Joan Roughgarden and autogynephilia

The final part in a series about Joan Roughgarden and her studies of sex, gender and nature. In this post I look at what Roughgarden's alternative view of evolution and sex can mean for male to female crossdreamers.

Joan Roughgarden's reflections on biology and gender began with a gay parade in San Fransciso:

"In June 1997 I marched in my first gay pride parade. I walked up Market Street in San Francisco, from the Civic Center to the Ferry Building. The parade was one of the biggest I had ever seen, and the sidewalks on both sides were packed six deep. I had heard that 1 in 10 people is gay or lesbian, but had always felt this number exaggerated. At this parade, though, I began to realise for the first time that the number of gays may indeed plausibly reach that figure."

The biologist in her found this to be quite of a problem:

"My discipline teaches that homosexuality is some sort of unexplained anomaly. If the purpose of sexual contact is reproduction, as the standard explanation has it, how can all these gay people exist? One might argue they are somehow defective, that some developmental error or environmental influence has misdirected their sexual fantasies. If so, gay and lesbian people are here for a brief time during our species' evolution, awaiting removal when natural selection prunes those with lower Darwinian fitness."

Same-sex behavior is common

Roughgarden finds, though, that same-sex behavior is common in nature, and have probably been so for a very long time, which means that Darwin's view -- that males and females have preordained roles of "horny handsome warriors and discreetly discerning damsels" -- is wrong.

In her words:

"In many species, including ours, females are not necessarily less eager than males, nor do females all yearn for Arnold Schwarzenegger. Females often solicit males, and males often decline. Moreover, in many species the supposed sex roles reverse. Even Darwin acknowledged species of birds, like the jacana, in which the females are highly ornamented and the males dull and drab, reversing the peafowl story.

Gay animals

Part four in a series about sex, gender and nature. In this post I look at the  world of gay animals.

The very popular documentary movie The March of the Penguins from 2005 was used by Christian fundamentalists to prove that in God's nature animals are heterosexual and monogamous. They had long argued that homosexuality was unnatural, and here was the proof.

The problem is that there is a lot of same-sex action among penguins. Same-sex behavior has been observed in close to 1500 species, and is well documented for 500 of them. There is in general a lot of "gay" animals.

All right, make note of the quotation marks. To use words like "gay" and "homosexual" when it comes to animals is complicated, as those words have a lot of human connotations that do not necessarily fit other species (or other human cultures for that matter).

Still, it makes sense to look at the phenomenon of same-sex sexuality among animals, because it broadens the scope of what can be considered "natural" in the original sense of the word.

What causes "homosexual" behavior among animals?

Sexual selection theory consider same-sex behavior a mistake, a deception or a disease caused by genes that decrease fitness in one sex but increase fitness in the other.

Among more "positive" theories we find indirect insemination, male over male domination, and "the practice hypothesis" (they are training for the real thing). Then there is the "sexually antagonistic selection" hypothesis: same-sex behaviour in males are favoured by selection because they increase the reproductive chances of their daughters.

Female Laysan albatrosses from Hawaii. Over 30 percent of the nesting pairs consist of two females. "They engage in mutual preening and even occasionally copulation, and, like female-male pairs, each year they raise a single chick." (Research by Lindsay Young, ref. New Scientist, Photo: Tui De Roy/Minden Pictures/FLPA)

Professor Joan Roughgarden over at Stanford, on the other hand, considers homosexuality a positive and natural thing in and for itself:

"Homosexuality, together with mutual grooming, preening, sleeping, tongue rubbing, and interlocking vocalization allows animals to work together as a team -- to coordinate actions and tacitly to sense one another's welfare." (2009, p. 245)

In other words, animals -- like humans -- use sex for bonding.

Macho gay big horns and effeminate straight rams

In Evolution's Rainbow Roughgarden describes many species with same-sex behavior. I am not going to go through all of them here, but find the macho big horn sheep of North America so fascinating that I just have to give you a taste of what the book has to offer.

The male and female big horn sheep are only together during the breeding season. A female is receptive only for three days and will not be mounted outside of these three days. The males solve this lack of sex by forming "homosexual societies". Almost all males participate in same-sex courting and anal copulation!

The few males who do not take part in this activity are known as "effeminate" males among big horn researchers. They look like the other males, but prefer to stay with the ewes:

These males do not dominate females, are less aggressive overall, and adopt a crouched, female urination posture. These males refuse mounting by other males.

