathering bones in the Rift Valley while he toured and raised money. She gathered, he hunted! She insisted, in her 50s, on accepting honorary diplomas and standing on her own and against his directions. Floating some estrogen into her in her later years might well have temperamentally inhibited some of her accomplishments.

The Leakeys, despite all the factors that should make them different from the rest of us, traveled paths strongly similar to the women who come into my private practice, women in their 3rd or 4th decade who are beginning to stand erect, look Herman in the eye, and demand a separate checking account. Their need for my help is often limited. I challenge some of their former thoughts that were useful for maintaining a couples status while the children grew and I recommend productive ways to let Herman know that things are about to change in his life, that he can change also or he can be alone. Luckily for Herman, many of us men do become more companionable in our 4th and 5th decade and don't particularly oppose what is happening with our partners once we understand what is happening.

One outcome of this model of trait variability and genetic tuning is that female scientists, writers, executives, and politicians may be not only very beautiful but also more assertive for much of their early lives and become even more so as wrinkles and knowledge accumulate while hormones change.

Our Current Balances of Power

Another outcome is that women's complaints about evolutionists and social attainment is symptomatic not of social tyranny but of social attainment. Thoroughly downtrodden women complain less for the same reasons that such is true of men. That is, a sequence exists between "normal" zeal and contentment into anger as we begin to experience reversals and finally into helplessness as we run out of options. Assertion and combat can be ways to maintain status or to gain a bit more of it; showing the throat, silence, and panic are corollaries of defeat. One possibility is that female complaints reflect their comparative prosperity, that the complainers are rarely oppressed themselves -- although they may not have as much of the pie as they want -- but speak on behalf of one constituency or another. Given the rarity of selfless advocacy, many of the complainers may be doing so in order to build a following, to get some press, and to elevate their own serotonin levels. Unfortunately, there are few ways to limit such processes aside from combat between rival groups and limits on cash, time, materials, and followers. Bob Wright sometimes mentions Buddhism as a positive option -- encapsulated as "how to want what you have" -- but most of us to the right of California are not yet, perhaps due to lower population density, to that position.

Overt female political influence is limited in many cultures but there may be more subtle counter measures that the females employ. Such arms races are common in evolution whether you consider germs vs. antibiotics, children vs. adults, or women vs. men. I would be surprised if males have an single unilateral strategy for which females do not have counter measures.

For example, Mike McGuire (and others) studied social behavior in vervet monkeys in relation to serotonin levels. (Serotonin has been with us about a billion years, about 90% of ours is in our gut, and the remainder in our heads seems to influence sleep, temperature, appetite, and self esteem. Raising our access to serotonin is the most common mechanism through which our current generation of antidepressants -- Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, etc. -- work.) McGuire found that:

1) Dominant male vervets are more attentive to events outside of the group, more tolerant of infant play, more often initiate affiliative behavior and less often initiate aggression. They have 1st claim on desirable perches and food, have more intercourse, and intervene more often in fights between adult females. Dominant males have serotonin levels twice those of subordinate males.

2) Removing one dominant male allows a different male to move into both those behaviors and those serotonin levels. The dominant male who is removed loses his serotonin levels in about 2 weeks.

3) If we pick a subordinate male randomly and increase his serotonin activity, he becomes dominant "literally 100% of the time" according to McGuire. They achieve their new position by increasing affiliative behavior with females who form coalitions with them!

4) If we randomly choose a subordinate and lower his serotonin activity he becomes more aggressive and shows fewer affiliative behaviors towards females. He will not become dominant even though he is more aggressive.

5) Sometimes females will pick a subordinate male, initiate a coalition, and move him into a dominant position through ritualized displays, threats and submissive behavior. Serotonin levels follow the change in social standing in both the newly dominant and the displaced male.

6) All of these differences between dominance, and serotonin levels, and aggression disappear within a few weeks after females are removed from the group. They also disappear in vervets under conditions of social crowding.

You might find a different pattern of relationships if you studied a different group of monkeys or apes. Thus, it can be instructive or misleading to -- as I have done -- pick a study in order to make a point. McGuire has shown us some aspects of vervets and we can perhaps observe the shadows of comparable processes in humans. Santa Claus is a product of mothers, not of fathers. Check the lines at Christmas if you don't believe me! Movie stars and singers -- male or female -- owe their positions to the adulation of females, neither Nicholas Cage nor Kevin Costner can act but women seem to love them. Likewise for politicians whose popularity rises with affiliative behaviors towards women and fades with aggressive ones.

Despite the risks of generalizing McGuire's observations, there are certain tuning factors that stand out in regard to human conduct whether you consider evolution, sociobiology, or genetics as a source of information. I've mentioned the differences that seem most correlated with age. Being relatively wealthy should induce more dominant, independent attitudes, interests, and behaviors and perhaps fewer children. Being better educated should make the same adjustments as wealth in the developmental paths of men and women. Being poor and ignorant for either sex could reasonably be associated with being more subservient, depressed, and fecund -- children could be one of the male's tactics for ensuring her continued loyalty -- economic, reproductive, and sexual -- and one of hers for ensuring that his support will continue and that someone, likely her children, will care for her later.

It must be recognized that we therapists and family practitioners engage in some tuning whenever we recommend one of the modern antidepressants, those misnamed chemical throttles that adjust depression secondary to changes in serotonin levels, self esteem, and social standing. My female clients usually become more assertive, open with their opinions, and socially active. They become more "masculine" in their conduct and act more as equals to their mates. Of course, your physician treats "depression" and sees no need to caution your mate or children that mom is about to put on some brass ones. (On the other hand, husbands often become more confident and "socially cooperative" and less irritable -- they become more like a dominant vervet.)

