To my sisters on the streetTo my sisters everywhereTo people everywhere
Contents Introduction: Diversity Denied / 1 PART ONE ANIMAL RAINBOWS 1 Sex and Diversity / 13 2 Sex versus Gender / 22 3 Sex within Bodies / 30 4 Sex Roles / 43 5 Two-Gender Families / 49 6 Multiple-Gender Families / 75 7 Female Choice / 106 8 Same-Sex Sexuality / 127 9 The Theory of Evolution / 159 PART TWO HUMAN RAINBOWS 10 An Embryonic Narrative / 185 11 Sex Determination / 196 12 Sex Differences / 207 13 Gender Identity / 238
14 Sexual Orientation / 245 15 Psychological Perspectives / 262 16 Disease versus Diversity / 280 17 Genetic Engineering versus Diversity / 306PART THREE CULTURAL RAINBOWS 18 Two-Spirits, Mahu, and Hijras / 329 19 Transgender in Historical Europe and the Middle East / 352 20 Sexual Relations in Antiquity / 367 21 Tomboi, Vestidas, and Guevedoche / 377 22 Trans Politics in the United States / 387 Appendix: Policy Recommendations / 401 Notes / 409 Index / 461
INTRODUCTIONDiversity DeniedOn a hot, sunny day in June of 1997, I attended my ﬁrst gay pride pa-rade, in San Francisco. The size of the crowd amazed me. As I marchedfrom Civic Center up Market Street to San Francisco Bay, a throng ofonlookers six persons deep on both sides shouted encouragement andsupport. For the ﬁrst time, I felt the sheer magnitude of the gay com-munity. I stored this impression in the back of my mind. How, I wondered,does biology account for such a huge population that doesn’t match thetemplate science teaches as normal? When scientiﬁc theory says some-thing’s wrong with so many people, perhaps the theory is wrong, not thepeople. It wasn’t just the number of gay people that astonished me, but the di-versity of personal expression in the parade. A drag queen or two werefeatured in the newspapers, but many other, less ﬂamboyant presenta-tions with different mixtures of gendered symbols were evident as well.I was intrigued, and resolved to investigate further if I ever got thechance. During the next few months I intended to transition into a trans-gendered woman.1 I didn’t know what the future held—whether I’d beﬁred as a biology professor, whether I’d become a nightclub waitress,whether I’d even stay alive. I couldn’t make long-term plans. Still, I found my mind leaping from one question to another: What’s 1
2 INTRODUCTIONthe real story about diversity in gender and sexuality? How much diver-sity exists in other vertebrate species? How does diversity evolve in theanimal kingdom? And how does diversity develop as individuals growup: what role do genes, hormones, and brain cells play? And what aboutdiversity in other cultures and historical periods, from biblical times toour own? Even more, I wondered where we might locate diversity ingender expression and sexual orientation within the overall frameworkof human diversity. Are these types of diversity as innocent as differencesin height, weight, body proportion, and aptitude? Or does diversity ingender expression and sexuality merit special alarm and require carefultreatment? A few years after the 1997 parade, I was still alive and still employed.I had been forced to resign from my administrative responsibilities, butfound myself with more time for research and writing. I was able to re-visit the questions that had ﬂooded my mind as I walked in the paradeon that lovely day. This book is the result. I found more diversity than I had ever dreamed existed. I’m an ecol-ogist—diversity is my job—and yet I was still astonished. Much of thisbook presents the gee-whiz of vertebrate diversity: how animal familieslive, how animal societies are organized, how animals change sex, howanimals have more than two genders, how species incorporate same-sexcourtship, including sexual contact, as regular parts of their social sys-tems. This diversity reveals the evolutionary stability and biological im-portance of expressions of gender and sexuality that go far beyond thetraditional male/female or Mars/Venus binary. I also found that as wedevelop from tiny embryos to adults, our genes make decisions. Our glo-rious diversity is the result of our “gene committees” passing various bio-chemical resolutions. No gene is king, no body type reigns supreme, noris any template universal in a cacophonous cellular democracy. I studied how some cultures value transgender people, found wherein the Bible transgender people occur, and learned that people from var-ious cultures organize categories of identity differently. Although all cul-tures span the same range of human diversity, they have different waysof distinguishing gay, lesbian, and transgender identities. All these facts were new to me, and even now seem utterly engaging,leading to page after page of I-didn’t-know-that, wow, and really. Thisbook, then, is a memoir of my travels though the academic spaces of
DIVERSITY DENIED 3ecology and evolution, molecular biology, and anthropology, sociology,and theology. My general conclusion is that each academic discipline hasits own means of discriminating against diversity. At ﬁrst I felt that thebook’s main message would be a catalogue of diversity that biologicallyvalidates divergent expressions of gender and sexuality. This validatingcatalogue is indeed important. But as I reﬂected on my academic sojourn,I increasingly wondered why we didn’t already know about nature’swonderful diversity in gender and sexuality. I came to see the book’smain message as an indictment of academia for suppressing and denyingdiversity. I now conclude that all our academic disciplines should goback to school, take refresher courses in their own primary data, andemerge with a reformed, enlarged, and more accurate concept of diver-sity. In ecology and evolution, diversity in gender and sexuality is deni-grated by sexual selection theory, a perspective that can be traced to Dar-win. This theory preaches that males and females obey certain universaltemplates—the passionate male and the coy female—and that deviationsfrom these templates are anomalies. Yet the facts of nature falsify Dar-win’s sexual selection theory. In molecular biology and medicine, diver-sity is pathologized: difference is considered a disease. Yet the absence ofa scientiﬁc deﬁnition of disease implies that the diagnosis of disease isoften a value-loaded exercise in prejudice. And in the social sciences,variation in gender and sexuality is considered irrational, and personalagency is denied. Gender- and sexuality-variant people are thought to bemotivated by mindless devotion to primitive gods, or compelled by far-fetched psychological urges, or brainwashed by social conventions, andso on: there is always some reason to avoid taking gender- and sexual-ity-variant people seriously. The fundamental problem is that our academic disciplines are allrooted in Western culture, which discriminates against diversity. Eachdiscipline ﬁnds its own justiﬁcation for this discrimination. This bookblows the whistle on a common pattern of disparaging gender and sex-uality variation in academia and predicts foundational difficulties foreach discipline. Although criticism is valuable in its own right, and a critic has no re-sponsibility to suggest solutions, I do suggest improvements when I can.I offer alternatives for interpreting the behavior of animals, interpreta-
4 INTRODUCTIONtions that can be tested and will lead ultimately to more accurate science.I suggest new perspectives on genetics and development that may yielda more successful biotechnology industry. I show that mathematical cri-teria for the rarity of a genetic disease point to possibly overlooked ad-vantages for genes presently considered defective. I suggest new readingsof narratives recorded from gender-variant people across cultures. I callattention to overlooked aspects of the Bible that endorse gender varia-tion. I do not argue that because gender and sexuality variation occur in an-imals, this variation is also good for humans. People might anticipatethat as a scientist I would say, “Natural equals good.” I do not advocateany version of this fallacy that confuses fact with value. I believe thegoodness of a natural trait is the province of ethical reasoning, not sci-ence. Infanticide is natural in many animals but wrong in humans. Gen-der variation and homosexuality are also natural in animals, and per-fectly ﬁne in humans. What seems immoral to me is transphobia andhomophobia. In the extreme, these phobias may be illnesses requiringtherapy, similar to excessive fear of heights or snakes.2 I also do not suggest that people are directly comparable to animals.Indeed, even people in different cultures have life experiences that maynot be comparable, and comparing people to animals is even riskier. Still,parallels can sometimes be found between cultures. Rugby is a counter-part to American football but located in a different sports culture. Someaspects of American football, like the way play begins by hiking the ball,are comparable to rugby. Similarly, parallels can sometimes be drawnbetween how people behave and how animals behave, as though animalsoffered biological cultures resembling ours. I’m quite willing to anthro-pomorphize about animals. Not that animals are really like people, butanimals are not just machines either. We make an error if we attributetoo much human quality to animals, but we underestimate them if wethink they’re mechanical robots. I’ve tried to strike a balance here. I’ve borrowed the word “rainbow” for the title of the book and useit throughout. The word “rainbow” signiﬁes diversity, especially ofracial and cultural minorities. The Reverend Jesse Jackson ran for pres-ident with the Rainbow Coalition. The rainbow also symbolizes gay lib-eration. You probably work with or supervise biologically diverse people. You
DIVERSITY DENIED 5may be the parent or relative of an unusual child. You may be a teacher,Scout master, coach, minister, legislator, policy analyst, judge, law en-forcement officer, journalist, or therapist wondering why your col-leagues, clients, or constituencies are so different from the norms wewere indoctrinated with as children. You may be a student in college orhigh school trying to understand diverse classmates. You may be takinga deep breath before coming out yourself, or you may have come outyears ago and wish to connect with your roots. You may be studying gen-der theory and wondering where science ﬁts in, or you may be a womanscientist wondering how to contribute to feminist theory. You may be aconservation biologist wondering how to make biodiversity more rele-vant to human affairs. You may be a medical student with a professionalneed for more information about diversity than medical school teaches.You may belong to a discussion group in your place of worship trying tounderstand how to be inclusive. You may be a young doctoral studentshopping for a thesis topic. This book is for all of you. In Part 1, Animal Rainbows, I begin with my own discipline of ecol-ogy and evolution. I’ve written previously on the evolution of sex: whyorganisms have evolved to reproduce sexually rather than simply bybudding, fragmentation, parthenogenesis, or some other nonsexualmeans.3 Reproduction that uses sex rather than bypassing it is better be-cause species need a balanced portfolio of genes to survive over the longterm, and sex continually rebalances a species’ genetic portfolio. Yet,even though this beneﬁt of gene pool mixing is universal, the means ofimplementing sexual reproduction are incredibly diverse, spanning manystyles of bodies, family organizations, and patterns of bonding betweenand within sexes, each with its own value and its own internal logic. Part 1 reviews the body plans, genders, family organizations, femaleand male mate choices, and sexualities of animals, leading to the con-clusion that Darwin’s theory of sexual selection is false. I ﬁnd that com-petitive tooth-and-claw narratives about nature have been greatly exag-gerated, that all sorts of friendships occur among animals, manymediated by sexuality, and that many social roles are signaled by gen-dered bodily symbols. The great difference in size between an egg and asperm (a ratio in mass of usually one million to one) is not present to thesame degree at the levels of body, behavior, and life history. When a gen-der binary does exist, the difference is usually slight and sometimes re-
6 INTRODUCTIONverses gender stereotypes. Furthermore, there are often more than twogenders, with multiple types of males and females. This real-life diversityin gender expression and sexuality challenges basic evolutionary theory. Darwin is known for three claims: that species are related to one an-other by sharing descent from common ancestors, that species changethrough natural selection, and that males and females obey universaltemplates—the males ardent and the females coy. This third claim resultsfrom Darwin’s theory about sexual selection, and this claim, not the ﬁrsttwo, is what is speciﬁcally under challenge. The picture conveyed by Dar-win’s sexual selection theory is both inaccurate in detail and inadequatein scope to address real-world animal diversity. Darwin’s theory of sex-ual selection is perhaps valid for species like the peacock, whose maleshave showy ornaments directly used in courtship, but it isn’t a generalbiological theory of gender roles. Twisting Darwin’s original theory toconform with today’s knowledge renders the theory a tautology. Instead,I submit that the time has come to acknowledge the historical value ofDarwin’s theory of sexual selection and move on. I’ve suggested a new theory that I call “social selection.” This new the-ory accommodates variation in gender and sexuality. It envisages ani-mals as exchanging help in return for access to reproductive opportunity,producing a biological “labor market” for mutual assistance by em-ploying reproductive opportunity as currency. This theory proposes thatanimals evolve traits that qualify them for inclusion in groups that con-trol resources for reproduction and safe places to live and raise offspring.These traits, called social-inclusionary traits, are either possessed only byfemales and unexplained by any theory, such as the penis of female spot-ted hyenas, or possessed only by males and interpreted as a secondarysex characteristic even though they are not actually preferred by femalesduring courtship. Part 2, Human Rainbows, deals with the areas of biology focused onhuman development. I tell the story of human embryogenesis as a ﬁrst-person narrative (“when my sperm part met my egg part”) to emphasizethat agency and experience function throughout life, before birth andafter. I also wish to destabilize the primacy of individualism, to empha-size how much cooperation takes place during development, from themother who chemically endorses some sperm and not others as compe-tent to fuse with one of her eggs, to genes that interconnect to produce
DIVERSITY DENIED 7gonads, tissues that touch each other and direct each other’s develop-ment, and hormones from adjacent babies in utero that permanently in-ﬂuence each other’s temperament. Therefore, what we become arisesmore from our relationships than from our atomic genes, just as a pieceof coal’s atomic bonds differ from a diamond’s, even though both con-sist solely of carbon atoms. I’ve coined the term “genial gene” to distinguish my conception fromthe popular notion of the selﬁsh gene, which is imagined to single-handedly control development for its own ends. Instead, I emphasizethat genes must cooperate lest the common body they inhabit sink like alifeboat ﬁlled with squabbling sailors. I dwell at length on genetic, phys-iological, and anatomical differences among people. We are as differentfrom each other under the skin as we are on the surface. Although bio-logical differences can be found between the sexes and between peopleof differing gender expression and sexuality, biological differences canalso be found between any two people. For instance, musicians who arestring players have been discovered to have brains that differ from thoseof people who don’t play strings. Part 2 shows how medicine seizes onthe often tiny anatomical differences between people, and on differencesin life experience, to differentiate them from an artiﬁcial template of nor-malcy and deny a wide range of people their human rights by deﬁningthem as diseased. Meanwhile, in our society we face not only persecu-tion of people with diverse expressions of gender and sexuality, but alsothe prospect of doing permanent harm to the integrity of the gene poolof our species, thereby damaging our species for posterity. Part 2 con-cludes with a summary of the dangers inherent in attempts by genetic en-gineers to “cleanse” diversity from our gene pool. In Part 3, Cultural Rainbows, the book progresses from biology to so-cial science, offering a survey and new reading of gender and sexualityvariation across cultures and through history. Many tribes of NativeAmericans accommodated gender and sexuality variation by identifyingpeople as “two-spirits” and including them within social life to an extentthat is inspirational to those persecuted in modern society. In Polynesia,the mahu, comparable to the Native American two-spirits, are experi-encing cultural tension as a result of the introduced Western concept oftransgender. Across the globe in India, we ﬁnd a large castelike group oftransgender people called hijra; there are over one million hijra in a total
8 INTRODUCTIONpopulation of one billion Indians. The hijra enjoy an ancient pedigreeand provide an Asian counterpart to the European history of gendervariation that extends from Cybelean priestesses in the Roman empire tothe transvestite saints of the Middle Ages, including Joan of Arc (calledhere Jehanne d’Arc), a transgender man. Early transgender people in Eu-rope were classed as eunuchs, a large group similar to the hijra, withwhom they may share a common origin. The Bible, in both Hebrew andChristian testaments (including a passage from Jesus), explicitly endorseseunuchs for baptism and full membership in the religious community.Gender variation was recognized in early Islamic writings as well. Early Greece enforced a gender binary for techniques of sexual prac-tice: certain practices were considered appropriate for between-sex sex-uality and others for same-sex sexuality. Approved practices were called“clean” and those disapproved called “unclean.” The Bible is relativelysilent on same-sex sexuality, in spite of the centuries-old belief that theBible condemns homosexuality. I suggest the Bible’s clear affirmation ofgender variation and its relative silence on same-sex sexuality reﬂect dif-ferent ages of gender- and sexuality-variant categories of identity. Thecategory of eunuch extended to the time of Christ and beyond into pre-history, whereas homosexuality as a category of personal identity origi-nated relatively recently in Europe, during the late 1800s. Thus, whenthe Bible was written, there existed a language for categories of gendervariance but not for categories of sexuality variance. My focus then shifts to anthropologists working in Indonesia, whodescribe coming reluctantly to acknowledge a legitimate element of mas-culine gender identity in lesbian expression, although they at ﬁrst be-lieved that lesbian sexual orientation should not include a masculinepresentation. In contrast, an investigator studying Mexican vestidas(transgender sex workers) never moves beyond pejorative descriptions.Also, an interesting situation has occurred in the Dominican Republic,where enough intersexed people lived in several villages to have pro-duced a special social category, the guevedoche. I wind up the culturalsurvey by returning to the contemporary United States to discuss the pol-itics of transgender people and their growing alliance with gay and les-bian organizations, and conclude by stating a political agenda for trans-gendered people. Part 3 demonstrates that our species manifests the same
DIVERSITY DENIED 9range of variation across cultures and through time, but shows greatvariation in how we package people into social categories. In Part 3, I’ve discussed affirming diversity from a religious stand-point. I believe that ignoring religion, and the Bible speciﬁcally, is towork with tunnel vision. Regardless of what science tells us, if people be-lieve that the Bible disparages lesbian, gay, and transgender people, thenthe cause of inclusion is jeopardized because many would choose religionover science. In fact, I ﬁnd that the Bible is mostly silent about sexual ori-entation and that the passages about eunuchs that directly affirm trans-gender people have been largely ignored. Overall, the Bible gives no sup-port to the religious persecution of gender and sexuality variation.Moreover, the well-known story of Noah’s ark imparts a moral impera-tive to conserve all biodiversity, both across species and within species. As an appendix, I offer concrete policy recommendations. I suggeststrengthening the undergraduate curriculum in psychology and im-proved education for premedical and medical students to prepare thembetter to understand natural diversity. I propose new institutionalprocesses to prevent continuing medical abuse of human diversity underthe guise of treating diseases. I demand that genetic engineers take anoath of professional responsibility and that they be licensed to practicegenetic engineering only after having passed a certifying examination. Fi-nally, I ﬂoat the idea that our country should construct a large statue andplaza, called the Statue of Diversity, which would be to the West Coastwhat the Statue of Liberty is to the East Coast. This book is my ﬁrst “trade book,” a term publishers use for booksintended for a wide audience rather than speciﬁcally for classroom use—my previous books have been specialized textbooks, monographs, orsymposium proceedings.4 In this type of book I’m free to express opin-ion and to adopt an informal style. In this book, I freely declare whereI’m coming from. Being up front about my position automatically raisesthe question of objectivity; I’ve told the truth, and the whole truth, asbest I can. Yet I offer my own interpretation of the facts, as if I were alawyer for the defense opposing lawyers for the “persecution.” You, myreaders, are a jury of friends and neighbors, and you will make up yourown mind. Please consider that everyone writing on these topics is writ-ing from a particular perspective and with a vested interest. Some bene-
10 INTRODUCTIONﬁt from the biological excuse for male philandering that Darwin’s sex-ual selection theory provides. Others ﬁnd validation in Darwin’s rein-forcement of their aggressive worldview. Still others enjoy the geneticelitism of sexual selection theory, conﬁdent that their own genes are su-perior. I ﬁnd that refuting sexual selection theory imbues female choicewith responsibility for decisions about power and family far more so-phisticated than what Darwin envisioned, and empowers varied expres-sions of gender and sexuality. At times I’ve loved writing this book; at other times I’ve felt afraid ofwhat I have to say. The view of our bodies, of gender and sexuality, thatemerges is strikingly new. But I’ve carried on because I’ve found the mes-sage to be positive and liberating. I hope you enjoy this book. I hope itbetters your life.I thank the staff of the Falconer Biology Library at Stanford Universityfor extensive help with research. I am deeply grateful for reviews fromBlake Edgar, Patricia Gowaty, Scott Norton, Robert Sapolsky, and Bon-nie Spanier, together with editorial improvements from the staff of theUniversity of California Press, especially Elizabeth Berg and Sue Heine-mann. I’ve been blessed by love from my closest friend, Trudy, and mysisters at Trinity Episcopal Church in Santa Barbara, especially Terry.
PART ONEANIMAL RAINBOWS
1Sex and DiversityA ll species have genetic diversity—their biological rainbow. No ex- ceptions. Biological rainbows are universal and eternal. Yet bio- logical rainbows have posed difficulties for biologists since the be-ginnings of evolutionary theory. The founder of evolutionary biology,Charles Darwin, details his own struggle to come to terms with naturalvariation in his diaries from The Voyage of the Beagle.1 In the mid 1800s, living species were thought to be the biologicalequivalent of chemical species, such as water or salt. Water is the sameeverywhere. Countries don’t each have water with a unique color andboiling temperature. For biological species, though, often each countrydoes have a unique variant. Darwin saw that ﬁnches change in body sizefrom island to island in the Galápagos. We can see that robins in Cali-fornia are squat compared to robins in New England, and lizards ofwestern Puerto Rico are gray compared to the brownish ones near SanJuan. Darwin recognized that the deﬁning properties of biologicalspecies, unlike physical species, aren’t the same everywhere. This real-ization, new and perplexing in the mid 1800s, remains at times perplex-ing today. In Darwin’s time, the Linnaean classiﬁcation system, which is basedon phyla, genera, species, and so forth, was just becoming established.Naturalists mounted expeditions to foreign places, collecting specimens 13
14 ANIMAL RAINBOWSfor museums and then pigeonholing them into Linnaeus’s classiﬁcationsystem. At the same time, physicists were developing a periodic table forelements—their classiﬁcation scheme for physical species—and chemistswere classifying recipes for various compounds on the basis of chemicalbonds. But the biological counterpart of physical classiﬁcation didn’twork very well. If Boston’s robin is different San Francisco’s, and if in-termediates live at each gas station along Route 80, what do we classify?Who is the “true” robin? What does “robin” mean? Biological names re-main problematic in zoology and botany today. Biological rainbows in-terfere with any attempt to stuff living beings into neat categories. Biol-ogy doesn’t have a periodic table for its species. Organisms ﬂow acrossthe bounds of any category we construct. In biology, nature abhors acategory. Still, a robin is obviously different from a blue jay. Without names,how can we say whether it is a robin or a blue jay at the bird feeder? Thework-around is to collect enough specimens to span the full range of col-ors in the species’ rainbow. Then specialists in biological classiﬁcation,taxonomists, can say something like, “A robin is any bird between sixand seven inches in length with a red to orange breast.”2 No single robinmodels the “true robin”; all robins are true robins. Every robin has ﬁrst-class status as a robin. No robin is privileged over others as the exem-plar of the species.DIVERSITY—GOOD OR BAD?Rainbows subvert the human goal of classifying nature. Even worse,variability in a species might signify something wrong, a screwup. Inchemistry a variation means impurity, a ﬂaw in the diamond. Doesn’tvariability within a species also indicate impurity and imperfection? Themost basic question faced by evolutionary biology is whether variationwithin a species is good in its own right or whether it is simply a collec-tion of impurities every species is stuck with. Evolutionary biologists aredivided on this issue. Many evolutionary biologists are positive about the rainbow. Theyview it as a reservoir of genes that can come to the forefront at differenttimes and places to guarantee a species’ survival under changing condi-
SEX AND DIVERSITY 15tions. The rainbow represents the species’ genetic assets.3 According tothis view, the rainbow is decidedly good. This view is optimistic aboutthe capability of species to respond to ever-changing environmental con-ditions. This view affirms diversity. Other evolutionary biologists are negative about the rainbow, believ-ing that all gene pools—even our own—are loaded with deleterious mu-tations, or bad genes. During the 1950s, studies claimed that every per-son has three to ﬁve lethal recessive genes that would surface if theychose the wrong marriage partner, causing their children to die.4 Thisview is pessimistic about the future, suggesting that evolution has alreadyreached its pinnacle and all variation is useless or harmful.5 This schoolof evolutionists believed in a genetic elite, advocating artiﬁcial insemi-nation from sperm banks stocked with genes from great men. This viewrepresses diversity. Darwin himself was ambivalent on the value of rainbows. Darwin ar-gued that natural selection is the mechanism that causes species toevolve. On the one hand, because natural selection depends on variation,Darwin viewed the rainbow as a spectrum of possibilities constitutingthe species’ future. A species without variability has no evolutionary po-tential, like a ﬁrm with no new products in the pipeline. On the otherhand, Darwin viewed females as shopping around for mates with desir-able genes while rejecting those with inferior genes. This view demeansthe variation among males and implies a hierarchy of quality, suggestingthat female choice is about ﬁnding the best male rather than the bestmatch. Darwin both affirmed and repressed diversity at different timeswithin his career. The philosophical conﬂict over whether to affirm or to repress diver-sity is still with us today, permeating everything from the way biologistsinterpret motives for an animal’s choice of a particular mate to how med-ical doctors handle newborn babies in the hospital.THE COSTS VERSUS THE BENEFITS OF SEXHow, then, are we to decide whether rainbows are good or bad? Who iscorrect, the diversity affirmers or the diversity repressers? To answer thismost fundamental question of evolutionary biology, let’s compare species
16 ANIMAL RAINBOWSwith full rainbows to species with very limited rainbows. Species whomanage to reproduce without sex have limited rainbows. By sex, I meantwo parents mixing genes to produce offspring. Lots of species propagatewithout sex. In such species, everyone is female and offspring are pro-duced without fertilization. In addition, in many species offspring may beproduced either with or without fertilization, depending on the season. If you go to Hawaii, look at the cute geckoes on the walls. You’re see-ing an asexual species—all these geckoes are female.6 Females in all-female species produce eggs that have all the needed genetic material tobegin with. In sexual species, like humans, an egg has only half the ge-netic material needed to produce a baby; a sperm has the other half, socombining these yields the required material. In addition, eggs from anall-female species don’t need fertilization by a sperm to trigger the cell di-visions that generate an embryo. Females in all-female species clonethemselves when they reproduce. The Hawaiian all-female geckoes are locally abundant and wide-spread throughout the South Paciﬁc, from the lovely Society Islands ofFrench Polynesia to the Marianas Islands near New Guinea. More all-female species live in Mexico, New Mexico, and Texas—all varieties ofwhiptail lizards These small, sleek tan and brown-striped animals dartquickly along the ground looking for food. The all-female species ofwhiptail lizards live along streambeds, while sexually reproducing rela-tives typically live up-slope from the streams in adjacent woods or othervegetation. Every major river drainage basin in southwestern NorthAmerica is a site where an all-female whiptail lizard species has evolved.More than eight all-female species are found in this area. Still more all-female species of lizards are found in the Caucasus Mountains of Arme-nia and along the Amazon River in Brazil. All-female ﬁsh occur too. In-deed, all-female animal species are found among most major groups ofvertebrates.7 Also, some species have two kinds of females: those who don’t matewhen reproducing and those who do mate. Examples include grasshop-pers, locusts, moths, mosquitoes, roaches, fruit ﬂies, and bees among in-sects, as well as turkeys and chickens.8 Fruit ﬂies grow easily in the lab-oratory and are especially well studied. Over 80 percent of fruit ﬂyspecies have at least some females that reproduce entirely asexually. Al-though the majority of females in these species reproduce through mat-
SEX AND DIVERSITY 17ing, selection in the laboratory increased sixtyfold the proportion of fe-males not needing to mate, yielding a vigorous all-female strain.9 Thus all-female species are well known among animals. So why don’teven more all-female species exist? Indeed, why aren’t all species all-female? To answer this question, let’s look at the costs and beneﬁts of re-producing with and without sex. Sexual reproduction cuts the population’s growth rate in half—this isthe cost of sex. Only females produce offspring, not males. If half thepopulation is male, then the speed of population growth is half that ofan all-female population. An all-female species can quickly outproducea male/female species, allowing an all-female species to survive in high-mortality habitats where a male/female species can’t succeed. (This resultis also true in hermaphrodite species, in which the ﬁfty-ﬁfty allocation ofreproductive effort to male and female function reduces the female allo-cation used to make eggs by half.) The potential for doubling production in an all-female species hasn’tescaped the attention of agricultural scientists. In the 1960s, turkeys andchickens were bred to make all-female strains.10 Indeed, the cloning of asheep in Scotland reﬂected a ﬁfty-year-old aspiration to increase agri-cultural production by taking the sex out of reproduction. However, de-spite the big advantage in population growth rate that all-female speciesenjoy and the many examples of all-female species that do occur, clon-ally reproducing species remain a tiny minority. Far and away mostspecies are sexual. Nature has experimented many times and keeps ex-perimenting with clonal species, but with little success. Sex does work.Why? The beneﬁt of sex is survival over evolutionary time. Lacking sex,clonal species are evolutionary dead ends. On an evolutionary time scale,almost all clonal species are recently derived from sexual ancestors. Onthe family tree of species, asexual species are only short twigs, not thelong branches.11 The advantages of sex are also demonstrated by specieswho can use sex or not, depending on the time of year. Aphids (tiny in-sects that live on garden plants) reproduce clonally at the beginning ofthe growing season, switching to sexual reproduction at the end of theseason. Aphids beneﬁt from fast reproduction when colonizing an emptyrose bush, but the anticipated change of conditions at the end of the sea-son makes sexual reproduction more attractive.12
18 ANIMAL RAINBOWS Clonally reproducing species are “weeds”—species specialized forquick growth and fast dispersal, like plants that locate and colonize newpatches of ground. The common dandelion of North America is a clonalreproducer whose sexual ancestors live in Europe.13 Weeds eventuallygive up their territory to species who are poorer colonizers but more ef-fective over the long term.14 The geckoes who colonized the South Paciﬁcand the whiptail lizards of New Mexico streambeds make sense in thesecontexts, where dispersal is at a premium or the habitat is continuallydisturbed. Clonal reproduction is a specialized mode of life, not recommendedfor any species that fancies itself a permanent resident of this planet. Butwe haven’t answered why sexual reproduction is good over the longterm. Two theories have been offered for why sex beneﬁts a species, onediversity-affirming, the other diversity-repressing. Both theories agreethat asexual species are short-lived in evolutionary time relative to sex-ual species and that sex guarantees the longer species survival. Both the-ories therefore agree that sex is beneﬁcial to a species. Both theories alsoagree that the purpose of sex isn’t reproduction as such, because asex-ual species are perfectly capable of reproducing. But the theories havedifferent perceptions of why sex is good. The diversity-affirming theoryviews diversity itself as good and sex as maintaining that diversity. Thediversity-repressing theory views diversity as bad and sex as keeping thediversity pruned back.15 Let’s start with the diversity-affirming theory.THE DIVERSITY-AFFIRMING THEORYAccording to the diversity-affirming theory for the beneﬁt of sex, sexcontinually rebalances the genetic portfolio of a species. Think of a sav-ings account and jewelry—a rainbow with two colors. How much canboth colors earn together? When demand for jewelry is low, one can’tsell jewelry, even to a pawnshop, and earning 2 percent from a bank ac-count looks great. When jewelry is hot, interest on a bank account lookscheap and selling jewelry turns a good proﬁt. The overall earnings are thetotal from both investments. A species earns offspring instead of money from its investments. Thelong-term survival of a species depends on being sufficiently diversiﬁedto always have some offspring-earning colors. Although biologists may
SEX AND DIVERSITY 19talk about the rainbow as a source of genes for new environments, it isin fact more important for surviving the regular ﬂuctuations between hotand cold, wet and dry, and the arrival and departure of new predators,competitors, and pathogens like the bubonic plague or AIDS.16 The social environment within a species is always changing too. Con-cepts of the “ideal” mate change through time. Among humans, menhave sometimes preferred the amply proportioned Mama Casses amongus, at other times the skinny Twiggys, as recorded in the portraits ofwomen from art museums. Other aspects of our social environment havealso changed over the centuries, like the fraction of time spent with oth-ers of the same sex or the opposite sex, or the number of sex partners aperson has. Changes in the social setting within a species, as well aschanges in the ecological and physical environment, all affect which col-ors of the rainbow shine the brightest at any one time. A clonal species can accumulate diversity through mutation, or it mayhave multiple origins, thereby starting out with a limited rainbow. Infact, several genetically distinct clones have been detected among theSouth Paciﬁc geckoes and dandelions. Still, these mutation-based andorigin-based rainbows are nearly monochromatic.17 Furthermore, even the limited rainbow of a clonal species is continu-ally endangered. The colors that shine brightly are always crowding outthe colors that don’t, causing diversity to contract over time. Recall thejewelry and the savings account. If diamonds are valuable for a longtime, their value grows and comes to overshadow the savings account.If proﬁts are automatically reinvested in the most immediately success-ful venture, the portfolio gradually loses its diversity. Then when the de-mand for jewelry drops—say because a new ﬁnd of diamonds ﬂoods themarket—the portfolio takes a big hit. This progression is similar to thatof the clonal reproducer, which courts danger by concentrating on onlya few investments. Instead, one should redistribute some earnings eachyear across the investments. If jewelry has a good year, sell some and putthe proceeds in the savings account. If interest is high one year, thenwithdraw some funds and buy jewelry. Shuffling money across invest-ments in this way maintains the portfolio’s diversity, and a bad year forone investment doesn’t cause disastrous losses in the portfolio. WallStreet investors call this shuffling “rebalancing a portfolio.” This is thestrategy of the sexual reproducer. Every generation when sexually re-
20 ANIMAL RAINBOWSproducing animals mate, they mix genes with one another and resyn-thesize the colors in short supply. Thus, according to the diversity-affirming theory, sex serves to maintain the biological rainbow, whichconserves the species.18THE DIVERSITY-REPRESSING THEORYAccording to the diversity-repressing theory for the beneﬁt of sex, sexprotects the genetic quality of the species. The diversity-repressing the-ory envisions that asexual species accumulate harmful mutations overtime and gradually become less functional, as though asexual lizardsgradually lost the ability to run fast or digest some food. Sex supposedlycounteracts this danger by allowing family lines that have picked upharmful mutations to recombine, producing offspring free of bad muta-tions. According to this theory, some offspring will possess both fami-lies’ mutations and will die even more quickly, but other offspring willhave none of the mutations, and will prosper on behalf of the species.According to this theory, without sex each and every family line inex-orably accumulates mutations, leading eventually to species extinction.ENDING THE DEBATEAlthough both the diversity-affirming and diversity-repressing viewshave a long history, the time has come for closure. The time has come toreject the diversity-repressing view as both theoretically impossible andempirically vacuous. The scenario envisioned by the diversity-repressingtheory can’t exist. In an asexual species, when a bad gene arises, the linewhere the mutation originated is lost to natural selection, whereas thelines without the mutation prosper. The entire stock never deteriorates,because natural selection doesn’t look the other way while a bad genespreads. Instead, natural selection eliminates a bad gene when it ﬁrst ap-pears, preserving the overall functionality of the species. No evidencewhatsoever shows asexual species becoming extinct because of a pro-gressive accumulation of disabilities and loss of functionality. A bad genenever gets going in an asexual species, and sex’s supposed pruning of thegene pool is unnecessary and mythical. On the other hand, the environment does change from year to year,
SEX AND DIVERSITY 21and individuals who don’t do well one year may shine when conditionschange, and vice versa. Butterﬂies whose enzymes work at cold temper-atures thrive in dark, damp years, while butterﬂies whose enzymes func-tion best at hot temperatures do better in sunny drought years. All but-terﬂies are perfectly good butterﬂies, even if the abilities of some don’tmatch the opportunities currently supplied by the environment. I don’t see any grounds for dignifying the diversity-repressing view forthe beneﬁt of sex as a viable alternative to the diversity-affirming view.To be agreeable, one might say both theories are valid. But this com-promise isn’t true. Conceding, even slightly, that one function of sex isto prune diversity puts forth a view that hasn’t earned its place scientif-ically. Accepting a diversity-repressing view of sex simply to be polite ad-mits through the back door a philosophical stance that may later be usedto justify discrimination. Therefore, I accept as a working premise that a species’ biologicalrainbow is good—good because diversity allows a species to survive andprosper in continually changing conditions. I further accept that the pur-pose of sex is to maintain the rainbow’s diversity, resynthesizing that di-versity each generation in order to continually rebalance the genetic port-folio of the species. I reject the alternative theory that sex exists to prunethe gene pool of bad diversity. Darwinists have to take a consistent stand on the value of diversity.They can’t maintain on the one hand that most variation is good becauseit’s needed for natural selection and on the other hand also maintain thatfemales must continually shop for males with the best genes as thoughmost genes could be ranked from good to bad. Instead, I argue that al-most all diversity is good and that female choice is more for the bestmatch than for the best male. How then should we assess the rainbows in our own species? Weshould be grateful that we do reproduce sexually, although we proba-bly take this gift for granted. I feel too that we should conserve and em-brace our rainbows. Affirming diversity is hard, very hard. We mustcome to accept ourselves and love our neighbors, regardless of color inthe rainbow. Overall, sex is essentially cooperative—a natural covenant to sharegenetic wealth. Sexual reproduction is not a battle.
2Sex versus GenderT o most people, “sex” automatically implies “male” or “female.” Not to a biologist. As we saw in the last chapter, sex means mixing genes when reproducing. Sexual reproduction is producing off-spring by mixing genes from two parents, whereas asexual reproductionis producing offspring by one parent only, as in cloning. The deﬁnitionof sexual reproduction makes no mention of “male” and “female.” Sowhat do “male” and “female” have to do with sex? The answer, onemight suppose, is that when sexual reproduction does occur, one parentis male and the other female. But how do we know which one is themale? What makes a male, male, and a female, female? Indeed, are thereonly two sexes? Could there be a third sex? How do we deﬁne male andfemale anyway? “Gender” also automatically implies “male” and “female” to mostpeople. Therefore, if we deﬁne male and female biologically, do we windup deﬁning gender as well? Similarly, for adjectives like “masculine” and“feminine,” can we deﬁne these biologically? Moreover, among humans,is a “man” automatically male and a “woman” necessarily female? Onemight think, yes, of course, but on reﬂection these key words admit lotsof wiggle room. This chapter develops some deﬁnitions for all thesewords, deﬁnitions that will come in handy later on. When speaking about humans, I ﬁnd it’s helpful to distinguish between22
SEX VERSUS GENDER 23social categories and biological categories. “Men” and “women” are so-cial categories. We have the freedom to decide who counts as a man andwho counts as a woman. The criteria change from time to time. In somecircles, a “real man” can’t eat quiche. In other circles, people seize onphysical traits to deﬁne manhood: height, voice, Y chromosome, orpenis. Yet these traits don’t always go together: some men are short, oth-ers are tenors, some don’t have a Y chromosome, and others don’t havea penis. Still, we may choose to consider all such people as men anywayfor purposes like deciding which jobs they can apply for, which clubs theycan join, which sports they may play, and whom they may marry. For biological categories we don’t have the same freedom. “Male”and “female” are biological categories, and the criteria for classifying anorganism as male or female have to work with worms to whales, withred seaweed to redwood trees. When it comes to humans, the biologicalcriteria for male and female don’t coincide 100 percent with present-daysocial criteria for man and woman. Indeed, using biological categories asthough they were social categories is a mistake called “essentialism.” Es-sentialism amounts to passing the buck. Instead of taking responsibilityfor who counts socially as a man or woman, people turn to science, try-ing to use the biological criteria for male to deﬁne a man and the bio-logical criteria for female to deﬁne a woman. However, the deﬁnition ofsocial categories rests with society, not science, and social categoriescan’t be made to coincide with biological categories except by ﬁat.MALE AND FEMALE DEFINEDTo a biologist, “male” means making small gametes, and “female”means making large gametes. Period! By deﬁnition, the smaller of thetwo gametes is called a sperm, and the larger an egg.* Beyond gametesize, biologists don’t recognize any other universal difference betweenmale and female. Of course, indirect markers of gamete size may exist insome species. In mammals, males usually have a Y chromosome. But*A gamete is a cell containing half of its parent’s genes. Fusing two gametes, each with half the needed number of genes, produces a new individual. A gamete is made through a spe- cial kind of cell division called meiosis, whereas other cells are made through the regular kind of cell division, called mitosis. When two gametes fuse, the resulting cell is called a zygote. A fertilized egg is a zygote.
24 ANIMAL RAINBOWSwhether an individual is male or not comes down to making sperm, andthe males in some mammalian species don’t have a Y chromosome.Moreover, in birds, reptiles, and amphibians, the Y chromosome doesn’toccur. However, the gamete-size deﬁnition is general and worksthroughout the plant and animal kingdoms. Talk of gamete size may seem anticlimactic. Among humans, for ex-ample, centuries of poetry and art speak of strength and valor amongmen, matched by beauty and motherhood among women. Saying thatthe only essential difference between male and female is gamete sizeseems so trivial. The key point here is that “male” and “female” are bi-ological categories, whereas “man” and “woman” are social categories.Poetry and art are about men and women, not males and females. Menand women differ in many social dimensions in addition to the biologi-cal dimension of gamete size. Yet, biologically, the gamete-size deﬁnition of “male” and “female”is far from anticlimactic. In fact, this deﬁnition is downright exciting.One could imagine species whose members all make gametes of the samesize, or several gamete sizes—small, medium, and large—or a continuumof gamete sizes ranging from small to large. Are there any such species?Almost none. Some species of algae, fungi, and protozoans have gametesall the same size. Mating typically occurs only between individuals in ge-netic categories called “mating types.” Often there are more than twomating types.1 In these cases, sex takes place between the mating types,but the distinctions of male and female don’t apply because there is onlyone gamete size.2 By contrast, when gametes do come in more than onesize, then there are generally only two sizes, one very small and the othervery large. Multicellular organisms with three or more distinct gametesizes are exceedingly rare, and none is known to have a continuum ofgamete sizes. More than two gamete sizes occur in some colonial single-celled or-ganisms, the protozoans. In the green ciliate Clamydomonas euchlora,the cells producing gametes may divide from four to sixty-four times.Four divisions result in relatively big gametes, whereas sixty-four divi-sions produce lots of small gametes. The cells that divide more than fourtimes but less than sixty-four make various intermediate-sized gametes.Another ciliate, Pandorina, lives in colonies of sixteen cells. At repro-
SEX VERSUS GENDER 25duction, some cells divide into eight big gametes and others into sixteensmall gametes. However, any two of these can fuse: two big ones, onebig and one small, or two small ones.3 These species are at the border-line between single-celled and multicellular organisms. In the fruit ﬂy Drosophila bifurca of the southwestern United States,the sperm is twenty (yes, twenty) times longer than the size of the malewho made it! These sperm don’t come cheap. The testes that make thesesperm comprise 11 percent of the adult male’s weight. The sperm take along time to produce, and males take twice as long to mature as females.The sperm are so expensive that males conserve them, “offering” themto females in small amounts, leading to a one-to-one gamete ratio.4 Somuch for the vision of one huge egg surrounded by zillions of tiny sperm.Although giant sperm are a marvelous curiosity, the important ﬁnding isthat some species of Drosophila have three sperm sizes—one giant typeand two smaller varieties that overlap somewhat, totaling four gametesizes (three sperm sizes plus one egg size). In Drosophila pseudoobscurafrom Tempe, Arizona, the tail of the big sperm is 1/3 millimeter long, andthe tail lengths of the two small types are 1/10 and 1/20 millimeter. Female Drosophila in some species can store sperm for several daysor even up to a month after mating. About one-third of the sperm are thegiant type; the remaining two-thirds are small. Females preferentiallystore the large sperm, although some small sperm are stored too. Femalesalso control which sperm are used for fertilization and preferentially se-lect the large sperm. Whether the small sperm are ever used for fertiliza-tion has been hard to demonstrate. The amount of material in a largesperm is about one hundred times that of a small sperm. Therefore, tobreak even, the fertilization rate for small sperm needs to be only 1/100of the fertilization rate of large sperm, and this low rate would be hardto detect.5 If different individuals made the different-size gametes, we could haveas many as four sexes in Drosophila, one for each gamete size. In thisspecies, however, every male apparently makes all three of the spermsizes in the same ratio, so all the males are apparently the same. If fur-ther research reveals that the sperm makers differ in the ratio of spermsizes they produce, we will have discovered a species with more than twosexes. Such a discovery would not violate any law of nature, but it would
26 ANIMAL RAINBOWSbe very rare and would certainly make headlines. So, for practical pur-poses, male and female are universal biological categories deﬁned by abinary distinction between small and large gametes, sperm and egg. Why are two gamete sizes practically universal in sexually reproduc-ing species? The current theory imagines a hypothetical species startingwith two mating types that produce gametes of the same size. These gam-etes fuse with each other to produce a zygote, and each gamete con-tributes half the genes and half the cytoplasm needed by the zygote. Thenthe gamete in one of the mating types is hypothesized to evolve a smallersize to increase quantity while sacriﬁcing quality. The gamete in the othermating type responds by evolving a larger gamete size to compensate forthe lowered quality of the small gametes now being made by its coun-terpart. Overall, this back-and-forth evolutionary negotiation betweenthe mating types with respect to gamete size culminates in one matingtype making the tiniest gametes possible—gametes that provide genesand nothing else, whereas the other mating type makes gametes largeenough to provide genes as well as all the cytoplasm the zygote needs tostart life.6 This little story of how the gamete binary originates is completely con-jectural and untested, and points to the need for much further thoughton such an important issue. This story also leaves unexplained why somegroups, such as fungi, persist with only one gamete size, and why raregroups such as Drosophila occur with multiple sperm sizes.GENDER DEFINEDUp to now, we’ve come up with two generalizations: (1) Most species re-produce sexually. (2) Among the species that do reproduce sexually, gam-ete size obeys a near-universal binary between very small (sperm) andlarge (egg), so that male and female can be deﬁned biologically as theproduction of small and large gametes, respectively. Beyond these twogeneralizations, the generalizing stops and diversity begins! The binary in gamete size doesn’t extend outward. The biggest errorof biology today is uncritically assuming that the gamete size binary im-plies a corresponding binary in body type, behavior, and life history. Nobinary governs the whole individuals who make gametes, who bring
SEX VERSUS GENDER 27them to one another for fertilization, and who interact with one anotherto survive in a native social context. In fact, the very sexual process thatmaintains the rainbow of a species and facilitates long-term survival au-tomatically brings a cornucopia of colorful sexual behaviors. Gender,unlike gamete size, is not limited to two.7 “Gender” usually refers to the way a person expresses sexual identityin a cultural context. Gender reﬂects both the individual reaching out tocultural norms and society imposing its expectations on the individual.Gender is usually thought to be uniquely human—any species has sexes,but only people have genders. With your permission, though, I’d like towiden the meaning of gender to refer to nonhuman species as well. As adeﬁnition, I suggest: Gender is the appearance, behavior, and life historyof a sexed body. A body becomes “sexed” when classiﬁed with respectto the size of the gametes produced. Thus, gender is appearance plus ac-tion, how an organism uses morphology, including color and shape, plusbehavior to carry out a sexual role. Now we’re free to explore the zoological (and botanical!) counterpartof human gender studies. So, we may ask: How much variety occurs ingender expression among other species? Let’s take some favorite stereo-types and see. We’ll look mostly at vertebrates; even more variety occurswith invertebrates and plants. An organism is solely male or female for life. No, the most common body form among plants and in perhaps half of the animal kingdom is for an individual to be both male and female at the same, or at different times during its life. These individuals make both small and large gametes during their lives. Males are bigger than females, on the average. No, in lots of species, especially ﬁsh, the female is bigger than the male. Females, not males, give birth. No, in many species the female deposits the eggs in the pouch of the male, who incubates them until birth. In many species, males, not females, tend the nest. Males have XY chromosomes and females XX chromosomes. No, in birds, including domesticated poultry like chickens, the reverse is true. In many other species, males and females show no difference in chromosomes. In all alligators and crocodiles, some turtles and lizards, and the occasional ﬁsh, sex is determined by
28 ANIMAL RAINBOWS the temperature at which the eggs are raised. A female can control the sex ratio among her offspring by laying eggs in a shady or a sunny spot. Only two genders occur, corresponding to the two sexes. No, many species have three or more genders, with individuals of each sex occurring in two or more forms. Males and females look different from one another. No, in some species, males and females are almost indistinguishable. In other species, males occur in two or more forms, one of which resembles a female, while the others are different from the female. The male has the penis and the female lactates. No, in the spotted hyena, females have a penislike structure externally identical to that of males, and in the fruit bat of Malaysia and Borneo, the males have milk-producing mammary glands.8 Males control females. No, in some species females control males, and in many, mating is a dynamic interaction between female and male choice. Females may or may not prefer a dominant male. Females prefer monogamy and males want to play around. No, depending on the species, either or both sexes may play around. Lifelong monogamy is rare, and even within monogamous species, females may initiate divorce to acquire a higher-ranking male.One could tick off even more examples of gender stereotypes that areoften thought to be “nature’s way” but that have no generality within bi-ology. Instead, let’s look closer at the lives of these organisms to seewhether what they do makes sense to us. Be prepared, though, to shrugyour shoulders and wonder about the mystery of life. Note that by deﬁning gender as how an organism presents and carriesout a sexual role, we can also deﬁne masculine and feminine in waysunique to each species. “Masculine” and “feminine” refer to the distin-guishing traits possessed by most males and females respectively. Cross-gender appearance and behavior are also possible. For example, if mostfemales have vertical stripes on their bodies and males do not, then amale with vertical stripes is a “feminine male.” If most males have antlersand females do not, then a doe with antlers is a “masculine female.” Politically, locating the deﬁnition of male and female with gamete size
SEX VERSUS GENDER 29keeps society’s gender categories at arm’s length from biology’s sex bi-nary. We don’t have to deny the universality of the biological male/fe-male distinction in order to challenge whether the gender of whole or-ganisms also sorts into a male/female binary. In humans speciﬁcally, agender binary for whole people is not clear-cut even though the differ-ence between human sperm and egg is obvious—a size ratio of about onemillion to one.