As Roughgarden points out, this case turns the meanings of normal and aberrant upside down. In this case the researchers believe the effeminate male must suffer from some kind of hormone deficiency, in spite of the fact that they look the same as the masculine males:

"Now, why would being straight be a pathology, requiring a hormone checkup?" Roughgarden asks sarcastically. "According to the researchers, what's aberrant is that a macho-looking bighorn ram acts feminine! He pees like a female -- even worse than being gay!" (2004, p. 138)

The bonobo - our pansexual sibling

Our closest relatives in the animal kingdom are the chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and the bonobos (or pygmy chimpanzees, Pan paniscus). We share 96 percent of our genes with them.

Chimpanzees behave the way they should according to the sexual selection theory. The males are aggressive, the females subordinate. Among the bonobos, however, the females have the upper hand, and they use sex as a way of dissolving conflicts.

Chimpanzee matings are front to back, with the male mounting. Bonobos, on the other hand, also enjoy the missionary position, although I doubt any missionary would find their sexual habits comforting.

Image: Female bonobos having sex.
Source: Live Like Dirt

All bonobos enjoy same-sex copulations, female-female as well as male-male. The young are also invited. There is a lot of French kissing, fellatio, reciprocal male-to-male masturbation, clitoris rubbing, rump-rump contact and penis fencing.

Frans de Waal and Frans Lanting write that the most regular masturbators in their studies are adolescents and adult females (de Waal 1997, p. 104):

"The latter is significant because of yet another uniqueness claim: from Frank Beach to Desmond Morris, scientists have declared female orgasms to be exclusively human. While people readily assume males to enjoy sex, many appear skeptical about females. This reflects the puritan belief, prevalent until early this century [20th century], that sex is a man's privilege and a woman's chore."

The female orgasm is important, as it may partly explain the prominent role of the female in bonobo society. The orgasm means that the female bonobos are as motivated for sex as the males. The fact that the female bonobos are receptive almost continuously (unlike their chimpanzee sisters), also means that sex can be used as a social tool during the whole year.

The reason for all this sex is that it facilitates sharing of food, leads to reconciliation after a dispute, helps integrate new arrivals and is used in the establishment of coalitions. As for humans, reproduction is just one of many reasons for getting close.

"For example, after one male has chased another away for a female, the two may engage in a scrotal rub. Or when one female has hit a juvenile, and the juvenile's mother has come to its defense, the problem may be solved by intese GG-rubbing [genito-genital contact] between the two adults. >Based on hundreds of such incidents, my study produced the first solid evidence for sexual behavior as a mechanism to overcome social tension. " (de Waal 1997, p. 109)

Why gay?

As you can see from these two examples of "gay" animals, the sexual habits of animals vary a lot. You can not deduce one and only one explanation for same-sex relationships in all animals, nor can you use the bonobo or the big horns to explain human homosexuality (at least not directly).

But this very diversity is interesting, again because it helps us get around some of the sexual stereotypes of traditional evolutionary theory.

Why do the female bonobos enjoy each others company in this way? How can such a trait have evolved? Roughgarden points out that females maintain strong friendships with unrelated females, females control access to food, females share food with one another more often than with males, and females form alliances in which they cooperatively attack and even injure males.

"A female who doesn't participate in this social system, including same-sex sexuality, will not share in these group benefits. For a female bonobo, not being a lesbian is hazardous to your fitness." (2004, p. 150).

In this case same-sex sexuality is a social-inclusionary trait. Same-sex sexuality promotes friendship, and that may also increase survival. Given that these female bonobos also engage in "heterosexual" sex this can lead to more offspring.

It can be no question that "homosexuality" in animals is inherited, although not because of one single gene. (p. 155) And given that it can increase both fertility and survival, it does not necessarily go against evolution. (p. 156)

Now, the most important questions remain: What does all of this mean for transgendered people? That will be the topic of my final post in this series.

Here's a video with Rouggharden presenting her own theory:

Marcel Barelli‘s cartoon Dans la nature (In Nature) documents the diversity of animal sexuality and gender, proving  once and for all that nature does not care a bit about the binaries of bigots.

Litterature:

Roughgarden CV

Roughgarden, Joan: The Genial Gene, Berkeley 2009. Click here for Google Books excerpt.

Roughgarden, Joan: Evolution's Rainbow, Berkeley 2004. Click here for Google Books excerpt.

Homosexuality in animals (Wikipedia)

Susan McCarthy: The fabulous kingdom of gay animals

Bruce Bagemihl: Biological exuberance: animal homosexuality and natural diversity

Frans de Waal and Frans Lanting: Bonobo, the Forgotten Ape, Berkeley 1997. Click here for Google Books excerpt.

