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The Woman That Never Evolved
What does it mean to be female? Sarah Blaffer Hrdy--a sociobiologist and a feminist--believes that evolutionary biology can provide some surprising answers. Surprising to those feminists who mistakenly think that biology can only work against women. And surprising to those biologists who incorrectly believe that natural selection operates only on males.
In The Woman That Never Evolved we are introduced to our nearest female relatives competitive, independent, sexually assertive primates who have every bit as much at stake in the evolutionary game as their male counterparts do. These females compete among themselves for rank and resources, but will bond together for mutual defense. They risk their lives to protect their young, yet consort with the very male who murdered their offspring when successful reproduction depends upon it. They tolerate other breeding females if food is plentiful, but chase them away when monogamy is the optimal strategy. When "promiscuity" is an advantage, female primates--like their human cousins--exhibit a sexual appetite that ensures a range of breeding partners. From case after case we are led to the conclusion that the sexually passive, noncompetitive, all-nurturing woman of prevailing myth never could have evolved within the primate order.
Yet males are almost universally dominant over females in primate species, and Homo sapiens is no exception. As we see from this book, women are in some ways the most oppressed of all female primates. Sarah Blaffer Hrdy is convinced that to redress sexual inequality in human societies, we must first understand its evolutionary origins. We cannot travel back in time to meet our own remote ancestors, but we can study those surrogates we have--the other living primates. If women --and not biology--are to control their own destiny, they must understand the past and, as this book shows us, the biological legacy they have inherited.
In The Woman That Never Evolved we are introduced to our nearest female relatives competitive, independent, sexually assertive primates who have every bit as much at stake in the evolutionary game as their male counterparts do. These females compete among themselves for rank and resources, but will bond together for mutual defense. They risk their lives to protect their young, yet consort with the very male who murdered their offspring when successful reproduction depends upon it. They tolerate other breeding females if food is plentiful, but chase them away when monogamy is the optimal strategy. When "promiscuity" is an advantage, female primates--like their human cousins--exhibit a sexual appetite that ensures a range of breeding partners. From case after case we are led to the conclusion that the sexually passive, noncompetitive, all-nurturing woman of prevailing myth never could have evolved within the primate order.
Yet males are almost universally dominant over females in primate species, and Homo sapiens is no exception. As we see from this book, women are in some ways the most oppressed of all female primates. Sarah Blaffer Hrdy is convinced that to redress sexual inequality in human societies, we must first understand its evolutionary origins. We cannot travel back in time to meet our own remote ancestors, but we can study those surrogates we have--the other living primates. If women --and not biology--are to control their own destiny, they must understand the past and, as this book shows us, the biological legacy they have inherited.
304 pages, Paperback
First published December 12, 1981
About the author
Sarah Blaffer Hrdy
9 books92 followersSarah Blaffer Hrdy is an American anthropologist and primatologist who has made several major contributions to evolutionary psychology and sociobiology. She has been selected as one of the 21 “Leaders in Animal Behavior.”
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Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews
August 11, 2012
More challenging than Mother Nature in two important ways: (1) technically, in that the vast bulk of the text focuses on (then) current primatological research, and (2) ideologically, in that it places the onus for feminist progress entirely on political/social reform by contemporary feminists (this she demonstrates is possible, pointing to status competition and other pre-political conduct by female primates), by showing that no pre-modern feminist paradise ever evolved. (The book is a little dated in this latter respect--I am at least not aware of any current feminists whose ideology depends on the historical existence of such a feminist utopia, but apparently this was an idea that had traction in the 1970's-80's.) Hrdy argues that female primate sexuality evolved to confuse paternity, thereby minimizing the risk of infanticide by non-paternal males and maximizing the prospect of male support for infants who were potentially their offspring. Human cognitive capacity, however, has responded to this biological state of affairs by creating institutions designed specifically to combat this strategy among women, by sequestering and oppressing women (utilizing both sophisticated newly-evolved social institutions and long-existing masculine strength [a product of the energetic tradeoff between reproduction and size in females, as well as male competition for access to females]) in order to guarantee certainty as to paternity. This development has been enabled or at least exacerbated by the division of labor among humans, which eliminates the pre-existing tradeoff between male ability to invest in offspring and number of "wives"--unlike polygynous monkey, polygynous men are frequently those best able to invest in the survival of infants. A new take on the fruit of the tree of knowledge.
July 23, 2017
This is a fantastic book! Takes on the big questions not only of sociobiology but also of feminism: why male domination everywhere?, why women not bonding together?, why we look the way we do?, who's taking care of the kids?, what's going on with our supposed monogamy?, etc., etc.
Filled with about as much research data on primates as you can take, but beautifully curated with humor, drawings, and wisdom. I highly recommend this book for all: looking through a summative lens of our primate family, it will change the way you see yourself at the deepest levels. And likely enhance your sex life. :)
Filled with about as much research data on primates as you can take, but beautifully curated with humor, drawings, and wisdom. I highly recommend this book for all: looking through a summative lens of our primate family, it will change the way you see yourself at the deepest levels. And likely enhance your sex life. :)
August 6, 2007
I'm so spoiled by Natalie Angier. Hrdy's writing isn't at all the saucy romp that Angier's is, but it is due to scientists like Hrdy that Angier is able to write about topics like primate filandering in the first place.