3Sex within BodiesA lthough the binary in gamete size is practically universal, the way male and female functions are packaged into individual bodies does not ﬁt into any consistent polarity. We tend to think thatmales and females must be in separate bodies because most of us are, asare most of the animals we live with, such as our pets, domesticatedstock, and the birds and bees around our parks. However, many specieshave other ways of organizing sexual functions. An individual body who makes both small and large gametes at somepoint in life is called a hermaphrodite. An individual who makes bothsizes at the same time is a simultaneous hermaphrodite, and one whomakes them at different times is a sequential hermaphrodite. Most ﬂow-ering plants are simultaneous hermaphrodites because they make pollenand seeds at the same time. Pollen is the male part of a plant and theovule is the female part. A pollinated ovule turns into a tiny embryo thatdetaches, to be blown away by the wind or carried away by an animal. Among animals, hermaphrodism is common in the ocean.1 Most ma-rine invertebrates, such as barnacles, snails, starﬁsh, fan worms, and seaanemones, are hermaphroditic. Many ﬁsh are too. If you go snorkelingat a coral reef in Hawaii, the Caribbean, Australia, or the Red Sea,chances are that about a quarter of the ﬁsh you see will be hermaphro-ditic. Or take a look at some of the colorful ﬁsh popular in tropical30
SEX WITHIN BODIES 31aquaria—they are often sequential hermaphrodites. Most species ofwrasses, parrot ﬁsh, and larger groupers are hermaphroditic, as are somedamselﬁsh, angelﬁsh, gobies, porgies, emperors, soapﬁshes, dottybacks,and moray eels (all from shallow waters), and many deep-sea ﬁsh aswell.2 Hermaphrodism is a successful way of life for many species; my guessis that hermaphrodism is more common in the world than species whomaintain separate sexes in separate bodies (called gonochorism). Theseparate-sex/separate-body state is often viewed as “normal,” suggestingthat something unusual favors hermaphrodism in plants, on coral reefs,and in the deep sea. Alternatively, hermaphrodism may be viewed as theoriginal norm, prompting us to ask what there is in mobile organisms inthe terrestrial environment that favors separate sexes in separate bodies.WHAT FISH CAN TELL USFEMALES CHANGING TO MALESex change is only one of several interesting aspects of coral reef ﬁsh soci-ety. The bluehead wrasse is named for the blue head of the largest males.When small and just entering sexual maturity, ﬁsh of both sexes look sim-ilar. Later three genders develop. One gender consists of individuals whobegin life as a male and remain so for life. Another gender consists of indi-viduals who begin as females and later change into males. These sex-changed males are larger than those who have been male from the begin-ning. The third gender consists of females who remain female. We’ll callthe two male genders the “small unchanged males” and the “large sex-changed males,” respectively. The large sex-changed males are the biggestindividuals of the three genders, and they attempt to control the females.In some species, the large sex-changed males maintain and defend the fe-males, and in others they defend locations that females appear to prefer. Fertilization is external—a female releases eggs into the water and amale then releases a cloud of sperm around the eggs to fertilize them. Theunfertilized eggs are out in the open and can potentially be fertilized byany male in the vicinity. The small unchanged and large sex-changed males are hostile to eachother. The large sex-changed males chase the small unchanged males
32 ANIMAL RAINBOWSaway from the territory or from females they control. The small un-changed males are more numerous than the large sex-changed males andmay form coalitions to mate with females that a large sex-changed maleis trying to control. The small unchanged males mate by darting in andfertilizing the eggs that a large sex-changed male was intending to fertil-ize. Some small unchanged males keep the large sex-changed male busywhile others are mating. Different ecological circumstances favor unchanged and sex-changedmales. The wrasses live both on coral reefs and in the seagrass bedsnearby. In seagrass, females nestled among grass blades can’t be guardedvery well, and the balance of hostilities tips in favor of the small un-changed males. This situation leads to only two genders, unchangedmales and females. On the coral reef, clear water and an open habitatstructure permit the large sex-changed males to control the females, andthe balance tips in their favor.3 This situation encourages the presence ofall three genders. Simple population density also shifts the gender ratios.At high densities females are difficult to guard and small unchangedmales predominate, whereas at low densities a large sex-changed malecan control a “harem.”4 Whether females prefer either type of male isn’tknown. The sex changes are triggered by changes in social organization. An-other type of wrasse is the cleaner wrasse, named for its occupation ofgleaning ectoparasites from other ﬁsh. When a large sex-changed maleis removed from his harem, the largest female changes sex and takesover. Within a few hours, she adopts male behavior, including courtshipand spawning with the remaining females. Within ten days, this newmale is producing active sperm. Meanwhile the other females in theharem remain unchanged.5 I haven’t been able to ﬁnd out whether anyfemale can turn into a male if she is the biggest female when the existingmale dies, or whether females divide into two groups—those who remainfemale no matter what and those who change sex when circumstancesare right. Does this animal society seem oh-so-bizarre? It isn’t. Aspects of thissystem appear again and again among vertebrates, especially the themesof male control of females or their eggs, multiple male genders, hostilityamong some of the male genders, ﬂexible sexual identity, and social or-ganization that changes with ecological context. Still, if you think the
SEX WITHIN BODIES 33coral reef ﬁsh scene is bizarre, you’re not alone—so did the biologistswho ﬁrst witnessed it. We’re only just realizing that the concepts of gen-der and sexuality we grew up with are seriously ﬂawed.MALES CHANGING TO FEMALESex changes from male to female also occur. A group of damselﬁsh arecalled clown ﬁsh because their bold white strips remind one of the whitemakeup used by clowns. These ﬁsh live among the tentacles of sea anem-ones, which have cells in their tentacles that sting any animal whotouches them. To survive in this lethal home, a clown ﬁsh secretes amucus that inhibits the anemone from discharging its stinging cells. Al-though living within the anemone’s tentacles provides safety for theclown ﬁsh, the size of its house is limited by how big its sea anemonegrows. An anemone has space for only one pair of adult clown ﬁsh anda few juveniles. The female is larger than the male. If she is removed, the remainingmale turns into a female, and one of the juveniles matures into a male.6The pair is monogamous. Female egg production increases with bodysize. A monogamous male ﬁnds no advantage in being large because he’snot controlling a harem of females. The advantage for males of remain-ing small and for females of becoming large may account for the devel-opmental progression from male to female.7MALE AND FEMALE SIMULTANEOUSLYHamlets, which are small coral reef basses, don’t have to worry aboutchoosing their sex: they are both sexes at the same time. However, theycross-fertilize and must mate with a partner to reproduce. These simul-taneous hermaphrodites change between male and female roles severaltimes as they mate. One individual releases a few eggs and the other fer-tilizes them with sperm. Then the other releases some eggs, which theﬁrst fertilizes with sperm, and so on, back and forth.8 No one has offered any suggestions about why hamlets are simultane-ous hermaphrodites. Deep-sea ﬁsh also tend toward simultaneous her-maphrodism, which for these species is viewed as an adaptation to ex-tremely low population density.9 Hamlets don’t have a strange appearance,
34 ANIMAL RAINBOWSnor do any other hermaphroditic ﬁsh. Hermaphroditic ﬁsh look like, well,just ﬁsh. Hamlets are not particularly rare, nor are they derived from an-cestors who were rare or lived in the deep sea. So just why hamlets are si-multaneously hermaphroditic remains mysterious.MALE AND FEMALE CRISSCROSSINGChanging sex once may seem a big deal, but some ﬁsh do it several timesduring their life span. An individual may change from an unsexed juve-nile to a female, then to a male, and then back to a female. Or it maychange from a juvenile to a male, then to a female, and then back to amale. In certain species, sexual identity can be changed as easily as anew coat. Sex crisscrossing was ﬁrst discovered in a species of goby, which is thelargest family of ﬁsh. Gobies are tiny and often live on coral reefs—inthis case, on the Paciﬁc island of Okinawa.10 These gobies live as monog-amous pairs on branching coral, and the males care for the eggs. About80 percent of the juveniles mature female, and the rest mature male.Some of the females later switch to male, and some of the males laterswitch to female. Of those that have switched once, a small fraction laterswitch back again—the crisscrossers. Why go to the expense of changing one’s sexual wardrobe? One the-ory envisages pair formation in gobies as resulting when two larvae dropout of the plankton together onto a piece of coral.11 They awake aftermetamorphosis to discover that they are both the same sex. What to do?Well, one of them changes sex. Changing sex has been suggested as a bet-ter way of obtaining a heterosexual pairing than moving somewhere elseto ﬁnd a partner of the opposite sex when traveling around is risky. Thusthis theory comes down to a choice: switch or move. This theory is ratherheterosexist, though. As the hamlets show, a heterosexual pair is not nec-essary for reproduction, because both could be simultaneously her-maphroditic and not have to bother with crisscrossing. A species of goby from Lizard Island on Australia’s Great Barrier Reefhas recently been discovered to crisscross, but in a way that is interest-ingly different from the Okinawan goby.12 In the Australian goby, all thejuveniles mature into females, with some later becoming males. Themales, however, can change back into females. In fact, the meaning of
SEX WITHIN BODIES 35male is ambiguous here. The investigators deﬁned a male to be any ﬁshwith at least some sperm production. All males, however, contain early-stage oocytes—cells that develop into eggs—in their gonads. So all themales remain part female. The species therefore consists of two gendersat any one time: all-female ﬁsh and part-male-part-female ﬁsh. Among ﬂowering plants, populations with hermaphrodites and fe-males are common,13 more so than populations with males and females.These mixed hermaphrodite/single-sex species contrast with most plantspecies, which are entirely hermaphroditic. (Perhaps as more gobies areinvestigated, a species will be found consisting of females and hermaph-rodites, just as in plants.) Plants also offer the most amusing examples of crisscrossing sexchanges. In a tropical ginger from China, some individuals are male inthe morning, making pollen, while others are female in the morning, re-ceiving pollen. Then they switch sexes in the afternoon. This phenome-non, called ﬂexistyly, is known in eleven families of ﬂowering plants.14The ginger’s diurnal sex change is not too different from how hamletsmate, where members of a mating pair switch back and forth betweenmale and female once a minute. These examples of sequential, simultaneous, and crisscrossing her-maphrodism show that male and female functions don’t need to be pack-aged into lifelong distinct bodies. Hermaphroditic vertebrate species aresuccessful and common.INTERSEXES IN MAMMALSCan mammals be hermaphroditic too, or have we been left out? Not en-tirely. Mammals described as hermaphrodites are often reported, al-though the word “hermaphrodite” is misleading. Let’s work out some deﬁnitions. The reproductive system in mammalsconsists of gonads—the place where eggs and sperm develop—andplumbing, which transports gametes from the gonads to their destina-tion. The plumbing consists of internal pipes and external valves. The in-ternal pipes are fallopian tubes, muellerian ducts, and so forth. Externalvalves include the penis, clitoris, scrotum, labia, and so on. An “inter-
36 ANIMAL RAINBOWSsexed” individual has gonads to make both eggs and sperm and/or com-binations of sperm-related and egg-related plumbing parts. With somany parts in the overall system, many combinations are possible. To be more speciﬁc, we can distinguish intersexed gonads, with somecombination of ovarian and testicular tissue, from intersexed genitals,with some combination of egg- and sperm-related plumbing.15 We couldeven distinguish internal genitally intersexed and external genitally in-tersexed to pinpoint where the combined plumbing is located. Althoughthe gamete-size binary implies that only two sexed functions exist, manybody types occur, ranging from all-sperm parts, through various combi-nations of both sperm- and egg-related parts, to all-egg parts. To manufacture a hermaphrodite using mammalian components ona vertebrate chassis, two entire sets of gonadal and plumbing parts areneeded, one for eggs and one for sperm. Mammals show many partialcombinations of sperm- and egg-related parts. All the partial combina-tions could be stirred together into a putty from which evolution mightsomeday mold a full mammalian hermaphrodite if selection pressure forthat arose, a pressure such as those to which coral reef ﬁsh have alreadyresponded. In some mammalian species, intesexed bodies are a minority;in others, the majority. Antlers offer easy-to-see clues for possible intersexed individuals.White-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) possess a male body type,called a velvet-horn because these deer retain the special velvet skin overthe antlers that is usually shed after the antlers have aged. Velvet-hornmales have small antlers, doelike body proportions and facial features,and small testes; they are said to be infertile. Females typically don’t haveantlers, but there is a type of female deer with hard, bony antlers and ex-tensively combined plumbing parts, which is believed to be infertile. Adistinct fertile antlerless male morph and a distinct fertile antlered femalemorph occur as well. The mention of infertility plays to the prejudice that something is“wrong” with intersexes. But the story is more complicated. The fre-quency of velvet-horns in white-tailed deer is around 10 percent in someareas and can reach as high as 40 to 80 percent.16 Numbers this big con-tradict the idea that velvet-horns represent a deleterious mutation. Similarly, a male morph in black-tailed deer (Odocoileus hemionus)called a cactus buck may be a form of intersex as well. Elk (Cervus ela-
SEX WITHIN BODIES 37phus, also called red-tailed deer), swamp deer (Cervus duvauceli), Sikadeer (Cervus nippon), roe deer (Capreolus capreolus), and fallow deer(Dama dama) all have a male morph with velvet-covered antlers, calleda peruke, that is described as nonreproductive. Moose (Alces alces) havemales with velvet-covered antlers, called velericorn antlers, as well as pe-rukes and a small number of velvet-antlered females.17 Because female kangaroos incubate their embryos in a pouch ratherthan a uterus, an intersexed individual might have both a penis and apouch, mammary glands and testes. Intersexed kangaroos are knownamong eastern gray kangaroos (Macropus giganteus), red kangaroos(Macropus rufus), euros (Macropus robustus), tammar wallabies(Macropus eugenii), and quokkas (Setonix brachyurus).18 Kangaroo rats are small mammals that are not marsupials at all, butrather rodents native to the American Southwest. Kangaroo rats hoparound on their hind feet, reminding one of real kangaroos. Not to beoutdone by the better-known kangaroos, kangaroo rats (Dipodomysordii) have lots of intersexes. About 16 percent of the animals have bothsperm- and egg-related plumbing, including a vagina, a penis, a uterus,and testes in the same individual.19 Pigs in the South Paciﬁc islands of Vanuatu (formerly the New Heb-rides) have been bred for their intersex expressions. Typically, these pigshave male gonads and sperm-related internal plumbing, intermediate ormixed external genitalia, and tusks like boars. In Vanuatu cultures, thepigs are prized as status symbols, and among the people of Sakao, sevendistinct genders are named, ranging from those with the most egg-relatedexternal genitalia to those with the most sperm-related external genitalia.The indigenous classiﬁcation of gradations in intersexuality is said to bemore complete than any system of names yet developed by Western sci-entists and was adopted by the scientist who wrote the ﬁrst descriptionsof the culture. In the past, 10 to 20 percent of the domesticated pigs con-sisted of intersexed individuals.20 Bears, including the grizzly bear (Ursus arctos, also called the brownbear), the American black bear (Ursus americanus), and the polar bear(Ursus maritimus), have long been symbols of gender mixing for NativeAmerican tribes. The Bimin-Kuskusmin and Inuit peoples have stories ofbears who are “male mothers,” giving birth through a penis-clitoris.21 In-deed, 10 to 20 percent of the female bears in some populations have a
38 ANIMAL RAINBOWSbirth canal that runs through the clitoris, rather than forming a separatevagina. An intersex female bear actually mates and gives birth throughthe tip of her penis.22 This form of intersexed plumbing is found in all females of the spot-ted hyena (Crocuta crocuta) of Tanzania—in which the females havepenises nearly indistinguishable from those of the males.23 Aristotle be-lieved these animals to be hermaphrodites, but he was only half right.The ﬁrst scientiﬁc investigation in 1939 showed that a spotted hyenamakes only one-size gamete throughout its life, either an egg or sperm.24Thus these hyenas are not hermaphrodites. Rather, female spotted hye-nas are intersexed, like some female bears. The females have a phallus90 percent as long and the same diameter as a male penis (yes, somebodymeasured, 171 millimeters long and 22 millimeters in diameter). Thelabia are fused to form a scrotum containing fat and connective tissue re-sembling testicles. The urogenital canal runs the length of the clitoris,rather than venting from below. The animal can pee with the organ,making it a penis. Completing the picture, the female penis contains erec-tile tissue (corpus spongiosum) that allows erections like those of a malepenis. A female spotted hyena mates and gives birth through her penilecanal. When mating, a female retracts the penis on itself, “much likepushing up a shirtsleeve,” and creates an opening into which the male in-serts his own penis. The female’s penis is located in the same spot as themale’s penis, higher on the belly than the vagina in most mammals.Therefore, the male must slide his rear under the female when mating sothat his penis lines up with hers. During birth, the embryo traverses along and narrow birth canal with a sharp bend in it. About 15 percent ofthe females die during their ﬁrst birth, and they lose over 60 percent oftheir ﬁrstborn young.25 These obvious disadvantages lead us to the ques-tion of why female spotted hyenas have this penis instead of a clitoris. Female spotted hyenas have a dominance hierarchy, and the erectpenis is a signal of submission. When two females interact with eachother in a struggle for dominance, the one who wants to back down sig-nals by erecting her penis.26 No one knows why female hyenas evolvedthis method of signaling, but then signals always seem arbitrary in them-selves. Why are traffic lights red, yellow, and green? The female penileerection of hyenas is an “honest signal.” Erections occur in the “meet-
SEX WITHIN BODIES 39ing ceremony” when animals greet after having been apart. The animalsapproach each other and stand alongside one another, head-to-tail, oneor both lifting her hind leg to allow inspection of her erect penis. Whenonly one member of a greeting pair displays an erection, she is normallythe subordinate. Each hyena puts her reproductive organs next to pow-erful jaws. Greetings between captive females that have been separatedfor a week are tense and frequently wind up in a ﬁght that starts whenone bites the genitals of the other, doing occasional damage to the re-productive capability of the injured party. The masculinized genitals of female hyenas are an example of what Icall a social-inclusionary trait, which allows a female hyena access to re-sources needed for reproduction and survival. If a female were not toparticipate in social interactions using her penis for signaling, she wouldnot be able to function in hyena society and presumably would either dieor fail to breed. It has been suggested that the enlarged clitoris is a side effect of hightestosterone levels in female spotted hyenas.27 Social life among femalespotted hyenas involves lots of aggression, possibly caused by elevatedblood testosterone. This testosterone might produce incidental “excess”masculinization during development. I don’t buy this theory. Aggres-siveness doesn’t require testosterone. We’re not talking about a slightlylarger clitoris, but a full-ﬂedged replica of male genital anatomy, com-plete with scrotal sacs and fat bodies resembling testicles. This structurecan’t develop from a few extra splashes of testosterone in the blood. I be-lieve this case demonstrates that mammalian genitals have a symbolicfunction. In fact, displaying genitals is a mammal thing. Fish, frogs,lizards, snakes, and birds rarely have external genitals pigmented withbright colors to wave around at one another. Mammals do. Penises can be seen in various female primates, such as bush babies,nocturnal squirrel-like primates from central Africa. Among the dozenor so known species of bush babies, all the females have a penis—that is,a long pendulous clitoris with a urethra extending through the tip so thatthey can pee through it.28 The males have a bone in their penis called abaculum. Copulation is unusually slow in these primates, lasting one totwo hours.29 Field guides to spider monkeys of South America refer to a pendulousand erectile clitoris long enough to be mistaken for a penis.30 Over half
40 ANIMAL RAINBOWSa dozen species of these monkeys exist, named for their spectacular abil-ity to hang from prehensile tails and move around the treetops usingtheir hands, feet, and tails as though they were ﬁve-legged creatures. Be-cause the clitoris looks like a penis, the presence of a scrotum is used asa ﬁeld mark to indicate whether the subject is male. Scent-markingglands may also be present on the clitoris of spider monkeys. In woolly monkeys, close relatives of the spider monkeys, the clitorisis actually longer than the penis.31 In still another close relative, themuriqui, nipples are located along the sides, under the arms. Thus, evenin primates, a gendered body can be assembled on a vertebrate chassis inmany ways. One reason the public presentation of genitals is such an emotionallycharged issue for us humans is that primates use their genitals in dis-plays even more than other mammals do. Picture books about animalsoften feature baboons called drills and mandrills, showing the male’scolorful snout. A full-body photo, rather than just a head shot, wouldreveal that the color extends to the genitals. Both males and femaleshave bright red genitals. The male displays a crimson-red penis ridingastride a snow-white scrotum, and an estrous female displays large redbulbous swellings surrounding her vagina. The drills provocativelypresent these areas to one another’s view.32 Our own practice of cover-ing the genitals with clothes except in particular evocative situations be-speaks the symbolic power of genital design and decoration for us too.Medicine’s peculiar history of assigning gender based on genitalanatomy can undoubtedly be traced to our primate dependence on gen-itals as symbols. How about feminized male genitals? Spotted hyenas, bush babies, andspider monkeys offer cases of masculinized female genitals. What aboutthe reverse? The genitals of male dolphins and whales apparently repre-sent a different type of intersex. For the purposes of hydrodynamicstreamlining, male dolphins and whales don’t have external genitals. In-stead, paired testes are located within the body cavity. The penis is cra-dled inside a “genital slit” and covered by ﬂaps unless it is erect. Malecetaceans have no scrotum. What would be the easiest way to develop this genital architecture formales, using mammalian body parts and a vertebrate chassis? Some ofthe steps ordinarily taken by terrestrial mammalian males when their
SEX WITHIN BODIES 41genitals are developing could simply be omitted. On land, a male mam-mal’s testes descend from the body cavity into the scrotum, whereuponthey become testicles. The scrotum is derived by fusing the tissues that infemales become the labia covering the vagina and clitoris. By not both-ering to fuse the labial tissue into a scrotum and leaving the testes in theabdominal cavity, a developing male dolphin or whale keeps his testesprotected, using the labial tissues as protective ﬂaps. The clitoris contin-ues to develop into a penis, as the urethra becomes included along its axis.If these steps took place on land, a mammalian male would be classiﬁedas intersexed. Thus, we might speculate that male dolphins and whaleshave achieved their genital architecture by making a norm out of whatwould otherwise be considered an exceptional intersex morphology. Both genital and gonadal intersexes are documented in wild cetaceans.The striped dolphin (Stenella coeruleoalba) has some individuals who dis-play external female genitals along with testes and internal male plumbing.The bowhead whale (Balaena mysticetus) has individuals with female ex-ternal genitalia and mammary glands combined with male chromosomes,testes, and male internal plumbing. A ﬁn whale (Balaenoptera physalus)has been described with both male and female reproductive organs, in-cluding uterus, vagina, elongated clitoris, and testes. A beluga whale (Del-phinapterus leucas) in the St. Lawrence seaway had male external genitalscombined with a complete set of two ovaries and two testes.33 Although a recent report on intersexes among cetaceans raises thespecter of pollution causing genital deformity, the early reports on in-tersexes predate dangerous levels of pollution. Perhaps cetaceans are ontheir evolutionary way to the state that hermaphroditic ﬁsh have alreadyattained. The examples so far have focused on intersexed genital plumbing.What about intersexed gonads? In four species of burrowing mammalsfrom Europe called old world moles, males have testes typical of othermammals, whereas all the females have ovotestes, containing both ovar-ian and testicular tissue. The females make eggs in the ovarian part oftheir ovotestes, whereas the testicular portion has no sperm, although thetesticular portion does actively secrete hormones. These species comeclose to being hermaphroditic.34 Thus a number of mammalian species have recombined genitalplumbing and gonads in surprising and successful ways. More generally,
42 ANIMAL RAINBOWSwe see that among vertebrates, from ﬁsh through mammals, the binarydistinction in gamete size does not generally extend to the entire body.Many body plans include production of both sizes of gamete at differenttimes or the same time, as well as various genital sculptures and mixturesof genital plumbing—all as a way of serving social functions importantin the society of the species.
4Sex RolesE ven species thought of as typical, with one gender per sex and in- dividuals who maintain a single sex throughout life, often have gen- der roles quite different from the traditional template. Indeed, insome species, males (apart from making sperm) look and behave muchas females do in other species, and females (apart from making eggs)look and behave much as males do in other species. If these species couldexpress their thoughts about us, they would describe our gender distinc-tions as reversed.BODY SIZES REVERSEDAnglerﬁsh are deep-sea ﬁsh who have what looks like a tiny ﬁshing poleattached to their head. A spine projects out in front of the ﬁsh, and some-what upward, with a frilly or luminescent bulb at its tip to lure prey.When prey comes near, the anglerﬁsh lunges forward, “angling” andthen gobbling it up. Predators catch prey in countless tricky ways. The anglerﬁsh’s ﬁshingpole is a neat curiosity, but what is more interesting is that the anglerﬁshjust described are all female—ﬁsherwomen, not ﬁshermen. Is the angler-ﬁsh another example of an all-female species? Nope. Anglerﬁsh males 43
44 ANIMAL RAINBOWSexist, but they are tiny and are called “dwarf males.” These anglerﬁshmales are incapable of independent existence. They have large nostrilsfor homing in on perfumes released by the females and pinchers, insteadof teeth, to grasp little projections on the female. After a male attachesto the back or side of a female, their epidermal tissues fuse and their cir-culatory systems unite, and the male becomes an organ of the female.Multiple males may attach to one female, a case of polyandry. Theythereby turn into two or more genetically distinct individuals in onebody, a colony.1 These ﬁsh were discovered in 1922 by an Icelandic biologist who ob-served two small ﬁsh attached by their snouts to the belly of a large fe-male. He thought the small ﬁsh were juveniles being suckled by theirmother—which mammals do all the time, but which would be big newsfor ﬁsh.2 Three years later, the small attached ﬁshes were discovered tobe reproductively mature males. An attached male was called a “parasite,” by analogy to the small ec-toparasites on the outside of large individuals, such as the barnacles at-tached to whales or leeches that cling to people who bathe in tropicalstreams. The terminology is unfortunate, because here the relationshipis presumably reciprocal. The anglerﬁsh male is “merely an appendageof the female, and entirely dependent on her for nutrition. . . . [S]o per-fect and complete is the union of husband and wife that one may almostbe sure that their genital glands ripen simultaneously, and it is perhapsnot too fanciful to think that the female may possibly be able to controlthe seminal discharge of the male and to ensure that it takes place at theright time for fertilization of her eggs.”3 Over one hundred species of anglerﬁsh are distributed throughout theworld at depths below one mile. For all anglerﬁsh, the females are muchlarger than the males. In other respects, though, anglerﬁsh are diverse,exhibiting a rainbow of their own. Some species have attaching dwarfmales that fuse with the body of a female, as just described; others haveboth free-living males and attaching males; and still other species havemales who are exclusively free-living. Indeed, whenever one looks deeplyinto any biological category, a rainbow is revealed. The living world ismade of rainbows within rainbows within rainbows, in an endless pro-gression.
SEX ROLES 45SEX ROLES REVERSEDThe pipeﬁsh is a small pencil-like ﬁsh with a circular mouth that resem-bles a small musical pipe, like a ﬂute. In some species of pipeﬁsh, the em-bryos are “glued” to the male’s underside. The young ﬁsh develop thereand swim away when they are mature. In other pipeﬁsh species, themales have protective skin ﬂaps that partially cover the fertilized eggs. In their close relative the seahorse, the skin ﬂap is elaborated into apouch that fully encloses the developing embryos. A female seahorseplaces eggs in a male’s pouch. The eggs are fertilized there, forming em-bryos, and the male becomes “pregnant.” The male provides oxygen,maintains the right salt balance, and nourishes and protects the embryosin his sac.4 We might think that seahorses and pipeﬁsh reverse male and femaleroles relative to mammals. To determine whether this impression is cor-rect, we must consider the “parental investment” made by males and fe-males in the raising of young. A male contributes a sperm to the embryo,which provides little energy or nutrients. A female contributes a full-sized egg to the embryo. A female therefore starts out by putting a largerinvestment in the embryo than the male does. Biologists deﬁne “sex-role reversal” as occurring when the totalparental investment by males in raising the young exceeds that of fe-males.5 Male seahorses and pipeﬁsh provide a great deal of parental in-vestment in terms of time spent rearing the young in their pouches orglued to their undersides. Does what the males do for the young by thetime the embryos mature add up to more than what the females do, giventhat females invested more at the beginning? Simply having males provide some care for the young doesn’t qual-ify as sex-role reversal. Species showing some male parental care aretoo numerous to mention. Many male ﬁsh watch over and nourisheggs in nests on the sea ﬂoor or lake bottom, and others even store theeggs in their cheeks (called mouth brooders). The speciﬁc way malesprovide parental care depends on the species, and the seahorse’s pouchis one of many curious delivery styles. The style of care doesn’t mat-ter, the amount does. So, are seahorses sex-role reversed? That is, does
46 ANIMAL RAINBOWSthe cumulative parental investment by male seahorses exceed that offemales? How could one tell which sex was contributing the most overall to theraising of offspring? An indication comes from the supply and demandof each sex at the time of mating. We’re all familiar with supply and de-mand during courtship. A belle at an Alaskan mining camp has men en-treating her with bags of gold dust and promises of trips to Paris. A bach-elor on a love-boat cruise is entertained by women offering duty-freeCuban cigars and football lore memorized from the 49ers playbook.Let’s extend this idea. If one sex, say A, is providing most of the parental care, then few arereceptive to mating at any particular time because most are occupiedwith raising offspring. Conversely, the other sex, B, is not very involvedwith raising offspring and has many individuals ready and willing tomate. This asymmetry in the supply and demand of mates leads to a dy-namic tension between the sexes. The Bs compete for access to and con-trol of the As. Provided their freedom of choice is not thwarted by theBs’ control, the As choose which B they wish to mate with. Biologists call the ratio of receptive females to willing males the “op-erational sex ratio.” The operational sex ratio isn’t ﬁfty-ﬁfty because thesex with the higher parental investment is occupied with raising the off-spring and is relatively unavailable for mating compared with the othersex.6 Returning to the seahorses and pipeﬁsh, we can ask which sex is rel-atively unavailable for mating because of their efforts in raising off-spring. Swedish investigators found two nearby North Sea pipeﬁshspecies that are indeed sex-role reversed. The females from both thesespecies produce enough eggs for about two males during the time it takesfor one male to raise his young. In the wild, the number of females withripe eggs consistently exceeds the number of receptive males. Females inthese species are polyandrous, with a harem of males. In addition, thesefemales are larger than the males and develop bright colors at courtshiptime, presumably for the males to choose among, reversing Darwin’sclassic peacock story. Furthermore, the females, not the males, competewith one another, forming dominance hierarchies for access to the maleswho will tend their eggs. Nine other pipeﬁsh species in which the females
SEX ROLES 47alone have sexual coloration and/or grow larger than the males arethought to be sex-role reversed as well. On the other hand, seahorses and certain other pipeﬁsh species are notsex-role reversed; they follow the model of Darwin’s peacocks. Maleseahorses can raise their young and get ready for the next embryos fasterthan female seahorses can produce egg batches. The result is a net sur-plus of males wanting eggs compared to females offering eggs. Males ag-gressively tail-wrestle and snout-snap one another for access to females,whereas females don’t have any speciﬁc aggressive behaviors amongthemselves. Male seahorses tend to be larger, more colorful, and moredistinctly patterned than females.7 Thus sex-role reversal deﬁnitely occurs in nature. Many feel that theconcept of an operational sex ratio effectively extends Darwin’s theoryof sexual selection to cover sex-role reversed species—after all, the logicis the same for the mating strategies in both sex-role-typical species andsex-role-reversed species, with the identities of the excess sex and rate-limiting sex simply ﬂipped. But no theory has been proposed to explainwhy sex-role reversal occurs in the ﬁrst place. Sex-role reversal is found in birds, especially aquatic and sea birds.When sex-role reversal occurs, the double standard can reverse too. Wat-tled jacanas from the Chagres River in Panama are large, squat blackbirds with white wing tips, a red face, and a long, yellow probing billused to feed among shallow freshwater plants like hyacinths. The rau-cous, beefy females spend their days jousting with one another at theborders of their territories. Within these territories, harems of smallermales tend the eggs and chicks. DNA ﬁngerprinting has shown that males raise eggs laid by the femalewho controls their harem, even when the eggs were fathered by malesoutside the harem. The females clearly went outside their harem to ob-tain matings and yet burdened the males within their harem with the jobof raising the young. The investigators, themselves male, were outraged,asserting that male jacanas were being “cuckolded” in spite of con-tributing so much parental care. One investigator stated, “It’s about asbad as it can be for these guys.”8 The converse probably wouldn’t have provoked such outrage. A fe-male in a harem controlled by a male might raise a chick fathered by that
48 ANIMAL RAINBOWSmale and placed there by a female from a neighboring harem. We couldimagine many reasons for such an adoption. The female might ﬁnd it ad-vantageous to raise the chick in return for the controlling male’s provi-sioning and protection of the young she has mothered herself. Similarly,a male jacana might ﬁnd it advantageous to raise a chick mothered bythe controlling female in return for the controlling female’s provisioningand protection of the young he has fathered himself. Thus, sex-role re-versal implies that the double standard also reverses. This idea takessome getting used to. Other birds showing sex-role reversal include two shore birds, Wil-son’s phalarope and the spotted sandpiper.9 Apparently, no mammalsexhibit sex-role reversal, presumably because of the very high parentalinvestment by mammalian females. In addition to the egg, a mammalianfemale supplies milk to the embryo and carries the young to term, eitherin a placenta or a pouch. For a mammalian male, this act is hard to fol-low. To exceed this already high parental investment by a female, a malewould require a social system allowing him to care for his offspring wellbeyond the age of weaning, as may be approached in humans. The evolution of the mammalian placenta and pouch is usually pre-sented as a physiological advance, an adaptation for nurturing embry-onic development in a climate that has cooled globally since the time ofdinosaurs. Alternatively, the evolutionary force behind the placenta andpouch may have been for females to assume control of their offspring. Aside effect is that males then acquire an incentive to control females.
5Two-Gender FamiliesL et’s move on now to species with two genders that don’t change sex, do not have intersexual body parts, and aren’t sex-role re- versed. Are such animals “normal”? Have we come at last to thefamiliar gender roles performed by ordinary bodies, as depicted on na-ture shows? Or are nature shows perhaps not telling the whole story?What goes on in two-gender animal families, and how are such familiesorganized? Many of us were raised to admire the nuclear family as a norm andwere taught that single-parent families, families of same-sex couples, orcommunes were second-best alternatives or, even worse, wrong. Yet themeaning of a human family is in ﬂux. In the United States, public atten-tion has focused on the problem of how to deﬁne “family” as a result ofa recent Supreme Court case about the rights of grandparents to visitgrandchildren despite parental objection. The thirty-million-memberAmerican Association of Retired People (AARP) states that grandparentsare the primary caretakers of 1.4 million children because many nuclearfamilies have dissolved.1 The American Center for Law and Justice, which represents theChristian right, claims that “the traditional family, consisting of marriedparents and their children” is the building block of society. A leader ofthe Nation of Islam similarly declares, “Whenever . . . 50% of those 49
50 ANIMAL RAINBOWSwho marry get divorced within the ﬁrst three years, these are signs of thedecline of a civilization.”2 Meanwhile, the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, a gayrights organization, argues that neither side, grandparents or parents,sufficiently protects children being reared in nontraditional families, af-ﬁrming the primary importance of “the quality and security of the rela-tionship between individual children and adults rather than blood ties orlabels.”3 Indeed, in June 2002, the California Supreme Court ruled unan-imously that a man who cared for a six-year-old boy could be consideredthe boy’s parent, even though the man was not the boy’s biological fa-ther and was never married to the boy’s mother. The man was given cus-tody of the child over the mother’s objections, showing that “parenthoodcould be achieved through love and responsible conduct.”4 With so much controversy about the meaning of family and parent-hood, asking how animals raise their young may be helpful. What is ananimal family? Does any family organization emerge as a particularly ef-ﬁcient way to raise young? And does biology support the belief that thenuclear family should have a privileged status in our society?SEX AND POWEROh, I wish the simplest of animal families were a blissfully pair-bondedmale and female. Alas, males and females negotiate over power in eventhe most elementary of animal families. Feminist writings call attentionto a power differential between the sexes: “The image of the cage helpsconvey . . . the nature of oppression. ‘Why can’t I go to the park; you letJimmy go!’ ‘Because it’s not safe for girls.’ ”5 Well, how safe is it outsidethe cage? Why does a cage exist at all? If we look at squirrels, we can seewhat biologists call “mate guarding,” a male caging a female. The Idaho ground squirrel (Spermophilus brunneus) lives in popula-tions of one hundred to three hundred individuals in short-grass mead-ows.6 The squirrels hibernate in burrows most of the year, only becom-ing active from late March to early August. The males wake up fromhibernation about two weeks before the females. Females become sexu-ally active for about three hours in the afternoon on the ﬁrst day after hi-bernation. Three hours on this one day is all the family life a squirrel has.
TWO-GENDER FAMILIES 51 A successful date for a male squirrel means walking behind a femalewhile sniffing and licking her genitals, going with her into a burrow,mating there for ﬁve minutes, and then reemerging. As a sign of suc-cessful mating, the female acquires a “sperm plug” that can be seen by ahuman observer and probably by other squirrels as well. The male thenstays within one meter of her and keeps her in a small area by “herding.”About every forty minutes, he follows her back into the burrow, wherethey mate again. She acquires a fresh sperm plug, and he turns aroundto block the entrance with his body. The male rebuffs an average of fourother males who try to mate with the female. If a male is displaced, he islikely to take about an hour and twenty minutes to locate another fe-male, and she is usually guarded by some other male. A litter typically consists of ﬁve pups. If the female has been guardedby only one male for these three hours, then the whole litter is sired byhim. If more than one male has guarded the female, paternity analysisshows that her litter is sired mostly by the male who was the last to guardher or by the male who guarded her the longest. Thus the family life of the Idaho ground squirrel consists of threehours per year. The Idaho ground squirrel family is solely a unit for re-production. The male doesn’t hang around and help raise the young. Themale is said to guard the female to protect his “investment” of sperm bymaking sure that his female doesn’t mess around. He doesn’t messaround himself because if he stopped guarding he would lose his invest-ment, and in any case ﬁnding another female is nearly impossible. A close relative, Belding’s ground squirrel (Spermophilus beldingi) ofthe midwestern United States, does not mate-guard. In this species,twenty-ﬁve minutes are all a male needs to locate and initiate courtshipwith another female. Female Belding’s squirrels typically mate withthree to ﬁve males. The female’s ﬁrst mate sires most of the litter, fol-lowed by the second mate, then the third mate, and so on, in contrast tothe Idaho squirrel, where the last mate gets most of the sires. A Belding’smale doesn’t waste time guarding a female because his investment ofsperm is secure—as the ﬁrst mate, he’s already guaranteed siring most ofthe young. Instead, these males hurry to ﬁnd more females to mate with,and with so many nearby, why not? A cage, then, is not biologically universal. These two closely relatedspecies of squirrels have completely different power relationships be-
52 ANIMAL RAINBOWStween males and females. Male Idaho ground squirrels guard the fe-males, while male Belding’s ground squirrels don’t. Why? The power re-lationship is probably not as simple as it seems. Are the female Idahosquirrels being caged against their will? Maybe, maybe not. If asked, anIdaho male squirrel might say lovingly that he was “protecting” his fe-male during their brief marriage from the unwanted advances of rivalmales. And she might agree, happy to have him there. The courtship thatprecedes mating suggests her acquiescence. And she is capable of physi-cally repelling a male if she wishes: the day after her three-hour burst ofsexuality, an Idaho female squirrel constructs a nest and excludes allother squirrels from a small territory around it. So a female Idaho squir-rel may want to be guarded. Why does the last male sire most of the young in the Idaho squirrel,and the ﬁrst male sire most of them in Belding’s squirrel? Could femalesquirrels control whose sperm fertilizes their eggs?7 Could a female ma-nipulate a male to guard, or not guard, by controlling his sperm? Can afemale select the ﬁrst male’s sperm to do the fertilizing if she wants himto have no incentive for staying, and select the last male’s sperm if shewants him to hang around and guard? Presenting mate guarding as a tac-tic by which males protect their investment ignores the female perspec-tive. Females are viewed as land in which males plant seeds and whichthey guard if necessary. Yet females are probably active players inwhether they’re guarded or not. The Idaho and Belding’s squirrels may have evolved to experiencepleasure differently. A female Idaho squirrel may like being squeezedinto a burrow, and a male may enjoy having a female behind him as hestuffs the burrow’s entrance, like a guy taking a girl for a spin in his redconvertible—fun for both. Yet for a female Belding’s ground squirrel,squeezing into burrows could be a total turnoff and the reason shedoesn’t permit the guarding. Species differences in how power is eroti-cized make it difficult to discern whether animals have freedom ofchoice during mate selection and in their family lives. Among primates, the amount of sexual coercion varies greatly fromspecies to species, as does the overall level of both between-sex andwithin-sex aggression.8 Outside the breeding period, male mountain go-rillas aggress against females one to four times a day, olive baboonsabout one time per day, and red howler monkeys only 0.04 times per
TWO-GENDER FAMILIES 53day. The context for the aggression varies from competing for food,coming to the aid of one female against another, and breaking up ﬁghtsbetween females. These aggressions are not directly sexual coercion, butrather reﬂect a social atmosphere of violence. Within the breeding period, male rhesus monkeys attack femaleswho consort with male rivals. Similarly, among chimpanzees, one of ourclosest primate relatives, males attack females who consort with lower-ranking male rivals, rather than attacking the low-ranking males them-selves. Using “a fair amount of brutality,”9 chimpanzee males persuadefemales to accompany them away from the group where they were liv-ing. One-third of all conceptions result from matings between pairs sep-arated from the group for several days to over a month. Chimpanzeemales also intimidate females into submitting to their advances later on.Lack of resistance does not necessarily mean willing participation, butmay reﬂect experience with the male’s previous aggression. The record-holders for male sexual coercion are the orangutans, inwhich most copulations by subadult males and nearly half of all copu-lations by adult males occur after a female’s ﬁerce resistance has been vi-olently overcome.10 Other primate species showing lots of male aggres-sion against females include white-fronted and wedge-capped capuchins,black spider monkeys, and brown lemurs. Females’ counterstrategies in-clude avoiding areas where males are found, joining a male’s territory orharem to gain his protection, and forming coalitions to ﬁght off themales. Yet other primate species enjoy a peaceful life. Male aggressionagainst females is rare in bonobos, a primate species as closely related tohumans as the relatively violent chimpanzee is. Male sexual coercion isalso rare in patas monkeys, red-backed squirrel monkeys, brown ca-puchins, woolly spider monkeys, and black-and-white ruffed lemurs. Aswith the bonobo/chimpanzee contrast, closely related species differ in theprevalence of male sexual aggression. No explanation exists for why some societies develop coercive powerrelations between the sexes, whereas others form equitable power rela-tions.11 Although some species resemble the tough-talking televisionshow “NYPD Blue,” others resemble the peaceful Mr. Rogers. Howpower relates to sex is not a biological universal. We may choose to livelike some species and not others.
54 ANIMAL RAINBOWSMONOGAMY AND DIVORCEAs we turn to long-lasting two-gender families—beyond the three-hourmarriages of ground squirrels—the plot thickens. Ninety percent of birdspecies are monogamous in the sense that a family consists of one maleand one female who cohabit a nest and raise young together in that nestduring at least one breeding season. In contrast, 90 percent of mammalspecies are polygynous, with one male for many females.12 Among mam-mals, females typically occur in groupings of two or more who are ser-viced by one male. But what do these statistics mean? Biologists have been slow to dis-tinguish between economic monogamy and reproductive monogamy.Birds are identiﬁed as “monogamous” simply if they are living in thesame nest and feeding nestlings together—an economic criterion. Biolo-gists have unquestioningly assumed that the nestlings are the offspringof the couple in the nest. When distributed parenthood is discovered, bi-ologists feel something is amiss—that one or the other member of thepair “cheated,” straying outside the marriage bond. However, birds havedecoupled reproductive and economic monogamy; in some species thesego together, and in others not. Black-capped chickadees (Parus atricapillus) of eastern Ontario aremonogamous.13 During the summer, pairs settle in territories to raisetheir families—a suburbanite’s dream. During the winter, the chickadeescease living as couples and live in ﬂocks of about ten birds. Because achickadee’s average life spans several years, the birds are aware of eachother through both the over-wintering period and the breeding period.During the winter, males and females sort themselves into separate dom-inance hierarchies. New couples form during the winter social period and settle as pairsfor the summer to raise a family. As a couple, they forage together, ex-cavate their nest cavity together, mate with one another, and defend theirterritory together. The male feeds the female although they both forage,and the male prevents other males from approaching the female. Whenforming couples, the highest-ranking female pairs with the highest-ranking male. Most couples remain together for more than one breedingseason. Females may “divorce” their mate and/or mate with males other
TWO-GENDER FAMILIES 55than their nest mate. A mating outside the pair-bond is called an extra-pair copulation, or EPC in biology jargon. Female chickadees divorce toobtain a male who is higher in the male dominance hierarchy than theirpresent mate. In one study,14 seven females paired to seven high-ranking males wereremoved, temporarily creating seven very desirable widowers. Over thenext two days, some of the remaining females deserted their partners andtook up with the higher-ranking widowers. When the females who hadbeen removed were restored to the site, they quickly chased the socialclimbers back to the males they had deserted. These hen-pecked hus-bands took their wayward spouses back. To complete the experiment,six females were also temporarily removed from six low-ranking males,but none of the remaining females left their mates to join these sad sacks.These males were saved from eternal loneliness only when their mateswere returned to the site to rejoin them. Not only are female chickadeeswilling to desert their mate to acquire a higher-ranking male when oneis available, but they are willing to mate with higher-ranking males inEPCs, resulting in many broods with mixed parentage. A close relative of the chickadees, a member of the same genus, is theEuropean great tit (Parus major). Boxes for these birds to nest in havebeen constructed on the island of Gotland in southeast Sweden. In a1985–89 experiment, eggs were removed from one pair’s nest and trans-ferred to another pair in order to observe the effect on divorce. Pairswhose eggs were removed divorced more often, presumably because theywere not able to raise as many young as the population baseline. Con-versely, pairs given extra eggs divorced less often, presumably becausethey did raise more young. Success at raising a family thus seems to be afactor in whether birds decide to divorce.15 One survey of marriage ﬁdelity among birds shows annual divorcerates as low as 2.4 percent in the barnacle goose (Branta leucopsis) ofnorthern Europe, 2.5 percent in the silvereye (Zosterops lateralis), aberry-eating forest bird from Australia, New Zealand, and Fiji, and 2.7percent in Cory’s shearwater (Calonectris diomedea) of Long Island toNova Scotia.16 The highs were 36 percent in the European shag (Pha-lacrocorax aristotelis), which is similar to a cormorant but more marine,and 30.6 percent in Parus major, the European woodland songbird men-tioned above.
56 ANIMAL RAINBOWS Divorce rate correlates with mortality. In birds where the annual sur-vival rate is only 40 to 80 percent, the divorce rate is high, and in birdswhere the annual survival rate is 90 percent or more, the divorce rate islow.17 Lots of eligible widows and widowers make for a hot singlesscene. And when the singles scene is hot, the action doesn’t stay conﬁnedto singles. When divorce rates are high, lots of mating also takes placeoutside of the nest. The data for birds show a positive statistical relationbetween rates of divorce and EPCs. Thus monogamy among birds seems to be an economically beneﬁcialsocial institution, with divorce and some out-of-wedlock matings a reg-ular part of the picture too. Bird females seem to have lots to say abouttheir own lives, choosing partners and initiating divorce when advanta-geous. When we turn to mammals, though, we have to face the fact thatmonogamy seems rare. Why? One explanation for why birds are more often monogamous thanmammals is that ﬂight endows female birds with more opportunity tochoose their mates than female mammals have.18 Female birds can checkout prospective husbands by ﬂying from party to party around town,whereas a female mammal is stuck walking to the nearest block party.With so much choice around her, a female bird can demand a husbandwho is faithful and helps with the dishes, while a female mammal can’t.However, this theory assumes that a male generally doesn’t want to stickaround and help with the young, can’t stand doing dishes, and must bemanipulated to do so by a female’s threat of turning to someone else ifhe doesn’t. I don’t accept this logic. I feel the male’s perspective shouldbe stated differently. He has two directions in which he can invest socialeffort. Within-sex effort involves competing with other males and/orbuilding coalitions with them to access females. Between-sex effort in-volves “coalition-building” with a female to raise offspring together.Whether a male winds up with more offspring overall from within-sexor between-sex coalition-building depends on circumstances. This is theanimal equivalent of balancing career and family. Monogamy then emerges when (a) building relationships with a fe-male is more advantageous to a male’s reproductive success than build-ing relationships with other males, and (b) building a relationship witha male is more advantageous to a female’s reproductive success than rais-ing young by herself or in conjunction with other females. In general, dif-
TWO-GENDER FAMILIES 57ferent mating systems emerge from different optimal allocations of so-cial effort to between-sex and within-sex relationships. Although not as commonly as in birds, monogamy among mammalsdoes happen. It occurs in 15 percent of primate species and is commonamong wild canines, among others. In most monogamous species, thehusband contributes to parental care by building a den, burrow, orlodge, defending the family’s feeding territory, feeding his wife whenshe’s nursing, and carrying the young around (driving the kids to soccerafter school). In the monogamous prairie vole, Microtus ochrogaster,when a female produces a bigger-than-normal litter, a second nest isbuilt, the young are divided up, and the male cares for one nest and thefemale for the other. Thus monogamy occurs among mammals, althoughnot as commonly as in birds. But why is monogamy rare in mammals? Mammalian females haveinternalized embryonic development in a uterus or pouch, whereas avianfemales leave the developing embryos as eggs in the external environ-ment. This difference affects who can control the offspring. A mam-malian male who wants to control offspring must somehow control thefemale herself, whereas an avian male can directly control the eggs in thenest. A mammalian female knows the embryo developing in her body ishers alone, not an egg deposited there by some other female. In birds, afemale may derive from a monogamous marriage both male provision-ing of the young and male protection of the nest, not only from preda-tors but from “dumpers”—other females who deposit foster eggs in thenest.19 The male gains the female’s initial investment in eggs, plus her ad-ditional provisioning. Neither male nor female mammals beneﬁt frommarriage as much as birds do.EXTENDED FAMILIESLet’s now take a look at two-gender families larger than two individu-als: extended families. The groove-billed anis (Crotophaga sulcirostris)is an insectivorous black bird with a large, deeply grooved bill. It lives inmarshes and open pastures in Central America and is related to thecuckoo. Family organizations of the anis may consist of twosomes withone female and one male, foursomes with two females and two males,
58 ANIMAL RAINBOWSsixsomes, and even eightsomes.20 The foursomes are not sixties-stylecommunes of free love. An anis foursome is two couples cohabiting aone-bedroom ﬂat with one crib. Nests are built in thorny trees or vines.Each male guards one of the females. A female lays an egg every one totwo days. The time from egg-laying to ﬂedging is three weeks. The two females in a foursome wind up with four eggs total. A femalein a twosome can also produce four eggs by herself. Thus the number ofeggs laid per female is lower in a foursome than in a twosome. In a four-some, the females start laying eggs at different times. The starter lays big-ger eggs and has a longer time between successive eggs than the follower.Both females stop laying eggs at about the same time. Each female“tosses” out of the nest some of the eggs already laid by the other, withthe follower winding up mothering on average 63 percent of the eggs andthe starter only 37 percent of the eggs. After all the tossing is over, foureggs are left in the nest. Even though the follower mothers more of the eggs, she doesn’t nec-essarily successfully raise the most offspring. The starter lays larger eggs,which hatch earlier, so these chicks have a better chance of survivingthan chicks from the follower. All four birds in a foursome work to-gether to provide for and protect the eggs. The males divide the day intounequal shifts. The oldest male incubates at night and most of the day-light hours. As a result, he also incurs the most hazard and the highestdeath rate. Yet he also fathers the most young. But why should a female, who can lay four eggs in a twosome with-out worrying about a nest mate tossing her eggs out, bother living in afoursome? The answer is that the larger group provides protectionagainst egg predators. Once loss of eggs to predators is taken into ac-count, the starter in a foursome produces the most young, a female in atwosome produces an intermediate number of young, and the followerin a foursome the fewest. For the anis, the beneﬁt from predator protec-tion of living in extended families of two couples outweighs the disad-vantages of a rancorous life at home. The family life of tamarins offers a pleasant contrast to that of anis.The saddle-backed tamarin is a tiny monkey that lives in the tropicalrainforest of southeastern Peru, including the Manu National Park.21Among tamarin families, 22 percent consist of one female with one malein a monogamous relationship, 61 percent of one female with multiple
TWO-GENDER FAMILIES 59males, 14 percent of multiple females with multiple males, and 3 percentof males only. In the families with one female and multiple males, the fe-male mates with all the males. The matings take place in view of theother males without any sign of aggression. The males in this species notonly help take care of the young, but they cooperate with one anotherwhen doing so. The females usually give birth to twins, and the malescarry the babies with them through the treetops. The males and femalesgive the babies fruits and large insects to eat. The twin babies are 20 percent of their mother’s weight, and are 50percent of her weight by the time they can walk and climb on their own.Just one female and one male aren’t enough to raise the twins; threeadults seem to be the minimum to do the job. Even the families consist-ing of one adult male and one adult female are accompanied by olderchildren who help out. This family organization is called cooperativepolyandry. Other mammals with cooperative polyandry include African huntingdogs (Lycaon pictus) and dwarf mongooses.22 Cooperative polyandryalso occurs in birds, including the Australian white-browed scrubwren(Sericornis frontalis) that lives near Canberra, the Tasmanian native hen(Tribonyx mortierii), the Galápagos hawk (Buteo galapagoensis), theEnglish dunnock (Prunella modularis), the New Zealand pukeko (Por-phyrio porphyrio), and the Venezuelan striped-back wren.23 No biolog-ical reason prevents these guys from cooperating with each other andhelping around the house. Lions, in contrast, seem to take the idea of a war between the sexesvery seriously. We may be misled by the common picture of lions as co-operative hunters. Although lions seem to work together, not only athunting but also in rearing cubs and roaring in a uniﬁed chorus, the truthmakes human political inﬁghting seem benign.24 Lion family organiza-tion is multimale polygyny—gangs of males guarding groups of females,called prides. Males form lifelong alliances among one to eight lions.Most members of an alliance are brothers or cousins, but others are un-related. Once mature, these coalitions take charge of a pride of femalesand father all the offspring born in the pride for a period of two to threeyears. After that, a rival coalition moves in and evicts them. The maleswork together more effectively when battling with a rival gang than inany other situation. How well a male does depends on how well his
60 ANIMAL RAINBOWScoalition does—gang warfare in the extreme. A male lion is nowhere ifnot in the right gang. Victorious lions don’t make ideal boyfriends. A cub matures in twoyears, and a female isn’t interested in mating during that time. However,if a cub dies, a female mates again in as little as two days. In their hurryto become fathers, an invading gang of males may kill off more than onequarter of the cubs, which quickly brings their mothers into reproduc-tive condition. The invading males don’t share fatherhood equally. Oneor two father almost the entire pride’s litter. To counter the male danger to the cubs, the females band together toraise the young. The females enjoy a reproductive life span of about tenyears, during which ﬁve gangs may come and go. The females give birthin secrecy and keep their litters hidden in a riverbed or rocky outcropuntil the cubs can move on their own. Then they bring the cubs to a placewhere they are nursed together in what is called a “crèche,” a wordmeaning a public nursery for infants of working women. The lionesses nurse their own cubs and those of others as well. Thisshared lactation is not entirely altruistic. The lioness gives milk primarilyto her own cubs and rejects the advances of others. She needs her sleep,though, and while she is asleep, cubs who are not her children are able tonurse. Although a lioness prefers her own cubs, the strength of this pref-erence depends on how closely related the other cubs are to her. If a prideconsists mostly of close relatives, a lioness is more generous with cubswho are not her own than if she is in a pride of comparatively unrelatedfemales.25 In sum, female lions raise their young in crèches to defendagainst infanticidal males rather than to provide nutritional beneﬁts fromshared nursing. Ironically, house mice have the same family dynamics aslions,26 as though a lion were no more than a mouse that roars.THE BIG CITYSome animal species live in what might be called cities. In these cases,family life shows many of the sophisticated intricacies of human urbanliving. Consider the vampire bat. Your ﬁrst impulse may be to shudderat the terrifying vision of vampire bats, in the dead of night, swooping
TWO-GENDER FAMILIES 61down to drink the blood of an unsuspecting victim. Yet vampires have awonderful story to tell of social cooperation.27 The vampire bat (Desmodus rotundus) is a rather small bat, not muchbigger than a plum. A vampire can hang by its feet from the hair of ahorse’s mane and bite the horse’s neck. It doesn’t suck the blood; instead,it removes a small patch of ﬂesh with its razor-sharp incisors and laps upthe blood ﬂowing from the wound. A vampire’s saliva has an anticoag-ulant to keep the blood from clotting. After one bat has drunk its ﬁll, an-other continues at the same spot. Horses can dislodge feeding bats bytossing their heads, swishing their tails, or rubbing against trees. Life as a vampire is hard. Bats are warm-blooded and, without feath-ers or fur, lose lots of heat. Their requirements for energy are huge. Avampire bat consumes 50 to 100 percent of its weight in each meal. Yetup to one-third of the bats may not obtain a meal on any given night.Going without a meal is dangerous. A vampire dies after sixty hourswithout food because by then its weight has dropped 25 percent, and itcan no longer maintain its critical body temperature. To survive, vam-pire bats have developed an elaborate buddy system for sharing meals.The sharing takes place between mother and pup, as well as betweenadults. One study of vampires on a ranch in Costa Rica focused on a popu-lation divided into three groups of a dozen females. The members of agroup often stay together for a long time, twelve years in some cases, andget to know one another very well. The group of a dozen adult bats is afamily unit from a vampire’s standpoint. Most of the group consists offemales, each of whom usually cares for one pup. A female pup stays inthe group as she matures, whereas a male pup leaves. The females in agroup span several generations. Group membership is not entirely static,however. A new female joins the group every two years, so at any timethe females in the group belong to several lineages, called matrilines. The bats live in the hollows of trees. Imagine a hollow tree with anopening at its base and a long vertical chamber reaching up into the treetrunk. The females congregate at the top of the chamber. About threemales hang out, so to speak, in the tree hollow. One male assumes a po-sition near the top of the chamber, nearest to the females, and defendsthis location against aggressive encounters from other males. This dom-
62 ANIMAL RAINBOWSinant male fathers about half of the group’s young. Subordinate malestake up stations near the base of the tree by the entrance. Other malesare out of luck, roosting alone or in small male-only groups rarely vis-ited by females. The pattern of food-sharing is especially interesting. The food is trans-ferred by one bat regurgitating into the mouth of another. (You wouldn’twant to be a bat, would you?) Most (70 percent) of the food transfersare from a mother to her pup. This food-sharing supplements themother’s lactation. The other 30 percent involves adult females feedingyoung other than their own, adult females feeding other adult females,and on rare occasions, adult males feeding offspring. Some adult females have a “special friendship” with females who arenot their kin (males also have same-sex relations; see p. 141). This bondis brought about in part by social grooming. The bats spend 5 percent ofeach day grooming and licking one another. Some of this grooming is be-tween special friends, and the remaining among kin. A hungry batgrooms one who has recently fed to invite a donation of food. To solicitfood, a hungry bat licks a donor on her wing and then licks her lips. Thedonor may then offer food. The mutual assistance is signiﬁcant. If they didn’t help each other, theannual mortality of vampires would be about 80 percent, based on thechance of missing a meal two nights in a row. Instead, the annual mor-tality is around 25 percent because food-sharing tides bats through theirbad nights. Biologists assume that animal species don’t readily cooperate witheach other. If natural selection is the survival of the ﬁttest, shouldn’t nat-ural selection reward selﬁshness and discourage cooperation? Biologistssuggest two forms of cooperation that can evolve by natural selection.The ﬁrst is cooperation restricted to helping kin, and the second is coop-eration restricted to helping special buddies—those who regularly recip-rocate the cooperative acts.28 Vampire bats help not only kin as do manyspecies, but also unrelated friends—which is what makes vampires so in-teresting. This mutual helping, called “reciprocal altruism,” takes placeprimarily between animals who have lived together and gotten to knowone another. Each helps the other at various times, and each instance ofhelping beneﬁts the recipient much more than it costs the donor. Critics of the idea of reciprocal altruism have argued that natural se-
TWO-GENDER FAMILIES 63lection favors the “cheater” who takes food without reciprocating. Ifcheaters are evolutionarily more successful than food-sharers, the altru-ism eventually disappears and all the animals wind up being selﬁsh. Thevampires solve the problem of cheaters by developing special friendshipsthrough what might be considered same-sex courtship. This involvescontinual mutual grooming and food solicitation using the bat equiva-lent of kissing, all of which reinforces the pair-bond and promotes long-term survival. Other species have different tactics to exclude or retaliate against theselﬁsh.29 For instance, Rhesus macaques who ﬁnd food sources and don’tgive food calls telling everyone else about it are subsequently targets ofaggression. Little is known about whether animals acquire a “reputation” thatothers use to decide whether to include them in cooperative activities.The idea of reciprocal altruism invites thinking in terms of pairs. Yet inmy ﬁeld studies of lizards, whenever I’ve seen two animals interactingwith each other using head bobs, pushups, and color changes, all theother lizards in the vicinity were watching too. Do they remember whatthey’ve just seen? Probably. The lizards can probably remember whowon or lost in a showdown over territory, and they can probably re-member who cheated and who reciprocated in an instance of coopera-tion. Animals may talk about each other as well, indulging in animal gos-sip.30 Animal interactions, from mating to territorial spats, to groomingand food-sharing, are often done out in the open, so that everyone cansee and later discuss what happened. Animals with “nice” reputationsmay be included in cooperative activities and “meanies” left out. Repu-tations may provide a way for an animal to know whether another islikely to reciprocate, without having to learn the hard way. Similarly, little is known about animal “generosity.” A social systemeffective at excluding cheaters promotes evolution of the desire to share.Generosity depends on society’s promise that what goes around comesaround. If vampires someday prove to be among nature’s most generouscreatures, future children’s comic books may feature vampires as friendsrather than foes. The gold medal for cooperation between mammals is held by small,almost hairless rodents that live underground in parts of Kenya,Ethiopia, and Somalia. Their subterranean families consist of certain in-
64 ANIMAL RAINBOWSdividuals specialized for reproduction and others who routinely groom,feed, and protect the offspring. If this society sounds like a colony ofbees, with a reproductive queen surrounded by the workers, you’re right.These mammals, called naked mole-rats (Heterocephalus glaber) be-cause of their exposed smooth skin, are the vertebrate counterparts ofthe social insects.31 A family of naked mole-rats typically consists of about one hundredindividuals. Naked mole-rats are underground all the time. Their onlyaboveground signs are volcano-shaped mounds about one foot high, cre-ated by ejecting loose soil from their burrows. Naked mole-rats makethese mounds when excavating tunnels, primarily at dawn and dusk, andduring the winter rainy season. To ﬁnd food, the naked mole-rats diguntil they bump into a juicy root. The rats can’t see or smell through thedirt, so ﬁnding a root is like a miner striking a vein of gold. Becausenaked mole-rats are so difficult to study in the ﬁeld, most observationsare based on captive colonies in the lab. Naked mole-rat families are really close—more than 80 percent of thematings occur between brothers and sisters or between parents and off-spring. Typically one female and one to three males do the breeding. Thebreeding female is aggressively dominant over other females. A breedingfemale gives birth every two to three months, producing a litter of aboutten pups. A female produces thirty to sixty offspring per year. Non-breeding naked mole-rats are not sterile. If a breeding male or female diesor is removed, a nonbreeding mole-rat of the same sex steps up to takehis or her place. Breeding is a demanding occupation. Although the breeding femaletypically remains the largest and heaviest animal in the extended familyduring her tenure as chief breeder, the breeding males lose weight afterthey become breeders, quickly shedding 17 to 30 percent of their weight,and appear emaciated after several years. Meanwhile the breeding fe-male becomes not only heavier but also longer, adding vertebrae to herspinal column. Who becomes a breeder (either male or female) seems to be deter-mined by conﬂict among the aspiring females. Upon the death of the fe-male breeder, the would-be successors not only attack one another butalso target speciﬁc males, shoving and biting them. Of seven ﬁghtsstarted by females against males, ﬁve ﬁghts led to the death of the male.32
TWO-GENDER FAMILIES 65The males attacked were either mates of the previous breeding female orwere pair-bonded to rival females, as indicated by courtship activitiessuch as frequent anogenital nuzzling. The nonbreeding males and females provide parental care to the off-spring of the breeders. From shortly before the pups are born untilthey’re weaned, the nonbreeders huddle with the pups in the communalnest to provide a stable thermal environment, a warm nursery. The non-breeders regularly nudge, handle, and groom the young; retrieve pupsthat fall out of the nest; transport pups when the family moves to a newnest site; and evacuate pups from the nest during a disturbance. Thenonbreeders also provide food to the pups in the form of caecotrophies,partly digested fecal pellets. The pups routinely solicit and obtain thesemorsels of candy from the nonbreeders of both sexes, but not from thebreeders themselves. After the pups are fully weaned, they are able to eatfood that has not been preprocessed. Nonbreeders also defend, maintain,and extend the family’s system of tunnels. They collect and transportfood through the tunnels back to the nest, where they feed other familymembers, including the breeders. The distribution of reproductive activity throughout a group is calledits reproductive skew. A social group where everyone reproduces haslow skew. High skew occurs in the naked mole-rats because only two tofour individuals in the entire group of one hundred or more reproduce.The reproductive skew in an animal society is the most fundamental at-tribute a society has from an evolutionary standpoint—the index of a so-ciety’s reproductive equity. Little is known about what determines a so-ciety’s reproductive skew to begin with, but once in place, the skew setsa baseline for how each individual in the society structures a life plan forreproductive success. Cliff swallows (Hirundo pyrrhonota) are perhaps our closest cousinswhen it comes to life in the big city.33 Swallows live as monogamouspairs in colonies. Their nests, which look like small pitchers, arearranged side by side. Up to ﬁve thousand birds form what amounts toa city of mud huts. Not all swallows live in the big city, though. Somelive in small villages of twenty or so nests, and some males hang out out-side of town without any nests. Cliff swallow life includes many features of our own city life—a hotreal estate market, trespassing, robbery, hanky-panky with the neigh-
66 ANIMAL RAINBOWSbors, plus presumably some compensations. Nonetheless, most ob-servers of cliff swallow life emphasize the problems, perhaps because thebirds live in the countryside, where the virtues of city living are under-appreciated. The nests are packed in so densely that occasionally a birdis trapped inside and dies when a neighbor’s construction project blocksits entrance hole. Even worse, the droppings from a nest above may clogup and bury a nest below—swallows seriously need expertise in civil en-gineering. Swallows also have a major public health crisis. The colonydensity promotes the growth of bugs that harm the chicks and adults. Birds occasionally “trespass” into one another’s nests by either barg-ing in on the owner unannounced or following the owner in before he orshe can turn around and block the entrance. Seventy-ﬁve percent of thetrespassers are males. Of nest entries considered “successful,” 14 percentof the time, the trespasser stole grass used to line the nest; 9 percent ofthe time, a male trespasser forced himself on his neighbor’s wife; 7 per-cent of the time, the trespasser stole some still-wet mud before it haddried; 3 percent of the time, a female laid an egg, or transferred an egg,into her neighbor’s nest; 1 percent of the time, the trespasser tossed oneof the neighbor’s eggs or chicks out the window; and in 0.3 percent ofthe cases, the trespasser evicted the owner. Enough intrigue for a new TVdrama, “Cliff Swallow Vice.” Females congregate in ﬂocks while gathering mud and grass to makenests. “Surplus” males hang around mud holes waiting for females toalight. The males circle above and then pounce, “forcing” copulation asthe pair ﬂails about in the mud. Nonetheless, some males may be inno-cent of evil intent, traveling to a mud hole for regular ol’ mud, wherethey encounter a female who “elicits a forced copulation.” Also, “fe-males did not always appear to struggle with the males attempting tocopulate with them at a mud hole. Some females clearly allowed suc-cessful cloacal contact.”34 Indeed, 86 percent of the extra-pair copula-tions (EPCs) at the mud hole appeared to “achieve” cloacal contact. What do husbands back at the nest do about all this? They are “sus-pected of dealing with the threat of cuckoldry by frequently copulatingwith their mates.” Indeed, “the male copulated with his mate virtuallyeach time she returned to the nest,” leading to conjugal love “dozens”of time in a single morning. Biologists have observed which males are “perpetrators” of illicit ro-
TWO-GENDER FAMILIES 67mance. Among thirty-eight male birds observed in EPCs, one male“committed” twelve copulations, another eleven, the next eight, and soforth. Thirty percent of the EPCs involved the top three, with the num-bers trailing off to those who had only one dalliance apiece. Thus only afew males commonly “engaged in this behavior,” whereas most “did it”casually or not at all. EPCs lead to extra-pair paternity, or EPP—that is, to eggs in the nestfathered by a male other than the male tending the nest. Females placeeggs in one another’s nest, leading to varied egg maternity in the nest too.Extra-pair maternity, or EPM, refers to eggs mothered by females otherthan the female tending the nest. Females either lay eggs in their neighbor’s nest or transfer eggs laidin their own nest to other nests by carrying them in their bills. Femalestransfer eggs primarily to nests nearby, within ﬁve nests of their own.The transfer typically happens when the recipient nest is left unat-tended. In several cases, though, a male nest owner allowed a neigh-boring female to enter his nest and lay an egg there while he waspresent. The female does not toss an egg already there to make roomfor hers; she simply adds her own egg to those already there. Around15 percent of the nests wind up with one or more eggs with extra-pairmaternity. Biologists call transferring eggs “brood parasitism”; the bird owningthe recipient nest is called a “host”; and the bird delivering the egg, a“parasite.” Host birds lay 71 percent fewer eggs than parasite birds, im-plying that parasites are somehow taking advantage of the hosts. How-ever, the parasites are themselves often parasitized, as they leave theirown nest unguarded. Just as some males are more likely to “perpetrate” an EPC, some fe-males are more likely to be brood parasites. In one study 29 percent ofthe females labeled as parasites laid eggs in two or more nests, whereasother females laid eggs only in their own nests. Females did not brood-parasitize to get out of housework. The females labeled as parasites con-tributed just as much parental care and raised as many offspring in theirown nests as did their hosts. The advantage to brood parasites is simplyleaving more eggs in the nests of other females, not in lowering the sizeof their own nest. Just as certain females were more likely to lay eggs inanother’s nest, some females were more likely to receive the eggs of oth-
68 ANIMAL RAINBOWSers. Also, females sometimes transfer baby nestlings who have alreadyhatched. When EPCs and brood parasitism are taken into account, 43 percentof the nests are estimated to contain an egg unrelated to one or bothbirds tending the nest. Clearly, cliff swallows have decoupled economicmonogamy from reproductive monogamy. Both EPPs and EPMs lead to eggs in the nest unrelated to one or bothof the paired birds at the nest. EPPs and EPMs are not symmetric, how-ever, because an EPP implies that one gamete was transferred, whereasan EPM implies the transfer of two gametes, one from the mother andone from the father. In fact, a female transferring an egg may not be in-tending to get a free ride, but rather may be transferring the egg to thefather’s nest. So-called brood parasitism hasn’t been demonstrated to becompetitive at all. The appetite for seeing theft and deceit everywhere has blinded biol-ogists to other interpretations of what’s going on. Swallows apparentlyhave a distributed system for raising young. Throughout the colony theparenting workload is essentially parceled out to work teams of twoadults apiece, which amounts to economic monogamy, even though theegg and gamete trading implies an absence of reproductive monogamy.Each team winds up tending about the same number of eggs andnestlings in its nest, and each clutch of nestlings contains offspring fromthe neighborhood. (For more on a system of distributed paternity in aclosely related species, the tree swallow, see chapter 7.) After ﬂedging, the juvenile birds gather in ﬂocks called crèches. Theadults continue to feed their young for a few days after they have ﬂownthe nest by searching them out in these crèches and giving them foodthere. They can recognize their own offspring by listening for an indi-vidually distinctive signature in their calls. Some juveniles do not join thecrèches, returning instead to the nests, much as an eighth grader mightreturn to kindergarten for cookies. Called kleptoparasites, the juvenilesblock the nest entrance and intercept food destined for the baby nestlingsinside. The parents “willingly” feed these juveniles. The adults neverevict them as they routinely do other adults who trespass. Why? The par-ents are supposedly unable to recognize the juveniles as thieves and areduped into disgorging their food to someone other than their nestlings. Why isn’t the food given the juveniles considered a voluntary dona-
TWO-GENDER FAMILIES 69tion by the adults? Calling juveniles at the nest kleptoparasites criminal-izes these birds and implies that the adults are incapable of knowing theirown best interests. Indeed, any swallow who doesn’t do what they’resupposed to is criminalized. The males in EPCs are “perpetrators” ofcopulations, the females are “elicitors” of copulations, and females whoplace eggs in other nests are “parasites.” Birds haven’t been corrupted bysex and violence in the movies; shouldn’t they be better behaved? The plot thickens. Males sometimes copulate with other males at mudholes, described as “ﬁghts in the mud.” In an experiment in whichstuffed models of birds were placed near a mud hole, 70 percent of thecopulation attempts were directed by males to the male models. The in-terpretation was that the males were “mistaken”; they were unable todistinguish the sex of the stuffed birds. Hmm . . . Cliff swallows have a complex dynamic going. City life in these birdstaxes the ability of biologists even to describe what’s happening. But thepejorative language biologists have used so far undercuts the attempt tounderstand cliff swallow society in greater depth.A DIFFERENT MODELDo animals really own anything? The assumption that they do natural-izes human property rights. Because of this assumption, animals can bedescribed as stealing. Biologists are willing to impute ownership to ani-mals, as though animals cared about property as much as people do. Abiologist interprets a bird feeding another as wasting food. The bird issaid to be incapable, too dumb, to know it’s been duped into giving uphard-earned wages. Yet the same bird is acknowledged to be smart in somany other ways. Why is a bird smart in some ways and dumb in oth-ers? Time and again, biologists assume that ownership is well deﬁned,and explain away the failure to be selﬁsh as a limitation of ability, ratherthan as falsifying the assumption that selﬁshness is adaptive. Close genetic relationship among individuals undercuts natural prop-erty. Imagine living in a place where you’re closely related to everyoneelse. In a colony where every individual is related 50 percent to another,do you own half your things or half-own all your things? I don’t know.The clarity of who owns what becomes fuzzy here. Reciprocal and dis-
70 ANIMAL RAINBOWStributed altruism also undercuts natural property. I live in San Franciscoamong the homeless. I often see people of limited means give to the pooron the streets. Hasn’t someone told them to be selﬁsh? Perhaps they, ortheir genes, have been there too. What goes around comes around. Twenty years ago, Sandra Vehrencamp, an evolutionary biologist, in-troduced the theory that a society’s reproductive skew was connected towhat might today be called a “labor market” for cooperative effortwithin the society. Her focus was on insect colonies with multiplequeens. The basic idea is that an animal helps another in exchange foraccess to reproductive opportunity.35 Some individuals, the privileged,are envisioned to have control of reproductive opportunity, and to payout some of this opportunity to others who do not have similar access.In return for this paycheck, the underprivileged contribute labor to as-sist the privileged in their reproduction. The inequality of reproductive opportunity initially available to dif-ferent individuals is called a “distributional inequity” by economists.Distributional inequity may reﬂect territories that vary in exposure topredators or availability of food, water, and a mix of sunny and shadyspots. An animal’s political connections may also give it control of re-sources. Distributional inequity may develop because of inheritance, age,abilities, and luck. Exchanges of labor for reproduction are especially proﬁtable betweenrelatives, leading to the formation of an extended family wherein the in-dividual who does the breeding is a parent of helpers who remain at thenest. The value to a helper of assisting its parent’s reproduction dependson its genetic relationship to the parent’s offspring. The highest value ac-crues to offspring who are full brothers or sisters—in this case a helpermay not bother with reproducing at all but let the parent do all the work,called kin selection.36 An exchange of help for reproductive opportunity is possible even inthe absence of a genetic relationship if the amount of access the helper ispaid exceeds the reproductive opportunity the helper would have in theabsence of supplying any labor. The reproductive opportunity grantedby a privileged individual who employs an underprivileged individual iscalled a “staying incentive” because this payment leads the underprivi-leged individual to stay at the nest as a helper instead of leaving to starta new nest. Overall, the theory envisions the animal society as a politi-
TWO-GENDER FAMILIES 71cal economy held together by transactions in the currency of reproduc-tive opportunity. Extended families form depending on supply and demand within thelabor market. If demand for labor is tight—no jobs for youngsters out-side of home—then even a small staying incentive will induce them tostay at home and join an extended family. With lots of opportunity out-side of the home, even a large staying incentive will not persuade theyoungsters from striking out on their own. According to this thinking, family structure is ﬂuid, changing whenopportunities outside the nest vary and when the breeder changes mates(which devalues the genetic paycheck helpers receive for their labor).Great distributional inequity causes reproduction to concentrate in afew individuals by mutual agreement between breeders and helpers, re-sulting in a high reproductive skew that may amplify the initial in-equity. If resources are evenly distributed, almost everyone breeds forhimself or herself, and the social system has a low reproductive skew.Sandra Vehrencamp termed these extremes “despotic” and “egalitar-ian” societies.37 Let’s see how this theory works in an actual case. White-browedscrubwrens of Canberra, Australia, ﬁt the labor-market theory of fam-ily dynamics.38 The social groups consist of a breeding female and oneor more males (polyandry). In this case, the young males have to decidewhether to stay and help mom and dad or to leave and set up a newhome. Females build their nest alone and incubate the eggs alone. Themales feed the female while she is fertile before the eggs are laid, andwhile she is incubating the eggs. The males and the females both feed thechicks while they are in the nest and up to eight weeks after they leavethe nest. The males ﬁght it out, leading to a dominance hierarchy, withthe alpha male on top and the beta male as a subordinate. The questionis what the alpha male should allow the beta male to do so that the betamale remains as a subordinate and doesn’t strike out on his own. Howdoes the alpha male hire the beta male as a helper? Four types of multi-male families occur: 1. If the beta male is related to both the alpha male and the female, the beta male helps at the nest and doesn’t father any of the nestlings himself. The alpha male is the sole male parent. Even
72 ANIMAL RAINBOWS though the beta male is not the father, the eggs are very worthwhile to him because the eggs are his full siblings. When combined with limited outside opportunity, the beta male ﬁnds it reproductively proﬁtable to stay, even without the incentive of sharing in some of the matings. This family has high repro- ductive skew. 2. If the beta male is related to the female but not the alpha male, the beta male again helps at the nest without mating, even though the eggs are not as valuable to him as they are when both the female and the alpha male are his relatives. Again the alpha male provides no staying incentive. This family too has high reproductive skew. 3. If the beta male is related to the alpha male but not the female, the value of the eggs is even less because the paternity of the eggs is uncertain. About 15 percent of the eggs are fathered by extra-group matings. From the beta male’s perspective, any eggs the alpha male doesn’t father have no value. As a staying incentive, the alpha male allows the beta male to sire about 20 percent of the brood by mating with the female. This family has moderate reproductive skew. 4. If the beta male is not related to either the alpha male or the female, the beta male sires about 50 percent of the brood himself. The alpha male has to share half of all matings, the maximal possible incentive, to keep the beta male as a helper. This family has zero reproductive skew. Thus the alpha male can be viewed as allotting the beta male accessto reproductive opportunity within the family group in whatever amountis necessary to induce him to stay as a helper. In situations 1 and 2, thebeta male doesn’t need any staying incentive at all. In situation 3, thealpha male allows the beta male to sire 20 percent of the brood, and insituation 4, to sire half of the brood. Do you think these families are happy groups of individuals stickingtogether by mutual consent to fashion productive lives for all? Some bi-ologists are critical, raising three objections.39 The breeder, for one, mayﬁnd the price of the staying incentives too high and not agree to pay. Thehelper would then abandon the nest and set forth alone. But the breedermight coerce the helper to stay anyway. However, the breeder might not
TWO-GENDER FAMILIES 73be able to completely control the helper. The helper would thereforebreed surreptitiously to whatever extent he could. This is not a peacefulhome, but a family at war. A second objection concerns whether the net effect of the “helper” isactually to help or to hurt. Does hanging around the nest and bringingin some food now and then yield a net beneﬁt to the breeder? In nakedmole-rats, the breeding female aggressively prods “lazy” workers, sug-gesting a tension between employer and employee.40 A third objection is that mutual consent is beyond what animals arecapable of doing. Perhaps animals can’t really negotiate labor contractsamong one another when people can’t even do this very well. But I be-lieve that animals can do anything—I’m a hopeless animal chauvinist. These objections are perhaps merely growing pains in the early stagesof a new theory. The approach of looking at labor relations among fam-ily members seems promising to me. I’d like to see this theory becomemore dynamic and interactive. As it is, the breeder is assumed to knowwhat the helpers are willing to accept and then offer that price. Thebreeder is what economists call a perfectly discriminating monopolist, asole seller who has perfect information about what buyers are willing topay. Economic theory also allows for price negotiation between sellerand buyer, and competition among sellers and among buyers. Extendingbiological labor relations theory to include ongoing negotiations be-tween breeders and helpers may solve the present limitations, and allowus to predict when societies will become peaceful or violent. The take-home message from this theory is that reproductive inequityemerges from distributional inequity combined with genetic relation-ships. In animals, we have the counterpart of human democracies anddictatorships. We see in these biological theories the same issues that po-litical scientists deal with in human societies. We see an even distributionof resources lead to widespread participation in breeding and a concen-trated distribution of resources lead to power hierarchies, family feuds,and labor strife. We see economic markets for transactions of reproduc-tive opportunity. As we now move to social systems featuring multiple genders, the lan-guage biologists use to describe how animals behave becomes particu-larly loaded. The language always lauds the individuals who hold terri-tories and possess mates, as though each male were biologically entitled
74 ANIMAL RAINBOWSto a castle of his own, complete with princess. Words like stealing, par-asitism, deceit, and mimicry dominate the discussion and distort the so-phisticated reality of what really happens in societies that contain a bio-logical diversity of participants. Instead, the theory of transactions ofreproductive opportunity seems to extend nicely to family organizationswith multiple genders.