Transgender animals

The third part in a series about sex, gender and nature. In this post I look at the strange world of transgendered animals.

In her book Evolution's Rainbow (2004) Roughgarden has a separate chapter named "Multiple-Gender Families" which really took me by surprise.

I had heard the "Discovery Channel alpha male scaring the others males away" story so many times that I had come to believe that there are only two "genders" in the animal kingdom: male and female.

I need to make a little detour here. "Gender" is often understood to be the "socially constructed roles, behaviours, activities, and attributes that a given society considers appropriate for men and women." (WHO) Hence gender differences are defined by culture, sex differences by biology.

Roughgarden, however, is a biologist - not a social scientist - and in her tradition it is possible to use the word gender to denote the physical basis for the behavioral differences between males and females.

Roughgarden needs the term gender in addition to the term sex, simply because many animals have several variants for one or both of the two sexes!

This came as a total surprise to me. How is it possible than no one has ever told me this extremely important fact before? The answer, of course, is that it does not fit well with the sexual selection theory.

Gender multiplicity

So what does "multiple gendered animals" or "within-sex polymorphism" mean?

Roughgarden explains it this way:

"Males and females in a species may come in two or more sizes or colors. The morphological [pertaining to the form, structure and configuration of an organism] differences are the tip of the iceberg.

"The two morphs [i.e. gender variants of a sex] approach courtship differently, have different numbers of mates, have different arrangements of between-sex and same-sex relationships, live different life spans, prefer different types of real estate for their homes, exercise different degrees of parental care, and so on." (2004, p. 75)

Here are a few examples:

Singing fish

There are hundreds of known fish species that have two distinct types of males. The Californian singing fish (Porichthys notatus), for instance, have one large and one small type of males. The large type defend territories and guard eggs. A large male guards a big collection of eggs laid by several females. The small male defend no territories. They dart in to fertilize eggs laid in the large male's territory. (p. 77)

Male red deer or elk (Cervus elaphus) has a secondary type of males that have no antlers. They may at times be more successful at mating, according to Roughgarden (p. 78).

Three types of male

The North American bluegill sunfish (Lepomis macrochirus) has no less than three male genders, of different sizes and different colors and markings. The large males try to repel the small ones from their territories. The females spawn readily with the small males while the large male is busy with all his chasing (p. 80). The medium sized males may be schooling with the females. Roghgarden continues:

"A medium male approach the territory of a large male from above in the water and descends without agression or hesitation into the large male's territory. The two males then begin a courtship turning that continues for as long as ten minutes. In the end, the medium male joins the large male, sharing the territory that the large male originally made and defends." (p. 80)

A popular way of explaining away this strange phenomenon is to say that the medium male deceives the large one into believing he is a female.

But, as Roughgarden points out, this is the male chauvinist talking. Sunfish have great eyesight, and the medium "feminine" male may be similar to females, but they are not identical.

An alternative theory is that two males may defend the territory in a better way than one, and the females appreciate this.

Roughgarden prefers a third explanation:

"A female might wonder if she will suffer domestic violence from this male who's trying to look big and powerful...Perhaps the courtship between the large male and the medium male offers the female a chance to see how the large male behave with a feminine-looking fish who is slightly smaller than she is." (p. 84)

It gets weirder!

White-throated sparrows (Zonotrichia albicollis) of Ontario have two male and two female genders! In both males and females the white-striped individuals are more aggressive than the tan-striped individuals. Still, they can all find mates.

Not to be outdone the side-blotched lizard (Uta stansburiana) from the American Southwest has three male types and two female.

The flycatcher

Just a few kilometers from where I live now, you will find the pied flycatcher bird (Ficedula hypoleuca). Males vary from striking black and white to brown.

I have taken the liberty of reproducing a Russian drawing of the bird. Note that there is nothing here to signify that this bird violates the rule of having two genders. Indeed, the superiority of the male is displayed by the fact that there are no less than four drawings of the "normal" male, one of the female and none of the "feminine" male.

Roughgarden presents a Norwegian experiment where male flycatchers who had set up territories were presented with individual caged birds to see if they could distinguish the sexes:

"A territory-holding male who hadn't already attracted a female reacted to a female by showing off the entrance to his hole and calling enticingly. When the same male was presented with a macho black-and-white male, he was not so hospitable, and jumped on the cage of the visitor, pecking at it, trying to attack, and not bothering with any welcoming calls. When a feminine brown male was presented, the male again showed off his nest hole and called invitingly." (2004, p. 93)

Note that the research Roughgarden bases this description on argues that "the female-like males gain an advantage because they are in control of when to initiate a fight because of the opponent's poor sex recognition ability." (Sætre and Slagsvold 1995) The masculine male is therefore fooled into believing the feminine male is a peaceful girl. The Norwegian researchers see, as most of their colleagues, violence and deceit, where Roughgarden sees collaboration and the division of labor.

