Chapter 6

This Protection is For Your Own Good

It is very important that we understand these cultural restrictions of sexually limiting the female's freedom through force or intimidation. I strongly believe that the original intent was protective while the clans and tribes moved on the slow journey out of Africa. In my mind, I see the clan moving while in search of the fallen, migrating animals, and the clan's movement never deterred from the innate understanding that protecting the young is protecting one's genetic future. I have images of this moving clan, with mothers and children at the center, surrounded by single females assisting these child-bearing females; this inner circle would then be surrounded by the committed males to the child-rearing females, and then lastly, the outer circle consisting of single-warrior males. The ultimate intent was to protect the children with whom the female was primarily in charge of watching. Whether or not our ancestors had the conceptual abilities to understand family relations and the protective requirements of those ties is open to debate; what is certain, is that our primal ancestors most likely knew the danger when meeting strange clans, and thusly, formed protective rings instinctually.

Since the survival of the clan is secondary only to the survival of the selfish genes that we carry, the next logical step would be to consider how the genes are transferred and how to protect them. And that, of course, is protecting the female (in particular the young, single, and uncommitted female, and restricting her availability to other males not of the same clan). I believe that these restrictive and controlling mechanisms stayed in place for thousands of generations and still can be found in some tribal customs today, usually under the guise of religious dictates. (I speak primary of the Taliband of Afghanistan where the female is not allowed from the house except with an escort. And even then, she must be covered from head to toe with no flesh showing). As societies became more complex and resources began to flourish with farming and trade, the protective and restrictive behaviors of the males toward females was merely extended to the physical properties. Physical property and the ownership of those material resources then took on greater importance with whom one included into the family to carry on the resources through familial ties. Hence, the intense scrutiny by some parents, of any prospective bride or groom to be included into the family.

In modern societies where females are allowed to marry whom they choose and legally transfer property after their deaths, we see that overall male dominance begins to wane. This waning usually starts at the top of the social hierarchies, where better education and job opportunities are within their reach, and slowly inches itself down into the lower socioeconomic levels. In our deep history, there most likely was no such thing as property; survival swirled around those resources that were immediately consumable and available within reach. When domestication of plant food and livestock occurred some 10,000 years ago, however, tangible property took on new meaning for survivability. We were no longer tied to the violent and immediate reactions needed for evolutionary survivability. Unfortunately, the innate architecture of the brain remains relatively the same: The mechanisms of acquiring, maintaining, and controlling those resources through force, intimidation and outright aggression still dominate our species' inner core mechanisms. The major thing that has changed is that the behaviors are now greatly muted through various new layers of stored information in the neurocortex regarding exacting social norm requirements of the local environments. Thousands of generations of living in group settings has left us with socialization cues needed to coexist with our fellow humans, and most of us do not violate those required behaviors of cooperation and coexistence.

As males' success in using aggressive and cognitive skills was fed over thousands of years by the female's ability to attract and manipulate these higher ranking males, the traits for these abilities became the norm. These behaviors and cultural customs could then have slowly solidified into genetic predispositions over the vast years of repetition to leave us where we now stand. I will argue that this path has not been to our species' advantage, but is merely that which evolved and survived. I argue here that vast imbalances of resources acquired by aggressive males and their female partners have led our species to the brink of destruction; over thousands of years of resources falling more and more into the hands of fewer and fewer clans/villages/states, a stressful resource differential has evolved which can, if not eased or reduced, lead to social disruptions that can have serious consequences for society's stability. I also suggest that the male dominance over the female and other disadvantaged races and sects has created diverse and distinct behavioral patterns for our species which have impeded, not advanced, our species. We are like a horse-drawn wagon with one large lopsided wheel causing us to limp along in comic fashion, and unless we regain proper balance, we will end up with nature rearing her head, and "accidentally" trimming back our species. It's already starting to happen as our species pushes more and more people into poor, unplanned areas, separated by their poverty, and then watches in horror as nature extracts its toll in the form of earthquakes, typhoons, and tornadoes. A perfect case in point, on July 10, 2000, 71 squatters were killed outside of Manila in the Philippines when a mountain of garbage collapsed and burst into flames when loosened by incessant rains. The Associated Press, July 11, 2000. The poor souls lost were those who earned a living by scavenging garbage in the "Payatas" dump. We are made witnesses to such tragedies inflicted upon the poor because there is better media coverage of catastrophes that, in the past, would have gone unnoticed. Nature is merely being herself, but humankind does not give her the proper respect, and will pay the price for bad judgement. That's the bad news. The good news is that I feel we are very close to finding the truth about our biological legacy; this, in turn, will set us upon the right path in our evolutionary journey and instruct us in how to live in harmony with nature.