6Multiple-Gender FamiliesT he social roles of multiply gendered animals are indicated by their bodies. Males or females in a species may come in two or more sizes or colors. The morphological differences are the tip of the iceberg.The two morphs approach courtship differently, have different numbersof mates, have different arrangements of between-sex and same-sex re-lationships, live different life spans, prefer different types of real estatefor their homes, exercise different degrees of parental care, and so on. Be-cause body shape, color, and posture—the important modes of commu-nication in ﬁsh and lizards—are so easily visible to biologists, multigen-der societies are better described in these groups than in groups thatcommunicate more by sound and scent. Biologists have struggled with naming these within-sex polymor-phisms. They may be called alternative mating strategies to emphasizethe different approach of each morph to courtship. Or they may be calledalternative life histories to emphasize the different life path each morphtakes. Previously, I suggested that we call these different expressions ofhow to live “genders.” I feel this word best captures the totality of thedifferences between the morphs, extending from mating, throughlifestyle, to length of life. Phrases like “alternative” mating strategy or “alternative” life historyare especially poor names for multiple genders because the “alternative” 75
76 ANIMAL RAINBOWSstrategy is usually the most common strategy. Singling out a minoritystrategy as “normal” and labeling the rest “alternative” is simply preju-dice. Societies with multiple genders are not easy to describe becausewe’re not prepared to ﬁnd what we actually see. But let’s wade in.TWO MALE, ONE FEMALEThe ﬁrst step beyond one-male one-female two-gender societies arethose with two male genders and one female gender, making three alto-gether. Here’s a sample. Bullfrogs (Rana catesbeiana) have two male genders: large males whocall at night, giving bullfrogs their name, and small males who are silent.1Both are reproductively competent, and females mate with both. Silentmales turn into calling males as they grow older. Male frogs in otherspecies2 and males in many vertebrate groups also have to decide whento begin breeding—whether to wait until established enough to ﬂauntwealth and power, or to begin sooner with fewer resources but lots ofcharm. Perhaps silent males should not be considered a different genderfrom calling males, but rather an early developmental stage of the samegender. Compare this case with others, though, and you may agree thatit makes more sense to view males who mature from a silent stage intoa calling stage as changing genders. Did you know a ﬁsh could sing? There is a ﬁsh in the bays and estuar-ies of the Paciﬁc coast, including San Francisco Bay, called the plainﬁnmidshipman (Porichthys notatus) because of its bioluminescent spots,which resemble rows of buttons on a Navy uniform. These ﬁsh are alsoknown as the California singing ﬁsh or canary-bird ﬁsh. The species hastwo male genders who behave somewhat like bullfrogs. The large malegender consists of ﬁsh who defend territories and guard the eggs laid inthem. To signal readiness to mate, a large male emits a low hummingsound for as long as ﬁfteen minutes, and a female may respond by enter-ing the territory and laying eggs there. Females lay only one batch of eggs.A large male guards a big collection of eggs laid by ﬁve or six females. Thesmall male gender consists of ﬁsh that mature at a younger age and aresilent, like the silent bullfrogs. They don’t defend territories. Instead, theymate by darting in to fertilize eggs being laid in a large male’s territory.
MULTIPLE-GENDER FAMILIES 77 This ﬁsh is but one of hundreds of known species where males comein two or more genders. This species is unusual because its habit ofsinging has allowed biologists to determine how deeply the anatomy ofthe two male genders differs. For biology wonks, here are the technicaldetails: The large male gender relative to the small male gender has a rel-ative sixfold advantage in the mass of sound-producing muscles, a three-to ﬁvefold increase in the number and diameter of sound-producing mus-cle ﬁbers, a cellular ultrastructure with enlarged zones densely ﬁlled withmitochondria, a more branched endoplastic reticulum, larger sarco-meres, and Z-lines that are twenty times wider. Motoneurons and pace-maker neurons are also three times larger, as well as sonic axons withterminal boutons two to three times larger. And so on. Even withoutbeing a biology wonk, the large male and small male genders clearly rep-resent deeply different developmental programs, involving different ex-pressions of entire suites of genes.3 Thus, both the bullfrog and plainﬁn midshipman have a calling largemale gender and a silent small male gender. A bullfrog male changesfrom the small gender to the large gender as he ages, whereas a maleplainﬁn midshipman is locked into one of these genders for life. In the Paciﬁc, coho salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch) have two typesof males. A “jack” spends two years in the ocean before returning tostreams to breed, and a “hooknose” spends three years in the ocean be-fore returning to breed. The female spends three years in the ocean too.All three types die after breeding. A jack is small and cryptically colored,and a hooknose is big, has a pronounced snout (hence its name), and isbrightly colored. The females excavate a nest in the gravel in which they lay their eggs.When they do, the closest male fertilizes the most eggs. Hooknose malesare better than jacks at ﬁghting for position near a female and wind upwith the most fertilizations. The jacks obtain some fertilizations by dart-ing in under the female while she is laying eggs. The beneﬁt for the jackof being able to breed one year earlier and avoiding the hazard of livinganother year at sea compensates for its relative disadvantage in fertiliza-tions compared with the hooknose. Jack and hooknose coho salmon ap-pear to have equally successful strategies of life.4 In the Atlantic, salmon (Salmo salar) have some males that migratefrom rivers to the sea as smolts and return after about ﬁve years as large
78 ANIMAL RAINBOWSanadromous males about 75 centimeters in length. Other males, calledparr, don’t bother journeying to the sea. They remain in the streams andmature in about three years at near 50 centimeters. The females also mi-grate to the sea and return. At spawning, a large anadromous male de-fends access to a female, while the parr hang out downstream. When theanadromous male and female are mating, the parr dart in and obtainsome fertilizations. These two male life strategies work out to haveabout the same overall success when survival and mating access are fac-tored in. Male red deer (Cervus elaphus, also called elk) who don’t have antlersprobably are counterparts of the silent male frogs.5 Called hummels (ornotts), these deer are in better physical condition than males with antlers,and may at times be more successful at mating.6THREE MALE, ONE FEMALE—SUNFISHNow to species with three male genders. The females here have one gen-der, making four genders in total. A good example is the sunﬁsh, a deep-bodied ﬁsh averaging about 10 centimeters in length and exceedinglycommon in North American lakes. When I was in high school in NewJersey, I remember seeing sunﬁsh underwater. Every time I went snor-keling in one of the nearby lakes, I would see them through my facemask. If I went ﬁshing, all I would catch were sunﬁsh. Everybody tookthese ﬁsh for granted and hoped to catch a perch or other rarer ﬁsh. Iwould never have guessed that these everyday freshwater ﬁsh from theUnited States and Canada would someday challenge the foundations ofgender and sexuality. One sunﬁsh species, the bluegill sunﬁsh (Lepomis macrochirus), hasbeen studied in detail at Lake Opinicon, Ontario, Canada, and at LakeCazenovia, in upstate New York.7 Spawning males consist of three dis-tinct size/color classes, and together with females, fall into four mor-phological categories, corresponding to four distinct genders: 1. Large males are about 17 centimeters long and eight years old. Their gonads constitute 1 percent of body weight, and they have a light body color with a yellow-orange breast.
MULTIPLE-GENDER FAMILIES 79 2. Medium males are about 10 centimeters long and four years old. Their gonads are 3 percent of body weight, and they have a dark body color marked with dark vertical bars. 3. Small males are about 7 centimeters long and three years old. Their gonads are 5 percent of body weight, and they have a uniformly light body color with neither a yellow-orange breast nor dark vertical bars. The testes may occupy most of the body cavity, crowding the stomach and displacing the intestines. 4. Females are about 12 centimeters long and six years old, making them larger than the medium males by about 2 centimeters and older by about two years. At breeding, females bulge somewhat with eggs. Females have a dark body color with vertical bars, like the medium males. The medium males somewhat resemble small young females because of the similarity of color pattern.The yearly spawning episode lasts only one day. In preparation, large malesaggressively stake out territories next to one another in aggregations of ahundred or more, called leks, along the bottom of the lake at a depth of 1meter. Large males are called on to defend their space against neighborsabout once every three minutes. Large males make nests for eggs in theirterritories by scooping out a depression in the mud with their tails. Femalesaggregate at the locales with many males and do not visit isolated or pe-ripheral nests. Females prefer nests belonging to large aggregations becausethe presence of many males affords more protection from egg predators. The large males are not Mr. Nice Guys. Their acts of aggression in-clude biting, opercular spreading, lateral displays, tail beating, and chas-ing. Although primarily directed at intruding males, aggression some-times is directed at a female in the territory—domestic violence, sunﬁshstyle. The male apparently tries to control the speed and timing at whicha female lays eggs. Females simply leave if harassed too much in this way. The females arrive in a school, and one by one they enter the territo-ries of the large males. When a female arrives, a large male begins toswim in tight circles, with the female following. Every few seconds as thepair turns, the female rotates on her side, presses her genital pore againstthat of the large male, and releases eggs that the large male fertilizes. Theegg release is visible as a horizontal dipping motion. A female may spawn in many nests. A large male accumulates up to
80 ANIMAL RAINBOWSthirty thousand eggs from various females during the one-day spawningepisode. A female lays about twelve eggs at a time with her dipping mo-tion, so this total egg accumulation involves some female laying in thenest about once every thirty seconds. The scene is fast. Still, large malessomehow ﬁnd the time to enter the nests of neighbors, and about 9 per-cent of the fertilizations in a nest are by a neighboring large male. Meanwhile, the small males are active. They stay at the borders be-tween territories of large males and in the periphery, often close to rocksor in vegetation. Eggs remain viable in lake water for about an hour andsperm for only a minute. When the female releases eggs, the small malesdart in quickly to release sperm over the eggs and carry out their own fer-tilizations. The large males try to repel the small males from their terri-tories, but the small males are more numerous than the large males—about seven to one in shallow-water colonies. Chasing all these smallmales, as well as neighboring large males and the occasional predator,takes a large male away from fertilizing the eggs being laid in his terri-tory. In these circumstances, the females spawn readily with small maleswhile the large male is busy with all his chasing. There are more small males in shallow-water colonies than deep onesbecause there is more vegetation for cover. It is important to hide be-cause predators—large-mouth bass, small-mouth bass, and pike—lurkin the lake. Thus the ratio of small to large males depends on the sur-rounding environmental context. All in all, the small males seem to bethe gender counterpart of silent bullfrogs, silent singing ﬁsh, jack andparr salmon, and antlerless male deer. The medium males—the third male gender—are really surprising. Noone knows where the medium males live most of the time, but they mayschool with the females. A medium male approaches the territory of alarge male from above in the water and descends without aggression orhesitation into the large male’s territory. The two males then begin acourtship turning that continues for as long as ten minutes. In the end,the medium male joins the large male, sharing the territory that the largemale originally made and defends. Although the medium male sometimes joins the large male before afemale has arrived, more often the medium male joins after a female isalready present. The large male makes little if any attempt to drive awaythe medium male, in contrast to the way the large male drives away small
MULTIPLE-GENDER FAMILIES 81males that dart into the territory. When a female and two males arepresent, the three of them jointly carry out the courtship turning andmating. Typically, the medium male, who is smaller than the female, issandwiched between the large male and the female while the turningtakes place. As the female releases eggs, both males fertilize them. Occasionally, two females may be within a large male’s territory at thesame time. Although the large male mates with both females, the threedo not participate in any common ritual similar to the three-way inter-action of the female with a large and a medium male. After the day’s excitement is over, each large male remains in his ter-ritory for eight to ten days to guard the eggs. The large male repels nestpredators. During this period he never leaves the nest to forage and losesbody weight. In all, 85 percent of spawning males are either small or medium, withthe remaining 15 percent large males. Though in the minority, largemales take part in most of the matings. Among the large males, the re-productive skew is high and only some of the large males apparently sur-vive the mutual aggression that is necessary to acquire a successful terri-tory. The small and medium males obtain about 14 percent of thespawnings. Overall, 85 percent of the territories in which spawning oc-curs consist of one male with one female, 11 percent of two or moremales and one female—usually a large male accompanied by a mediummale—and 4 percent of one male and two females. Developmentally, the small and medium males are one genotype, andthe large males another. Individuals of the small male genotype transitionfrom the small male gender into the medium male gender as they age,whereas individuals of the large male genotype are not reproductively ac-tive until they have attained the size and age of the large male gender. Explaining the medium male gender has caused big-time confusionamong biologists. Three theories have emerged.DECEITThe most popular theory is that by sharing some female coloration andparticipating in courtship turning, a medium male deceives a large maleinto thinking he’s a female.8 This female-disguised male then steals someof the fertilizations that rightfully belong to the large male.
82 ANIMAL RAINBOWS I don’t ﬁnd this theory plausible. Sunﬁsh, which prey on tiny shrimp inthe water during the day, have great eyesight. As predators, they estimatesize and distance very well, constantly using these abilities to decide whichprey to catch and which to ignore. Lots of visual cues distinguish amedium male from a female, including simply size and shape. A ﬁsh thatcan detect the difference between a 1- and 2-millimeter shrimp 1 meteraway can surely detect 2 centimeters of difference between two ﬁsh rightnext to him. In addition, the large male has lots of time to check out amedium male as they turn together in courtship for up to ten minutes. Dur-ing this time, the large male can see that the medium male isn’t laying eggs. If the large male were being deceived, he should occasionally break offthe three-way mating ceremony. For a large male and a female to swimin formation with the medium male squeezed in between, precision isneeded. If the large male were being deceived, he would maneuver to ex-clude the medium male once the medium male was discovered to be pro-ducing sperm rather than eggs, just as the large male actively chases offsmall males. Furthermore, when two actual females are in the territorywith a large male, the three don’t swim together in a three-way matingceremony. If the large male believed the medium male was a female, thenhe shouldn’t carry on a three-way mating ceremony with him. The explanation for why the large male doesn’t chase off the mediummale once the deceit is discovered is supposed to be his worry about los-ing fertilizations while the female is actively laying eggs. But the largemale does chase small males in spite of this same cost. To counter this,it’s further argued that the medium male’s female coloration suppressesthe large male’s tendency toward aggression. All in all, this theory is another instance of biologists explaining awaysomething surprising by assuming the animals are somehow incapaci-tated. The large male should chase away the medium male, shouldn’t he?And if the large male doesn’t—well then, for some reason he just can’t.A large male is too dumb to tell a medium male from a female. A largemale can’t turn his aggressiveness on when he needs it.COMMON UNGENDERED SIGNALAn alternative theory is that the medium male is helping the large male,that they are working together as a team.9 How? One possibility is that
MULTIPLE-GENDER FAMILIES 83the two males together are more successful at attracting a female thanone male is by himself. Females prefer to lay eggs in territories in themidst of many males because collectively many males protect againstpredators better than an isolated male does. Therefore, a territorial malemight enhance his chances of attracting a female if he teamed up with amedium male. Teaming up with a medium male might seem more ap-pealing from his point of view than teaming up with another large malebecause the medium male, with smaller gonads, produces fewer spermthan a large male would. By teaming up with a medium male, he obtainsa helper at the least cost. According to this theory, the fertilizations obtained by the mediummale are not stolen from the large male, but actually offered to him bythe large male as an incentive to stay, a transaction based on reproduc-tive opportunity. The courtship that precedes the medium male joiningthe large male’s territory amounts to a job interview. Medium males havefemale color patterns, this theory claims, to act as a white ﬂag, an invi-tation to cease hostility and aggression. The medium male resembles afemale by coincidence, because both are sending the same signal, ﬂyinga white ﬂag. By this account, the medium male is a bona ﬁde male knownto all as male, even though he happens to be ﬂying the same colors as afemale. Although this theory does seem plausible to me, I’m still suspicious.It seems a bit too male-centered, suggesting that the more males the bet-ter—more males mean more protection, more aggregate masculinitymeans more attractiveness. Well, maybe. But what about the function of female and medium malecoloration? Are these only ungendered white ﬂags? Or does the mediummale really intend to be a feminine male, and is the large male speciﬁcallyemploying a feminine male as a helper, rather than a smaller version ofhimself?MALE FEMININITYI suggest a third interpretation, that females view a large territorial maleas dangerous, to be approached with caution. A female might wonder ifshe will suffer domestic violence from this male who’s trying to look bigand powerful. She sees the large male chase neighbors and small males.
84 ANIMAL RAINBOWSAll she sees is violence. Where’s the evidence that this good-looking guywith a great territory is safe to be with? Conversely, how is a large maleto say that he’s gentle after all—that all the tough stuff is reserved formale colleagues? Perhaps the courtship between the large male and the medium maleoffers the female a chance to see how the large male behaves with a fem-inine-looking ﬁsh who is slightly smaller than she is. She can watch howthe large male does his courtship turning with the medium male. She canwatch whether the large male is aggressive toward the medium male. Ofcourse, a large male who is kind to a medium male is not guaranteed tobe kind to her too, but at least watching how the large male behaves withthe medium male supplies evidence, which is better than just going on ahunch. Furthermore, once the medium male is sandwiched between the largemale and the female during their combined courtship turns, he maysomehow facilitate the mating process by synchronizing the release ofegg and sperm. The medium male may protect the female from spawn-ing harassment through his position between her and the large male.Also, the medium male may have developed a relationship with the fe-males while schooling with them, and thus be able to vouch that the largemale is safe. In my interpretation, the medium male’s femininity as such has a gen-uine, nondeceptive role. I suggest that the feminine male is a “marriagebroker” who helps initiate mating, and perhaps a “relationship coun-selor” who facilitates the mating process once the female has entered thelarge male’s territory. This service is purchased by the large male fromthe small male with the currency of access to reproductive opportunity.Thus, the second and third theories both view the medium male as work-ing in tandem with the large male, rather than as stealing from him, andextend the concept of a helper. Sharing fertilization represents an incen-tive to stay, not theft. To coin some new biology jargon, we might saythat a medium male is a prezygotic helper, in contrast to the postzygotichelper, who assists in caring for offspring that have already been born.Nothing prevents animals from cooperating in bringing about a mating,as well as in caring for young after a mating—the animal counterparts
MULTIPLE-GENDER FAMILIES 85of a dating service selling prezygotic help, and a pediatric clinic sellingpostzygotic help (see the discussion of ruffs in chapter 7). In view of the roles played by the three male genders, let’s agree to callthe large male a “controller,” the small male an “end-runner,” and themedium male a “cooperator.”THREE MALE, ONE FEMALE—OTHER CASESThe services of the third male gender, typically the intermediate body sizetype, are purchased by controller males with the currency of access to re-productive opportunity. The services that are most valuable to the con-troller vary with the circumstances. The wrasses of Europe are as interesting as those on coral reefs. Thesespecies don’t do any sex changing, but they do have multiple male gen-ders. The two-male species have a controller morph that is colorful, ter-ritorial, and guards eggs, plus an end-runner morph that is smaller andplain-colored. The three-male species add a medium-sized male, offeringa useful comparison to the North American sunﬁsh. Take the spotted European wrasse (Symphodus ocellatus), which livesin the shallow water of the Mediterranean along rocky shores. Biologistshave observed these wrasses while scuba diving in Revellata Bay, west ofCalvi on Corsica.10 These rather small ﬁsh live for up to three years,breed during the summer, and have a maximum length of 8 centimeters.Of the three morphs, the medium male is again the most interesting. Thismedium male does not look or act like a feminine male. It’s a bit biggerthan a female, has its own distinctive coloration, and can be aggressive.Nonetheless, the medium male is enticed by the large male into his terri-tory and fertilizes some of the eggs laid in the territory. Why? The largemale has apparently hired the medium male as a security guard. Themedium male chases away small males that the large male would other-wise have to chase away himself. More interestingly, this species happensto have more females than it does males with territories. During spawn-ing, several females arrive at one nest, and because only one female canspawn at a time while the large male is there, the others wait at the rimof the nest. But females may try to crowd in and interrupt the female whois laying eggs. In this situation, the medium male expels the excess fe-
86 ANIMAL RAINBOWSmales so the spawning can continue. The medium male then stays withthe nest for three days, compared with the full week that the large malesticks around. The spotted European wrasse has three developmental pathways. Onetype skips early reproduction and matures into a controller. The secondstarts as an end-runner and transitions into a cooperator. The third startsas a cooperator and transitions into a controller.11 Thus, comparingwrasses to sunﬁsh, the operational sex ratio may determine whether themedium male is feminine or masculine. If females are scarce, as in sun-ﬁsh, the large male will need help attracting them, and a feminine malecan assist. If females are common, as in wrasses, the large male will needhelp keeping order at home. In this case, the controller employs abouncer instead of a marriage broker. Another particularly graphic case is found among the cichlids, a fam-ily of colorful perchlike ﬁshes found in the tropical freshwaters ofAfrica, South and Central America, India, Sri Lanka, and Madagascar.About 1,500 species are known, or 5 percent of all vertebrate species!Most species occur in the Great Rift lakes of eastern Africa—LakeMalawi, Lake Tanganyika, and Lake Victoria. Cichlids are most closelyrelated to the saltwater damselﬁshes, wrasses, and parrotﬁshes, amongothers.12 They are the freshwater equivalent of the colorful and diversecoral reef ﬁsh. Oreochromis mossambicus, a kind of cichlid, from the IncomatiRiver in Mozambique were studied in an aquarium in Portugal.13 Theseﬁsh are rather small, around 6 centimeters, and males come in three gen-ders. The controller recruits the cooperator through a courtship that in-cludes remarkable same-sex sexuality. The black territory-controlling males form dense aggregations, leks,in the sand or mud during the breeding season. A male digs a pit to at-tract a female, and after courtship, she lays eggs there. The male thenquivers and releases spawn over the eggs. The female inhales the mixtureof eggs and spawn into her mouth where the actual fertilizations takeplace. The female then broods the eggs in her mouth, continuing brood-ing even after the young fry have hatched, for a total of three weeks. Theyoung are “born” when they swim out of the female’s mouth. The second male gender is the familiar end-runner, who darts into a
MULTIPLE-GENDER FAMILIES 87controlling male’s territory during spawning and adds some of his ownspawn to the mix inhaled by the female. The controlling male aggres-sively repels the end-runners. The third male gender is once again themost puzzling one. These males have a neutral light color and are ac-tively courted by controller males using the full courtship repertoire usedfor females, including tilting, signaling the nest, circling, and quivering. Of six hundred courtships observed, two hundred were directed tothese light-colored males and the remaining four hundred to females. Inthree of the male-male courtships, the light-colored male placed hismouth on the genital papillae of the dark territorial male, then the terri-torial male quivered and released spawn, whereupon the light-coloredmale moved his mouth as a female does when she inhales the sperm/eggmix. The end-runners did not intrude into these male-male courtships,although they did dart into male-female courtships, indicating thateveryone around knew what was going on. In most groups of these ﬁsh, males courted females more than males.In one group, though, males courted males more than females. The au-thors concluded that “further experimental work is needed.” In partic-ular, the beneﬁts to the controller presumably provided by the third malegender need to be described. Male genders may also range from territorial stay-at-homers to non-territorial travelers. Although many of the three-male species are orga-nized according to the template of controller, end-runner, and coopera-tor, not all are. Among tree lizards (Urosaurus ornatus) living in theAmerican Southwest,14 the males come in various colors—nine areknown for the species. Some populations have only one color, othersonly two colors, and still others as many as ﬁve. At one site upstream of the Verde River in Arizona, two colors eachaccount for 45 percent of the total males. The orange-blue form is a punkrocker’s delight—an orange chin with a big blue spot in the middle, athroat fan with orange near the body and a blue band at the tip, and blueon the stomach. In contrast, the orange form is solid orange on the chin,throat fan, and stomach. The orange-blue males are the most aggressive,and their body proportions are short and stocky. They are the con-trollers, defending territories large enough to overlap the territories ofthree to four females. The orange males are end-runners, but they come
88 ANIMAL RAINBOWSin two subvarieties, nomadic and sedentary. Unlike most end-runners,these males are the same weight or heavier than the controllers, althoughlonger and leaner. These males are not aggressive and defer to controllerswhen challenged. In a typical dry year, orange males are nomadic, spending only a dayor two at a site before moving on. In a rainy year, orange males settledown for the season, becoming sedentary and occupying relativelysmall territories, the size of a female home range. The controllers andend-runners are ﬁxed for life, although an end-runner can transitionback and forth between nomadic and sedentary styles in successiveyears. In this species, the hormonal dimension of gender expression has beenworked out. Progesterone determines whether a male matures into acontroller or an end-runner. A single injection of progesterone given toa tiny hatchling on the day he hatches from the egg will ensure that hematures into an orange-blue controller. In contrast, males with lowprogesterone develop into orange end-runners.15 No intermediatesoccur. Presumably genes produce high or low progesterone levels on theday of hatching, thereby determining whether a male develops into acontroller or an end-runner. As the season progresses and the lizards wait for rain, the orangeslisten to the lizard version of Emmylou Harris’s song “Born to Run.”How does an orange male get to feelin’ like it’s time to hit the roadrather than settlin’ down for a spell? Orange males are sensitive. Whenconditions are dry, orange males show high levels of the hormone cor-ticosterone, an indicator of stress. In orange males, corticosteronecauses testosterone to decline. This drop in testosterone in turn causesorange males to hit the road and become nomadic.16 Meanwhile,orange-blue males are indifferent to weather conditions—they tough itout no matter what. The tree lizards illustrate what are called the “organizing” effects ofhormones (irreversible effects that occur early in development) and alsothe “activating” effects (reversible effects, which usually occur later inlife). Progesterone on the day of hatching organizes the male body to ma-ture into an orange-blue controller. Corticosterone from the stress ofgoing thirsty during a drought activates the orange end-runner to turnnomadic rather than remaining sedentary.
MULTIPLE-GENDER FAMILIES 89TWO MALE, TWO FEMALEWhen multiple genders occur in both males and females, we may won-der whether some gender combinations don’t mesh together especiallywell. Would a feminine male paired with a masculine female be just assuccessful as macho male with a femme female? What about other pair-ings too? White-throated sparrows (Zonotrichia albicollis) of Ontario, Canada,have four genders, two male and two female: 1. A male with a white stripe is the most aggressive, calls often, and is the most territorial. 2. A male with a tan stripe is less aggressive and unable to defend a territory from the white-striped male. 3. A female with a white stripe is aggressive, calls spontaneously, and defends a territory. 4. A female with a tan stripe is the most accommodating of all. When challenged with a territorial intrusion, she continues foraging.17So, in both males and females, the white-striped individuals are more ag-gressive than the tan-striped individuals. Ninety percent of the breedingpairs involve either a white-striped male with a tan-striped female or atan-striped male with a white-striped female—attraction between oppo-sites. The white-striped male appears to have everything going for him. Afemale who chooses to pair with a tan-striped male has to settle for aninferior territory. Yet some females do prefer tan-striped males. In stud-ies in both 1988 and 1989, more tan-striped males found mates, andfound them sooner, than did the white-striped males. So why is themacho white-striped male doing so poorly at attracting mates? A tan-striped male and a white-striped female work as a team to de-fend the territory. When the performance of a pair is considered, theteam of the tan-striped male and white-striped female is just as effectiveat repelling intrusions as that of the white-striped male and tan-stripedfemale. The aggressive potential of both teams is the same. The tan-
90 ANIMAL RAINBOWSstriped males don’t acquire territories until the females arrive to helpthem out. Still, why doesn’t a white-striped female pair with a white-striped male?That way she’d form a team with the most aggression of all, and togetherthey would get the best territory of all. Well, tan-striped males provide moreparental care than do white-striped males, so when nesting survival is fac-tored in, the white-striped female is better off with a more domestic partnerwho leaves her to do more of the ﬁghting. Conversely, the tan-striped fe-males provide more parental care than their white-striped counterparts, soa team composed of a white-striped male and a tan-striped female providesthe same total parental care as the other type of team. White-throated sparrows are a neat case of gender meshing. Twokinds of teams provide the same total amount of protection and parentalcare, but divide the labor differently. These genders represent a geneticpolymorphism, in which the body differences are not limited to coloredstripes. The brain architecture of the morphs differs. Just as with themorphs of the singing ﬁsh, the plainﬁn midshipman, the differencesamong the genders extend deep into the body (see also p. 224).THREE MALE, TWO FEMALESo far, the most genders that have been described in one species is ﬁve:three male and two female genders. The present medal-holder—the side-blotched lizard (Uta stansburiana), from the American Southwest andWest—has both males and females of multiple colors, signifying differ-ent genders in both sexes. Mortality is high, and the population turnsover annually. Three male and two female color morphs occur at a grass-land site in Los Baños Grandes in central California: 1. Orange-throated males are controllers. These “very aggressive, ultradominant, high-testosterone” males defend territories large enough to overlap the home ranges of several females. 2. Blue-throated males are less aggressive and juiced with less testosterone. They defend territories small enough to contain only one female, whom they “guard.”
MULTIPLE-GENDER FAMILIES 91 3. Yellow-throated males don’t defend territories. Instead, they cluster around the territories of the orange males, “sneak” copulations, and masquerade as “female mimics.” 4. Orange-throated females lay many small eggs, 5.9 eggs per batch. Orange-throated females, like their male counterparts, are very territorial and, as a result, must distance themselves from one another, achieving a maximum density of only one female per 1.54 square meters. 5. Yellow-throated females lay fewer but bigger eggs, 5.6 eggs per batch. Yellow-throated females, like their male counterparts, are more tolerant of one another and can achieve a maximum density of one female per 0.8 square meter.18 Females lay up to ﬁve batches of eggs at monthly intervals during aseason. The ratio of males in each gender cycles over time. In one four-year period, blue males predominated in 1991, orange in 1992, yellowin 1993–94, and blue again in 1995. The ratio of females in each morphalso cycles, but over a two-year period. The total abundance also ﬂuc-tuates in a two-year cycle. The female cycle synchronizes with the two-year cycle of total abundance. Concerning the male genders, an explanation for the male cycling wasproposed based on the child’s game of rock-paper-scissors: rock beatsscissors, paper beats rock, and scissors beats paper, leading to a never-ending cycle of who’s winning: “Trespassing yellows can fool orangeswith their female mimicry. However, trespassing yellows are hunteddown by blue males and attacked. Although oranges with their hightestosterone and high stamina can handily defeat blues, they are suscep-tible to the charms of yellows.”19 And so on, in an ecological perpetualmotion machine. Does this theory seem too cute to be true? The problem, as usual, lieswith how the nonaggressive male gender is interpreted. First, all themales “sneak,” not only the yellow ones. Thus, the yellow-throatedmale isn’t distinguished correctly as a sneaker. More important, the yel-low male isn’t a female mimic after all. What is supposedly feminineabout the yellow-throated male? Early studies indicated that all femaleshad yellow throats. Therefore, the yellow male was thought to resem-ble a female in throat color. Later study revealed that the orange females
92 ANIMAL RAINBOWShad been at a low point of their population cycle during the originalstudy. Once the orange females peaked, the yellow-throated andorange-throated males both resembled corresponding morphs in the fe-males. The loss of throat color as a criterion of femininity left only oneother trait: “The most intriguing display that males make, which is re-stricted to yellow-throated males, is an imitation of the female rejectiondisplay. This rejection display is characteristic of post-receptive femalesand consists of a series of rapid head vibrations [called buzzing]. Themale extends his yellow throat, assumes a humped back, and comes inand nips the dominant male on the tail. The parallel between the yellowmale . . . and an actual rejection by a bona ﬁde female is extraordi-nary.”20 Why would performing this one behavior be sufficient to fool an or-ange male into thinking the yellow male is a female? The blue malesaren’t fooled, why only the orange males? This question seems to botherthe investigators a bit too. A revealing passage on their website entitled“Are You Blind?” states, “The orange male is somewhat blind and can’trecognize the yellow male in front of him as a male.” A blind lizard thatmakes its living as a visual predator catching insects? Impossible— theorange males would starve if they were blind. The possibility that the or-ange male knows what he’s doing and actually wants the yellow malearound is never remotely considered. As for the females, the synchrony between population size and morphratio in the females suggests that alternating low and high crowdingdrives the alternating ratios of orange to yellow females. The orange fe-male is more valuable when crowding is low and growth is at a premium.The yellow female is more useful when crowding is high and the abilityto pack into a small space is at a premium.21 Thus the polymorphism be-tween orange and yellow females is theorized as a polymorphism be-tween a genotype adapted to low-density conditions and a genotypeadapted to crowded conditions. Still, the alternation of high and low crowding can’t be the wholestory. Helping takes place too, not just the negative effects of crowding:“When orange females had more orange neighbors their ﬁtness was re-duced, but ﬁtness increased with more yellow neighbors. Yellow femaleﬁtness was not affected by the density of either morph.”22 Also, one won-ders how the two-year female orange/yellow cycle connects with the
MULTIPLE-GENDER FAMILIES 93four-year male orange/yellow/blue cycle. All in all, this social systemwith multiple genders would beneﬁt from rethinking and further study.FEMININE MALES—THE DECEIT MYTHFrom what we’ve seen, the notion of a universal male or female templateis clearly false. Let’s focus speciﬁcally on the males who would seem tomost clearly violate the universal male template: the feminine males. Thethird male gender in bluegill sunﬁsh consists of males that look like fe-males. Are such cross-dressing animals rare? Members of one sex oftendress in the clothes of the other. Feminine males especially provoke bi-ologists to froth at the mouth. Why would any self-respecting male wantto appear feminine? Well, maybe it’s okay if the purpose is deception.Hey, it’s war out there—a guy does what he has to, even wearing a dress,in order to win. Let’s look into cases of male-to-female cross-dressing to see if biolo-gists have really demonstrated that the function is deception. If not—banish the thought—we might have to consider that being a femininemale might be adaptive in itself. The pied ﬂycatcher (Ficedula hypoleuca) is a common insectivorousEuropean bird. Males vary in plumage from a striking black and whiteto brown, and the colors are inherited. Females are also brown. Some bi-ologists have suggested that the brown males are female mimics, eventhough brown males have a darker tail and more white on their wingsthan females. So a human observer can tell the sexes apart, but the birdssomehow can’t.23 Do you think it likely that biologists are more obser-vant than birds? In woods near Oslo, Norway, male ﬂycatchers who had set up terri-tories were presented with individual caged birds to see if they could dis-tinguish the sexes.24 A territory-holding male who hadn’t already at-tracted a female reacted to a female by showing off the entrance to hisnest hole and calling enticingly. When the same male was presented witha macho black-and-white male, he was not so hospitable, and jumped onthe cage of the visitor, pecking at it, trying to attack, and not botheringwith any welcoming calls. When a feminine brown male was presented,the male again showed off his nest hole and called invitingly. Is the
94 ANIMAL RAINBOWSterritory-holding male making a mistake, believing the feminine brownmale is a female? Later in the season, after these territory-holding males had attracteda female, they were again presented with the feminine male. This time,about half of the territory holders did not court the feminine male visi-tor, but instead reacted aggressively. The investigators concluded thatthe territory holders had now acquired enough “experience” with fe-males to tell the difference between a female and a feminine male, so theywere no longer deceived. But some of these very same territory-holding males had bred the pre-ceding year. Didn’t they become “experienced” at that time? The inves-tigators concluded that the territory-holding males forgot over the yearhow to tell a feminine male from a female, and needed “recent sexual ex-perience for correct sex recognition,” which had to be “refreshed eachyear.” Could territory-holding male birds be this dumb? At the beginning of the breeding season, the feminine males tend toarrive late, and they must ﬁnd space for their territories amid the terri-tories of birds that arrived earlier. The feminine males are allowed to set-tle closer to the macho males than the macho males can settle next toeach other. If you were a macho male, wouldn’t you allow a friendlyneighbor to settle closer to you than an aggressive neighbor? Not that thefeminine males are necessarily wimps. When forced to compete with amacho male for a nest box in experimental aviaries, the feminine maleattacked ﬁrst and won, provided he fought at all. Twenty percent of thetime the feminine male didn’t bother ﬁghting and simply let the machomale have the nest box.25 Males with territories who had not yet attracted a female have beenobserved in the wild advertising to feminine males. The territorial maleshows off his nest hole, gives enticing calls, and the feminine male joinshim and they enter the nest cavity together. Does it seem plausible thatthe feminine male has used deceit to enter the home of a territorial male“to obtain information” about his “nest site quality”? Would the femi-nine male be that devious? A simpler explanation is that territorial males who have not yet at-tracted a female are horny and invite romance with feminine males. Oncethe territorial males have attracted a female, they are no longer hornyand no longer interested in courting a feminine male. A simpler expla-
MULTIPLE-GENDER FAMILIES 95nation is that no one is deceived, no one forgets from year to year, andno one requires continual updating of his limited memory. A simpler ex-planation is that the two male birds who retire together into the nest holeare enjoying a romance. These birds may be neighbors building a coop-erative relationship based on same-sex sexual attraction. The problem with deceit theories of animal behavior is that not onlymust some animals be implausibly dumb, but others must be remarkablydevious—there must be great asymmetry in cognitive ability. Imagine abird sneaking into the nest of another to spy on it. What would a birddo with what it saw? Does a bird keep a ﬁle cabinet in its head full ofdirty secrets about its neighbors? I don’t think so, and scientists have notshown any such thing. The European kestrel (Falco tinnunculus), a dramatic bird of prey, of-fers another instance of cross-dressing. Males two years and older areblue-gray with brick-red on the back and spots on the head. The femalesare mostly brown, with a barred pattern on the head. One-year-oldmales resemble females, so much so that observers ﬁnd it difficult to tellyoung males from females. Biologists have therefore suggested that year-old males are female mimics who deceive older males into thinking theyare females. About thirty birds were housed in isolation at a ﬁeld station in centralFinland.26 A bird was placed in a box with one-way glass on the sides.Birds were also placed on the sides; these birds couldn’t see the centralbird because of the one-way glass, but the central bird could see them.The biologists then noted which side bird the central bird paid most at-tention to and tried to associate with—called the “preferred bird.” When the central bird was a macho male and was offered a machomale on one side and a female on the other, he always preferred the fe-male. When he was offered a feminine male on one side and a female onthe other, he preferred either in a ﬁfty-ﬁfty ratio. The investigators claimthey’ve shown that a macho male bird can’t distinguish a feminine malefrom a female. Clearly, though, there is another possibility: a machomale may be quite able to tell the difference between a feminine male anda female, but he doesn’t care which he sits next to. When the central bird was a female and was offered a macho male onone side and a feminine male on the other, she always preferred themacho male. The investigators claim they’ve shown that females are bet-
96 ANIMAL RAINBOWSter able to distinguish sexual identity than males are. The experimentdoesn’t speak to whether a female can distinguish a feminine male froma female. The female wasn’t presented with a choice between a femininemale and a female; the female was offered only males. The investigators go on to speculate that “the better sex recognitionability of females compared with males may have evolved because she isthe ‘choosy’ sex. Males . . . do not need to be so good at sex recognitionas females.” Deceit theory is a trap. Deceit theory forces scientists to takesides on who is smarter—in this case, claiming that females are smarterthan males. A different kind of cross-dressing is found among red-sided gartersnakes (Thamnophis sirtalis parietalis).27 One of seven distinct sub-species of the common garter snake, this nonpoisonous snake is pre-dominantly black with yellow stripes and red bars, and eats invertebratesand small rodents. Females are 10 centimeters larger than males, aver-aging 55 and 45 centimeters, respectively. The red-sided garter snake has made Manitoba’s interlake regionworld-famous for snake-watching, and the town of Inwood has even cre-ated a monument in recognition of its large population of garter snakes.Snake dens (or hibernacula) can be found in tree roots, shale cliffs, rockpiles, sewers, foundations, animal burrows, rock outcrops, and sink-holes. Twenty thousand garter snakes may gather in a single den duringthe winter. In spring the snakes’ mass emergence creates an awesomenatural spectacle. As far back as the 1880s fashionable picnics were heldnear Stony Mountain just to watch this phenomenon. But the snakegatherings have also provoked fear. In a labor strike, penitentiary con-struction workers once refused to work at Stony Mountain until the denwas destroyed. After the snakes emerge, they mate and then disperse to their summerhomes in marshes and shallow lakes. Males hang around the dens longerthan the females, so that the ratio of males to females near the den en-trances is ten to one. Courtship takes place in small groups called “mat-ing balls,” in which one animal is courted by several others. These “suit-ors” align their bodies with the courted individual and vigorously workto position their tails base to base with the tail of the courted individual,resulting in a ball of writhing snakes. Females have special lipid perfumes in their skin that turn males on.
MULTIPLE-GENDER FAMILIES 97In 1985 some male garter snakes were found with female perfumes intheir skin. Of two hundred mating balls, about 15 percent consisted ofa male, presumably with female perfumes in his skin, surrounded bycourting males. The males with female perfumes were called—youguessed it—female mimics. The feminine males who joined female-centered mating balls in progress were thought to be distracting themales already there, thus giving themselves greater access to the female. As with the other claims of female mimicry, the story had internalcontradictions. In choice experiments, the males preferred a female to afeminine male, showing that males could tell the difference—they werenot deceived. Moreover, in 2000 it was found that all male garter snakeshave female perfumes when they emerge from the den in the spring andthat all males court these perfumed males in addition to females. At thispoint, the investigators ﬂoated four deceit-based theories to explain whyall males have female perfumes on emergence: (1) a perfumed male mayconfuse the other males while carrying out his own mating; (2) the per-fumed male may avoid wasting energy in courting before he has fullyawakened from hibernation; (3) a perfumed male may induce the othermales to waste time and energy courting him while he gets ready to starthis own courting; and (4) a perfumed male may distract other males fromthe females so he has more to himself when he does get going. The investigators discarded what seems like an obvious hypothesis.Imagine you’re a male garter snake just waking up in the spring. You’rechilly and covered with cold dirt and mud. You see a spot of blue skythrough the ceiling. You crawl out and are greeted by the smiling facesof ten horny males hoping you’re a female. You’re not. But they’re hotand fast, and you’re cold and slow. Wouldn’t it be nice to roll around inthe sun—why not use some perfume to signal your intentions? And ifyou’re one of the ten males watching this face poke up through theground, and you see he’s not the female you were waiting for, why notwelcome him into the sunlight and get acquainted? Better than attack-ing him, with nine of your buddies looking on ready to attack you too. This explanation, that the female perfumes might protect a male fromattack when he is emerging, was dismissed because garter snakes justaren’t “agonistic.” By nature they’re friendly. Indeed, they’d better be,with twenty thousand of them in one spot! But why are they so “notori-ously amorous”? And what makes them so friendly? Group sex.
98 ANIMAL RAINBOWS These studies are disturbing because they attempt to sensationalize atthe expense of transgendered people. An article in the scientiﬁc journalAnimal Behaviour begins, “Female mimicry, whereby a male takes on afemale’s appearance, is a rare but widely publicized trait in human soci-eties. Remarkably, parallels can be seen in other animal species.” Femi-nine males and masculine females are not rare among humans. Nor aretransgendered people comparable to snakes. All male garter snakes wearfemale perfume and participate in same-sex copulation every year. Nohuman society has ever enjoyed such a rite of spring! An article in an-other scientiﬁc journal, the Canadian Journal of Zoology, refers to fe-male mimicry as “bizarre.”28 The problem with female mimicry is notthat it is bizarre; the problem is that female mimicry is a myth. Both articles refer to feminine males in text and ﬁgure captions as“she-males.” This language, derived from pornography, is derogatory.A she-male is a woman with a penis. The transgender community hasbetter words to describe transgendered bodies. In the biological litera-ture expressions like “gynomorphic male” and “andromorphic female”are preferred when describing a feminine male or a masculine female.29 The articles derogate not only transgendered people but also theirpartners. The title of one article includes the phrase “transvestite ser-pent,” and another claims to be about the “behavioural tactics of ‘she-males’ and the males that court them.” This writing not only stigmatizestransgendered people with certain body types, but also transfers thestigma to their friends. I hope future work on these animals is carried outwith more professionalism, and that future publications on this subjectreceive better editorial oversight. The examples just cited involve males whose appearance is somewhatfeminine. A different kind of example, involving a male bighorn sheepthat is morphologically indistinguishable from other males but quite dif-ferent behaviorally (called an “effeminate male”), might also have beendiscussed here (see chapter 8). What seems common among all these fem-inine males is a lessening of hostilities. The cessation of hostility may betemporary, as in garter snakes, or last a year or so, as in young birdswhose juvenile color matches the color of females, or be permanent, asin the sunﬁsh cooperator morph whose occupation is to assist controllermales in their courtship. The feminine males may exhibit a distinctlyfeminine signal, such as colored bars or stripes, or simply share with fe-
MULTIPLE-GENDER FAMILIES 99males the absence of the threatening colors of controller males. In eithercase, feminine imagery seems to be adopted by males to reduce hostilityand promote friendship. Overlooking the positive value of feminine males is part of a largerproblem of overlooking cooperation among animals. Even apart fromgender expressions, many forms of cooperation occur. Let’s look at afew more.FRIENDLY FISHBooks on ﬁsh behavior are the ponderous rivals of telephone directories.Without going into extensive detail, a few more examples are worth not-ing to ﬁll out some missing colors in the rainbow of ﬁsh gendering.30 Some species don’t bother with a controller morph. Instead, theyspawn in large groups of two genders—just male and female. Simple. Insurgeonﬁsh, thousands of individuals aggregate for one giant love feast.Other species spawn both in pairs and in groups.31 In the bluehead chub (Nocomis leptocephalus), males form partner-ships to build nests together. Two large, individually recognizable maleswere observed together building ﬁve different nests in succession. Malesof the northern greenside darter (Etheostoma blennioides) form part-nerships to court females. Several species of temperate freshwater ﬁshcarry out joint courtship, including lake trout (Salvelinus namaycush),the yellowﬁn shiner (Notropis lutipinnis), and the sucker (Moxostomacarinatum). In many species of suckers, spawning appears to occur onlyin trios. Two male spawning partners adjoin the female on either sideand press against her ﬂanks. This formation is aided by breeding tuber-cles, called “pearl organs,” which roughen the body surface of males sothat the three ﬁsh can hold position and not slip apart. Males in some species, such as the Mediterranean peacock wrasse(Symphodus tinca)—“hot bed,” that is—lay eggs in a nest while the nestowner is between spawning periods. For some reason, biologists term thisnest sharing “piracy,” again reﬂecting a preoccupation with theft. In thetesselated darter (Etheostoma olmstedi), a male who spawns in a breed-ing hole abandons it to ﬁnd another one. Another male takes over the nestand cares for the eggs, including cleaning and guarding them.32
100 ANIMAL RAINBOWS Some species show cooperative brood care in extended families, justas in the extended families of birds with postzygotic helping at the nest:Lamprologus brichardi, a small ﬁsh from Lake Tanganyika, is one of sixspecies there exercising cooperative brood care.33 There is even cross-species brood care! All broods older than ﬁve weeks guarded by Midascichlids (Cichlasoma citrinellum) in Lake Malawi contained young ofNeetroplus nematopus in addition to their own, and conversely, someguarded broods of Neetroplus nematopus contained young of the Midascichlid.34 All in all, ﬁsh show lots of cooperation. Although not my ﬁrst choice,I could live with being a ﬁsh.BIASED VOCABULARYSilent bullfrogs, antlerless deer, and small, medium, and large male sun-ﬁsh are happily ignorant of how they’ve been described by biologists. Ifthey knew, they’d be mad. The silent bullfrog has been termed a “sexual parasite” by the biolo-gists who study it. Instead, the bullfrog who croaks all night long is themodel bullfrog, what every young male frog should aspire to. Why is thenoisy male so privileged? If I were a female frog, I’d certainly prefer amale who didn’t keep me awake all night. I see no reason to admire alarge, noisy male bullfrog as the masculine norm for frogdom while dis-paraging the silent bullfrog as a parasite. Biologists call a small male ﬁsh who darts in to fertilize eggs a“sneaker,” a medium male who resembles a small female a “femalemimic,” and a large aggressive territorial male a “parental,” to place apositive spin on his egg guarding. Both the sneaker and the female mimicare “sexual parasites” of the parental male’s “investment” in nest con-struction and territorial defense. The sneaker and the female mimic aresaid to express a gene for “cuckoldry,” as though the parental male weremarried to a female in his territory and victimized by her unfaithfulness.In fact, a territorial male and the female who is temporarily in his terri-tory have not pair-bonded. Scientists thus sneak gender stereotypes intothe primary scientiﬁc literature and corrupt its objectivity. Are these de-scriptions only harmless words?