Roughgarden does not believe the male flycatcher is fooled by the feminine male. The problem with deceit theories, she says, is that not only must some animals be implausibly dumb, but others must be remarkably devious. The masculine flycatcher cannot be that stupid, because later in the year they tend to fend the feminine ones off.

"A simpler explanation is that territorial males who have not yet attracted a female are horny and invite romance with feminine males. Once the territorial ['masculine'] males have attracted a female, they are no longer horny and no longer interested in courting a feminine male... These birds may be neighbors building a cooperative relationship based on same-sex attraction." (p. 94-95)

Moreover, it is better for a masculine male to have a feminine "gynomorphic" male as a neighbor, than a much more aggressive masculine one.

Summing up

Many biologists have done their best to ignore this strange phenomenon. But there are just too many of these cases. They require an explanation. The sexual selection theorists therefore argue that the large aggressive territory-holding male gender is "the reference male", i.e. the real thing. The other types are at best considered "alternative mating strategies" and often described as "sexual parasites". They are cheaters.

But where the traditionalists sees conflict and deceit, Roughgarden sees a practical division of labor. Roughgarden says:

"According to social selection, economic theory for the elemental one-male-one-female economic team is extended to larger teams with more 'social niches'." (2009. p. 243.)

In general feminine imagery seems to be adapted by males to reduce hostility and promote friendship (p. 99).

Roughgarden argues that the different genders represent different sectors within a kind of community economy. While some of the genders compete, others are like service providers working under contract. In return for a peaceful behavior and care for the young, they get the opportunity to mate. (p. 105)

Roughgarden argues that markings and colors on animals represents their "body English". This is how animals tell one another what their social role is, what their intentions are, and what activities they promise to perform:

"Feminine males are participating in a conversation on topics and with words used more frequently by females than by masculine males [and visa versa for the masculine females]." (2009, p. 244)

This is why they look more like females.

Now I guess you are all waiting for the punch line: trangender people are like the transgender animals. That is not given. It is definitely hard to argue that most male to female crossdreamers are feminine looking men! My main point with these posts is first and foremost to help us all think outside the box, and to demonstrate how deeply mainstream biology is anchored in traditional gender roles. Still, I will discuss the possibility of trans people being a separate gender in the final post in this series.

Up next: Gay animals!

Litterature:

Roughgarden CV

Roughgarden, Joan: The Genial Gene, Berkeley 2009. Click here for Google Books excerpt.

Roughgarden, Joan: Evolution's Rainbow, Berkeley 2004. Click here for Google Books excerpt.

Homosexuality in animals (Wikipedia)

Susan McCarthy: The fabulous kingdom of gay animals

Nudging Darwin over the rainbow SFGate on Roughgarden

Bruce Bagemihl: Biological exuberance: animal homosexuality and natural diversity

An amazing must see cartoon about queer and transgender animals

Joan Roughgarden on social evolution

Second part in a series about sex, gender and nature. In this post I look at the social selection theory of Joan Roughgarden.

Joan Roughgarden is a professor in evolutionary biology over at Stanford. I found her via a review of her new book The Genial Gene in the New Scientist.

The Genial Gene is one of the most radical attacks on Darwin I have seen in a long time. Not that she is a creationist arguing against natural selection, mind you. She does not, but she finds that the biologist's obsession with sexual selection to be questionable, and she and her research team puts up a fascinating alternative, called social selection.

Sexual selection

Sexual selection is based on the idea that individuals battle for their gene's survival in a fierce completion to get laid and get as many descendants as possible.

If you watch nature programs on Discovery or National Geographic you hear the same story over and over again: The tail of the peacock is large and colorful so that the male can attract females and have sex with them.

This narrative also confirms the stereotypes of human gender roles. According to Darwin males are passionate and females are coy. Still, the females have one important sphere of power: They select which male to have sex with, which is why males compete so hard between them. The fast and furious gets the girl.

This is relevant for transpeople, because these theories strengthen the social stereotypes of what it is to male or female. Any deviation from these stereotypes are therefore easily defined as something unnatural (in the true meaning of the word) and therefore something negative.

