Monday

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.'

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