MULTIPLE-GENDER FAMILIES 101 No. The words affect the view of nature that emerges from biology.Animals are not warrior robots—wind them up and all they do is lie,cheat, steal, and ﬁght. The biology I know reveals sophisticated rela-tionships among animals, relationships that involve honesty and coop-eration as much as or more than deceit and competition. Scientists are open about their predilection for seeing deceit every-where. They write, “Natural selection favors those individuals that areable to increase their own ﬁtness by manipulating the behavior of oth-ers,” and “Cooperation might be seen as the opposite of competition . . .it is instead another form of selﬁsh behavior.”35 These attitudes spin howanimal behavior is interpreted and predetermine what data are taken. The expression “female mimicry” prevents the study of gender varia-tion. The words suggest a male deceptively impersonating a female. Inbiology, mimicry usually refers to such cases as an edible ﬂy that lookslike an inedible bee. “Looks like” here means “exactly like,” not “ap-proximately like.” A ﬂy that mimics a bee almost totally resembles a bee.A good magnifying glass and technical knowledge are needed to tellthem apart. A bird ﬂying quickly over the ground can’t spot the differ-ence.36 So-called female mimics don’t exactly resemble females, and allthe players have a long time to examine each other. I doubt that femalemimicry exists anywhere outside the imagination of biologists. Thus biologists project scripts of their own prejudices and experienceswith male-male competition onto animal bodies and use insulting lan-guage about animals. Far from being a sexual parasite, why not see thesilent male bullfrog as nature’s antidote to excess macho, preventing thecontroller from grabbing unlimited power? Far from being a cuckolder,why not picture the feminine male sunﬁsh as nature’s peacemaker? Biol-ogists need to develop positive narratives about the diversity they’re see-ing. Then a new suite of hypotheses will emerge for testing, taking theplace of the shallow, pejorative, and far-fetched ideas that deceit theoryrequires.TRANSGENDER SPECIESSome species have an appearance or behavior that invites the term“transgender.” These species contain polymorphisms of feminine males,
102 ANIMAL RAINBOWSmasculine females, masculine males, and feminine females all together,and/or gender-crossing behavior. One study offers comparative data ontransgender morphology from museum specimens. Hummingbirds, the world’s tiniest birds, feed on nectar from ﬂowersand on insects. Their name comes from the buzzing sound their wingsmake as they hover while feeding at a ﬂower. About 340 species existworldwide. Hummingbirds typically live three to ﬁve years. The small-est is the bee hummingbird of Cuba—a bird only 2.25 inches long. Hummingbirds also have the smallest eggs of all birds—half the sizeof a jellybean. A female builds the nest and broods the young alone.Males only fertilize. A typical nest is tiny—about the size of a bubblegumball. A female incubates two eggs for two to three weeks and feeds themfor three more weeks. Because females do all the work, males wouldseem to be in great excess, allowing females to choose among them. In-deed, the males of many hummingbird species are spectacularly colored,which Darwin would argue is what female hummingbirds ﬁnd hand-some. Recently, though, hummingbirds have begun to emerge as the bestdocumented example of transgender expression in birds. Male sunangel hummingbirds (Heliangelus) of the Andes, fromVenezuela through Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, to Bolivia, have colorfulfeathers on their throats called a gorget. The name comes from a biblikecollar of metal armor used in fencing to avoid being pierced in the throatby a sword. In birds, a gorget is a broad band of distinctive color on thethroat and upper chest. Museum specimens revealed that eight of nine sunangel hummingbirdspecies have some percentage of masculine females with gorgets just likethose of males. A few instances of males with female coloration were alsodetected.37 The investigation of masculine females and feminine maleshas now been extended to forty-two species of hummingbirds from ﬁvegenera, yielding the ﬁrst statistical information about transgender ex-pression in birds.38 Of the forty-two species, seven had both masculinefemales and feminine males, nine had masculine females and no femininemales, two had feminine males and no masculine females, and twenty-four had neither masculine females nor feminine males. Pooling thespecies with either masculine females, feminine males, or both, yieldsdata on the total variation of gender expression in both sexes. The ap-pearance of a bird’s gorget was divided into four classes, from most fe-
MULTIPLE-GENDER FAMILIES 103malelike to most malelike. Fifty-two percent of the adult females (288 of548) were masculine, including 34 percent who were very masculine. Incontrast, only 2 percent of the adult males (18 of 745) were feminine. Not only the total gender variation but also its distribution varied be-tween the sexes. The distribution of masculinity among females wasgradual. That is, most of the females were feminine, and the percentagedropped off gradually from most feminine to most masculine. In con-trast, the distribution of femininity among males was bimodal. The greatmajority were masculine, with no intermediates and a small second peakat the most feminine category. Thus the sexes are not symmetric in eitherthe total amount or the distribution of transgender expression. What does this variation in gender expression mean? Hard to say.The strength of this study on hummingbird museum specimens is itsbreadth of coverage. The study’s weakness is the absence of ﬁeld data onhow the genders behave. Still, clues are provided by other traits besidesthe gorget. Male hummingbirds tend to have shorter bills than females.39 In hum-mingbirds, bill length is important in indicating the type of ﬂower that isvisited—short bills for short, squat ﬂowers, long bills for long, tubularﬂowers. Overall, short ﬂowers and short-ﬂower users are more abundantthan long ﬂowers and long-ﬂower users. Hence, short-billed birds wind uphaving to defend their ﬂowers and are aggressively territorial compared tolong-billed birds, who don’t defend ﬂowers. With its relatively short bill,then, a male typically also has a showy gorget and territorial behavior. Masculine females have a shorter bill than feminine females, and pre-sumably defend territories containing ﬂowers. It is possible that a malemight prefer to mate with a female whose offspring are guaranteed ac-cess to resources in the territory she defends. In fact, studies have recentlyshown that males prefer ornamented (masculine) females in seven birdspecies, including an auklet, pigeon, swallow, bluethroat, tit, and twoﬁnches.40 Thus one guess is that masculine female hummingbirds repre-sent a gender of female controllers maintained in part by male choice. The feminine males have longer bills than masculine males, evenlonger than feminine females. Hence feminine males must be using dif-ferent ﬂowers than the masculine males. The feminine males also havesmaller testes than the masculine males, indicating a lower allocation ofenergy to sperm production. Perhaps the feminine males are pair-bonded
104 ANIMAL RAINBOWSto masculine females, as another case of gender meshing. Alternatively,they may have a role in facilitating courtship. Also, mating in some ofthe species takes place in leks, suggesting a comparison to the femininemale sunﬁsh and ruffs found in leks. Perhaps the feminine males have arole in facilitating courtship at the leks. In any case, the data on museumspecimens show that transgender expression is widespread in humming-birds, inviting follow-up ﬁeldwork. For a case of transgendered behavior, let us turn to the opposite ex-treme in data collection, a single individual in the ﬁeld. Hooded war-blers (Wilsonia cirtina) live in woods of the mid-Atlantic United States.They are named for the black plumage that adult males have on theirheads—a hood. Some females also have these black hoods, and can’tbe distinguished from males by birdwatchers.41 Early on, variation infemale plumage color was thought to represent age, but later workshowed that the color is permanent, suggesting a genetic polymorphismfor color. About 5 percent of the females very closely resemble males. Of particular interest is one transgendered black-hooded warblerthat was discovered in Maryland.42 The bird was originally assumedto be a masculine female, but was later discovered to be gonadallymale. Black-hooded warblers are monogamous, and the transgenderedbird behaved as the female member of a monogamous pair, consis-tently showing female-typical behavior throughout two years, includ-ing nest building, incubating and brooding young, and not singing orengaging in territorial defense. The bodily appearance of the trans-gendered bird was typical of males, the behavior typical of females.This bird pair-bonded to a male who was also typically male in bothappearance and behavior.43 In this case, a male-bodied bird behaved inall respects like a female, except for laying eggs. Gender identity in thisindividual hooded warbler evidently crossed over from that typical ofthe sexed body.In conclusion, families with multiple genders can be explained using theconcepts developed for two-gender families. The idea of helping at thenest in return for reproductive access that was devised for social insectsand applied to extended families of birds and mammals also works forhow multiple genders are integrated into a social system. Extending kin
MULTIPLE-GENDER FAMILIES 105selection theory now leads to a theory for a labor market that trades ac-cess to reproductive opportunity for service, with genetic relationshipmerely affecting the worth of a unit of reproductive access. The differ-ent genders represent different sectors within this economy. While somesectors, like the end-runners, clearly compete with the controllers, oth-ers (like the cooperators) are service providers working under contract.Understanding this complex and interesting social dynamic, an animalpolitical economy, I believe is the next step for evolutionary social the-ory. The part of Darwin’s theory of sexual selection that predicts uni-versal male and female templates may be false, but an evolutionary ap-proach to social behavior is alive and well.
7Female ChoiceA s further evidence of the difficulties with sexual selection theory, let’s consider how real-life female choice differs from female choice in Darwin’s sexual selection theory. Darwin focuses on matingonly. A female is supposed to select males according to their attractive-ness and prowess. Males are supposed to compete among themselves formating opportunities and to advertise their good looks to females. Thispeculiar emphasis on the mating act alone is simply not supported by ac-tual female choices, which are more concerned with the totality of re-production, including the growth and protection of the young. “Darwinian ﬁtness” is a technical term that refers to production ofthe young who will partake in the next generation’s reproduction; inmathematical terms, ﬁtness is the product of fertility and probability ofsurvival. Evolution depends on this overall measure of reproductive suc-cess. Mating is one component of ﬁtness, but a preoccupation with“mating success” has led to an emphasis on mating to the exclusion ofother components of ﬁtness. In reality, female choice considers the over-all production of offspring, keeping mating in perspective. Darwin is in-correct in almost all details concerning female choice, although he mustbe credited with recognizing that female choice among animals exists inthe ﬁrst place. What, then, are the preferences of female animals, and how do fe-106
FEMALE CHOICE 107males vary in their preferences? What do females want from a male, howmany times do females want to mate, how many males do females wantto mate with, how does a female ﬁnd Mr. Right, and how do females de-cide how many eggs to produce?DEADBEATS NEED NOT APPLYIs a male’s true mettle tested in combat with other males? Does the bestmale surface as the winner and assume dominance over a hierarchy ofwannabes? Shouldn’t a female yearn to shack up with a proven winner?Shouldn’t a female respect the winner of male-male competition as thebest father for her baby, a stud with the best genes? Does mating withhim guarantee the best and brightest child? Let’s see what female gobies think about male dominance. Sand go-bies (Pomatoschistus minutus) are small ﬁsh (5 to 6 centimeters) com-mon along European coasts. To see what a female goby wants in a malegoby, specimens were collected from a shallow sandy bay near the Klub-ban Biological Station in Sweden and housed in seawater tanks for ob-servation.1 After the experiment, they were released back to the sea. Sand gobies live for one or two years and experience one breeding sea-son. Both males and females reproduce often during the breeding season,which is two months long (May and June). Males build nests underempty mussel shells by covering the shells with sand and excavating acavity underneath. They attract females with a courtship display that in-cludes showing their colorful ﬁns. During spawning, a female attachesher eggs to the nest in a single layer. In an experiment, two goby males were allowed to compete for a claypottery fragment to use as a nest in order to determine the dominantmale. The winner was usually slightly larger than the loser, althoughonly by 3 millimeters. They were then placed in chambers at oppositeends of a tank. The tank was divided into thirds using transparent par-titions. The middle chamber was left empty. The winner and loser weregiven new pottery fragments and allowed to build nests by themselves. Next, a female was introduced into the middle chamber. The femalecould choose which of the males she preferred, indicated by the side ofthe chamber where she spent her time. After the female’s preference was
108 ANIMAL RAINBOWSdetermined, she was placed with one of the males, either the one she pre-ferred or not, by ﬂipping a coin, and then the time needed for spawningto occur was noted. Another female was placed with the remaining male,and the time they took to spawn was also noted. Thus both males wereable to spawn. Finally, after spawning, the females were removed, as were the parti-tions separating the males, leaving two males, each with a nest contain-ing eggs, at opposite ends of the tank. A small crab was introduced,which is an egg predator. Observers counted the number of eggs lost tothe predator in order to determine how good the males were at protect-ing the eggs. The results are striking. Whether a male was dominant in competitionfor nests did not correlate with whether he was a good father in pro-tecting the eggs. Also, female preference didn’t correlate with dominancein male-male competition. The females didn’t care if the male they pre-ferred won his ﬁght with another male. The females did care whether themale would protect the eggs. Somehow females were able to predict whowould or wouldn’t be a good father, and decidedly preferred mating withmales who later turned out to be good egg protectors. A female couldsomehow look a male in the eye and tell if he was a deadbeat. Now, let’s take a look at the peacock wrasse (Symphodus tinca) thatlives off the coast of Corsica in the Mediterranean in a shallow rockyhabitat.2 The female peacock wrasses have a choice of whether to layeggs in a male’s nest or to broadcast their eggs over the sea ﬂoor. Whichthey do depends on how they assess the offer of male parental care. Large controller males construct guarded areas of a meter in diame-ter and place pieces of algae in the middle, to which the eggs attach. Nestconstruction takes one or two days, followed by two or three days dur-ing which females visit the nests and deposit about ﬁfty eggs at a time,leading to as many as ﬁfty thousand eggs in a nest. Thereafter, the malemay guard the egg mass until hatching, which varies from twelve days inthe cold water of mid April to six days in the warm water of mid June. Smaller males take on two roles. They may be “followers,” who swimat a distance behind gravid females and fertilize eggs broadcast on theopen sea ﬂoor. Or they may hang out as end-runners around the terri-tories of controllers and fertilize eggs laid in the territory. During the ﬁrsthalf of the reproductive season, however, small males are absent. The
FEMALE CHOICE 109small males arrive only for the second half, presumably when the abilityof the large male to shoo them away is constrained by the need to guardthe eggs that have already been deposited. Males defending eggs lose weight and appear to have a higher mor-tality during this period, so they abandon nests that haven’t accumulatedenough eggs to be worth their while. Abandoned eggs are hung out todry, so to speak. Because abandoned eggs are concentrated in one spot,they quickly attract predators. Thus the best chance of an egg survivingis to be laid in a nest that is not abandoned, the next best chance is foran egg to be broadcast on the sea ﬂoor, and the worst is to be laid in anest that is subsequently abandoned. The males stay with only 20 percent of the nests early in the season,remain with 85 percent of the nests at midseason, and drop off to 20 per-cent again by the end of the season. Thus laying eggs in a male’s nest isa good bet only in midseason. Indeed, only 15 percent of the females laytheir eggs in nests at the beginning of the season, rising to 85 percent atmidseason, and falling back to 15 percent as the season ends. What does a female peacock wrasse want of a male? A male who isn’ta deadbeat, who won’t abandon her eggs. And she can tell. The investi-gators write, “If a female chooses to lay her eggs outside a nest, she tendsto do so only after visiting several nests.”INVITING FEMALE COMMITMENTHow does a guy convince his gal that he isn’t a deadbeat? Fish offer someadvice on this ancient question too. Females know that males abandonnests that don’t accumulate enough eggs to be worthwhile from the malestandpoint. From a female’s standpoint, adding eggs to an egg massthat’s already large makes sense, because the male guarding it is morelikely to stick around than if it was a small egg mass. So, how does anegg deposit get started? A female has to take a chance on a male or go italone. Various male ﬁsh have structures on their body that resemble eggs, acommon example being the fantail darter (Etheostoma ﬂabellare). Thesesmall ﬁsh are found in freshwater streams in North America, includingcentral Kentucky.3 During the spring, males excavate nests beneath ﬂat
110 ANIMAL RAINBOWSrocks, defend small territories, and mate with various females who de-posit eggs in their nests. Males then guard the eggs until hatching. Each of the seven to eight dorsal spines on the male’s front ﬁn is tippedwith a ﬂeshy knob. These knobs are smaller than the size of real eggs but,on the largest males, approach the size of actual eggs. Deceit theoristshave suggested that a female is fooled by these structures into believingthat a male is already tending eggs, so that adding her own to the col-lection is safe. This hypothesized deceit is called “egg mimicry.” Two facts compromise this interpretation: females also have theseﬂeshy knobs, and the knobs on males are smaller than real eggs. Why dofemales have these knobs if their only function is for males to deceive fe-males? Why would these ﬁsh, who are visual predators, be fooled byﬂeshy knobs that are smaller than real eggs? Experiments suggest that the females prefer to lay eggs in the nests ofmales with ﬂeshy knobs rather than the nests of males whose knobs havebeen snipped off with scissors. Although the study was preliminary, wecan still ask what such a result would mean. Were the females fooled?The alternative is that the ﬂeshy knobs are symbols of eggs, not mimicsof eggs. When a male swims close to the underside of a rock, he mightbe showing where the eggs should be placed. Female ﬁsh want male ﬁsh to live up to their promise of guarding theeggs. The male must communicate that he is serious about his willing-ness to provide for the young. The invitation to lay eggs in his nest mustsomehow show he knows how to handle this responsibility. The femalecarefully assesses the credibility of the promise; she seems unlikely to bedeceived by a trick such as egg mimicry.HOW MUCH SEX IS ENOUGH?Newspapers are ﬁlled with advertisements for new toys and chemicals tohelp people have sex more often. Well, how often is enough? Birds illus-trate how females may take the lead in determining how often matingshappen and when. Female alpine accentors (Prunella collaris) from the central Pyreneesof France like sex.4 These females don’t worry about male harassment.If anything, it’s the reverse—females harassing poor males into sex all the
FEMALE CHOICE 111time. What do these horny females want? They want the same thing fe-male sand gobies and female peacock wrasses want: males who do theirshare of the housework. Alpine accentors go in for eightsomes, as many as four males and fourfemales. A female is fertile for about two weeks, from about a week be-fore her ﬁrst egg until the last egg is laid. After the eggs hatch, the malesmay help feed the young. Fertile females actively solicit copulation. A female approaches a male,crouches with her breast touching the ground, lifts her tail to expose a brightred, swollen cloaca, quivers her tail from side to side, and shivers her wings.Just to be sure he’s awake, she often jumps in front of him and presents hercloaca directly in his face. Hard to miss. A female solicits in this way onceevery 8.5 minutes. A full 93 percent of all solicitations are initiated by thefemale approaching the male, the other 7 percent by him approaching her. The males in the group form a dominance hierarchy. The alpha male fol-lows behind any fertile female, limiting but not entirely preventing lower-ranking males from approaching her. Moreover, the males play hard toget, ignoring 68 percent of the solicitations. Still, they do a lot of matinganyway. In fact, a female copulates 250 times per clutch of eggs, althougha single insemination provides enough sperm to fertilize all the eggs. Somuch for believing that the sole purpose of copulation is to conceive! What’s going on here? An alpha male doesn’t stick around to help atthe nest unless he’s sufficiently occupied at home. He can easily visitnearby nests, so to keep him at home, the female invests more time inmating with him than with the lower-ranking males. The lower-rankingmales don’t have as many opportunities to shop around outside the nest,but if they are to remain as helpers at the nest, they require some mini-mum share of the action. Therefore, a female actively displays to the sub-ordinate males as well, making sure that they have some share of the cop-ulations and therefore of the paternity. Alpine accentors provide an example of females preferring the alphamale, because most of the copulations are with him and are initiated bythe female. This preference might seem to suggest that the alpha male of-fers some beneﬁt to the female, such as his “great genes,” and that femalepreference for alpha males is an endorsement of their superior quality.The data show, however, that the quality of the chicks sired by an alphamale is no better than that of chicks sired by the subordinate males, judg-
112 ANIMAL RAINBOWSing by the weight of the chicks at the time they leave the nest. In fact, theonly reason the female appears to prefer to copulate more with the alphamale is that the greater availability to him of opportunities outside thenest makes it more of a challenge to keep him at the nest. From the fe-male perspective, copulation provides the shared paternity needed as a“staying incentive,” which is allocated to males of various dominancestatus according to what is required to keep them involved at the nest. Do monogamous females mate only during the brief period when theeggs are ready for fertilization? Or do monogamous females like fun too?In fact, monogamous females may be even more sexually active than fe-males in other types of families.5 In birds such as the mallard duck andcommon guillemot, mating starts before the female is ready to produceeggs, and before the male is ready to produce sperm. Why should all thismating occur when it is apparently not needed? The obvious answer, onemight have thought, is that mating maintains the bond between male andfemale. Regular mating keeps the pair in touch with one another, so tospeak. By mating, they enjoy sexual pleasure with one another. One mighttheorize that the pleasure of mating evolved in such species in order to pro-vide an ongoing motivation for the members of the pair to stay together. But in the minds of deceit theorists, “excess” mating between mem-bers of a pair has nothing to do with building relationships; rather, itrepresents females using sexuality to manipulate males into giving themfree food—a dinner date followed by sex. According to one model forthe evolution of “female sexuality” in monogamous birds, males keepbuying dinner because they can’t “risk leaving.” As a result, “femalesbeneﬁt from the presence of males in such a way that males get nothingin return.”6 For the record, biology provides no evidence whatsoever that thefunction of sexuality in monogamous relationships is deceit. Instead, the-ories of male/female cooperation should have been considered as a ra-tionale for sexuality in the monogamous family.WHEN FEMALES LOOK LIKE MALESWhat does female-to-male cross-dressing tell us about the role of femalechoice? Reports on feminine males are marked by deceit rhetoric and
FEMALE CHOICE 113sensationalism. Reports of masculine females are scanty, suggesting un-derreporting. What emerges is that some females signal receptivenesswith colors that coincidentally resemble male colors, whereas other fe-males modify their attractiveness to males to control how often males so-licit them. At the northwestern tip of the Iberian peninsula lies the seaport cityof A Coruña, Spain, where Bocage’s wall lizard (Podarcis bocagei) lives.This lizard is the only vertebrate animal species so far in which femaleshave been reported to imitate males, but the case isn’t convincing.7 Maleshave an intense green color on their back. Female wall lizards are usu-ally brown, but when they have fertilized eggs already in their oviductsor have recently laid an egg, they turn green to signal that they won’t ac-cept courtship. Is being green masculine and therefore romantically un-appealing to other males, as some scientists have speculated? Whereasfeminine males are cast as deceivers, masculine females are cast as unat-tractive. Or could green simply be a gender-neutral signal telling malesnot to bother courting? The green color seems to be a gender-neutral signal rather than a mas-culine presentation that males ﬁnd unattractive, because males do occa-sionally try to mate with green females and are rebuffed. These males arepresumably learning what green means. If males found green femalesunattractive, they wouldn’t court them to begin with. Interestingly, the phrase “male mimicry” is not introduced. Femalesare not seen as deceiving males. If this was a case of male mimicry, themales who do try to mate with green females would have to be mistak-ing the females as males and soliciting a same-sex courtship, somethingnot (yet?) described in this species. A comparable lizard species in western Ecuador, Microlophus occip-italis, also has females that display a special color when unreceptive tocourtship.8 Hatchlings of both sexes have red throats and chins for abouta month. Then males lose the red pigment, while females retain some ofthe red in skin folds on the side of the neck. The males develop blackmarkings on their back and grow larger than the females. During the reproductive season, some females develop bright red pig-mentation covering the throat and chin similar to that of juveniles. Imag-ine painting Texas-red on your chin and neck, all the way down to yourbreastbone: you’ll get noticed. Females wear red on their chin and neck
114 ANIMAL RAINBOWSwhen carrying undeveloped eggs in their oviducts or after laying eggs.Males were found to make more courtship approaches to nonred femalesand pursue the courtship with them more ardently. Conversely, red fe-males rejected courtship advances more than nonred females did. Out ofthirty-eight matings observed during three years of study, thirty-three in-volved either unpigmented females or ones with but a small trace of red,whereas only ﬁve involved fully red-throated females. Thus females in both Spanish and Ecuadorian lizards signal whenthey are not receptive. In the Spanish species, the signal (green on theback) is a color that males coincidentally also have on their backs,whereas in the Ecuadorian species the signal (red on the chin and neck)is distinctive from the color that males have on their chins and necks.Bright colors have been described in the females of more than thirtyspecies of lizards so far, and in eighteen of these, the bright colors are ex-pressed when the females are carrying oviductal eggs.9 Thus femalesusing color to signal to males to back off is apparently quite general inlizards. To ﬁnd cases of genuinely masculine females, we visit the insects.Since the 1800s, naturalists have known that in many species, femaledamselﬂies appear in two color morphs, one distinctively female and theother resembling a male.10 A species of damselﬂy from ponds in centralFlorida, Ischnura ramburi, has colorful males with green spots on thehead, green on the thorax, and a black abdomen.11 Feminine femaleshave orange spots on their head, orange on the thorax, and a green-blackmetallic abdomen. (Gucci, are you listening?) The masculine females aregreen like the males but can still be identiﬁed by their female externalgenitalia and a bit of feminine color on the wings. What are we to makeof these masculine females? Male damselﬂies don’t mate-guard. Instead, male and female dam-selﬂies take their sweet time in the mating itself. Copulation ranges fromover one hour to over six hours, averaging three hours. While a long cop-ulation might seem like great fun, this can waste a whole day and be toomuch of a good thing, especially if carried out day after day over a lifespan that is only a few days long.12 Indeed, from a female’s perspective,copulations beyond the ﬁrst would be redundant, because one copula-tion supplies enough sperm. Extra copulations simply increase the riskof falling prey to some hazard.
FEMALE CHOICE 115 The masculine females average half as many copulations as the femi-nine females. The behavior of a masculine female approached by a maleresembles the behavior of a male to another male—a face-to-face stand-off, like a baseball coach getting in the face of an umpire. Still, the mas-culine females deﬁnitely do mate, and therefore the males presumably doknow what’s happening. A follow-up study on another species of damselﬂies, Ischnura elegans,shows that the advantage to a female of looking masculine depends onhow many males are around. At high densities, masculine females bene-ﬁted by avoiding sexual harassment from males and having freer accessto water, where they could lay eggs with less disturbance compared withfeminine females. But in sparse populations, masculine females werecourted less by males and more often remained unmated compared withfeminine females.13 I ﬁnd these damselﬂy cases convincing. Masculine fe-males have a higher survival rate because of diminished harassment frommales, but they can incur a lower chance of being mated. Still, you never know what turns guys on. Although masculine fe-males are in the minority (about 30 percent in most damselﬂies), in Enal-lagma boreale Selys the masculine females constitute about 60 to 80 per-cent of all females. In this species, males are actually attracted to themasculine females.14 Thus what happens when a female looks masculinedepends partly on male tastes.15 Some insect species have females that synthesize male perfumes, re-versing what we saw in garter snakes. Females use these perfumes to keepmales away—like a woman wearing after-shave lotion. To unload a guy,wear Jade East on your next date! During mating, a male fruitﬂy(Drosophila melanogaster) transfers an “antiaphrodisiac” to the female.Although most evaporates four to six hours after the ﬁrst mating, femaleslater synthesize this compound themselves during courtships, makingthem less attractive to males.16 Butterﬂies also use antiaphrodisiacs.17 Well, at this point you might conclude that vertebrates offer no ex-amples of masculine females because the colors in female lizards that sig-nal an unwillingness to mate are only occasionally the same as male col-ors, hence the overlap is probably coincidental. True, the most extensivestudies of masculine females come from insects. But recall the Andeanhummingbirds and the hooded warbler of the eastern United States, bothcited in chapter 6 as examples of species with transgender expression. In
116 ANIMAL RAINBOWSfact, female hummingbirds and female hooded warblers introduce thephenomenon of “female ornaments.” Here’s where the underreportingof gender variation in females is taking place. Female ornaments in birds are brightly colored feathers, skin ﬂaps,beaks, and crests that are found in males and also expressed in a few fe-males. Darwin suggested that female ornaments were male traits being“accidentally” expressed in females because the genetic system in fe-males wasn’t up to the task of shutting off their development during em-bryogenesis. Today, interest increasingly focuses on how females bene-ﬁt from these traits. Other birds with ornaments causing some femalesto resemble males include the crested auklet, feral pigeon, barn swallow,bluethroat, blue tit, house ﬁnch, and zebra ﬁnch.18 Among wattled starlings (Creatophora cinerea), grassland birds ofeastern and southern Africa, most males develop a special appearanceduring breeding season consisting of two hanging skin ﬂaps (wattles) oneach side of the beak, loss of feathers from the head to expose yellow orblack skin underneath, and ﬂeshy combs on the forehead. (The featherloss has been compared to male pattern baldness in humans becauseboth are brought about by male hormones.) About 5 percent of the fe-males also develop these ﬂeshy folds and feather loss, qualifying them asmasculine females. Not much else is known.19 Female deer with antlers, usually a trait limited to males, might bethought of as masculine females. In white-tailed deer (Odocoileus vir-ginianus), 1 percent of the females have antlers, and antlers are reportedin some female black-tailed deer (Odocoeleus hemionus) as well.20 Inreindeer (Rangifer tarandus), females usually have antlers, as do themales, but not every female—the frequency is anywhere from 8 to 95percent, depending on the population.21 Thus many deer species offer thepossibility of looking further into why females might adopt a masculineappearance.FINDING MR. RIGHTSometimes it’s hard to get enough information about prospective mates.Some male genders appear to help bring couples together, like themedium-sized male sunﬁsh (see chapter 6). Here’s a similar case involv-
FEMALE CHOICE 117ing birds who mate in leks, just like sunﬁsh do. A lek is a male red-lightdistrict in which males congregate, each defending a personal spacewithin this patch, called his “court.” Females come to the lek, and eachmale tries to attract a female onto his court so they can mate there. Froma female’s point of view, what basis is there for choice? How to ﬁnd Mr.Right? Ruffs (Philomachus pugnax) are sandpipers—shorebirds that breedduring the summers in northern Europe from England to Siberia.22 Ruffsowe their name to a ring of feathers around the neck of the male that isreminiscent of the large collars, or ruffs, worn in the Renaissance. Maleruffs occur in at least two genders. One gender has a dark ruff, acces-sorized with dark feathers on the head to make a tuft, while the other haswhite feathers in both ruff and tuft. These genders are genetic, withabout 20 percent white-ruffed, and the remaining 80 percent black-ruffed. Ruffs mate in leks, but not exclusively so. Males also follow femalesas they forage, displaying to them while they are feeding. If the resourcesare so spread out that the female density is thin, males stop following fe-males and instead congregate in a lek, letting the females come to them.23At a site in Finland, 12 percent of the males participated in a lek, and 90percent of the displays to females took place outside of leks.24 Males offthe lek spend 75 percent of their time feeding and the rest trying to at-tract a female. On a lek, males have a mating rate ﬁve times higher thanin the ﬁelds, despite all the effort spent displaying to females while offlek. A female off lek is busy feeding too, and her mind is on other mat-ters. Females who go to a lek have the same thing on their mind thatmales do—sex, sex, sex. What differentiates the ruff from other lekking birds is its two malegenders. The dark-ruffed males are controllers who defend small courtsof about 1.5 square meters against other dark-ruffed males on the lek.White-ruffed males are solicited to join as assistants. When a white-ruffed male is nearby and a dark-ruffed male is alone on a court, thedark-ruffed male does a half–knee bend and bows his bill downward.This invites the white-ruffed male to join him on the court.25 Femaleswho arrive at the lek prefer a dark/white team rather than a single dark-ruffed male. Both males jointly court and then mate with the female.While mating, a dark-ruffed male may try to limit the white-ruffed male’s
118 ANIMAL RAINBOWSaccess to the female, short of actually evicting him. A dark-ruffed maleobtains more matings when a white-ruffed male is present than whenalone, even though the matings are shared. Thus the two male gendersact as controller and cooperator. Somehow the cooperator assists thecontroller in providing a more attractive mating court, and in return ispaid a staying incentive of shared matings. The two genders exist specif-ically to address the demands of female choice. I haven’t located any theories about why a female ﬁnds a court witha dark/white team more attractive than a court with a single dark-ruffedmale. Most investigators seem to assume that a female automaticallyﬁnds two males better than one—the more masculinity the better. Ifmore total masculinity is so important, then two dark-ruffed males couldsimply team up with each other. Why two genders? My hunch is that awhite-ruffed male builds relationships with the females while he is withthem off the lek. While the dark-ruffed male is defending a court fromother dark-ruffed males, the white-ruffed male is ﬂying with females inthe ﬁeld and presumably getting to know them. Perhaps the white-ruffedmale can, so to speak, make introductions when the females arrive at thelek. He can facilitate a mating by knowing the females after having spenttime with them, and also by knowing the dark-ruffed male after their ini-tial courtship together. He can act as a go-between, a marriage broker.FAMILY SIZEWho determines the size of a family? From an evolutionary standpoint,family size is ultimately controlled by a female determining the size andnumber of eggs she lays. A female chooses an egg size and number basedon the parental investment she expects to provide plus a discounted ex-pectation of what the male will contribute to their combined investmentpool. In mammals, a female may also be coerced by a controlling maleto produce more young than she would if allowed reproductive freedom.Little is known about female choice of family size among vertebrates.More attention has been focused on female choice of mates and fre-quency of mating. Females of the side-blotched lizard (Uta) have two color morphs, yel-
FEMALE CHOICE 119low and orange, which differ in egg size and egg number, as mentionedin chapter 6. In salmon, the largest egg can be two to three times the sizeof the smallest egg. Since they start with the same amount of material toput into eggs, this egg-size variation translates into some families beingup to three times bigger than other families.26 A large variation in egg sizehas also been noted in some bird species.27 Family size is one aspect of reproductive choice. Do females controltheir reproductive destiny? In biology, the traditional assumption hasbeen that a female sets the number and size of the eggs she produces, andthe males ﬁght it out among themselves to acquire paternity of thoseeggs. An alternative theory is that female choice of mating partners al-lows a male to cooperate with her in jointly setting the family size. If amale promises to assist with parental care and doesn’t defect, the femalecan elect to have more offspring than she would have if she were raisingthem alone. This cooperative solution to family size would generally leadto higher egg production than a competitive solution would. The role ofcourtship may be more to establish mutual trust that a cooperative so-lution will be honored than for the male to advertise his qualities,power, and possessions.NUMBER AND IDENTITY OF PARTNERSAnother aspect of female reproductive choice is the number and identityof mating partners. Female partner choice is yet one more area of biol-ogy showing severely biased language. Studies describe females who pre-fer one mate as “faithful” and females who prefer multiple mates as“promiscuous.” A clutch of eggs with multiple paternity is said to con-tain “legitimate” and “illegitimate” offspring, and a male tending aclutch with multiple paternity is said to be “cuckolded.” This overlay ofmoralizing obscures the facts. Razorbills (Alca torda), colonial seabirds of the North Atlantic, havebeen studied on Skomer Island off the coast of Wales.28 Males and fe-males have the same color and overall shape and live in pairs at nests ina colony. A pair provides joint parental care for one egg laid each year,which can be thought of as economic monogamy. Yet, as we saw in
120 ANIMAL RAINBOWSchapter 5, an economically monogamous pair is not necessarily repro-ductively monogamous. Openly visible areas, called arenas, are located near the colony. Mostmating occurs in the arenas, even that between bonded pairs. Approxi-mately 75 percent of the within-pair matings take place in the arena,even though the pair shares a nest in the colony, while 87 percent of theextra-pair matings occur in the arenas. A goodly number of same-sexmatings occur there too (see p. 136). One-third of the females accepted extra-pair matings, while two-thirds did not. Over two consecutive years, the identities of the femaleswho did, or did not, accept extra-pair matings remained the same. Of thefemales who did accept extra-pair matings, most accepted only one, andthe remaining accepted matings with two, three, or even seven othermales. The investigator concluded that two types of females exist: two-thirds “faithful” and one-third “promiscuous.” All the males participated in extra-pair mating attempts. The maleswho pair-bonded with promiscuous females were slightly more success-ful in obtaining extra-pair copulations (EPCs) themselves than malespaired with faithful females. The investigator concluded that all guysnormally play around, although playboys tend to pair-bond with play-girls. Why was this study done? To decipher the feminine mystique. The in-vestigator writes, “The beneﬁt of EPC’s to males is clear; by fertilizingadditional females, males can increase their reproductive success at theexpense of other males. . . . While it is now clear that some female birdspursue EPC’s, the possible beneﬁts accruing to females remain obscure.”The list of conjectured reasons for why a female might want to mate withmore than one male includes wanting great genes, wanting a variety ofgenes, storing sperm in case one of the males turns out to be infertile, andchecking him out in view of switching later. These conjectures assumethat all a guy delivers is genes. Let’s think. Could mating involve more than the transfer of sperm? In-deed, why is the mating being done in open arenas? Even the within-pairmatings? So everyone can see, of course! Public matings have symbolicsigniﬁcance. If a birdwatcher can see the matings, so can the birds. Notonly is the mating done in public—the mating act is often just for show.Female razorbills can control whether sperm is transferred. Females have
FEMALE CHOICE 121long, stiff tails that they must lift for the male to make cloacal contact.Females can carry out copulatory behavior, including being mounted,while preventing sperm transfer. In over six hundred extra-pair copula-tions, observers never saw a male force a female to lift her tail and makecloacal contact. The investigators conclude that males “do not appearcapable” of forcing a copulation. But perhaps males don’t want to forcea copulation. Perhaps the show of copulation is what’s important, notthe sperm transfer. The focus on sperm transfer as the sole purpose of copulation leadsto one difficulty after another. If a male is truly “cuckolded,” he shouldabandon his unfaithful mate. Male razorbills do not abandon theirmates, nor do they attack them when they accept an EPC. Nor do malerazorbills reduce their parental care in proportion to their mate’s promis-cuity. Why not? Didn’t they read the book? Are females getting awaywith something that males must grudgingly tolerate? The story doesn’t add up. I suggest instead that mating is as muchabout managing relationships as about the transfer of sperm. By matingin public arenas, both males and females are advertising the network ofrelationships they participate in. Two-thirds of the females apparentlyﬁnd it advantageous to concentrate the paternity of their eggs in onemale, and one-third to distribute the probability of paternity across sev-eral males. Because this arrangement has been broadcast to the entirecolony by mating in public, the alliances and power relationships thatﬂow along this network of relationships are publicly known too. But why might some females want to distribute the probability of pa-ternity and others not? What are the implications of a network of powerrelationships for birds? Because the males do not prevent females fromdistributing the probability of paternity or retaliate against them, couldthey too be beneﬁting from the formation of a network of alliances? Consider another colonial species. Like razorbills, female tree swal-lows (Tachycineta bicolor) from Ontario, Canada, are reported to have“two alternative copulation strategies.”29 These birds were also studiedto decipher the feminine mystique. The investigators write, “Previously,much attention was focussed on beneﬁts to males. . . . Later, it was re-alized . . . that females may not be just passive targets for EPC.” Hello!The investigators continue, “The conﬂict between the extra-pair maleand the pair male is obvious and straightforward; the extra-pair male
122 ANIMAL RAINBOWSwill seek to enhance his reproductive success at a relatively low cost byparasitizing the parental care of the pair male, whereas the pair male willtry to protect his paternity and avoid caring for unrelated offspring. Theinterest of the female seems more obscure.” Again, the investigatorsadmit they don’t understand the females. They also disparage the EPCsas a theft of the parental care that rightfully belongs to the pair male,never considering that the pair male might be trading some of the prob-ability of paternity that he apparently controls in return for some bene-ﬁt. The investigators conclude, “In some species, females actively seekEPCs . . . in other species females are generally resistant toward copula-tion attempts by non-mates.” To ﬁnd out why females stray from their marriage vows, the investi-gators ﬁrst tried to determine if only certain females do. Surveys of pa-ternity using DNA ﬁngerprinting showed that 50 percent of nests con-tained one or more nestlings sired by an extra-pair male. Furthermore,a brood with extra-pair paternity (EPP) didn’t contain just one “illegiti-mate” nestling; 65 percent of the nestlings were sired by extra-pairmales. So half of the females lay clutches with no extra-pair eggs, and theother half of the females lay clutches with a majority of eggs fertilized byextra-pair matings. In an experiment, ten females were allowed to lay an egg or two andthen the pair male was removed (shot). The “widow” was then allowedto acquire a replacement male. The ﬁrst two eggs would have been fa-thered by the original pair male if the female was a stay-at-homer, butby diverse males if she was a swinger. Would the replacement male fa-ther the remaining eggs? The stay-at-homer females declined to copulatewith the replacement male and used stored sperm from the original pairmale to fertilize subsequent eggs, so that 78 percent of the eggs laid afterthe ﬁrst two were still fathered by the original pair male, even though hewas now dead. The swinger females, however, readily copulated with thereplacement male. But the eggs laid after the ﬁrst two often were fertil-ized not by the replacement male but by other, neighboring males. Theswinger stayed a swinger, and her brood continued to be fathered bymultiple males, while the stay-at-homer remained “faithful” to her orig-inal pair male. The investigators invite the possibility that “the two types of copula-tion behavior are obligate strategies, i.e., that some females are always
FEMALE CHOICE 123faithful while others are always promiscuous.” One-third of the extra-pair matings were solicited by a female who ﬂew to the nest of anothermale and mated with him there, while the remaining two-thirds tookplace at the nest of the female, with a male who came to her. “The abil-ity of females to effectively resist copulations may also explain whyforced EPC attempts are rarely seen.” Thus the responsibility for play-ing around rests with the females who volunteer to play. How do the males react to “their” females playing around? The in-vestigators say that mate guarding is not possible in colonial species be-cause males must guard nests and can’t guard the females themselves. In-stead, males copulate frequently. Fifty copulations occur per clutch,when one is enough. Thus, according to this theory, females play aroundbecause the homebound males can’t guard them. Instead, males mate ex-tensively when the females return home after a night on the town, hop-ing their sperm will outnumber the sperm from any other males the fe-male played around with. Still, the males don’t copulate any differentlywhen their mate is a swinger versus a stay-at-homer. For this reason, thetheory claims that “the males cannot be sure whether or not their matesare faithful.” Keep in mind that the copulations take place in the open, where birdsas well as birdwatchers can see them. I can’t imagine any reason why themales are always unaware of the copulation history of their pair mate.Furthermore, recent copulation doesn’t guarantee paternity, because fe-males can fertilize eggs with stored sperm. Finally, a goodly number ofthe EPCs are actually same-sex matings between males (see p. 137). Again we have a story that doesn’t add up. The theory doesn’t offerany reason why some females accept extra-pair matings and othersdon’t. The theory doesn’t explain why males should care more about de-fending the nest instead of guarding the female, nor why males shouldbe seemingly indifferent to whether their pair mate is a stay-at-homer ora swinger. The overlooked clue is that replacement males are unhelpful,even dangerous. In an undisturbed nest, males make half of the trips tobring food to the nestlings, so male and female share this workloadequally. In nests where the original male was removed after only one eggwas laid, the replacement male defended the nest real estate, but onlyhalf of these males provided any food to the nestlings, and the remain-der completely ignored the nestlings’ need for food. In these cases, many
124 ANIMAL RAINBOWSnestlings died from starvation because the female couldn’t fully com-pensate for the lack of male cooperation. Even more dramatically, if the original male was removed after twoor more eggs were laid, the replacement male actually killed thenestlings. Thus a male who takes over an undefended nest when it al-ready contains a few eggs is certain to commit infanticide. The observa-tion of male infanticide is not new. In a pioneering study twenty-ﬁveyears ago, Sarah Hrdy showed that female langurs (an Indian monkey)distribute paternity to purchase protection against male infanticide.30 Isuggest that some female tree swallows also deliberately distribute theprobability of paternity among the males most likely to take over the nestif the original male is lost. A female can allocate all the probability of pa-ternity to the nest male if she feels he is not likely to die or be evicted andwants maximum parental assistance from him.31 Or she can distributethe probability of paternity among the males likely to take over the nestif the risk of losing the nest male seems high, thereby ensuring somesafety for her offspring. Now, the nest male may even agree to “his” female distributing theprobability of paternity to neighboring males. If his neighbors have somelikelihood of paternity in his nest, there is less chance that they will wishto evict him, or kill his brood if he dies. Regardless of how often biolo-gists claim that the only goal of a male is to fertilize as many eggs as pos-sible, in fact the male also has an interest in whether the eggs successfullyhatch. A male’s parental care need not be limited to providing food forthe nestlings, but can extend to ceding some probability of paternity inorder to help ensure the survival of the nestlings he is helping to feed. Thefemale’s distribution of paternity among males may amount to a “peaceincentive” to purchase protection for her brood, a household expensethat the male approves of. Of course, the male may work to keep this ex-pense as low as possible by mating extensively with the female when shecomes home for the night, but monitoring a cash ﬂow is different fromtrying to close an account. We need not think of tree swallow females either as choir girls honor-ing their marriage vows or as loose women cheating on their husbands.Instead, females may be part of a social system for raising young, in whichthey allocate matings so as to balance the danger of male power with thebeneﬁt of male parental investment, all with the acquiescence of the
FEMALE CHOICE 125males. The social system thereby decouples economic monogamy— maleand female working together to feed the young at a nest— from repro-ductive monogamy (compare discussion in chapter 5 of decoupling in theclosely related cliff swallows). More generally, I’m suggesting that females publicly choose matingpartners to manage the genetic relationships of their offspring. Femalesguarantee their offspring safety by buying membership in the old genesclub and choose their extra-pair partners with the tacit consent of thepair male. Females choose not males with supposedly “great genes,” butmales with well-connected genes. In genetic lingo, females are concernedwith genetic identity by descent, not genetic identity by state. When a fe-male chooses a male with some special color on his tail, she is not fol-lowing the dictates of some inexplicable taste for fashion, but rather en-dowing her offspring with a bodily marker of culturally inherited power,like the Tudor nose. Thus Darwin was fundamentally on the wrong track in his conceptu-alization of female choice. Sand guppies and alpine accentors show thatdominant males don’t have any better genes than subordinate males, ac-cording to any known metric (such as the weight and vitality of thenestlings). Sand guppies and peacock wrasses demonstrate that femaleschoose males not for their great genes but for the likelihood of actuallydelivering on their promise of parental care: females are looking to avoiddeadbeats. Alpine accentors and tree swallows suggest that females maychoose males to distribute the probability of paternity so as to balancethe incentive for a male to provide parental care with the danger to hernest from other males. Damselﬂies reveal that females may tune their gendered presentationto control the number of male advances. Female wattled starlings,hooded warblers, reindeer, and other females with male ornaments sug-gest that gendered symbolism may also be tuned among vertebrates toregulate the frequency of male advances. The side-blotched lizard shows that females can vary family size byvarying egg size, inviting the suggestion that family size is set to accom-modate the discounted expectation of male parental care. Courtship isthen not about a male advertising great genes to a female, but rather anegotiation over the degree of parental care the male will provide, to-gether with the female’s assessment of the credibility of the male’s prom-
126 ANIMAL RAINBOWSise. To aid in this assessment, a female may require the services of a mar-riage broker to testify on behalf of a male. The cooperator morphs inbluegill sunﬁsh and ruffs are apparently male genders that evolved to ﬁllthis need for a go-between, suggesting that female choice has con-tributed to the evolution of gender multiplicity among males. This sophisticated constellation of decisions that females make aboutmales goes far beyond the simplistic conceptualization that Darwin putforth that all a female is searching for is a hulk with great genes.
8Same-Sex SexualityT he ﬁnal nail in the coffin of Darwin’s sexual selection theory is the discovery of extensive same-sex sexuality in nature. According to Darwin, homosexuality is impossible because the purpose of mat-ing is to transfer sperm with the intention of producing offspring, and ahomosexual mating can’t produce offspring. So, if homosexuality is dis-covered, and if one also wishes to retain sexual selection theory, somefancy footwork is needed. Typically, biologists quickly assert that ho-mosexuality is an “error” or, if not an error, then some devious and un-savory trick. On the other hand, if matings serve as much to manage re-lationships as to transfer sperm, then mating need not be restricted tobetween-sex encounters. That is, mating isn’t the same as breeding, andin fact these activities are often decoupled. But we’re getting ahead ofourselves . . . Let’s review same-sex sexuality among vertebrates andthen return to considering implications.SCIENTIFIC DENIALIn 2000 a distinguished scholar summarized a career’s work with a bookon the biology of freshwater cichlid ﬁsh. “When animals have access tomembers of the opposite sex,” he wrote, “homosexuality is virtually un- 127
128 ANIMAL RAINBOWSknown in nature, with some rare exceptions among primates.”1 Yetwe’ve already reviewed many cases of ﬁsh, including cichlids (see chap-ter 6), with same-sex courtship, including genital contact. Moreover, ayear earlier, a young scholar, out as gay, had published a book twoinches thick with 751 pages reviewing same-sex courtship, includinggenital contact, in over three hundred species of vertebrates.2 All thecases were drawn from peer-reviewed scientiﬁc literature, and detailedreferences were provided. How can one scientist assert that homosexuality in animals is virtu-ally unknown, while another demonstrates that homosexuality is com-mon? Perhaps this difference of opinion about the facts reﬂects a simpledifference in experience. Some species do include homosexuality in theirsocial lives, others don’t, and perhaps the differing conclusions reﬂect afundamental difference in study systems. Perhaps each scientist is inno-cently, although incorrectly, overgeneralizing. Still, the scientiﬁc silenceon homosexuality in animals amounts to a cover-up, deliberate or not. Why might scientists cover up homosexuality in animals? Perhapssome scientists are homophobic, refusing even to consider homosexual-ity, while others are embarrassed or fear they might be suspected of beinggay themselves if they talked positively about homosexuality. Some maythink that homosexuality is evolutionarily impossible and doubt theirown eyes when they see homosexual behavior. A ﬁnal reason is an ab-sence of consensus that homosexuality is theoretically important. “Isthat worth a paper? Would it get me a job?” In fact, homosexuality inanimals is exceptionally important and challenges basic premises of evo-lutionary biology. To counter this suspicion of cover-up, scientists must start to teachthe truth, and organizations who present nature to the public must startoffering an accurate picture. Scientists are professionally responsible forrefuting claims that homosexuality is unnatural. The dereliction of thisresponsibility has caused homosexual people to suffer persecution as aresult of a false premise of “unnaturalness,” and to suffer low self-worth and personal dignity. Suppressing the full story of gender andsexuality denies diverse people their right to feel at one with nature andrelegates conservation to a niche movement—the politics of a privilegedidentity. What stories should museums exhibit or nature ﬁlms depict regard-
SAME-SEX SEXUALITY 129ing same-sex courtship? The stories could begin with the courtshipwe’ve already seen between animals who are members of visibly differ-ent genders. These courtships are homosexual, yet heterogenderal. Doescourtship, including genital contact, also occur between animals who be-long to the same sex and the same gender? These animals might bethought of as “gay”—that is, both homosexual and homogenderal. Yes,let’s visit such a species.LESBIAN LIZARDSRecall the all-female species of whiptail lizards from the AmericanSouthwest and Hawaii (chapter 1). You’d think a clonally reproducingspecies wouldn’t bother with courtship. After all, what could be easierthan laying an egg that doesn’t need to be fertilized? No worries aboutgetting a male for his sperm, no heartache of relationships, and no put-ting up with someone else grabbing the remote. Yet females in the all-female lizard species of the American Southwest do go through an elab-orate courtship, including genital contact, prior to laying eggs. In ordinary sexual species of American whiptail lizards, such as Cne-midophorus inornatus, the male begins courtship by grabbing the femalewith his mouth on the hind leg or tail. If she doesn’t reject him, he trans-fers his bite to the nape of the neck, mounts, and curls his tail under hers.Male lizards have a Y-shaped penis so the animal can mount from theright or the left. The male wraps his body around the female, assuminga “donut” posture, and everts one of his hemipenes into the female’scloaca, whereupon intromission occurs. Courtship in an asexual species is almost exactly the same.3 One of thefemales copies the male role down to the last detail. One mounting fe-male was even seen everting her cloacal region to contact the cloacal areaof the mounted female. Courtship between female whiptail lizards is nota sloppy parody of male-female courtship left over from its sexual an-cestry, but an intricate and ﬁnely honed sexual ritual. When two females are housed together, they quickly wind up with al-ternating hormonal cycles.4 As one female cycles into high estradiol, hereggs mature and she assumes the female role in courtship. At the sametime, the other cycles into high progesterone (not testosterone) and as-
130 ANIMAL RAINBOWSsumes the male role. Then they switch roles a few weeks later as theirhormone cycles switch. Why do asexual female whiptail lizards bother with this elaborate rit-ual? One suggestion is that they’re evolutionarily stuck with it. A femaleis said to “depend” on males for stimulation. Without any males, one ofthe females has to step up and take over. The asexual species haven’t hadtime to evolve to the point of losing an undesirable dependency.5 Yet itis clear that asexual females beneﬁt from the copulations with one an-other. In nature, asexual females lay an average of 2.3 batches of eggseach season. If a female is housed alone, she lays only about 0.9 batches.If housed with a female whose hormonal state leads to male behavior,she lays 2.6 batches during the season. Copulation between asexual females was originally reported for threewhiptail species, the one from Arizona (Cnemidophorus inornatus) andtwo from Colorado (Cnemidophorus velox and Cnemidophorus tesse-latus), although more of the females engaged in same-sex courtship in theArizona species than in the Colorado species. The original report was at-tacked, claiming “no evidence that homosexual activities normally areinvolved.”6 But the attack actually conﬁrmed the presence of same-sexmounting in four asexual species, and further revealed that femalesmount females and males mount males in sexual species too. An addi-tional attack claimed that same-sex courtship happened only in the lab-oratory, and not in the ﬁeld. But data showed that asexual females in theﬁeld have V-shaped marks on their sides identical to the copulationmarks on sexual females, which come from the male’s biting behaviorduring courtship.7 Evidently, asexual lizards do participate in same-sexmatings in the ﬁeld as well as in the laboratory. Apparently, then, asexual female lizards enjoy a form of same-sexcourtship and beneﬁt from it reproductively. Does this beneﬁt express aphysiological dependency they’re stuck with because of evolution? Istheir same-sex courtship the behavioral equivalent of our own uselessappendix? Consider another possibility . . . Asexual female lizards show social behaviors and live in a social sys-tem; they are not clonal robots, living solitary lives and laying eggs insolitude. Perhaps they form pair-bonds. At the very least, two femaleswho are cycling in alternation have a thing going. Reports suggest otherforms of cooperation as well.
