Mars and Venus: thoughts on the nature and evolution of (sssh!) sex. Part II

We tried to make a delicate point in the wake of the Penn State child abuse scandal, which seems to have  'released' inhibitions across the country, perhaps even more readily than a decade or more of stories about abuse in the Catholic Church.  If up to a quarter of people were abused as children, and even if each abuser was a multiple offender, then abusers are very common in our society.

In the previous post in this series we reviewed an article by Barron et al., in the December 2011 BioEssays, that argued that we now clearly know that there is much more variation in sex-related behavior than a dichotomous male-female view reflects, and that a more nuanced, variation-reflecting truth should be taught in college courses.  Plus, of course, if there is so much variation and if it is biologically based, that may call for explanations about how it could have evolved, given the strong and direct fitness effects associated with reproductive success.

If gender behavior evolved because of Darwinian selection for successful reproduction, a long-standing problem for evolutionary biologists has been to explain the much less common aspects of behavior such as homosexuality, trans-sexuality, voluntary celibacy and the like.  Rationales and (we would suggest) post-hoc wriggling have been offered to ensure that gender behavior is indeed biologically driven by a long history of selection 'for' successful reproductive strategies.

Of course, if there is variation in genes that causes these kinds of anomalies (assuming that they can be called that), one can ask why they exist.  The variants must be new enough not yet to have been screened away by selection....yet homosexuality is far too common to have survived such stringent selection.

Culture can make people do strange things, like be suicide bombers, commit infanticide, or agree to voluntary celibacy.  In this sense, culture is a human trait based on imagined truths (going to Heaven for such acts, for example).  That means culture can override biological 'imperatives' a view that we would personally agree with.  But there's more, since the term imperative invokes just the kind of dichotomous thinking that Barron et al. object to.

So among other aspects of variation in sex and gender behavior, what could possibly explain anything resembling a quarter of people being sexually abused and so many abusers?   We know that some cultures allow or even mandate consummated marriages for children of ages that in our society would be defined as sexual abuse.  This includes cultures that in various ways allow or mandate homosexual encounters with what we define as 'children' (classical Greece is one example, but only one).  Definitions of what constitutes rape vary over time, and one can easily list variation that clearly muddies up any simplistic evolutionary arguments:  stoning adulterers in societies that now, or recently, have allowed or encouraged polygamy; making forcible sex in marriage illegal and calling it rape; same-sex marriages, and more.  And of course there were laws about inter-racial sex or marriage, and there is the current abortion controversy.

Society can determine what is accepted behavior and who can be locked up for what.  Is our idea that child abusers are pathological purely cultural and definitional? Or, why are there so many of them?  After all, especially in the case of same-sex abusers, what evolutionary mandate is being reflected in their behavior?  Are they super-sexed-up so that during their lives they actually sire more children than their contemporaries--in which case their 'abuse' is simply a manifestation of their superior sexuality?  But this seems unlikely since most people are not sexually attracted to children.

Since our society calls child sexual abuse abnormal and illegal, and in our society, the effect on children can be profound and lifelong, people certainly should not do it!  But it seems too common to be called 'abnormal' in the medical or psychopathological sense.  The article by Barron et al., if even reasonably on the mark, implies that as a population we have not come to grips with the natural variation in sex-related behavior.  Whether the variation is caused by genes (and if even that means it is 'mandated') or by culture, its very existence raises questions that evolutionary psychology should take seriously rather than ignore or sweep under the rug (much less be oblivious to).

Should how and where social policy and legal constraints ought to be applied be derived from a better understanding of biology, or is it appropriate for cultural and religious criteria to be used to establish constraints, whether or not they go against biological 'mandates' (if there are such things)?

Mars and Venus: thoughts on the nature and evolution of (sssh!) sex. Part I

In the wake of the revelation of alleged repeated sexual assault on young boys by a big boy who was a football player and legendary coach here at Penn State, we mused about what it all meant.  An important part of that story was how the event released all sorts of other allegations of child sexual abuse, by men and women, and figures suggesting that a sixth to as much as a quarter of both men and women had been sexual abused as children.