The Woman That Never Evolved is a great look into some of the social-sexual workings of our near and dear primate cousins, and while the writing itself didn't have me in stitches, the content was more than sustainably fascinating.
Fun fact: Bird species are 90% monogamous, while mammals can only boast a whopping 4% monogamy rate.
The Woman That Never Evolved is a great look into some of the social-sexual workings of our near and dear primate cousins, and while the writing itself didn't have me in stitches, the content was more than sustainably fascinating.
Fun fact: Bird species are 90% monogamous, while mammals can only boast a whopping 4% monogamy rate.
January 29, 2009
I read this book on the recommendation of a colleague at work. She had read it in one of her anthropology courses during college. I therefore enjoyed reading it as much as I did partly because I knew there would be no exam at the end!
I was confused about the title until the very end of the book. Mostly, it is a discussion of various primate societies and the different sex roles they exhibit. The hope is that by studying our nearest genetic relations that we can begin to understand the development and evolution of gender roles in humans. The author concludes with some very interesting ideas about women and their past, current, and future situations in society.
I am definitely going to read more on this subject. I noticed that there is an updated version of the text available that I will pick up if I ever see it in a book store. All in all this was a very good introduction to a topic I knew little about.
I was confused about the title until the very end of the book. Mostly, it is a discussion of various primate societies and the different sex roles they exhibit. The hope is that by studying our nearest genetic relations that we can begin to understand the development and evolution of gender roles in humans. The author concludes with some very interesting ideas about women and their past, current, and future situations in society.
I am definitely going to read more on this subject. I noticed that there is an updated version of the text available that I will pick up if I ever see it in a book store. All in all this was a very good introduction to a topic I knew little about.
March 26, 2018
I am sure this book was revolutionary back in the 80's, so people didn't mind that it's not that well-written, slow moving, and repetitive. Since pretty much none of these ideas were revolutionary to me (OMG women care about status and are actually quite hierarchical just in a different way than men?!) it was pretty boring.
On that note: When men ruled the world they fought wars honestly. You always knew who the winner was. Today's wars are secretive and sneaky and the masses never know what's really going on. This is a much more "female" way of fighting. I did like it when Hrdy points out that it is a total myth that women are nice and would create a peaceful world. Women are "competitive, strategizing creatures" and their relations are "never what they seem on the surface." I mean, duh, but it's nice to hear someone say that explicitly.
The (only) revolutionary idea I got from this book was that the most successful and long-lived monkey dynasties are matrilineal. This makes perfect sense: Women raise the kids. Whatever percent nurture is in the nature/nurture debate, a successful dynasty is far more dependent on the woman than the man. (FYI European royal families - that's where you messed up.)
An idea that entertained me is that it is so hard to determine when women ovulate because those women who knew when they were ovulating chose not to copulate during those times to limit their number of offspring ... and therefore died out.
Important quote: "For years it was assumed that allomothers were simply helpers in a communal child-rearing system. Indeed, allomothers probably are helping the mother to some extent. But the recurrent observations of abuse suggest that not all females who borrow infants are doing so merely to care for them. Most allomothers are also exploiting their charges in some way, using them as pawns in social interactions or as props to practice maternal skills." Conclusion: Never trust anyone with your children. No one will care for them like their mom. Raise your own kids. I cannot say this enough. Homeschool them and do not rely heavily on nannies.
I almost downgraded this book to two stars for its socialist vomit - Evolution isn't to be trusted. 90% of species that ever existed have gone extinct, guys!!! It's a tragedy! We have got to get control of mother nature! And did you know that more successful monkeys leave behind more babies?!!! It's SO unfair, we have GOT to stop them from "oppressing" the less successful monkeys!!!
I would expect a BIOLOGIST to be more interested in knowing what the most successful monkeys and humans are doing. Who cares what percent of human societies are monogamous and polygamous? How are the most successful human societies structured? And even in those societies, knowing what the masses are doing is a lot less helpful than knowing what the most successful 1% are doing. I mean, from a biological perspective....
Question: Could the fight against female circumcision be better fought with paternity tests? Marry an uncircumcised woman and our charity will give you unlimited free paternity tests to make sure those kids are yours! Just a thought. Why are we so hard on these guys for wanting to make sure they are investing in offspring that are genuinely theirs? Yeah, it's cruel to circumcise the women, but can we entertain the idea for a minute that both people's needs matter? The women who doesn't want to be hurt AND the man who doesn't want to be cuckolded?
On that note: When men ruled the world they fought wars honestly. You always knew who the winner was. Today's wars are secretive and sneaky and the masses never know what's really going on. This is a much more "female" way of fighting. I did like it when Hrdy points out that it is a total myth that women are nice and would create a peaceful world. Women are "competitive, strategizing creatures" and their relations are "never what they seem on the surface." I mean, duh, but it's nice to hear someone say that explicitly.
