We have heard the term “patriarchy” endless times, referring to this social system of men’s privilege, but a few times we’ve really stopped to think about when it started. And when we dare to trace this structure of male dominance back to the dawn of our civilization, we are struck by the question: is it patriarchy’s origin truly cultural or biological?
Historically speaking, one of the most “recent” studies in terms of roles in society, is the distinction between sex and gender, and without going too deep into this, I want to clarify what this theoretically implies because it will be relevant for our discussion later.
In an overly simplified way, we can summarize sex, as the biological and anatomic aspects of a person, and gender as the cultural significance and social function of that given individual. And I want to emphasize culture here, because gender roles have had many conceptions in different cultures across time.
Quoting French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir’s claim: “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman,” the debate has moved to ponder if the cumulous of characteristics and behaviors which define a gender are hardwire in our brains as product of our evolution (ergo biological) or if are the result of acculturation (ergo cultural) as de Beauvoir suggest. And here is when things start getting complicated.
When we compare ourselves to animals, especially to our closer relatives, primates, we observe behavioral patterns like mating rituals, herd dominance, breeding, that can be attributed to a particular “sex”, but professionals agree, that despite having these distinctions and living in a hierarchical aggrupation, animals doesn’t possess a culture, or at least not yet.
Then, we can agree, forming a culture is an exclusive trait of humankind, and ours was developed in parallel as we became cognizant as species. In terms of biological evolution, the human brain mainly developed its frontal lobe, responsible for planning, problem solving, judgement, management of emotions and personality among others, but very importantly, also manages impulse control. In other words, as humans became more rational, we had to rely less and less on our limbic system, or branded as “primitive” brain, responsible for survival mechanisms like feeding, reproduction, caring for the young, fight or flee responses.
Even when most of theories about intrinsic anatomical differences between male and female brains have been mostly debunked, there are a few behavioral differences, one which is associated directly to the Amygdala, a part of the limbic system, which defines how genders process emotions.
The 2012 study “A review on sex differences in processing emotional signals” revealed that “males tend to have stronger reactions to threatening stimuli and that males react with more physical violence.” [1] Having this in mind, it’s easy to imagine our primitive ancestors hiding in a cave, living in a proto family. If the female had to go through giving birth to their offspring, the male had to take the role of “protector,” as hunter and deterrent of predators, not out of cultural imposition, but of need for survival and conservation of the species. And these basic survival mechanisms of the species, like a newly born asking for being breastfed by the mother, are inserted deep into our primitive brains and perhaps even in our genes, and might have triggered the patterns and behaviors attributed to a “sex,” as an inception of the “roles” which later would conform the “genders” recorded in history.
Several researchers have stated that the first evidence of patriarchal structures started 2 million years ago with the sexual division of labor, but some other believe most prehistoric societies were relatively egalitarian, providing social equality among their members, and it was until the development of agriculture and domestication when patriarchal structures developed [2]. But regardless of when you believe this happened, it would be naïve not to think that behaviors attributed to “sex” influenced the gender roles during the incipient civilization at least in a degree.
How can we be sure about this? If we look at human’s closest relative, the chimpanzee, who some believe have recently entered their own “stone age,” [3] displayed quite alarming behaviors during a four-year war in Gombe Stream National Park [4] . Researchers observed two groups of males as they fought for territorial and food resource dominance, ambushing each other, and committing acts of violence against females and infants, even with several of the females being kidnapped. Does this violent, territorial behavior of the males by any chance resemble humans in wartime? We could argue if it’s justified or unjustified and that is a topic for another video, but unfortunately for us, this pattern unfortunately repeats even in today’s conflicts.
For good or for worse, humanity evolved from primates, and most species of mammals tend to have a male dominant hierarchy, with a few exceptions like hyenas. Unfortunately for women, we didn’t evolve from a different species, like insects or arthropods where most are female dominated with a wide physical superiority over males. If that were the case, we could now be living in a matriarchal society with an inverted privilege structure. And for a time, I entertained this thought without truly grasping how a matriarchal society evolved from insects could be like. Thankfully for us, somebody else already did this mental exercise.
