Essay and Theories


Darwin’s Sexual Selection Flaw:
Opening the Door to
Evolutionary Feminism’s Foundation.
by
William A. Spriggs
July 4th, 2009

This essay has been a long time coming.  It’s not an in-depth, scientific dissertation, but merely reflects a firming up of my personal opinion regarding some passages that I found in the Janet Browne book, Charles Darwin: The Power of Place that cry out because they defy common logic.  This essay is a major reworking of the book review that I did on February 1, 2004, and I feel this revamping into a more formal missive is due because of the importance of the issue, and perhaps, the possibility that it was glanced over by readers of the book review.

We all know that Darwin’s natural selection theory is upholding nicely against time and debate, or more correctly, time and debate in scientific community, and insults brought on by the religious fundamentalists in America and locations around the planet.  Without dwelling too deeply into the theory, natural selection is basically the random series of events in one’s local environment that causes the species in question to adapt physically to those local environments.  These natural occurrences include environments such as too much rain or drought conditions; severe and prolonged periods of heat or cold; availability of food sources; the presence of natural predators, and of course, the physical attributes needed to overcome competition for mates amongst one’s own sex.  In broad terms it is the natural order of things that occur around a species in which that animal has no control but those evolutionary pressures have left an indelible impact in the specie’s genome.

As for the origin of Darwin’s other theory, sexual selection, we have to look at how Darwin created the separate theory.  It’s because Darwin had a small problem with the peacock; in fact, he now is famously cited as writing, “The sight of a feather in a peacock’s tail, whenever I gaze on it, makes me sick.” 1 On the same page, Miller tells us that, “The peacocks seemed to mock Darwin’s theory that natural selection shapes every trait to some purpose.”  It made no sense – What evolutionary purpose did those fancy feathers have in the evolutionary struggle for survival?  In the end, Darwin literally threw up his hands and concluded that the peahen’s choice of the male’s feathery display was not about survival, but simply a manner of choice for the female peahen.  It was one male’s display that diverged from the other guy’s same-old-same-old.  Scientists have concluded that this choice of the female peacock is no fluke; remove some of the large dots found within the peacock’s tail and guess what? The poor guy just can’t convince a peahen that he is worthy of the gene transfer dance.  The theory is called: the handicapped theory.  The fancier the display of the feathers, the more likely they attract his predatory distracters (the handicap) as well as the peahen’s gaze.  But, if he is still pecking around the farmyard, then it is also safe to assume that he has a sturdy set of genes because he is more intelligent at hiding from, or is swifter than, any predator -- and hence, he is a good prospect for mating because of his highly adaptive genes – this then provides physical evidence to the peahen that the male is a very a very good prospect because he can overcome this particular handicap of fancy feathery.

Darwin’s “surrender” is important to remember because it points to fork in the road for all of us in the debate between nature vs. nurture.  It’s not, either, or -- it’s both.  Today, the mating dance between humans continues with their own variations, and all the influences of non-physical traits that we normally associate with the physical struggle for “survival of the fittest” (like besting out one’s sexual rival through head banging) are mostly missing.  Today, both males and females look for traits in potential mates that show their use of language skills; the ability to create visual or musical arts; their ability to write plays or compose poetry; their moral convictions and values; their sense of humor – the ability to tell a joke or to solve complex mathematics; how impulsive they are in charitable giving -- even perhaps, how strongly they believe in religion.  I’ve even interviewed a woman who married a man because he had “sexy moves on the dance floor.”  These are all sexual selection choices that have nothing to do with “survival of the fittest.”  Geoffrey Miller, in his seminal work, The Mating Mind, convincingly argues that all human nature is in fact, the direct benefit of sexual selection, or choice.2

Perhaps, it would be appropriate if we renamed Darwin’s “sexual selection” theory as “mating choice.”  However, since I am elevating Dr. Helen Fisher to the unofficial title of Queen Mum of Evolutionary Feminism, and to honor her name, I will change “sexual selection” to her usage of “romantic love.”  This is because she shifted using “attraction” from her science journal days for using sexual selection as “attraction,” morphing to “romantic attraction,” and then finally to “romantic love” in her commercial period. 3  & 4 & 5 .  I really would prefer calling it “free choice” because it fits into the modern political usage of allowing a woman “free choice” in the reproductive direction of her own body; it is the one of the principal tenets of evolutionary feminism.  In studying her work, I really do not get the impression that Dr. Fisher is a political creature as some would like, but if we look at the entire spectrum of femininity, most females of our species are not either.  As for the two phrases, I will try to put both usages in the same sentence to cement them together.

