Women After All: Sex, Evolution, and the End of Male Supremacy

by Melvin Konner

There is a human genetic fluke that is surprisingly common, due to a change in a key pair of chromosomes. In the normal condition the two look the same, but in this disorder one is malformed and shrunken beyond recognition. The result is a shortened life span, higher mortality at all ages, an inability to reproduce, premature hair loss, and brain defects variously resulting in attention deficit, hyperactivity, conduct disorder, hypersexuality, and an enormous excess of both outward and self-directed aggression.

It is called maleness.

Melvin Konner traces the arc of evolution to explain the relationships between women and men. With patience and wit he explores the knotty question of whether men are necessary in the biological destiny of the human race. He draws on multiple, colorful examples from the natural world — such as the mating habits of the octopus, black widow, angler fish, and jacana — and argues that maleness in humans is hardly necessary to the survival of the species.

In characteristically humorous and engaging prose, Konner sheds light on our biologically different identities, while noting the poignant exceptions that challenge the male/female divide. We meet hunter-gatherers such as those in Botswana, whose culture gave women a prominent place, invented the working mother, and respected women’s voices around the fire. Recent human history has upset this balance, as a dense world of war fostered extreme male dominance. But our species has been recovering over the past two centuries, and an unstoppable move toward equality is afoot. It will not be the end of men, but it will be the end of male supremacy and a better, wiser world for women and men alike.

Genres: Feminism, Nonfiction, Science, Anthropology, Gender, History, Evolution

416 pages, Paperback

First published February 23, 2015

About the author

Melvin Konner, M.D. is the Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor in the Department of Anthropology and the Program in Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology at Emory University. He is the author of Women After All, Becoming a Doctor and Medicine at the Crossroads, among other books.

Reviews

[Caren · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book, but feel some reticence in recommending it. The author's credentials are certainly good (he is a professor in the Department of Anthropology and the Program in Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology at Emory University), and with nearly 70 pages of bibliographic notes, you could certainly check his sources to see how he arrived at his conclusions. I think you’d have to read a book like this with a sense of humor and a willingness to enter into a sort of mental conversation with someone who holds what are surely very controversial viewpoints. I didn’t open the book with any preconceived ideas…I was simply curious about what he’d say. Perhaps the first third of the book was wildly entertaining. He tells the reader about the mating habits of some very diverse creatures, and some of them had me laughing aloud. When he proceeds on to human evolution, through related primates and their behavior, he begins to enter the controversial area. By the end of the book, he was so pro-female and anti-male (and mind you, he backs up his opinions with his chosen evidence), that even I, a female, was a bit uncomfortable. I mean, we are all human and I don’t really see women as inherently better, just different. I think he would actually approve of that conclusion since he really wants to make a point that how the sexes differ is primarily brought about genetically (and by evolution) rather than through cultural cues, and that women should be aware of those differences. Or, as he says on page 211: “I will argue, too, that we cannot develop daughters into the roles for which they are destined---let us say for now that this means no more than true equality---unless they fully understand males and how males are different.” That males are more physically aggressive is well-known, but I was interested that he spun that out a bit further in saying (on page 215): “The facts are that men are more xenophobic and ethnocentric than women, more inclined to dehumanize out-groups and use animal words about them, and more willing to make sacrifices to punish them. Across many cultures, men show more social dominance orientation, prefer group-based hierarchy, are more likely to identify with the flag or colors of their group, and are more likely to complete an open-ended statement beginning ‘I am…’ with group identity. Men have a lower threshold than women for triggering intergroup conflict and are more likely to order preemptive strikes without provocation in war games." On the next page, he quotes Ashley Montagu as saying: “The male seems to be in a chronic state of sexual irritation. The woman who in a letter to Kinsey described the race of males as ‘a herd of prancing leering goats’ was not far from the truth.” He then adds, “Very few men tell women what they are thinking, and this may be a good thing. Women who ‘get it’ may sympathize (up to a point) or not, but either way they are better off than those who believe men are just like them. Even in post-industrial cultures prominent men often display their intentions by taking trophy wives, using supermodels as ‘elbow candy’, and having illicit sex with much younger women, even in the public eye. But only occasionally do they say something revealing.”
There were some sections of the book that were just plain interesting, whether you accept his thesis or not. For example, I found this kind of fascinating: (page 171-172) “DNA analysis of the Y chromosome by Tatiana Zerjal and her colleagues showed in 2003 that about sixteen million men alive today---including one out of every twelve central Asian males---are genetic descendants of one man who lived at the time of the conqueror and polygynist Genghis Khan, whose sons and grandsons had similar habits and power. Most likely, the man in question was Genghis Khan himself. And, as shown by Laoise Moore and her colleagues in 2006, roughly the same proportion---about 8 percent---of Irish men today have a genetic type traceable to one man who lived more than a thousand years ago; he was probably a chieftain in the mold discussed above. Over the centuries those Y chromosomes passed through the wombs of millions of women, many of whom did not freely consent to the usage; nor did millions of disadvantaged, deprived, bereft, and slaughtered fathers, brothers, husbands, and suitors of those women, whose fruitless genes died with them. Not just in Asia and Ireland but throughout the world, men bear the genes and to some extent the inclinations of those who in a durable past killed men and seized women at will. As ecologist Bobbi Low put it, war is a kind of runaway sexual selection, and we have long dealt with the genetic legacy of that process in males.”
On thinking about why a man would write a book that actually (by the end) seems to indicate that males are optional and perhaps females would do well to dispense with them, I think he has apparently worked and lived with some pretty amazing women. He recounted studies he and his first wife (who sadly died fairly young from cancer) did of the !Kung people in Africa. (This former wife, Marjorie Shostak, wrote a book now considered a classic of ethnography called “Nisa: The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman”.) In his acknowledgments, he thanks his current wife, Ann Cale Kruger, who is a child psychologist. He also says early in the book that he wrote the book also for the sake of his daughters and stepdaughter, that they may live in a more equal world. He has a son, but says the world has been so tilted toward male advantage, his daughters are the ones who need the recognition. So, perhaps the best way to enjoy this book is to go in with an open mind. You can look at his sources and see if you reach the same conclusions, or if you vehemently disagree. I would say, read it for fun, as there is much that will entertain you within its covers. Then, allow it to settle, mull it over for a bit. Don’t be threatened and jump to condemnation. Just realize, this guy has some interesting things to share with you and the conversation is thought-provoking and worth the time.

