Andrew Sullivan on evolutionary psychology

Since Andrew Sullivan has moved to New York Magazine, I find him more liberal, more tempered, more rational, and more readable. His three-part essay this week is notable for what he says in the first part: “#MeToo and the Taboo Topic of Nature” Don’t be put off by the title: it’s really a discussion of evolutionary psychology infused with Sullivan’s experiences as a gay man.

One thing that makes the Left less appealing than it used to be is its overt resistance to scientific findings that supposedly go against the liberal narrative. For example, any suggestion that there might be evolutionary differences between human ethnic groups, or between men and women, is not only denied, but has become so taboo that merely to bring up these subjects risks opprobrium from the Left. Evolutionary psychology and studies of “race” have been demonized by many to the extent that these endeavors are sometimes deemed worthless.

Likewise, the Left obdurately resists any notion that there are evolved differences between the behavior, abilities, or preferences of men and women. Cordelia Fine, for example, has made this her goal, and while her two books on the subject are good in parts, they’re also deeply flawed in some of their critiques. For instance, males are larger and stronger than females, and it’s hard to explain this without invoking sexual selection. And if sexual selection on the human body caused dimorphism in morphology, isn’t it reasonable to expect it to have caused differences in behavior and brains— just the kind of differences that produce behaviors we see in human society? (Males are generally promiscuous and willing to mate with many females, looking for signs of reproductive capacity, while women are pickier, and more attuned to signs of males being good providers. Males are also more competitive and take more risks when they’re of reproductive age.) Another example: P. Z. Myers is on a constant tirade against evolutionary psychology, and has made the ludicrous statement that “the fundamental premises of evo psych are false.” But those “fundamental premises” are only that the human mind, like the human body, bears traces of our evolutionary ancestry and the selective pressures that molded it. (See my longer response here and here.)

The reason that some Leftists oppose this kind of science, of course, is because they think it enables racism and sexism, with the premise being that any observed differences will be grounds for discrimination. But that need not be true: for example, groups will differ on many axes: better on some, worse on others. More important, and as I’ve emphasized endlessly, the moral and political equality of groups should not be grounded on empirical research. For if you do that, and then, like Fine, slant your analyses to match your ideology, asserting that women and men are absolutely equal in all respects, then your argument for equality becomes vulnerable to future empirical observation of differences. Further, as Pinker emphasized in his Spiked remarks at Harvard, if the Left tries to deny scientific findings, it simply drives people toward the right. Our best strategy, and one that comports with centuries of moral philosophy, is to be open to scientific research but absolutely committed to equality of opportunity for all.

Sullivan’s piece is about the denial of evolutionary psychology by the Left; he too thinks that it’s maladaptive to pretend that all groups are, on average, exactly the same. His perspective as a gay man is quite interesting. An excerpt (my emphasis):

. . . in our increasingly heated debate about gender relations and the #MeToo movement, this natural reality [the effects of testosterone on behavior, based on Sullivan’s own experience with hormone therapy]— reflected in chromosomes and hormones no scientist disputes — is rarely discussed. It’s almost become taboo. You can spend a lifetime in gender studies and the subject will never come up. All differences between the sexes, we are now informed, are a function of the age-old oppression of women by men, of the “patriarchy” that enforces this subjugation, and of the power structures that mandate misogyny. All differences between the genders, we are told, are a function not of nature but of sexism. In fact, we are now informed by the latest generation of feminists, following the theories of Michel Foucault, that nature itself is a “social construction” designed by men to oppress women. It doesn’t actually exist. It’s merely another tool of male power and must be resisted.

This is, however, untrue. Even the newest generation of feminists concede this on the quiet. Although they will organize to shut down an entire magazine to prevent an airing of an alternative view of gender, they are not currently campaigning to shut down the Planet Earth series because it reveals that in almost every species, males and females behave differently — very differently — and there appears to be no “patriarchy” in place to bring this about at all. They know enough not to push their argument into places where it will seem to be, quite obviously, ridiculous. But it is strikingly obvious that for today’s progressives, humans are the sole species on this planet where gender differentiation has no clear basis in nature, science, evolution, or biology. This is where they are as hostile to Darwin as any creationist.

And this is stupid. The alternative explanation — that these core natural differences between men and women have been supplemented by centuries of conscious oppression — is staring us in the face. The fascinating conundrum is where one ends and the other begins. How much of this difference is natural and how much is social? That is the question. And the answer is a tricky one. Is the fact that the vast majority of construction workers are male and the huge majority of nurses are female a function of sexism or nature? Is male sexual aggression and horniness a function of patriarchy or testosterone? Is the fact that women now outnumber men among college graduates a function of reverse sexism or nature?

My suspicion is that it’s more about nature than about society, and one reason I believe this (apart from all the data) is I because I’m gay. I live in a sexual and romantic world without women, where no patriarchy could definitionally exist, a subculture with hookups and relationships and marriages and every conceivable form of sexual desire that straight men and women experience as well. And you know what you find? That men behave no differently in sexual matters when there are no women involved at all. In fact, remove women, and you see male sexuality unleashed more fully, as men would naturally express it, if they could get away with it. It’s full of handsiness and groping and objectification and lust and aggression and passion and the ruthless pursuit of yet another conquest. And yes, I mean conquest. That’s what testosterone does. It’s also full of love, tenderness, compassion, jealousy, respect, dignity, and a need for security and a home. It’s men’s revenge on men. The old joke applies: What does a lesbian bring on a second date? A U-Haul. What does a gay man bring on a second date? What second date?

I know this must be a pain in the neck for most women. But it’s who we are. It’s a blessing and a curse. It’s called being male, this strange creature, covered in hair, pinioned between morality and hormones, governed by two brains, one above and one below. We can and should be restrained, tamed, kept under control. But nature will not be eradicated. And when left-feminism denies nature’s power, ignores testosterone, and sees all this behavior as a function entirely of structural patriarchal oppression, it is going to overreach.

. . . Trump understands this dynamic intuitively. Bannon believed it was integral to the Trump project, and wants the slanted elite discourse on men to continue and intensify. I think this issue was an under-acknowledged cause for Clinton’s failure. At some point, Democrats and liberals are going to have to decide if they want to “problematize” half the voting population. They are going to have to figure out who they really side with: Brooklyn or much of America? Reality or an ideology? Both genders or one?

Sullivan goes on to describe how gay men, in their own relationships, show the same dynamics that that straight men do with women, while lesbians in relationships show behavior similar to straight women. (Read the piece to see Sullivan’s joke about this.) To Sullivan, this is evidence that the important differences of sexual behaviors between men and women are based on hormones and genetics, not pure social conditioning. (I suppose one could counterargue that even gay men and women were socialized when young, but a counter-counter argument would note, as Sullivan did above, that there are striking parallels between sexual dimorphism in human sexual behavior and animal sexual behavior. Is there a patriarchy in wild chimpanzees?)

Sullivan is not, of course, defending the sexual predators singled out by #MeToo. He’s merely pointing out that in our future discussions of the fraught sexual dynamics between men and women (or men with men, or women with women), we must take into account that there are biological differences between the sexes that will affect their behavior.  It’s always better to know what’s true when trying to deal with a problematic issue.

Read the whole piece (the other two pieces, not as thought-provoking, are about Trump’s wall—Sullivan is for it, but not for the reason you think—and about how underrated Washington, D.C. is).

 h/t: Gregory