But getting back to Darwin; something is not quite right; when Darwin starts to explain the preference of choice between animals and humans in choosing their mates, I seem to be struck by the divergent flow in his theory, and hence, what I consider to be, Darwin’s flaw.  Below is a passage from Janet Browne’s book, Charles Darwin: The Power of Place.

“In animal species, he [Darwin] had suggested in the Origin of Species, females would mate more readily with males displaying the largest antlers, the brightest coulours, the neatest nest, or the most beautiful song, and thereby leave descendants liable to possess the same characteristics.  Over the generations such features would build up in a population.  Sometimes the attributes might determine the victor in a fight for possession of the female but generally they served no life-preserving adaptive function.  They merely increased the chances of mating and thus the number of offspring…He was convinced that this explained many aspects of human evolution. ‘Among savages the most powerful men will have the pick of the women, and they will generally leave the most descendants,’ he mused to Alfred Russell Wallace [the co-conceptulizer of natural selection].  Strictly speaking, this was not natural selection, since choice was involved.  In Humans, said Darwin, the choice was exercised by males.  The situation was otherwise in the animal kingdom, where he believed females took the decisive role.” 6

How come the flip between human and animal?  Why the separating of the human and “savage?”  If we really evolved from the animal world, why the sudden reversal?  Why did Mother Nature abruptly make a decision to prefer choices made by males previously made by females?  Did Mother Nature suddenly made the decision that human male’s preference towards violence was more beneficial to the survival of the species than the human female’s preferences for nurturing and compassion?  Did Mother Nature decide that in order to evolve the human species only males could make intelligent and correct choices that would best suit the evolutionary path upwards?  Did Mother Nature suddenly decide that the sexual selection process which had taken millions of years to perfect needed to have more masculine bias to complete the tweaking?

To understand how Darwin did not seem to raise those questions and prefer male mate choice over female mate choice, one has to study the Victorian social structure of his time; in particular, the social pecking order of males, females, and the social classes of his day.  Tremendous industrial changes were taking place during Darwin’s time.  The Industrial Revolution had transformed his country, England, from a sleepy, agrarian country into a world power.  Although, not quite there at its peak during Darwin’s rise to prominence, England was well on its upward path to becoming an empire that ruled the world, and everyone in it.  That’s pretty heady stuff when you start to look around at your local environment and you know in your bones that you and your fellow males that you grew up with, went to church with, corresponded with in scientific circles – were all part of your local environment, and were responsible for those achievements.

It is my belief that Darwin took this path of masculine bias because he was a captive of the strict cultural and behavioral social norms of his Victorian England that overwhelmingly favored males.  I believe that if his sexual selection theory had favored the human female instead of the human male in the selection process as presented in the animal realm, the theory would have fallen on deaf ears of his male colleagues.  Without their cooperation in the scientific community on this particular issue, I argue that Darwin feared rejection of his entire natural selection theory as well.  We have to remember that it was his male scientific colleagues that also urged Darwin to leave Alfred Russell Wallace behind concerning the natural selection theory because they thought that Darwin would better serve the scientific community. (Or, did Darwin adroitly manipulate his science colleagues to make this suggestion?).

Here’s Janet Browne’s take on Darwin’s local social environment at the time in which he penned the sexual selection theory. 

“And on the other hand, he [Darwin] lived in a world in which heredity was an obvious organizing principle.  The upper reaches of Victorian society were, after all, built on the notion of human pedigree and good breeding, no only in the sense that an individual’s position in the existing social order depended to large degree on birth, but also in the heightened emphasis then laid on manners and the cultivation of taste and intellect…Darwin had every reason to muse on good and bad breeding among humans.  His personal circle belonged to a close-knit stratum of society, the intellectual aristocracy of the high Victorian era, sympathetic to Mill’s idea of a ‘learned elite’ and Carlyle’s ‘aristocracy of talent.’  Most members of his intellectual elite associated themselves with the rising ideologies of meritocracy, utilitarianism, and personal ‘character,’ a Smilesian sense of personal effort and determination under adversity, while for the most part enjoying inherited private incomes and status by birth.  Darwin’s position as a gentleman was secure. 7

So for Darwin to pen the male bias below should come as no surprise to you now that you know his social world.