Since I want to establish my argument that our modern society is based upon this "control and restrict" pattern of male dominance and what we can do about it, I feel that it is proper to add my suggestions on how the female mind may have evolved in comparison with the males. Assuming this control and restrict pattern by males does exist throughout all cultures in one degree or another, it then is safe to assume that the female has learned to adapt optimally while imprisoned in this highly restrictive environment. I argue that the female evolved by exercising her brain instead of body mass and muscle even more than the "loser" scenario of the males I discussed in chapter two regarding the great separation with the primates. Being restricted by the need to nurture a large-brained child, and no longer advertising her estrous state to attract various males for assistance, the majority of females gave into the long evolutionary requirement of being protected for, and being held as property by the overly aggressive males. While being restricted, the female has learned to observe and calculate with as little movement within her world as possible. As a result of this evolutionary voyage, the female of today is highly suitable for the emerging global village, which will most likely not require muscle mass. At the same time, advances in automated manufacturing methods leave fewer and fewer options for males to use their muscle mass, and they are thus blocked from relieving their aggressive predispositions. Even war itself is losing its ability to be such an outlet; if we do not discover how to achieve world peace, the warrior of the future would be one whose brain power is needed more than the physical prowess of wars past. To buttress this argument, Helen Fisher, in her book, The First Sex, has trumpeted similar arguments that the female of the 21st Century will be well suited for leading the new e-commerce paradigm that is blossoming into what, Business Week, is calling the new industrial revolution as, The New Economy.

16 Tons and What Do You Get?

In order to understand better how this control and restrict culture exists and spreads in our society, it is necessary first to deal with some negative stereotypical views that have taken root amongst males at my socioeconomic level. These negative stereotypes have been culturally transmitted by males who believe that women are manipulative and cunning creatures whose minds are designed to emasculate them. Some males at my socioeconomic level consider women as creatures to be desired, captured, used, and discarded at their whim. Females at my social ranking, as females elsewhere, are creatures carved by the dictates of their local environments; most, by outward appearance, seem well-content and satisfied with their world; yet, unfortunately, there are some that are very sad; who are frustrated at the lack of respect they are given, who are imprisoned for lack of the sexual features demanded by our culture of images. (Hint -- don't look at fashion magazines for fashion tips -- they will just make you feel ugly). Lower-ranking females who adapt at my level work hard and yet are still denied the respect that they deserve. For them, both work and sacrifice are essential. Relaxation and pleasure fleeting. Physical wear and tear abuses their physical bodies while the duel mental stress of job and family tear at their collective souls. They are captives of their family's financial and education levels, which further shape the way they raise their children in their local environments. I will not apologize for the way my fellow males behave towards these women, as we also are captives of our social rank and circumstances. But that does not mean that I personally have to think demeaning thoughts about their physical attractiveness or mental capabilities. I hope that this book will help prepare their minds, as well as all people's, for the new consciousness that will emerge in the 21st century.

Having been raised in a strong matriarchal family, and not having any neighborhood children to play with because our house sat in the middle of an industrial area, I have always tended to believe that studying the subjects that interested me a more pleasurable escape than endurance sports. I do not agree for one moment that the mental skills possessed by women are in any way inferior to males, or that women should be ranked only by their sexual parts or whole. To say that they evolved a manipulative and cunning mind is not all derogatory, since this was in response to the control and restriction constantly exercised by their male counterparts. What other options would a organism, whether male or female, have if imprisoned and watched over every second of their reproductive lives? Anecdotal interviews from Viet Nam POWs have consistently told us that the use of mental mathematical calculations and good old-fashioned daydreaming helped the prisoners transcend the vicious environmental conditions they endured. From their mental prison cells women have learned to develop a silent strength and unparalleled sense of determination through thousands of years of evolution. Their unique, innate skills in multi-tasking skills and their compassionate stance place them in front of the parade as both genders evolve into the new millennium.