Finally, I think these are good times -- maybe even the best of them -- in American culture for men and for women. I enjoy seeing women writing, active in politics, and taking key roles in many organizations. (For example, 57 of 75 local branches of the American Psychiatric Association are managed by women.) Ed Wilson and I both think that male patterns of consumption -- many of them probably keyed by showing off for women -- could be attenuated and more environmentally sustainable as women become not only older but also more affluent and more outspoken. Still, we have some current tensions but probably not greater than at other times in our history.

Angier remarks accurately that women are still proportionately absent from top positions and compensated less than males. The explanations are complicated or they may be simple. I don't think that we should blame child rearing by female executives as the only reason. One possibility is that women accept lower compensation to get past corporate gatekeepers although this is less true than in the past. Women are far more conspicuous in human resources now and have become gatekeepers themselves and may well preferentially recruit "feminine" traits in applicants.

Another possibility and the one that intrigues me most is that "feminine" skills -- to form alliances, to gather resources, to remember things seen today that may not be useful until tomorrow -- are satisfying to the female more so than to a comparably schooled male. The female accepts a position at a lower salary perhaps to get in the door but she might also continue accept it because she enjoys that particular job more than a male would. Business theory discriminates between motivators that excite you about a job and satisfiers that keep you going to one that you hate. Cash is usually considered to be a satisfier whereas social recognition and accomplishment are motivators. Could it be that males are more apt to hate the job but demand the money and females to love the job and the teamwork in spite of the money and title? If so, then things will change when women break work alliances and move to new positions for cash reasons as often as males do.

It may be that uniform, cross cultural patterns of differences in our sexual roles relate to resource availability and to the relative stability of social networks. Helen Fisher observed in Anatomy of Love that female influence is closely tied to female economic contributions. It is reasonable to protest that men have everything locked up simply by arriving first on the scene. It would not be the only time that "what is best" is not the same as "what was first" and is squelched for reasons of competition and seniority -- first arrivals become part of the niche for second arrivals. On the other hand, protesting so that power is "given" creates respect for women neither from men nor other women; exchanging power for complaints reinforces complaints not competence. If this line of reasoning is correct, women should collect ever greater amounts of power so long as their stable political alliances can branch and intertwine.

Power should -- by my dimming eyes -- accrue to people who can execute it effectively and not to those who can beg for it the most convincingly. Such as been true in our biological histories and may serve us well in the future. That is, women should gain influence because they assume it, not because they whine their ways into it. I'm being somewhat Darwinian here but for perhaps a tolerable reason.

The Next Crisis

While we can build stable social networks with "feminine skills," those networks are stable only so long as our environment is also stable. Neither human organizations nor the Earth is a stable niche and may never be; further, there may not be a lot of warning before the next crises. I want an array of competent, decisive people of whatever sex, in position for that inevitable moment when we all scramble to consider every possible behavioral, genetic, and cultural variable. Indeed, such logic -- that of increasing survival options -- may be one of the chief reasons that most species occur in two sexes instead of one in spite of the short term greater reproductive efficiency of having only one sex. If we do not have a maximum degree of information and foresight about our own nature(s), then genes and biological tuning that significantly influence our goals, perception, and volition as well as our sense of good and evil, will drive the collective us as powerfully as whatever glacier or volcano, charismatic or dictator passes our way.

McGuire and Troisi (Darwinian Psychiatry) comment that evolved mechanisms will operate whether we believe in them or not; ignorance of those mechanisms and their genetic orchestrations almost guarantee their unimpeded operation. We are all capable of taking action and rationalizing it later as an expression of our "free will" or as something that we "wanted to do anyhow." We may yet commit actions, genetically mediated, that we ordinarily view as horrendous during prosperous times but will excuse our own future misbehavior as the expression of a convenient God, whose Will usually corresponds to the things that we think we want to do. We need to understand and to appreciate these possibilities, that our vaunted self determination itself can become a deception, mere propaganda and braggadocio of whatever content or sexual banner, generated by our nature in order to fool our self. The surprising bottom line is that you might want to kiss an evolutionist even if you don't like us.

*James Brody, Ph. D.

1262 West Bridge St.

Spring City, PA 19475

610-948-5344

jbrody@compuserve.com

http://www.behavior.net/forums/evolutionary/

http://www.clinical sociobiology.com

Dr. Brody is a psychologist in private practice near Philadelphia and is organizer and co-instructor for the seminar "Clinical Sociobiology: Darwinian Feelings and Values," with John Price, M.D., Russell Gardner, Jr. and John Fentress, Ph.D., 20th Cape Cod Institute, July 19-23, 1999, 15 CME/CEU available, www.cape.org/1999/ or Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Cape Cod Institute, 1308 Belfer Building, Bronx, NY, 10461. (718) 430-3207.

This is the third in a series; last summer's presentation, "Healing the Moral Animal: Lessons from Evolution" included Robert Wright, Frank Sulloway, Russell Gardner, M.D., John Fentress, Ph. D., Robin Walker, and Dylan Evans from the London School of Economics. Brody started and has been host for "Evolutionary Psychology and Clinical Sociobiology," a part of Behavior On Line at http://www..behavior.net/fourms/evolutionary/. Behavior On Line has been commended by the Encyclopedia Britannica and the American Psychological Association Monitor.

SUGGESTED READINGS

Fisher, H. Anatomy of Love: The Natural History of Monogamy, Adultery, and Divorce. NY: Norton 1992.

McGuire, M. & Troisi, A. Darwinian Psychiatry. NY: Oxford, 1998, esp. pp 93-94.

Small, M. Female Choices: Sexual Behavior of Female Primates. Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press, 1993.

Stevens, A. & Price, J. Evolutionary Psychiatry: A New Beginning. NY: Routledge, 1996.

Wilson, E. O. Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge NY: Knopf, 1998.