The (only) revolutionary idea I got from this book was that the most successful and long-lived monkey dynasties are matrilineal. This makes perfect sense: Women raise the kids. Whatever percent nurture is in the nature/nurture debate, a successful dynasty is far more dependent on the woman than the man. (FYI European royal families - that's where you messed up.)
An idea that entertained me is that it is so hard to determine when women ovulate because those women who knew when they were ovulating chose not to copulate during those times to limit their number of offspring ... and therefore died out.
Important quote: "For years it was assumed that allomothers were simply helpers in a communal child-rearing system. Indeed, allomothers probably are helping the mother to some extent. But the recurrent observations of abuse suggest that not all females who borrow infants are doing so merely to care for them. Most allomothers are also exploiting their charges in some way, using them as pawns in social interactions or as props to practice maternal skills." Conclusion: Never trust anyone with your children. No one will care for them like their mom. Raise your own kids. I cannot say this enough. Homeschool them and do not rely heavily on nannies.
I almost downgraded this book to two stars for its socialist vomit - Evolution isn't to be trusted. 90% of species that ever existed have gone extinct, guys!!! It's a tragedy! We have got to get control of mother nature! And did you know that more successful monkeys leave behind more babies?!!! It's SO unfair, we have GOT to stop them from "oppressing" the less successful monkeys!!!
I would expect a BIOLOGIST to be more interested in knowing what the most successful monkeys and humans are doing. Who cares what percent of human societies are monogamous and polygamous? How are the most successful human societies structured? And even in those societies, knowing what the masses are doing is a lot less helpful than knowing what the most successful 1% are doing. I mean, from a biological perspective....
Question: Could the fight against female circumcision be better fought with paternity tests? Marry an uncircumcised woman and our charity will give you unlimited free paternity tests to make sure those kids are yours! Just a thought. Why are we so hard on these guys for wanting to make sure they are investing in offspring that are genuinely theirs? Yeah, it's cruel to circumcise the women, but can we entertain the idea for a minute that both people's needs matter? The women who doesn't want to be hurt AND the man who doesn't want to be cuckolded?
July 31, 2014
This book is fascinating, well-written and -argued. Hrdy discusses female behavior in many species of primates and finds competition among them an important component of evolution. She argues that this quality forms a part of human character and should not be ignored in favor of the unfounded notion that women are essentially more cooperative than men. She concludes that women's very recently achieved social equality is fragile and should not be taken for granted, and that is for sure given recent political attacks on female autonomy. I recommend this work to all feminists, female and male, as a good reminder of what we have gained and what could be lost.
December 27, 2019
I liked this book overall but I thought that the focus of the book on apes and monkeys was overdone. It looked at how the evolution of the female monkeys can be used as a backdrop to explain the progress or lack of progress that has been made in homo sapien women. It got more and more interesting as the pages turned and the last section about sexuality of monkeys was pretty eye opening but overall I didn’t have that many best bits to report.
The book had chapters such as why some women never evolved and initial inequality, the monogamous primates of climate for dominant females, the pros and cons of males competition and bonding among females, the primate origins of female sexuality, and a disputed legacy. Here are some of my bits:
- Although natural selection may have had a role in shaping such values of love of children and prevention towards those who aren’t them, the process of evolution itself is oblivious to such sentiments.
– Women everywhere writes the historian William O’Neill seem to identify more with their families and with the sex and join men in supporting role definitions that keep women out of politics. The lack of solidarity distinguishes women from the minorities with which they are often compared.
– But how can you explain sexual appetite of the human female, who has the capacity to engage in sex on virtually any day of the month, at any time of the year? A sexual receptivity like that is clearly not synonymous with ovulation; if it will not lead to conception what is all this nonreproductive sexuality about?
– The sexual bond is regarded as Essentia for enlisting the males help in rearing highly dependent human babies. Over a decade later it is still widely believed that the female of the species became uniquely sectionalised in order to attract and keep a man in that continuous receptivity along with the female orgasm that developed in the human female to ensure that she would be willing to copulate frequently enough to satisfy Her man’s needs and that it would be to her camp he would return from that.
– Recall that most primates in which females are equal in status to males are monogamous, and virtually all monogamous species are characterised by monomorphic or same size sexes. By contrast polygynous species tend to be characterised by sexual dimorphism with males substantially larger than females owing to the fact that males in Polygynous species fight amongst themselves for access to harems of females.
– In a patriarchal culture sexuality is a crucial issue. Men have no direct access to reproduction and survival of the species. As individuals they claim to any particular child can never be as clear as that of the mother who demonstrably gave birth to the child. The only way a man can be absolutely sure that he is the one to have contributed the sperm is to control the sexuality of the woman.
– You can tell the degree of family’s aristocracy by the height of the windows in the home. the higher the rank a smaller and higher all the windows and the more secluded the woman. Again something that you see in afghan society.