Sex and roles

Roughgarden does not deny that there males and females have different roles in the animal kingdom. But she does two things that are important for our understanding of the natural basis for sex differences:

1. She reinterprets the behavior of males and females according to a new overarching understanding of evolution. By doing that she kills some of the stereotypes.
   
   
2. She adds variety to the behavior of both males and females. There is no ideal macho male or sexy chick out there. In some species there are even different types of males and females, types that look and behave differently from others of the same sex.

Choosing a mate

The social selection theory of Roughgarden and her friends downplay the role of aggression and completion and focus instead on collaboration. She argues convincingly that there is no way the peacock hen can determine which male has the best genes based on the look of his tail. Indeed, research shows that the female disregard male plumage (Roughgarden 2009, p. 37).

Instead Roughgarden believes the female chooses to mate with the one she reckons will be the best to help her raise her offspring. Actually how the hen determines the parental capabilities of the male is a bit unclear to me, but in this respect her theory is at least as plausible as the old one.

Moreover, her theory (as opposed to the sexual selection theory) does not rest on the female's capability of finding the best man. You see, there is no hierarchy of genetic quality:

"All males are equivalent in genetic quality, except a rare fraction that obviously contain deleterious mutations and are present in a mutation-selection balance" (2009, p. 240).

I can remember how I as a young man reading about evolution, found it so hard to make sexual selection fit with what I saw around me. Clearly, it was not just the Queen of the Prom or the sexy soccer player that got kids? Most of my class mates got offspring, regardless of their looks or the brand of their car.

And if only the "fittest" of animals get offspring, why don't they all look the same? Why is there so much variation between individuals?

Reading Roughgarden makes it all make more sense, even if I think she downplays the role of aggression and violence a bit too much.

Compassionate Darwinism

Roughgarden says:

"According to social selection, what each sex does is subject to negotiation in local circumstances and statistical regularities in sex roles reflect commonness of circumstance.... Natural selection arises from differences in the number of offspring successfully reared, and particular behaviors are viewed as contributing to producing offspring and to building and maintaining a social infrastructure within which offspring are reared (Roughgarden 2009, p. 239)."

It is not the one who gets laid most often that win the race, but the one that manages to help his or her offspring survive through childhood. The best way of ensuring that is through collaboration and the division of labor, and that requires other skills than aggression and deceit.

Variation

Roughgarden again and again points to the enormous amount of variety found in nature. Collaboration can take many forms, and the behavior also changes over time. This is why closely related species like the chimpanzee, the bonobo and homo sapiens behave so differently.

There are, however, logical -- yes, even mathematical -- models that explain why such models of collaboration helps the survival of the species. I am not going into the details here, but if you have a mathematically inclined mind, take a look at The Genial Gene. In that book she demonstrates through game theory that collaboration is more effective than cheating for the survival of your own genetic lineage.

Sex and collaboration

According to the sexual selection narrative, male and females are in conflict and cooperation is at best a secondary development.

In Roughgarden's world things are different:

"According to social selection, male and female mates begin with a cooperative relationship because they have committed themselves to a common 'bank account' of evolutionary success. Their offspring represent indivisible earnings from a common investment. As such, conflict develops only secondarily if a division of labor cannot be successfully negotiated."

Roughgarden takes this propensity towards collaboration so far that she argues that males are not promiscuous by default. Male promiscuity is a strategy of last resort that occurs when males are excluded from control of offspring rearing. (I am not so sure about this one, especially when it comes to the males of homo sapiens, but I am willing to go give her -- and men -- the benefit of doubt.)

Sexual selection theory on the other hand describes monogamy as an entrapment of males by females. Males do not want all the hassle of rearing kids, but they accept it anyway in order to get laid.

Roughgarden takes the logic of collaboration down to the level of sperm and eggs.

In biology the difference between male and female is determined on the basis of the size of the gametes (sex cells). Following the logic of sexual selection the sperm seem to be cheating on the egg by forcing "her" to do all the hard work. In social selection the difference in sizes is a practical way of ensuring a successful conception. The big egg is easier to find for the sperm. Moreover, it contains the provisions needed for the first period of growth.

Power cliques

So what about the peacock's tail?

Well, Roughgarden does not think male ornaments (feathers, antlers etc.) are there for the female to judge the genetic quality of the male. She believes male and female ornaments serve as "admission tickets" to "power-holding cliques" that control the opportunity for successful rearing of offspring.

Again, this makes sense to me. A man doesn't buy an expensive car just to impress the girls. He buys it to impress his mates. He signals that he is successful and that he is one to be invited to the parties of the in-crowd.

