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Strategy in the Human Pair Bond
by Rich Persaud
December 15, 1998
Read this first: Scientific American: How Females Choose Their Mates
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This paper describes a shift in the power balance between human males and females. This shift occurs due to two technologies related to human reproduction: DNA Testing and Birth Control. These two technologies create pair bond dynamics that do not exist in any other animal species. This paper aims to be a starting point for further discussion.
The Biological Imperative
We begin by describing two important terms.
- Female Choice
- Female mammals (including humans) carry most of the reproductive burden of their species. They invest time and energy into pregnancy, birth, nursing and the raising of offspring. A female’s reproductive success depends on the quality of her choice of mate. She decides when she will mate, how often and with whom.
- For example, a female may seek males with significant resources or males with superior genes. Females influence the evolution of their species by choosing which males will mate and pass on their genes to the next generation.
- Females use courtship rituals to evaluate prospective mates. Male reproductive success depends on successful courtship, so male behavior is influenced by female preferences. The female’s ability to say "No", due to her larger reproductive investment, gives her sexual power over the male.
- Male Determination of Paternity
- In animal species where females exhibit visible signs of estrus, a male knows when his mate is ovulating and can ensure that he is the only one to copulate with her. With humans, ovulation is concealed, making it difficult for human males to guarantee the paternity of offspring. Where wealth and property are transferred to offspring via inheritance, a guarantee of paternity is essential.
- Many cultural strategies have been employed by men to discourage the development of women’s sexuality, since an increase in a woman’s sexual activity makes it more difficult to guarantee paternity. Legal, physical and psychological force has been employed in this cause. Examples include the cultural glorification of female sexual purity and Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). Such strategies arise from men’s anxiety about paternity.
- If the reader is tempted to pass moral judgement on these strategies, the reader is reminded that cultural mechanisms for guarding paternity are a consequence of male biology, just as female choice is a consequence of female biology. Modification of these cultural mechanisms depends not on logical reasoning, but on changing the strategic options available to each gender.
The Cultural Imperative
Let us examine the difference in "emotional intelligence" between the genders.
- Women
- In contrast to the male obsession with paternity, females never worry about maternity. They know that their genes will be passed onto their offspring, independent of their mate’s genetic contribution. Females are more concerned about eliminating bad mate choices, which have a high reproductive opportunity cost. Perhaps in service of this objective, women talk to each other about everything under the sun, especially men.
- The human female is engaged from childhood onwards in intimate individual and group discussions with other females. By adulthood, she has countless hours of such discussions under her belt, much more than the male does. The female has developed human relationship skills that the male doesn’t even know exist. Not only is he in an emotionally inferior position, he does not have either the language or skills to assess the extent of his emotional inferiority.
- The sexual double standard has been used as a psychological tool to guarantee paternity. Discouragement of the development of female sexuality reduces the need for determination of paternity. Unfortunately for men, the double standard gave women sexual power over and above that provided by female choice.
- Women have a greater sexual capacity than men. This capacity is tempered by reproductive cost, as well as the sexual double standard. Birth control reduced the relevance of reproductive cost, leaving primarily the double standard to temper female sexuality. Ironically, the double standard put women into an even better negotiating position.
- In a negotiation, the party that is least attached to the outcome has the most power. The double standard leads men and women to the perception that men want sex more than women do. This in spite of the fact that women have a greater sexual capacity than men. It would be more correct to say that it has been biologically and culturally more expensive for women to have sex than for men.
- From a strategic perspective, we have a situation where one party to the negotiation (the woman) wants an outcome (sex) more, but is perceived as wanting that outcome less. The other party (the man) is perceived as wanting the outcome more, but actually has a lower sexual capacity. This is every negotiator’s dream, to negotiate for an outcome that you are perceived as not wanting.
- Thus is sexual power unwittingly delivered into the hands of women, in contradiction to most verbal or written statements on the subject. This may appear to be an ideal situation for women, but power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The responsibility is too much for any gender to bear alone, and sexual power must be redistributed.
- Women send signals for men to initiate courtship. They are encouraged by the double standard to support the perception that they don’t want sex and need to be persuaded. As a result, they exercise enormous sexual power over men. The secret is that women want it more than men, talk about it constantly, are better at it than men, and most men don’t have the emotional tools to negotiate successfully with women.
