The Anti-Dawkins: Are We Hardwired to be 'Selfish' or 'Social'? (Part 3 of 3)

But Roughgarden's not alone in her critiques.

In The Genial Gene, she cites a Japanese study that casts doubt on 'the ultimate poster child of sexual selection': the peacock.

Darwin thought that the only reason peacocks would risk attracting predators with their plumage was because they must be even more desperate to attract mates.

For their part, peahens supposedly judge the quality of males' genes by the beauty of their tail feathers.

After more than seven years of studying peafowl, however, the authors of the Japanese study came to a stunning conclusion: there was no evidence that peahens had any preference for peacocks with fancier trains.

Even more damningly, they noted that other studies also had mixed results.

As Roughgarden puts it, 'those in the UK generally support the sexual-selection narrative, while those elsewhere do not… raising suspicion of publication bias.'

Roughgarden's own work makes you wonder whether the tooth-and-claw view of sex and nature is inherently true or just a 'de-facto truth' because we've been conditioned to believe it.

'How power relates to sex is not a biological universal,' she writes. 'We may choose to live like some species and not others.'

And it could be that sexual selection has become a self-fulfilling prophecy, with men conditioned to believe that they have to show off to attract females—'pick-up artists' actually call it 'peacocking' (citing Dawkins).

Meanwhile, women have learned to respond accordingly, rewarding 'alpha males' and 'bad boys' with their affections, even though they might be better off with nice beta and epsilon blokes. Roughgarden takes evident delight in a review that hailed her work as 'a civilization-changer.'

'But I don't think it's being taken seriously enough yet for that engagement to occur,' she says.

'People suppose that it will just go away, that the triumph of the selfish-gene narrative will continue unabated. That's wishful thinking,' she shrugs, 'but it's a kind of euphoria before the crash.'

The beauty of science, though, is that those who shout the loudest aren't necessarily the most revered in the long run.

Around the same time that Darwin was publicizing his newfangled theory, a little-known Austrian was quietly working out the mechanics of evolution.

The scientific community didn't honor Gregor Mendel until after his death.

And for what it's worth, he wasn't an atheist, either.

'The father of modern genetics' was an Augustinian monk.

The Genial Gene: Deconstructing Darwinian Selfishness is published by the University of California Press

J.R. Daeschner is the author of The History of Sex (But Not As We Know It): A Journey from Pompeii’s Oldest Brothel to Cold War Sexpionage, Angry Male Lesbians and Beyond

The Anti-Dawkins: Are We Hardwired to be 'Selfish' or 'Social'? (Part 2 of 3)

In contrast to Darwin's modern champions (most of whom are men), Roughgarden comes across as refreshingly humble and, well, genial, in person.

Over lunch at a charity-run café near her home in San Francisco, she tells me that she'd like to think of the British Darwinist, Richard Dawkins, as a friend.

Nevertheless, the title of her book is an obvious play on his work.

Roughgarden recalls teaching from The Selfish Gene after it came out in 1976. 'I noticed the appeal that a naturalized doctrine of selfishness has to certain students and to those in the general public who, for example, identify with Ayn Rand's writings that celebrate the ethic of individualism,' she writes.

However, Roughgarden argues that the days of 'the selfish-gene narrative' are 'numbered—they have to be numbered. It's not what birds and bees do. Like two birds in a nest: each is not trying to get the other to do all the work, which would be a typical proposition by which a selfish-gene proponent would try to understand the dynamics at a bird's nest.'

Instead, her theory of 'social selection' emphasizes cooperation and reproduction rather than competition and mating.

'(The) sophisticated constellation of decisions that females make about males goes far beyond the simplistic conceptualization that Darwin put forth: that all a female is searching for is a hulk with great genes,' she writes.

And just as Darwin was a man of his time, it's tempting to cast Roughgarden and Dawkins as stranger-than-fiction opposites in our own era.

She's a relatively obscure, 'transgendered female' from one of the most liberal parts of America—and a self-professed Christian to boot—while he's a celebrated male atheist who's literally a product of British imperialism, having been born the son of a civil servant in colonial Kenya.

Dawkins published The Selfish Gene the same year that the Seventies were dubbed 'The Me Decade', and in retrospect, you can't help but wonder if his book, complete with its talk of 'cheat' and 'sucker' strategies, has helped justify the Greed-is-Good capitalism that's since wrecked the world's economy.

Likewise, it's probably no coincidence that a 'transgendered' academic in California is now highlighting cooperation over competition at a time when the world is trying to recover from the damage.

And although scientists like to tout their objectivity, Roughgarden notes that the most scathing attacks against her have come from Darwin's homeland.

'It must be like a Brit coming over here and taking potshots at George Washington!' she laughs. 'They don't want a Yank takin' potshots at Darwin.'

The Anti-Dawkins: Are We Hardwired to be 'Selfish' or 'Social'? (Part 1 of 3)

Everybody knows that men compete for sex, while women hanker after 'alpha males,' right?

Well, at least one biologist argues that ain't necessarily so.

In fact, in The Genial Gene: Deconstructing Darwinian Selfishness, Dr. Joan Roughgarden argues that Darwin and his disciples have got it wrong: that cooperation is as important as competition in nature, and sex is as much about relationships as reproduction—if not more so.