“To avoid enemies, or to attack them with success, to capture wild animals, and to invent and fashion weapons, requires the aid of the higher mental faculties, namely, observation, reason, invention, or imagination.  These various faculties will thus have been continually put to the test, and selected during manhood…thus man has ultimately become superior to women.8  

Darwin truly believed that the male hunter who brought home meat protein from the hunt was the catalyst in the surge of growth behind the human brain.  Thus, he logically followed, the children of the most able-bodied, and fittest of male hunters benefited the most and became our human ancestors.

Again, Ms. Browne:

“Darwin certainly believed that the moral and cultural principles of his own people, and of his own day, were by far the highest that had emerged in evolutionary history.  He believed that biology supported the marriage bond.  He believed in innate male intellectual superiority, honed by the selective pressures of eons of hunting and fighting.  The possibility of female choice among humans hardly ruffled the surface of his argument, although he repeatedly claimed that female choice was the primary motor for sexual selection in animals.  Primitive societies, he conceded, may be matriarchal or polygamous.  However, he regarded this as an unsophisticated state of affairs, barely one step removed from animal.  Advanced human society, to Darwin’s mind, was patriarchal, based on what we then assumed about primate behavior and the so-called ‘natural’ structure of civilized societies.” 9

At this point, let’s add the wisdom of Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, Professor Emerita of Anthropology at University of California-Davis.

“Thus did the ‘hunting hypothesis’ morph into one of the most long-lasting and influential models of behavior in anthropology.  Subsequent versions wove together increasingly coherent scenarios in which early human evolution was a ‘direct consequence of brain expansion and material culture’ fueled by an increasingly bipedal, increasingly effective hunter.  Big brains, and with them superior intelligence, were viewed as ‘the sine qua non of human origin.’” 10

Even though the theory about male’s superior intellect through hunting skills persisted for over one hundred years, it seems to have reached a fevered pitch during the 1960s, in what one could only call the “Man the Hunter” era.  You must also remember that in this American time period, the country was in love with cheap gas and “muscle cars”; it was undergoing social upheaval in the wake of the prolonged Vietnam War with war images and body counts drifting across TV screens every night.  But, perhaps the ultimate representation of dominate masculine culture were watching large penile-shaped missiles lifting upwards with fiery tails in search of glory in the great infinity.  If all these images do not fall under the masculine wet dream category of “boys and their toys” cultural bias, I don’t know what does.  It was during this era that Darwin’s Man the Hunter theory was given new life with anthropologists whose ranks were made up mostly males during this 1960s time period. 11

Not much changed until a new crop of scientists trained to observe subsistent strategies of modern hunter-gatherers were very skeptical of the Man the Hunter theory, and, for many years chaffed over this masculine superiority through hunting and thought that it had gone on long enough.  It wasn’t until around the late 1990s when behavioral ecologist/archaeologists began to gather courage and present their evidence.  Thus, the provider and protector given to the origin of the human species began to fall under the scrutiny of intensive biological and careful observation.  It broke with heated exchanges within the evolutionary community, and somewhere around 1999, the theory had collapsed.  I suspect, and hope, that more will be written in the future about these events that occurred below the surface benefiting all of us who seek the truth.

Again, Professor Hrdy:

“Like all young primates, H. ergaster [that is, the African branch of Homo erectus] juveniles probably had to eat several times a day, every day.  Like modern children, they probably relied on others to provide most of their food for years after weaning.  The hunting hypothesis holds that early human males were the main source of this support, yet traditional East African hunters living in similar habitats today cannot meet this need, despite their use of sophisticated weapons.  Though meat represents a sizable fraction of their families’ annual caloric intake it is not acquired reliably enough to satisfy the daily nutritional needs of their children. 12

So, if males did not fulfill the daily nutritional needs of the new human child, then we are left with the obvious.  Yes, my friends, it was the daily gathering of herbs, nuts, fruit, and roots found by the patient and persistent female.  Somehow, the male anthropologists since Darwin’s pronouncement of the hunting male’s superiority “missed” that small detail in their studies – I assume that they were too busy studying the males prepare for, and witnessing the strategies behind the actually hunt while ignoring the females remaining in camp and providing the daily needs for the children.

So, if Darwin was mistaken because he was overwhelmed by his social environment, how come the modern female has not come forward and denounced this flip in sexual mate selection and stormed the barricades hiding truth and reason?

