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The Future of Men and Women: A Battle for Supremacy
23 / 07 / 10
I recently gave a keynote address to the World Future Society's conference in Boston on the topic The Future of Men and Women: Battle for Supremacy. Not usually a topic they turn their attention to, the conference is mostly concerned with technology and politics futures, but they agreed to this one and the feedback was great. I then repeated it at the British Psychological Society's conference a week later in Windsor. The Psychology of Women conference held each year has a number of interesting talks from academics and practitioners around the world, the most interesting of which was a seminar I attended on women gambling (yes they do, but differently to men). Anyway, here is the text and slides from my talk.
INTRODUCTION
Steven Pinker, Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard University wrote that “Behavioural science is not for sissies”. I’m sure he would agree that the phrase is even more apt when applied to those of us foolish enough to study the differences between men and women, for the field is full of political landmines and academic fissures. Many women are reluctant to admit that there might be differences between the sexes, and many men daren’t even suggest it. Look what happened to Larry Summers.
My favourite joke about the foolishness of those who attempt such things is the one about the man sitting on the beach reading his newspaper…
He spots something glistening in the sand. He goes over and pulls up a glinting piece of metal which turns out to be an old oil lamp, polishes it and a big grinning genie appears. “I will grant you anything you wish, master,” said the genie. The man scratches his head, thinking long and carefully about the opportunity he has been given. He picks up his newspaper and says to the grinning genie “You see here? This is a map of the Middle East. We’re having terrible problems here. There are conflicts all over the region, people are dying, people are oppressed, its been going on for thousands of years, no-one can see a solution…” “Oh no,” said the genie. “I’m really sorry, but I don’t do that kind of thing. That’s too difficult. Haven’t you got anything else?” The man thinks for a minute and then says, “Well, yes. Maybe you could help with this personal problem. My new female boss doesn’t really appreciate my value at work, when I come home my wife doesn’t want to hear about my day and my daughter goes to her bedroom and slams the door…” “Wai…wai…wait…Hold on a second” says the genie. “Just show me that map again.”
Human beings are the most complex thing that walks this planet, and sex is a highly complex and controversial subject. So in studying the future of the sexes (and in contemplating the battle for supremacy), I am aware of the dangers of oversimplification. However, I am also aware of the dangers of not talking about some of these things. If we fail to acknowledge women’s and men’s relative strengths and weaknesses because we hang on to the belief that “anything you can do I can do…”, we may avoid getting into the heart of inequality. So here goes.
SEX, GENDER: WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE?
Lets get a few definitions out of the way first. Sex. Most of us agree the biological definition of men and women. Nature usually produces babies that are unambiguously one sex or another as determined by the reproductive organs (although she sometimes gets it wrong, which we’ll discuss later). But the biological sex that we’re born with is part of what makes us men and women. What also makes us men and women are those influences in our environment and in our upbringing which determine our thoughts, values, attitudes and shape our behaviours. Sociologists normally refer to this aspect of men and women as our gender and keep the word sex to mean that reproductive role that nature intended. So in this exploration of the future of men and women I will examine both our sex and our gender.
To complicate things further, we need to acknowledge the interaction between our genetic selves (our sex) and our environmental selves (our gender). What makes us sentient, thinking human beings is a result of at least these three things: the genes that reside within each cell in our bodies and provide a blueprint for many characteristics (our genotype), the hormonal soup that bathed us in the womb and at subsequent stages in our lives such as adolescence and menopause and which helped form our thinking behaviour particularly about ourselves and our sexuality, and thirdly the world in which find ourselves which influences just about everything else and determines the outward expression (the phenotype) of our inward nature.
Genetic research is prolific at the moment, and the impact of our endocrine systems, our hormones, is also being better understood by the day. Less clear is the relationship between our biological predispositions and we world we live in, although we are beginning to understand that the influences can act both ways. In other words, not only do our genetic predispositions make us more likely to respond to the world in a certain way, but our world can influence the expression of our genotype, or not as the case may be. But to keep things simple as we’re looking at the future of men and women, let us deal with the influences on sex and gender separately.