- Thus women hold all the cards, except one. To counteract this extreme imbalance in power (viewed by men as one of the great mysteries of the universe), men use force (physical, psychological and legal) to control virtually all resources besides sex. Women’s desire for equity in resource access will require concessions in the area of sexual power.
- First on the negotiating table will be the double standard.
- Men
- Men don’t talk to each other about their emotions and sexuality. Whether due to biological or social influences, human males have less emotional intelligence than do human females. Men’s abilities to discuss their feelings, to be emotionally expressive, to read nonverbal communication and facial expression are less developed than those of women.
- Women talk to each other much more than men do. It may surprise some men, but women talk extensively among themselves, especially about men. The contrast between male and female groups could not be more dramatic. Little exchange of emotional information takes place between men, except in macho-disguised conversation. Men rarely talk to each other about women except via braggadocio. Women routinely converse about subjects that would make men blush.
- Due to female choice, men are outranked in sexual negotiating power. Due to their limited emotional support structure, they are also quickly outranked in emotional intelligence. Developing deep emotional relationships with women tends to conflict with the feelings of their primary female partner. From a strategic perspective, a man’s emotional development is most safely done in the company of other men.
- Most men don’t have emotional answers, and the few who do aren’t eager to share this information. Male competition for reproductive access to females is a limiting factor in their emotional development. The fragile male sexual ego may be a consequence of men’s inability to engage in collective emotional bargaining on behalf of their gender. Women excel at this skill.
- Women and Men in Negotiation
- The difference in emotional intelligence between men and women produces an unadvertised dynamic during courtship negotiations. Each MAN negotiates ALONE against ALL OF WOMANKIND. Every relationship experience that a woman has with a man can be immediately submitted to her emotional support network of female acquaintances, of varying ages and perspectives. A man acting alone has a minimal chance of winning a emotional negotiation with a woman and her female support network.
- We are not asking whether this is biologically or socially determined. This form of social organization may have evolved as a female defensive strategy against male oppression. However they developed, women’s support networks function today as the planet’s most powerful union. The power of the female support network is enhanced by the organization’s invisibility. Decentralized, non-hierarchical, without physical assets or a leader that can be ousted, this "gender union" demonstrates the power of shared knowledge and collaboration.
- Consider again a human male in a relationship negotiation with a human female. The male has known since puberty that the female has the power to say "no" to sexual activity (female choice in mammals). From a negotiating perspective, the person who can say "no" has the greater power in the relationship. The human male knows that the woman has greater sexual power, and that he must work within parameters set by the female.
- As the relationship progresses, the female’s emotional expectations of the male increase. The male now arrives at an unpleasant dilemma. Human relationships depend on a balance of power and a sense of reciprocity. The male is already aware of an inequity in sexual choice, weighted towards the female because of her larger reproductive investment. He accepts this as a biological fact of life. Now, he is faced with the possibility of an emotional inequity, again weighted towards the female. How can this inequity be addressed?
- Where can the human male go to develop greater emotional skills? He generally can’t turn to other males, for two reasons. First, many of them don’t have the skills either. Second, there isn’t a group culture of sharing such information, so it’s difficult to identify which men have this knowledge. Male competition also means that those who do know are in no hurry to broadcast their knowledge from the rooftops.
- The only other source of this information would seem to be other human females. But now the male comes into direct conflict with the objectives of his female partner. To justify her reproductive investment, she doesn’t want her male partner’s attention to be diluted among other women. Especially not in the area of developing deeper emotional understanding.
- The male is stuck between unacceptable options. He can talk to men, but most don’t have answers. He can’t talk to other women, although they do have the answers. He can talk to his female partner, who does have the answers, but his acceptance of this information (the creation of a student-teacher relationship) creates another inequity to accompany the inequity in sexual choice. The typical result is fervent male denial of their alleged emotional inadequacies.
- Much male domestic violence occurs in response to this experience of emotional inadequacy. It is an experience that is guaranteed to every male in an intimate relationship with a human female. It may happen early or late, but it will happen. When faced with a double inequity (sexual choice and emotional intelligence) in their relationship with women, men are forced to use their other strengths to rebalance power in the relationship. Those strengths are typically force, aggression and logic.
- In conclusion, we have men oppressing women’s sexuality to guarantee the paternity of their offspring. We have women being placed on a cultural pedestal because of their higher reproductive investment. We have them developing social structures that continually improve their emotional intelligence. Then we have lone males negotiating with these females in intimate relationships, and failing miserably. This is only expected, as the man is negotiating with all women past and present, their arms linked in a human wall stretching to infinity.