Although I have no compelling empirical evidence to prop up this argument other than highly debatable DSM-IV evidence (see below), I believe strongly that our ancestral females bonded closely with each other during the early years of human evolution and developed strong gender ties -- just as women do today. Then, as today, females "discussed" or imitated the behaviors of their fellow females that were the most advantageous to their gender; they followed the social constructs of the local cultural environments that enveloped them, and they "behaved" accordingly. I also believe strongly that the same cultural forces that separated and excluded females also applied to males who were forced by the cultural socialization processes to go forth and roam in bonded groups for the purpose of hunting. Hunting was not a pleasurable excursion, and most likely highly fraught with danger. Common sense dictates that this dangerous atmosphere created the need for testing of young males who were ready for their elevation into manhood; hence the rise of initiation rites. A group is only as strong as its weakest member, and the need to be sure of a man's strength and courage was paramount when off on a dangerous hunt upon which the survival of the clan/village depended. Failure of a boy to pass initiation rites, (which are local cultural inventions and widely practiced worldwide) into the adult male world most likely meant death, expulsion, or social ostracism, which emphasized his "weakness" and separated him from the "stronger" males. This expulsion or social ostracism led to the impossibility of ever displaying captured prizes to attract females or to share with others. The excluded and emasculated male became the equivalent of a "loser" in our modern surroundings. No one has suggested that our evolutionary past was glamorous or compassionate.

To add more controversy to the cauldron of speculations, I strongly believe that each of our deep historical hunter-gatherer groups had a "culture" that shaped and defined its sexual behavior. Who stands to argue that our pre-hominoids did not have a culture that influenced group and individual sexual practices? In a recent study done concerning tool use in chimpanzees that spanned five decades, primatologist Andrew Whiten of the University of St. Andrews in Scotland and co-author Jane Goodall found that at least 39 customs related to chimp tool use, grooming and courtship. Associated Press, "Chimps Exhibit 'Culture.'" by Joseph B. Verrengia, June 17th 1999. Does anyone rise to oppose the logic that at some time in our ancestral past our forebears did not wear clothes? Does anyone choose to argue that clothing would prohibit or limit visual acknowledgement of the females' fluid-filled sac denoting her estrous state, (if it existed), or the males' erect and excited penises? And since sex has the most important function of transferring the code of life, DNA, does anyone argue against the innate forces and importance attached to the sexual dance between our genders which gained access to the DNA transference devices -- the genitals of both sexes? Do we rise in agreement to understand that this sexual dance may be different in different cultures today? Can we begin to see the overwhelming force that sometime pushes our species into sexual frenzy? Especially, (of course) the males?

She's Mine, All Mine

"For six straight days, and nights, alpha Wilkie sequestered Gremlin as they traveled together through the treetops in Kakombe valley. They were followed on the ground from dawn until dusk by an entourage of the other adult males, who stationed themselves at the base of whatever tree the mating couple were in and sat, often with erect penises, staring hopefully into the tree crown. If Wilkie allowed Gremlin to stray more than a few meters from him, a male from below would scramble up the tree, only to be driven back by an angry attack by Wilkie. During this time, only Wilkie's close ally Prof was allowed to approach and even occasionally to mate with Gremlin; she was otherwise off limits to all the suitors in waiting." The Hunting Apes, 1999, p.76

Reflecting on this "culture" of tool use, I had it dawn on me that instead of attempting to "settle" on which observation was the best, I should accept all of them as correct and assume that what these highly capable observers were jotting down in their notebooks were cultural variations in sexual behavior at specific longitudes and latitudes on the planet. I also concluded that small details of their observations were then filtered through either their male and female biases and, on top of those differences, some scientists blended various observations in order to be accepted by their colleagues, which may have further slanted their masculine or feminine bias. I mean, after all, they are only human. If my reflection is correct, we have a lot of re-self-educating to do on the subject of sexual access.