SEX
Starting with sex. As most people know, the blueprint that maps out who we are is inherited from our biological mothers and fathers in the form of 46 chromosomes, half from our mother, half from our father. The first 44 team up and determine certain bodily features, such as eyes and hair colour, shape of nose, and other psychological characteristics - personality traits, talents and predispositions to certain behaviours. The last pair of chromosomes however are different. They determine what sex we will be. Our mothers (who had two female chromosomes called XX) gave one of these X chromosomes via the egg, our father (who has an X and a Y chromosome) gave either his X or his Y chromosome via the sperm. If you happen to get a Y chromosome from your father you will be a baby boy, if you happen to get an X chromosome from him you will be a baby girl. Last time I spoke at the WFS conference I focused on the fragility of the Y chromosome and asked if there was a future for men. I can email you the original paper if you’re interested.
For the first few weeks all embryos look like girls, but if the Y chromosome is present the fetus develop testicles which then produce the male hormone testosterone. It's this testosterone that makes the male organs grow and determines to a large degree the ways in which our brains will operate in a typically male or female way. In the absence of testosterone, the baby develops a female brain and female external genitalia. As soon as you introduce testosterone, you get a spectrum of males. Male babies don’t have a monopoly on testosterone though, because it is also found in wombs where a female fetus is growing. So the amount of testosterone present is critical to how male or female you think/feel/behave in adult life, what is called your gender identity, regardless of your sex.
Now how might that change in the future? Well the good news is that for those of us born with unambiguous sex, happy to be male or female, healthy in our reproductive roles, then nothing much needs to change physically. But for those who have trouble conceiving, the process of reproduction will probably like many things become more medical and more controlled. We are already needing more help to reproduce as sperm counts drop and we postpone starting a family until later in life. In the future we should be able to use techniques developed in stem cell research to reproduce without the traditional coming together of sperm and egg, and we may be able to gestate fetuses in artificial uterine environments. Assisted reproduction will continue to benefit from medical and technical advances. But the questions we will struggle to address will be ethical. Who are the parents, for example, and what are their responsibilities? Do we have a right to procreate? Who should pay for these expensive procedures? This isn’t the future of men and women, this is the present, and we need better ethical and legislative frameworks that can keep up with medical advances, and prevent us falling into the voids. Law makers, futurists and scientists need to work together to pre-empt such limbos.
AMBIGUOUS SEX
If something goes wrong with the delicate balance of hormones in the womb the child's genitals won't develop fully and their sex can be ambiguous. When nature gets it wrong she can produce:
• a male with tiny testes (male gonads) that don’t produce testosterone (a condition called IHH- idiopathic hypogonadotrophic hypogonadism)
• a girl born with female external genitals, so is assumed to be a girl and raised a girl, but until no uterus or ovaries, so it becomes apparent on puberty that she is not menstruating (a condition called AI – Androgen insensitivity)
• a female baby born with male genitals and gonads but because of an enzyme deficiency she over-produces testosterone in the womb (called CAH- congenital adrenal hyperplasia)
• a female baby born with only one and not the usual two X chromosomes who exhibits extremely feminine characteristics (called TS – Turner’s syndrome).
For those people born with ambiguous sex, the current treatment consists of a course of hormone therapy usually followed by surgery. The latest predictions suggest that scalpel-happy surgeons are becoming more prudent about how and when they operate. Until now it was easier to turn babies with micro-penises or fused genitalia into girls and raise them as such, but it might be that doctors delay operating in the future until after adolescence when the individuals can choose the gender in which they feel most comfortable. So we may see more individuals of ambiguous sex in schools and colleges. Society will become more accepting of transexuality in general as more people come forward for treatment and a spectrum of maleness and femalesness will be accepted.
Finally, in terms of transexuality, although the ability to change your sex remains an arduous process, the direction of that change remains tied to the values of the social community in which you live. In Japan, for example, there are 3 times as many females wanting to become males than in the rest of the developed world. It is no coincidence that Japan remains in the lowest UN ranking of the developed world in terms of gender equality (91st position in 2007). Its more fun to be a man in Japan!
SEXUALITY
In terms of our sexuality, the last two millennia following Christianity have seen a swing towards heterosexuality but in previous eras such as classical Greece and Sparta, polysexuality was the norm. Tolerance of homosexuality has increased in the last 50 years and may continue to do so but if religious fundamentalism takes hold we may see a return to more traditional sex roles.
But perhaps the greatest advances will exploit the recreational potential of hormones. The anthropologist Helen Fisher describes it this way.
“We are changing the very nature of what it means to be human once we start to play with the brain. We going to manipulate these things because they’re what makes us alive”. “Transcending biology will not make us less human, but more human, because that what makes life worth living.”