Again and again I have been told that women dress up etc. to attract males, but the fact is that most men (apart from cross-dressers, that is :-) are unable to distinguish one brand of make-up, clothing or perfume from another. They will find a decently dressed woman attractive without knowing the secret language of women. The reason women put so much effort into shopping and brands, is first of all that they want to fit in with their fellow sisters, i.e. "the power cliques" of Roughgarden.

All right, but if this is the case, why doesn't the peacock hen have colorful plumage? The hens should, like human women, also strive to join cliques, right?

This is where Roughgarden gets a little vague. She has no general explanation of why male animals, as Darwin argued, seems to have more ornaments in general. In the case of the peacock, however, the explanation is simple: The female protects the eggs, so she has developed camouflage colors. I guess all the blue hens were killed off before their eggs hatched.

Another obvious argument would be that our tendency of interpreting blue feathers as more sexy than brown feathers, or big antlers as more impressive than no antlers, is biased. The male peacock clearly find the brown hen amazingly attractive.

Why is woman more ornamental?

As you probably have understood by now, I find this immensely fascinating, and again I am reminded of discussions I had when I was younger.

I guess it was the crossdreamer in me that had to ask the obvious question: If the male is the one with the colorful feathers, why is it that it is the human males who are grey and bland and the human females who are beautiful, colorful and have the more prominent curvy "ornaments"?

I admit I am a bit gynephiliacly biased here, but my impression is strengthened by the fact that in most cultures women also wear more ornamental and colorful clothes.

Believe it or not, but evolutionary biologists have taken the lack of male plumage seriously. Some of them argue that the human male ornament (the one used to impress the girls) is not their body but their brain. Men have developed huge brains to outsmart other men and thereby win their way into a girls heart. (No, I am not making this up!)

This immediately leads to the question: Why have females developed equally smart brains? Well, to appreciate the genetic quality of the male brain, of course!

Evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller puts it this way:

"If hominid females happened to develop a sexual preference for creative intelligence, then males with more creative intelligence would attract more sexual partners and would produce more offspring. Those offspring would inherit both the taste for clever courtship and the capacity for producing it. Over many generations, average creative intelligence in the lineage would increase rapidly, perhaps explaining why brain size tripled in just two million years."

Note that Miller doesn't make the obvious conclusion: that the females' have gotten bigger brains in order to attract males. Males are clearly not able to appreciate female intelligence! We go for tits and asses, and not for the woman's ability to help us raise our kids. So much for the big brain!

Seriously, I don't know where to begin...

Why am I telling you all this? Because we have to read all of this "authoritative" science for what it is: stories told by men and women like you an me: people who have their own hang-ups and prejudices.

Sexual differences

Let's get back on track:

Sexual selection theory find it hard to explain why some species have no or only small visible differences between the sexes (cp. penguins, sparrows or wolves). They normally explain this by saying that this happens when females lack a sense of aesthetics (!). This very argument does, of course, weaken the whole sexual selection theory.

For Roughgarden "sexual monomorphism" signals the absence of same-sex power cliques: "This should occur in ecological situations where the economically efficient coalition is the coalition of the whole," she says (p. 243).

Sex-role reversal

In some species we see sex-role reversal: The male provide more parental investment than the female.

This should not happen according to the sexual selection narrative. This narrative says that males should do less parenting, because the sperm is smaller than the egg (long story!). According to Roughgarden, this kind of natural feminism makes perfect sense. It is just another type of useful contract based on negotiations in that particular ecological niche.

Transgender animals

It is when Joan Roughgarden goes on to describe "gender multiplicity" it gets really interesting for a transgendered person. That's the topic of my next post.

Postscript on Joan Roughgarden

As I noted earlier, most scientist do not rock the boat. They do not challenge the ruling paradigm for a lot of reasons, the main one being probably that it was the dominant mentality or belief system of a discipline that attracted them to it in the first place.

That leads to the question of why Roughgarden has made such a radical stance.

I didn't read her own history until after having read The Genial Gene. Then it all became clear. Roughgarden is an M2F transsexual.

So far I haven't seen any serious attempts at debunking her theory on the basis of her personal history. It seems her position in the academic world is too strong for that to happen.

[Photo of Roughgarden: Nature]

She did not have to leave Stanford after her transition, partly because of strong support from Condoleezza Rice, the university provost. Yes, we are talking about the Condy Rice! Some times real life is much stranger than fiction.