The book had chapters such as why some women never evolved and initial inequality, the monogamous primates of climate for dominant females, the pros and cons of males competition and bonding among females, the primate origins of female sexuality, and a disputed legacy. Here are some of my bits:
- Although natural selection may have had a role in shaping such values of love of children and prevention towards those who aren’t them, the process of evolution itself is oblivious to such sentiments.
– Women everywhere writes the historian William O’Neill seem to identify more with their families and with the sex and join men in supporting role definitions that keep women out of politics. The lack of solidarity distinguishes women from the minorities with which they are often compared.
– But how can you explain sexual appetite of the human female, who has the capacity to engage in sex on virtually any day of the month, at any time of the year? A sexual receptivity like that is clearly not synonymous with ovulation; if it will not lead to conception what is all this nonreproductive sexuality about?
– The sexual bond is regarded as Essentia for enlisting the males help in rearing highly dependent human babies. Over a decade later it is still widely believed that the female of the species became uniquely sectionalised in order to attract and keep a man in that continuous receptivity along with the female orgasm that developed in the human female to ensure that she would be willing to copulate frequently enough to satisfy Her man’s needs and that it would be to her camp he would return from that.
– Recall that most primates in which females are equal in status to males are monogamous, and virtually all monogamous species are characterised by monomorphic or same size sexes. By contrast polygynous species tend to be characterised by sexual dimorphism with males substantially larger than females owing to the fact that males in Polygynous species fight amongst themselves for access to harems of females.
– In a patriarchal culture sexuality is a crucial issue. Men have no direct access to reproduction and survival of the species. As individuals they claim to any particular child can never be as clear as that of the mother who demonstrably gave birth to the child. The only way a man can be absolutely sure that he is the one to have contributed the sperm is to control the sexuality of the woman.
– You can tell the degree of family’s aristocracy by the height of the windows in the home. the higher the rank a smaller and higher all the windows and the more secluded the woman. Again something that you see in afghan society.
January 8, 2021
Rating: 4.5/5
Really fascinating read that tackles the main question I’d been searching for (in vain) within the feminist canon: why did the patriarchy come to exist in the first place? Sarah Hrdy, an esteemed primatologist, challenges the dominant approaches to answering this question, going beyond the complete dismissals of the utility of evolutionary approaches to explain women’s condition by feminists and the stereotype-informed, cherry-picking assessments of female primates of the 1970s scientists that were her peers at the time this was written.
She makes a very convincing case, extremely dense with primatological research, that the origins of patriarchy lie in male efforts to eliminate paternal uncertainty—i.e., men (unlike women) not knowing whether their child is actually their child—through extreme policing of women's behavior, especially in relation to their sexuality. In doing so, she addresses a host of other interesting questions—what are the evolutionary origins of women’s sexuality?; why has patriarchy weakened over time, and how could it be further undermined?; why are present-day humans overwhelmingly monogamous?; etc. It was incredibly refreshing to see a work for the first time that referenced evolution without succumbing to biological essentialism, that addressed physical/reproductive differences and their relation to culture yet did not jump to portray said differences as inevitably producing particular societal arrangements for time immemorial.
Important to note is that this work was one of the core reasons the at the time dominant sociobiological narrative of “choosy” females and “ardent” males was overturned. Naturally, being an explicitly scientific text, it focuses very heavily on primatological research, preventing it from it from being an easy beach read. Yet despite this, Hrdy is a consistently engaging writer, and her heavy focus on research makes the payoff when she turns to her own conclusions all the more satisfying.
Really fascinating read that tackles the main question I’d been searching for (in vain) within the feminist canon: why did the patriarchy come to exist in the first place? Sarah Hrdy, an esteemed primatologist, challenges the dominant approaches to answering this question, going beyond the complete dismissals of the utility of evolutionary approaches to explain women’s condition by feminists and the stereotype-informed, cherry-picking assessments of female primates of the 1970s scientists that were her peers at the time this was written.
She makes a very convincing case, extremely dense with primatological research, that the origins of patriarchy lie in male efforts to eliminate paternal uncertainty—i.e., men (unlike women) not knowing whether their child is actually their child—through extreme policing of women's behavior, especially in relation to their sexuality. In doing so, she addresses a host of other interesting questions—what are the evolutionary origins of women’s sexuality?; why has patriarchy weakened over time, and how could it be further undermined?; why are present-day humans overwhelmingly monogamous?; etc. It was incredibly refreshing to see a work for the first time that referenced evolution without succumbing to biological essentialism, that addressed physical/reproductive differences and their relation to culture yet did not jump to portray said differences as inevitably producing particular societal arrangements for time immemorial.
Important to note is that this work was one of the core reasons the at the time dominant sociobiological narrative of “choosy” females and “ardent” males was overturned. Naturally, being an explicitly scientific text, it focuses very heavily on primatological research, preventing it from it from being an easy beach read. Yet despite this, Hrdy is a consistently engaging writer, and her heavy focus on research makes the payoff when she turns to her own conclusions all the more satisfying.