And if all that sounds like wishful thinking, then prepare to open your mind just a little bit further: the person behind this potentially revolutionary theory is a 'transgendered woman.'

Professor Roughgarden was known as Jonathan until the age of 52, when he took a sabbatical in 1998 and came back as a she.

Since then, as an evolutionary biologist at Stanford (with a doctorate from Harvard), Roughgarden has risked her academic cred by challenging one of the founding principles of evolution: Darwin's theory of sexual selection, a key corollary to natural selection.

In his follow-up to The Origin of Species, Darwin hypothesized that showboating traits like peacocks' tails and stags' antlers were physical manifestations of the life-or-death struggle to mate with females.

According to this very Victorian view—which still dominates evolutionary biology (not to mention popular thought)—external appearances indicate the quality of one's breeding.

'Males of almost all animals have stronger passions than females,' Darwin declared in The Descent of Man. 'The male is the more active member in the courtship of the sexes. The female, on the other hand, with the rarest of exceptions is less eager than the male… she is coy.'

However, Roughgarden argues that the theory of sexual selection is not just flawed but false: a relic of its time.

In doing so, she makes Darwin & Sons look like screaming male chauvinists.

'Darwin conceived his theory in a society that glamorized a colonial military and assigned dutiful, sexually passive roles to proper wives,' she wrote in her previous book, Evolution's Rainbow.

'In modern times, a desire to advertise sexual prowess, justify a roving eye and disregard the female perspective has propelled some scientists to continue championing sexual selection theory despite criticism of its accuracy.'

Check out my latest sites!

If you'd like to see what I'm up to, check out these sites:

• True Brits
• Shin Kicking
• Cheese Rolling
• Darkie Day
• The History of Sex (But Not As We Know It)

The History of Sex

My new book has now been published:

The History of Sex (But Not As We Know It) is the thinking person's guide to sex and how we got here: 'A Journey from Pompeii's Oldest Brothel to Cold War Sexpionage, Angry Male Lesbians and Beyond.'

You can check out the website here:

www.ButNotAsWeKnowIt.com.

You have two ways to read the book:

Quickly: by downloading the entire book, all 400+ pages, for just $5 at

Amazon's Kindle store
Scribd.com

or

Slowly: via free excerpts that I'll release every Tuesday and Thursday.

Next up: Arse Blowing!

Okay, so I'm a bit behind on this, so to speak, but here's this year's calendar of events, starting with Arse Blowing.

(All dates are subject to change, so check before booking!)

Arse Blowing: 19 April
La Mascarade des Soufflaculs
Nontron, France

St. George's Day: 23 April
La Diada de Sant Jordi
Barcelona, Spain

May Day: 1 May
Padstow, Cornwall, UK

Hot Penny Throwing / Beating the Bounds: 21 May (tbc)
Oxford, England

Fire Dancing: 21 May
Anastenariá
Ayia Eleni and Langadas, Greece

Cheese Rolling: 25 May
Cooper's Hill, Gloucestershire, England

Shin Kicking: 29 May
The Cotswold Olimpicks
Chipping Campden, Gloucestershire, England

Phallus Festival: 5–7 June (tbc)
Festa de Sao Goncalo
Amarante, Portugal

St. George vs. the Dragon: 7 June (Trinity Sunday)
Le Combat dit Lumecon
Mons, Belgium

Baby Jumping: 11-14 June (Corpus Christi weekend)
La Fiesta del Colacho
Castrillo de Murcia, Spain

Oil Wrestling: usually the last weekend in June
Edirne, Turkey

Rigor Mortis Procession: 29 July
Fiesta de Santa Marta de Ribarteme
San Xose de Ribarteme, Spain

Burry Man Day: 14 August (tbc)
South Queensferry, Scotland

The Virgin's Snakes: on and around 15 August
Markopoulo, Kefalonia, Greece

Bog Snorkelling: 31 August
Llanwrtyd Wells, Powys, Wales

Matchmaking Festival: 28 August to 4 October
Lisdoonvarna, Ireland

Abbots Bromley Horn Dance: 7 September
Abbots Bromley, Staffordshire, England

Miracle of the Blood: 19 September
San Gennaro Festival
Naples, Italy

World Gurning Championships: 19 September
Egremont, Cumbria, England

Cowfighting: usually early October
Le Combat des Reines
Martigny, Switzerland

Faggot Cutting / Quit Rents Ceremony: October (exact date tbc)
London, England

Bonfire Night / Pope Burning: 5 November
Lewes, East Sussex, England

Sinterklaas and 'Black Pete': mid-November to 5 December
Amsterdam / rest of the Netherlands

Darkie Day (aka Mummers' Day): 26 December 2009 and 1 January 2010
Padstow, Cornwall, UK

The Haxey Hood: 5 January 2010
Haxey, Lincolnshire, England

Goat Tossing: 22 January 2010
Fiesta de San Vicente Martir
Manganeses de la Polvorosa, Spain

Rooster Run: 27 January 2010 (tbc)
Correr el Gallo
Guarrate, Spain

Wenches' Feast Day (Weiberfastnacht): 11 February 2010
Karneval in Beuel/Bonn, Germany

My bit for Obama-mania

Here's the article wot I wrote for Obama's inauguration.

Forget Dreams From My Father: Frederick Douglass' autobiography should be required reading in US history classes. I was ashamed to realize I'd never read it before.

You can check it out here.