[El · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am wary of any book written by a man which begins: "This is a book with a very simple argument: women are not equal to men; they are superior in many ways, and in most ways that will count in the future." Actually, I would probably be wary of a book written by a woman beginning that way.

I'll be very clear from the beginning - for all of my jokes and sarcasms, I do not believe the women are superior to men. I do not believe that men are superior to women. I do believe in that crazy kind of feminism that calls for equality, but that also goes beyond gender, so whatever.

In any case, Dr. Konner goes on to kinda sorta mansplain some stuff about sex and gender and science and evolution and stuuuuuuff that went on sometimes for much too long. A lot of it made my eyes glaze over, even though I am equally interested in evolutionary theory and cultural and social anthropology and primatology, all of which he goes into some detail about within the book.

Granted this book was published in 2015 but already I had to cock an eyebrow at some of his proclamations:

It is much harder to estimate sexual violence during war, but probably this too has declined; even if it stayed the same, the decline in war would mean a decline in rape.
(p179, Chapter 7: Samson's Haircut, Achilles Heel)

Aside from things such as that, what it really felt like to me was that Dr. Konner was pandering to his female/feminist readers. Kind of like, "Hey, guys, #notallmen, amirite?" Frequently it read too eager, like he really wanted to read us women-folk over, which again, comes across as suspicious. I can appreciate he believes women are superior, and even though I don't agree, I can't disagree with his own opinion. But I can disapprove with certain aspects of his book, regardless of his certainly good intentions.

If you are going to make any predictions at all, one of your best bets is going to be on the one in my admittedly flawed crystal ball: empowering women will make a better world.
(p293, Chapter 10: Billions Rising)

No shit. We want equal pay. We want to walk down the street without worrying about being attacked or harassed. We want to be able to be leaders and not put on marble pillars to be idealized or objectified.

We want to live in a world where a book like this doesn't need to be written by a man; we've been saying it for generations.

[Stacie MacAdams · Rating 2 out of 5]

As a student of anthropology, I’ve read many scholarly discussions on human sex differences and their evolutionary origins. This area is highly controversial, and unfortunately for us of the fairer sex, such accounts have not always seemed favorable to our gender. Darwin himself was willing to proclaim that man had become, via natural selection, “superior” to woman. Indeed, only a cursory examination of some of the literature will reveal many a case made for men's inevitable dominance and supremacy. It's certainly therefore understandable that feminist critics have accused “sociobiologists” and evolutionary psychologists of harboring sexist and androcentric prejudices. But it’s not always the case that such a treatment is unfavorable to women, and Mel Konner’s book is a case in point.