Ritalin type drugs designed for ADD sufferers and Modafinil originally developed to help with sleep apnoea currently being used on campuses to help students study will increasingly be used in high pressure jobs in the financial and legal sectors where alertness and focus are valued. So using these drugs as performance enhancers is not new. But how could they affect our sex, our gender and our sexuality?
Drugs like Viagra developed to correct sexual dysfunction are the success story of the sociopharmaceutical industry, being used across the globe as performance enhancers. The hunt for the female Viagra continues but, as we know, sex is a lot more complex for women. The recreational use of mind-altering drugs is not new, but the more we know about the powerful effects of hormones, the more they are likely to be manufactured synthetically and released upon a pleasure-loving world. SSRIs in particular which enhance seratonin, the feel good hormone, are in demand. E.g. Prozac. `But they decrease dopamine levels and feelings of elation, in other words, they flatten emotion. So attention will turn to oxytocin and vasopressin which enhance feelings of attachment. They could be used to help bonding with children you’re finding difficult or work colleagues you can’t get on with. Dopamine and noraprephamine present in those experiencing the state of romantic love are possible candidates too. One can imagine women out on dates spiking their partner’s drink with something that might make them more affectionate, considerate or caring.
Studies which administer doses of testosterone have already brought about changes in behaviour, in particular, it seems to make us more aggressive and inclined to take risks. Both men and women in jobs that require these traits might be tempted to use a testosterone patch, as prescribed for post menopausal women at the moment to increase their libido and their general drive, and prescribed for men suffering low testosterone levels. At the moment many of these hormones are either prescribed or legal highs, but the amount being made in China and distributed into the global markets means that the use of these hormones needs to be regulated. Again, legislation seems to lag behind the free market.
Given the interest in cheating death, transhuman life extension and the possibility of embedded pharmacies in our bodies, we can expect our mental and physical health to be monitored by nanosensors and our metabolisms to be regulated by a cocktail of synthetic chemicals secreted directly into our blood, and giving us the highs and lows we prescribe for ourselves on an hour by hour basis. We will all know our genomes well and will have been able to manipulate our abilities to the point where we can have the vision of a hawk, the hearing of a dog and the sonar of a bat. The problem is, we’ll probably still have the emotions of a five year old.
Finally, perhaps the greatest impact on the future of our sexuality will come from technology that combines brain power with computing and allows us to get sexual thrills from virtual worlds. Existing sex toys are still mechanical and electrical and essentially clunky, but will truly come of age when they go digital and can be attached to the brain. When the gaming and pornography industries collide, it will raise virtual sex to a whole new level.
GENDER
Moving away from biology and into society, lets look at how male and female roles will develop in the future, because although biologically men and women have remained virtually unchanged for the last two millennia, socially we have seen significant changes, certainly in the last one hundred years. In the developed world, albeit at different rates, we have experienced the growing emancipation of women, we have seen women reach 50% of the workforce in the US, and despite the glass ceiling and pay gap, women are making progress in most fields previously dominated by men, including crime.
I believe that we have arrived at a point where we can now tell jokes like this with more ease than would have been the case ten years ago. Some things never change.
A Man wakes up in hospital, bandaged from head to foot. The doctor comes in and says 'Ah, I see you've regained consciousness. Now you probably won't remember, but I'm afraid you were in a pile-up on the highway. You're going to be OK, you'll walk again, everything seems to be OK, but there is a bit of bad news and I'm going to break it to you as gently as I can. Your penis was chopped off in the wreck and we were unable to find it.'
The poor man groans a bit but the doctor goes on, 'We've checked your insurance and you've actually got $9,000 compensation coming to you and the good news is that we have the technology now to build you a new penis that will work just as well as your old one, better in fact. But the thing is, it doesn't come cheap. It is one thousand dollars an inch.' The man perks up a bit at this. 'So it's a simple decision,' the doctor says, ‘you need to decide how many inches you want. But it's something you'd better discuss with your wife. I mean, if you had a five inch penis before and you decide to go for a nine inch penis now, she might be a bit put out. But if you had a nine incher before and you decide only to invest in a five incher now, she might be a bit disappointed. So it's important that you consult with her to help you make the decision.' So the man agrees to talk with his wife.
The doctor comes back the next day.
'So' he says, 'have you spoken with your wife?'
'I have.' says the chap.
'And has she helped you to make the decision?'
'Yes, she has' he says.
'And what is the decision?' asks the doctor.
'We're having a new kitchen.'