Anyway, we must be as critical towards her science as we are towards the traditionalists. She openly admit that she has an agenda: to develop a theory with room for outsiders like gays and transsexuals. That might lead her to ignore findings that go against her theory of collaboration.

See also:
Roughgarden on transgender animals

Litterature

Roughgarden CV

Roughgarden, Joan: The Genial Gene, Berkely 2009. Click here for Google Books excerpt.

Roughgarden, Joan: Evolution's Rainbow, Berkely 2004. Click here for Google Books excerpt.

Nudging Darwin over the rainbow SFGate on Roughgarden

"Joan Roughgarden profile: A plea for diversity" Nature 2003

Sex, gender and nature, part 1

First part in a series about sex, gender and nature. In this post I look at how science works and scientific ideas are shaped.

One thing I have learned from working on this blog is that as regards crossdreaming (offensively called "autogynephilia") and transgender conditions, you have to question everything, even the most basic knowledge taught in school.

And the more I read about the research done on these topics, the more it is clear to me that scientists are like the rest of us: caught by their own prejudices, fears and dreams.

The fact that something is published in a scientific journal does not mean that it is true. As regards the transgender topic, one scientific paper will say the exact opposite of another, which is as it should be, of course, for science is supposed to be a discourse between knowledgeable people of good will.

The main problem with transgender issues, however, is that they challenge the very basis biology, psychology and psychiatry are based on. This means that we not only have to discuss the merit of the individual research report, we must also question the the world view of that researcher -- i.e. the scientific paradigm, to use Thomas Kuhn's term.

Why the concept of autogynephilia makes transpeople mad

To give one obvious example: The debate on autogynephilia is full of angry words, hatred and despair. The reason for this is not primarily that Ray Blanchard, the man who coined the term, is arguing that it is useful to have a separate category for men who fantasize about being women, being that cross-dressers or cross-dreamers. Such a category may or may not be a useful one.

No. the main reason for all the strong feelings is that Blanchard starts out with two premises that have not yet been proven:

1. Such a condition is a paraphilia. It is unnatural.

2. There is no such thing as a woman trapped in a man's body. Transsexuals are men, and as such either homosexual or heterosexual.

Science as the objective truth

I guess there are those that would say that the reactions from the transgender community are mainly emotional and unscientific, even if they are understandable.

Many scientists would argue that if science concludes that many of the transgendered are "autogynephiliacs" and that this condition is a disease or a paraphilia, well, then the scientists cannot just rewrite their findings to avoid offending a small proportion of society.

In science the truth comes first, regardless how painful it may be. Instead the medical society should develop psychiatric treatments that can help the poor bastards back to a normal life.

This all makes sense. But (and this is a huge "but"!) what if the scientific findings are not based on a critical and unbiased exploration of the world? What if the relevant conclusions are not the result of the research itself, but instead are implicit in the very world view of the researchers themselves?

What if the researchers find what they set out to find, simply because they are unable to think outside their own box?

As for male to female crossdreaming (by them called "autogynephila"), it may be that Blanchard & Co are right about it being some kind of "target location error" and that there are two distinct types of transgender people (autogynephiliacs and "homosexual transsexuals"). My jury is still out on this.

[Update of 2013: The target location error the has been thoroughly debunked. Moreover, there are both female crossdreamers and gay and lesbian crossdreamers.]

Healthy heterosexuality

Nevertheless, it could also be that everything Blanchard and his followers do is to find confirmation for their initial world view, namely that there is one and only one natural and healthy sexuality: heterosexual intercourse between a man and a woman.

That is: Their conclusion could be nothing more than the effect of their basic world view. They would be like the night time drunk that kept looking for his lost keys under the lamp post, because that was the only place he was able to see anything.

This would imply that any sexual fantasy going outside the heterosexual pattern is interesting to them mainly because it is a deviation, a puzzle that has to be explained. Indeed, it does seem like Blanchard and Bailey never seriously question the world-view their theory is based on.

The way they insist on calling M2F classic transsexuals homosexual men is a clear indication of this. If they accept that these men are so feminine that they feel a strong need to change their sex, it should not be too hard to accept that they are in many ways "women trapped in men's bodies". After all, "feminine" means "womanly" or "the trait of behaving in ways considered typical for women".

But they cannot do that, as it would violate their belief that basic biology comes first. If it walks like a woman and talks like a woman, but used to have a penis between its legs, it is definitely a man, because that is how you classify the sex of mammals.

It's only human

You could argue that the reason Blanchard and Bailey believe in what we can call a "natural heterosexuality" could be found in their own cultural upbringing and the fact that disciplines like biology and psychiatry have been steeped in the same ideology.