SAME-SEX SEXUALITY 131 Asexual whiptail lizards from New Mexico and Colorado, along withsexual lizards from New Mexico, were collected and raised in outdoormetal enclosures in Oklahoma.8 During the night, the lizards live in bur-rows in the ground, coming out during the day to forage. Whiptaillizards are not territorial. Constantly on the move in search of food, theyare called “searchers” to differentiate them from the other culinary styleof lizard life—“sit-and-wait foragers”—who feed only within the con-ﬁnes of the territories they defend. While looking for food during theday, the sexual lizards showed four times more aggression directed atone another than the asexual lizards did. The sexual species had moreﬁghts, more chasing as they tried to steal one another’s food, and astronger dominance hierarchy. An interesting experiment split this higher aggression in sexual speciesinto two possible components. The asexual lizards are more closely re-lated to one another than sexual lizards are because of their clonal re-production, and so might be expected to cooperate with one another be-cause of shared kinship. Furthermore, the asexual lizards do not includemales. Maybe the presence of males in sexual species causes higher lev-els of aggression there. So is the willingness of asexual lizards to getalong with one another a result of being close kin (kinship effect) or ofhaving no males around to mess things up (male effect)? The studyshowed that both are factors. But is the peaceful life of asexual whiptail lizards due only to closekinship and the absence of males? Or does peace also result from femalesforming pair-bonds through same-sex courtship? An intriguing clue thatpair-bonding occurs comes from the observation that the asexual fe-males often share burrows, sleeping together in the same hole in theground. Such cohabitation was observed only once in sexual whiptails,and then between a male-female pair. Thus the female asexual lizardsmay have an even more cooperative relationship than can be explainedby kinship and the absence of males, an extra cooperation resultingspeciﬁcally from pair-bonding brought about by same-sex courtship.9 The extensive study of same-sex courtship in all-female lizard speciescan easily overshadow the same-sex courtship that occurs in two-sexlizard species. Though much less is known, lizard species for whichsame-sex mounting is described include the common ameiva (Ameivachrysolaema); six species of anoles (Anolis carolinesis, A. cybotes,
132 ANIMAL RAINBOWSA. garmani, A. inaguae, A. porcatus, and A. sagrei) from Cuba, the Do-minican Republic, and Jamaica; the blue-belly fence lizard (Sceloporusundulatus); the side-blotched lizard (Uta stansburiana); plus skinks,geckoes, and a curly-tailed lizard.10AVIAN ARRANGEMENTSInformation about same-sex courtship is hard to come by because of thechilly attitude toward research on this topic in the United States, wheremost of the world’s science is done. The U.S. Congress has meddled di-rectly. In 1992 a study of the sexual habits of Americans to help preventthe spread of AIDS was halted by Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolinaand Representative William Dannemeyer of California. Helms saw thestudy as a “gay agenda” and insisted that the money be used instead topromote sexual abstinence outside of marriage. The research was even-tually carried out anyway, with private funding.11 The censorship didn’tultimately succeed, of course, although information to stop the spread ofAIDS in straight as well as gay couples was delayed. Two studies ofsame-sex courtship in birds, which we are about to review, were done insettings where homosexuality is not so stigmatized. The chilly attitude inAmerica toward research on same-sex courtship means Americans arethe last to know what’s going on. There is a lovely large bird, called the purple swamp hen (Porphyrioporphyrio) in the United States and the pukeko in New Zealand. A deep,almost iridescent indigo blue, it has a large, chunky, scarlet bill and or-ange-red legs. In the United States, it lives in Louisiana, but it can alsobe found in southern Europe, Africa, India, Southeast Asia, New Guinea,Melanesia, western Polynesia, Australia, and New Zealand. Pukekos areabundant in New Zealand, where they are thought to have been intro-duced a thousand years ago. They eat swamp and pasture vegetation, aswell as insects, frogs, small birds, and eggs, and are quite omnivorousoverall. They are now frequently killed by automobiles after feeding atroadside ditches. The pukeko enjoys same-sex as well as between-sex courtship andmatings. A study conducted north of Auckland, New Zealand, docu-mented the context for the same-sex courtships.12 A male-female mating
SAME-SEX SEXUALITY 133typically involves three steps: (1) a male approaches a female in an up-right posture and gives a loud humming call, (2) the female assumes ahunched position and allows the male to step onto her back, and (3) thefemale raises her tail as the male brings his cloaca into contact with hersand sperm are transferred.13 A male-male mating or a female-femalemating is identical to the male-female mating in all three steps, the onlydifference being the sex of the birds. Observation over three years re-vealed 555 between-sex matings, 29 female-female matings, and 12male-male matings.14 Thus about 10 percent of the matings are same-sex. How did the female-female matings take place? Within a breedinggroup of two females and two or three males, the females and malesmaintain separate dominance hierarchies. In seventeen instances, analpha female approached a beta female while both were alone, and theymated. In nine instances, the alpha female approached a beta female whowas courting with males at the time. The alpha female ran in front of themales and mounted the beta female before the males could. In three in-stances, all involving the same female, a female evaded males who werecourting her by running to another female and initiating courtship withher instead. The males then transferred their attention to this other fe-male. What about the male-male matings? Dominant males initiated alltwelve instances. However, in only two of these did the dominant maleapproach the beta male in an upright position. In the remaining ten in-stances, the dominant male ran in front of the subordinate male and as-sumed a hunched position. In these cases, the subordinate male was inthe process of courting females. He then stopped and mounted the alphamale instead. Only some of the birds participated in same-sex matings. Three ofnine alpha males initiated almost all of the male-male matings, and threefemales initiated most of the female-female matings. What do these same-sex matings mean? Consider the circumstancewhere an alpha male intercedes during a beta male’s between-sex mat-ing and mates with the beta male. A competition advocate would hastilyconclude that the alpha male is using same-sex mating as a tactic to pre-vent the beta male’s mating with a female, thereby ensuring that his ownsperm are used instead. The investigators, however, caution against a
134 ANIMAL RAINBOWScompetitionist theory, noting that dominant males often totally ignorethe matings of subordinate males without trying to interrupt them.Moreover, the hunched posture used by the dominant male to solicit themating is also used outside of courtship as a signal to reduce aggressionafter a territorial dispute. Thus, the solicitation of the mating could havea social signiﬁcance in reducing overall hostility, and not have anythingto do with competition for fertilizations. Consider the female-female matings. Aggressive interactions betweenpukeko females are rare, and females don’t attack each other’s eggs, asdo some other communal nesting birds. The investigators raise the pos-sibility that the alpha female is communicating to the beta female howmany eggs to lay so that the total number laid is manageable by thegroup. The female-female matings occurred only when eggs were aboutto be laid, whereas the male-female matings were taking place for almosttwo months before this. Thus the female-female matings take place at atime when the total brood size is being decided and communicationwould make a difference. Finally, the investigators note the lack of overt aggression amongbreeding females and males in the highly developed social system ofpukekos, and same-sex matings clearly occupy a place in this social sys-tem. The second study looks at the Eurasian oystercatcher (Haematopusostralegus), a conspicuous marine coastal bird, a wader, with a black-and-white body, a long orange bill, rose legs, and red eyes that is com-mon on mudﬂats. Most oystercatchers breed in economically monoga-mous male-female pairs, with some distributed paternity coming fromdivorce and extra-pair copulations. The female lays enough eggs thatboth members must care for the young, and if one doesn’t do his or herjob, the nestlings suffer.15 However, at a site in Holland studied intensively from 1983 to 1997,about 2.5 percent of the breeding groups consisted of one male and twofemales. By itself, this grouping isn’t especially noteworthy—after all,polygyny is one of the most common mating systems in nature. What isextraordinary is that these threesomes occur in two different forms: ag-gressive and cooperative. In an aggressive threesome, the females com-pete. Each defends her own nest, and the male defends a territory thatencompasses both females. In a cooperative threesome, the two females
SAME-SEX SEXUALITY 135share one nest, laying eggs in it together, and all three together defendthe nest and raise the young.16 About 60 percent of the threesomes are aggressive. The females showsome aggressive interaction with each other about every two minutesduring the time of breeding. The females lay eggs about two weeks apart.The male contributes most of his parental care to the nest of the femalewho laid her eggs ﬁrst. The net result is that few ﬂedglings are produced.The male’s attention is divided between two nests, so one remains un-guarded for long periods, and neither gets enough incubation time tokeep the egg temperature right for proper development. The other 40 percent of the threesomes are cooperative. The femalesmate with each other about once every six to seven hours and shownone of the constant aggressive behavior that continually takes placein the aggressive threesomes. The alpha female mates with the maleevery three hours or so, and the beta female every ﬁve hours or so.Thus the females mate with each other only slightly less often than theydo with the male. Females switch back and forth between beingmounted or doing the mounting, so neither could be identiﬁed as hav-ing a male or female “role.” They also sit and preen their feathers to-gether. They lay eggs about one day apart, placing them in their com-mon nest. Although cooperative threesomes may seem advantageous,the arrangement is still somewhat undesirable overall. The birds areonly so big and can sit on no more than four eggs, so three or four ofthe eggs fail to develop for lack of warmth. The net effect is that co-operative threesomes produce more nestlings than aggressive three-somes, but still less than an economically monogamous male/femalecouple does. The investigators conclude that the threesomes form because femalesare positioning themselves to obtain a territory in a subsequent year. Be-cause of the high abundance of oystercatchers, real estate is at a pre-mium. A female who was a member of a threesome had a higher chanceof moving into a monogamous relationship the following year than a fe-male who was not part of any breeding group. So being in a threesomeis better than being in no reproductive group at all, and a monogamouspair is best of all. Still, if a female is in a threesome, then being coopera-tive is more effective than being aggressive. The role of the same-sex copulations between the females in the co-
136 ANIMAL RAINBOWSoperative threesomes is to promote cooperation, to help cement and con-tinually reinforce the bond between them. Same-sex copulation may alsobe the mechanism that leads to females laying their eggs at the same timerather than two weeks apart. Thus same-sex copulation is part of thenormal social repertoire of oystercatchers, not used often, but sometimesinvaluable. A recent survey of same-sex matings in animals found ninety-four de-scriptions for bird species.17 Let’s round out the descriptions so far withsome other examples. Geese (Anser anser), for example, are well knownas the avian example of the human social ideal of a lifelong marriage.Geese may live for twenty years, and the pair-bond lasts more than adecade. Gay geese marriages are stable too. About 15 percent of pairs aremale-male, and some couples have been documented to stay togetherover ﬁfteen years. A male is reported to show “grief” after his partnerdies, becoming despondent and defenseless, just as between-sex partnersdo when one dies. Geese sometimes form threesomes that are the reverseof oystercatchers: a male pair is joined by a female and the trio raise afamily together.18 Swans (Cygnus atratus) also form stable male-male pairs that last formany years. Gay swans may even raise offspring together as a couple. Afemale may temporarily associate with a male-male pair, mate withthem, and leave her eggs with them. The male couple then parents theeggs and is reported to be more successful than a male-female couple be-cause together they access better nesting sites and territories, sharing theworkload more equally than between-sex couples. A full 80 percent ofthe gay couples successfully ﬂedge their young, compared with 30 per-cent for straight couples.19 The “mystery” of why monogamous razorbill (Alca torda) femalesparticipate in extra-pair copulations has already been mentioned (seechapter 7). The “mystery” deepens because males solicit EPCs with oneanother, not only with females. Of all out-of-pair-bond matings, 41 per-cent are between males, which constitute 18 percent of all mountings, in-cluding the within-pair male/female matings. Nearly two-thirds of allmales mount other males (an average of ﬁve partners apiece, and asmany as sixteen), and more than 90 percent of the males receive mountsfrom other males. Thus extra-pair copulation by males is distributedacross both males and females.20
SAME-SEX SEXUALITY 137 The little blue heron (Egretta caerulea) and the cattle egret (Bubulcusibis) also have same-sex EPCs—about 5 percent of the EPCs are male-male matings.21 The ring-billed gull, common gull, western gull, kitti-wake, silver gull, herring gull, black-headed gull, laughing gull, ivorygull, caspian tern, and roseate tern offer a large variety of mixed same-sex and between-sex pair-bonding, all facilitated with same-sex andbetween-sex copulation.22 In some species, up to 20 percent of all pairsconsist of two females, while in other species, up to 20 percent of allpairs consist of two males. Trios with two pair-bonded females and onemale sometimes occur; the male’s presence may be temporary, allowinga lesbian couple to raise the chicks on their own. Conversely, in otherspecies, trios of two pair-bonded males with one female may culminatein the departure of the female, allowing the gay male couple to raise thechicks by themselves.23 Tree swallows (Tachycineta bicolor) were also discussed earlier (seechapter 7) in relation to the “mystery” of why females participate inexta-pair copulation. Some of the EPCs in this species are betweenmales.24 In the blue tit (Parus caeruleus), pairs occasionally consist oftwo females. Both females incubate eggs that only one has laid, and usu-ally the eggs are infertile. In this species, same-sex pair-bonding occursonly sporadically.25 In the orange-fronted parakeet (Aratinga canicu-laris), pairs appear to be about 50 percent same-sex for both males andfemales.26WE, LIKE SHEEPBy 1984 male homosexual behavior had been reported in sixty-threemammalian species.27 A 1999 review featured detailed descriptions ofmale and female homosexual behavior in over one hundred mammalianspecies.28 From the many examples now available, I’ve selected sheep tobegin with because both behavior and physiology have been studied inthe ﬁeld and in the lab. Bighorn sheep are card-carrying members of the charismatic mega-fauna high on people’s conservation priority list. Living on rugged slopesof the Rocky Mountains, bighorn sheep inspire visitors to the Banff andKootenay National Parks in Canada, and the National Bison Range in
138 ANIMAL RAINBOWSMontana. The males (rams), with large thick horns that curl back fromabove the eye to behind the ear, weigh up to 300 pounds. Their machoappearance has become a symbol for many male athletic teams. The fe-males (ewes) live separately from the males. The sexes associate only dur-ing the breeding season, called the rutting season, which extends frommid fall to early winter. A female is receptive for about three days, andwill not allow herself to be mounted outside of these three days.29 The males have been described as “homosexual societies.” Almost allmales participate in homosexual courting and copulation. Male-malecourtship begins with a stylized approach, followed by genital lickingand nuzzling, and often leads to anal intercourse in which one male, usu-ally the larger, rears up on his hind legs and mounts the other. Themounted male arches his back, a posture known as lordosis, which isidentical to how a female arches her back during heterosexual mating.The mounting male has an erect penis, makes anal penetration, and per-forms pelvic thrusts leading to ejaculation. The few males who do not participate in homosexual activity havebeen labeled “effeminate” males. These males are identical in appear-ance to other males but behave quite differently.30 They differ from“normal males” by living with the ewes rather than joining all-malegroups. These males do not dominate females, are less aggressive over-all, and adopt a crouched, female urination posture. These males re-fuse mounting by other males. These nonhomosexual males are con-sidered “aberrant,” with speculation that some hormone deﬁciencymust underlie the effeminate behavior. Even though in physical ap-pearance, including body size and horn development, these males areindistinguishable from other males, scientists urge further study oftheir “endocrinological proﬁle.” This case turns the meanings of normal and aberrant upside down.The “normal” macho bighorn has full-ﬂedged anal sex with other males.The “aberrant” ram is the one who is straight—the lack of interest in ho-mosexuality is considered pathological. Now, why would being straightbe a pathology, requiring a hormone checkup? According to the re-searchers, what’s aberrant is that a macho-looking bighorn ram acts fem-inine! He pees like a female—even worse than being gay! This Alice-in-Wonderland mixing of what’s normal and what’s patho-logical continues in laboratory studies of homosexuality in domesticated
SAME-SEX SEXUALITY 139sheep. These studies, funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture,were carried out at the government’s U.S. Sheep Experimental Center inDubois, Idaho. The project escaped the congressional knife because itwas camouﬂaged with the goal of improving the economic success ofsheep farmers.31 Homosexual behavior in male domesticated sheep has been docu-mented since the 1970s.32 Two investigators write, “It is commonly ac-cepted that male-male mounting of prepubertal animals is important inthe development of normal rear orientation in mount interactions,” andthey cite a study on homosexual cattle.33 This argument has been a fa-miliar escape over the years from dealing with the reality of gay ani-mals—gayness in youth is necessary for straight life later on. Really,though, let’s be honest. Homosexual sheep and cattle are actually gay,not playing make-believe. Investigators coined the term “dud stud” for a ram attracted only toother rams. Preference, not ability, is the issue: “No matter how manybullets are in the clip, nothing happens until ﬁring commences.”34 Now,consider that rams cost from $350 up to $4,000. A sheep farmer has aratio of one ram to 30 to 50 ewes, and a “high-performance” stud canservice 100 to 125 ewes. Having a dud stud, then, deprives a sheep farmerof proﬁt because more studs must be purchased for each lamb produced.The investigators developed tests to determine whether a ram has bulletsin his clip (“servicing test”) and whether he knows where to aim them(“preference test”). The long-term goal was to determine the biologicaland genetic basis of homosexual behavior, so that duds could be weededout of domestic sheep, enhancing the economics of sheep raising.35 To separate gay sheep from straight sheep, rams were exposed to re-ceptive ewes for various periods. If the rams didn’t mount the females,they were candidates to be considered homosexual. Next a candidate gayram was strapped into a stanchion, a big crate with holes on each side tokeep sheep in a ﬁxed position. By arranging sheep of both sexes aroundthe stanchion, the candidate gay ram was allowed to respond to a vari-ety of females and males. The candidate gay male could indicate his pref-erence for a female, or another male, within the stanchion. A candidate wasn’t offered just any male. He was speciﬁcally pro-vided with males previously identiﬁed as “receivers” based on their will-ingness to be mounted by other males in the pen where they lived. If a
140 ANIMAL RAINBOWScandidate male chose a receiver rather than a female for courtship, hewas classiﬁed as homosexual. If a candidate failed the gay preferencetest, he was given a second chance. If he wouldn’t mount one of the re-ceiver males, but would mount some other male in the home pen, he wasthen provided with that special other male. Eight out of ninety-fourmales representing Rambouillet, Targhee, Colombia, Polypay, andFinnish Landrace breeds tested as gay. Interestingly, six of these maleswould mount receiver males. Two, though, would only mount eachother and none else, suggesting that they were somehow pair-bonded. After all of this preparation, the hormonal response of the gay maleswas determined. The investigators hypothesized that gay rams would re-spond hormonally to receiver males in the same way straight males re-spond to receptive females. They were wrong. Gay males don’t think an-other male is a female, and don’t respond as if they did. Gayness is expected in domesticated sheep because wild sheep are gay.The social structure in which being gay makes sense in nature is un-doubtedly also present to some degree in the pens where the animals live.The removal of gayness from rams to increase sheep-farming proﬁtswould also produce a change in their social system in the pens. I bet anyeconomic gain from breeding out duds will be offset by lower survivalrates among the remaining studs in an increasingly dysfunctional do-mestic social system. Many other creatures with hair have been documented as engaging insame-sex mating.36 White-tailed deer, black-tailed deer, red deer (alsocalled elk), reindeer, moose, giraffes, pronghorns, kobs, waterbucks,blackbucks, Thomson’s gazelles, Grant’s gazelles, musk oxen, mountaingoats, American bison, mountain zebras, plains zebras, warthogs, col-lared peccaries, vicuñas (a llama), African elephants, and Asiatic ele-phants have all been documented in scientiﬁc reports as engaging in somedegree of same-sex mating.37 In some species, same-sex mating is spo-radic; in others, very common, comprising over half of all copulations.In some, males engage in most of the same-sex matings; in others, mostlyfemales do it; and in still others, both sexes participate. Same-sex mat-ing is common among female red deer, male giraffes, female kobs, maleblackbucks, male and female mountain goats, male American bison, andmale African and Asiatic elephants. To continue, lions, cheetahs, red foxes, wolves, grizzly bears, black
SAME-SEX SEXUALITY 141bears, and spotted hyenas have been documented as engaging in same-sex mating. Again, the frequency varies from sporadic to common, witheither or both sexes involved, depending on the species.38 The gray kan-garoo, red-necked wallaby, whiptail wallaby, rat kangaroo, Doria’s kan-garoo, Matschie’s kangaroo, koala, dunnart, and quoll all enjoy same-sex mating too, although at relatively low frequency.39 The red squirrel, gray squirrel, least chipmunk, olympic marmot,hoary marmot, dwarf cavy, yellow-toothed cavy, wild cavy, long-earedhedgehog, gray-headed ﬂying fox, Livingstone’s fruit bat, and vampirebat show various degrees of same-sex mating.40 For example, female redsquirrels occasionally form a bond, with sexual and affectionate activi-ties leading to joint parenting. The female squirrels take turns mountingeach other, and raise a single litter of young. Although only one memberof the pair is the mother, both nurse the young. Only females form suchpair-bonds; male and female red squirrels don’t form pair-bonds. Amongmale red squirrels, 18 percent of the mounts are homosexual. Concern-ing vampire bats, recall that females form special long-lasting friendshipswith affectionate gestures, including grooming and kissing (see chapter5). No genital-genital contact has been reported among female vampirebats, but male vampire bats hang belly to belly licking one another, bothwith an erect penis. The bottlenose dolphin, spinner dolphin, Amazon river dolphin, killerwhale, gray whale, bowhead whale, right whale, gray seal, elephant seal,harbor seal, Australian sea lion, New Zealand sea lion, northern fur seal,walrus, and West Indian manatee are exceedingly active in same-sex gen-ital behavior.41 Nearly everyone has marveled at the playful personalityof dolphins, often featured in children’s movies—lots of makin’ whoopeegoing on in all directions. Male bottlenose dolphins are especially wellstudied. A male places its erect penis into another male’s genital slit, nasalaperture, or anus. They nuzzle each other’s genital slit with their beak,and they can interact sexually in threesomes and foursomes. In mixed-sex groups, homosexual activity occurs as much or more than hetero-sexual activity. The same-sex courtship is part of forming and main-taining lifelong pair-bonds between male dolphins of the same age. Theybond as adolescents, becoming constant companions and often travelingwidely. Paired males may take turns watching out while their partnerrests, and they protect one another against sharks and predators. On the
142 ANIMAL RAINBOWSdeath of a partner, the widower must search for a new companion, usu-ally failing unless he encounters another widower. Sometimes one ﬁnds lifelong bonds among a trio of dolphins ratherthan a pair. And to complete this picture of facile sexuality, male same-sex matings occur between species too! Male bottlenose dolphins matewith male Atlantic spotted dolphins (Stenella frontalis) and may bandtogether for interspecies cooperation. All is not sweetness and light,though. These pair-bonds are part of a system of “nested alliances.”Teams composed of pairs and trios of the Indian Ocean bottlenose dol-phin (Tursiops aduncus) ﬁght other such teams in contests over fe-males.42 Thus, a huge story remains to be told about same-sex matingsamong mammals under the sea.OUR CLOSEST RELATIVESWe come at last to our closest relatives in the animal world—the pri-mates. By now you might expect that primates, like other mammals,would show a good deal of same-sex courtship and mating. You won’tbe disappointed. Japanese macaques (Macaca fuscata) are one of the best-known of theold world monkeys and the northernmost of all primates other than hu-mans. Both sexes have gray-brown fur, a noticeably red face, often redgenitals as well, and a small tail. Their maximum height is about 2 feet,and they can weight up to 40 pounds. Japanese macaques are mostlyvegetarian, eating fruits, seeds, leaves, and bark, with some snails, cray-ﬁsh, and bird eggs thrown in. Japanese macaques become adults at aboutﬁve years and can live up to thirty years. A free-living group (theArashiyama West troop) was introduced to Texas in 1972 and hasthrived there, even inventing a special alarm call for rattlesnakes. Their social structure consists of mixed groups of around ﬁfty to twohundred females and males in an area of 100 to 500 hectares. The fe-males stay put, and a group consists of several matrilines, or female de-scendants of an elder female. The ratio of females to males in a group istypically around four females to one male. The males migrate betweengroups every two to four years. The social system revolves primarilyaround females and the interactions among them.
SAME-SEX SEXUALITY 143 The females are described as having a rigid dominance hierarchy, andall the females can be ordered along a line from top to bottom. Here’show the hierarchy works. Suppose the three elder females are ranked A,B, and C from top to bottom. All female offspring inherit the rank oftheir mother. So, if the daughter of A is A1, the daughter of B is B1, andthe daughter of C is C1, then the overall dominance hierarchy goes A,A1, B, B1, C, C1. And if A1 has a daughter too, say A11, and similarlyfor B11, C11, and so on, the overall dominance hierarchy spanning threegenerations would be A, A1, A11, B, B1, B11, C, C1, C11. However,matters are a bit more ﬂuid than this picture suggests. This hierarchy isproduced because elders come to the defense of their daughters andgranddaughters. At birth, A11 is subordinate to the C matriline, but afterinterventions on her behalf by A1 and A, the status of A11 is raised tothat of the A matriline. Dominance testing goes on continually. No onejust accepts her place unquestioningly. Against this backdrop, same-sex courtship and copulation are alsogoing on. Same-sex relationships happen not between close kin but be-tween distantly related individuals. These same-sex copulations pro-duce bonds that go beyond the straight-line lineage-based dominancehierarchy, building cross-cutting links and suggesting a network struc-ture in the social system. Same-sex courtship and copulation take placein what are called female-female consorts. These are short-term rela-tionships (STRs) that last for less than an hour up to four days. Dur-ing this time, the two females mount each other frequently, engagingin genital-genital contact. When not having sex together, they huddle,sleep, and forage together, groom each other, and defend each otherfrom challenges. For the duration of their STR, a pair is monogamous.After a few days, though, they form new STRs. During the STR themountings are bidirectional and mutually pleasurable, and there is nosign of dominance or submissiveness within the relationship.43 Indeed,the presence of any aggressiveness in the relationship destroys the“mood,” and forecasts the dissolution of the STR. The males have a hard time while all this lesbian love is going on.When a guy approaches to mate with a female, her partner usually shooshim away.44 Females back each other up while in an STR. The lower-ranking member of an STR increases in rank temporarily because of herpartner’s support.45 This temporary increase in rank ends when the STR
144 ANIMAL RAINBOWSdissolves. Although the lower-ranking member of a consort temporarilyrises in rank, a low-ranking female shows no tendency to pair up pref-erentially with a high-ranking female, as would be expected if she wereinterested in ﬁnding a more powerful ally. Instead, the higher-ranking fe-male is responsible for starting the relationship. Neither is forming a con-sort a means for two females to share parental care. The consort part-ners do not help raise each other’s young. A partner does not support theother’s young in conﬂicts, nor does she groom the other’s young. If any-thing, partners tend to be aggressive toward each other’s young. A subgroup in which females outnumbered males by eleven to onewas formed experimentally to see if the females would show increasedcompetition for the male’s favor, or if they would instead increase thenumber of same-sex relationships. Instead of competing more intenselyfor the one male, they formed more female-female relationships.Nonetheless, the majority of females who rejected a sexual solicitationfrom the one lucky guy in favor of a same-sex partner did later form aheterosexual consortship with him, showing him to be an acceptablemate.46 As these studies show, research on homosexuality in primates has ad-vanced beyond the “Gee, do they really do it?” stage of other vertebrategroups. Homosexuality is so conspicuous among primates, so in-your-face, that it cannot be ignored, resulting in a relatively extensive litera-ture going back to the 1970s.47 Yet, if the fact of extensive same-sex sex-uality in primates is well established, the reasons for this homosexualityare open to debate. The macaques don’t participate in homosexual rela-tionships because heterosexual partners aren’t available, or as an ex-pression of dominance and submission, or to form alliances, or to ac-quire help in raising their young. So why do female macaques spend somuch of their time in same-sex courtship and copulation? With no ready explanation for female homosexuality in Japanesemacaques, investigators have wondered “whether our line of question-ing is not faulty.”48 Does homosexuality really have to further overalllifetime reproduction, albeit in some indirect way? An alternativeview—what I call the neutralist position—is that homosexuality is aneutral byproduct of the evolution of other traits.49 Homosexuality, itis argued, doesn’t disappear during evolution because homosexuality isharmless. Female macaques have lots of offspring, and they participate
SAME-SEX SEXUALITY 145in heterosexual matings whenever they need some sperm. Homosexu-ality doesn’t interfere with their reproduction, so why would natural se-lection remove this harmless behavior? By chance, it is suggested, overthe course of evolution homosexuality has drifted into prominence insome species, while remaining nearly absent in others. Or maybe insome species chance has genetically linked homosexuality to importantgenes, and homosexuality has “hitchhiked” into prominence on thecoattails of those genes. Either way, it is contended, this behavior servesno evolutionary purpose. Since lots of traits are neutral, does some causal mechanism determinewhich of these traits actually evolves? One suggestion is pleasure. Whydo macaques participate in same-sex copulation instead of, say, themonkey equivalent of reading Kant in their spare time? Neither increasesreproductive success, we may suppose. Yet sexual stimulation is pleas-urable, and reading Kant isn’t. Therefore sexual activity, and not read-ing Kant, evolves to take place when not carrying out reproductively im-portant activities. Although “sexual pleasure was selected for because itmotivates individuals to engage in fertile sex, . . . sexual pleasure is notspeciﬁc to reproductive sex but can be satisﬁed by many non-reproduc-tive sexual outlets as well.”50 In this view, evolutionary theory is incom-plete because it applies only to traits that affect reproduction and sur-vival. This pleasure principle extends evolutionary theory to explainwhich among the set of selectively neutral traits evolve and which don’t.Homosexuality is viewed as existing under the radar screen of natural se-lection, subject only to the winds of passion. I don’t buy this neutralist position, at least not yet. I’m from the otherschool, the adaptationist school, which holds that nearly all behaviorsand traits beneﬁt organisms, and our task is to ﬁgure out how. Here’swhere I’m coming from. In my experience, animals don’t have lots of freetime for hanging out. The lizards I work with are busy all day. When notactively eating, mating, or displaying to one another, lizards are lookingaround intently for food or keeping tabs on their neighbors. Sure, lizardssleep now and then, and they stay in bed on a cold day, when they’re tooslow to catch prey anyway. Still, lizards use their time wisely and don’twaste it. We’re always underestimating animals. Long ago we thoughtlizards were mindless little robots. We ﬁnd now that throughout the daythey make complex decisions of the sort that top business executives pay
146 ANIMAL RAINBOWSexpensive consultants to solve.51 From this ﬁeldwork, one becomes waryof claims that a trait is useless. What about macaques? Is every day another day in paradise, an end-less party ﬁlled with evolutionarily meaningless play? Why shouldmacaques be so lucky, while the rest of us poor sods have to work for aliving? To my mind, homosexual interaction occupies far too much timein the lives of female macaques to be evolutionarily incidental. My hunch is that the social system has been oversimpliﬁed. Tradi-tionally, if A attacks B, and B backs down, then A is said to be dominantover B. A is assumed to get whatever is wanted as long as A remainsdominant. However, this assumption isn’t always true. I’ve sat on a rockin the woods watching a juvenile lizard, about 1 inch long, take territo-rial space from a male lizard ﬁve times as big. Here’s how. The juvenilegoes to the edge of the big lizard’s territory. The big lizard sees this andrushes over. The juvenile scurries away—he lost. So the big lizard goesback to his perch, and the juvenile lizard tiptoes back. The big lizardthen runs over again and chases the juvenile away. The juvenile losesagain. And so on. After ﬁve of these chases, the big lizard has hadenough and doesn’t bother to chase the juvenile anymore. The sliver ofland the juvenile wants isn’t worth the fuss from the big lizard’s stand-point.52 Overall, the juvenile lost every single pairwise interaction butstill won a slice of the dominant male’s territory. He lost every battle butwon the war. Thus saying the big lizard is dominant over the juvenilejust because the juvenile always backs down in pairwise contests doesn’tcapture the true power relationship. Furthermore, even pairwise inter-actions don’t take place in a vacuum. A lizard lives on every tree. Allthese lizards are watching, and they remember what they see. So themeaning of the interaction extends beyond the two lizards in the pair toall the lizards who were watching. A social system isn’t the sum of iso-lated pairwise disputes. For macaques, the ranking scheme is assembled from records ofmany pairwise interactions, and may miss much of the true social or-ganization. The question comes down to whether female macaques areparticipating in sex for fun only, or whether they’re networking for fu-ture proﬁt. If the homosexuality is only for fun, why are STRs not be-tween close kin, but only between matrilines? In heterosexual mating, an“incest taboo” prevents inbreeding. In homosexual matings, no off-
SAME-SEX SEXUALITY 147spring are conceived, so there is no reason for STRs to be avoided be-tween relatives. I suggest that STRs between close kin have no strategicvalue because close kin already share a bond, the kinship bond itself.STRs are needed to build bonds beyond kinship. Furthermore, if the ho-mosexuality is only for fun, why should high-ranking females be moreresponsible for maintaining the STRs than low-ranking ones; shouldn’trank be immaterial and the STRs be formed solely on the basis of whois the most enjoyable sexual partner? Let’s look at it another way. Calling this social structure a dominancehierarchy may exaggerate the power of a high-ranking female. Is thealpha female given her status by the consent of the governed? Does shehave to solicit their support, ask for their votes, to continue as theiralpha? Perhaps high-ranking females need support from low-ranking fe-males, and forming STRs secures their friendship. If the social system isbased on a network of power rather than a dominance hierarchy, thenfemale choice of homosexual partners may be adaptive not for climbinga dominance ladder but for navigating a political network. So a horse race is shaping up. Neutralists have often squared offagainst adaptationists in evolutionary biology. The dispute may be overquickly, though. Evolutionary theory includes an acid test for neutralistand adaptationist theories.53 For homosexuality to be evolutionarily neu-tral, females who do, and who don’t, participate in short-term homo-sexual relationships need to have nearly identical average reproductionover a lifetime. I doubt that homosexuality is selectively neutral in Japanesemacaques. I suspect that the fate is bleak for a female who doesn’t par-ticipate in homosexual STRs, as she is likely kicked out of the group andleft to die. Being kicked out of the group would greatly reduce her aver-age lifelong reproduction because she wouldn’t live long enough to re-produce, and any offspring she did have would not have access to groupresources or protection. If participating in STRs is necessary for inclusionin female social groups, then female same-sex sexuality in this species iswhat I call a social-inclusionary trait (see chapter 9). Not to participatein the STRs bound together with same-sex sexuality would be lethal. Consider now another primate with extensively documented same-sex sexuality. The bonobo (Pan paniscus) is not just any primate. Bono-bos, or pygmy chimpanzees, are our closest relatives, along with the
148 ANIMAL RAINBOWScommon chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes). Pan and human lineages splitapart about eight million years ago. The Pan line went on to divide intopygmy and common chimpanzees, while the Homo line divided into var-ious forms of early humans. Because Homo sapiens is the only remain-ing species from the human lineage, our closest living relatives are thesechimpanzee species. Chimpanzees* have become well known for theirmale-male power games, whereas bonobos illustrate female-female rela-tionships and the social uses of sexuality. Bonobos are less well knownbut just as relevant, if not more so, to the way people actually live. Bonobos, which live in the tropical lowland rainforests of Zaire, incentral Africa, grow to about 2 to 3 feet in height, weigh about 70 to 85pounds, and have black hair. They live about forty years, beginning tobreed after thirteen years or more. Bonobos eat fruit, insects, and smallmammals, and are more nearly vegetarian than chimpanzees. Chim-panzees actually hunt monkeys for food, whereas bonobos don’t. In cap-tive situations bonobos use tools skillfully, but in the wild they show lesstool use than chimpanzees. Bonobos are as intelligent as chimpanzees,and more sensitive. During World War II bombing in Germany, bono-bos in a zoo near Hellabrun died of fright from the noise, while the chim-panzees were unaffected. Bonobos live in mixed-sex, mixed-age groups of about sixty individ-uals. In bonobo females, a pink swelling around the genitals signalsreadiness to mate. Bonobo females are receptive almost continuously,whereas female chimpanzees are receptive for only a few days duringtheir cycle. In bonobo between-sex matings, one-third take place face toface, the remaining two-thirds taking place front to back, with the malemounting the female. By contrast, all chimpanzee between-sex matingsare front to back, with the male mounting. In bonobo female same-sex encounters, the two females face eachother. One clings with arms and legs to her partner, who lifts her off theground. The females rub their genital swellings side to side, then grinand squeal during orgasm, a form of mating called genito-genital rub-bing (GG-rubbing). In bonobo male same-sex encounters, the two malesrub humps: standing back to back, one male rubs his scrotum againstthe buttocks of the other. Another position, penis-fencing, involves two*The word “chimpanzee” will hereafter refer to the common chimpanzee unless otherwise qualiﬁed, and “bonobo” to the pygmy chimpanzee.
SAME-SEX SEXUALITY 149males hanging face to face from a branch while rubbing their erectpenises together. Bonobos don’t have anal intercourse, but they do havesporadic oral sex, hand massages of the genitals, and lots of intenseFrench kissing. With all these choices of sexual activity, bonobos haveeven developed a set of hand signals to tell each other what they’d like.These signals are used in both between-sex and same-sex sexual en-counters. Bonobo life isn’t a continuous orgy, as the extensive menu of sexualactivity might suggest. Daily life consists of numerous brief episodes scat-tered throughout the day. Each female participates in GG-rubbing onceevery two hours or so. A sexual encounter lasts about ten to ﬁfteen sec-onds, so in total, sex doesn’t take a lot of time. At least six situations leadto sex: 1. Sex facilitates sharing. When a zoo caretaker approaches bonobos with food, male bonobos develop erections. Before the food is tossed in, males invite females, females invite males, and females invite each other for sex. After sex, the meal begins. In the ﬁeld, at the Lomako Forest in Zaire, bonobos engage in sex after they enter trees loaded with ﬁgs, or after one has captured a prey animal. When ﬁve to ten minutes of sexual contact have passed, they all settle down to dine together. Sex facilitates sharing not only food but anything in demand. When a cardboard box used as a toy is given to bonobos in a zoo, they mount each other before beginning to play with the box. Most primate species would squabble and ﬁght over it instead. 2. Sex is used for reconciliation after a dispute, such as arguing over who has the right of way when walking along a branch. 3. Sex helps integrate a new arrival into the group. When females migrate to a new group, the new arrivals establish relationships with the established matriarchs through frequent GG-rubbing and grooming. 4. Sex helps form coalitions. Female bonobos bond through GG- rubbing to form coalitions against males who would otherwise be dominant. When food is given to chimpanzees, the males eat their ﬁll before the females are allowed their turn, whereas in bonobos, the females eat when they want, regardless of male presence. Females together chase off harassing males.
150 ANIMAL RAINBOWS 5. Sex is candy. In return for sex, a female may take a bundle of branches and leaves, or sugarcane, from a male. 6. Oh, I almost forgot—sex is used for reproduction.54 Why has homosexuality evolved between female bonobos? Femalesmaintain strong friendships with unrelated females, females control ac-cess to food, females share food with one another more often than withmales, and females form alliances in which they cooperatively attack andeven injure males. Their increased control over food and the lessenedthreat from males allows bonobo females to reproduce starting at anearlier age compared to chimpanzee females, who don’t form suchfriendships. An earlier age of ﬁrst reproduction in turn leads to higherlifetime reproductive success.55 A female who doesn’t participate in thissocial system, including its same-sex sexuality, will not share in thesegroup beneﬁts. For a female bonobo, not being lesbian is hazardous toyour ﬁtness. For these reasons, female same-sex sexuality in bonobos is what I calla social-inclusionary trait (see chapter 9). The evolution of female ho-mosexuality is driven by the need to be included in the social group thatcontrols resources, and not belonging is near-lethal. The selection infavor of participating in same-sex sexuality, given that this mode ofbonding is already in place, is exceedingly strong. Bonobos and common chimpanzees offer an interesting contrast insocial organization. Physically, they are much the same, the main differ-ence being that common chimpanzees have grayish hair under their chinsand bonobos don’t. Yet chimpanzees have a male-dominated society andbonobos a female-centered society, and as we’ve seen, bonobos have alove life that chimpanzees can only envy. In case you’re wondering about other primates, here are some inwhich same-sex courtship and mating are documented. Lemurs, such asVerreaux’s sifaka (Propithecus verreauxi) from Madagascar, have lim-ited same-sex mating between males—up to 14 percent of all matings inone study.56 New world monkeys, like the squirrel monkey (Saimiri sci-ureus) and the white-faced capuchin (Cebus capucinus) from SouthAmerica, have same-sex genital interactions.57 Female squirrel monkeysform short-term sexual relationships, and also have close female“friends” with whom they travel and rest and occasionally coparent.
SAME-SEX SEXUALITY 151Males too have same-sex genital displays. Mounts between females oc-curred once every forty minutes during a week out of each month, and40 percent of all genital displays were same-sex, one-quarter between fe-males. In white-faced capuchins, more than half of the mountings weresame-sex and included specialized courtship gestures and vocaliza-tions.58 Old world monkeys have an extensive record of same-sex sexual en-counters. In addition to the Japanese macaque (Macaca fuscata) alreadydiscussed, the rhesus macaque (Macaca mulatta) and stumptail macaque(Macaca arctoides) engage in same-sex sexuality as a regular part of life.In rhesus macaques, about a third of all mountings are same-sex, 80 per-cent of which are between males. Females form short- to medium-termrelationships, as do male/female pairs.59 Male-male genital contact instumptail macaques includes anal intercourse, with penetration andejaculation, and mutual oral sex. Homosexual activity accounts for25–40 percent of all sexual encounters.60 The savanna baboon (Papio cynocephalus), hamadryas baboon(Papio hamadryas), and gelada baboon (Theropithecus gelada) fromAfrica have extensive same-sex genital relationships. Savanna baboonmales have numerous same-sex genital contacts, including “diddling,” inwhich males fondle each other’s genitals, called “greeting” behaviors.Some males form long-lasting coalitions with mutual exchange of sexualfavors. Savanna baboons protect and help one another, and their asso-ciations can last for many years, constituting long-term relationships(LTRs). Approximately 20 percent of the mountings are between males,and 9 percent between females. Baboon life is marked by violence. Male savanna baboons coerce mat-ings with females, often seriously injuring them. When an outside maletakes over a troop, he may attack mothers and infants, injuring females,causing miscarriages, and killing infants. Males often “kidnap” infants,and the youngsters may be injured. In this social system, same-sexcourtship is used speciﬁcally for coalition-building. For baboons, coali-tions are threatening to those who exercise power and dominance.61 At-tempts by powerful males to break up threatening coalitions among sub-ordinates emerge as a form of homophobia. Hanuman langurs (Presbytis entellus) are medium-sized monkeysfrom India known for their exceptional violence toward infants and ju-
152 ANIMAL RAINBOWSveniles.62 Attacks by adult males may account for half of all infantdeaths. The stress of this violence causes females to abort fetuses spon-taneously. Females may also induce abortion by pressing their bellies onthe ground or allowing other females to jump on them. Females are notnecessarily award-winning mothers, either. Maternal mistreatment in-cludes abandonment; dangling, dropping, and dragging the baby; shov-ing it against the ground; biting or kicking it; and throwing the infant outof trees. Females from one group may kidnap a baby from a neighbor-ing group, keeping it for three days before allowing the mother to retrieveit. The presence of this behavior was controversial when ﬁrst reported.63 The same-sex sexual activity of langurs is rather ordinary. All femalesmount each other. Interestingly, females do mount close relatives (27percent of all lesbian mountings are between half-sisters) and show nohomosexual incest taboo, whereas an incest taboo does govern hetero-sexual mountings. Males also mount each other. The mountee initiatesthe mounting with a special head-shaking display. Males sometimesform duos, a pair-bond lasting for about a month. Males who havebonded through homosexual mounting may cooperate in launching at-tacks against males in neighboring groups. The white-handed gibbon (Hylobates lar) of Thailand and the sia-mang (Hylobates syndactylus) of the Malay peninsula and Sumatra, inwelcome contrast to langurs and baboons, are primarily monogamous,although some divorce happens. In a study over six years of elevenmale/female gibbon pairs, ﬁve split up and six remained intact. Femalesbreed for four or ﬁve months every two to three years, and between-sexsexual behavior is largely limited to breeding periods. Nonabusive in-trafamily same-sex behavior is common. A male parent and offspringhave sexual contact—primarily penis-fencing leading to orgasm andejaculation—about as often as between-sex mating occurs during thebreeding period. Although gibbons are monogamous, about 10 percentof the heterosexual matings are extra-pair. The whole system seems quitesimilar to avian monogamy, with the addition of the same-sex father/off-spring sexual activity.64 Gorillas (Gorilla gorilla) live in groups of one male with three to sixadult females plus their offspring, as well as in all-male groups. Same-sexgenital contact occurs in females and males. Females have favorite femalepartners in the mixed-sex groups. Most of the male-male homosexual
SAME-SEX SEXUALITY 153behavior takes place in the all-male groups. Males have preferred part-ners too; some interact with only one partner, others with up to ﬁve part-ners. Males also commit infanticide, causing more than 40 percent of theinfant deaths in one study.65 All in all, lots of same-sex courtship and mating takes place amongprimates. A look at the family tree of primates suggests a pattern. Fromits base near the ground, the tree trunk splits ﬁrst into the prosimians onone side and the anthropoids on the other. The prosimian branch, in-cluding bush babies, lemurs, and tarsiers, appears to have only inciden-tal same-sex mounting while in heat and no evidence of a major socialrole for same-sex courtship. The anthropoid branch splits into two sub-branches: the new world primates and the old world primates. The newworld primates, including marmosets, tamarins, and monkeys with pre-hensile tails, such as spider monkeys, show some homosexual behavior.It is in the old world primates that homosexual courtship becomesprominent. The old world primates, including macaques, baboons, gib-bons, orangutans, gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos, and humans, containthe most sophisticated of the primate societies. In these societies, indi-viduals form complex relationships, relationships clearly fosteredthrough both same-sex and between-sex sexuality.66 This pattern of oc-currence across the primate family tree suggests that homosexuality inprimates is an evolutionary innovation originating around ﬁfty millionyears ago, when the major prosimian and anthropoid lineages begantheir divergence.OBJECTIVITY AND HOMOSEXUALITYMy coverage of homosexuality in animals will be seen by some as a lit-mus test of objectivity. Am I simply going to assert that because homo-sexuality is common in animals, it is legitimate in people? I want to beclear about where I stand on the issues of how widespread animal ho-mosexuality is and what relevance such information has for affirminghuman homosexuality. I believe the moral assessment of human behavior is independent ofwhat animals do, as I’ve mentioned before. Infanticide by males is commonin animals, and female animals choose mates in part to manage this dan-
154 ANIMAL RAINBOWSger. The naturalness of male infanticide in animals is clearly no justiﬁcationfor infanticide in humans—human infanticide is wrong, period. By con-trast, I believe that affirming homosexual expression is right for people, notbecause animals are often homosexual but because endorsing homosexualexpression makes for a just and productive society. Further discussion ofthe moral aspects of homosexuality appears later in this book. Here,though, the morality of homosexuality is not at issue. The issue is whetherhomosexuality is in fact common among animals. I began this chapter by citing two disparate views: one scientist say-ing homosexuality is rare to the point of being nearly nonexistent, an-other documenting over three hundred species of vertebrates in whichhomosexuality occurs. This gap in scientiﬁc opinion is huge. Scientistswho think homosexuality is almost nonexistent will feel that I am trawl-ing for scraps of data, making up a story where one doesn’t exist. Scien-tists who think homosexuality is common will wonder why their col-leagues have been silent, and suspect a cover-up. I have gradually movedfrom the ﬁrst camp into the second. Prior to researching this book, I took for granted that homosexualitywas rare. Personally, I still have never seen a mating between lizards thatI am certain is homosexual, even after thirty years of working with them.I can sympathize with those who think homosexuality is rare—this hasbeen my experience too. Yet I now know this experience is misleading.Previously, I was aware of one published reference to a homosexual cop-ulation in nonparthenogenic lizards, but I felt the situation was unusualenough to be an isolated instance. As a result, I never checked. Every fewdays during ﬁeldwork I see lizards mating. Sometimes I’m sure of thesexes involved. Usually, though, I would assume the bigger lizard wasmale and the smaller female. If both were about the same size, I wouldstill assume one was male and the other female. To ﬁnd out, I would havehad to catch them while they were in the act of mating, separate them,and inspect their sex by physically palpating them and examining theircloacal opening. This action would be intrusive, would be disturbing andpossibly injurious to the animals, and would take time away from a re-search project that had other goals. For this reason, I don’t know howmuch homosexual mating occurs even in the species I have worked withfor many years. I’m sure that many other scientists are in the same situ-ation—we have never really looked.
SAME-SEX SEXUALITY 155 I was stunned to discover how many reports of homosexuality thereare in the primary literature. The seven cases I’ve reviewed above—whip-tail lizards, pukekos and oystercatchers, bighorn and domesticatedsheep, Japanese macaques and bonobos—are well documented overmany years by multiple investigators. In these, no doubt whatsoever ex-ists of homosexuality. Of the, say, 293 others, for a total of approxi-mately 300 species, some will fall by the wayside and others will be re-conﬁrmed. Today, it’s very hard to know how common homosexualityis in natural social systems. The data aren’t collected, or the sexes aren’tchecked, and when data are available, they often aren’t reported. Myoverall conclusion is now that the more complex and sophisticated a so-cial system is, the more likely it is to have homosexuality intermixed withheterosexuality. Any animal in a complex society has to manage bothwithin- and between-sex relationships. Both types of relationships aremediated through physical contact, including embracing, grooming, andgenital contact, as well as through vocalizations, bodily symbolism, andbehaviors like food-sharing and warning calls.IS SAME-SEX SEXUALITY PROBLEMATIC?Let us suppose, on the basis of the available evidence, that same-sex sex-uality is now known to be natural and common. Would this discoverybe a problem? Here are the questions I’m usually asked. What’s the function of homosexuality? Same-sex sexuality promotesfriendship. Genitals have sensory neurons that provide pleasure. Acti-vating one another’s genital neurons sends a friendly message andbuilds relationships. The friendship’s purpose depends on context. Thepurpose of friendship might be innocent or threatening. Friendly batshuddling together through the cold nights are innocent. Friendly ba-boons building coalitions to overturn an alpha male are threatening; thealpha male will try to prevent this friendship, which would be seen ashomophobia. Does a gay gene exist? The question doesn’t really ask about DNA.The question asks whether homosexuality is inherited. Homosexualityin animals is obviously inherited in some way, but no single gay gene ex-ists. Homosexuality is a complex social behavior. Complex traits are not
156 ANIMAL RAINBOWScaused by single genes. Reports of a gay gene in humans are erroneous,as will be discussed later. Doesn’t homosexuality contradict evolution? This question usuallyconfuses same-sex sexuality with nonbreeding. Nonbreeding is an evo-lutionary problem; same-sex sexuality isn’t. The two aren’t necessarilyconnected. Nonbreeders always exist, heterosexual and homosexual. Inmost species, only some members breed, while the rest don’t, reﬂectingthe population’s reproductive skew. Some nonbreeding homosexual an-imals are expected to exist simply because of the population’s reproduc-tive skew, and this can be explained by whatever causes that skew. In-deed, the main evolutionary issue is to explain where the reproductiveskew comes from, not whether same-sex genital contact occurs. Although some homosexual animals don’t breed, most do. Homo-sexuals who breed can have either a lower or higher fertility than het-erosexuals who breed, depending on circumstances. Breeding homosex-ual animals could have a lower fertility than breeding heterosexualsbecause of a tradeoff between fertility and survival. Natural selection fa-vors traits that increase average total offspring production throughoutlife, which depends on both fertility and survival. A homosexual strat-egy could increase same-sex matings to obtain higher survival thoughfriendships. This homosexual strategy might result in decreased fecun-dity because of fewer between-sex matings. However, the homosexualstrategy might yield more offspring averaged over a life span than an ex-clusively heterosexual strategy because of the increased survival. Alternatively, breeding homosexual animals might have an evenhigher fertility rate than breeding heterosexual animals because homo-sexually bonded friendships might access more resources than thoseavailable to exclusively heterosexual animals, yielding a fertility advan-tage. Homosexuality can be a social-inclusionary trait. In this situation,homosexuality might increase both fertility and survival, and be favoredby natural selection even without taking into account a possible trade-off between fertility and survival. Thus same-sex sexuality doesn’t nec-essarily go against evolution, either in general or in particular. Although homosexuality doesn’t contradict evolution, widespreadhomosexuality among animals does open new perspectives on how wethink about bodies and social relationships. Let’s move on to some im-plications of this realization that homosexuality is a common ingredient
SAME-SEX SEXUALITY 157in the social life of our vertebrate relatives. One implication is that traitspresently interpreted solely in heterosexual terms now need to be reex-amined.GENITAL GEOMETRYColorful feathers and other traits that make an animal attractive arecalled secondary sex characteristics and are assumed to attract membersof the opposite sex. Because same-sex sexuality may be as important asbetween-sex sexuality in some species, secondary sex characteristics mayattract same-sex partners as much as between-sex partners. A specialcase of secondary sex characteristics is the color and geometry of the ex-ternal genitals. Many people are too squeamish to discuss the optimal de-sign of genitals, focusing instead on safe characteristics, such as colorfultail feathers, fur, or scales. Yet genitals also have symbolic importance,serving not only to transfer and receive sperm but also to build and main-tain social relationships both within and between the sexes. Why the clitoris with its sensitive pleasure neurons is located somedistance from the vagina in humans has long been an enigma. In males,the main sensory spot is at the tip of the penis. As a result, a male is mo-tivated to insert the penis into the vagina to obtain orgasm. By contrast,a female may not experience orgasm during penile insertion because theclitoris may not be activated. It is a puzzle why genital geometry doesn’tguarantee as much pleasure for females in heterosexual intercourse as formales. Because same-sex matings can be as common as between-sex matings,the geometry of the genitals may be shaped to promote same-sex contactas well as between-sex contact. In bonobos, females participate in same-sex sexuality by facing each other and rubbing their genitals side to side.In 1995 the distinguished primatologist Frans de Waal wrote, “Thefrontal orientation of the bonobo vulva and clitoris strongly suggest thatthe female genitalia are adapted for this [frontal] position.”67 More ex-plicitly, the noted behavioral ecologist Marlene Zuk wrote in 2000 thatthe bonobo clitoris is “frontally placed, perhaps because selection fa-vored a position maximizing stimulation during the genital-genital rub-bing common among females.”68 Bonobos are unusual because between-
158 ANIMAL RAINBOWSsex mating also often takes place face to face rather than face to back.The frontal position may be how bonobo males adjust to the position ofthe female genitals, a genital geometry that must work for both same-sexand between-sex sexuality. From the standpoint of female reproduction,little is gained by placing the clitoral neurons near the vagina to furtherbetween-sex mating when males are well motivated for intercourse any-way. Instead, the pleasure neurons are shifted to a location that pro-motes same-sex mating and may yield more effective same-sex bonds, in-creasing overall Darwinian ﬁtness at no reproductive cost. A subject forthe future will be to account for genital design across the vertebrates ina uniﬁed treatment that takes into account all symbolic and other func-tions of genitals beyond the transfer of sperm.
9The Theory of EvolutionD iversity in gender expression and sexuality undercuts Darwin’s theory of sexual selection. Saying this, however, does not mean all of Darwin’s writings are incorrect. Indeed, I feel we should not losesight of his overwhelming contribution, even though I believe one of histheories is seriously mistaken. Perhaps Darwin’s most important discovery is that all species are re-lated to all other species through shared descent from common ances-tors. The most grand and most lowly share in the unity of life. Darwincame to this insight as a young man, during his travels as a naturalist ona sailing ship called the Beagle. In his diary, Darwin compared the ani-mals of an archipelago, the Galápagos Islands, with those of SouthAmerica, which he had previously visited.1 He wrote, “We see that thisarchipelago, though standing in the Paciﬁc Ocean, is zoologically part ofAmerica. If this character were owing merely to immigrants from Amer-ica, there would be little remarkable in it; but we see that a vast major-ity of all the land animals, and that more than half the ﬂowering plants,are aboriginal productions. It was most striking to be surrounded by newbirds, new reptiles, new shells, new insects, new plants, and yet by in-numerable triﬂing details of structure, and even by tone of voice andplumage of the birds, to have the temperate plains of Patagonia, or thehot dry deserts of Northern Chile, vividly brought before my eyes.” Thus 159
160 ANIMAL RAINBOWSDarwin observed that the species unique to the Galápagos, which hecalled aboriginal productions, are nonetheless related to South Americanspecies. Darwin continues by comparing the animals on different islandswithin the Galápagos: “I never dreamed that islands, about ﬁfty or sixtymiles apart, and most of them in sight of each other, formed of preciselythe same rocks, placed under a quite similar climate, rising to a nearlyequal height, would have been differently tenanted . . . one is astonishedat the amount of creative force, if such an expression may be used, dis-played on these small, barren, and rocky islands; and still more so, at itsdiverse yet analagous action on points so near each other.” Here Darwinfurther observes that species diverge even within a group of islands, notonly between the group and the mainland. Today, one could not improve on Darwin’s formulation. Darwin per-fectly expressed the idea of evolution through common descent. He fo-cused on populations of plants or animals rather than on single individ-uals. Strictly speaking, Darwin might have concluded only that thespecies he personally saw were related to one another by descent fromcommon ancestors. Although at present the possibility of more than oneindependent origin for life perhaps can’t be ruled out after considering theenormous diversity of single-celled organisms, all the organisms peopleare generally familiar with do share descent from common ancestors.2DARWIN’S NATURAL SELECTIONDarwin’s next task was to understand what “creative force” producesthe diversity of new species. Darwin identiﬁed a force he named “natu-ral selection,” which causes species to change over time. Darwin’s the-ory of natural selection is correct overall, although our contemporaryunderstanding of the process is somewhat different from the way Dar-win wrote about it. Living in an agricultural setting, Darwin was well aware of animaland plant breeding—cows, horses, and crops for yield and dogs, roost-ers, and ﬂowers for show. Animal and plant breeding was done every dayand could obviously change the properties of a stock. Animal and plantbreeding is based on selecting certain individuals to reproduce and elim-
THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION 161inating the remainder. This process is now called “artiﬁcial selection” toindicate that a farmer, rather than the natural environment, determineswho gets to survive and/or to breed. Darwin was also aware that a contemporary, Thomas Malthus, wasdeveloping scenarios about the consequences of population growth. Dar-win wrote, “On the principle of geometrical increase . . . more individ-uals are produced than can possibly survive, there must in every case bea struggle for existence. . . . It is the doctrine of Malthus applied withmanifold force to the whole animal and vegetable kingdoms.”3 Darwinrealized that if only certain types of individuals survive in crowded con-ditions, then the population will consist of descendants of those sur-vivors. Thus was born the idea of “natural selection,” the process bywhich the natural environment determines who gets to survive and/orbreed. Natural selection is nature’s equivalent of artiﬁcial selection foryield. Furthermore, if nature selects for different types of individuals indifferent locations, then the populations in those locations will divergeover time, eventually accumulating enough differences to be distin-guished as different species. A technical difficulty in Darwin’s original account concerns how di-versity is maintained. Darwin had not heard of Mendelian genes andcould not account for why variation persists in a natural populationrather than simply dissolving. Fifty years later, population geneticistsRonald Fisher and J. B. S. Haldane in the United Kingdom and SewallWright in the United States rescued Darwin’s theory of natural selectionusing mathematical equations that incorporated Mendelian inheritance.Today, evolutionary textbooks all triumphantly teach how early popu-lation genetics theory provided Darwin’s natural selection with a rigor-ous mathematical basis. Although scientists are perhaps justly proud of early population ge-netics, they rarely bother to mention that those equations also funda-mentally change the interpretation of how natural selection works. In theMalthusian scenario, the “struggle for existence” emphasizes competi-tion for scarce resources, making aggressive combat the theme of natu-ral selection. Yet the equations for natural selection do not concern astruggle for limited resources at all. Instead, each genetic type is associ-ated with a measure of net reproductive productivity—fecundity timesprobability of survival, the so-called Darwinian ﬁtness. Natural selection
162 ANIMAL RAINBOWSis today best described as survival of the productive based on the pro-gressive improvement of natural yield. Evolution by natural selectiontakes place even in a population unlimited by resources, because somegenetic types are inherently more productive than others, regardless ofthe scarcity or abundance of resources. A genetic type may become moreproductive by being cooperative, forming friendships, being frugal or in-novative, or any number of strategies having nothing to do with “strug-gle.” I believe scientists have failed to publicize effectively that the no-tion of a tooth-and-claw struggle for existence was discarded over ﬁftyyears ago as the central metaphor of mathematical natural selection the-ory. What actually happens in nature is much kinder than people havebeen led to believe. Thus Darwin’s concept of natural selection has been modiﬁed and in-vested with new meaning, showing that he was on the right track. How-ever, evolution by natural selection is not completely settled even to thisday. The issue remains of where the variation among individuals comesfrom. This has been the most problematic area of evolutionary biology. In the 1970s the distinguished biologist Lynn Margulis discoveredthat all the plants and animals above the level of bacteria—so-called eu-karyotic organisms—are really partnerships at the cellular level.4 Ivividly remember when, as a teenager in biology class, I peeled anonion’s skin, placed the thin sheet under a microscope, and saw cells forthe ﬁrst time. I was taught that cells are the elemental building blocks oforganisms, and there I was, looking at the building blocks of an onion.Well, it’s now clear that the cell is not a unitary building block after all,but rather a partnership of many subunits, some of which lived sepa-rately by themselves at some time in the past. The places within a plantcell where the green chlorophyll is located and photosynthesis occurs—the chloroplasts—were once bacteria that lived on their own. The placeswithin a cell where our food is broken down and converted into energy(the mitochondria) were also once bacteria existing independently. Thegenes in an onion’s cells, and in our cells too, are located not only in thenucleus, but also in other places that were once free-living cells. A cell isthus a partnership, and its overall genome is distributed across all theformerly independent partners and not solely contained in the nucleus. Biologists have been reluctant to think through what this partnershipimplies. If every one of our cells is a symbiosis among formerly free-
THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION 163living bacterial elements, then we are but clusters of bacteria ourselves.We’re not only descended from bacteria—we still are bacteria, a deeplyhumbling thought. And cellular function is not the simple story of a nu-cleus whose genes impose its wishes on the cytoplasm. Instead, some sub-cellular negotiation was required to form our cells to begin with, andmay still take place. Perhaps the nucleus and mitochondria have an on-going biochemical discussion, whose breakdown shows up as disease. Most genes in our cells are in fact located in the nucleus, and thosefew residing in mitochondria and elsewhere are exceptional. This fact al-lows the narrative of nuclear genetic control to persist unchallenged. Onewonders, though, how long this biological ﬁction can be sustained. Tra-ditional population genetics views genetic variation as blindly poppingup through random mutation of nuclear genes, and natural selection asoperating on these new genes to fashion innovative adaptations. Thisview implicitly accepts the story of nuclear genetic control. Suppose instead that genes arrive by negotiation with other organ-isms: one cell says to another, “I need some of your genes,” and the otherreplies, “Sure, and I need a home to live in.” Well, this collaboration isexactly what occurs in corals. The coral is an invertebrate animal like ahydra, capable of catching food with tiny tentacles. But corals also wel-come single-celled algae called zooxanthellae into their bodies. At anytime, the genes in a coral cell may include those in the coral nucleus plusthose in the algae nucleus. However, the zooxanthellae of a coral are stillquite capable of leaving the coral and surviving alone, unlike the chloro-plasts of land plants. The coral-zooxanthellae relationship breaks downin low light, where corals rely on what they can catch with their tenta-cles. No one knows what zooxanthellae do when living on their own.Many strains of zooxanthellae exist, and the total genetic compositionwithin a coral cell varies as different strains of zooxanthellae shuffle inand out. The genetic variation in a coral cell thus does not depend on theblind mutation of single genes, as envisioned by traditional populationgenetics theory. Instead, a cell can adaptively negotiate its genome withother cells. Evolutionary biology is nowhere close to engaging the implications ofa genome whose composition originates by negotiation with othergenomes instead of by blind mutation. I feel the discovery of the partner-ship basis of cells is as important as the discovery of DNA. But the DNA
164 ANIMAL RAINBOWSstory has been relatively easy for people to absorb, a reﬁnement of thenarrative of genetic control we’ve been taught since grade school. Thepartnership theory of cellular function is wholly unexpected, and scien-tists haven’t known what to do with the ﬁnding. The situation is analo-gous to gender and sexuality, where also no one was prepared for the ﬁnd-ings, and there, too, cooperative relationships have been underestimated. Thus Darwin’s theory of natural selection as the creative force mold-ing diversity seems certain to continue as the major element of evolu-tionary theory, even as discussion continues about the source of varia-tion. By contrast, the third component of Darwin’s theory, sexualselection, should not, in my opinion, be resuscitated.DARWIN’S SEXUAL SELECTIONI appreciate the gravity of discrediting a discipline’s master text. How-ever, I doubt that the factual difficulties in Darwin’s theory of sexual se-lection can be easily smoothed over. I also believe that this theory haspromoted social injustice and that overall we’d be better off both scien-tiﬁcally and ethically if we jettisoned it. I am far from the ﬁrst to call fora thorough overhaul of sexual selection theory. I join a tradition initiatedin the courageous studies by Sarah Hrdy of female choice in Indian mon-keys and continued today in the writings and the experimental and ﬁeldstudies of Patricia Gowaty.5 I am, I confess, more extreme than they incalling for the outright abandonment of sexual selection theory. Darwin’s sexual selection is evolutionary biology’s ﬁrst universal the-ory of gender.6 Darwin claimed, based on his empirical studies, thatmales and females obey nearly universal templates. He wrote, “Males ofalmost all animals have stronger passions than females,” and “The fe-male . . . with the rarest of exceptions is less eager than the male . . . sheis coy.” Darwin offered sexual selection as an explanation for why males andfemales should obey these universal templates. Whereas artiﬁcial breed-ing for yield was the model for natural selection, artiﬁcial breeding forshow was the model for sexual selection. Darwin proposed that females,like the farmer, choose showy and virile males. Females choose maleswho are, he wrote, “vigorous and well-armed. . . . Just as man can im-
THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION 165prove the breed of his game-cocks by the selection of those birds whichare victorious in the cock-pit, so . . . the strongest and most vigorousmales, or those provided with the best weapons . . . have led to the im-provement of the . . . species.” Beauty, too, could be a factor. In partic-ular, “Many female progenitors of the peacock must . . . by the contin-ued preference of the most beautiful males, [have] rendered the peacockthe most splendid of living birds.” Thus Darwin imagined that malescome to be the way they universally are because these males are what fe-males universally want, and the species is better off as a result. Darwin further proposed a universal template for social life in ani-mals: “It is certain that amongst almost all animals there is a struggle be-tween males for the possession of the female. . . . The strongest, and . . .best armed of the males . . . unite with the more vigorous and better-nourished females . . . [and] surely rear a larger number of offspringthan the retarded females, which would be compelled to unite with theconquered and less powerful males.” In these writings, Darwin pejora-tively viewed diversity within a species as a hierarchy beginning with su-perior individuals and winding down to the “retarded,” a view that isdiversity-repressing and elitist, stressing a weeding out of the weak andsickly and naturalizing male domination of females. In his earlier writ-ings, however, Darwin viewed diversity favorably across species withinan ecological community, imagining that each species ﬁlls a special nichein nature. The contradiction evident in Darwin’s attitude to diversitywithin species, as opposed to diversity between species, plagues our so-ciety today, from biology and medicine to politics and law. However, Darwin didn’t ignore diversity altogether. Juxtaposed withuniversalist claims are acknowledgments of “exceptions” to the generalpattern. In some species, males “acquire” females by defeating their ri-vals. In other species, males cannot unilaterally capture females but mustallow for female choice instead. “In very many cases the males whichconquer their rivals do not obtain possession of the females, indepen-dent of the choice of the latter.” In such cases, “the females . . . preferpairing with the more ornamented males, or those which are the bestsongsters, or play the best antics . . . [and] at the same time prefer themore vigorous and lively males.” In still other species, males and femalesare equals, and male choice of females is as important as female choiceof males. Darwin wrote that in the “much rarer case of the males select-
166 ANIMAL RAINBOWSing particular females . . . those which . . . had conquered others . . .would select vigorous as well as attractive females.” Darwin was an ex-perienced naturalist who knew of diversity in mating behavior but dealtwith this diversity by privileging the narrative of the handsome warrior,relegating everything else to exceptions. Darwin made no attempt to ex-plain why “exceptions” occur or why species vary in the balance ofpower between the sexes. His labeling of this diversity as exceptionalsidestepped the need to explain. Darwin also acknowledged that many animals do not align with asimple sexual binary. Although Darwin worked at length on barnacles,which are simultaneously hermaphroditic, he never tried to ﬁt them intohis theory. Instead, he simply set barnacle-like species aside and assertedthat all the remaining species do obey the universal male and female tem-plates: “On the whole there can be no doubt that with almost all ani-mals, in which the sexes are separate, there is a constantly recurrentstruggle between the males for the possession of the females.” Similarly, Darwin knew of sex-role reversal but offered no explana-tion other than to say that such reversals are rare: “With birds there hassometimes been a complete transposition of the ordinary charters properto each sex; the females having become the more eager in courtship, themales remaining comparatively passive, but apparently selecting themore attractive females. . . . Certain hen birds have thus been renderedmore highly colored or otherwise ornamented, as well as more powerfuland pugnacious than the cocks.” After reviewing the sex-role reversedcassowary, emu, tree-creeper, and nightjar, Darwin concluded, “Takingas our guide the habits of most male birds . . . [females] endeavor todrive away rival females, in order to gain possession of the male. . . .[Here] the males would probably be most charmed or excited by the fe-males which were the most attractive by their bright colors, other orna-ments, or vocal powers. Sexual selection would then do its work, steadilyadding to the attractions of the females; the males and the young beingleft not at all, or but little modiﬁed.” Even today, sex-role reversals are“explained” as resulting from a higher parental investment from malesthan females in raising the young. Yet even today no theory has beenproposed that explains when this transposition of the sex-role binary oc-curs. Darwin does not appear to have been aware of natural same-sex sex-
THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION 167uality, or of gender multiplicity in the sense of coexisting alternative re-productive and/or life history strategies within each sex. Nor does Dar-win consider any functions for mating that are not directly linked to re-production. Yet Darwin did anticipate the theory of parental investmentbased on the relative cost of egg and sperm: “The female has to expendmuch organic matter in the formation of her ova, whereas the male ex-pends much force in ﬁerce contests with his rivals, in wandering aboutin search of the female, in exerting his voice. . . . on the whole the ex-penditure of matter and force by the two sexes is probably nearly equal,though effected in very different ways and at different rates.” Darwin should be credited for distinguishing between traits con-tributing mostly to survival in the physical environment and those con-tributing mostly to reproduction in the social environment, for ac-knowledging many exceptions, and for anticipating many of theconcepts still employed today. Darwin should also be credited with at-tributing evolutionary status to females. The possibility that femaleswere even capable of choice was controversial at the time. Yet Darwinwrote, “Females have the opportunity of selecting one out of severalmales, on the supposition that their mental capacity suffices for the ex-ertion of a choice. . . . No doubt this implies powers of discriminationand taste on the part of the female which will at ﬁrst appear extremelyimprobable; but by the facts . . . I hope . . . to show that the females ac-tually have these powers.” What then are we to make of Darwin’s theory of sexual selection? Thematter comes down to whether the underlying metaphor is correct. Is se-lection in a social context the natural counterpart of artiﬁcial selectionfor show? Does social life in animals consist of discreetly discerningdamsels seeking horny, handsome, healthy warriors? Is the social dy-namic between males limited to ﬁghting over the possession of females?Does diversity within a species reﬂect a hierarchy of genetic quality? Is today’s sexual selection theory any better than Darwin’s? No.Today’s theory makes matters worse by adding new mistakes, morphingwhat Darwin actually wrote into a caricature of male hubris. Accordingto today’s version, males are supposed to be more promiscuous than fe-males because sperm are cheap, and hence males are continually roam-ing around looking for females to fertilize. Conversely, females are sup-posed to be choosy because their eggs are expensive, and hence they must
168 ANIMAL RAINBOWSguard their investment from being diluted with bad genes from an infe-rior male. A male is naturally entitled to overpower a female’s reluctancelest reproduction cease, extinguishing the species. In fact, Darwin’s writ-ings do not endorse the expensive-egg-cheap-sperm principle. Today’ssexual selection lore is based on an accounting mistake that Darwin didnot make. Darwin referred to the total energy expended by each sex inreproductive effort over a lifetime as being equal.7 The second contemporary mistake is elevating deceit into an evolu-tionary principle. Darwin claimed that warfare to secure control over fe-males is the universal social dynamic among males. Therefore, coopera-tive relations, especially those between members of the same sex, appearto falsify the social template that Darwin claims is universal. The con-temporary work-around is to postulate deceit. Today’s sexual-selection-ists have produced a proliferation of “mimicries”: sexual mimicry, fe-male mimicry, egg mimicry, and so forth. By postulating these types ofmimicry, the spirit of warfare and conﬂict is preserved but driven un-derground, turned into guerrilla combat. Yet in no case have any of themimics been shown to be fooling any other animal, and the circum-stances suggest that the animals are in fact perfectly aware of what ishappening. The sexual-selectionist picture of nature is not pretty. Notcorrect either. Darwin conceived his theory in a society that glamorized a colonial mil-itary and assigned dutiful, sexually passive roles to proper wives. In mod-ern times, a desire to advertise sexual prowess, justify a roving eye, anddisregard the female perspective has propelled some scientists to continuechampioning sexual selection theory despite criticism of its accuracy.SEXUAL SELECTION FALSIFIEDContemporary sexual selection theory predicts that the baseline outcomeof social evolution is horny, handsome, healthy warriors paired with dis-creetly discerning damsels. Deviations from this norm must then be ex-plained away using some special argument. But is the theory that makesthis prediction correct to begin with? How many exceptions are neededbefore sexual selection theory is itself seen as suspect? The time has come to set the glass on the table: to declare that sexualtheory is indeed false and to stop shoe-horning one exception after an-
THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION 169other into a sexual selection framework. We need to face the fact thatsexual selection theory is both inaccurate and inadequate. To do other-wise suggests that sexual selection theory is unfalsiﬁable, not subject torefutation. The universal claims of sexual selection theory are inaccurate. Malesare not universally passionate, nor females universally coy. The socialdynamic between males is not universally combat to control females. Di-versity among males and among females does not universally ﬁt a hier-archy of genetic quality. Females do not universally select males for theirgenetic quality. Moreover, sexual selection theory is inadequate to ad-dress the diversity in bodies, behaviors, and life histories that actually ex-ists. Darwin didn’t bother to explain the exceptions he recognized, andas data on diversity in gender and sex continue to accumulate, sexual se-lection theory, which addressed only a subset of the facts to begin with,becomes increasingly inadequate. Let’s record, then, the many ways we’ve seen in which real species de-part from the sexual selection norm: 1. Bodies do not conform to a binary model. Gametic dimorphism doesn’t imply a binary of body types. The individuals in many species don’t make only eggs or sperm for the duration of their lives. In most species, distinct “male” and “female” bodies are undeﬁned or unstable. Sexual selection theory doesn’t apply to many species because distinct male and female individuals as envisioned in the theory simply don’t exist in those species, a point Darwin recognized. 2. Genders do not conform to a binary model. Gametic dimorphism does not imply a binary of gender roles either. The two sexes, even if located in separate bodies, may each entail more than two genders, deﬁned as distinct morphologies, behavioral roles, and life histories in sexed bodies. Societies with one, two, and three male genders, together with one or two female genders, have been extensively described. However, sexual selection theory is a two-gender theory. 3. Sex roles are reversible. Even when distinct male and female bodies exist, with one gender per sex, the behavioral roles these genders carry out may be the reverse of what sexual selection theory envisions. Pipeﬁsh and jacana sperm are tiny and their eggs
170 ANIMAL RAINBOWS large, just as in other metazoan species, yet the overall parental investment by the male exceeds that of the female in these species, resulting in a reversed operational sex ratio leading to female- female competition for males and male choice of females. Neither today’s extensions to sexual selection theory nor Darwin’s original treatment offer any prediction for when this occurs. 4. Sperm are not cheap. According to well-known primatologist Meredith Small, “Non-human primates show us what many single women in America today already know—sometimes it’s very hard to get a date. Female rhesus monkeys and baboons often present to males, a clear sign of preference and choice, but males regularly refuse. Lion-tail macaque females, especially subadults, share this rejection. Females of this species initiate almost 70 percent of the copulations but only 59 percent end up in mounts. No one is sure why these males refuse, inasmuch as sperm is supposed to be so cheap, but males often ignore estrous females.”8 Why should males refuse the invitation to sex when sperm are supposedly so cheap, as sexual selection theory requires? Because sleeping together is meaningful in itself. Animal sex is not anonymous. Mating is a public symbol. Animal “gossip” ensures everyone knows who’s sleeping with whom. Therefore, mate choice, including male mate choice, manages and publicizes relationships. A male may not want the commitment that accepting a new girlfriend entails. 5. Females do not choose “great genes.” Females choose mates for many reasons, but rarely or never to acquire the great genes that a male is supposed to have according to sexual selection theory. Low-ranking males have offspring just as capable as those of high-ranking males. Females select for males who deliver on their promises of parental care and spread the probability of paternity among males to ensure offspring safety. Physical characteristics in a male serve to endow offspring with the bodily markers of a powerful lineage, not to acquire attractiveness; females are buying their offspring membership in the old genes club. 6. Family size is negotiated. Egg and sperm production are not necessarily independent, as sexual selection theory envisions. Males don’t have to run around trying to fertilize a ﬁxed number of eggs. Males and females can negotiate to increase the number
THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION 171 of eggs a female produces beyond those she would make if she were to raise them by herself. In addition, males need to make sure the eggs they do fertilize are successfully raised—it doesn’t matter how much sperm they produce if the quality of parental care is compromised. 7. Social deceit is not demonstrated. The deceit required by sexual selection theory has never been demonstrated. Despite scientists’ invention of many categories of social deceit, such as sexual mimicry and egg mimicry, it has never been proved that the mimetic traits are not simply social symbols. Perhaps animals do lie to each other now and then, but biologists have yet to catch them in a lie, so a presumption of honesty is appropriate. 8. Same-sex sexuality is common. Same-sex sexuality is contrary to sexual selection theory, so the existence of homosexuality must be explained away as either an aberration or a deception. Instead, the extensive documentation of same-sex sexuality among vertebrates rules out any further denial of homosexuality and contradicts sexual selection theory. 9. Mating is not primarily for sperm transfer. The purpose of mating, both heterosexual and homosexual, is more often to create and to maintain relationships than to transfer sperm. Sexual selection theory requires that mating be primarily about sperm transfer, whereas the amount of mating that actually takes place is a hundred to a thousand times more frequent than that needed for conception alone. 10. Secondary sex characteristics are not just for heterosexual mating. Sexual selection theory limits the meaningfulness of secondary sex characteristics to heterosexual mating. In species with common homosexual matings, secondary sex characteristics, including genital geometry, are shaped to facilitate all types of mating, including homosexual matings. The sheer number of difficulties with sexual selection theory precludesplugging all the leaks. An occasional leak might be ﬁxable, but this manyleaks make repair impossible. The theory of sexual selection was takingon water long before evidence was found of widespread homosexuality,but homosexuality is the ﬁnal torpedo.