PROGRESS TOWARDS EQUALITY
Futurists love to extrapolate. So indulge me a little. I imagine that these current trends we have experienced as we march towards full equality will continue. However, the pace is inexorably slow and appears in the UK at least to have stalled recently. The UK’s Equality and Human Rights Commission reckon that if current slow trends towards equality do not pick up pace, it will be a long time before we achieve anything significant. They liken women's progress to a snail's pace, stating that a snail could crawl:
• nine times round the M25 in the 55 years it will take women to achieve equality in the senior judiciary.
• from Land's End to John O'Groats and halfway back again in the 73 years it will take for equal numbers of women to become directors of FTSE 100 companies.
• the entire length of the Great Wall of China in 212 years, only slightly longer than the 200 years it will take for women to be equally represented in Parliament.
So exactly how will the gender balance evolve, and what effect will it have on male-female relations?
POSSIBLE SCENARIOS
Three scenarios emerge when considering a future for men and women. None of these maintains the status quo, for things have to move, they will not stand still. The equality and dignity of half the human race is at stake here; a cause which is unlikely to hide its face.
Before we look at possible scenarios, a quick word about social change across the entire global spectrum. I suspect that change may happen at a much faster pace in developing countries where the pace of everything is faster. For example, in March India ‘s upper house voted overwhelmingly for a bill that would reserve 1/3 parliamentary seats for women. If this is a sign of things to come that we in the old world can expect to see swifter change in the new world. The killing of baby girls, or Gendercide as the Economist calls it, has created a significant gender imbalance in India and China and these countries are rushing to improve the situation before it becomes a social and economic catastrophe. Recently, the following countries elected female heads of state: Liberia, Philippines Argentina, Chile, Rwanda, India, Lithuania, and these countries have elected female heads of government: Costa Rica, Madagascar, Croatia, Bangladesh, Haiti, Moldova, Ukraine. The country with the highest proportion of women in parliament in the world is Rwanda. So if we in the west are impatient for change we should look to our brothers and sisters in less developed economies and ask how come they can change themselves so quickly.
The three scenarios I want to describe for the future of men and women are
1. Carry on carrying on
2. Back to the kitchen
3. Parallel worlds
I will explain each of these separately but bear in mind they will probably all happen in parallel and not as simple alternatives.
Scenario 1: Carry on carrying on
In addition to the individuals who plug away patiently at solving the problems in society from within, the biggest impetus for change will in the short term be brought about by governments who adopt targets for the numbers of women occupying senior positions in government and corporate life, or quotas, as we have seen recently in Norway, Spain and France. The public services will take the lead and the corporate world will follow as companies move to obey the law. As the women they hire to meet their targets are seen to bring essential talents to the business, forward thinking business leaders will encourage and promote more able women. But as we have seen the progress will be slow and mitigated by biology as women dip in and out of the workforce to bear and raise children. More responsibility will be taken by men for child care and domestic work, but only in cultures and countries where such role swapping is not seen as a threat to masculinity.
Several trends will then conspire to slow down our economic growth in the developed world, some of which are influenced by and blamed on the influx of women into the world of work. First, as the epicentre of commercial ambition continues its move to the east, the demographic profile particularly in Europe will bring a labour shortage. More women will join the workforce to make up this shortfall, bringing a feminisation of work, the workplace and its culture. Next, the demand for part-time working, job-sharing, flexible working hours, child care and school term working will continue to grow. Schools and workplaces will coordinate their working weeks and years to make it easier for parents. Third, as girls receive a better education and tend to get better qualifications, many will move into traditional male careers, such as engineering science and technology. But the numbers will plateau as the vast majority of women continue to be attracted into careers where they feel more comfortable, their talents are put to good use and their interests are satisfied.
Next, women although usually cheaper to employ, tend to be less motivated by financial gain and may prefer to be in organisations that allow life-style rather than life-long careers, that have an ethical rather than a profit-driven ethos, and encourage a workplace culture of cooperation and collaboration rather than competitiveness. This may result in organisations making less monetary profit for their share holders but more social profit for employees and the community. But again let me stress that all of these developments will take time.
We can expect an increase in male backlashes as some men disturbed by the changes brought about by feminisation in the workplace object to the loss of their male world. For example, Michael Buerk, a prominent BBC journalist has complained that women increasingly set the agenda in broadcasting. He accuses them of dumbing down news broadcasting and claims that men have been emasculated by women’s rise up the corporate and political ladder. He calls for a reversal of this trend. The British Medical Association has pointed out that as more women qualify with medical degrees, they tend to choose General Practice and patient care roles rather than research work in laboratories. I heard one male doctor complain on the radio that “Women only want to work part-time, and patients are not sick part-time. They need doctors to be on call”. As we have said, the slow feminisation of the workplace is something we have witnessed and requires the gradual dismantling of a set of institutions, habits and norms that took 2000 to construct. An easier route brings me to scenario 2.