September 16, 2014
I first read this book as an undergrad but to my dismay lost my copy in my many roommate shuffles and moves. I looked several times over the years for it and was overjoyed to snap up a new edition of it some years ago when it came back into print. I have re-read this book multiple times and it sparks new avenues of thought and understanding for me to this day.
A word of caution: Dr. Hrdy is a serious primatologist and this book is dense with facts. It is not a breezy, bedtime read. This book helped overturn an academic field's paradigm, which can only be done through the overwhelming application of rigorous, fact-based logic. That is what Dr. Hrdy did: she made a convincing, biology-based argument for evolutionary anthropologists to look at how females and evolution interacted.
This book marshals an intimate knowledge of primate behavior across a breathtaking number of species to demonstrate that evolutionary pressures shape female behaviors, that female behaviors influence the evolution of a species, and to draw the inescapable conclusion that the same must be true in humans, too. This seems intuitively obvious now but in the 1980s it was revolutionary.
Previously, the Just So stories of human evolution were the Just So stories of Men: humans developed tools to help men hunt, humans became bipedal so that men could use their hands to carry food back to their passive (apparently sessile!) mates and offspring, humans became bipedal because men had to stand up to look out over savannah grasses to see the herds they were hunting, men's sexual preferences led women to develop permanently enlarged breasts, etc. Women were hardly ever mentioned, dragged along the human evolutionary track blazed by the needs and desires of men.
This book was influential in demonstrating how blinkered that limiting view was and why it necessarily led to a fundamental misunderstanding of evolution and humanity.
A word of caution: Dr. Hrdy is a serious primatologist and this book is dense with facts. It is not a breezy, bedtime read. This book helped overturn an academic field's paradigm, which can only be done through the overwhelming application of rigorous, fact-based logic. That is what Dr. Hrdy did: she made a convincing, biology-based argument for evolutionary anthropologists to look at how females and evolution interacted.
This book marshals an intimate knowledge of primate behavior across a breathtaking number of species to demonstrate that evolutionary pressures shape female behaviors, that female behaviors influence the evolution of a species, and to draw the inescapable conclusion that the same must be true in humans, too. This seems intuitively obvious now but in the 1980s it was revolutionary.
Previously, the Just So stories of human evolution were the Just So stories of Men: humans developed tools to help men hunt, humans became bipedal so that men could use their hands to carry food back to their passive (apparently sessile!) mates and offspring, humans became bipedal because men had to stand up to look out over savannah grasses to see the herds they were hunting, men's sexual preferences led women to develop permanently enlarged breasts, etc. Women were hardly ever mentioned, dragged along the human evolutionary track blazed by the needs and desires of men.
This book was influential in demonstrating how blinkered that limiting view was and why it necessarily led to a fundamental misunderstanding of evolution and humanity.
February 1, 2023
Oh, dear… This book… I have to mention that the Victorian Era did not end here… I am Charlotte Heywood. I am appalled…. Ok, guys, I was joking. This book was published.... hmm... now many decades ago. Hmm, no wonder the American singers are so sexual, I mean Ari and her songs, and all those singers, so sexual and promiscuous… Well, I guess that it is because of studies like these. LOL… Key findings that I loved…
Rarely can paleontology provide insights into social structure,
but on this particular point-whether or not a species
possessed a monogamous breeding system-I think we are on
fairly firm ground. Recall that most primates in which females
are equal in status to males are monogamous, and virtually all
monogamous species are characterized by monomorphic, or
same-size, sexes. By contrast, polygynous species tend to be
characterized by sexual dimorphism, with males substantially
larger than females, owing to the fact that males in polygynous
species fight among themselves for access to harems of
females. In monogamous species there exist approximately
equivalent levels of overt intrasexual competition in both
sexes.
When we look at the fossil record in the hominid line, the
degree of sexual dimorphism among our antecedents was at
least as great as that in contemporary human populations,
where men are 5 to 12 percent larger than females; recent
fossil evidence from Hadar in Ethiopia and Laetoli in Tanzania
provides grounds for believing that hominids four million
years ago were even more dimorphic than humans are today.
Certainly this was the case for Old World higher primates in
the more distant past, at thirty million years before the present.
When we compare our statistics to those for mammals
generally, Homo sapiens falls into the range of a "mildly polygynous
species." Among our highly polygynous hominoid relatives,
the gorillas, chimpanzees, and orangutans, males tend
to be 25 percent (or more) larger than females.
I actually believed that chimps mate only when in heat and only to reproduce, once or twice a year... HAHAHA HAHAHA... I also used to think they were peaceful vegetarians... HAHAHAHA That once upon a time I was a cute monkey, eating fruits in a tree, not hunting, not killing, just cute... Yeah, I used to believe many things. After I did my research I found out chimps commit infanticide, eat meat, hunt, go to war, and female chimps are...are.... very active sexually.... very active...