Sometimes the Truth Really Hurts

Despite loud protests from feminists, women have had to rely on the "wisdom" of males and be cognizant of the physical limitations of their bodies. In maintaining control, whether intentionally or unintentionally, male "experts" throughout history, and perhaps, for a much longer stretch in time, have told females that they are unclean at certain times of the month, weak, stupid, confused, unorganized, and worthless. All of these are nothing more than self-esteem deflating mechanisms that depress and weaken the female while strengthening the male's position. Left with little viable alternatives, women, "for their own good" had to depend on the support of the male for their mere existence. Is it that difficult to believe that once the female was in this dependent, depressive, humiliated state, sexual access, and thus the transference of the male genes, became the cultural favorite of dominate males to follow? And the final question to ask, did the cultural favorite path become imbedded into genetic code? The jury is still out on that question.

The main thrust of my argument is that males who were in an important position of control, consciously or unconsciously understood the advantage of this control and applied behavioral mechanisms favorable to their desired goals. Although violence against women most likely occurred (and of course still occurs today in humans and primates), our ancestral males most likely could easily overcome the weaker female without violence, particularly if she was isolated from forming alliances with other women or family members. The coercion for sexual access as opposed to brutal violence was more likely was the norm of behavior. There has been a loud cry of indignation, and rightly so, from female scientists about the low importance of the female and the contributions made by their sex in interpretations of our deep history. If we wish the truth to prevail where's the evidence from our deep history that males were the "saviors" of modern civilization? Where are the citations that started all this crap about males being the dominate and the superior gender over females? Is there anything more that could confirm the assumption that the vast majority of our male primate ancestors went off and hunted over wide areas while females stayed at home and cowered in a local environment of non brick-and-mortar prison cells? How can we substantiate these two points if no physical evidence other than cave drawings of male hunting and bravery has yet been found? Should we believe only the arguments of male scientists, which have been clumped together, buttressed by culture and gender advantage, and pumped up and glamorized by male writers of scientific observations, editorials, adventure novels, and Hollywood screenplays?.

Stan's the Man and He's Got a Plan

You don't need to be a rocket scientist to read and understand a high school history book, or to listen to sermons given by lay religious leaders and glean from their message that "man" took it upon himself to put his dominion above all other creatures. It does not matter whether his excuse to dominate women and animals came from religious sermons, historical records, or cultural heritages at local levels; evidence of male dominance is with us today all around the globe. But, the controls and restrictions do not stop there; man has not been content to dominate only women and animals. History books are filled with "facts" and "scientific" studies done to establish inferiorities in others of our species in order to justify the practice of exclusion and to assuage feelings of guilt for practices that go against the Christian principal of compassion. Mismeasure of Man, 1999. In fact, this establishment of superiority over others by classifying some peoples as "undesirable" still holds sway today; it is only, perhaps, a bit more less strongly worded or enacted. It continues to permeate societies on the planet today in the form of local military conflicts between ethnic groups; legislation voted into law by dominants; cultural and social barriers to advancement of one particular group by others; and a double standard of justice by which "inferiors" are subject to harsher sentencing while leniency is given the dominant subspecies. I don't have to name names or quote citations -- just look around you.

The evidence that I bring to your attention about behavioral differences between the genders is found in the well-credentialed Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th Edition, known more popularly in its short form as the DSM-IV. It is literally a vast pool of statistical data complied over the last forty-plus years to establish mental disorders in individuals. A couple of years ago, in search of citations for the existence of group social interactions that affect individual behavior from an evolutionary perspective, I made an observation concerning gender differences, unrelated to that search, which seemed quite obvious when connected.

One must make several assumptions concerning the information about individuals that are diagnosed within the DSM-IV. The first is that you must purge any idea that an individual diagnosed with a "mental disorder" is totally unfunctional. Even the authors of the DSM-IV give a similar warning:

"...mental disorder unfortunately implies a distinction between "mental" disorders and "physical" disorders that is a reductionistic anachronism of mind/body dualism. A compelling literature documents that there is much "physical" in "mental" disorders and much "mental" in "physical" disorders." p. xxi.

