Almost exactly two years ago I reviewed Sex at Dawn on this blog. One of the things I predicted was that it would sollicit a massive counterattack on the part of those who found its central tenets too threatening. I am happy to say that this reaction has been a lot more muted than I expected, despite the book’s success. Our species is readier than I thought to look at its image in the mirror.
A lot of the criticism of the book that we have seen in fact does nothing to invalidate its core conclusions – it’s more like sniping from the bushes than all-out warfare. And I do not doubt that some of those who criticise it really think some important ideas are missing, and some of them are right. However, tedious trawling over references misses the central point: there never was any scientifically reasonable account of a monogamous organization in pre-agricultural human societies, and other accounts are much more plausible. Having shown this, Sex at Dawn has, for now, become the standard narrative. The authors don’t have to show beyond all possible doubt that their account of early human sexuality is correct in every detail, because they are not taking on an established scientific theory, they are taking on a cultural narrative which has polluted the science. There never was any monogamy “theory” worthy of the name.
I am therefore unimpressed by and, given that I am a multidisciplinarian, not a narrow specialist, do not intend to read, reviews which purely criticize this or that aspect of what ithe authors say. I invite the critics to correct the account so we can get to a more accurate and plausible story than Ryan and Jetha have managed. I myself can see that there are some phenomena which their theory does not explain (it is after all not a theory of everything). I do not doubt at all that future accounts will differ in many respects from theirs, but they will not differ in respect of the central conclusion – there never will be a robust theory of primitive monogamy.
I also believe that there is quite a volume of evidence which I believe points in a convergent direction and Sex at Dawn does not even review, in particular the evidence from the psychoanalytic tradition and recent work on somatoform disorders. To my mind, Sex at Dawn does not really endeavor to explain those elements of contemporary behavior which some might (and do) cite as evidence in support of primitive monogamy, but had it had this goal, there is plenty more it could have done.
This article for instance sheds light on the (predictably) almost ignored subject in psychiatry of morbid jealousy, and to my mind is highly suggestive of the conclusion that jealousy itself is part of a neurotic complex due to the system of property which has been overlaid on human nature. Definitely, jealousy does have a psychodynamic explanation as the theory of the Oedipus complex implies; in that sense it is “natural”. No one is saying that there is no competition within the cooperative unit of the tribe. But it is expressed in contemporary society in ways, under circumstances and with consequences which would certainly not have arisen in primitive societies. This is extensively discussed in Salovey’s 1991 compilation of essays on the psychology of jealousy and envy which presents plenty of reasons to caution against highly simplistic conclusions about innate human nature based on how jealousy is experienced and expressed in contemporary society.
Essentially, the cooperative tribal unit becomes competitive when resources are scarce – including when scarcity is manufactured. The socially manufactured scarcity of sexual expression and opportunity leads to jealousy very predictably, and replacing it by abundance erodes jealousy even today, as plenty of couples can testify. Simply put, jealousy is a capacity we all have to employ emotional manipulation in order to hoard scarce resources to the detriment of wider social units. Sexual jealousy would have been highly disruptive of primitive tribal societies for the reasons which Ryan and Jetha point out. That it occurs under entirely different circumstances today does not tell us anything relevant at all In fact, in bonobos it seems that sex serves precisely the opposite purpose, namely to elicit sharing of resources such as food where it might otherwise not have occurred. This leads to group cohesion and greater resilience vis a vis external threats.
So Sex at Dawn has done better than I had hoped – it seems there is no longer anyone seriously defending the naturalness of sexual exclusivity as a social institution on the basis of scientific evidence. That means the way is open to investigate a host of issues which until now have been taboo.
Ultimately, I doubt though that paleoanthropology will tell us much more about human nature than it already has. The great appeal of Sex at Dawn is that it makes sense of feelings we may all have, but have been taught to suspect. In this way it opens a way forward for a much more generous humanity than we have been conditioned to believe possible. The sentiments on which proponents of monogamy base their conclusions have in reality been generated by they themselves, and we are at liberty to construct alternative narratives. I am told I should love only my children, but in fact I love all children. I am told I should desire only my spouse, but in fact desire is much broader. I am told I should be jealous of men who are interested in my spouse, but in fact it has the propensity to create a deep bond with them. And I am told that if I display any of these sentiments there must be something “wrong” with me or my primary relationship, but in fact acknowledging all of this makes both my sense of self and my relationship only stronger.
In fact, all of the inherited narrative (as I shall henceforth call what Ryan and Jetha call the “standard narrative”) seeks to constrain me; I do not recognize myself in it all and see it only as a tool of social control. It would not exist if most did not take the opposite view; but that is proof only of its perfidy, not of its truth.