Caroline Tutin reports that wild female chimps in
estrus alternate between consortships with a single male in
the privacy of the forest, out of sight from other animals what
Gombe researchers refer to as "on safari"-and group
matings involving coteries of males. Males in these clusters
sometimes fight, but there is little advantage to them from
doing so since other would-be suitors move in to profit from
the distraction. Whereas a female on safari may copulate 5 to
10 times in a day, an estrous female traveling with a group of
males may copulate 30 to 50 times in a day. Gorilla females
are typically found in one-male breeding units but may nevertheless
solicit and mate with subordinate "blackback" males
in addition to the dominant "silverback" male in groups
where such young males happen to be present.
What, then, are we to make of this libidinous aspect
of their nature?
Yeah, what, then, are we to make of this libidinous aspect
of their nature? Yeah, crises… But now I understand why as a teen I was so horny. Damn it, my ancestor was not cute and innocent like Charlotte Heywood, they were… these chimps… Fortunately, now all my hormones are dead. Thank goodness!
And after reading this book I have understood why I liked so much cute things as a teen and young adult… I am a female humanoid organism (yeah incels, I liked that), and all female primates are crazy about babies, that’s what they do, copulate and take care of babies, oh, and eat, and sleep, sorry, and walk... Babies are cute, so I loved cute. Yeah…
In a patriarchal culture ... sexuality is a crucial issue ... men
have no direct access to reproduction and survival of the species.
As individuals, their claim to any particular child can never be as
clear as that of the mother who demonstrably gave birth to that
child ... The only way a man can be absolutely sure that he is
the one to have contributed that sperm is to control the sexuality
of the woman ...
He may keep her separate from any other man as in a harem,
he may devise a mechanical method of preventing intercourse
like a chastity belt, he may remove her clitoris to decrease her
erotic impulses, or he may convince her that sex is the same
thing as love and if she has sexual relations with anyone else she
is violating the sacred ethics of love.
I don’t blame men for trying to control women’s sexuality, because they used to be the main providers, and they wanted to provide for their children not someone else’s and they wanted their children to inherit their fortune, not another man’s. Their ancestors were chimps, and all that male chimps do is jokey for positions, who becomes alpha has free access to females and impregnates them all. That’s the game. That’s all about. The perpetuation of your genes and not those of others. That's the fight, that's the battle. Now of course people are not like that anymore, there are many men who raise other men's children. Or so I think... Yeah, I think. Maybe now things will change because now women work too. But women are still very much judged if they cheat or are very promiscuous. Worse fear of mine is to be called a whore. I hate that word. My biggest fear was that.
Well, what can I say about the Victorian era or Charlotte… Actually, I do not like the Victorian era, I just like modern ITV period dramas set there, such fine taste… I don’t like those times. As for Charlotte, she is still my favorite role model. I understand now what’s happening in America, these studies and books were published now a long time ago. And people were receptive. I always believed Ari was weird singing about 24/35 or I’ve been there all night, but now I know that she is completely normal, especially from a natural perspective… I still want to be like Charlotte… I still like that style better… Anyway, my hormones are dead, and spoiler, this book did not revive them. When I was very cute and young, and very naïve, I was talking to the only boy I ever talked to in high school, on the internet of course, and that boy told me that he would have sex all day and so he will forget all his troubles. I stopped talking to him after that. Reading now about all these monkeys and apes, I realized that that is the solution to mankind’s problems. LOOOL, no… Just joking. Just joking. Or not?
Rarely can paleontology provide insights into social structure,
but on this particular point-whether or not a species
possessed a monogamous breeding system-I think we are on
fairly firm ground. Recall that most primates in which females
are equal in status to males are monogamous, and virtually all
monogamous species are characterized by monomorphic, or
same-size, sexes. By contrast, polygynous species tend to be
characterized by sexual dimorphism, with males substantially
larger than females, owing to the fact that males in polygynous
species fight among themselves for access to harems of
females. In monogamous species there exist approximately
equivalent levels of overt intrasexual competition in both
sexes.
When we look at the fossil record in the hominid line, the
degree of sexual dimorphism among our antecedents was at
least as great as that in contemporary human populations,
where men are 5 to 12 percent larger than females; recent
fossil evidence from Hadar in Ethiopia and Laetoli in Tanzania
provides grounds for believing that hominids four million
years ago were even more dimorphic than humans are today.
Certainly this was the case for Old World higher primates in
the more distant past, at thirty million years before the present.
When we compare our statistics to those for mammals
generally, Homo sapiens falls into the range of a "mildly polygynous
species." Among our highly polygynous hominoid relatives,
the gorillas, chimpanzees, and orangutans, males tend
to be 25 percent (or more) larger than females.
I actually believed that chimps mate only when in heat and only to reproduce, once or twice a year... HAHAHA HAHAHA... I also used to think they were peaceful vegetarians... HAHAHAHA That once upon a time I was a cute monkey, eating fruits in a tree, not hunting, not killing, just cute... Yeah, I used to believe many things. After I did my research I found out chimps commit infanticide, eat meat, hunt, go to war, and female chimps are...are.... very active sexually.... very active...