"...considered a manifestation of a behavioral, psychological, or biological dysfunction in the individual. Neither deviant behavior (e.g., political, religious, or sexual) nor conflicts that are primarily between the individual and society are mental disorders unless the deviance or conflict is a symptom of a dysfunction in the individual, as described above." p. xxi & xxii.

The second assumption we must make is that individuals who suffer from the illnesses defined in the DSM-IV process information in the brain the same way as those with "healthy" minds. They do, however, have significant distress in social, academic, or occupational areas when judged against an assumed perfect social animal working on all cylinders within a perfect social setting. If we assume that mentally healthy people and mentally unhealthy people are using the same modular computational mind structures to solve problems, survey, and analyze local conditions, and that both act outwardly toward those problems, then one can make the next assumption: that the majority of the populace is adapting nicely to their local environments without significant distress -- barring of course, any birth defects, brain damage, or ingestion of harmful chemicals, be they social or industrial. This leaves us on the path to a final assumption: Gender differences in the DSM-IV could represent deep, innate behaviors on a universal planetary scale that have evolved through differences in evolved gender roles. Another important reason the DSM-IV is relevant to this discussion, oddly, is that it is compiled without the slightest interest in evolutionary or gender perspectives, thereby rendering the statistics totally unbiased, at least from this perspective

In creating the chart below, I merely extracted the gender information and placed it, line-by-line, in the chart. I placed the female disorders to the left and the male disorders on the right, and created two large descriptive headings over the female columns and the male columns; I have not sub-divided the genders into child or grownup. Over the two female columns you will see the words LESS MOVEMENT, and over the two male columns you see the words MORE MOVEMENT. Directly above the five columns of the listed disorders, you will see the frequency of the disorders as described in the DSM-IV. In the middle, you will find the disorders that are shared by both genders. How the authors of the DSM-IV invented the wording for the frequency of the disorders is anybody's guess, and I suspect it had to do more with grammar than scientific accuracy. But then, this is not a scientific study either, but merely an observation gleaned from an evolutionary perspective on a well-credential publication that does not delve into evolutionary behavioral theories.

In the upper left, F1 stands for a mental disorder that afflicts the female in heavier ratios than females in column F2, such as 3:1 or five times as likely, etc. F2 represents the mental disorder afflicting the female gender with the descriptive words, "much more" or "more common;" the disorder descending in severity towards the center. If you look in the upper right where the male disorders are located, you will find the same wording describing the disorders for the males, only the subheadings are tagged as M1 or M2 and run from right to left toward the center. In the center column, you will find disorders that are mixed, or equally found in both genders. As you read across the rows, make sure that you do NOT connect in any way a female disorder on the left with a male disorder on the same row to the right, and vice versa. The rows fall in this manner only because I started at the beginning of the book and made my way to the end, merely filling in the appropriate disorder and the frequency for each gender or both as they occurred.

As I was compiling the chart, and separating the two genders, I began to see a pattern emerging: The female disorders have seemed to be about mental images and possible scenarios while not involving much movement, and the disorders visiting the males seemed to be tied to significant outward physical movement. These motion differences may, in some cases, seem very subtle, and in others, quite obvious. Female disorders appeared to be about how people perceived them, whether they were accepted by other females, or were attractive to males. Disorders such as major depressive disorder, anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, dissociative identity disorder, animal and natural phobia and seasonal pattern specifier (depression goes up when the days become shorter in the fall and winter) have to do with images that revolve around real or imaged fears that usually are obtained by remaining in, or being close to, one place. The disorders of anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa undoubtedly have to do with the fear of not obtaining the optimal physical appearance thought required to be accepted by a high-ranking mate in the local culture, and also require little movement. That these disorders affect mainly females gives strength to suggestions that males are greater risk-takers, and may not fully think-out all possible scenarios before acting or speaking.