No, I am not going to go all relativist and postmodernist on you! I have the deepest respect for science. Indeed, I am going to make active use of science in future blog posts. My point is that the scientific method does not stop researchers from being like all the rest of us. They have their prejudices and their hang-ups.

The scientific career has its price

Furthermore: In spite of what scientists may tell you, it is not always a good career move to question the very foundation your discipline is based on. If you do that, you question all the researchers that have gone before you, the very ones that right now control research funding and any chance you have for a promotion.

Moreover, if you want to produce the necessary number of peer reviewed papers, you need to take some facts for given. You cannot question everything all the time, so why not stick to the facts your colleagues agree on? After all, they are the peers in the peer review panels.

There is more than enough to disagree on anyway, to make your research interesting and to give you a standing in the scientific community.

The biological foundation for natural heterosexuality

So what are the basic tenets of "natural heterosexuality", this particular scientific ideology?

Well, these are the ones that makes it hard to believe that MTF crossdreaming can be anything but a "paraphilia", a disease and a perversion:

1. The basis for much of evolution is the battle of the sexes. Inheritable traits are selected through a process whereby females select the males with the best genes and mate with them.

2. There is an underlying premise that there exists some kind of "perfect" male: the one with the best genes. This male has to be aggressive to succeed in outperforming the other males, both through fighting and in order to impress the female.

3. Although there is variation in nature, and also between individual animals, it is given that each sex has one standard way of behaving that is common for all members of that sex and that is different from the behavior of the members of the other sex.

If these three premises were to be proved wrong, it would at least open up the possibility that transgender people in general should not be considered freaks of nature. Instead they could be explained as the result of natural variation. It would also force the scientist look for transgender roles that makes sense evolution wise.

This is why biology and zoology matters. Not because we can use animal behavior as a guide line for human ethics -- we cannot! -- but because these disciplines have the power to define what's natural and what's not.

Darwin and the roles of the sexes

This is what Darwin said about the roles of males and females (The Decent of Man):

"Throughout the animal kingdom, when the sexes differ in external appearance, it is, with rare exceptions, the male which has been the more modified; for, generally, the female retains a closer resemblance to the young of her own species, and to other adult members of the same group. The cause of this seems to lie in the males of almost all animals having stronger passions than the females. Hence it is the males that fight together and sedulously display their charms before the females; and the victors transmit their superiority to their male offspring...

"The female, on the other hand, with the rarest exceptions, is less eager than the male. As the illustrious Hunter long ago observed, she generally 'requires to be courted;' she is coy, and may often be seen endeavouring for a long time to escape from the male.... It is shewn by various facts, given hereafter, and by the results fairly attributable to sexual selection, that the female, though comparatively passive, generally exerts some choice and accepts one male in preference to others."

This narrative makes it extremely hard to understand and accept males that do not strive to become the alpha male, who are not trying to sire as many sons as possible, who are not attracted to females, or who - heavens forbid! -- act like a coy female.

It is interesting to see how hard biologists have worked to explain away homosexuality. How on earth can same-sex attraction exist, when the evolution of the species only reward "natural" sex that produces off-spring?

The very existence of homosexuality challenges basic beliefs within these sciences. No wonder it took time for homosexuality to be declassified as a perversion.

Even now a lot of scientists in this area probably believe they were forced to do so for political reasons, not because science proved them wrong.

As a matter of fact, most biologist continue to look at homosexuality among animals as an error, a kind of deception or -- at best -- as a way for one male to dominate another (in order to prevent the other guy from getting access to the girls, of course...).

Alternative paradigms

For transgender people and crossdreamers struggling with shame and low self-esteem caused by a society labeling them as perverts, it should therefore be of interest to know that this basic scientific paradigm -- the one about heterosexual relationships and fantasies being the only natural ones -- is being challenged, not only by gay and trensgender activists, but also by renowned scientists within these very disciplines.

There are alternative models for understanding sexuality and evolution that make equally much sense and that do not necessarily lead to the conclusion that all homosexuals and transpeople are generated by genetic errors or traumatic upbringings.

I am going to present one such scientist to you in a series of posts. Although I do not necessarily agree with all she has to say, she is one of the very few scientists living today that has actually changed my view of the world, and that says a lot. I am not easily impressed!

Joan Roughgarden will be the topic of my next post.

[Edit of March 2014: The offensive  terrm autogynephiliac has been replaced by crossdreamer, unless there is a clear reference to the theory of Blanchard.]