Melvin Konner is an anthropologist and physician at Emory University who has done interesting work on indigenous peoples, human behavior and childhood development, as well as being one of the contributing scholars in the origin of the “Paleolithic diet” (which, alas, has been roundly criticized by many scientists as “half-baked” pseudoscience). He is a wonderful writer and is very direct and articulate in his approach. His arguments and presentations are often vivid, insightful, and poetic, and his descriptions of animal behavior are fascinating.

Disappointingly, it's more accurate to call Women After All a political "sermon" than a strict scientific treatise. Nevertheless, it's certainly interesting to witness Konner reinterpret the very same research on sex differences often used to diminish women to argue for their social equality or even, in some cases, their moral superiority.

Doing preliminary research on this book (by reading some excerpts and reviews) was jolting, as I found myself taken aback by the wild and bigoted way Konner characterizes and describes men and male development. But since other important writers that I admire seemed to find some general theme of this book praiseworthy, I convinced myself that these extreme statements by Konner were merely rhetorical devices -- hyperbole meant as a way of teasing his case for publicity, and that there must be a meaningful message buried in here somewhere. This assumption was largely correct, and I'll admit the book wasn’t all that bad – certainly not as outrageous and over-the-top as the promotional material, some reviews, and book excerpts (a lot of which comes from the introductory chapters) suggest. But despite that, the style of argument presented here not only made me very uncomfortable, but serves to distort the evidence on this topic in terribly unproductive and biased way.

Since the introductory chapters are where a lot of Dr. Konner’s particularly controversial and invidious statements are made (and many of these have made it into the press), I would like to at least address some of them. To be honest, I don’t think I agreed with or appreciated even half of what Konner said here. Indeed, it reads more like a satire than an actual argument, which I'm guessing is a manifestation of Konner's bizarre sense of humor. To get a taste of it, consider that he jokes that maleness is a “defect,” which is the result of “androgen poisoning,” the genetics of which are caused by “X-chromosome deficiency syndrome.” As “proof” of the “syndrome”, he cherry-picks some fairly non-controversial sex differences on ways in which males are vulnerable, including that males are more likely to get autism and hyperactivity disorder, are more aggressive, and have, on average, higher mortality at all ages. There is no need for rebuttal of this kind of rhetoric, as it is obviously purposely placed hyperbole, but he doesn't stop there. Konner proceeds to claim that women are better than men in the ways that will "matter in the future,” whatever that means, citing them as better in “judgment, trustworthiness, reliability, fairness, working and playing well with others, relative freedom from distracting sexual impulses, and lower levels of prejudice, bigotry, and violence.” Already I was skeptical. I guess men are better at the traits that “mattered in the past" or something? In any event, he continues with these sort of pronouncements, and fails to make a convincing case that all of these traits are correlated with a person's biological sex (some of the ones he lists are, like sexual drive, but not all). Amusingly, Konner even attempts to reverse conventional wisdom to tell us that women are somehow more “logical” and men “emotional,” his argument resting on his claim that men’s sexual and aggressive emotions are responsible for everything wrong in the world, whereas women's tears are harmless. Priceless stuff here! He presents no evidence for this of course other than his own pronouncement.

But lest you think the controversial tone wanes, it in fact goes even further. Perhaps the most bizarre and mind boggling commentary found at some places in the book revolves around new reproductive technologies which Konner claims will allow women to do without men, or at least reduce their numbers (or in another scenario, he jokes, reduce males to tiny parasites on women’s bodies!!!). You can't make this stuff up, folks. He says he doesn't advocate that at all, you understand, just that it's perhaps possible in the future (wouldn't artificial wombs, or even the womb of something like a cow, coupled with synthetic eggs also allow men to do the same?? This possibility is lost on Konner). It was at this point that I completely stopped taking the author at face-value and decided that he was just trying to provoke and annoy. I understand that these are merely rhetorical tactics, designed to get people reading the book, but they're hardly necessary and, frankly, subtract from the credibility of his argument,