That the issue expanded in this way could in part be a common phenomenon of the expansion of definitions to include more than gross physical abuse, copycat claims and the like.  But even if that were partly true, still the prevalence of adult offenders is rather astonishing.  Sexual abusers are not just very rare deviants, but part of the 'normal' (that is, usual) distribution of sexual behavior--so that child sexual abuse is apparently a common form of violation of law and publicly proclaimed standards.

This is not any sort of defense of child abuse, and we won't rehash our commentary here.  But the point is that there is much more variation in sexual, or perhaps more properly put, gender-related behavior than is generally acknowledged.

Today's post was triggered by a thoughtful commentary by Andrew Barron and two co-authors, in the December issue of BioEssays, itself a thoughtful journal.  The article is about how we are--or aren't--appropriately educating undergraduates about what is actually known about sex and gender and associated behaviors.  As the authors put it:

Research over the last decades has stimulated a paradigm shift in biology from assuming fixed and dichotomous male and female sexual strategies to an appreciation of significant variation in sex and sexual behaviour both within and between species. This has resulted in the development of a broader biological understanding of sexual strategies, sexuality and variation in sexual behaviour. However, current introductory biological textbooks have not yet incorporated these new research findings.

The authors further state that

Darwin’s strict view of male and female roles most likely reflected the social constraints of his time, yet these stereotypic assumptions have influenced  evolutionary and biological research for decades. Darwin characterised males as competitive and eager in the pursuit of females, while females were described as passive, coy and choosy. Darwin’s theory of sexual selection has been enormously influential and still enjoys tremendous research discourse.

They go on to discuss how we could improve education by properly presenting what is now actually known about sexual behavior, sexual selection, and related topics.  Most books cling to the simple ideas of classical Darwinism and their expanded theoretical treatment from a mathematical and selectinonist perspective often called 'evolutionary psychology' or 'behavioral evolution'.

There is the problem, according to Barron et al., of too rigid a separation of the sexes and much too rigid dichotomization of behavior that, within and among species, is far more variable, plastic, and less stereotypical than is the usual treatment--or caricature--that is offered.  Not so long ago, Joan (once Jonathan) Roughgarden wrote a book, Evolution's Rainbow: Diversity, Gender, and Sexuality in Nature and People, similarly intended to debunk simplistic Darwinian treatments of sexual selection.  We mention Joan née Jonathan because Roughgarden can be viewed as having  personal, political, and experience-based, as well as scientific interests in a less rigid view of sexual identity and behavior.  Points of view are rarely totally disinterested, and that might be expected to be a major aspect of a subject such as this.

In a somewhat similar vein, Barron et al. argue (and cite supporting literature) that "biological sex (and its associated traits)" are in fact "a fundamentally plastic reaction norm."  They cite Kinsey research showing "significant and consistent variation in sexual behavior," and argue that too often sex and gender (sex-related behavior) are equated when they really are far less rigidly stereotypical in humans and in other species.

To the extent that they are on target, this is a problem because a rigid dichotomization of what is actually more overlapping and variable will lead to social definitions that categorize people, lead to laws setting legal limits and punishments, and restrictions on personal freedoms that are cultural reflections of mistaken biology.

Someone with strong selectionist views such as are common among evolutionary psychology or behavioral evolution may feel that these authors have overstated the amount variation, and that things are actually more dichotomous than Barron et al. allege or have similar reactions to Roughgarden's book.  We are not expert in this area and we are less sanguine about adaptive explanations that are so common and, we feel, weakly supported but too strongly argued in evolutionary psychology.  That difference aside, however, the point here is that if one wants to understand sex and gender behavior in our own society (forgetting strutting peacocks and bright red male cardinals), we would do well to understand what is actually going on in Nature, rather than what our culture considers 'right', 'normal', or 'pathological.'

Barron et al.'s point is that education is doing a disservice to the variation that exists.  They identify areas of sex and behavior that they feel should be included in modern college courses on the subject that would properly reflect the variation seen in Nature.  Their concern is biological factors (not just cultural ones in humans) that affect sex and gender beyond the mechanics and genetics of reproduction.  An example is the controversy over the genetic causation of homosexuality ('gay' genes).  They find that psychology texts do a better job of this but that most anthropology and especially biology texts fail their test.

But what does this have to do with sexual abuse of children?  In Part II we'll return to a point we made in our initial Sandusky-related blog-post.