Scenario 2: Back to the kitchen
Some 10-30% women are comfortable in traditional roles and do not want to engage in paid work. They are the home keepers, mothers and carers in our communities and are fulfilled in those roles. Others choose to go back to the kitchen for a certain length of time. But there is another type of woman who will feel the attraction of the kitchen. She is young, savvy, generation Y, and because she feels equal sees no servitude in the domestic role or in being financially dependent upon a man, unlike her mother perhaps. In her world, why go out to work when you can stay home, enjoy your hobbies, keep fit and healthy, see your friends, write books or paint pictures, and be paid (or have a share in another’s income) to have a great life, possibly without the added responsibility of children on an allowance which you don’t have to “earn”, except by fulfilling the role of a good wife/partner? So we may see more women returning to the kitchen in future generations, but on their terms. Whether they can sustain their terms when they lose their financial independence depends upon the nature of the relationship with their partners and on the government giving in to increasing pressure to pay women for domestic work, which is a possibility, but a faint one.
Scenario 3: Parallel worlds
Men and women really are very different. As if you didn’t know already, I’m just going to give you a short reminder of the latest research on male-female differences but first let me add a few notes of caution.
First, nature usually distributes characteristics of living things normally. For example, height. If we were to measure the height of the entire population of the world we would find it spread across the height spectrum in a bell-shaped (normal or Gaussian) curve. If we were to subdivide the population into nations, we would find differences in height. The Dutch for example are very tall but the Chinese are quite small. No-one is saying that all Dutch are tall and all Chinese are small, for the shape of the overlapping bell-shaped curves shows very clearly that some people lie outside the norm. But there are statistically significant differences in their height and scientists will need to be able to draw conclusions from the data they collect and so make generalisations where they see a difference between populations. Remember that male and female brains and ways of thinking are found in varying degrees in both men and women. Nonetheless, there are some statistically significant differences between the ways our brains work and the ways we behave.
Perhaps the most salient and most recent summing up of the differences has been made by Professor Simon Baron Cohen of Cambridge University in his book The Essential Difference and his colleague Professor Melissa Hines in her book Brain Gender. These texts draw on fMRI work and the location of sex-linked genes that determine sex-differentiated behaviours. I will use Baron-Cohen’s definition of the essential differences which states that women are hardwired for empathising and men for systematising. In using the shorthand word empathising he summarises all the evidence that women are more interested in people, relationships, communicating. By using the word systematising, he is reflecting the evidence that men are more interested in inputs, operations and outputs and the objects and data that perform within systems. I shall illustrate this difference as follows:
A woman's husband had been slipping in and out of a coma for several months, yet she stayed by his bedside every single day. When he came to, he motioned for her to come nearer. As she sat by him, he said, "You know what? You have been with me all through the bad times. When I got fired, you were there to support me. When my business failed, you were there. When I got shot, you were by my side. When we lost the house, you gave me support. When my health started failing, you were still by my side... You know what?" "What dear?" She asked gently. "I think you bring me bad luck."
In summary, the latest research suggests that
MEN WOMEN
Talk more
Interrupt more
Appear more certain
Boast more
Use opposition and debate more
Use more direct than indirect speech
Take higher risks
Ask more questions
Seek opinion more
Give more praise
Say thank you more
Apologise more
Soften criticism more
Complain more
Down play their authority
Allow themselves to be interrupted more
Look at things through binoculars
Remember isolated incidents and facts
Move from problem to solution to action
Find it difficult to filter out background noise
Separate emotionality from rationality
Don’t verbalise emotion easily
Look at things through a kaleidoscope
Remember connections and patterns
Juggle possible solutions, explore all angles
Can listen to several noises at once
Take things more personally
Verbalise emotions easily
Want to win
Deal with one issue at a time, think linearly
Forge ahead
Look for gaps, conflict and weaknesses
Usually want to get straight to the point
Deal with stress by fight or flight then remove themselves to focus on a solution
Want to engage
Deal with several issues at once, switch topics easily
Need to justify
Look for areas of agreement
Usually explore every detail before concluding
Deal with stress by sharing and validating with others
So given that we are so different, present different talents, are interested in different things, have different priorities and perhaps even different values, it is not surprising that as women have joined the workforce in increasing numbers there have been a pioneering few who have perhaps had male type brains who have fitted in well and succeeded, but the larger majority of women now joining perhaps bring something different and feel different, even uncomfortable.