172 ANIMAL RAINBOWS The uncritical acceptance of sexual selection theory has led to under-estimation of the extent of cooperation among animals, forcing scientiststo construe all interactions between organisms as somehow competitive.From a scientiﬁc standpoint, sexual selection theory is inaccurate in itsclaims and unable to account, even by extension, for the diversity of bod-ies, genders, sexualities, and life histories. Most important, sexual selection theory is diversity-repressing. Sex-ual selection theory envisions male-male competition as weeding out thefrail and sickly, and female choice as welcoming to bed the winners ofmale-male competition so that their children may inherit great genes.This elitist, regressive stance incorrectly views gene pool diversity as con-sisting of mostly bad genes that males must eliminate and females avoid.SEXUAL SELECTION CORRUPTEDSexual selection theory has long been used to perpetuate ethically dubi-ous gender stereotypes that demean women and anyone else who doesn’tidentify as a gender-normative heterosexual male. By hesitating to de-clare sexual selection theory scientiﬁcally false, scientists prolong the in-justice that emanates from this theory, as the writings of contemporaryevolutionary psychologists illustrate. Evolutionary psychology extrapolates the cheap-sperm-expensive-egg principle of today’s sexual selection theory to “explain” human de-sire. One psychologist writes, “Because women in our evolutionary pastrisked enormous investment as a consequence of having sex, evolutionfavored women who were highly selective about their mates. . . . A manin human evolution history could walk away from a casual coupling hav-ing lost only a few hours of time. . . . A woman in evolutionary historycould also walk away from a casual encounter, but if she got pregnantas a result, she bore the costs of that decision for months, years, and evendecades afterward.”9 This view implies that motherhood is a punishmentfor sex rather than a desirable end in itself. If women do wind up havingto abide with more severe consequences from a casual encounter thanmen, this reﬂects a social inequity in the division of childcare, not someuniversal difference between the sizes of egg and sperm. We thus see howpsychologists attempt to naturalize gender inequality. Another psychologist writes, “Differences in mating strategies can be
THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION 173traced to the minimum ‘parental investment’ required to produce an off-spring. In our species, parental investment required to produce offspringis much greater for females (i.e., nine months for females vs. minutes formales). Given that females can only produce a maximum of 20 offspringin a lifetime, having sex with a relatively large number of males is un-likely to have adaptive advantages. It is generally far better to investmore in each offspring by carefully selecting a mate with good genes whowill participate in the raising of the offspring. For males, having inter-course with a larger number of fertile females was likely correlated withreproductive success since in ancestral environments contraceptive de-vices were not available.”10 Apart from asserting a natural right topromiscuity, this quotation also manages to suggest that nonprocreativesex awaited the invention of condoms. Drawings on Greek pottery, notto mention the behavior of our primate relatives, demonstrate manynonprocreative heterosexual positions. These quotations illustrate how Darwin’s theory, which might other-wise be written off as merely incorrect, is open to corruption by psy-chologists, yielding a stimulating fantasy. The assertions by psycholo-gists claiming to speak biological truth have ﬁnally come to the attentionof professional evolutionary biologists and are being refuted with un-characteristic vehemence. One of the most accomplished experimentalpopulation geneticists today, Jerry Coyne, writes, “Evolutionary psy-chologists routinely confuse theory with idle speculation. . . . Evolu-tionary psychology . . . is utterly lacking in sound scientiﬁc grounding.”Its “stories do not qualify as science, and they do not deserve the assent,or even the respect, of the public.”11 What provoked such an unusual declaration? The recent publicationof yet another theory of the naturalness of rape supposedly based on evo-lutionary biology.12 The idea is that men unable to ﬁnd mates in the“usual way” can reproduce through rape. Genes for rape then increase,leading to the brain’s acquisition of a “rape chip.” All men are thereforepotential rapists, although they do not necessarily act on this potential,depending on external circumstances. Coyne points out that this I-can’t-ﬁght-evolution theory is falsiﬁed by the facts that one-third of all rapesare of women too young or too old to reproduce; 20 percent do not in-volve vaginal penetration; 50 percent do not include ejaculation in thevagina; 22 percent involve violence in excess of that needed to force cop-
174 ANIMAL RAINBOWSulation; 10 percent of peacetime rapes are in gangs, thus diluting eachman’s chance of reproducing; wartime rapes usually culminate in themurder and sexual mutilation of the victim; some rapists are wealthy,giving them access to women without coercion; and many rapes are ho-mosexual. So many rapes are nonreproductive that rape can’t plausiblybe viewed as a means of sperm transfer for disadvantaged men to achievereproduction. Like other mating acts, rape is about relationships—in thiscase, domination. The assertion that all men are potential rapists is offensive enough tomake men angry about the misuse of sexual selection theory—as womenand others outside the sexual selection templates have been for years.Coyne has been prompted to say publicly what many have already ob-served: that evolutionary psychology “is not science, but advocacy,” thatevolutionary psychologists “are guilty of indifference to scientiﬁc stan-dards. They buttress strong claims with weak reasoning, weak data, andﬁnagled statistics . . . [and] choose ideology over knowledge.” Coynepoints out, “Freud’s views lost credibility when people realized that theywere not based on science, but were actually an ideological ediﬁce, amyth about human life, that was utterly resistant to scientiﬁc refuta-tion. . . . Evolutionary psychologists are now building a similar ediﬁce.They, too, deal in dogmas rather than propositions of science.” Worseeven than being theorized as a latent rapist, the misuse of science offendsCoyne: “To a scientist, the scientiﬁc errors . . . are far more inﬂamma-tory than . . . its ideological implications.” Thus Darwin’s sexual selection theory uses an incorrect model of so-cial life in animals—that when not busy looking for food or escapingfrom predators, discreetly discerning females are busy selecting forhorny, handsome warriors. This theory that social life boils down to aselection for showy traits is both inaccurate in its universalist claims andinadequate to address the diversity of bodies, gender expression, andsexuality that actually occurs in nature. Furthermore, the theory hasbeen corrupted by evolutionary psychologists and others to naturalizeinjustice and deny freedom of expression. Still, some may feel that denying sexual selection theory is too dras-tic. I get responses like “She throws out a very healthy baby with someslightly soiled bathwater”13 to my proposal that sexual selection theoryshould be discarded. Couldn’t we just substitute new wording for Dar-
THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION 175win’s—invest the theory of sexual selection with new meaning—much aswe have done with the theory of natural selection? Well, from my per-spective, the crux is that the underlying model of sexual selection—se-lecting for show—is incorrect. To me, all that’s ﬂoating in the dishwaterof sexual selection theory is dirt—no baby there, never was. I invite you to make your own judgment on retaining sexual selectiontheory as a scientiﬁc principle. I’ve been clear about where I’m comingfrom. I’m a transgendered woman; I have standing, as lawyers say, to suefor damage against this theory: it denies me my place in nature, squeezesme into a stereotype I can’t possibly live with—I’ve tried. For me, dis-crediting sexual selection is not an academic exercise. By now, nearlyeveryone can claim to be misrepresented by sexual selection theory.Today we have a call-to-action from society to scientiﬁcally audit sexualselection theory. I have done this audit, and found the books cooked. Ifwe’re serious that scientiﬁc principles are open to falsiﬁcation by facts,then I believe we’re compelled to rule that sexual selection theory hasnow been discredited. I propose a different theory.SOCIAL SELECTIONMy underlying assumption is that animal species with distinct males andfemales interact socially to acquire opportunities for reproduction—thatis, through trade or other exchanges, they obtain access to resources thatenable the production and survival of young. Animals are not seekingeach other’s genes; they are seeking access to the resources that each con-trols. Each animal has a time budget to allocate among between-sex andsame-sex relationships. Together, these relationships further the ex-pected number of offspring successfully placed in the next generation. Females may be thought of as starting with total control of repro-ductive opportunity, and males none, because an egg can potentially de-velop without any male contribution (as in the case of parthenogenesis).What beneﬁt, then, do males offer to make sexual reproduction advan-tageous to females? They allow a continual rebalancing of the species’genetic portfolio. This beneﬁt must be substantial, because—instead ofproducing 100 percent daughters, each of whom can lay eggs—femalesdilute their future reproductive rates by one-half, producing 50 percent
176 ANIMAL RAINBOWSsons, who don’t lay eggs, along with 50 percent daughters, who do layeggs. However, by negotiating male parental care in return for maleinput into the offspring, a female can increase, even double, the numberof offspring that she could produce by herself, thus partly compensat-ing for the 50 percent loss that the invitation to sex originally cost.Courtship therefore consists of exchanging information about ability topay, likelihood of payment, and transfer of control. Meanwhile, the abil-ity to pay, for both males and females, depends on the same-sex rela-tionships each is engaged in. Males interact with one another to acquireand defend the resources they pay out as parental care, and females in-teract with one another to acquire the circumstances in which they cansafely rear the young under their control. The packaging of male and female functions in one body type—asseen in plants, many invertebrates, and coral reef ﬁsh—may be thoughtof as the initial and more general condition. Conﬁning one sex to onebody emerges as a specialization for the “home delivery” of sperm.Wind-pollinated plants and broadcast spawners like sea urchins suffersubstantial sperm loss, opening a niche for specialized delivery systems.Barnacles glued to rocks in the intertidal zone, for example, remain si-multaneously hermaphroditic but have evolved a very long penis, typi-cally three or more times the body diameter, to deliver sperm to adjacentbarnacles without losing any to the pounding surf. Plants, which are ses-sile and can’t carry out home delivery by themselves, contract with in-sects and birds to deliver their sperm to other plants. Mobile animalshave the option of locating sperm in a separate body type for delivery tofemales. But once males exist as separate bodies, they assume an agendaof their own. Males may ﬁnd their interests furthered by offeringparental care to females to increase successful paternity. Because malesmust negotiate with females and with one another, the delivery of spermitself can assume a secondary and almost incidental function to the actof mating. Mating is then more about maintaining the between-sex andsame-sex relationships needed to provide food and safety for the youngthan about sperm transfer as such. If social life in animals is primarily about acquiring and trading theopportunity to reproduce, then the dynamics of animal societies arecomplex, nonlinear, and unpredictable. I’m struck by the unpredictabil-ity of how social evolution has played out in closely related species. Take
THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION 177our two closest relatives, the bonobo and the common chimp: they dif-fer slightly in chin hair and habitat. Yet one is peaceful, the other violent.Female spotted hyenas have a penis, but their closest relative doesn’t.The Idaho ground squirrel performs mate guarding, Belding’s groundsquirrel doesn’t. These pairs of very closely related species have devel-oped societies with diametrically opposed power relations. Why? Tradi-tionally, it is thought that a society’s organization reﬂects properties ofthe environment, that a society is somehow put together for overall effi-ciency, a great machine organized for a collective function.14 Instead, Isuggest that social evolution is turbulent, that an animal society is throb-bing, vibrating, and energetic, and that the unpredictability of the powerrelations emerging in closely related species is the evolutionary signatureof turbulent social dynamics. The outcome of social evolution seems asuncertain as where a white-water stream deposits a ﬂoating leaf. If social evolution results from complex nonlinear dynamics, thenphenomena like sex-role reversal, which Darwin noted in passing, arenot so anomalous. A common feature of nonlinear systems is the pres-ence of alternative multiply stable attracting states. The axes of genderedmorphology and gendered behavior may each have two simultaneouslystable evolutionary states and give rise to many combinations of mor-phology and behavior that are evolutionarily stable. Some would be sex-ually monomorphic, some dimorphic, some with typical gender rolesand others with reversed roles. Similarly, various family arrangements,either monogamy, polyandry, or polygyny, may emerge as the diverseoutcomes of social negotiations about how to control access to variouskinds of resources needed for reproduction and safety. This suggestionis pure conjecture on my part, but I believe this is the direction in whichwe should start thinking. When we focus on social life as a continual exchange of control overresources to reproduce, then complex multigendered societies are notanomalous. The genders emerge as occupational categories, with gen-dered symbolism to signal occupational roles in bringing about matings,raising young, or tending resources, much as a worker’s uniform does inhuman society. The payment for services rendered is in terms of in-creased opportunity to reproduce. While some genders reach a market-based accommodation of their needs, others linger on the outside of theirpolitical economy, taking the opportunity to reproduce by force and ag-
178 ANIMAL RAINBOWSgression. Social violence is not nature’s baseline state, but a special caseof failing to strike a successful bargain in an animal society’s marketplacefor access to reproductive opportunity. As ever-increasing similarities between animals and humans are re-vealed, do animal societies become more relevant to human societiesthan previously believed? Should political science and sociology, basicsubjects in the human social sciences, be widened to include investiga-tions of how animal societies function? I think so. People are not de-meaned by the comparison with animals, but animals are elevated by thecomparison to people.SOCIAL-INCLUSIONARY TRAITSFinally, we are left with the one issue on which many feel that Darwin’ssexual selection theory was correct—the peacock’s tail, an example of aso-called secondary sex characteristic. Other supposed examples wouldinclude the long nose on an elephant seal, the antlers on a deer, andcountless other male ornaments. As Darwin wrote, the female peacock’s“preference for beautiful males, [has] rendered the peacock the mostsplendid of living birds.” Is female preference for beautiful tails whymale peacocks have them? Even if one grants that Darwin’s sexual se-lection theory is inaccurate in its claims of universality and inadequateto address the diversity of bodies, gender expression, and sexuality thatactually exists, perhaps Darwin is still correct about peacocks. Perhapssexual selection applies solely to those few species like the peacock, inwhich the males, and the males alone, are highly ornamented, and wherethe males actually do display these ornaments to a female duringcourtship. If I were settling out of court with Darwin’s lawyer, I’d happily con-cede peacocks to obtain a compromise. Someday, though, someone willchallenge Darwin on peacocks too, and I’ll bet they’ll win. Here’s theproblem. Let’s turn our gaze for the moment from ornamented males tospecies where females are the sex with unusual structures. Some specieswith female ornaments are sex-role reversed, like the pipeﬁsh and the ja-cana. However, other species with female-limited ornaments are not sex-role reversed. Take the spotted hyena, in which females all have penises.
THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION 179No one suggests that females have these structures because male hyenasprefer females with a large penis. The female penis in hyenas is used forsocial interaction among females and has nothing to do with what maleswant. This case raises the possibility that some structures are used as acondition for inclusion in the same-sex social groups that control the re-sources needed to reproduce. If a female hyena lacks a penis, she has nochance of effectively interacting with other females. She would thereforebe excluded from the all-female groups that control resources in hyenasociety: she would not be able to reproduce, the evolutionary equivalentof death. Candidates for social-inclusionary traits include the masculine geni-tals on female spotted hyenas, female same-sex sexuality in bonobosand Japanese macaques, and the human brain (as we will see in chapter12). Social-inclusionary traits evolve fast because, once a trait takeshold, anyone without it is excluded from the group—a lethal situation.Unique to the group in which they occur, they are a bodily manifesta-tion of animal prejudice. Social-inclusionary traits are to social selectionwhat secondary sex traits are to Darwin’s sexual selection, but social-inclusionary traits pertain to both within- and between-sex social dy-namics, and to relationships distributed across many individuals, notjust dyadic relationships. Selection for social-inclusionary traits wouldseem to account for traits found solely in females of species that are notsex-role reversed, traits that presently lack any explanation. The idea ofsocial-inclusionary selection thus ﬁlls an explanatory vacuum. Social-inclusionary traits also provide an alternative explanation formany, if not all, of the traits conventionally interpreted as secondary sexcharacteristics in males, which, like the peacock’s tail, females are sup-posed to prefer. The problem is that the traits of the males with whomfemales wind up mating may be intended more for the attention of othermales than for display to the females. Antlers, for example, serve asweapons by which males can physically beat up other males, but theymay also be symbolic to other males of what they seek in companionsand allies. In short, these traits may be “medals” valued by other malesrather than ornaments valued by females. A female might not necessar-ily care if a male held another male in high regard, unless that regard cor-related with the amount and reliability of parental care he would provideher. But a male not held in high regard by other males might never have
180 ANIMAL RAINBOWSthe opportunity to court a female. Thus an illusion emerges that the fe-male prefers the male who is victorious, or otherwise held in high regardamong males, when she is in fact indifferent to those characteristics ex-cept insofar as her own direct reproductive success is affected. Here it ismale-male social dynamics that determine who qualiﬁes as an eligiblesuitor. Thus the test of whether a male’s showy trait is an ornament re-sulting from sexual selection or a medal resulting from social-inclusion-ary selection is whether the trait is valued by the females or by othermales, and not whether males lacking the trait don’t mate. For this rea-son, I wouldn’t bet money that Darwin is correct about peacocks, be-cause we don’t know how male peacocks regard each other’s tails—whether male peacocks require beautiful tails on each other as acondition for participating in whatever male-male social dynamic estab-lishes eligibility to become a suitor. Social-inclusionary medals are within-species counterparts of what evo-lutionary biologists call premating isolating mechanisms. Animals usecolor spots and vocalizations to tell what species they belong to and avoidhybridizing with other species. These traits reinforce the distinction be-tween species. Biologists have long wondered how species become distinctfrom one another. The selection pressure to reduce hybridization graduallydisappears as species become more distinct from each other, stalling the evo-lution before completion and leaving a residual hybridization rate. If thetraits that separate species also function as social-inclusionary medals, thenselection for social inclusion augments selection to lower hybridization andpropels the evolution of species distinctness to completion. Species are moredistinct in animals than in plants, where extensive hybridization takes placeacross the species in many genera. If premating isolating mechanisms in an-imals are also social inclusionary medals, then animal species should evolvesharper between-species distinctions than plant species for this reason.This review of diverse gender expression and sexuality among the verte-brates demonstrates that biology need not tell one single, simple, and bor-ing story. Biology need not be a purveyor of essentialism, of rigid univer-sals. Biology need not limit our potential. Nature offers a smorgasbord ofpossibilities for how to live, and an endless list of solutions for every con-text, some of which we’ll wish to reject, and others to adopt or modify.
THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION 181 The true story of nature is profoundly empowering for peoples of mi-nority gender expressions and sexualities. Yet this truth has been sup-pressed by biologists, and the few accounts that do surface are embed-ded in pejorative language. To remove the conceptual rot, we’ve had toexcavate deep into the foundation of evolutionary theory, identify thecollapsing member—Darwin’s theory of sexual selection—and replace itwith new ideas that may be better able to carry the load as the futureunfolds.
PART TWOHUMAN RAINBOWS
10An Embryonic NarrativeM any developmental mechanisms must exist to produce the di- versity of bodies, gender expressions, and sexualities so evident among the animals we’ve just visited. What are these mecha-nisms? How do two fertilized eggs that start out looking just about thesame wind up producing two adults as different as a lion and a lioness,or a man and a woman? How does one fertilized egg grow up to be-come a corporate CEO, while another grows up to be a drag queen?This part of the book is about the developmental mechanisms that bringabout diversity. The story of development is told by molecular genetics, cell biology,embryology, physiology, as well as developmental psychology—areas Irefer to collectively as developmental biology. Developmental biologyhas fallen into the same trap that sexual selection theory has: it assumesthat one master template is the norm, and that variety reﬂects a defectivedeviation from that ideal norm. Although early scientists could equallywell have approached developmental biology with an open heart, readyto embrace the diversity of molecular mechanisms that produce bodilyand behavioral diversity, the party line has instead been to sound thealarm at any hint of diversity, then to label diversity as disease and“cure” it. Of course, disease does sometimes occur, and cures for truediseases are needed, but the disease model of diversity fundamentally 185
186 HUMAN RAINBOWSmisrepresents human nature, inﬂicting needless procedures or actualharm on people in the name of “curing” them. The fundamental mistake made in developmental biology is privileg-ing a master controlling narrative for genes. According to developmen-tal biology, genes recline on chromosomal thrones in a nuclear palace,from whence they direct subcellular minions to accomplish their selﬁshends. That story is still taught today in biology class, forming the intel-lectual basis for medicine. Is that story true? How much, if anything, dogenes control? In this and subsequent chapters, I will challenge the mas-ter controlling narrative for genes and suggest instead a story of humandevelopment that emphasizes relationships among the organic compo-nents that make up our bodies. I believe that my story more accuratelyreﬂects nature and that its adoption will lead to more economically effi-cient medicine, more proﬁtable biotechnology, and a more just society. The model for developmental biology imagines that a master genetriggers a subordinate gene, which cascades to downstream genes in a de-scending hierarchy of control. In this picture, bodies develop as thougha bowling ball were accurately rolled to hit the genetic kingpin at just theright spot and cause all the genetic bowling pins behind to fall down inperfect order. Producing a normal baby is bowling a genetic strike. Instead, imagine that genes are like mice released at the top of thebowling lane, who scurry down the lane, bumping into genetic pins asthey go and eventually knocking down all the genetic pins in a variable,but directional, clamor. In my picture of how development works, di-versity ﬁgures from the very beginning. The narrative I tell of development emphasizes the interrelatedness ofgene function and avoids exaggerating the role of genetic control. Mymodel of how a gene works is the “genial gene”—a gene that cooperateswith other genes, in contrast to the well-popularized concept of the “self-ish gene.”1 In other words, my narrative of development deemphasizesindividualism. The fertilized egg begins as a genetic partnership betweenegg and sperm, and the sperm part of the genome isn’t expressed untilafter a few zygotic cell divisions. In the beginning, the egg alone carriesthe ball, both genetically and in the cytoplasm, and the zygotic cell is ateam of egg and sperm parts. Eventually the embryo transforms into anindividual from its original egg-sperm partnership. Furthermore, themother plays an active role in how the egg-sperm partnership is formed:
AN EMBRYONIC NARRATIVE 187she screens the chemical eligibility of a sperm before allowing it to fer-tilize one of her eggs, and she transports sperm to the back of heroviduct, where her eggs are waiting, rather than relying on the sperm toswim there. As the embryo develops, tissues talk to each other and cellsshuffle around to build the body of a child. Thus a newborn child is al-ready socialized and chemically experienced, the proud graduate of a bi-ological education from many organic teachers. We should think of ourbiological education as being continuous with our social education—merely a school we attend before going to kindergarten. Much has been made of gay genes, gay brains, and transsexual brains,as though such organic differences among people, whenever they exist,were somehow anomalous. Instead, we all naturally differ from one an-other materially. Someday we may even know how our brains changeafter reading a novel, for instance. I will now tell the story of human development as though my genes,my cells, and my tissues could talk. I trust my genes to provide my bodywith the parts I need. I cooperate with my body to live a good life. I be-lieve agency extends throughout my entire being, and I see no groundsfor splitting off my biochemical functioning from my deliberative ac-tions. This revised narrative of human development offers a new foun-dation for understanding organic variation as a healthy, joyous alterna-tive to the medical monotony of disease.MY EGG PARTMy egg part began when my mother was four weeks old and tiny, only 0.2 mil-limeters long.2 She was still an embryo herself, sprawled out across the ball-likeyolk sack that nourished her. I was one of the earliest cells my mother pro-duced—a primordial germ cell. I started life at the edge of the yolk sac, plump and round, not yet within mymother’s developing body. To join my mother in the core of her body, I moved bysticking a piece of me out in front, then I ﬂowed into the piece and reabsorbedmy trailing parts. Step by step. I entered her where her tummy would be, nearthe bottom, where her colon would form. I moved up toward her head and in-ward toward where her backbone would be. Yes I did. By the time my embryonic mother was six weeks old, I had come to rest in
188 HUMAN RAINBOWSridges along either side of her spine, called the genital ridges. This would be myhome while I remained within my mother’s body. By the time my mother wastwelve weeks old, she had prepared her genital ridge as an ovary. I then begantransforming into a form called an oogonium and lived within my mother’s ovary,as though her ovary were my nursery. I divided many times, making sister oogonia. At eight weeks, we numberedover ﬁve hundred thousand, and between the second month and the seventhmonth of my mother’s life as an embryo, my sister oogonia and I divided so oftenthat our peak numbers reached over seven million. This was far too many, andwe would decline to two million by the time my mother was born. Some of my genes were outside of my nucleus, in my cytoplasm, within mymitochondia, and the rest were in my nucleus. I now had to eliminate half of mynuclear genes to make room for the genes that would come from my spermpart. I started the process of setting aside half of my genes, becoming anoocyte, then put the process on hold, suspended. I sat on the bench, waiting forher nod to continue. Meanwhile my mother was born, and she grew up in theworld to become a young woman. When my mother was twelve, she gave us the ﬁrst call to action. At staggeredtimes, she would ask one of us to warm up. We oocytes numbered ﬁve hundredthousand at the start, a strong bench. Only about four hundred of us would everget the chance to play—one per month for about forty years, between mymother’s puberty and her menopause.3 After years of waiting, when my mother was over twenty years old, the ac-tion suddenly picked up. I quickly grew over twelve days to become ﬁve hun-dred times bigger. I made a sheath around me, called the zona pellucida. Mymother offered an extra coating of cells outside my sheath, called granulosacells. I was making myself ready to become an embryo. In my cytoplasm, Istored materials, enzymes, messages from my genes, and ribosomes to syn-thesize proteins. I prepared enough to last for a week on my own as an embryo.During that week my genes alone would be expressed, until the additionalgenes I obtained from my sperm part could be used.4 Biologists call the com-bination of me an oocyte, with my sheath and surrounding coat of granulosacells, a follicle. My mother had prepared the playing ﬁeld. About two to three weeks earlier,she had cleaned her uterus by shedding the old lining of tissue and blood ves-sels.5 While I was growing within my follicle, she added a fresh uterine lining. Themucus near the back of my mother’s vagina then thinned, making it possible for
AN EMBRYONIC NARRATIVE 189sperm to move into her reproductive track, where I was waiting. Indeed, spermdid pass through my mother’s oviducts at this time and waited for me to appear. I resumed the process of setting aside half of my genes, the process I hadsuspended for many years. I then transformed from an oocyte into an egg. Mydiameter was now almost visible to the naked eye, a little less than a tenth of amillimeter (80 microns). I was ready. I burst through the granulosa coat and out of the follicle into theoviduct that leads from the ovary to the uterus. I was not left alone. I was ac-companied by cells from my mother, called cumulus, named for the cottonyclouds in the sky. As I emerged into the oviduct, I met many suitors. I fused withmy sperm part right then and there! I was still in my mother’s oviduct, near herovary. I was now a zygote, residing in the oviduct, prepped, warmed up, andready for life!MY SPERM PARTMy sperm part began when my father was only a few weeks old, an embryo just0.2 millimeters long, sprawled out across his yolk sack. I too was a primordialgerm cell. I too migrated to the genital ridges along either side of his spine. My father, working fast, outﬁtted his genital ridges as testes by the time hewas seven weeks old in utero. The testes would be my nursery as I matured. Ibecame a spermatogonium, destined to become a sperm, slightly smaller thanI looked when I was a primordial germ cell. I then sat dormant in my father’s testes while much happened around me.By four months the major pipe that would someday carry me to the outside,called the vas deferens, was completed. Sometime between the sixth andeighth month of my father’s embryonic age, my whole nursery began to move.My father’s testosterone caused my nursery to descend into his empty scrotumon the outside of his body. My father pushed the testes in which I was livingthrough his inguinal canal and through his abdominal wall with pressure fromhis breathing and an occasional hiccup. My father was then born and grew to puberty as a gangling teenager, whentestosterone cruised through his veins. The cells of my nursery, my father’s tes-ticles, now turned into an extensive set of tiny pipes, called seminiferoustubules, that ﬂowed like streams down a mountainside into tributaries, windingup in the vas deferens. It was my time to spring back to life.
190 HUMAN RAINBOWS I multiplied several times. My brothers and I stayed close to one another.Even though we each had a separate nucleus, our cell bodies remained con-nected to one another with bridges through which we interchanged molecules—our version of holding hands in a football huddle. I divided my genes in half, becoming a spermatid. I stripped down and splitoff from my brothers. At one end I developed a cap with chemicals to serve asa name tag identifying me to my intended when we met so that I might dissolveher veil, the zona pellucida sheath surrounding her. At the other end I formed aﬂagellum to propel me through the birth canal and up to the location where we’dmeet. And I ﬂattened my nucleus and jettisoned any remaining cytoplasm. I waslean and ready for action! I went from a spermatogonium to a well-dressed sperm in two months. Eachday one hundred million of my brother sperm matured, and my father releasedus in batches of two hundred million at a time. During my father’s life, 1012 to1013 (over a million million) brother sperm would mature. It’s hard not to feelinsigniﬁcant, but I do have half of my father’s nuclear genes. In contrast to mymother, who was born with somewhat over a million oocytes, my father wouldhost over a million million sperm, a ratio of sperm to eggs of about one millionto one. My father could have used me in two ways: to join the nucleus of an egg or,while mating, to form relationships with other adults, relationships to promotehis survival or his fertility at some later time. As it turned out, I was destined tojoin the nucleus of my egg part.OUR CELLULAR COURTSHIPWhen my sperm part was released into my mother’s vagina, I thought I was leanand fast, proud of being in good shape and ready for the race to meet my eggpart. I was in for some big surprises. I didn’t call all the shots. Thirty minutes aftermy release into my mother’s vagina, I found myself in her oviduct—much fasterthan I could have swum under my own power.6 In fact, my mother transportedme to her oviducts with the muscles of her uterus. Once there, I was able tocover short distances by myself. Of the 280 million brother sperm released withme, only two hundred of us, about one in a million, reached the end of mymother’s oviduct, where my egg part was waiting. I needed lots of chemical help. I found I was incapable of joining with my egg
AN EMBRYONIC NARRATIVE 191part the way I was. My mother modiﬁed my cell membrane, shaved off some un-sightly molecules coating my surface, changed my attitude by siphoning offsome salt ions and opening me to the prospect of accepting some calcium ionsin their place, and dressed up some of my proteins with phosphorus. Withoutthis chemical endorsement, called capacitation, other sperm were held up bythe cumulus cells that my mother provided as guards surrounding the egg. I acquired these chemical stamps of approval in different places along mymother’s reproductive tract on my way from her vagina to the end of her oviduct.As a leading developmental biologist has clariﬁed, “The female reproductivetract, then, is not a passive conduit through which the sperm race, but a highlyspecialized set of tissues that regulate the timing of sperm capacitation and ac-cess to the egg.”7 As I approached my egg part, I was humbled. She was like the earth, hugeand colorful. I was tiny, like her moon. I swam up to her, approaching at a tangent.I nuzzled against her velvety surface, called microvilli, which reached out to me.QUITTING MY SINGLES CLUBAs I (the egg part) felt a sperm touching my microvilli, I wondered if he was theone for me. I felt the surface proteins on his head and checked for signs of mymother’s endorsement. This was the guy. I allowed his enzymes to dissolve a tinyhole in my sheath, the zona pellicuda. In about twenty minutes, I accepted himinto my body, restoring the genetic quorum in my nucleus. Now I had to work fast. Some 199 attractive sperm were nearby. Alas, nospace remained in my nucleus for more genes, and I needed to broadcast themessage that I had made my decision and was no longer eligible. Right beneathmy cell membrane, I had stored lots of tiny granules containing enzymes thatwould make my microvilli unattractive to sperm and prevent any sperm from at-taching to the outside of my sheath. I allowed my tiny granules to fuse with mycell membrane, turning themselves inside out to release the enzymes containedwithin. My granules released their enzymes one by one in a wave across my cell,starting where my chosen sperm had entered. In one minute, the wave spreadacross my entire cell. Now my surface was no longer attractive to sperm, andany sperm still nuzzled up in my microvillae ﬂoated away. So there I was at last. A fertilized egg, a zygote, soon to become a baby. I feltlike I’d lived a long life already. My egg part had already lived ten to twenty years,
192 HUMAN RAINBOWSand the clan from which my sperm part came had also lived many years, yet anew phase was about to begin. The clock had started for my life as an embryo. As I and my sperm part began our life together, there was lots to do. We hadto ﬁnd one another within my huge cell wall. He unwrapped his DNA and ex-panded his nucleus, while I completed the last stage of setting aside half of mygenome and got ready to include his genes in their place. Then we looked foreach other across the crowded cell. Already, while we were still traveling towardeach other within our common cell, we began duplicating our genes. When wemet up, all the preparation was done—we fused our nuclei, combined our chro-mosomes, and immediately divided. We never existed as a single cell with a sin-gle diploid nucleus. Instead, we lived for a day as one cell with two nuclei andthen quickly became a two-celled embryo, each cell carrying a copy of our com-bined genes. For our honeymoon, we rafted down my mother’s oviduct into her uterus.As we went along, we became more multicellular. Because we were still liv-ing within my sheath, the zona pellucida, our total volume didn’t expand; wewere simply dividing ourselves into smaller and smaller cells. When wereached sixteen cells, we were numerous enough that we didn’t all have todo the same thing, and we began to specialize among ourselves. By the timewe had divided into sixty-four cells, we had segregated ourselves into twogroups: an “inner cell mass” (ICM) of a dozen cells that would continue ourembryonic development and a surrounding layer of helper cells that would in-terface with my mother, obtaining nutrients and unloading waste products. Asa sixty-four-cell embryo, we were what is called a “blastocyst,” about oneweek old. We were getting too big for our raft, and as we rounded the turn out of mymother’s oviduct, heading into a large bay (her uterus), we decided it was timeto jump off and swim for shore. We dissolved a small hole in our sheath, thezona pellucida, and squeezed ourselves out. As we approached the wall of mymother’s uterus, called her endometrium, we found a likely spot to beach, andour outer ring of helper cells pitched a tent within her uterine lining. As wesettled into my mother’s endometrium, our helper cells became our contribu-tion to the placenta, called the chorion. My mother’s contribution formed fromher uterine lining, called the decidua. My mother and I shared in producing theplacenta. At this point I was getting more comfortable thinking of myself as a single in-dividual. The genes from my sperm part and my egg part were working together.
AN EMBRYONIC NARRATIVE 193BECOMING A BABYOur two-week honeymoon as egg-sperm newlyweds was over. Now began theexcitement of growing into a baby.8 My ﬁrst task was getting oriented. I spreadmyself out and located top and bottom, front and back, and right and left. I con-sulted my committee of genes for directions, and placed genes named Hox incharge of sections of my body, starting from where my head would be and work-ing down. Other genes took charge of telling left from right, so that my heartwould wind up on my left side and my liver and large intestine up on my right.By three months I had transitioned from a sphere of cells, the ICM, into an em-bryo with three distinct axes. As I was determining my major body axes, my cells were taking up stationsfor the future. Have you ever seen the Stanford marching band? After the bandplays a number, the trombone players run off in one direction, the drums in an-other, and the ﬂutes in a third, with everyone scurrying to new locations. A fewmoments later a new formation materializes, ready to play another number. TheUSC marching band, in contrast, changes from formation to formation by mov-ing in stately columns. National television rarely shows the Stanford band, afraidits chaotic appearance will frighten off viewers who long for an orderly world.But I got to enjoy both shows. As I developed into a baby, my cells did both theStanford scurry and the USC procession. Cells piled up in a ragged line wheremy body was to form. This line, called the primitive streak, had a groove runningdown the middle called the primitive groove. The cells at my primitive streakwere continually changing as they dived into the interior of my body along theprimitive groove. Later, other cells moved as a sheet. About two weeks after pitching tent in my mother’s uterus, I had come toconsist of three cell layers: the ectoderm on the outside, the mesoderm in themiddle, and the endoderm on the inside. (The cell movement leading to theselayers is called gastrulation.) The ectoderm would become my skin, nails, hair,eye lens, ear linings, mouth, anus, tooth enamel, pituitary gland, mammaryglands, and all of my nervous system. The mesoderm would become muscles,bones, lymphatic tissue, spleen, blood cells, heart, lungs, and reproductive andexcretory systems. The endoderm would become my lung lining, tongue, ton-sils, urethra, bladder, and digestive tract. These tissues talked to each other as they developed. The mesoderm in-duced the ectoderm above it to develop the central nervous system, as though
194 HUMAN RAINBOWSthe mesoderm said, “I think I could use a brain,” and the ectoderm replied, “OK,coming right up.” Three weeks after my egg and sperm parts had fused, I hadalready started on my nervous system and had developed some blood—and Iwas only 1 to 1.5 millimeters long. By four weeks, barely after my mother knew she was pregnant, I had grownto 5 millimeters long, my spinal cord was developing, my brain had enlarged andbegun differentiating into three parts, my heart was beating, my eyes and earswere started, and my arms and legs were starting to stick out from my body. Thehighlight at four weeks was when I formed my own primordial germ cells. Theywere initially outside my body. Two weeks later, at six weeks after fertilization,they migrated into my body to live within my gonads. From this time until mybirth, my mother embodied three generations at once—her own generation, mygeneration, and my child’s generation. Although I had lived for so long as a germcell within my mother’s body, I could now see the other side: my own germ cellswere living within me, trusting in me for their future. Over the next two weeks—eight weeks after fertilization—the ﬁrst signs ofelectrical activity in my brain and muscles would start, and I began to outﬁt mygonads to host the recently arrived germ cells. I realized I had a Y chromosomewith a noisy gene on it called SRY that directed me to outﬁt my gonads astestes. In two more weeks, my external genitals started to become recogniz-able. By the end of the ﬁrst trimester of my life in my mother’s body, all my or-gans were in place, although they were still rudimentary. As the second trimester began, week twelve, I ceased being called an em-bryo and was now called a fetus. I looked human. I started to move around onmy own within my mother’s uterus. My task was to grow and mature. As I grew,the placenta surrounding me grew too. At ﬁve months, my testes started to de-scend into my scrotum, and my legs and arms approached their ﬁnal proportionsrelative to the rest of my body. During this trimester, my body assumed theshape that would determine whether I would be eligible to become a sumowrestler or a racehorse jockey. Also in the ﬁfth month, I began to recognizesounds, such as my mother’s breathing, heartbeat, voice, and digestion. At sixmonths, my eyes responded to light. I was thin, with zero baby fat. As the third trimester began, my brain woke up, and by seven months mybrain waves, or EEG, had attained the form they would have at birth. I startedfattening up, getting ready for birth. By eight months, I was up to 2 to 3 percentbody fat; my body growth slowed, but my brain kept expanding. My eyes wereopen when I was awake and closed when I slept. I started developing my im-
AN EMBRYONIC NARRATIVE 195mune system. During this trimester, my brain developed and my temperamentstarted forming. At nine months, I was nearly ready to be born. My body fat was 15 percentof my weight, insulating me and raising my body temperature higher than mymother’s. My skull was not fused, but rather consisted of ﬁve bony plates thatwould allow my head to elongate while squeezing through my mother’s birthcanal. I am ready! I feel it coming!! I start heading down my mother’s birth canal. Isee light at the end of the tunnel. I feel my mother pushing, pushing. I hope I’mnot too big. I’m sorry I’m hurting her. Pushing, pushing. I squirt through, into thehands of a doctor. I look him in the eye. He slaps me on the back, congratulatesmy mother, and says to me, “Be a man.”This narrative of life as an embryo is only one of many possible narra-tives. The narrative differs for a baby boy and a baby girl—indeed, it dif-fers for each and every person, because our individuality begins at con-ception, if not before. The life narrative, including the embryonic phase,varies for people who become basketball players, football linemen, long-distance runners, corporate CEOs, musicians, high-fashion models, ele-mentary school teachers, parents with six children, drag queens, and allother individual expressions of body type, temperament, and inclination.
11Sex DeterminationT he single biggest difference among people is sex—traits related somehow to the size of the gametes they make. Yet the overall dif- ference between human males and females is moderate compared toother vertebrates. Mice males and females are nearly identical, except forgamete size and related genital plumbing, whereas lions have conspicu-ous male/female differences. Other than gamete size, our statisticallyvalid sex differences are few and small, and our distributions overlap ex-tensively. How do such differences between males and females develop?WHEN SEX IS DETERMINEDAccounts of how male and female differences develop in mammals usu-ally begin with gonadal differentiation—the genes that determinewhether gonads mature as testes or as ovaries. Yet the gonad is merely anursery for the germ cells. The germ cells are a different tissue from thegonad in which they reside and are descended from the primordial germcells, which differentiated in the very early embryo before the tissue thatgives rise to the gonads differentiated. The gonad is the site where hor-mones like testosterone and estrogen are synthesized, and once the go-nads form, many other aspects of the body develop a gendered mor-196
SEX DETERMINATION 197phology. The hierarchical bowling-a-strike view of sexual differentiationis that a master gene starts the gonad, and then the gonad propels the restof the body into a male or female template. However, this controllingnarrative is simply not accurate, even though widely believed and oftentaught. The sex of an embryo—whether its primordial germ cells mature aseggs or as sperm—is evident before the gonads start transforming intotestes or ovary.1 In mice, male embryos grow faster than female embryoseven before the gonads differentiate into ovary or testis.2 In marsupials,both male and female external genitals start to develop before the gonadsform.3 In humans, the Y chromosome has a version of the gene for ribo-somes, the cell’s protein-making module, that is not found on the Xchromosome. The cells of XX and XY embryos thus differ in their ribo-somes, because females have one type of ribosome and males two types,long before any gonads develop.4 Therefore, protein synthesis takes placeslightly differently in male and female embryos from the time the spermcontribution to the embryo’s genome is ﬁrst expressed, a few divisionsafter fertilization. This sex difference is manifest even before the ﬁrst pri-mordial germ cells differentiate and long before the gonads differentiate. Thus gonadal differentiation, while important in gendered develop-ment, is not the stage at which sex differentiation occurs, because sex dif-ferences are already manifest before gonadal development starts. Thegenes that determine gonadal differentiation do inﬂuence an individual’sultimate bodily and behavioral presentation. I will call the key genes de-termining gonadal differentiation the gender-determining genes, or “gen-der genes” for short.WHEN GENDER IS DETERMINEDEven though a primordial germ cell may already have a good idea, so tospeak, of whether to mature as a sperm or an egg, a germ cell thatreaches the gonad is inﬂuenced by whether the gonad there becomes atestis or an ovary. Sex (whether the primordial germ cells mature as asperm or egg) and bodily gender (starting with whether the gonad dif-ferentiates as a testis or an ovary) are subject to biochemical negotiation.
198 HUMAN RAINBOWS In mammals, a key player in this negotiation is a gene called SRY onthe Y chromosome. SRY redirects and accelerates gonadal differentiationin the direction of a testis; in its absence, the gonad differentiates moreslowly into an ovary.5 Biologists often describe SRY as the master genecontrolling sexual differentiation, the essence of maleness. Whenpresent, SRY is said to take over an embryo, commanding it to developinto a male; without it, an embryo develops “by default” into a female. Well, not so fast. As we’ve seen, the gonads develop after some sex dif-ferences are already determined, so SRY doesn’t fully control sex differ-entiation; it can only inﬂuence gendered presentation to some degree.Moreover, SRY doesn’t act alone. That’s not to say SRY isn’t important.SRY produces a protein that binds to DNA, causing sharp bends, whichin turn affect whether the genes in the bent area of DNA can be ex-pressed. SRY censors the DNA, determining which genes get their mes-sages published throughout the cell. In one experiment, an SRY gene was introduced into XX mice.6 About30 percent of these mice went on to develop testes, as well as male ex-ternal genitalia and some male mating behavior. The germ cells in thesemale XX mice, which would have otherwise become eggs, started to de-velop as sperm but couldn’t ﬁnish without the right accessories. Keywardrobe instructions are needed from the full Y chromosome—SRY isnot sufficient. However, SRY can direct at least some female embryos todevelop a masculine presentation, and can coax the testis into convinc-ing some primordial germ cells to mature as sperm rather than eggs. In another experiment, an SRY gene was deleted from the Y chromo-some of XY mice. These mice went on to develop ovaries, as well asother feminine traits. The germ cells in many of these female XY mice,which would otherwise have become sperm, developed as eggs, even re-sulting in some litters.7 Thus, the absence of SRY leads male embryos todevelop a feminine presentation and can coax the ovary into convincingsome primordial germ cells to mature as eggs rather than sperm. In mammals, then, gonadal gender is determined in large part by thepresence or absence of the gene SRY. For this reason, SRY has assumedits legendary status as the sex-determining gene—if the Y chromosomeis the marker of maleness, its power depends on SRY’s presence on it. Butis SRY really in a one-way controlling position at the top of the bowling-a-strike hierarchy? In fact, the gonads can develop at least partially into
SEX DETERMINATION 199testes on their own, even without coaxing by SRY. In XX female walla-bies, genital ridges develop partially as testes in the absence of germcells.8 Thus, in the absence of germ cells that would turn into eggs withinthe ovary, the gonad moves on its own toward becoming a testis, evenwithout SRY present. The narrative of hierarchical control by a master gene, SRY, is thus anoversimpliﬁcation. SRY is only one player in the germ-cell-to-gonad ne-gotiation, with the role, as a genetic lobbyist, of coaxing the gonad in amale direction. SRY doesn’t unilaterally control sex determination, be-cause sex is already determined before SRY is expressed.BEHIND THE POWER STRUGGLEOkay, so SRY has a loud voice, but does it really bring to the table im-portant information about how to be male? No. SRY turns out to beheavy on inﬂuence, light on substance. Here’s how SRY has wormed itsway onto the genetic committee that determines bodily gender. Everyone has the genes to make both ovaries and testes, but which wemake depends on some network of intergene negotiation. One key geneat the conference table is SOX9, which is located on a nonsex chromo-some: it holds the basic testis recipe for all vertebrates. SOX9 is ex-pressed in the developing gonads of male mammals, male birds, andmale alligators.9 Other genes at the conference table, in addition toSOX9 and SRY, are WT1, SF-1, and DAX-1 (or DSS) on the X chromo-some.10 Here’s how the interaction goes: 1. WT1 prepares the genital ridge and adjacent kidney area. Then SF-1 and WT1 together urge SOX9 to make a testis. 2. But DAX-1 intervenes, preventing SF-1 and WT1 from activating SOX9, so an ovary forms instead. 3. In males, SRY inhibits DAX-1, permitting SF-1 plus WT1 to activate SOX9, which in turn produces a testis.Thus SRY stops a gene, DAX-1, which itself was stopping testis devel-opment according to SOX9’s recipe. Wow, not simple. Notice that SRY
200 HUMAN RAINBOWSand DAX-1 don’t contribute materially to the recipe for making a testis.They are at the conference table just to argue, like genetic lawyers. Nothing is universal about SRY or DAX-1; these genes don’t appearin other vertebrates, including some other mammals. Species withoutSRY or DAX-1 have testes and ovaries, implying that different types ofgenetic negotiation can also produce gonadal differentiation. SOX9 isthe only one of these genes with any claim to universality, at least amongvertebrates. Even in species whose gonadal differentiation does emergefrom the SRY-DAX-1-SOX9 committee, multiple alternative forms, oralleles, of SRY, DAX-1, and SOX9 exist, so the genetic narrative leadingto bodily gendering in each individual differs depending on the precisealleles an individual has at these three genetic loci. The genes at thegonad-determination conference turn up at other conferences as well,and their expression is noted in many other tissues. These genes are abasic source of diversity in bodily aspects of gender. SRY has pulled a coup d’état in our genetic palace, acquiring thepower to preempt the differentiation of gonad into testis. But SRY is aloud-mouthed bandit living on a puny chromosome, Y, which itself re-cently degenerated during evolution from the X chromosome.11 Thehow-to-do-it capability for testis construction resides in chromosomesother than Y. Thus genes, including even the noisy SRY, work together during thebody’s development. The selﬁsh gene is a sound byte, not science. Genesoccupy a common body, their lifeboat. A selﬁsh gene had better knowhow to swim. Survival for a gene means being genial—the genial gene.Not only do genes work together to jointly construct a pathway of con-secutive steps in biochemical pathways, but they also collaborate in thesynthesis of single enzymes. Some enzymes have multiple subunits thatcome from distinct genes. Furthermore, an enzyme called cytochrome coxidase even has some subunits coded by genes in the nucleus and oth-ers by genes in mitochondria, so that making this enzyme involves the co-operation of nuclear and mitochondrial genes.12 A subversive philosophical shift is occurring in how biologists thinkabout genes. As a student, I was taught that genes come ﬁrst and thephenotype second. We live our lives with whatever traits our genes stickus with. A new view, from evolutionary developmental biology (fondlyknown as evo-devo), states that the traits come ﬁrst. The need for a trait
SEX DETERMINATION 201appears in the world, like the ability to make a testis to contain germ cellsmaturing into sperm. Then genes, like SRY and DAX-1, compete to de-liver that trait during development. A takeover artist like SRY with noinformation of its own can evolve by promising to deliver the trait faster.Ecology writes the speciﬁcations and places an order for a trait. Genescompete to deliver the trait—ecology the consumer, genetics the pro-ducer, in a client-server relationship. This new view empowers the con-text in which phenotype is meaningful.WHEN Y DOES NOT EQUAL MALESRY’s power, as we’ve seen, is far from absolute—it must negotiate withother members of the gender-gene committee to effect the differentiationof a gonad into a testis. Sometimes SRY is dispensable altogether, as inthe case of Ellobius lutescens, a mole-vole. This burrowing mammal is10 to 15 centimeters long with a velvety cinnamon coat and lives in semi-desert areas of the Caucasus, eastern Turkey, Iraq, and Iran, where itfeeds on underground plant parts. Males of this species have no Y chro-mosome, nor any SRY gene anywhere. Yet E. lutescens males are still realmales: they make sperm in testes.13 Males of another mole-vole, Ellobiustancrei from Uzbekistan to Sinkiang, China, also don’t have Y chromo-somes.14 In other cases, SRY and the Y chromosome may be present but becompletely overridden by other genes, outvoted on the gender-gene com-mittee. In four species of South American vole mice of the genus Akodon,15 to 40 percent of the females have both SRY and a Y chromosome, yetthey are still female and make eggs. These females evidently have genesthat silence the noisy SRY.15 That SRY can be completely outvoted foreshadows discussion later onthat genes on the X chromosome in humans control how much effecttestosterone has on tissue development. Thus, even if SRY succeeds inobtaining legislation to produce a testis, resulting in the synthesis oftestosterone, the genetic bureaucracy has a say in whether the legislationis implemented. The genetic bureaucracy may partially implement thelegislation by ensuring that testosterone has only little effect, or it mayfail to implement the legislation at all, as in the case of complete andro-gen insensitivity.