The counterattack has indeed been quite mild; the positive reactions have been much stronger and more visible. It has been fascinating to watch the influence of S@D percolate out into the world of ideas and journalism. There has been a palpable shift in how even fairly-mainstream magazines and blogs respond to “sex scandals,” celebrity bed-hopping, and other more serious reports on subjects concerning human sexuality. And this shift happened as these journals and bloggers read and reviewed S@D. My question now is how enduring this shift will be.
On a less optimistic note, there are some obvious reasons why S@D would not yet generate a lot of noise from (for example) the Christian American Outrage Machine:
First of all, the theses of S@D remain intellectual and essentially hypothetical ones. The book remains a naughty conversation piece for hipsters, who remain wedded (so to speak!) to the Hollywood, fairytale picture of love, sex, and family. No one is publicly going poly because of it… at least no one with any visibility. No one is mocking the literary and cinematic conventions of happily-ever-after, jealousy, etc.
Secondly, the group of people likely to respond with fear and outrage, and the group of people who read books, have a relatively small overlap. A real Family Values voter might borrow an entry in the Left Behind series from a member of her church, or he might buy a biography of Ronald Reagan at the airport, or a high-octane book of business negotiation techniques. But not S@D.
Thirdly, the souls of the people among whom S@D has influence are already lost. To a Fox News viewer, S@D is lost in the noise of pot-smoking gay-marrying, defense-budget-cutting, minority-rights-advocating, public-school-supporting leftist anarchist perverts. It’s a detail, a blip.
All of this adds up to a kind of functional irrelevance. For the time being, the S@D phenomenon has no visibility in the communities most prone to freaking the fuck out. The people who manipulate those masses probably know about S@D, but it isn’t yet a viable source for adrenaline, ratings, or campaign contributions.
That could change. It is quite normal that minor proposed reforms to a system generate more polemic and fury than deeply revolutionary ideas. This is not only because the minor reforms might be a more immediate possibility. It is at least partly because those invested in a system can more easily understand and fear the kinds of minor reforms that exist essentially *within* that system. More deeply critical pictures are both harder for them to understand, and harder to imagine, even hypothetically, as real possibilities.
Economically, ecologically, socially, politically, sexually: If substantial numbers of people really began to live differently, sustainably, coherently, there will be some noise. Journalists and politicians will advance their careers making sure that the people who *might* freak the fuck out *do* freak the fuck out.
Thanks for the thoughtful comment. You obviously make a number of valid points, yet I am less pessimistic. Media interests may be powerful, but they are not the Inquisition. I think thought leadership eventually trickles down. The people I would have expected to react more vociferously were those whose reputations were directly endangered – and indeed some of them have, But as you will know from Kuhn, there comes a point in scientific history where opinion tips, and then those who previously would have been fighting a rearguard action instead frantically reinterpret their own oeuvre to be consistent with the emerging consensus. That’s where I sense we are. S@D is not going to change people’s lifestyles overnight or perhaps even in the course of some generations. It is essentially agnostic as to how people should live, in any case. Even if I think that we should live in a way informed by the species that we are, others can still claim revelation or espouse extreme doctrines of free will.
Speaking personally, as the article suggests, I feel empowered by the book because it makes sense of the feelings I have found inside myself. This empowerment is its real popular legacy, and that’s what may shift some of the social dynamics. Of course it is only one factor in a complex web of causation. Nonetheless, if you look at the recent history of gay rights in the US, or the fourth wave of feminism, pessimism seems unwarranted in the longue durée.
Hi Jangali,
You didn’t mention Sex at Dusk in your article, and that seems to me to be the most prominant and noteworthy rebuttal of Sex at Dawn. Have you read it, and what did you think of its arguments?
For the reasons set out in the article, I haven’t read it, nor do I envisage doing so. Its genesis and credentials are more than suspect, which doesn’t mean it cannot make some good points, but they will certainly be of an order which does not interest me Particularly. Perhaps specialists will find it worth a look. It should certainly be read by anyone who otherwise will be tempted simply to assume there is a “rebuttal”. But otherwise it seems to me a lame money-spinning ploy.
I have read a number of articles which take vitriolic issue with details of the book whilst essentially conceding its central thesis. Again, that is of little interest to me, especially when the tone already gives away the purpose of the diatribe.
The thing is, S@D has shown to the world that there is no monogamous null hypothesis worthy of being considered scientific. Thus it cannot be rebutted, it can only be improved on. That is what the scientific community should be doing. And then I will read what they have to say.
As I have explained on this blog, in particular my article “Our tribal nature”, I do think S@D is incomplete and that the institution of monogamy does have a biological basis, albeit its contemporary expression is unrecognizable. It derives from the mechanism we have evolved to ensure the migration of pubescent females from their tribe of birth to the tribe in which they will bear offspring. It seems obvious to me that there is a degree of bilateral selection involved in this process. Yet this certainly does not amount to sexually exclusive lifelong dyadic bonding