- A man alone remains convinced that he is negotiating with one woman.
The Technological Imperative
What of the two technologies mentioned in the opening paragraph of this paper, DNA Testing and Birth Control? The implications of these technologies should now be clear.
- DNA Testing
- DNA Testing provides human males with a capability not available to males of any other animal species, the technological determination of paternity. Does this mean that every male will employ DNA testing to confirm the paternity of offspring? Not so, for the technology need only be used in cases where there is a serious question of paternity. Like the atomic bomb, DNA testing functions as a deterrent. It need not be used to be effective.
- If men and women understand the social consequences of male attempts to guard paternity, they can choose to reverse those social consequences with the advent of DNA testing. High on the agenda for elimination should be the sexual double standard and Female Genital Mutilation.
- Male suppression of female sexuality is no longer necessary. Termination of this suppression will transfer strategic sexual power to men, creating a more equitable power distribution between men and women. This can in turn lead to men releasing control of more economic resources to women.
- Birth Control
- Birth control has been with us for several decades, so it seems unlikely that we would not have already made the necessary social adjustments. Birth control removes reproductive cost from the sexual decision making criteria of the human female. This reduces the reproductive risk of a female exploring and developing her sexuality to its maximum potential. It also changes her strategic negotiating position from the one implied by female choice.
- Since the advent of birth control, women have made good use of the reduction in reproductive risk offered by the technology. However, they have made no negotiating concessions to men that acknowledge this lowered reproductive risk. Female choice and male deference to female preference is a concession by males to the reproductive burden borne by the female. Birth control alters this biological power balance, and there has been little explicit acknowledgement from women to men of this change.
- How does it alter the power balance? That is something that men and women must decide in negotiations with each other. As a gender, women must acknowledge that birth control has changed the sexual power dynamic between men and women. It has made women freer than females of any species, liberating them from the mandate of their physiology. Birth control exerts as much influence on female choice as DNA testing exerts on paternity.
Conclusion
Culture, law and technology are the legacies we leave for future generations. We must inspect our cultural assumptions in the light of new technology. Today, humans can celebrate their liberation from the biological imperatives of female choice and paternity determination, a feat no other species has accomplished.
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Evolutionary Biology Books
Sex on the Brain: The Biological Differences Between Men and Women
by Deborah Blum, July 1998
Why is Sex Fun? The Evolution of Human Sexuality
by Jared Diamond, July 1997
Alchemy of Love and Lust
by Theresa Crenshaw, July 1997
Female Choices: Sexual Behavior of Female Primates
by Meredith Small, October 1995
Sexual Selection (Monographs in Behavior and Ecology)
by Malte Andersson, July 1994
Sexual Strategies: How Females Choose Their Mates
by Mary Batten, January 1994
The Selfish Gene
by Richard Dawkins, September 1990
Strategy Books
Winning: Using Lawyer's Courtroom Techniques to Get Your Way in Everyday Situations
by Noelle Nelson, May 1997
How 10% of the People Get 90% of the Pie
by Craig Soderholm, June 1997
Games People Play: The Psychology of Human Relationships
by Eric Berne, August 1996
Thinking Strategically: The Competitive Edge in Business, Politics and Everyday Life
by Avinash Dixit & Barry Nalebuff, April 1993
You Can Negotiate Anything
by Herb Cohen, February 1989
Winning Through Intimidation
by Robert Ringer, 1973
Communication Books
What Men Don't Want Women To Know
by Doe Smith, July 1998
How to Dump a Guy (A Coward's Manual)
by Kate Fillion & Ellen Ladowsky, April 1998
The Enchantment of Opposites: How to Create Great Relationships
by Patricia Huntington Taylor, September 1997
Successful Nonverbal Communication: Principles and Applications
by Dale Leathers, December 1996
How to Make Anyone Fall in Love With You
by Leil Lowndes, October 1996
How to Date Young Women: For Men Over 35
by Don Steele, July 1995
Gender Speak: Men, Women and The Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense
by Suzette Haden, April 1993
The Fine Art of Flirting
by Joyce Jillson, November 1989
When I Say No, I Feel Guilty
by Manuel Smith, February 1985
Body Language
by Julius Fast, 1970
(in association with Amazon.com)
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