202 HUMAN RAINBOWS Therefore, among mammals, a Y chromosome and an SRY gene areneither necessary nor sufficient to determine male sexual identity. Ad-mittedly, in some species, including humans, SRY is a major player on thegender-gene committee. Yet even in species where SRY is empowered tocause testis development, SRY does not control how much effect thehormones secreted by the testis have on the body’s adult morphology. Thus, the development of even as basic a difference as that betweenmales and females does not follow a standard template either across orwithin species. The bowling-a-strike view of development as the unfold-ing of a hierarchy of successive genetically mandated decisions simplydoesn’t occur. Instead, every individual has his or her own unique andequally valuable narrative of how the gender-gene committee fashionedthe compromise that became that individual’s embodiment of gender andsexuality.WHEN OVARIES AND TESTES COMBINEEvery aspect of the body is on the table for the gender-gene’s committeeto negotiate, even the structure of the gonads themselves. Most gender-gene committees, with or without the presence of SRY, pass a resolutioncreating only a testis in males and only an ovary in females. In somespecies, though, even this most elemental aspect of bodily gender hasbeen given a different conﬁguration. Among Talpa occidentalis—another burrowing mammal, an oldworld mole from the Iberian peninsula—all females have ovotestes, go-nads containing both ovarian and testicular tissue.16 The ovotestesoccur at the site in the body where simple ovaries are found in otherspecies. Talpa XX individuals have ovotestes and make eggs in the ovar-ian part of their ovotestes. They don’t make sperm, but they do haveboth sperm-related and egg-related ducts. The testicular part of theseovotestes secretes testosterone. XY individuals have testes only andmake sperm. Four species of old world moles are now known whose females haveovotestes instead of ovaries.17 Yet when a human is born with ovotestes,bells and whistles sound in the hospital as though a law of nature hadjust been threatened. Old world moles would view modern medicine as
SEX DETERMINATION 203primitively mistaken. Thus, even gonadal structure doesn’t follow a stan-dard template across mammals.WHAT HAPPENS TO THE “EXTRA” XIn mammalian species where females are XX and males are XY, femaleshave an embarrassment of riches—two X chromosomes where one suf-ﬁces. Expressing both X chromosomes would presumably provide anoverdose of the enzymes tweaked to work at the lower concentrationsproduced by a single X chromosome (as occurs in males). The work-around for females is to make one of the X chromosomes inactive. Oneof the Xs scrunches up, becomes unavailable for transcription into pro-tein, and appears under the microscope as a speck in the nucleus calledthe Barr chromatin body.18 Which of the two X chromosomes is inactivated in a cell is purechance, a ﬂip of the coin. Hence one cell might use the X chromosomeinherited from Dad, while the cell next door uses the X chromosome in-herited from Mom.19 If, however, one X chromosome contains a poorlyfunctioning gene, females have an alternative. Cells with that chromo-some can be weeded out and replaced by cells expressing the other Xchromosome. The advantage of diploidy is maintained across wholecells, rather than between genes within a cell.WHEN TEMPERATURE DETERMINES SEXAlthough testes and ovaries are much the same across all the verte-brates,20 the negotiations that lead to whether a gonad is furnished astestes or ovaries differ among the classes of vertebrates. Among reptiles,speciﬁcally turtles, crocodiles, and some lizards, gonadal identity is de-termined by the temperature at which eggs develop, not by chromo-somes.21 The eggs are usually laid in the ground and covered with sandor moist dirt from which they absorb water, swelling in size as they age.Reptile embryos start developing within their egg, and after a while pri-mordial germ cells form. When reptile primordial germ cells move to thegenital ridges of their parents, both the germ cells and the parental em-
204 HUMAN RAINBOWSbryo presumably experience the same environmental temperature. Bothgerm cells and parent therefore receive the same message about whichsex to develop as, and their agendas automatically agree.22 But couldthere be a difference of biochemical opinion? Might an intersexed phe-notype result if the temperature were changed between the time the pri-mordial germ cells ﬁrst differentiated and the time the gonad differenti-ated into a testis or an ovary? Such experiments don’t appear to havebeen tried yet. Temperature-dependent sex determination is unavailable to warm-blooded animals, such as birds and mammals, who live at only one tem-perature. Instead, birds and mammals concoct genetic schemes to deter-mine sexual identity. We’ve already seen the mammalian schemes, whichusually involve the X and Y chromosomes. The story is reversed in birds.ZZ MALES AND ZW FEMALESIn birds and snakes, the sex chromosomes are called Z and W instead ofX and Y. Males have ZZ chromosomes, and females are ZW, the oppo-site of mammals, where females have two identical sex chromosomesand males two different ones. In birds, something on the W chromosome convinces the gonad toturn into a single ovary on the bird’s left side. Something else on W tellsthe gonadal ridge to start synthesizing estrogen, which makes the go-nadal ridge continue along its path of turning into an ovary. In the ab-sence of estrogen, the genital ridge turns “by default” into two testes, oneon the right and one on the left.23 The avian negotiation is thus the mirror image of that in mammals.In mammals with XY males, the genital ridge heads off to become anovary unless the noisy SRY speaks up to argue for a testis. In birds, thegenital ridge heads off to become testes unless a militant counterpart ofSRY on the W chromosome insists on an ovary. Did chance create birds and mammals with mirror-image schemes fordetermining gonadal identity? Or are the opposite schemes somehowadaptive? Birds and mammals have fundamentally different social lives.In mammals, females carry and control the young, whereas in birds, bothmales and females control the young, who reside in a common nest.
SEX DETERMINATION 205Could these differences have worked their way back to the genome, de-termining how natural selection molds the rules for gonadal sexual iden-tity? I don’t know. My conjecture is that birds and mammals differ inwhether their social systems require the male or female to develop a gen-dered presentation ﬁrst. For mammals, intrasex competition for access toreproductive opportunity may be higher in males than females, and inbirds the reverse. If so, the sex experiencing the higher intrasex competi-tion may evolve the accelerated development of a gendered presentation.THE COSTS OF GENETIC MYTHOLOGYDevelopment begins and ends with egg and sperm, one big gamete andone little gamete. Although this overall beginning and end point may bethe same in many species, we see no standard templates for how femaleand male development are accomplished. How an animal’s sex is de-cided, whether it will make eggs or sperm, varies among species. The de-cision is genetic in some species, physiological in others; even when it isgenetic, various genetic criteria apply, depending on the species. And theindividual’s development is no more ordered or predictable than the out-come of a day’s parliamentary debate. A diversity of people emergesfrom a cacophony of developmental histories. No one or two develop-mental narratives can be privileged as a standard against which to judgethe rest. Why is the bowling-a-strike metaphor, the cascade of successivedownstream genetic decisions culminating in birth, so persistent in de-velopmental biology, in spite of so much contrary evidence? I suggestthat its persistence stems from a desire to own and control development.If a master gene produces some trait, then anyone who owns the patentfor that gene controls the trait. But if traits emerge from a committee ofgenes, then what’s to own? Buy out the whole committee? One canpatent a gene, but not a relationship between genes. If the body emergesmore from intergene relationships than from the individual genes them-selves, then control of development moves beyond human ownership. The material consequence of trying to own human development is ev-ident in the money lost by biotechnology’s efforts to patent the humangenome. For the most part, the patent on a gene is worthless, because no
206 HUMAN RAINBOWSgene works alone. My emphasis on genetic cooperation is not an ode tonatural harmony. Rather, I argue that the present emphasis on individ-ualism in science—from the selﬁsh gene to the selﬁsh organism—is em-pirically misleading, one result being that genetic engineering investorsare wasting real money.
12Sex DifferencesS uppose now that a baby’s sex has been determined—the baby’s gene committee has met during early development and somehow managed to come to a decision. What next? How does develop-ment continue? Will all males graduate from uterine school wearing thesame coat and tie, and all females the same dress? Obviously not. Howmuch biological difference is there among males, and among females,and between males and females? A motivation behind this chapter is that genetic and anatomical dif-ferences are increasingly being detected between gay and straight people,between transgendered and nontransgendered people, and between andamong intersexed and nonintersexed people. These differences are pub-licized as anomalous deviations from the supposed norm set by straightmales and females. But differences between gays and straights, or be-tween any two groups, must be assessed relative to differences within thegroups. If straight males, for example, show great biological variationamong themselves, then the difference between a straight male and a gaymale may be no more than that among straight males anyway, and there-fore not biologically noteworthy. Similarly, in education the unspoken assumption is that people are,for the most part, biologically the same, and that with instruction every-one can acquire the same skills and knowledge. Of course, everyone 207
208 HUMAN RAINBOWSknows that people differ genetically from one another, but “normal”people are assumed to be more or less the same biologically, so that aone-size-ﬁts-all approach to education can be applied, except for “spe-cial” cases. But what happens if we realize that people are as differentbiologically as they are culturally?GENETIC DIFFERENCESResearch on the human genome is beginning to clarify how geneticallydifferent people are from one another. These differences can be dividedinto those that arise from the nonsex chromosomes and those that comefrom the sex chromosomes. Furthermore, males have their own ways ofdiffering from other males and females from other females. We each have about thirty thousand genes total. I estimate that eachof us differs from the next person by about sixty genes, not includinggenes on the sex chromosomes, X and Y. Thus in this sense we’re all verymuch alike: we differ by only sixty out of thirty thousand genes, or 0.2percent. Yet this difference is enough to make for lots of biochemicalvariation among us because of the ripple effect of how these genes in-teract. Moreover, any two people differ from each other by a particularset of sixty genes that are different from the set by which two otherpeople differ from each other. Thus people differ from one another indifferent ways.1VARIETY FROM THE X CHROMOSOMEAn X chromosome has about 1,500 genes, and two people differ fromeach other in about three of these. XX people express only one of theirchromosomes, and XY people have only one to begin with. Thus peoplediffer genetically from each other, on the average, by sixty genes on thenonsex chromosomes, plus three more from genes on whichever X chro-mosome is being expressed.2 Humans with XX chromosomes are typically women, and most dif-ferences among women are from the sixty genes that have nothing to dowith sex. However, the additional three genes from X can lead to fur-ther differences that are unique to women. Males have an X chromo-
SEX DIFFERENCES 209some too, so three genes of difference coming from the X chromosomecould apply to men as well as to women. However, the phenomenon ofX chromosome inactivation is unique to XX people and provides a waythat women may differ genetically from one another that is unavailableto men. Two women may differ in genetic expression because different Xs re-main active in different cells. One woman may have X chromosomesfrom her dad active in her kidney cells, while her sister has X chromo-somes from her mom active there instead. This variability in the waygenes are expressed adds to the underlying variability in the genes them-selves. If one of the three genes that differ between the two Xs happensto be harmful, then the body can prune some of the cells expressing thebad X and use cells with the good X instead. Males carrying the bad Xsuffer the most severe disease, whereas women carrying the bad X suf-fer only in those cells that haven’t been pruned.3 Furthermore, womencan differ from each other in the severity of a disease, depending on howmany of the cells with the bad X were successfully pruned. The incidence of autoimmune disease is higher in women than inmen.4 I conjecture that susceptibility to autoimmune disease is a side ef-fect of X inactivation and the ability to prune cells that express harmfulgenes. The immune system faces the challenge of detecting which cellsare self and which are foreign, and removing the foreign ones. In XXbodies, two types of cells are self, depending on which X chromosome isactive. Having two types of self cells may make the discrimination of for-eign cells more difficult, leading to more autoimmune response in XXpeople than in XY people. Women may also differ from one another because of which speciﬁcgenes on the X remain active and which become inactive. The big-pictureview of X inactivation is that one X chromosome is completely activewhile the other is all scrunched up in a ball. In fact, only 80 percent of thegenes on the inactive chromosome are truly turned off, while 15 percentare still expressed. These 15 percent are said to escape inactivation. Theremaining 5 percent are especially interesting: they are expressed from theinactive chromosome in some women and not others. And ﬁnally, onegene is known that is expressed only from the inactive chromosome andnot from the active one, the reverse of the typical pattern.5 Thus the distinction between active and inactive does not apply to an
210 HUMAN RAINBOWSentire X chromosome, but rather applies selectively to various parts ofboth X chromosomes. As a result, the cells within the body of an XX per-son can be quite heterogeneous, and women whose genes are similar canstill differ a lot biologically because of genes being active or inactive.6 Allof these ways in which XX bodies differ from one another guarantee thatwomen differ from each another in ways unavailable to men.VARIETY FROM THE Y CHROMOSOMEBased on statistics for the other chromosomes, a Y chromosome poten-tially has about ﬁve hundred genes and is one-third the size of the Xchromosome. Two people with Y chromosomes would be expected todiffer from each other in about one of these genes.7 Yet only about twodozen genes have been identiﬁed so far on Y, well below the estimatedﬁve hundred, leading some biologists to describe the Y chromosome asa “genetic wasteland,” a “degraded relic.”8 These two dozen genes comein two functional clusters. One cluster contains genes for male versionsof cellular biochemistry, such as the gene for the male form of ribosomementioned in chapter 10. The other cluster consists of genes expressedonly in the testes. They affect sperm development, and their absenceleads to male sterility. Humans with XY chromosomes are typically men. Most genetic dif-ferences among men come from the sixty genes that have nothing to dowith sex, plus the three from the one X chromosome males have. XYpeople might conceivably also differ by an additional gene from their Ychromosomes. If such differences exist, they would provide ways inwhich men uniquely differ from one another that are unavailable towomen. However, the variation on the Y chromosome is low compared to thevariation on other chromosomes. Most genes on the Y chromosome arebundled into a large unit called a linkage group. Except at tiny spots atboth ends of the chromosome, the genes on Y don’t pair to recombinewith genes of any other chromosome—Y goes alone; it is haploid. There-fore, the genes on Y, except the few at the ends, all stand or fall together. At any particular time, a single version of the Y chromosome is tem-porarily the best, and all others are quickly weeded out within any well-mixed local population. But when times change, what was once a weed
SEX DIFFERENCES 211comes rushing back, displacing the previously best Y. At any particulartime, then, Y doesn’t have much variation within a species, but can varyacross species and over time. Some variation in Y is always waitingaround, ready to mount a triumphant return, but there is not as muchvariation as on the other chromosomes. A possible implication is thatXY bodies are more uniform than XX bodies. Here SRY—a major gene affecting masculinity in mice and men, oneof the gender genes—comes into play. If males differ in SRY, they differin an inﬂuential gene for how male gender is embodied. And SRY is oneof the fastest evolving of all known genes. This gold standard of mas-culinity differs greatly across species.9 SRY is also variable across popu-lations within a species, so the expression of masculinity is not constantfrom place to place within a species either.10 Primates have undergone es-pecially fast evolutionary change in SRY, implying that the embodimentof masculinity is not static but rather quickly changes over evolutionarytime. This evolution is clearly caused by natural selection, not randomgenetic drift, because new DNA molecules replace old ones faster at siteswhere the difference affects SRY’s protein than at sites where the substi-tution doesn’t change the protein.11 The protein made by SRY consists of a central portion called theHMG-box. The portions to the left and right, the ﬂanking regions, arecalled the N-terminal and the C-terminal regions. The HMG-box por-tion doesn’t change much—this conserved part binds to the DNA and al-lows the SRY protein to affect how the DNA is translated. The evolu-tionary action is in the ﬂanking regions, particularly the C-terminalregion. Variation in SRY causes variation along a masculine-feminine bodycontinuum. Laboratory mice have three types of SRY genes, whichcause different body types. In one type, XY bodies are male; in another,XY bodies are intersex as embryos and male as adults; and in a third,XY bodies are female or intersex as adults. The differences among theseSRY genes turn out to be simply eleven, twelve, or thirteen repeats of acertain sequence, CAG, in the C-terminal region of the DNA.12 Thus evo-lutionary changes in SRY outside of the HMG-box affect the genderedbody. Moreover, SRY can directly inﬂuence many parts of the body otherthan the gonads and the reproductive track. SRY indirectly inﬂuences the
212 HUMAN RAINBOWSentire body because the testes whose differentiation SRY helps initiate se-crete a hormone (AMH) that affects nearby cells, as well as testosterone,which affects distant cells. SRY probably inﬂuences many tissues directly,without bothering to use hormones as an intermediary. Depending onthe species, SRY is expressed in tissue from bone to brain.13 Quite possi-bly, SRY inﬂuences gendered bone growth and brain development. SRY’s impact on gendered embodiment is perhaps why it’s evolving soquickly. If SRY is a gene for male gender, it would evolve in response tothe turbulent winds of social change, endowing males with the latestbody style and pickup lines for success in the “meet market.”GENETICS AND THE GENDER BINARYAs already mentioned, people differ from each other in sixty genes, onthe average, from the nonsex chromosomes. They also differ in the genesprovided by the sex chromosomes. Let’s compare these sources of geneticvariation among people. Because of the Y chromosome, XY people havetwo dozen genes not in XX people. Because of having two X chromo-somes, XX people have about 225 genes (the 15 percent of the inactiveX chromosome escaping inactivation) that are expressed in a doubledosage relative to the single X chromosome of XY people. Consideringboth the presence or absence of Y and the presence or absence of thegenes on X that escape inactivation, an XX person and an XY person dif-fer by about 250 genes total from their sex chromosomes, or about fourtimes their difference of 60 genes from the nonsex chromosomes. Thusa male and female differ from each other on the average by about fourtimes as many genes as two males, or two females, do from each other.14These data suggest a clear-cut genetic binary distinction between malesand females. In fact, though, this genetic system allows for a great dealof overlap at the whole-body level. The XX/XY system of sex determination is widely believed to deﬁnea biological basis for a gender binary. Yet this system allows for both asharp gender binary and great overlap between XX and XY bodies, aswell as gender crossing. The details of what’s actually on the X and Ychromosomes, and which tissues respond to the products of these genes,determine the degree of male/female difference at the whole-body level,as well as allowing for transgendered bodies.
SEX DIFFERENCES 213 The bodies of males and females in mammalian species may be verysimilar overall, even though they differ in gamete size and associatedplumbing, or they may be very different. Compare guinea pigs, where fe-males and males can’t be distinguished without plopping their genitalsunder a magnifying glass, to lions and lionesses, who personify the dis-tinction between masculinity and femininity in the popular imagination.Clearly, XX/XY sex determination doesn’t dictate any ﬁxed differencebetween male and female within a species. How can XX bodies and XY bodies vary from being nearly identicalin some species to strikingly dimorphic in others? First, look at Y. Nat-ural selection can tune the duration and number of tissues in which gen-der genes like SRY are expressed. If SRY is expressed for a few hours onlyin the gonad, as in mice, then its impact is limited. If SRY is expressedfor months and in many tissues, as in some marsupials, then dimorphismbecomes widespread throughout the body. Natural selection can alsotune how closely the genes governing cellular biochemistry on Y resem-ble their ancestral counterparts on X. The gene on Y that determines themale ribosome could be replaced by other alleles, either more or less sim-ilar to its ancestor on X, thereby affecting the gendered difference in howproteins are manufactured. Thus evolution on the Y chromosome can af-fect the average difference of males from females. Next, look at X. The extent of X inactivation controls how many genesin XX bodies are expressed in different dosages than in XY bodies. If X in-activation is 100 percent, then both male and female bodies will see onlyone X chromosome, minimizing dimorphism. At the other extreme, if thereis no X inactivation, XX bodies see all 1,500 genes in a double dose com-pared with XY bodies, potentially leading to huge body differences be-tween the sexes. Natural selection can modify the percentage of genes thatescape X inactivation, as evidenced by the 5 percent of the genes on X thatare inactive in some people and active in others. This represents geneticvariation in the extent of X inactivation, variation that can be acted on bynatural selection. Natural selection can also tune how closely the dozengenes on X for cellular biochemistry resemble their counterparts on Y. Thegene on X controlling the female ribosome could be replaced by other al-leles either more or less similar to its descendant on Y, thereby affecting thegendered difference in how proteins are manufactured. Thus evolution onthe X chromosome can affect the average difference of females from males.
214 HUMAN RAINBOWS Together, evolution on X and evolution on Y control the overall de-gree of sexual dimorphism—the sum of the X-determined differences offemales from males and the Y-determined differences of males from fe-males.15 Further, variation on X can produce transgender expression. Toobtain feminine males and masculine females, the X and Y chromosomesmust ﬁrst have genes that maintain enough average body difference be-tween the sexes so that feminine and masculine are statistically well de-ﬁned. Then, because X occurs differentially in males and females, allelicvariation on X at loci that escape X inactivation can hypothetically causesome males to resemble females, and vice versa. To obtain feminine males, imagine that ﬁve units of pigment producepink, and ten units make red. Quantities of pigment above ten are alsored because ten units are enough to saturate the color. Suppose X has alocus for pigment that escapes X inactivation with two alleles. One al-lele makes only ﬁve units of pigment and appears in 99 percent of thegene pool; another allele makes ten units of pigment, but is rare, at only1 percent. All females, then, are red because, with any of the alleles fromtwo Xs, they make either ten, ﬁfteen, or twenty units of pigment, all ofwhich appear simply as red. Among males, 99 percent are pink, becausethey have only the allele for ﬁve units, and 1 percent wind up red withthe allele for ten units. These 1 percent of males appear as feminine maleswith respect to the trait of redness. To obtain masculine females, imag-ine now that twenty units of blue are automatically made in both malesand females, and that X has a locus for degradation of the pigment thatescapes X inactivation. The pigment saturates at navy blue with tenunits. Suppose one allele degrades none of the pigment but is rare at 1percent of the gene pool, whereas the other degrades 50 percent of thepigment and is common at 99 percent. All males are then navy blue be-cause they have either twenty or ten units of pigment. Among the fe-males, 99 percent are light blue, as they have only ﬁve units of pigment,because one of their alleles degrades half of the original twenty units andthe other the remaining ten. The remaining 1 percent are navy blue be-cause they have either ten or twenty units of pigment. This 1 percent offemales appear as masculine females with respect to the trait of blueness. Although the genetics of transgender expression are unknown and, inhumans at least, may be superseded by late embryonic and early post-natal developmental experience, transgender bodies are fully consistent
SEX DIFFERENCES 215with an XY system of sex determination. Indeed, feminine males mighteasily be feminine enough, and masculine females masculine enough, tocount socially and to identify as women and men, respectively, eventhough they possess XY and XX bodies. Thus genetics does not dictate a gender binary. Although the mam-malian system of sex chromosomes produces a binary based on gametesize, the gendered bodies that make those eggs and sperm are not con-strained by the genetics of sex determination; they are free to adapt evo-lutionarily to local context. Indeed, research on the human genome is re-vealing that all people are genetically different. Individuality is notskin-deep, but extends deep into our DNA. When any two people arecompared, genetic differences can be found. And if people sort them-selves into social categories that reﬂect innate inclinations, then geneticdifferences will also be found between the people of those categories.“Normal” people are not a sea of homogeneous genotypes, bodies, andbrains. “Normal” people are as genetically diverse as snowﬂakes.HORMONAL SEX DIFFERENCESA major source of diversity in the developmental narratives of people istheir differing hormonal experiences. Yet the story of hormones beginsnot with diversity, but with failed attempts to deﬁne a binary “male” and“female” in terms of chemicals. An authoritative summary in 1939 as-serted, “As there are two sets of sex characters, so there are two sex hor-mones, the male hormone . . . and the female.”16 But was this any morethan a wish? In 1927 female hormone was extracted from pregnantwomen’s urine, and in 1931 male hormone from men’s urine. Already in1928, however, reports of female hormones in men elicited scientiﬁc re-joinders of “disconcerting,” “anomalous,” and “somewhat disquiet-ing.” In 1935 a cherished symbol of male virility, the stallion, turned outto have large amounts of female hormone in his urine, eliciting remarkssuch as “surprising,” “curious,” “unexpected,” and “paradoxical.”Conversely, the male hormone was shown to operate on female tissue.Testes transplanted into female rabbits whose ovaries had been removedinduced uterine growth. In the 1930s the male hormone was shown toincrease mammary glands, enlarge the uterus and the clitoris, and pro-
216 HUMAN RAINBOWSlong estrus in female rats.17 So both sexes possessed and responded to“male” and “female” hormones. In fact, everyone possesses testosterone, estrogen, and all the other“sex” hormones. Sex hormones are instruments in the body’s chemicalorchestra. The body’s score calls for all these instruments at varioustimes, and together they help make the body’s music. Once isolated, the sex hormones turned out to be chemically simi-lar to one another—as close as, say, the sugars in honey and sugarcane.Humans, both males and females, can synthesize all the sex hormonesstarting from cholesterol. The recipe goes through two steps to prog-esterone, then three more to testosterone, the hormone that signals anembryo to make male internal plumbing plus male secondary sex char-acteristics at puberty. An additional step leads to dihydrotesterone, thehormone that shapes the male external genitals. A different step con-verts testosterone to estradiol, which interconverts with estrogen toproduce female secondary sex characteristics at puberty, bone growth,and masculine brain anatomy.18 These hormones, called steroid hor-mones, are widespread throughout the vertebrates. Each person hasdifferent amounts of each hormone, forming part of our biochemicalindividuality, but everyone has at least some of every type of sex hor-mone. Making hormones is half the story; the other half is whether cells havereceptors for them. All the hormones in the world will have no effect un-less cells contain certain substances that chemically bind to the hormone.The overall impact of a hormone depends on both how much has beenmade and how much receptor is present to respond. Thus, the commit-tee of genes that composes the body’s sex hormone symphony includesgender genes like SRY, genes for sex hormone receptors, and genes forthe many enzymes that catalyze sex hormone synthesis and interconver-sion. Quite a large committee.UTERINE ENVIRONMENTAt birth, a baby is chemically experienced. While still in the uterus, anembryo makes hormones both in the gonads and in the adrenal glands.The placenta, a structure jointly made by baby and mother, is also a site
SEX DIFFERENCES 217of hormone synthesis, and the mother contributes some hormones of herown. All these hormones irreversibly inﬂuence behaviors in later life. In species that give birth in litters—producing a group of fraternal“twins”—brothers and sisters inﬂuence each other’s development be-cause of the shared effect of their hormones.19 Certain behavioral incli-nations of rodents—such as mice and rats, for example—have beenmeasured in the laboratory. A male mouse was offered a choice of twofemales, one who had lived in the uterus next to two sisters (a two-sisterfemale) and one who had lived next to two brothers (a two-brother fe-male). The male mated twice as often with the two-sister female as withthe two-brother female. Male rats who developed next to two sisters inthe uterus (a two-sister male) had a higher sexual appetite than male ratswho developed next to two brothers (a two-brother male). When pairedwith a receptive female, the two-sister males mated and came to climaxmore often than the two-brother males. In mice, the two-sister males hada higher appetite for same-sex matings as well. When two-brother malesand two-sister males were paired with a reference male, the referencemale mated more with the two-sister males than with the two-brothermales. Lots of differences that can be detected in mice and rats point toan effect of their embryonic hormonal environment on temperamentlater in life. The data for humans are scantier, in part because humans typicallygive birth singly rather than in litters. One behavioral trait has been stud-ied, however: a peculiar trait called inner-ear clicking. Believe it or not,clicking sounds are generated inside the ear. These sounds travel out ofthe ear (instead of into the ear like most sounds) and can be recordedwith a microphone. People don’t hear the sounds made in their ownears—they get used to them. These clicking sounds are made more oftenby women than by men. A female with a twin brother, however, doesn’tproduce these sounds. Apparently, the brother’s hormones masculinizehis sister’s ear development, as indicated by the absence of click produc-tion.20 Lesbian and bisexual women also produce fewer clicking soundsthan straight women (see p. 246). Another clue that hormones from twins inﬂuence each other’s laterdevelopment comes from asymmetries in the teeth. Teeth are generallymore asymmetrical in men (the right jaw has larger teeth than the left
218 HUMAN RAINBOWSjaw) than in women. A woman with a twin brother has a more asym-metrical jaw than other women.21MATURATIONHormones have long been known to have a large effect on morphology,during embryonic growth as well as in puberty. In males, external bodychanges begin while the person is still embryonic. At three months, a typ-ical penis might be 0.3 centimeters in length, growing 0.7 centimeters perweek until birth, when it reaches 3.5 centimeters. Penis growth is causedby dihydrotestosterone, converted from testosterone circulating in theblood. While the penis is growing, the vaginal pouch is reabsorbed, al-though some men still retain a small pouch called a prostatic utricle.22Puberty starts with growth of the testes at about eleven years, just a fewmonths after the ﬁrst signs of puberty in females. In females, the average age at which breasts start to grow is 10.6 yearsfor girls of European descent and 9.5 years for girls of African descent,with a range from 6 to 13 years. The ﬁrst menstrual period begins abouttwo or three years later, at 12.9 years in women of European descent and12.2 years in women of African descent.23 Estrogen secreted by theovaries causes breast growth. At the same time, testosterone secreted bythe adrenal glands and the ovaries causes the pubic hair to grow. Before puberty, boys and girls grow at about the same rate. At puberty,boys wait two years later than girls for their spurt, winding up about 12.5centimeters taller than girls on the average. Their greater height resultsfrom starting their spurt at a taller height and having a faster maximumgrowth speed during the spurt. The growth spurt in both girls and boys re-sults from estradiol. One of the “female” sex hormones, estradiol has longbeen known to produce the growth spurt in girls, but it also causes thespurt in boys. Boys’ testosterone from the testes is converted to estradiolin the bones, where the growth occurs. Indeed, testosterone often has itseffect only after conversion in local tissues to estrogen and/or estradiol.24HOW HORMONES MAKE US FEELIn 1889 the physiologist Charles Edouard Brown-Séquard injected him-self with extracts from crushed animal testicles and claimed renewed
SEX DIFFERENCES 219vigor and greater mental clarity. A decade later, he admitted that the ef-fects were short-lived and he couldn’t rule out that he had been mistakenall along.25 In what I ﬁrst assumed was a spoof, around April Fool’s Day in 2000,the New York Times Magazine printed an homage to testosterone.26 Theauthor, a man taking testosterone as part of HIV therapy, offers this de-scription: “It has a slightly golden hue, suspended in an oily substanceand injected in a needle about half as thick as a telephone wire. . . . I pushthe needle in . . . [and] as I pull it out . . . an odd mix of oil and blackishblood usually trickles down my hip.” “Within hours,” he declares, “mywit is quicker, my mind faster, but my judgment more impulsive.” Atransgendered man the author interviewed adds, “My sex-drive wentthrough the roof. I felt like I had to have sex once a day or I would die,”27and a forty-year-old executive taking testosterone for body-buildinggushes, “I walk into a business meeting now and I just exude self-conﬁ-dence.” The author credits the big T for increasing his weight from 165to 185 pounds, his collar size from 15 to 17.5 inches, and his chest from40 to 44 inches. The article continues, “Men and women differ biologically mainly be-cause men produce 10 to 20 times as much testosterone as most womendo and this chemical, no one seriously disputes, profoundly affectsphysique, behavior, mood and self-understanding. . . . It helps explain. . . why inequalities between men and women remain so frustratingly re-silient in public and private life.” This claim is misleading. Testosteronedoesn’t stand alone; by itself testosterone doesn’t do anything and needsreceptors to have any effect. The author declares that affirmative action for women is impossible,and we “shouldn’t be shocked if gender inequality endures” because ofthe hormone differences between men and women. Instead, the “medicaloption” is to give “women access to testosterone to improve their sexdrives, aggression and risk affinity and to help redress their disadvan-tages.” So, to cure women of their womanhood, testosterone should beadministered, although “its use needs to be carefully monitored becauseit can have side effects . . . but that’s what doctors are there for.” Recti-fying social injustice by giving women testosterone to convert them intomen is, shall we say, inadvisable. Why would someone write such an irresponsible article? An answer
220 HUMAN RAINBOWSis suggested in the concluding sentence: “It seems to me no disrespect towomanhood to say that I am perfectly happy to be a man, to feel thingsno woman will ever feel . . . to experience the world in a way nowoman ever has. And to do so without apology or shame.” Male-maleposturing. The article details a stereotypical view of how testosterone affects be-havior: “I feel a deep surge of energy. It is less edgy than a doubleespresso, but just as powerful. My attention span shortens, . . . I ﬁnd itharder to concentrate on writing and feel the need to exercise more. . . .Lust is a chemical. It comes; it goes. It waxes; it wanes. You are nothelpless in front of it, but you are certainly not fully in control. Thenthere’s anger . . . mere hours after a T shot . . . I had nearly gotten intothe ﬁrst public brawl of my life.” The article seems only dimly awarethat it subverts the value of manhood, even as manhood is being cham-pioned. Men are portrayed as irrational creatures, ricocheting from oneimpetuous mistake to another, as testosterone propels their quest forsex. Women have long borne the brunt of criticism as irrational crea-tures, victims of a monthly hormone cycle, monsters on “bad hormonedays.” Men apparently have bad hormone days every day of their lives,suffering mental cramps, not menstrual cramps. Transgendered people have much to contribute on how hormones“feel.” Transgendered people tell of great variability in hormone sensa-tion, probably reﬂecting differences in hormone receptors as much ashormone production. Perhaps most interesting is the seemingly unani-mous report from transgendered men that testosterone calms them. TheNew York Times Magazine article provides only a partial picture of thetransgendered man quoted as saying testosterone gave him an enhancedlibido. In fact, that man, Drew Seidman, also stated that it is a “myth”that testosterone is a cause of undue aggression, that testosterone has a“calming effect” on him, and that he “feels much better” with it. Similarly, Patrick Caliﬁa, a prominent transgendered writer who tran-sitioned recently, said in an interview, “I’ve been much more comfortableon T. I feel like a calmer and more reasonable human being. Men are sup-posed to be more angry, but I just keep getting more mellow and loving andsweet, and I think it’s because I’m happier. This chemical balance just feelsright.”28 The distinguished transgendered leader Jamison Green writes,“The initial effect of testosterone was that it allowed me to feel ‘normal’
SEX DIFFERENCES 221for the ﬁrst time in my life. It allowed me to feel calm, balanced, centered,the absolute antithesis of the clichés about . . . testosterone poisoning.And once I got comfortable with that feeling . . . along came libido.”29 Ihave spoken with other transgendered men about testosterone. They allconﬁrm the reports of Seidman, Caliﬁa, and Green that testosterone hasbeen calming. All also conﬁrm a large increase in libido and speak of howthey’ve accommodated this new, happy sensation into their lives. What transgendered women say about testosterone differs markedlyfrom what transgendered men say. Concerning the male libido, trans-gendered women talk about freedom from the burning in their groin,from the never-ending need for relief; they talk about pacing in romance,not wham-bam. For me, testosterone was a triple-espresso buzz, razzing,annoying, clouding thought, taking me where I didn’t want to go. WhenI replaced testosterone with estradiol, within a day I felt a deep calm andhappiness. Transgendered people speak of hormones as the most important stepin gender change, tipping the balance of subtle signs connoting genderidentity as a man or woman. Transgendered people tell too of losingtheir partner or spouse soon after starting hormones because intimate re-lations were fundamentally altered. A major reason for individuality, for the emergence of diversity inbody and temperament, is the effect of hormones and their receptors.Hormones early in life cause irreversible effects on temperament later inlife, and hormones later in life can reversibly affect mood and activity.MENTAL SEX DIFFERENCESOur quest for the developmental sources of human diversity leads nowto the brain, the most mysterious of all our organs. Here lies the cir-cuitry that activates sex drive, hunger, temperament. Here, too, liescreative spirit, free will, love, humor. Somehow our personhoodemerges from the substance of our brains. Clues about what kind ofpeople we are reside in brain size and shape, in its pattern of electricaldischarges. Brain and behavior work together in a back and forth. Just as weight-lifting strengthens the biceps, and big biceps then allow heavier weights
222 HUMAN RAINBOWSto be lifted, parts of the brain shrink and expand with use, especiallyearly in life. People’s biceps start at different sizes, before any weight-lift-ing. Likewise, brains differ at birth, reﬂecting an inherent disposition todifferent behaviors. How, then, are our brains involved in our sex lives,in the disposition we have to express gender and sexuality? The brain listens to sights and sounds from outside, as well as to themusic of the hormones within the body. The brain secretes hormonestoo, playing in the hormonal orchestra—it does its listening as a per-former in the orchestra pit, not as a spectator in the audience. The brain“hears” the body’s hormones using receptors located in the preoptic areaof the hypothalamus, running from the back of the brain, near the spinalcord, along its bottom, to the front near the eyes. The brain also listensdirectly to genes, such as gender genes like SRY in the male, withoutgoing through hormones as intermediaries.30BIRD BRAIN ANATOMYBiologists who study brain anatomy are used to looking for ﬁne details,differences between a few cells here and there. In 1976 brain anatomistswere amazed by what they found. It was known that while male canariesand zebra ﬁnches sing, female canaries sing only a little, and female zebraﬁnches don’t sing at all. It was also known that in both species maleslearn their song from listening to other males.31 The surprise was that thebrains of the males and the females in these species are so different thatthey can be told apart with the naked eye.32 Place the brains from a maleand a female zebra ﬁnch next to one another, and with practice, you cantell their sex just by looking. In the upper part of his brain, a male birdhas extra nerve cells, which occur in clusters containing extra hormonereceptors as well—hormone receptors in addition to those along the baseof the brain.33 These upper-brain nerve cells enable the male bird’ssinging. Although the neurobiology of avian brains isn’t directly comparableto that of mammalian brains, avian brains set valuable biological prece-dents.34 Here’s a list: 1. The brains of males and females can differ, and differ substantially, as in canaries and zebra ﬁnches.
SEX DIFFERENCES 2232. The degree of difference between male and female brains correlates with the degree of difference in their behavior. In species where males sing and females don’t, the difference in the size of nerve-cell clusters responsible for learning and producing bird song is most marked. In dueting species, where males and females sing to each other at courtship with interlocking songs, the nerve- cell clusters that control song are the same size in both sexes.35 A survey of twenty songbird species spanning six families shows that the degree of dimorphism in brain anatomy correlates with the degree of dimorphism in both variety and quantity of song.363. Testosterone organizes the brain of newly hatched male chicks to develop song-control clusters of nerve cells. These clusters don’t develop in the absence of testosterone, and they can be caused to form in females if testosterone is administered.374. Hormones activate nerve-cell clusters in adults, expanding and shrinking the size of the clusters to match the breeding season.385. The brain is masculinized by estrogen that has been converted from testosterone by the enzyme aromatase. Because some aspects of the male body are masculinized directly by testosterone, other parts by estrogen that has been converted from testosterone, and still other parts by direct expression of genes without any involvement of hormones, reconstructing the developmental pathways of sexual differentiation is complicated.396. Personality differences can be traced to brain differences. Reproductively active male Japanese quail vary in aggressiveness by fourteenfold. This variation relates to the amount of aromatase in the hypothalamus of their brains—the more aromatase, the more aggressiveness.407. Female parents inﬂuence the temperament of their chicks by introducing estradiol or testosterone into the egg yolk. Birds given more testosterone in their yolk are more aggressive. A female bird deposits increasingly more testosterone in the eggs as the egg-laying season progresses, so the birds hatched last in the nest are the most aggressive, presumably to defend themselves against their older siblings. This effect is comparable to the role of maternal hormones in the developing mammal fetus.418. The direction of partner choice for adult female zebra ﬁnches shifts from between-sex to same-sex after estradiol is
224 HUMAN RAINBOWS administered to hatchlings. Estradiol masculinizes the brain and changes the direction of sexual preference.42 9. The white-throated sparrow has a territorial white-striped morph and a nest-tending tan-striped morph in both sexes (see chapter 6). This reciprocal transgender expression in body color and behavior extends to the brain too. Within a sex, the song-control clusters of neurons are larger in the territorial morph than in the nest- tending morph. Between sexes, a male nest-tending morph has larger song-control neural clusters than a female territorial morph, even though both sing about the same amount.43 Transgender gender identity apparently has not been investigated. Inbirds like canaries, males learn their song from male “tutors,” often theirfathers. How does a male chick know to listen to his father instead of hismother? Female canaries sing a different song from males. I wonder if anoccasional male chick learns his mother’s song, and an occasional femalechick learns her father’s song. Birds have reverse chromosomal sex determination relative to mam-mals (see p. 204). In birds, estrogen from the ovaries feminizes a bodythat would otherwise be masculine, whereas in mammals, testosteronefrom the testes masculinizes a body that would otherwise be feminine.Although hormones work somewhat differently in birds than in mam-mals, they bring about the same overall result in gender and sexuality. The connection between brain structure and behavior may be moredirect in birds than in mammals, as though birds relied more on instinctand less on thought than mammals. However, I’m struck by how clear-cut the data are linking differences in bird brain structure to differencesin gender presentation, personality, sexual orientation, and transgen-der expression. I wonder to what extent something similar happens inmammals.RODENT BRAIN ANATOMYLike birds, mammals have some sexual dimorphism in brain anatomy.Here’s a list of brain dimorphisms in rodents: 1. Male rodents, including gerbils, guinea pigs, ferrets, and rats, have a larger cluster of cells in the preoptic area of the brain,
SEX DIFFERENCES 225 along the base of the brain toward the front. The clusters are about ﬁve times larger in males than females, and the difference can be seen with the naked eye.44 Testosterone near the time of birth, converted to estrogen in the brain, organizes this difference. Testosterone given later in life doesn’t cause these cell clusters to form.45 Nobody knows what this cluster of cells does in a male. If they are removed surgically, little effect on behavior is noticed. However, if the whole preoptic area is removed, male copulation is affected, so the clusters may have something to do with male mating behavior.46 2. A nearby cluster of cells, called the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis, also shows a sexual dimorphism that is controlled by testosterone near the time of birth.47 This cluster is of interest because recent work on transgender identity in humans has focused on the human equivalent of this structure. 3. A cluster of nerve cells in the spinal cord in the lower back also differs between males and females. In males, these nerve cells control muscles in the base of the penis. These cells and muscles are present in newborn animals of both sexes. In males testosterone prevents this muscle and the nerve cells that control it from shrinking, whereas in females testosterone causes the muscles and nerve cells to shrink. Testosterone produces this effect directly, without needing to be converted into estrogen.48 When pregnant female rats are stressed in the laboratory by shiningbright lights on them all day long, the male embryos in the litter produceless testosterone during their fetal period. They wind up with smallerclusters of nerve cells in the preoptic area and fewer nerve cells in thespinal cord for control of the penile muscle.49 The scent of testosterone in a male offspring induces his mother togroom his genital region more often than the genital region of a femaleoffspring. If the mother isn’t able to smell, then she doesn’t groom eithersex very much. A young male offspring who isn’t groomed winds up withfewer penile-muscle-controlling nerve cells in his spinal cord and takesmore time to copulate than a male who is groomed.50 Thus, in mammals too, brain and spinal cord anatomy can differ be-tween the sexes, and these differences partly reﬂect the hormonal and so-
226 HUMAN RAINBOWScial environment in which the animals develop. Again, temperament andinclination originate near the time of birth.HUMAN BRAIN ANATOMYHuman brains show few sex differences compared with other species.Lots of research has been directed to showing brain differences betweenmales and females, and many small differences have been found. Over-all, though, male and female human brain anatomy is very similar—thebig story here is the overlap between the sexes, not their difference. Pic-ture two bell-shaped curves placed on top of one another. Then gentlynudge one to the right and the other to the left, so the curves are justslightly askew. That’s how close together the two sexes’ brain anatomyis.51 Here is a summary of the small differences that have been found: 1. Males have a somewhat bigger total brain size, 120 to 160 grams in adults. The difference is almost absent at birth, becoming more pronounced during puberty, partly reﬂecting the overall size differential at that age. Even at birth, though, a group of newborns who weighed the same showed a 5 percent difference in brain weight by sex.52 This 5 percent, although statistically valid, is tiny compared to the overall variation in brain size.53 2. Both male and female humans have the counterpart of the penis- controlling muscle found in mice. In human males, the muscle wraps around the base of the penis to aid in the ejaculation of semen. In human females, the muscle encircles the opening of the vagina and can constrict its entrance. The muscle is somewhat larger in males, although the male/female difference is not as great as in mice. Males have about 25 percent more nerve cells to control this muscle than females. As in mice, the cells are located in the spinal cord. As in mice, females and males have the same- size muscle and same amount of controlling neurons at birth, but testosterone directly causes the female muscle and neurons to shrink and die back.54 3. The preoptic area of the hypothalamus in humans features a cluster of cells called the SDN-POA (the sexually dimorphic nucleus of the preoptic area), which is the counterpart to that in mice. Both males and females are born with about 5,000 cells in
SEX DIFFERENCES 227 this cluster; both increase to about 50,000 by age four, and then a dimorphism develops as the number of cells in this cluster declines in females to about 25,000 by age twenty. This approximately twofold difference in cell number persists through adulthood. The function of SDN-POA remains unknown, although it is presumed somehow to inﬂuence mating behavior. SDN-POA is minute, a cluster of nerve cells the size of a grain of rice in a quart-sized brain.554. Another minute cluster of nerve cells that has been publicized in relation to gender and sexuality is found slightly above SDN-POA. It is called BSTc (the central subdivision of the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis). As in rodents, men have a larger BSTc than women, about 2.5 cubic millimeters with 35,0000 cells in men, and 1.75 cubic millimeters with 20,0000 cells in women.56 (See also chapter 13, concerning transgender gender identity.) BSTc is part of a region called the septum, which is involved in sexual function. Electrical discharges in this part of the brain occur during orgasm, and electrically stimulating this part of the brain causes orgasm.57 Altered sexual behavior, such as hypersexuality, as well as change of sexual orientation and fetishism, results from damage to the septum,58 suggesting that natural variation in sexuality may be associated with corresponding variations in particular areas of the brain. Moreover, hypersexuality raises the possibility that typical human sexuality is not as intense as is biologically possible, that through evolution our sexuality has been set at some optimum intermediate level. The septum provides a natural veil of modesty covering a potential for increased sexuality.5. Slightly below SDN-POA is a third, even smaller rice-grain of nerve cells, a 0.25 cubic millimeter cluster called VIP-SCN (vasoactive intestinal polypeptide containing subnucleus of the suprachiasmatic nucleus). After about ten years of age, a sexual dimorphism can be detected, wherein males have about 2,500 cells and females about 1,000 cells in this cluster. (See also chapter 14, concerning sexual orientation.)59 But just how important could a difference in a teeny neuron cluster be? We don’t know yet. They seem too tiny to account for much of the behavioral differences in gender and sexuality, but then even the small bite of a black widow spider or yellow-jacket wasp can pack quite a wallop. Let’s keep an open mind (so to speak).
228 HUMAN RAINBOWS 6. The human brain shows some right-to-left specialization, especially in right-handed males. Males process verbal information faster and more accurately on the left side, and spatial information on the right side.60 Females don’t show such a pronounced asymmetry. Strokes also reveal a male/female difference: females recover better overall, whereas the impact for males can be predicted by knowing which side of the brain the stroke is on.61 The differences in brain symmetry have a slight anatomical basis.62 The corpus callosum is a conduit of nerve cells that bridges the two sides of the brain. Males and females differ slightly in the shape, but not size or number, of neurons in their corpus callosum. The corpus callosum may be positioned slightly more toward the back in females than in males.63 7. Moving up from the base of the brain into the cerebral cortex at the top of the brain, dissections of brains from six males and ﬁve females show that males have more nerve cells with fewer connections among them, whereas females have fewer cells but more connections among them. Both males and females have the same overall amount of brain material. Males have about 115,000 Ϯ 30,000 neurons per cubic millimeter, whereas females have about 100,000 Ϯ 25,000 neurons per cubic millimeter. Moreover, males are more asymmetric between right and left sides of the brain. Males have an average of 1.18 more neurons per cubic millimeter on their right side compared with the left side, and females have an average of 1.13 more neurons per cubic millimeter on the right compared to left.64 These differences between the brains of males and females follow the familiar script: small statistically valid differences in the averages, with a large overlap. When the brain ﬁrst forms, more nerve cells are produced thanneeded. The cells are pruned through a process of programmed celldeath, called apoptosis. Testosterone slows the pruning. Females windup with fewer but more selected neurons than males do at the end of thisprocess, which occurs during the last ten weeks before birth.65 Although certain mental functions can be pinned down to speciﬁc lo-cations in the brain, more general-purpose cognitive processes emergefrom the collective activity of many neurons distributed throughout the
SEX DIFFERENCES 229brain.66 Do human males and females differ in these general-purposemental abilities too?MALE AND FEMALE THINKINGMen and women differ in cognitive abilities and aptitudes, much as itmight seem inﬂammatory to say so. Overall intelligence, whatever thatis, doesn’t differ between men and women, regardless of what you heareach gender saying about the other in moments of mutual incompre-hension, but some speciﬁc mental skills do differ. As with brain anatomy,the differences are small, but statistically detectable nonetheless, andshow great overlap. Women test better than men, on the average, in verbal ﬂuency, artic-ulation, and memory. Fluency is measured in tests such as trying to thinkof all the words that begin with a speciﬁc letter (for example, every wordthat starts with “t,” or words that rhyme with “mind,” or all the wordsthat pertain to some subject or category, like “ice cream”). Women canusually say a tongue twister, such as “Sweet Susie swept seashells,” fasterthan men. Women can also more quickly scan an array of symbols or ﬁg-ures and remember which one matches a previous symbol or ﬁgure. Thismemory advantage applies to visual and spatial information as well asto letters and words.67 The enhanced aptitude of females for verbal ﬂuency may result in partfrom estrogen. One clue comes from the female gorilla Koko, who wastrained to communicate in American Sign Language. Both the number ofdifferent signs and the total number of signs she gave increased duringthe part of her monthly cycle when her estrogen level was highest. Thiseffect of estrogen is temporary and does not affect brain structure (acti-vational, not organizational).68 In humans, too, performance on tests forarticulatory skill improves, and performance for spatial ability declines,at the preovulatory phase, the time of highest estrogen, compared to theintervening time of lowest estrogen.69 Postmenopausal women on estro-gen hormone-replacement therapy show cognition beneﬁts.70 Youngwomen may also receive cognitive beneﬁts from estrogen. Dyslexia, areading disability, was originally thought to reﬂect a visual difficulty. In-stead, dyslexia results from not discerning the components of words cor-
230 HUMAN RAINBOWSrectly. About an equal number of boys and girls are born with dyslexia.Of those who develop the ability to compensate, 72 percent are girls, re-sulting in more adult males with the disability than adult females. Ap-parently the estrogen available to girls at puberty leads to their develop-ing verbal abilities that permit them to compensate for the dyslexia.71 Men test better than women, on the average, at visualizing how to ro-tate a shape or object in two-dimensional or three-dimensional space.72This ability to visualize spatial relations shows up especially in tests ofquantitative aptitude such as the SATs. The gender gap on this test pro-gressively widens toward the high end. Boys outscore girls 2:1 at scoresof 500 and above, 5:1 at scores of 600 and above, and 17:1 at scores of700 and above. High scores on this test are particularly sensitive to per-formance in spatial relations. Beyond these details, if you’ve sometimes felt that men and womenjust think differently, there is some hard evidence to back up your feel-ing. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) now makes it pos-sible to take a picture of the brain while it’s thinking in real time. The pic-ture lights up the places in the brain where thinking is going on. In onestudy a group of men and women were given the same verbal task: theywere given a written list of nonsense words, like “lete” and “jete,” andasked to say them out loud, making them decide if the words rhymed.As they thought about how to pronounce these words, their brains werephotographed using fMRI. The results were astounding. For the sametask, the men and the women used their brains differently. Men relied ononly one part of their brain (the left inferior frontal gyrus), whereaswomen used two parts of their brain (both left and right inferior frontalgryi). This shows that female brains function more symmetrically thanmale brains, even though this claim has been difficult to demonstrateanatomically. The photographs of this result are dramatic: they showdifferent parts of the brain lighting up.73 These differences don’t pertainto tiny clusters of nerve cells, but rather to large regions of the brain. Ananatomical underpinning to these functional differences between howmen and women think hasn’t been discovered. Men and women also think about spatial tasks in different ways. Agroup of men and women were asked to ﬁnd their way out of a three-dimensional virtual-reality maze. To traverse the maze, men used onepart of their brain (left hippocampus) and women two parts (right pari-
SEX DIFFERENCES 231etal cortex and right prefrontal cortex). This difference in where think-ing goes on may correlate with the observation that women rely onlandmark cues rather than geometry for navigation.74 What are we to make of these mental differences between men andwomen? Such differences can be ampliﬁed by social convention. If theratio of men to women who are excellent at an occupation requiring spa-tial rotation abilities is 60:40, then the occupation may acquire a mas-culine character, which discourages women from joining. If the ratio ofmen to women who are excellent at an occupation requiring verbal ﬂu-ency is 40:60, then the occupation may acquire a feminine character,which dissuades men from joining. The social character acquired by anoccupation may lead to the belief that an occupation is a “man’s job” or“woman’s work,” far outweighing differences in native skill. Each of us can compare ourselves to the averages for human males orfemales and ﬁnd we don’t completely match. Almost everyone seems tocross over the statistical norms for their sex in some way or another. Theaverage values for the sexes don’t have much meaning for us as individ-ual people: it’s like saying the average American lives in Kansas, whichdoesn’t apply to most of us. The combination of average differences and a great overlap in men-tal characteristics sets the stage for many kinds of transgender expres-sion. The reality of differences between male and female averages meansthe statement that A is a male trait and B is a female trait is statisticallyvalid. But the great overlap also means that many males will have B andmany females will have A. Transgender presentations necessarily occurin all sorts of dimensions simply because everywhere the averages differthe overlap is also huge. The same can be said of gender identity. Why should men have more ability at spatial relations than women,and women be more verbally ﬂuent than men? Spatial rotation skillsmight help in throwing a spear or evading an attacker, as evidencedby the male high-risk life history (see pp. 236–37). Spatial skills arealso needed to build structures to contain women, enabling mateguarding, and are used in constructing weapons too. Conversely, ver-bal ability is fundamental to teaching children, to nursing the mind.The higher degree of interconnections among neurons in women’sbrains may permit performing more simultaneous activities. Such con-jectures raise the major issue of human evolution—why we have the
232 HUMAN RAINBOWSbrains we do—because the human brain is perhaps the single trait thatdeﬁnes our species.HUMAN BRAIN EVOLUTIONOur brain size has swelled by a factor of three in the last 2.5 millionyears. That’s fast. Why? Evolutionary psychologists have developed atortuous theory based on sexual selection to explain the brain’s evolu-tion. Their theoretical machinations illustrate how they have become in-tellectually addicted to sexual selection theory. We can’t begin to accountfor something as basic as the human brain’s evolution until we “just sayno” to sexual selection. The traditional explanation is that our brains evolved as we developedtechnology to solve ever more complex problems, allowing us to becometool-using animals. This view is seriously challenged by the observationthat technological innovation was at a standstill during our brain’s evo-lutionary expansion.75 Only after all the evolutionary action was overdid any cumulative tradition of technological progress emerge. Onlythen did any global migration take place from the tropics into colder cli-mates, or any population spurt occur. Natural selection can’t look aheadmillions of years and produce a brain in the hope that it will be valuablein the future. How did natural selection propel the brain’s evolution for-ward if it was only intended for future use? Instead, the evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller suggests thatour brains serve to create “the more ornamental and enjoyable aspectsof human culture: art, music, sports, drama, comedy, and politicalideals.”76 His theory goes on to state that cultural products somehowpromote ﬁnding mates, whereas tool use mostly promotes survival. Per-haps the brain evolved primarily to aid in reproduction rather than sur-vival. As Miller explains, “The human mind and the peacock’s tail mayserve similar biological functions. . . . The peacock’s tail evolved becausepeahens preferred larger, more colorful tails. . . . The peacock’s tailevolved to attract peahens. . . . The mind’s most impressive abilities arelike the peacock’s tail: they are courtship tools, evolved to attract and en-tertain sexual partners. . . . The mind evolved by moonlight . . . as an en-tertainment system to attract sexual partners.” According to this theory,
SEX DIFFERENCES 233intelligence signiﬁes the “great genes” that men supposedly have andwomen supposedly seek. But wait a minute. Sexual selection theory only applies if the attract-ing trait is a male ornament that is not also possessed by females, and itmust actually be preferred by females in heterosexual courtship. Thisbrain-as-a-peacock’s-tail theory is incorrect because men and womenhave nearly identical brains. In peacocks, only the male has large tailfeathers; peahens don’t bother with such decor. If the human brain werejust a man’s tail feather, then women wouldn’t bother to develop a sim-ilar brain. Miller has therefore suggested several modiﬁcations to the sexual se-lection theory to account for brain evolution. One modiﬁcation postu-lates that both men and women use their brain to advertise the absenceof bad genes rather than the presence of great genes: “Any deviationfrom the genetic norm is a deviation from optimality.” According to thistheory, if you’re smart and witty, you’re also healthy. “The humanmind’s most distinctive capacities evolved through sexual selection as ﬁt-ness indicators. . . . The healthy brain theory suggests that our brains aredifferent from those of other apes because . . . the more complicated thebrain, the easier it is to mess up. The human brain’s great complexitymakes it vulnerable to impairment through mutations, and its great sizemakes it physiologically costly. . . . Our creative intelligence could haveevolved . . . to reveal our mutations.” This modiﬁcation is fatally ﬂawed from the onset by its assumptionthat variation from the norm is suboptimal. Sexual reproduction existsto maintain genetic variation. This theory of brain evolution contradictsitself by postulating that the purpose of mate choice is to eliminate thevery variation that sexual reproduction is there to promote. This ﬂawedtheory is diversity-repressing. Yet another modiﬁcation notes, “It takes a sense of humor to recog-nize a sense of humor. Without intelligence, it is hard to appreciate an-other person’s intelligence.” According to this view, women have brainsin order to admire the brains of men. But as Miller ﬁnally acknowledges,“I do not think that female creative intelligence . . . arose simply as away of assessing male courtship displays.” So we’re back to where we started. Why our brains have evolved re-
234 HUMAN RAINBOWSmains as mysterious today as in the past. To move forward, let’s analyzewhere evolutionary psychology has gone wrong: 1. Evolutionary psychology overemphasizes the amount of cultural production that goes directly into mate choice. A peacock is believed to show his tail feathers to a peahen during courtship— this is why Darwin’s theory seems plausible, even if not demonstrated, for the special case of peacock tails. Except for the occasional love poem, few cultural expressions seem intended for one-to-one heterosexual courtship in the way a peacock’s display is claimed to be. 2. Evolutionary psychology accepts biological sexual selection theory too enthusiastically and uncritically. Sexual selection theory is an elite male heterosexist narrative projected onto animals. Basing a theory of human behavior on sexual selection theory naturalizes this narrative and transfers the narrative back to people, as though it were a theory of human nature. 3. Evolutionary psychology needs a deeper conceptualization of female perspective. Females are viewed as what males think females ought to be. 4. Evolutionary psychology is in denial about same-sex sexuality. Miller claims that “homosexual behavior is just not very important in evolution. . . . Its existence in 1 or 2 percent of modern humans is a genuine evolutionary enigma.”77 Homosexuality is a valid color in the human gender/sexuality rainbow. It needs explanation, not dismissal. Imagine if the theory of light had ignored some of the rainbow’s colors—we wouldn’t have both RGB color monitors and CMY color photographs. I suggest the human brain is a social-inclusionary trait for member-ship in the community of humans. People require the modes of interac-tion that the human brain supports in order to be included in human so-ciety and to have access to the chance to reproduce and to survive ashuman beings. This function of the human brain may account for itsrapid evolution in humans and for its uniqueness to people. Playing atbeing human involves ﬁnding mates, raising young, and surviving, all ina social context. Functioning as a human requires building relationships,
SEX DIFFERENCES 235both within and between the sexes, navigating social power networks,and teaching the young how to enter society. The complexity of our so-ciety reﬂects our complex brain, which in turn socially selects for an in-creasingly complex brain to be effective in an increasingly competitivesociety, leading to runaway evolution in brain size and complexity. Thebrains of men and women would seem to be mostly the same because weare both playing in the same society overall.LIFE-HISTORY SEX DIFFERENCESIs there any pattern to all the small sex differences we’ve just enumer-ated? We’ve seen in other animals that each gender has a characteristicapproach not only to mating but to its entire life. The three male gendersof bluegill sunﬁsh, for example, differ not only in mating and social be-havior, but also in body size and life span. The traits these ﬁsh exhibitcome together as a suite of tactics that carry out a life-history strategy.Perhaps human males and females too have slightly different life-historystrategies that tie together their differences. One basic feature of a life-history strategy is life span. Before 1940,men and women had about the same life span. During the last sixtyyears, though, women have been living longer than they used to, andlonger than men. By 1998 the expected life span of a baby girl was 79.5years, while that of a baby boy was 73.8 years, about ﬁve years less. Awoman of age 75 was expected to live an additional 12.2 years, and aman an additional 10.0 years. Overall, improved health care is revealingan inherent tendency for women to live longer than men.78 The immediate cause of higher mortality in older men is more heartdisease and cancer, but males have a higher death rate from injury andillness across all ages. Rather than considering what men might learnfrom women about how to live longer, some have attempted to demeanthe quality of life that women experience: “The female longevity advan-tage, however, is not without cost. Although females live longer,” they“experience more disabling problems than males.” By adjusting for“quality of life . . . a 5.38-year advantage for women is reduced to 1.3years.”79 What this statistic means is debatable. The surviving womenare, after all, surviving, whereas their male counterparts have already
236 HUMAN RAINBOWSdied. If we average in the dead males as being seriously disabled, malequality of life may drop below that of women. One suspects too that menare likely to underreport health problems compared with women. More-over, the health professions overall have emphasized male care morethan female care, so disabilities more common among women, such asautoimmune diseases, are less well understood than those in men, andthe treatment less effective. Women live longer by about ﬁve to ten years in all ethnic and culturalgroups. This difference in life span is substantial: 5 percent. Using thecategories Native American, Native Hawaiian, Samoan, Guamanian,Hispanic, Puerto Rican, Black, U.S. Virgin Islands Black, Chinese, Japa-nese, Filipino, and White, researchers found that females lived longerthan males within each category. The average life spans varied from alow of 65 and 74 years for male and female Blacks, to a high of 80 and86 years for male and female Chinese.80 That women live longer thanmen is undeniable. Why is this? An ecological perspective offers a possible answer. Ecol-ogists use the concept of a “life history” for the biologically programmedschedule of important events through life. Key events are when repro-duction can begin, how many young are produced at the same time, howlong reproduction can last, and when death is likely to occur. Ecologistsobserve that life-history traits usually come bundled in distinct suites. Indangerous environments, animals evolve an early maturation age, havelarge numbers of young at a time, and senesce early—the high-mortalitysuite. In safer environments, animals postpone the start of reproductionto a relatively late age, raise fewer young at any one time, and livelonger—the low-mortality suite.81 If we reﬂect on the full life cycle of many mammalian males and fe-males, including humans, sexual dimorphism in life history emerges. Thedimorphism shows that males, on the average, may have more of a high-mortality suite of life-history traits, and females more of a low-mortal-ity suite. Speciﬁcally, sperm are more numerous and senesce faster thaneggs. Male embryos grow faster from conception than female embryos.SRY grabs early control of the gonadal ridge to accelerate male body dif-ferentiation. At puberty, males have their ﬁrst intercourse about one yearearlier than females,82 and the male growth spurt is timed to yield alarger body size. The reproductive skew is more pronounced in males
SEX DIFFERENCES 237than females, with 14 percent of males not having any intercourse in ayear, compared with 10 percent for females.83 Adulthood ends withfaster male senescence and a shorter life span. Thus, on the average,males exhibit a high-mortality suite of life-history traits compared to fe-males. Not only do males on the average encounter more danger than fe-males, as evidenced by their higher mortality rate in the population, butthrough evolution their life history has apparently become adapted tothis higher danger.