Caroline Tutin reports that wild female chimps in
estrus alternate between consortships with a single male in
the privacy of the forest, out of sight from other animals what
Gombe researchers refer to as "on safari"-and group
matings involving coteries of males. Males in these clusters
sometimes fight, but there is little advantage to them from
doing so since other would-be suitors move in to profit from
the distraction. Whereas a female on safari may copulate 5 to
10 times in a day, an estrous female traveling with a group of
males may copulate 30 to 50 times in a day. Gorilla females
are typically found in one-male breeding units but may nevertheless
solicit and mate with subordinate "blackback" males
in addition to the dominant "silverback" male in groups
where such young males happen to be present.
What, then, are we to make of this libidinous aspect
of their nature?
Yeah, what, then, are we to make of this libidinous aspect
of their nature? Yeah, crises… But now I understand why as a teen I was so horny. Damn it, my ancestor was not cute and innocent like Charlotte Heywood, they were… these chimps… Fortunately, now all my hormones are dead. Thank goodness!
And after reading this book I have understood why I liked so much cute things as a teen and young adult… I am a female humanoid organism (yeah incels, I liked that), and all female primates are crazy about babies, that’s what they do, copulate and take care of babies, oh, and eat, and sleep, sorry, and walk... Babies are cute, so I loved cute. Yeah…
In a patriarchal culture ... sexuality is a crucial issue ... men
have no direct access to reproduction and survival of the species.
As individuals, their claim to any particular child can never be as
clear as that of the mother who demonstrably gave birth to that
child ... The only way a man can be absolutely sure that he is
the one to have contributed that sperm is to control the sexuality
of the woman ...
He may keep her separate from any other man as in a harem,
he may devise a mechanical method of preventing intercourse
like a chastity belt, he may remove her clitoris to decrease her
erotic impulses, or he may convince her that sex is the same
thing as love and if she has sexual relations with anyone else she
is violating the sacred ethics of love.
I don’t blame men for trying to control women’s sexuality, because they used to be the main providers, and they wanted to provide for their children not someone else’s and they wanted their children to inherit their fortune, not another man’s. Their ancestors were chimps, and all that male chimps do is jokey for positions, who becomes alpha has free access to females and impregnates them all. That’s the game. That’s all about. The perpetuation of your genes and not those of others. That's the fight, that's the battle. Now of course people are not like that anymore, there are many men who raise other men's children. Or so I think... Yeah, I think. Maybe now things will change because now women work too. But women are still very much judged if they cheat or are very promiscuous. Worse fear of mine is to be called a whore. I hate that word. My biggest fear was that.
Well, what can I say about the Victorian era or Charlotte… Actually, I do not like the Victorian era, I just like modern ITV period dramas set there, such fine taste… I don’t like those times. As for Charlotte, she is still my favorite role model. I understand now what’s happening in America, these studies and books were published now a long time ago. And people were receptive. I always believed Ari was weird singing about 24/35 or I’ve been there all night, but now I know that she is completely normal, especially from a natural perspective… I still want to be like Charlotte… I still like that style better… Anyway, my hormones are dead, and spoiler, this book did not revive them. When I was very cute and young, and very naïve, I was talking to the only boy I ever talked to in high school, on the internet of course, and that boy told me that he would have sex all day and so he will forget all his troubles. I stopped talking to him after that. Reading now about all these monkeys and apes, I realized that that is the solution to mankind’s problems. LOOOL, no… Just joking. Just joking. Or not?
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 28, 2020
I think everyone should read this, but it would be great to translate the book into more languages!
July 1, 2017
Uzun zamandır okumayı planladığım bir kitaptı. Dişilerin toy ve pasif olduğu fikrine karşı, dişilerin rekabetçi ve girişken olduklarını primatlar üzerinden anlatması çok değerli. Türler arası karşılaştırma yaparken, türleri yaşadıkları çevre üzerinden değerlendirerek sosyobiyoloji, primatoloji ve davranışsal ekoloji konularında bilgi veriyor. Yaşayışımızı anlamakta oldukça önemli bir kitap olduğunu düşünüyorum. Smuts'ın Evolutionary Origins of Patriarchy (1995) isimli makalesi ile de tamamlayıcı olduğunu düşünüyorum. Sonrasında, feminist evrimciler ve evrimsel psikoloji arasındaki tartışmayı daha iyi anlamak için Liesen'in (2007) Women, Behavior, and Evolution: Understanding the Debate between Feminist Evolutionists and Evolutionary Psychologists adlı makalesini okudum.
Kitabın yazım tarihi bu tartışmanın yeni yeni başladığı zamanlar olduğu için sonrasını öğrenmek resmi tamamlayıcı oldu.
Kitabın yazım tarihi bu tartışmanın yeni yeni başladığı zamanlar olduğu için sonrasını öğrenmek resmi tamamlayıcı oldu.
November 23, 2019
Really fascinating! I wish it was longer. I definitely want to read her other books now!