So my third scenario is parallel worlds where women choose not to stay in the existing format and fight to change from within, but leave and set up their own businesses, their own institutions which allow them to do things their own way.
A man is wandering around in the desert, lost, starving, thirsty when he sees coming over the sand dune a man on a camel. “Help me” he croaks. “I need water”. “Oh sorry I don’t have any water,” says the man. “But I have ties. You want a tie?” “Water!” says the thirsty man. “No sorry,” says the man on the camel and rides away. A day later the guy is nearly dead when another man on a camel comes riding by. He sees him, rides over, stops and looks down at this figure in the sand and says “You OK? You need a tie?” “Water!” utters the dying man. “Sorry, no water. I’ve got ties though. You want a tie? I’ve got bow ties, long ties, all colours…look” and he shows the man a vast array of ties. When the dying man slumps back into the sand he rides on. A few hours later the man has managed to crawl to the top of a sand dune and looks down to see an oasis not 100 yards from him with a sparkling lake and waving palm trees and a beautiful resort hotel. He pulls his last few ounces of strength together and crawls across the sand to the gates, lifts up his arm to the security guard at the gate and asks for “Water”. “I’m sorry sir,” came the reply. “You can’t come in here without a tie.”
The point about scenario 3, creating parallel worlds, is that women would be able to make their own rules and not have to guess the mysteries of the current system designed by men. They won’t be discriminated against because they don’t have a tie. Scenario 3 is already happening as more women start their own businesses than ever before, and as a critical mass gathers, more women will be seen doing business the way they want it done, for the reasons they want to do it.
This may mean businesses that are focused less on making capital and profit and more on sustaining communities, the environment and families. This is not because women can’t do it men’s way but they don’t want to do it men’s way. Their talents are of a different nature and in a different scale. Many men may want to join this world, and they would be very welcome.
Wild cards
Wild cards are the low probablility, high impact events that all futurists need to watch out for. In terms of wild cards that may affect the future of men and women, perhaps we should consider these possibilities:
• a pandemic which kills either only men or only women or wars that kill young men
Modern warfare is highly targeted and unlikely to reduce massive numbers of men, so this wild card would take us by surprise. It is interesting to note that after the first world war when an entire generation of young men were lost, many women took comfort in the company of other women and became lesbians, although it wasn’t called by that name and certainly was not acknowledged. This would bring social relief only however and we would need to have sufficient stocks of sperm in the bank for the species to survive. If the pandemic killed off large numbers of women, the species would be in big trouble unless artificial wombs were a reliable reality. Needless to say, any wild card that results in a significant imbalance will return the surviving gender to supremacy, for numbers bring power. Whilst we’re still 50/50, we stand a chance of achieving equality.
Other wild cards include:
• nanotechnology gone wild which reverses our biological sex or plays with our neurology and changes our gender
• artificial intelligence or singularity which turns on humans and destroys the species.
But these wild cards will cause social meltdown, affecting not just our gender differences but the future of the whole human race.
Conclusions
So the picture is quite complex and could evolve in several different ways. Female supremacy is something that doesn’t worry me too much however. After 3000 or more years of male domination, these last 100 years have witnessed emancipation without much threat of reverse hegemony. Women know what its like to be subjugated and I don’t think they’d want revenge.
Indeed, I read an interesting piece of research last week that gave me comfort. In his book “Physical Control of the Mind: towards a psychocivilised society”, Jose Manuel Delgado reports the results of an experiment with a female monkey called Elsa. Elsa was billeted in a cage with several other monkeys and an alpha male called Ali. She discovered a lever the experimenters had provided for her which when activated sent a signal to an implant in the part of Ali’s brain that controlled physical aggression. To her delight, Elsa discovered that if she pressed the lever Ali when Ali started towards her, he would stop and leave her alone. But it was Elsa’s attitude that struck Delgado more than anything. She started doing something that was unheard of in a monkey colony. She started looking more directly at Ali, which for a submissive monkey was highly unusual, for the fear of immediate retaliation was always present. He reports that “although Elsa did not become the dominant animal, she was responsible for blocking many attacks against herself and for maintaining a peaceful coexistence within the whole colony.”
Its not supremacy, but that’s the kind of future for men and women that I look forward to.