Instead of bringing up multiple examples of the social roles of Victorian home life and the female’s role during that time period, (Google –Victorian Women – Social History) let’s jump to 1982 when we find that it was the female of our species that defeated the ERA – Equal Rights Act – you know, equal pay for equal work -- that America was on the verge of passing that year?  It was a conservative woman who thought that the ERA act about to pass was a “demotion” to her fellow female contemporaries.  And therein lays the rub: Could it be that voting majority of modern females today somehow suspect that they really are in control of more than just running the home and that ‘becoming equal” lowers the bar for some of the elite sitting comfortably in there homes with a protective, providing male at their side while tending to the kids?  Could it be that marriage, home, kids, social status, consumption of luxuries, was part of their American Dream?  One traditionalist once told me that marriage was the greatest invention since sliced bread.  Radical feminist sometimes fail to see that some of their fellow sisters like feeling “sexy” and like having men compete for them.  Yes, it may be appalling to some feminists – but female sex is a highly competitive commodity that some men will do almost anything to obtain when they are at their sexual peaks.  It’s in both sexes genes – the male seeks and the female choices.  That puts the female in control because she has the object that men desire.  And many women know it, and know how to use their God-given talents.

I know what boys like
I know what guys want
I know what boys like
I've got what boys like

I know what boys like
I know what guys want
I see them looking 

I make them want me
I like to tease them
they want to touch me
I never let them

But you you’re special (I might let you)
You’re so much different (I might let you)
Ooohh would you like that? (I might let you)

I got my cat moves
That so upset them
Zippers and buttons
Fun to frustrate them
They get so angry
Like pouty children
Denied their candy
I laugh right at them

I see your sad now (I will let you)
Sorry I teased you (I will let you)
This time I mean it (I will let you)
Anything you want (You can trust me)
I really want to (You can trust me)
How would you like it? (You can trust me)

Pretty heavy lyrics, won’t you agree?  Of, course some feminist would consider this example a disgraceful display of immorality and the lowering the female ideal to pure skankery.  But, I wanted you to read the words that perhaps express an innate wisdom that perhaps could have been handed down from generation to generation amongst women -- even amongst the most polite and well educated.  Women are good competitors in the mating game, and for too long these facts have been hidden by other women because “it’s not the nice thing to do.”

Both the male and female of our human species are hierarchical creatures based on our biological legacy.  But, because human behavior is a mixture of DNA and culture, the rest of human behavior is basically influenced by socially constructed enviornments.  Look around you – the clothes people wears, the cars they drive, and the homes they live in --  all shout about where they are in the pecking order we call status or social standing; we innately understand that the higher our rank in the pecking order of things, the better the world will be for us, and the biological influence is highest when we look at our behavior when we bring our children into the equation.  The reason our culture is the way it is today is because the moving average of the herd has decided that the current culture is suitable.  It does change every day because the “movers” and “shakers” that people follow actually change the direction of that herd.  Culture does evolve, just like our species, and in the end influences our behavior; but it does not happen overnight. 

Every Victoria Secret advertisement that convinces our modern female that she needs not just a sexy body, but also sexy, revealing underwear to help capture a male is all part of the mating game that those in the game are faced with in 2009 that is influenced by the general overriding cultural norm.  Those who are not satisfied – radical feminist in this America, or perhaps the current crop of females in the Middle East who struggle with freeing themselves from the head-to-toe Burkas will change the system if the dissatisfaction is wide-spread enough, and will of the spirit moves them enough, they will change the system.  The feminist movement of the 1970’s was a global event in many industrial countries, and it could surface again.

But, let’s wrap this up by bookending where we came in with Darwin’s flip in the sexual selection process (romantic love) and who picks whom for sexual conquest.  Remember that Darwin argued that the “non-savage” human male chooses the woman and then pursues her?  Or does the available science teach us that nothing has changed much in the long time-line of mate selection (romantic love) process with the human female still doing most of the choosing?  Studies have shown that both males and females have different mating strategies, but, I believe that what you are about to read never really made it into the mainstream media.

All we have to do is reference the “Queen Mum of Evolutionary Feminism,” Dr. Helen Fisher, and cite some of her work from her 1992 book, Anatomy of Love.
As you recall, Darwin argued that the modern, enlightened male did the choosing, Dr. Fisher (although not challenging Darwin’s theory) sets that theory on its head.  She provides us evidence to the contrary that fits in the modern social norm pattern we find across the globe in the modern industrial world: That the modern woman generally starts the courting sequence and actively seeks male partners in which to pass their genes.  The complexity of the mating dance from start to finish, of course, differs according to longitude and latitude on the planet.

