288. Bitch: On the Female of the Species (6)
1 (57m 45s):
Or
2 (57m 46s):
That she's amazing.
1 (57m 47s):
Yeah. Modern conservatives have this idea of the nuclear family is the natural family, even though a lot of them reject evolution entirely, which is kind of funny, but, but wasn't it Sarah Blaffer hoodies, was it mothers and others or mother nature that said actually there's a lot of different ways that families can be structured, quite healthily, where those children thrive and survive and flourish and had their own children and so on. And so on up the chain.
2 (58m 18s):
Absolutely. I mean, Sarah has been an absolute pioneer in all of this, of course, and mothers and others and, and mother nature, both, you know, along with the woman who never evolved that trio of books. I mean, I really recommend, I think they're still brilliant, you know, and I, you know, she's, you know, they're not, then they're not recent recently, but they are fantastic. And she's, you know, she's, she's, it's have you that, you know, our ancestors, you know, probably lived in small groups and females mated with multiple males and, and the family unit was, was more dispersed. You know, it was, it was, you know, males and females caring for offspring and, and that, you know, and she even thinks that, you know, our ability to empathize with, as a result of this sort of diffuse, you know, you know, care is, is one of the reasons why we became so smart, you know, so she's, she's, she's really thought about it and she doesn't see the nuclear family ideal of something, you know, where's our natural place, you know?
1 (59m 27s):
Yeah. I think part of the problem that your book exposes is what Richard Dawkins calls the tyranny of the discontinuous mind that is binary thinking in just these kind of black and white there's two bins, there's male and female, and all the ones in the one bin are one way. And the other, it's hard not to think like that, right. To think statistically like to overlapping bell curves. Yes. The means are different, but there's a lot of overlap there and that's just in the humans. Right. And then is your book shows, well, just, just widen that out to a thousand different species and you see considerable variation.
2 (1h 0m 4s):
Absolutely. I think that, you know, as a species, we just, we're just wired for binary thinking, you know, black and white for a friend or folk good or bad. We just, we just want things to be neat and, you know, fit in one of two buckets, you know, but you know, what I discovered, you know, reading, you know, researching this book is, is that, you know, there is, there's this huge overlap, you know, and, and sometimes, you know, the differences between the text six is a really, just a sort of a product or statistics, you know, because, because of the overlap, but if you take the averages, then you suddenly you get a sort of discernible difference between the two, you know, height isn't, it is a great example of that in, in amongst males and females, there's just huge overlap and it's the same for every trait, you know, there's a huge overlap, you know, and, and of course, you know, that's, that's, that's necessary because, you know, if we're, if we're all the same, then we, you know, evolution wouldn't have so much to work with, you know, so it's, it's good.
2 (1h 1m 9s):
There's all this variation, you know, and, and what are was surprised to discover is really that males and females are more alike than we are different. And, you know, and I talked to you earlier about the, the gene, the genetics behind it. And that really sort of, for me, was like the, the sort of mindblowing basis of it all and was sort of understanding how similar the process of differentiation and determination and differentiation is, and made me really understand how, you know, we're just made of the, you know, we're made of the same genes, the same brains, the same bodies, the same hormones, you know, you know, we do have differences associated with reproduction, but otherwise, you know, this idea that we're radically different, you know, or it just doesn't, it isn't true.
2 (1h 2m 1s):
And I, and I feel that Darwin in a way, drove a wedge between the sexist, by focusing on the differences, we really hung up on that. Actually, maybe we should be looking at the similarities and maybe that would be more revealing. It would certainly make us more empathetic towards one another as humans. That's for sure.
1 (1h 2m 18s):
For sure. Well, Lucy, I, you have a hard out, you got to get ready for your book event tonight. So last kind of reflection, in addition to these two bins in this binary thinking, we also seem to want to rank the sexist. You know, why is that? I mean, there's like we add a moral component to it. The battle of the sexist, you know, men are better leaders, no women are better leaders because they're more empathetic, you know, Angela Merkel or, you know, who is a male leader, but why do we have to do that? Why do we do that? And how do we get past that?
2 (1h 2m 48s):
You know, again, you're asking as ecologists the question about humans. So I, I find humans just as confusing as you do, find it a lot more easier just studying animals. I find it a lot more straightforward humans. I'm going to quote, now I guessed infantis, lazing, Princeton, and he refers to his genius. I love Augustan Francis. I think he's fantastic. I've just in fact, I just bought, I was in Elliott bay bookstore, just buying the updated version of race, monogamy and other lies. They told you brilliant, brilliant book. First edition was amazing. He's a brilliant, I mean, he's, he, he, he refers to humans and I don't think it was his original phrase, but it was him that had his bio social X, you know, and that's because the bio cultural, sorry, bio cultural X, you know, so, you know, if you take biology and, and all the similarities that we have and all the sort of possibilities that we have, and then you throw the effects of culture on to that, which is what we have as humans, you know, and suddenly you have just so limitless kind of possibilities really don't you, you know, and I think it becomes, you know, the impact of culture.
2 (1h 4m 4s):
I'm fascinated by this, you know, the impact of culture on biology, which is obviously here. And so, you know, I think, you know, these are exciting times, revolutionary biologists. We've got a lot of, a lot of, a lot of, of the, sort of the, the, the, the, the basis, basic paradigms of propping up these sort of these, these fundamental sex differences are being torn down. And, and hopefully that can only benefit us as humans at the end of the
1 (1h 4m 35s):
Well
2 (1h 4m 37s):
Cultural.
1 (1h 4m 38s):
Yeah, I like that. I like that. Well, Lucy, I love the book, love the title of your work. And I'll just add this. I do know women who have said, I never want to have children. My, my office manager for, for skeptic magazine for years, I'm never having children. I have good and Carolinas. And then she had a child and went, oh my God, this is the best thing I ever did. So you never know, you don't find out until you try it. Who cares about other people's get up at it, but mine now that's different. Right? So some, some people do think about that. Okay. Where's your, where's your next adventure. One of the fun things about your book was all the trips you took and all the crazy places you went to. What what's next on your travel agenda besides the book tour?
2 (1h 5m 19s):
Oh God, I tell you what I'm thinking about. The ne the next, the follow-up will be a companion piece to pitch with it's begging to be written. It will be, will be how science got males wrong, and I'll call it cock and bull.
1 (1h 5m 33s):
That's great. I think you're going to just call it bastard, but cock and bull is even better
2 (1h 5m 42s):
Brilliant, right? Because it's comparable, you know, so I'm really fascinated. There was a load of stuff that I couldn't include, because I only wanted to tell stories about females at Fitch. And there's loads of fascinating stories of male variation. I think these Darwinian stereotypes, they do males as much of a disservice as they do when women, you know, the idea that, that you're meant to be striving to being when some aggressive, alpha male and, and all the myths around what being an alpha male really is, you know? So, so that's, that's what I'm going to start on next. Once I've, once I've finished, I'm promoting.
1 (1h 6m 16s):
I like it. I like that. All right. We'll have you on for that. And I'll tell you how much from a guy's perspective you got, right. That's funny.
2 (1h 6m 28s):
All
1 (1h 6m 28s):
Right, Lucy.
2 (1h 6m 30s):
Yeah. Pleasure.