The philosophical sci-fi novel “Children of Time” from author Adrian Tchaikovsky is an evolutive tale that poses the scenario about a cognizant civilization evolved entirely from arachnids and its inevitable confrontation with humanity.
In the distant future, in which a human empire rules the cosmos, one scientist, Dr. Avrana Kern, obtains the resources to finally put human evolution to the test. In a terraformed planet, provided with flora and fauna akin to planet Earth, minus threatening predators, the intent of the experiment is to release chimpanzees into this new world along with a nanovirus to speed up their mutation and evolution. A satellite orbiting the planet, broadcasting a mathematical problem repeatedly will wait for the “humans” evolved from chimpanzees to develop the knowledge and technology needed to broadcast back the response to the problem, confirming the evolutive theory. However, before the experiment could be started, the research team received an attack from dissidents of the empire protesting the testing. In a desperate attempt to conduct her testing, Dr. Avrana Kern triggers her experiment, releasing the virus into the planet without knowing that her test chimpanzees were killed during the attack. Researchers could not foresee that the nanovirus released would not only react with primates, but also with insects, especially arachnids, and without the dominance of primates, this new Eden would be conquered by spiders.
Children of Time recounts the thousands of years after this event, following the struggle for evolving of the spiders through the eyes of three archetypical spiders, two females, named Portia and Bianca, and a male called Fabian, and their subsequent generations presenting a complex history of survival against other colonies of spiders, wars for dominance against ants, the development of a sign language using their palps and sounds, the establishment of a matriarchal culture with a religion, and even technologic breakthroughs.
But what is interesting for this discussion is the development of the roles of the three archetypical spiders through the millennia, starting from a complete dominance of females, being four times larger and physically gifted, owning all the roles of relevance in the community referred as “Great Nest,” and the males, impersonated by Fabian, were relegated only to their reproductive function, providing the sperm or “understanding” (information coded in the genes) as referred by the spiders. But after the fertilization, the female was free to terminate the male, and feed from him, with no rules in the primitive civilization of Great Nest to punish the females for the indiscriminate killing. In other words, the lives of the male worth nothing in a civilization with a female centric religion. Along the novel we witness how “Fabian” starts a silent resistance, primarily using his intellect to decode the pheromone system of their rivals, the ants, providing and advantage in battle, and capitalizes this military victory to fight for the rights of males in Great Nest, in similar fashion as women did in the real world.
I would love to continue detailing the plot to highlight the relevancy of this mental exercise in the topic we are discussing, but I prefer not to spoil the novel in case you want to read it. Which I wholeheartedly recommend.
This interesting thought experiment carried out by Adrian Tchaikovsky in his novel certainly sheds light on what a civilization based on a biological-based matriarchal hierarchy could look like, and how this could shape the culture, the accomplishments of a society, but also the challenges the least biological prominent gender have to face.
I believe denying the influence of the attributes that biological behaviors had in the inception of gender roles in our early culture would be like denying the limbic system involvement in our decision making. The limbic system is often associated with the “id” in Freud’s Personality Theory, a key component in our psyche, which wanted or not, drives our most basic instincts and we can’t remove form our persona.
Contemporary humanity is the culmination of millions of years of evolution. But denying our steppingstones would be like rejecting the journey of development we had gone through. Certainly, as I mentioned, we have developed our frontal lobe enough to control our impulses, that’s what differentiates us from other animals, so there is no justification for being uncapable to adapt our behavior to the normativity of our culture… or change it if needed.
Finally, addressing Simone de Beauvoir’s claim about “one is not born, but rather becomes the gender our culture indoctrinates us to be…” with these last extra words added by me. I want to draw a parallel with any attribute inherited from our forebearers, even a disease. We might come to this world with a propensity to fulfil a given destiny, but the other half is decided by the environment where we grow up and the decisions we take. So, yes, when we come to this world, we carry the genetic baggage of our biological species, but ultimately our culture will shape us into the men and women our society want us to be… if we allow it.
M. Ch. Landa
Sources:
[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22245006/
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/may/14/early-men-women-equal-scientists
[3] https://www.science.org/content/article/chimpanzee-stone-age
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gombe_Chimpanzee_War