In the females, two of the most important disorders that support my observations are seasonal pattern specifier and major depressive disorder. Is it possible that SPS was the result of being herded into caves during long winter months, watched, and "protected" by stronger males throughout thousand upon thousands of years? Is it possible that the females were treated like cattle and exploited sexually during those closed-in winter months? And even with the coming of the spring, when they could finally leave the caves, did this really mean freedom, or merely a continuation of the social and biological forces of control and restraint by males? And what if some our ancestors did not live in caves? Would this make a difference, or was control and restrict behavior so widespread through humanity that all women faced the same imprisonment? Or were women then truly equal to men in terms of the hunt, as feminists want us to believe? Finally, do the historical records of emerging civilizations and the mental disorders in the DSM-IV cement the statistical truth of our evolutionary past to the historical reality of today?

Does the herding of woman as cattle and their treatment as property seem farfetched? Consider this: The Associated Press on March 1, 1998 carried a story of the Taliban religious army in Kabul, Afghanistan administering 100 lashes to a teenage girl for walking with a man who was not her relative. The news report also mentions that the open-air punishment was done in a soccer stadium, and was witnessed by a crowd numbering in the thousands. The Taliban army, which imposes a strict version of Islamic law on Afghanistan, is composed entirely of males. Their religion requires that women cover themselves from head to toe so as to not reveal any flesh; they also do not allow women to work, teach, or even to leave the house without being in the accompaniment of an elder female, or male relative. Listen people -- the lashing of the young female was done just a few years ago -- not 30,000 years ago when our ancestors dwelled in caves and in small hunter-gatherer bands. Lashing this young women was meant to enforce the religious beliefs of the Talibans, and I will not make any moral judgement, but I have reported the incident because it gives strong support to my argument of the possible treatment of women by our male ancestors of long ago. Do you think that that restrict and control was possible? Is it possible that such treatment may have something to do with the fact that women are twice as likely to suffer from major depressive disorder and seasonal pattern specifer as males?

In observing the male's mental disorders, one sees movement galore, and logic dictates that if you are on the move, safety dictates that you focus on the path or mission before you or else you may find that life is very short. Exhibitionism, fetishism, frotteurism, pedophilia, sexual sadism, travsvestic fetishism, pyromania, conduct disorder, and in particular, voyeurism give males many opportunities to roam.. Are the disorders of expressive language disorder, reading disorder, mixed receptive expressive language disorder, and stuttering that predominantly visit the male a direct result of movement and motor skills necessary for fighting and hunting, interfering with the formation of verbal, reading, and expressive abilities? Does action take the place of verbal acuity in the deep history of males? Did females, while stationary in groups and raising children, develop better language skills? Does attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder occur because the young male mind just wants to get up and do movements similar to those traits that he shares biologically with his ancestral male predecessor? Do conduct disorders reflect the "warrior" found in all males just waiting to be expressed and forced to the forefront by obstacles that need to be fought? Does the over-dependence on alcohol, cannabis use, opioids, hallucinogens, and other substances by males merely reflect the frustration and inability to rise up and conquer old enemies of yore? Are drugs used as catalysts to remove layers of learned behavior that return the male brain to its primitive core, to partake in its vision of long-ago battles won and enemies defeated?

But the male disorders in the DSM-IV that dovetail best with observations of male control and restriction of the female, are all the sexual disorders. Exhibitionism, fetishism, pedophilia, sexual masochism, sexual sadism, transvestic fetishism, and voyeurism are almost exclusively male, with one exception; Sexual sadism, which is occasionally found in females but visits the male 20 to one over the female. Are these part of the many behaviors males deployed to plant their seed into the loins of the enemies' females and poison their progeny? Is voyeurism a remnant of the constant observation of the female in a group? Does it also represent the male warrior behaviors in his ancestral past needed to search for prey and female mates? And the biggest question of all, when and how did human nature, evolving to the dictates of local environments, become a "mental disorder?"

In any case, common male mental disorders do seem to fit the ancestral male need of movement. Does this observation really help in our search for ancestral behaviors that have a bearing on modern ones? Or does it just raise more questions than it answers? In the end, time may relegate my theories of the stationery female and movable male to the garbage heap of history. Only, time, debate, and intensive scientific scrutiny will give us the answer.

GENDER DIFFERENCES IN THE DSM-IV

LESS MOVEMENT MORE MOVEMENT

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LESS MOVEMENT MORE MOVEMENT

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LESS MOVEMENT MORE MOVEMENT

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