“American women generally initiate the courting sequence – starting with subtle nonverbal cues such as a slight shift in body weight, a smile, or gaze.  Women began two-thirds of all the pickups that Perper witnessed.” 13

“…although most peoples think men are supposed to take the initiative in sexual advances, in practice women around the world actively begin sexual liaisons.” 14

“…Westerners cling to the concept that men are the seducers and women the coy, submissive recipients of male overtures.  This false notion is probably a relic of our long agricultural past, when women were pawns in elaborate property exchanges at marriage and their value depended on their “purity.”  Hence girls were strictly chaperoned, and the sex drive was denied.  Today, however, Western women have regained their sexual freedom.  Released from the world of arranged betrothals and sexual subservience, they are often pursuers too.” 15

“Eventually, however, the man must respond to the woman’s overtures if the liaison is to proceed.  As one woman reported to Perper, “At some point the man should get the hint and take it from there.” 16

This next entry is very important if we are truly seeking the truth; notice the shift in roles after the male has picked up the cues then he should begin to “put the moves on the female.”  I also want you to recall at this time how male anthropologist could ignore the contributions of the female in ignoring their subsistent strategies in gathering daily nutritional needs of the children in hunter-gatherer tribes.

“Men seem to sense this shift in leadership, a shift that Perper calls initiative transfer.  It normally occurs just after the couple has left the bar (Some single Americans gather at “single bars”).  Now the male must begin his “move” – put his arm around the woman, kiss her, woo her into the mood for coitus.  And it is interesting how well men know their role.   When Perper asked thirty-one of his male informants to describe the pickup sequence, all but three skipped over the initial parts – those directed by the woman (underline emphasis mine).  Only one man could recall the details of who spoke first, who touched whom when, or how either partner began to express interest in the other.   But all thirty-one men spoke at length about their own duties, how they started to kiss, pet, and maneuver the woman into bed” 17

So, who is the prey, and who is the predator here?  It seems to me quite obvious to me in 65% of the observations that this is female sexual selection (romantic love) in full swing.  The female chooses whom to mate with, but gives the subtlest of signals – perhaps to see if the male is “intelligent” enough to catch the slightest hint of the signals sent.  The evolutionary argument here is that the more intelligent the male (notice, I said, intelligent, not “the strongest”), the better chance for survival for her progeny.  The “dumber” the male, the more obvious the signals that would have to be made, and the evolutionary logic for the female would be to move on and seek another potential mate – if one is available at the local environment.  The most interesting part observed above that struck my interest is the mysterious “non-remembrance” by the males who initiated the mating dance.  Is the male “forgetfulness” innate to give the female the evolutionary advantage in the mate choice?  Or is it the male’s innate forgetfulness because men like to think they “conquered” the female?  Is it that the male was “outsmarted” by the female may be too big a blow to the male’s ego and biologically, the male might slither away?

Regardless of the method used, the female will still go with the best choice available at the select moment in time and circumstance within the local environment if she chooses to go forward.  And sadly, in many undeveloped countries where religious fundamentalism reigns supreme, the choices are limited.  Despite our modern and highly technological world, the vast majority of our biological brothers and sisters still need to do the horizontal dance with partners of the opposite sex to pass our genes.  The vast majority of the world’s population can not afford to go off to college and meet the perfect mate, nor financially survive a sustained attempt to rise in corporate structures with evaluated pay scales.

For most of recorded history since our species decided to settle down and domesticate animals and grow crops, mating amongst the newly established families’ consisted of relying on match-makers to make proper connections for their children.  Romantic love (sexual selection or the freedom to choose their husbands or wife) was just a dream.  Most marriages were made for financial security between families, and in some cases, for national political bonding.

But, in any case, the Darwin sexual selection theory needs to be “re-tweaked” back to the “natural” way that Mother Nature intended: We must look at the solid evidence presented that the female is not really the coy, demure, mating partner that we used to believe.  Perhaps, it is the female that is more likely to be the one that starts the mating pursuit –I think Mother Nature had the right idea in the animal world, but some folks, including honored scientists, and a select group of females in particular, who wanted to keep a secret that lead us off track for a short period of time in our evolutionary time line and we lost our way.

In conclusion, I strongly believe that Mr. Darwin channeled his sexual selection theory a bit off course: It is most likely that the female is the superior of the two sexes, not the other way around; Mother Nature got it right.

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Copyright, Evolution’s Voyage, 1995 - 2009.

Copyright, Evolution's Voyage, 1995 - 2011