13Gender IdentityD o the brains of politicians and poets differ? Can we ﬁnd a rice- grain of Beethoven’s brain shared by all composers and a different rice-grain of Picasso’s brain shared by all painters—anatomicalmarkers of ability in performing and graphic arts? Perhaps. No one’slooked. But it is known that the part of the brain controlling left-handﬁngers is larger in string players than in anyone else.1 As we have seen, among our vertebrate relatives, the two male gen-ders of plainﬁn midshipmen ﬁsh have different brains, and in tree lizards,the three male genders develop with different hormone proﬁles. Amplebiological precedent supports the hypothesis that different behavioraltemperaments in humans, including gender expression, could springfrom differences in brain organization. Might we, for example, detectdifferences in the brains of transgendered and nontransgendered?TRANSGENDER BRAINSThree rice-grains of brain in and around the hypothalamus are sexu-ally dimorphic in males and females—SDN-POA, BSTc, and VIP-SCN.Of these, only BSTc differs between trangendered and nontransgen-dered people—this rice-grain of brain is perhaps a gender-identity238
GENDER IDENTITY 239locus. The data supporting this claim may be thin but should be takenseriously. Two studies have analyzed a total of thirty-four brains preserved informaldehyde in a reference collection at the Netherlands Brain Bank.2The collection includes brains of people identiﬁed as heterosexual non-transgendered male, homosexual nontransgendered male, heterosexualnontransgendered female, and transgendered women with varied sexualorientations. Here’s what was found: 1. Among nontransgendered heterosexuals, the males’ BSTc was about 150 percent the size (2.5 cubic millimeters) and number of neurons (33,000) of females’ (1.75 cubic millimeters and 19,000 neurons): straight males bigger than straight females. 2. For the homosexual nontransgendered males, the BSTc was the same as for the heterosexual nontransgendered males: gay males same as straight males. 3. Among the six transgendered women, the BSTc matched that of the nontransgendered women, not the nontransgendered men: transgendered women same as nontransgendered women. 4. For the one transgendered man examined, the BSTc size and neuron count fell squarely in the male range and outside the female range: transgendered man same as nontransgendered man.The studies included photographs of the spots in the brain where theBSTc occurs, so comparisons are readily visible, supplementing thegraphs and tables of data. Another ﬁnding was that the size and neuroncount of the transgendered women didn’t relate to the age at which theytransitioned. The femalelike number of neurons in the BSTc of trans-gendered women is “related to gender identity per se rather than to theage at which it became apparent.” The investigators suggest that the neu-ronal differences between transgendered and nontransgendered peopleare “likely to have been established . . . during early brain develop-ment,”3 just as testosterone organizes BST dimorphism in rodents soonafter birth.4 The results are announced as though the traditional gender binaryhad been upheld, as though transgendered people had at long last beenrevealed as a rare form of intersex: “The present ﬁndings . . . clearly sup-
240 HUMAN RAINBOWSport the paradigm that in transsexuals sexual differentiation of the brainand the genitals may go into opposite directions and point to a neurobi-ological basis of gender identity disorder.”5 Similarly, an earlier paperfrom the same laboratory states, “Transsexualism is biologically con-ceptualized as a form of pseudohermaphroditism limited to the centralnervous system, as the biological substrate of gender identity.”6 These studies actually subvert the gender binary rather than support-ing it. The three sexually dimorphic neural clusters vary independently ofone another, leading to eight brain types, not two. For example, let Pstand for a large SDN-POA and p for a small one, B for a large BSTc andb for a small one, S for a large VIP-SCN and s for a small one. P mightcorrelate with an XY chromosomal makeup, p with an XX chromosomalmakeup, B with a masculine gender identity, b with a feminine genderidentity, S with same-sex sexual orientation and s with between-sex sex-ual orientation (see next chapter). We can see that eight brain conﬁgura-tions occur: PBS, pBS, PbS, pbS, PBs, pBs, Pbs, and pbs. These might cor-respond to various arrangements of chromosomes, gender identities, andsexual orientations. Of course, many more brain varieties may be foundif more size classes and more sections of the brain are counted. But evenif brain variation is scored only in binary sizes, large and small, and onlyat three independent sites, then eight brain types result, not two. No sci-entiﬁc reason supports selecting two of these eight as normal while de-claring the rest abnormal. Moreover, these eight types of brains can beplugged into bodies with at least two genital conﬁgurations—those witha penis, C, and those with a clitoris, c. Eight brain types and two bodytypes then lead to sixteen people types: PBSC, pBSC, PbSC, pbSC, PBsC,pBsC, PbsC, pbsC, PBSc, pBSc, PbSc, pbSc, PBsc, pBsc, Pbsc, and pbsc.You get the idea: brain-body combinations are limitless. The discovery of more of these variable brain features will ﬁll out therainbow of brain morphology, dissolving any belief in a binary brain,just as the research on hormones dissolved the belief in a binary bio-chemistry. Nonetheless, medical scientists presently envision unravelinga cornucopia of “neurobiological diseases and disorders,” the “tip of theiceberg . . . for many sexually dimorphic brain areas . . . and relatedclinical disorders.”7 Not to worry—won’t happen. Our task as informedreaders of science is to extract as best we can the data from the layers ofmedical prejudice in which they’re embedded.
GENDER IDENTITY 241 The studies of transgender brains have revealed an organic counter-part to some of the variation in gender identity—a valuable ﬁnding. Wetransgendered people wish to say, “We told you so.” Coming out astransgendered means realizing something deep about ourselves. Why dosome people ﬁnd us more believable once the organic connection is evi-dent? Couldn’t they have taken us at our word without dissecting sixformaldehyde-soaked brains?WHEN GENDER IDENTITY DEVELOPSWhen does gender identity form during development? When and how dothese BSTc regions form? Gender identity, like other aspects of tem-perament, presumably awaits the third trimester, when the brain as awhole is growing. In males, three periods during life show unusually hightestosterone levels. One is in the middle trimester, when the genitals aredeveloping; the second is around birth; and the third is at puberty. Thetime around birth may be when the brain’s gender identity is being or-ganized—cognitive lenses that instinctively distinguish who will be em-ulated from who will be merely observed. To determine when gender identity develops, a good strategy is to ﬁndan early limit and a late limit, and work in from these two end points.One clue that gender identity can’t occur much earlier than the thirdtrimester of pregnancy is the absence of sex-hormone receptors from thebrains of mid-trimester embryos. It has become clear that the externalgenitals differentiate before the brain does.8 Penis development, for ex-ample, depends on the concentration of testosterone and its productsduring the middle trimester. In cases of hypospadia—a common inter-sex form in which the urinary opening is not at the tip of the penis, butat some location on the underside—boys have gender-typical male iden-tity and male gender-typical forms of play and presentation.9 Here penismorphology is not connected to male identiﬁcation. The male hormonesaffecting gonadal morphology, which act in the middle trimester, ap-parently do not affect the brain’s later acquisition of gender identity cir-cuitry. Similarly, boys whose genitals are ambiguous at birth—guevedoche—mature at puberty into men and affirm a male identity. Originally stud-
242 HUMAN RAINBOWSied in the Dominican Republic, more examples have now been investi-gated in Papua New Guinea, Mexico, Brazil, and the Middle East.10Guevedoche also show that the period when genitals form precedes thatwhen gender identity forms. A low testosterone level when the genitalsare forming affects genital morphology, but a presumably high testos-terone level later on leads to male-typical gender identity. Some XY people become intersexed because they have receptors thatdon’t bind very tightly to testosterone. This trait, called androgen insen-sitivity syndrome (AIS), is X-linked. The genital morphology in AIS isvariable, but unlike hypospadics and guevedoche, many AIS people iden-tify as female. Presumably, the body’s partial unresponsiveness to testos-terone is not restricted to the time of genital formation, but laststhroughout embryonic growth, allowing some AIS people to develop fe-male and others male gender identity.11 In congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH), the adrenal gland producesmore than the usual amount of androgen. In girls, these hormones mas-culinize the genitals, leading to a large clitoris and sometimes labia fusedinto a partial scrotum. CAH girls almost always mature identifying as fe-male. The androgen produced from the adrenal gland, while higher thantypical in girls, is apparently still less than that produced by the testes ofboys. Hence a female gender identity develops, even though some impacton genital morphology is evident.12 Similarly, in other primates, genital masculinization and behavioralmasculinization take place at different times.13 Taken together, these re-sults imply that gender identity develops sometime after the middletrimester of pregnancy, when genital morphology is taking shape. At theearliest, then, gender identity forms about three months before birth,when the middle trimester ends and the third trimester begins. Turning to the late end of the range, anecdotes and case studies revealthat gender identity must already be determined by several months afterbirth. Attempts to change a person’s gender identity by rearing the childin one direction or another have simply failed, often tragically. Text-books in medicine once asserted that a child’s gender could be “as-signed” by the child’s upbringing. In 1997, however, a bombshell ex-ploded in the ﬁeld of child psychiatry: the textbooks were shown to bebased on fraudulent information. Textbooks claimed that “(1) individuals are psychosexually neutral at
GENDER IDENTITY 243birth, and (2) healthy psychosexual development is dependent on the ap-pearance of the genitals.”14 The capstone evidence for this belief camefrom a case of a baby boy whose penis was irreparably damaged duringa circumcision procedure at seven months and who was reassigned at theage of seventeen months to live as a female. The boy’s name was changedto a girl’s name (Bruce to Brenda, originally reported as John to Joan),and he was raised as a girl. His testicles were removed, and a semblanceof female genitals was surgically constructed in their place at twenty-twomonths. Female hormones were prescribed to begin at puberty. Becausethe boy had an identical twin whose penis was not damaged during cir-cumcision and who was raised as a boy, a comparison was possible. Thesupervising physician, John Money, a famous and powerful professor atJohns Hopkins University, reported in 1972 that the boy reassigned tolive as a girl was developing into a perfectly typical girl, interested in“dolls, a doll house, and a doll carriage,” in contrast to his brother’s in-terest in “cars, gas pumps, and tools.”15 On this basis, the textbookstaught that gender identity is determined by the way the baby is raised. Given what’s known about sex hormones and development, the re-ceived psychological wisdom that babies are psychosexually neutralseems highly unlikely, and the theory that we ﬁgure out as babies whatour gender is by looking at our genitals in the mirror seems farfetched.Nonetheless, this dogma went unchallenged in medicine for twenty-ﬁveyears, until courageous researchers, together with the courageous boyhimself (now a man), spoke up.16 In fact, “Brenda” never accepted theidentity imposed upon him and transitioned at age fourteen to living asa teenage boy, changing his name to David. The medical reports abouthis supposedly successful development as a female were not true. He isnow married and the father of an adopted family. One of the authors of the exposé admitted to being “shit-scared” incoming forward with the truth, and the man whose sex had been reas-signed has been acclaimed as a “true hero” for agreeing to detail to in-vestigators a long and painful period during his life. The human as wellas scientiﬁc dimensions of the case, together with the evidence of cover-up and apparent fraud, have been beautifully documented in the inves-tigative reporting of John Colapinto.17 In rebuttal, child psychiatrists produced a very brief report on onecounterexample. An XY baby whose penis was irreparably damaged
244 HUMAN RAINBOWSduring a circumcision at age two months was reassigned to live as a fe-male at age seven months. The girl was interviewed at age sixteen and attwenty-six and was living socially as a woman. She sought and obtainedsurgery to construct female genitals and completely identiﬁes as female.18 Taken at face value, these gender reassignment cases imply that thelate limit for gender identity development is sometime between sevenmonths (when the assignment did work) and seventeen months (whenthe assignment didn’t work). I’ll take twelve months as a working ﬁgure.Combining the data for the early and late limits, gender identity appearsto form sometime between three months before birth and twelve monthsafter birth. I envision gender identity as a cognitive lens. When a baby opens hisor her eyes after birth and looks around, whom will the baby emulateand whom will he or she merely notice? Perhaps a male baby will emu-late his father or other men, perhaps not, and a female baby her motheror other women, perhaps not. I imagine that a lens in the brain controlswho to focus on as a “tutor.” Transgender identity is then the acceptanceof a tutor from the opposite sex. Degrees of transgender identity, and ofgender variance generally, reﬂect different degrees of single-mindednessin the selection of the tutor’s gender. The development of gender identitythus depends on both brain state and early postnatal experience, becausebrain state indicates what the lens is, and environmental experience sup-plies the image to be photographed through that lens and ultimately de-veloped immutably into brain circuitry. Once gender identity is set, likeother basic aspects of temperament, life proceeds from there.
14Sexual OrientationI f outside behavior matches inside morphology, then gay and lesbian people may have unique bodies. If string players have special brain parts for left-handed ﬁngering, and race jockeys special genes for ashort physique, then perhaps people of same-sex sexuality have specialbrain parts and/or genes for sexuality too. The search for biological as-pects of sexual orientation often confuses sexuality with transgender ex-pression.GAY BRAINSRemember the three rice-grains of nerve cells in the preoptic/hypo-thalamus area at the base of the brain? These grains, called SDN-POA, BSTc, and VIP-SCN, are sexually dimorphic in humans. VIP-SCN size seems to align with sexual orientation in males. I bet you’reguessing that gay males have a female-sized VIP-SCN. Nope. Gaymales have an even bigger VIP-SCN than straight males, which is inturn bigger than the VIP-SCN of females. So much for the belief thatgay men have female brains!1 Speciﬁcally, straight males have about2,500 cells, and females about 1,000 cells in this approximately 0.25cubic millimeter cluster.2 Gay males have a volume of VIP-SCN 1.7 245
246 HUMAN RAINBOWStimes as large, and with 2.1 times as many cells, as that of straightmales.3 Another possible difference between gay and straight men comes froman unconﬁrmed study of a fourth and rarely mentioned rice-grain, thetiniest of all—a cluster of cells in the hypothalamus called INAH3. Inheterosexual men, this grain averages 0.1 cubic millimeters; in hetero-sexual women, 0.05 cubic millimeters; and in gay men, also 0.05 cubicmillimeters. This tiny feature in gay male brains has been singled out asmatching that in women.4 Thus gay males are closer to females in thisrice-grain (INAH3), but farther from females in the other (VIP-SCN). The brains of lesbian women appear to differ from those of straightwomen. Recall that men produce fewer clicking sounds in their internalears than women do (see chapter 12). Lesbian and bisexual women pro-duce fewer clicking sounds in their ears than straight women do, butmore than men do.5 Thus lesbian and bisexual women are intermediatebetween straight women and men in this regard. Indeed, ear clicking canchange in an adult as a result of taking hormones. A transgenderedwoman who began taking estrogen prior to her sex reassignment surgerydeveloped the ear clicking. So ear clicking does not necessarily say any-thing about how brain structure is organized.6 All in all, variation in the many rice-grains of nerve cells shows thatbrains vary with sex, gender identity, and sexual orientation. Furtheranalysis of brain states may reveal as many differences among people’sbrains as among people’s faces.GAY FAMILIESDid Dad go ﬁshing? Do you go ﬁshing? Did Mom bake cookies? Do youbake cookies? Lots of traits run in families, like hobbies and styles offood preparation. Like hair color and eye color. Hobbies and cookingstyles reﬂect shared environment; hair and eye color, shared genes. Beinggay and lesbian runs in families too. Does shared sexual orientation infamilies reﬂect shared environment or shared genes, or both? The answerisn’t clear. Here are some clues. If a man is straight, there is a 4 percent his brother will be gay, thesame percentage as in the general population. If a man is gay, the likeli-
SEXUAL ORIENTATION 247hood increases ﬁvefold, to 22 percent. Whether a man is straight or gayhas no statistical effect on whether his sister will be straight or lesbian.7These ﬁgures show that gay men cluster in families but do not saywhether this stems from shared genes or a shared environment. Simi-larly, if a woman is lesbian, her sister is about twice as likely to be les-bian, but whether a woman is lesbian has a very small or undetectablestatistical effect on whether her brother is gay or straight.8 Gay men andlesbian women cluster independently. Comparing identical and fraternal twins suggests some genetic com-ponent. In a 1991 study, 52 percent of identical male twins were bothgay, while only 22 percent of fraternal twins were both gay.9 In a 1993study, 65 percent of identical male twins were both gay, and 29 percentof the fraternal twins were both gay.10 Similarly, a 1993 study reportedthat 48 percent of identical female twins were both lesbian, and only 6percent of fraternal twins were both lesbian.11 The studies just cited come from the United States. A 1992 Britishstudy, which looked at males and females together, found that 25 per-cent of identical twins were both homosexual, but only 2.5 percent offraternal twins were homosexual.12 A 1995 Australian study used a dif-ferent method.13 Instead of inviting twins to participate by placing ad-vertisements in magazines and other sources likely to be seen by gayreaders, the study used a preexisting list of twins. Based on a strict deﬁ-nition of whether twins could be scored as both being gay, the investi-gators reported that 20 percent of the identical male twins were bothgay, 0 percent of the fraternal male twins were both gay, 24 percent ofthe identical female twins were both lesbian, and 11 percent of the fra-ternal female twins were both lesbian. The studies repeatedly show that identical twins are at least twice aslikely both to be homosexual as fraternal twins. The chance that identi-cal twins will both be gay ranges from about 25 percent to 50 percent,depending on the study, and is decidedly less than 100 percent. Thus,even though a genetic component may be present, other, presumably en-vironmental factors account for 50 to 75 percent of the story. Although comparisons between identical and fraternal twins suggesta genetic component in homosexuality, the possibility remains that iden-tical twins are raised more similarly to one another than fraternal twinsare, and that identical twins associate more closely and encounter more
248 HUMAN RAINBOWSsimilar experiences while they are growing up than fraternal twins do.Further investigation of a genetic component should look at data fromidentical twins raised apart, because these data will show the effects ofshared genes in the absence of a common environment. A 1986 study located six pairs of identical twins who were raisedapart and had at least one member who was gay or lesbian. In all fourfemale instances, one member was lesbian and the other straight. In oneof the male instances, both members were gay—in fact, they didn’t knowof each other’s existence until they happened to meet in a gay bar wherepeople had been mistaking them for each other. In the other instance ofidentical male twins raised apart, one member was bisexual until agenineteen and then became exclusively gay, whereas the other was ho-mosexual between ages ﬁfteen and eighteen, then later married and re-garded himself as straight. In this instance, both members exhibited atleast partial same-sex sexual orientation.14 Thus the data on sexual ori-entation in twins reared apart are perhaps suggestive of a possible geneticcomponent for gay male sexuality, but much less so for lesbian sexu-ality. Nonetheless, an important contrary fact remains. The 1991 studymentioned above also showed that an adopted brother of a gay man istwice as likely to be gay (11 percent) as an adopted brother of a straightman (5 percent). So unless the adoptive parents are somehow selectingbabies likely to become gay, something about the environment intowhich the adopted child is placed is contributing to sexual orientation asmuch as any genes are.15 Substantial evidence points to both genetic and environmental com-ponents in the development of same-sex sexuality. No one who pushesone factor to the exclusion of the other can be correct.THE HAMER-PATTATUCCI STUDY AND THE QUESTION OF A GAY GENEA milestone in the genetic analysis of gayness in males came in 1993 withthe publication of a paper in the respected magazine Science by a teamincluding a senior out gay scientist, Dean Hamer, and a young out lesbianscientist, Angela Pattatucci.16 This work (hereafter referred to as HP) hassince become quite controversial and must be considered carefully.
SEXUAL ORIENTATION 249 The paper conﬁrmed yet again the tendency for gay men to cluster infamilies. The brother of a gay man had a 13.5 percent of being gay,whereas the brother of a straight man had only the baseline chance ofbeing gay, which in this study was estimated at about 2 percent. The researchers’ distribution of men into the categories of straight andgay was claimed to be nearly absolute—bisexuals were almost com-pletely absent. HP concluded that “it was appropriate to treat sexual ori-entation as a dimorphic rather than as a continuously variable trait.” Al-though some other studies also report such a bimodal distribution (e.g.,the 1986 and 1991 studies mentioned above), this claim has been seri-ously disputed.17 In most cultures, same-sex sexuality is intermixed withbetween-sex sexuality. One anthropological study tabulates same-sexsexual practices from twenty-one cultures, and in ﬁfteen of these homo-sexual practice was concurrent with heterosexual practice.18 The sorting into distinct categories is partly an artifact of present-daysocial pressures within the gay and straight communities. HP’s subjectswere self-acknowledged homosexual men recruited through outpatientHIV clinics in the Washington, D.C., area, and through local homophileorganizations. The participants were 92 percent white non-Hispanic, 4percent African American, and 1 percent Asian, with an average edu-cational level of 3.5 years beyond high school and an average age ofthirty-nine years. Among the gays, 90 percent said they were nearly ex-clusively homosexual, and 90 percent of the straight men said they werenearly exclusively straight, giving the impression of a clear-cut bi-modality. On reﬂection, though, bimodality emerges in such a sampleas a result of social pressure and isn’t necessarily representative of thehuman population. A contemporary gay man can’t admit to being sex-ually interested in a woman any more than a present-day straight mancan admit to being sexually interested in a man. The organizations andmagazines that offer safe space for those who insist on a bisexual iden-tity were not solicited. The response of the investigators to this criticism has been evasive.Hamer states, “I didn’t tell these men to answer 0 or 6 [on a scale be-tween heterosexual to homosexual], it’s just that almost all of them did.Am I supposed to pretend the trait is continuous?” He continues, “Well,how many truly bisexual men have you ever met? I have no theoretic ar-gument with bisexuality. It’s just that before I started doing research, I’d
250 HUMAN RAINBOWSnever met any. Of the men we’ve interviewed, most identify themselvesas either gay or straight. A handful identiﬁed themselves as bisexual, andwe did not include them . . . for simplicity. But of the few who said—even insisted—they were bisexual and made their case with the fact thatthey were also sleeping with women, it would become clear with mostof them after just a couple of casual questions that they were really onlyattracted to men but were in the process of coming out. . . . Besides, asa geneticist, to be blunt about it, I don’t really give a damn what labelanyone uses, or even what they do, or with whom. I care about what theyfeel inside.”19 Pattatucci too is skeptical that bisexuals exist: “The most illuminat-ing experience for me has been discovering that the way we ask the ques-tions reveals what sexual orientation truly is. . . . I would often prefacethe central question by saying ‘I want to know what’s in your interior. . .do you feel that who you are now, your homosexual orientation, has al-ways been part of you, part of who you are . . . even though your sexualbehavior might have been with members of the opposite sex?’. . . It ac-tually is fairly rare, even when I talk to people who identify as bisexuals,that they say their interior, true sexual orientations have changed. Theirbehavior may have changed, but their homosexual core has always beenthere. That’s the important thing. The behavior is irrelevant comparedto the core.”20 These quotes show that homosexuality was deﬁned in the study as aform of self-identity, irrespective of sexual practice. One wonders,though, whether any hypothetical gene for homosexuality would pertainmore to perceived identity than to practice. Homosexual practice has ex-isted throughout the evolutionary history of our species, whereas the as-sertion of homosexuality as an identity is located in our particular cul-ture. Mischaracterizing the phenotype can render subsequent geneticanalysis meaningless. Pattatucci is selective about who counts as lesbian: “A relatively smallnumber of women will say in the interview, ‘I’m not a lesbian, I just fellin love with this one woman’ and it’s apparent that their feelings are . . .basically heterosexual. They perceive themselves as having had aserendipitous experience. They fell in love and committed to this partic-ular woman, and sex became part of the relationship.” Pattatucci ex-cludes these women from the study because “you’d better narrow your
SEXUAL ORIENTATION 251ﬁeld as much as you can. The best place to look is at people who showthe greatest amount of expression.” Another group Pattatucci excludesare “women who identify themselves as lesbian for political and ideo-logical reasons with little or no evidence of a romantic or sexual attrac-tion to women. . . . Am I sympathetic to those goals on a purely politi-cal level? I absolutely am. I’m a woman, and I’m a lesbian. But . . . I’mresearching a scientiﬁc question, not a political one.”21 This selection of subjects forces a bimodality between lesbian andstraight by throwing away the data for people who would score in be-tween. Scientiﬁcally, picking and choosing data in this way is a red ﬂag.Politically, this winnowing of the social category of lesbianism in searchof the truest lesbians of them all leads down a slippery slope, culminat-ing in an biologically based hierarchy.22 For these reasons, the assertionof HP that gays and straights sort cleanly into a dichotomy is dubious. HP provides valuable demographic data on the life history of gaymen, showing the ages when they ﬁrst experienced same-sex sexual at-traction, when they self-acknowledged their sexual orientation, andwhen they publicly acknowledged their orientation (came out). The av-erage age of ﬁrst same-sex attraction was ten years, two years beforetheir average age of puberty at twelve. The average age of self-acknowl-edgment was ﬁfteen years, and the average age of coming out wastwenty-one years.23 HP claims that gayness in males is maternally inherited and linked tothe X chromosome. The paper reports that maternal uncles and sons ofmaternal aunts (ﬁrst cousins) of a gay man had a 7.5 percent chance ofbeing gay, higher than the baseline chance of 2 percent. That is, out ofone hundred maternal uncles and cousins of maternal aunts, only aboutseven are likely to be gay. Although seven is higher than the two who arelikely to be gay on the paternal side, the number is still quite small. Thestrongest scenario from proponents of a genetic basis to homosexualityshows only a rather mild effect. Building on the premise that a genetic component of gayness is ma-ternally inherited, HP looked for spots on the X chromosome that mightbe statistically correlated with gayness. Such a spot could be called a“gay gene.” HP reported that a section on the X chromosome at the tipof its long arm, a section called Xq28, was statistically related to gayness.This ﬁnding attracted enormous attention.
252 HUMAN RAINBOWS HP located forty families in which two brothers were gay, the fatherwas straight, and not more than one of the sisters was lesbian. By look-ing at families in which the homosexuality was expressed mostly inmales, they felt they had achieved a sample “enriched” for a hypotheti-cal gene for gayness that was maternally inherited. Again, the sample hadbeen picked and chosen. HP devised a genetic test to detect a gay gene on the X chromosome.The question is: do gay brothers share the same X chromosome 100 per-cent of the time, or do gay brothers share X chromosomes at random(50 percent of the time)? A ﬁnding of 100 percent would mean the Xchromosome was needed for brothers to be gay—it contains a gaygene—whereas 50 percent would mean the X chromosome was irrele-vant to whether brothers were gay and there is no gay gene on the Xchromosome. Well, out of 40 pairs of brothers, 33 shared the Xq28 section of chro-mosome X, and 7 did not. This result is intermediate. If something inXq28 were absolutely needed to be gay, then all 40 brothers would sharethis chunk of DNA, whereas if only 20 brothers shared Xq28, then itwould be irrelevant to gayness. The ﬁgure of 33 out of 40 is statisticallysigniﬁcant, and it was therefore concluded that some gene in Xq28 tendsto produce gayness in males. Notice how modest this claim actually is.A gene in the Xq28 region of the X chromosome is neither necessary norsufficient for gayness in males. Because identical twins aren’t alwaysboth gay, genes alone don’t guarantee gayness. Conversely, a male canbe gay without the gene, because 7 of the 40 pairs were gay but didn’thave this gene. Nonetheless, this gene would be part of some biochemi-cal pathway occasionally involved with the development of gayness inmales. HP then followed up their own study and claimed to conﬁrm theirearlier work. In this case, 22 out of 32 pairs of gay males shared theXq28 section of the X chromosome. Again, the result is intermediate. IfXq28 were irrelevant to gayness, then 16 of the gay-brother pairs wouldshare this section of X, and if Xq28 were necessary for gayness, then all32 pairs would share the section. The ﬁgure of 22 is not too far from 16,overall a weaker result than the original study.24 Is even this limited claimfor a genetic basis to gayness in males correct? The Hamer-Pattatucci study has not received any further conﬁrma-
SEXUAL ORIENTATION 253tion, and it has even been directly refuted by subsequent work from otherinvestigators. One follow-up study did not detect any evidence of ma-ternal inheritance for gayness, stating that “none of the samples showeda signiﬁcantly greater proportion of maternal than paternal homosexualuncles or homosexual male maternal ﬁrst cousins.”25 This follow-upstudy did conﬁrm (yet again) that homosexuality runs in families: abrother of a gay man has about a 10 percent chance of also being gay,about two to three times the baseline chance of being gay in that study.A sister of a gay man has a 4 percent chance of being lesbian, also abouttwo to three times the baseline chance of being lesbian in that study.Thus, the family clustering was conﬁrmed, but the claim of maternal in-heritance was not. A Canadian team repeated the attempt to detect a gaygene on the X chromosome, using the same overall design as HP.26 Ad-vertisements were placed in the Canadian gay news magazines Xtra andFugue for families in which there were at least two gay brothers. Forty-six families with two gay brothers and two families with three gay broth-ers were studied. The sexual orientation was conﬁrmed for each subjectby direct questions from a “gay interviewer”; each subject read gay mag-azines and volunteered that he was gay; and his self-report was corrob-orated by interviewing the gay brother. Of the 46 brother-pairs, 23 would be expected to share Xq28 if thissection was irrelevant to gayness, whereas all 46 would share Xq28 if itwas necessary. In fact, only 20 of the pairs shared Xq28, suggesting thatXq28 is irrelevant to whether a male becomes gay. The results demon-strate that there is no gay gene in Xq28. The Canadian investigators con-clude, “It is unclear why our results are so discrepant from Hamer’s orig-inal study. . . . Nonetheless, our data do not support the presence of agene of large effect inﬂuencing sexual orientation at position Xq28 . . .[although] these results do not preclude the possibility of detectable geneeffects elsewhere in the genome.” The failure of the Hamer-Pattatucci study demands a postmortem.What went wrong? Why was a widely publicized and believed reportfrom a credible laboratory at the National Institutes of Health directlycontradicted by later research? The most striking difference betweenthese studies is the way in which people were identiﬁed as gay. The Cana-dian team apparently did not demand that a gay person affirm sexualorientation as their personal identity to the extent that the HP study did;
254 HUMAN RAINBOWSsexual practice may have been sufficient to qualify the person as gay.This sensitivity to how homosexuality is deﬁned was anticipated by Pat-tatucci: “People hear you say ‘How the question is asked will determinethe answer’ and they think this means they can discount the result. Whatit really means is that one needs to ask the right questions.” When youdo “and the data starts coming back, you’re thrilled because you realizeyou’ve tapped the vein, you’re on the right track . . . and you’re simplythrilled.”27 So who asked the wrong question? Was it HP, with their demand thatpeople deﬁne their homosexuality as a core identity before being countedas gay? Did HP manufacture a trait that doesn’t exist biologically, andselect subjects in such a way as to fabricate the appearance of a result?Or did the Canadian team, with their apparently looser interview crite-ria for homosexuality, lump different types of homosexuality into one,obscuring a true underlying pattern? Did the Canadian team overlook agenuine ﬁnding by not being rigorous enough in their selection of sub-jects? The jury’s still out. I support the conventional wisdom, which is suspicious of any resulthighly dependent on how a question is posed. In my experience, a strongand robust result is not extremely sensitive to methodological details—different people, both friends and foes, get more or less the same answer,whether they like it or not, even with somewhat different approaches. Ibelieve that if a gay gene were a major phenomenon, its detectionwouldn’t be so tricky.WHY BOTHER WITH A GAY GENE?One might wonder why so much effort has been invested in the scientiﬁcchase for a gay gene. Who cares whether a gay gene exists? Scientists andthe general public have a big disconnect here, trapping gay scientists inthe middle. From a scientiﬁc perspective, sexual orientation is a funda-mental feature of mating behavior, and a task of basic research is to un-derstand how this trait forms, what the relative contributions of directgene products are, and how early hormonal and childhood experiencesenter the picture. From a policy perspective, the issue is different: it is fo-
SEXUAL ORIENTATION 255cused on whether gayness is a matter of choice, whether gayness islearned and can thus be unlearned. Media interviews with Hamer illustrated this disconnect. On July 16,1993, Hamer was interviewed by all the major television networks. TheToday show announced, “There is new evidence that homosexualitymay be inherited in some cases and not a matter of choice.” TomBrokaw opened with, “There’s new medical evidence that homosexual-ity is genetic, not acquired behavior.” On Nightline, Ted Koppel an-nounced, “Tonight: the genetic link to male homosexuality. More au-thoritatively than ever before, a scientiﬁc study is suggesting that a man’shomosexual tendencies may not be a matter of choice. . . . Think aboutthe legal implication . . . it is not constitutional to make status such asrace illegal. If the ﬁndings of this study are conﬁrmed, it will not quiteraise homosexuality to the same legal level as race, but it moves it a lotcloser.”28 Koppel asked Hamer directly, “If the ﬁndings of the study, Dr.Hamer, are conﬁrmed, will it then be accurate to say that homosexual-ity is not optional behavior?” Hamer repeatedly answered a differentquestion, that his work points to a gene in a particular region of the Xchromosome, but stressed that other genes are involved too. After con-sultation during a commercial break, Hamer ﬁnally stated, “I think allscientists that have studied sexual orientation already agree that there’svery little element of choice in being gay or homosexual. The question iswhether there’s a deﬁned genetic component to homosexuality.” ForHamer, the question is technical. According to alternative hypotheses,sexual orientation could become ﬁxed for life because of hormones orother environmental factors impacting how brain circuitry develops,without necessarily being genetic. Hamer is taking the absence of choicein sexual orientation as a given and asking speciﬁcally how genes mightbe involved. Agreement that choice is absent from sexual orientation is not aswidespread as Hamer indicates. Many lesbian histories show transitionsback and forth between straight and gay lives, whereas other lesbiansstay in one sexual space for their entire life.29 Gay male histories, whichHamer seems primarily to be discussing, are less ﬂuid, at least in today’sculture. Transgender narratives also show variability in sexual orienta-
256 HUMAN RAINBOWStion. A recent study reports that about 30 percent of transgenderedwomen changed their sexual orientation after they transitioned.30 The enthusiastic reception of early evidence for a gay gene hasspawned an industry of genetic crystal-ball gazing by both scientists andscience reporters. One geneticist states, “I expect sexual orientation willcome down to just one or two genes. Sexual orientation is a simple trait.Everyone says it’s complex, but it’s not complex at all.”31 Another scien-tist speculates about the number of genes determining sexual orientation:“I imagine it will come down closer to one. I’d speculate that sexual ori-entation is linked to a very early event in embryogenesis and thus possi-bly could involve just a few fundamentally important genes that start theprocess unfolding. I would really be surprised, for example, if we wereto learn that the gene turned on late in fetal development.”32 Still anotherscientist, “one of Hamer’s colleagues, who would not allow himself to beidentiﬁed, [is] much more frank. ‘Look, you’ll never get me to say it pub-licly, but I think it’s clear that this is really a pretty simple trait . . . if youlook at where the data are going, there’s not much question.’ ”33 Alas, this molecular bravado must face up to contrary data. Sciencereporters seem especially taken in. A reporter compares the inheritanceof gayness in males to the inheritance of short height in pygmies, a traitbrought about by a single major gene for the growth-hormone receptor:“If a Pygmy has a child with an African of average height, all the chil-dren are either of average height or of Pygmy height. The trait is one orthe other, clear cut, and the reason is that the trait is controlled by onegene.”34 This pattern is precisely not how sexual orientation is inherited,as the many studies of gayness in families have shown; gayness is clearlynot inherited as a single major gene. Similarly, a reporter compares gayness with two very rare genetic dis-eases, ocular albinism and menkes disease, which occur on the X chro-mosome near Xq28. These diseases are decidedly not comparable tosexual orientation. Gay sexual orientation is far more common than agenetic disease, and it is not associated with any physical disability (seep. 284). I believe sexual orientation develops analogously to an accent inspeech, which also develops early in childhood. Some people don’t devi-ate even slightly from the accent they learned as a child, although a thickRussian accent isn’t genetic. Other people easily acquire a new accent—
SEXUAL ORIENTATION 257I can change mine in hours. Some people’s sexual orientation is im-mutable, whereas other people’s shifts. Not only is sexual orientationpart of one’s temperament, but so is the degree of ﬂexibility, just like anability to alter one’s accent.WHEN DOES SEXUAL ORIENTATION DEVELOP?As we did for the timing of gender identity, let’s look for an early limitand a late limit for the development of sexual orientation, and work infrom there. An early limit would seem to be a year or so after birth, fortwo reasons. First, sexual orientation would seem to require the mentallenses that distinguish gender and thus would develop only after genderidentity develops. Because gender identity seems set by about the ﬁrstyear after birth, sexual orientation could begin to form then. Second,adopted boys with a gay brother are more likely to be gay than adoptedboys with a straight brother. This line of thought also suggests an earlylimit near a year or so after birth, when adoptions typically take place. A late limit is indicated by the average age of ﬁrst awareness of same-sex sexual arousal, which is about ten years of age, two years before pu-berty. So the window for developing one’s sexual orientation would ap-pear to be from infancy to very early childhood, say a nine-year windowfrom one to ten years of age, as a ﬁrst guess. The window is probablymuch narrower, and further study of when gayness develops in adoptedchildren might be very revealing.GAYNESS AND EVOLUTIONARY THEORYIf there is some genetic component to homosexuality, we may wonderhow homosexuality ﬁts into ideas about human evolution. Until re-cently, scientists have taken for granted that homosexuality is a delete-rious trait within the framework of Darwinian ﬁtness and have lookedfor theories, often far-fetched, to explain how a “bad gene” could some-how become common. But who says homosexuality is deleterious? For lesbian women, a 1988 U.S. survey reported that the mean num-ber of children born to women with homosexual experience was 1.2
258 HUMAN RAINBOWScompared to a mean of 2.2 for women without homosexual experi-ence.35 A 1994 survey reported that 67 percent of lesbian women weremothers, compared with 72 percent of straight women,36 and a 1995study of contemporary British women showed that bisexual women havea higher fecundity to age twenty-ﬁve and no signiﬁcant difference in life-time fecundity compared to heterosexual women.37 From these studies,lesbian and bisexual woman apparently have somewhere between thesame and one-half the reproduction rate of straight women. For gay men, the 1994 study showed that 27 percent were fathers,compared with 60 percent for straight men.38 On the other hand, of 655homosexual and bisexual men in contemporary Japan, 83 percent hadoffspring.39 Thus, gay and bisexual men also apparently have somewherebetween the same and one-half the reproduction of straight men. These references scrape the bottom of the barrel. One would havethought that if homosexuality was deleterious, the evidence would beplentiful and easy to ﬁnd. Furthermore, fertility is only one componentof Darwinian ﬁtness, and fertility must be multiplied by the probabilityof living long enough to reproduce when computing the overall ﬁtnessrelevant to natural selection. A disadvantage in fertility could be offsetby a higher survival rate. No data are available on a trade-off betweensurvival and reproduction for homosexuality in humans. Today’s soci-ety is certainly not amenable to the survival and health of gay and les-bian people, but the matter may have been entirely different at otherpoints in human evolutionary history.40 All in all, the data do not sup-port uncritical acceptance of homosexuality as deleterious. One early theory postulated that gays and lesbians were like avianhelpers at the nest, people who remain with their nuclear family to helpraise brothers, sisters, and cousins, who would then go on to do the re-producing. This theory, which positively values the contributions to fam-ily and society that gay and lesbian people can make, was a step forwardin depathologizing same-sex sexuality.41 As one gay scientist notes,though, “Homosexuality is not simply the abandonment of sex in favorof altruistic behavior toward one’s relatives; rather it involves the adop-tion of a different sexuality, one that can be quite costly in terms of timeand resources.”42 Nor does helping at the nest account for why suchhelpers would speciﬁcally be gay or lesbian. Important though this sug-
SEXUAL ORIENTATION 259gestion has been, helping at the nest doesn’t appear to hold the answerto why homosexuality has evolved in humans.43 A more devious theory making the rounds is based on the premise thata gay gene on the X chromosome, say in Xq28, causes homosexuality inmales and not in females. If the gay gene escapes X inactivation (see p.209), then females express two copies of the gene and males only one. Iffemales beneﬁt from this gene in some presently unknown way, then menmight carry the gay gene as a side effect of the gene’s double-dose bene-ﬁt for women.44 This idea, called sex-antagonistic pleiotropic homosex-uality, is theoretically far-fetched, has no supporting evidence, and relieson the false assumption that a gay gene lies within Xq28. One science re-porter even found a molecular biologist who speculated, “Homosexual-ity may be a type of bacterial infection . . . we may eventually be able toeradicate with an antibiotic.”45 The various theories advanced, some of them absurd, all suffer froman uncritical acceptance of homosexuality as deleterious and thereforemust conjure up evolutionary pathways whereby a deleterious gene canbecome as common as homosexuality is. Instead, if homosexuality is anadaptation, then the commonness of homosexuality is no problem. In-deed, the question becomes why everyone isn’t homosexual, as in bono-bos. Overall, an evolutionary theory of human homosexuality needs toexplain the polymorphism in sexual orientation among humans. Whyare, say, 90 percent of men straight and 10 percent gay, and why are 95percent of women straight and 5 percent lesbian? And today at least,why are lesbian women more likely to be bisexual than gay men? Finally,why does homophobia exist? No evolutionary theory has been proposedfor humans that addresses this complete suite of issues, although I believesome promising ﬁrst steps have recently been made. One study offers a long-overdue extension of evolutionary psychol-ogy to include homosexuality in humans.46 This investigation contendsthat the “long history of institutionalized homosexuality between higherstatus and lower status males,” usually of different ages by ﬁve years ormore, produces “relationships [that] tend to socialize the youths into theadult male role, nurture and protect the youths and provide the basis forlife-long friendships, social alliances and social status. . . . Social status,a reﬂection of political strength and alliances, appears to have played a
260 HUMAN RAINBOWSlarge role in the evolutionary history of human male reproductive suc-cess.” The study goes on to suggest that homosexuality for women pro-vides bonds of friendship that lead to mutual assistance in raising chil-dren, assuming paternal assistance is absent in primitive societies. Heretoo homosexuality is hypothesized to provide higher reproductive suc-cess. These conjectures about how homosexuality evolved logically feedback to determining the type of environment in which homosexuality de-velops during infancy: “Homoerotic behavior may be evoked as a nor-mal response to placement in an environment which closely resemblesthe environment in which it evolved and was adaptive in the evolution-ary past.” In particular, homoerotic behavior in single-sex groups wouldreﬂect not an absence of partners, but the adaptive development of same-sex bonds and alliances in the conditions when they would be most use-ful, which may resemble the social structure of early hominids. Another study presents an anthropological perspective focusing onhow homosexuality leads to various types of alliances among males.47 Asalready noted, heterosexual and homosexual practice occurred togetherin ﬁfteen out of twenty-one cultures. Homosexual behavior has also oc-curred more often in agricultural than in hunter-gatherer societies, andmore often in larger social groups.48 Homosexual behavior may be morefrequent when it empowers political networks rather than independentindividuals, and it may be expressed more in industrial nations after theirdemographic transition from high reproduction to high survival.49 A dif-ﬁculty faced by a theory of homosexuality as a form of alliance-building,however, is that male-male alliances can be built without using sexual-ity. Data are needed that alliances bonded through homosexual behav-ior are in some sense stronger, better, or longer-lasting than bonds lack-ing this ingredient. These new theories for the evolution of human homosexuality seemto be on the right track, but they may be too speciﬁc. Homoerotic at-traction can have multiple functions, depending on context. Homosex-uality need not be dyadic—such as an alliance between two people. In-stead, I suspect homosexuality may also be a social-inclusionary trait, aticket for admission to a collective. What explains the polymorphism in sexual orientation—the ratio ofgays to straights? I conjecture that a polymorphism in sexual orientationmay indicate alternative strategies of same-sex relationships that are
SEXUAL ORIENTATION 261equally effective in achieving access to net reproductive opportunity.These alternative same-sex relational strategies are the counterpart of al-ternative between-sex mating strategies, such as the controller and co-operator morphs. Abstractly, members of the straight morph may bondthrough the exchange of power, whereas members of the gay morph maybuild alliances through the exchange of pleasure. Conﬂict is likely tooccur between alternative same-sex relational morphs because they areplaying by different rules. Homophobia may emerge from this conﬂict.Transactions based on the exchange of pleasure may be seen as subvert-ing the power hierarchy, and be crushed by those in control. A balancemay then result. At one extreme, if everyone is in continual conﬂict, a co-operator can beneﬁt by avoiding the hazards of conﬂict. In this view, ho-mosexuality emerges as a complex social adaptation, a product of posi-tive evolution.
15Psychological PerspectivesM y approach to variation in gender expression and sexuality is bi- ological and behavioral, not psychological. Since Freud, how- ever, gender and sexuality have often been discussed in psycho-logical terms. I’m skeptical of psychology and, as a transgenderedwoman, have found psychologists to be dangerous, like gays and les-bians before me did. Psychologists operate with a medical model thatpathologizes diversity. These medical wannabes have long persecutedand abused gender- and sexuality-variant people from a position of au-thority.1 Nonetheless, some reviewers felt a purely biological account ofgender and sexuality was incomplete and needed to be rounded out withpsychological perspectives. Reviewers felt that transsexualism in partic-ular needed more discussion. Well, okay. In my opinion, though, the source material for this chap-ter is academically sketchy. Instead of engaging in scientiﬁc inquiry,we’re dealing with scanty anecdotes that must be spliced together intosome composite picture. Furthermore, I’m not sure how many people re-ally want to hear in explicit detail about sexual fantasies and practicesthat go on behind closed doors. This chapter invites the invasion of pri-vacy. Also, the chapter risks imbalance by providing coverage of the fan-tasies of transgendered people without matching coverage of nontrans-gendered people. Although the written accounts of some transgendered262
PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES 263people may seem unusual, how many nontransgendered people matchstandard templates? It’s difficult to evaluate the diversity of transgenderpractices relative to the diversity of sexual practices in the general pop-ulation. Still, I wouldn’t offer this chapter at all if I didn’t feel there was somevalue in the material. The transgendered writer Patrick Caliﬁa hascharted the literary progression of autobiographies, noting how the ﬁrstnarratives from transgendered women denied any sexual ingredient, fo-cusing only on realizing gender identity.2 Taking the sex out of trans-sexual sanitized the narratives to gain acceptance in sections of societywhere sex is a dirty word. Only recently have transgendered womenstarted to put the sex back into transsexuality. Yet assuming that trans-gender expression is entirely sexual commits the reverse mistake: it takesthe gender out of transgender. In contrast to the autobiographical nar-ratives of transgendered women, those of transgendered men have neverbeen squeamish about sexuality. This chapter visits some narratives oftransgender experience, striking a balance between motivations based ongender identiﬁcation and on sexuality, respecting both the sex in trans-sexuality and the gender in transgender.INFORMATION ON TRANSGENDER EXPERIENCETransgender narratives come mostly from two sources: reports fromtherapists and autobiographies published as books or testimonials overthe web. Direct quotations from transgendered people are the most valu-able, because they contain only the speaker’s own bias. Digested sum-maries from therapists are the most suspect, because a frequently mis-guided theoretical perspective is layered on top of the bias alreadypresent in the primary report. In addition, therapists labor with a con-ﬂict of interest, because they beneﬁt ﬁnancially from their role as gate-keepers who authorize access to medical technologies such as surgeriesand hormones. At best, therapists collect information about a diversepeople while offering comfort and guidance. At worst, therapists psy-chologically torture clients with POW-type behavioral modiﬁcation tac-tics, physically maiming them with drugs and electroshock treatmentand diminishing their self-conﬁdence.
264 HUMAN RAINBOWS The sampling by therapists is exceedingly uneven. Therapists meettransgendered people who come to them as clients, but many transgen-dered people never seek a therapist. Those who do are more likely to beanguished, to identify as transsexual, and to be sufficiently affluent to af-ford therapy. Most important, therapists encounter transgenderedpeople in only one window of life. They see ﬁrsthand the difficulties at-tending transition and hear recollections of life before transition, butthey rarely conduct follow-up interviews after transition. Autobiographies offer a perspective over an entire life, but they toomust be read with care. Transgendered people continually need to defendand explain themselves, and they write while looking over their shoul-der. All in all, though, some fragments are emerging of what transgen-dered people go through as they discover their “true selves” at variousages. The phrase “true selves” comes from the title of a book by MildredBrown and Chloe Rounsley, which offers the most reliable account oftransgender narratives collected by therapists that I have found.3CHILDHOOD NARRATIVES: IDENTITYTransgender experience begins with the earliest moments of conscious-ness. Brown reports that 85 percent of her clients recognized a seriousdiscrepancy between body form and gender identity before grade school,many years before puberty. A transgendered woman recalls, “Mymother knew that I was transgendered from age four on, and she wasbound and determined to crush that and to make a male out of me.” Sim-ilarly, a transgendered man remembers being reprimanded by Mom:“For heaven’s sake, Lisa, you walk like John Wayne.”4 In response to pressure for gender conformity, transgendered childrenput enormous energy into trying to conform to expectations, into beingthe good son or the perfect daughter, often believing they’ll eventuallyget it right. A transgendered woman recalls, “I learned to become achameleon, to fabricate little masculine selves that had nothing to dowith me but that I could send out into the world.” Yet not everyone isable to change colors. Another transgendered woman relates, “I wasn’tliked for who I was. I would walk out in the street and express myself in
PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES 265the only way I knew how, with a very childlike innocence. Just beingalive seemed to be enough to draw taunts.”5 All children try on their parents’ clothes—a boy sees how his feet ﬁtin Dad’s big shoes and a girl ties on Mom’s scarf. Transgendered childrentypically try on the clothes of the parent whose gender they identify with.A transgendered woman recalls, “I used to try on my mother’s clotheswhen I was about six years old by standing under the hanger of herdresses in the closet. The sensation was one of peacefulness and integra-tion.” Conversely, transgendered boys often ﬂatly refuse to wear a dressor throw a tantrum when required to do so. One transgendered man re-ports always coming home with a dress “accidentally” ripped orstained.6 Transgendered children report violence from other children. A trans-gendered woman remembers, “All through my elementary school years,I was picked on by the other boys and called names like ‘wimp,’ ‘fairy,’or ‘Little Lord Fauntleroy.’ Even though I was bright and had a high IQ,I didn’t know what those words meant, much less why they were callingme that.”7 Therapists have accumulated thousands of narratives like these, alltucked away in their client records. Transgender expression emergesearly in childhood, along with other indicators of personality, tempera-ment, and inclination. These narratives show that transsexualism beginswith gender identity, not sex drive. Transgender expression appears be-fore puberty and well before any conscious sex urges. The narratives allreveal a very strong sense of not ﬁtting in, but they also show variationin awareness of gender identity, suggesting that not everyone has ﬁguredout what’s going on. Some children are completely convinced their gen-der differs from their body, whereas others keep trying to conform, un-aware of where their difficulties come from. The lovely movie Ma Vie enRose, which portrays a boy playing with dolls and wishing to be a bride,seems an unusual instance of a young child who has already come tocomplete awareness of her gender identity. Narratives quoted by therapists emphasize effeminate boys who arephysically bullied. Therapists acknowledge that although not all “lookor behave effeminately, some do.”8 Even with this qualiﬁer, the quota-tions leave the impression of transgendered children as defenseless
266 HUMAN RAINBOWSsissies. Nonetheless, I know many transgendered women who foughtback effectively against bullies while they were living as males.TEENAGE NARRATIVES: BODYThe narratives shift gear with the arrival of puberty. Testosterone and es-trogen cause secondary sex characteristics to develop. At this time,many transgender children become seriously unhappy with their bodies,bodies that up to then had not been noticeably gendered in either direc-tion. A transgendered man recalls, “I simply could not reconcile thephysical image with my mental image of myself. . . . I quickly learned todisengage my mind from my body in order to get through.” Conversely,a transgendered woman notes, “Puberty came, and I was scared andanxiety-ridden. Was I going to get large and hairy and ugly like all theother boys?”9 Some young transgender people react especially strongly to their bod-ies. Brown reports that teenaged transgendered men sometimes “poundor hit themselves in the chest area until they are covered with black-and-blue marks or in some cases cut their breasts.” And a transgenderedwoman recalls that, as a teenager, “I took the scissors to my genitals,fully intending to cut them. But at the last minute, I couldn’t go throughwith it. I guess I hoped my action would make my parents see the sever-ity of my anguish.”10 Therapists acknowledge that “while some experience feelings of dis-gust about their penis, others are merely indifferent to it.”11 In spite ofthis disclaimer, there is a tendency to emphasize extreme quotations. Ofthe many transgender people I know, no one has ever volunteered in con-versation, or in response to a question, that they mutilated their genitalsor attempted to do so. I’m sure some have, but the account of transgen-dered people as self-destructively hating their bodies has been greatly ex-aggerated by therapists. The theoretical goal of therapists is to construct a picture of the “truetranssexual” as the reference standard for a sick individual who needsmedical attention in every aspect of his or her life. Other transgenderedpeople can then be located on a continuum from normal, through the“mild” maladjustment of occasional cross-dressers, to the deep pathol-
PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES 267ogy of the true transsexual. In fact, though, the transgender people Iknow view their bodies in many ways. Many view their genitals not as asource of pride, but rather as a neutral piece of anatomy, like an earlobe.Their diverse attitudes toward the body are reﬂected in the differing at-titudes of transgendered people toward sex reassignment surgery. Aboutone-third, say, of transgendered women have had sex reassignment sur-gery (postoperatives), one-third plan to do so (preoperatives), and an-other third decline it (nonoperatives). Preoperative transgenderedwomen may postpone surgery for many years after transitioning, oftensaying they don’t have the funds. I found it interesting that after SanFrancisco passed legislation authorizing insurance coverage for sex re-assignment procedures, some preoperative women who were now cov-ered decided they were nonoperative after all. Even though the ﬁnancialhurdle had been removed, they weren’t interested in the operation. Still others actively and overtly enjoy a dual-body form. Many ofthese people work in the sex trade as “she-males” or the transgen-dered male counterpart, “he-shes.” In pornography, the she-male isportrayed with a proud, erect penis, large breasts, and ﬂowing hair—a very sexually charged image. I don’t believe enough dual-bodiedpeople have been interviewed to determine whether they shaped theirbodies after entering sex work to satisfy commercial demand, orwhether they shaped their bodies ﬁrst and then entered sex work asthe best available employment. The narratives assembled by therapistsrarely mention these people because their conspicuously sexual pres-entation lies outside the mold of “true” transsexuals, who are sup-posed to be concerned only with gender identity and not sexuality.Transgender people themselves may not feel safe being affiliated withovertly dual-bodied people, or they may be put off by their links tothe sex industry. Overall, the value of sex reassignment surgery depends on how onefeels about one’s body, how one plans to use it, and the social signiﬁ-cance of the surgery. Transgendered men choose among various pro-cedures depending on cost, appearance, and functionality—male geni-tals with or without urinary function, large or small scrotal regions,and so on, as provided by current technology. A recently transitionedtransgender man featured in the New York Times Magazine put thematter succinctly, saying of the $50,000 surgery: “We’ve got college tu-
268 HUMAN RAINBOWSition to pay. . . . I’m not that interested in a penis.”12 This deliberatecost-beneﬁt thinking behind body sculpting rules out any obsessive mo-tivation.ADULT NARRATIVES: MALE-TO-FEMALE SEXUALITYAt puberty, when voices drop and breasts swell, the sex drive awakens.For postpuberty transgendered people, the experience involves a com-plex mix of gender identity and sexuality. Some therapists’ writings em-phasize gender identity while suppressing sexuality, and others empha-size sexuality while suppressing gender identity. Actual narratives tell amore varied story. After puberty, the lives of transgendered men andwomen cease being more or less mirror images. As adults, transgenderedmen and women experience increasingly different hormonal as well associal environments. At puberty and on into adulthood, cross-dressing by transgenderedwomen becomes more frequent and deliberate. One states, “I was six-teen when I started cross-dressing. I’d just reached Mom’s height, andshe had a couple of wigs back then. So I’d wait until everyone wasgone—I’d make excuses to be home alone—and then dress up and puton a wig. . . . There was an overwhelming sense of everything beingright. I remember being dizzy with exultation. In fact, I was alwayshappy when I cross-dressed.”13 This narrative ﬁts the standard mold oftranssexual cross-dressing as an expression of female gender identity.And I suspect this narrative is in fact the most common motivation forcross-dressing, leading sometimes to transition. Still, the coincidence ofincreased cross-dressing with puberty seems more than accidental. Infact, many complex sexual aspects enter the picture as transgenderedpeople become adults. The simplest explanation for the sexuality of transgendered people isthat they are merely gay. The narratives of many transgendered womenrefute this belief. For example, one transgendered woman recalls, “Icame to the common but false belief that feeling as if I should be awoman meant that I was gay. So I set out in earnest in my ﬁrst semesterof college to see if this was the case. Though I would place myself in sit-uations where I could have easily had sex with a man I found attractive,
PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES 269I never found myself ultimately able to be comfortable with the idea ofbeing in the situation of a gay male and always backed out.”14 Nor dogay males regard a transgendered woman as a gay male. Gay men rarelyproposition transgendered women. By contrast, drag queens, a con-stituent within the gay community, project enough male signals to retaincredibility as males. Their male voice and caricature of female dress leaveno confusion about their gender identity, and they are often romanticallyinvolved with other gay men. Alternatively, transgendered women priorto their transition often try to date other women for a while, attemptingto live out the script of a conventional heterosexual male. But, as oneperson recalls, “I had to eventually stop dating [women] altogethe