May 17, 2021
The Woman That Never Evolved is a feminist science book, which is my favorite kind. It examines the question of female evolution -- a topic only slightly less ignored today than it was when the book was written -- and the ways that evolution has acted on primate females to work with and against males, and if and how that information can be extrapolated onto humans. It's very much a primatology book, with the extrapolations pretty cautious and caveated and well-supported.
Besides being a good book, where I felt like I learned a lot, it also feels like a good basis to work from. I am absolutely not up on primate research, so I don't know how much the field has changed since the book was published in 1981, but Hrdy is very open when the research is lacking, or paltry, and the theories she puts forward about how male dominance/oppression might have evolved still make a lot of sense today. I began reading Delusions of Gender while about halfway through The Woman That Never Evolved, and found them wonderful complements and an interesting conversation with each other. At least partially about how little has changed, and how much junk science still goes into propping up male supremacy.
Besides being a good book, where I felt like I learned a lot, it also feels like a good basis to work from. I am absolutely not up on primate research, so I don't know how much the field has changed since the book was published in 1981, but Hrdy is very open when the research is lacking, or paltry, and the theories she puts forward about how male dominance/oppression might have evolved still make a lot of sense today. I began reading Delusions of Gender while about halfway through The Woman That Never Evolved, and found them wonderful complements and an interesting conversation with each other. At least partially about how little has changed, and how much junk science still goes into propping up male supremacy.
August 12, 2022
Full review to come.
If you liked the dumpster fire that is "The myth of matriarchal prehistory" (by Cynthia Eller), you'll also enjoy the drivel that is "The woman that never evolved". Eller is an incompetent, ignorant sociologist pretending to be an archaeologist, a historian, an anthropologist, and a linguist (among other things). Hrdy (the author of this book) is an ignorant, mediocre anthropologist and filmmaker pretending to be a biologist, an evolution expert, an animal behavior expert (ethology), and a primatologist (among other things - she also stupidly pretends to be a political strategist and social commentator).
The book should actually have been called "Anyone I happen to dislike -or just don't identify with- never evolved; I also have the answer to everything and am the Chosen One to save the world".
If you liked the dumpster fire that is "The myth of matriarchal prehistory" (by Cynthia Eller), you'll also enjoy the drivel that is "The woman that never evolved". Eller is an incompetent, ignorant sociologist pretending to be an archaeologist, a historian, an anthropologist, and a linguist (among other things). Hrdy (the author of this book) is an ignorant, mediocre anthropologist and filmmaker pretending to be a biologist, an evolution expert, an animal behavior expert (ethology), and a primatologist (among other things - she also stupidly pretends to be a political strategist and social commentator).
The book should actually have been called "Anyone I happen to dislike -or just don't identify with- never evolved; I also have the answer to everything and am the Chosen One to save the world".
February 25, 2021
Great read on how bias can enter into a whole field of science. Although dated now, a really strongly written book on sexism within the field of primatology and how that sexism led to decades of biased and often wrong research. By studying primates from a male-centric perspective, a whole field was built on false assumptions. By reviewing the science and taking a female-centric perspective, the real underlying hierarchies and social systems of primates is revealed.
Read
June 13, 2019Interesting stuff about primates but I don’t really get what she’s saying the implications are for humans, it felt like a lot of info dumping about monkeys and no payoff. Mother Nature was a way better ratio to me of monkey info vs human info
October 10, 2021
Hrdy's research subverts expectations about female and male dominance and it was an insightful read for my anthropology sexuality class. However, I do lack the background knowledge of biological anthropology so some of the book had me a little lost. Still good.
August 9, 2016
This book brings the focus of evolutionary theory on women in stead of men, which, seeing the results, it desperately needed. There is a lot that can be gleemed on women and against stereotypes about women by looking at other primate females and using Darwin. That is hasn't been done before is a severe oversight.
My only wish is that it focussed a little bit less on monkeys - at some point I can't even keep them apart - and a little bit more on the implications for women. But even so, good book.
My only wish is that it focussed a little bit less on monkeys - at some point I can't even keep them apart - and a little bit more on the implications for women. But even so, good book.
January 3, 2012
I can't believe I'd never run across Hrdy until now. A feminist sensibility + evolutionary thinking grounded in actual science as opposed to speculation and surveys of American college undergrads=serious science win.
February 19, 2013
This is a beautiful way to understand feminism and female sexuality. It is a comprehensive study of our closest primate relatives. It is honest and rational and beautiful and I admire Hrdy immensely. It gives voice to the kind of feminism that I feel
October 25, 2014
Mungkin saja saya bacanya sedang tidak fokus jadi buku ini rasanya... tidak menarik. Kebanyakan penjelasan tentang hewan-hewan primata ketimbang manusianya. Masuk akal sih kenapa lebih banyak membahas primata, tapi ya... bosan juga. :P
Want to read
May 31, 2007the cover alone made me want to read this book.
May 31, 2009
Anything and everything by Hrdy is worth reading. Excellent research!
Read
June 15, 2012Great incite into our odd behavior (especially regarding our teenage girls need to be socially dominant).
July 6, 2015
Terrible title, great book.
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