Later on in the book, Konner gets a little more serious and begins to delve into the meat of his actual argument, which is slightly less inflammatory. He begins by attempting to describe the origins of sex and why it's important in the natural world. He describes the race to avoid exploitation by parasites as an explanation (though there are several others which he doesn't properly consider) for the maintenance of sex, but he confuses this hypothesis with an explanation of the origins of sex. He gets little details of this sort wrong, which is not uncommon among non-biologists, like additionally confusing the origins of sex and the origin of sexes or mistakenly referring to the original single-celled asexuals as "females" (which is a completely arbitrary and meaningless thing to say for primitive unicells). He also kind of mucks up the mechanics of mammalian sex determination, the understanding of which has significantly changed only in the last few years or so, and often confuses "gender identity" with sexual orientation. These small errors are annoying to a biologist, but they don't really affect the book's the overall argument. Konner does a pretty decent job of explaining male/female reproductive strategies. Males, who make cheaper sperm, generally invest much less in offspring, as well as are less discriminating in their choice of mates. Females make a larger investment, and thus must be choosy. This results in a lot of the sexual dimorphism in nature, and why males tend to be larger, more aggressive, and compete violently with each other for reproductive access. Most of what he covers here is basic evolutionary theory, and he describes several exceptions to the patterns (Jacanas, cassowaries, seahorses) as well as more extreme, amusing examples (hermaphroditic worms that penis-fence, tiny males in deep sea Anglerfishes, etc).

Konner brilliantly describes examples of sexual selection in many animals, such as the peacock, noting the gaudiness of the male as a way to attract mates even if it increases predation. He has a chapter on primate sexual systems, where he examines how the sexes relate to one another. He notes considerable variety, for instance describing the contrasting gender relations between common chimps and bonobos. To be honest, while I found many of these presentations interesting and lucid, I’m not convinced that these cross-species studies reveal much of anything about how we should structure human societies or what relevance they have to the author's argument.

Though Konner discusses differing sexual strategies in many organisms (and he is at his best here), he also devotes much time to humans and examines differences in the brain and in behavior. He argues that though the sexes are mostly equivalent on cognitive ability (eg, intelligence) they have different dispositions and temperaments. The greater relative size of the amygdala in the male brain, as well as the larger parts of the male hypothalamus, he argues, predispose men to greater aggression and sexual drive, which is what you would expect given how sexual selection operates. Unfortunately, some of Konner's claims about the causal mechanisms for behavior in the brain are not robustly established in the literature. These are really the primary differences he focuses on and says that sex drive and aggression are the only differences he knows for sure to be biologically based. Women, he says, have more inhibitory mechanisms against these impulses. Konner then spends the some of the time to talk about hook-up culture and how it’s mostly a myth that women want sex as much as men. Again, pretty standard stuff here. But throughout the whole treatment of these interesting differences, Konner unfortunately perches himself up on his soapbox and makes boring anecdotal jabs at men from time to time, such as chronicling the many ways in which some male politicians have behaved badly.

Konner investigates human social development and argues that most of human history, during our times as foragers, the sexes were more equal in importance and influence. Men often hunted, and brought back meat that furnished crucial calories, whereas women’s gathering, while less in caloric content, was more readily available. Both sexes, while occupying different roles, were considered equals. Men, he argues, tried but could not exclude women from decision making, and as evidence he introduces us to some interesting examples of influential "working mothers" from tribes in Botswana. Konner suggests we return to this state of affairs between the sexes of equality and mutual respect, and it’s hard to argue too much with these points. Although, his characterization of male dominance as historically "recent" is suspect, especially concerning recent works that show that violence among foragers (such as raids that often resulted in abducting women from other tribes) to be fairly common. Konner claims the invention of agriculture, centralization, and the settling down of denser populations allowed men to gain the upper hand, due to their greater physical strength, and dominate the social structure. Men therefore are responsible, in a sense, for all of historical development and the creation of civilization, which according to Konner has been a blood-soaked, violent, and tumultuous endeavor. Women who have traditionally led societies are rarities, he says, and if they went to war it is because they were “masculinized.” Somewhat amusingly, he provides this explanation to conveniently ignore the likes of Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi, Golda Meir -- all of whom were aggressive leaders -- because they were “like men," thus making his own thesis unfalsifiable.

The rest of the book is mostly political and deals with societal trends in women's rights. Women have made great gains but still have a ways to go. He discusses sexual and domestic violence against women, talks about the sex trade, challenges faced by women in STEM fields, how investing in women and giving them access to birth control, etc, increases GDP and economic well-being. Konner reiterates the main point of his book, that an increased respect for women’s rights and their increasing influence on society will reduce violence and that gender equality will be better for society at large. No major disagreements in a general sense with this information, only in his tone and presentation.

What to make of all this? The general, broad theme of the book that the empowerment of women is good for society is unassailable, as well as the notion that the sexes indeed have some biological differences and this has some societal consequences. The other important message that this book presents primarily concerns declining violence. Would greater female influence and a respect for the rights of women contribute to less global violence? Perhaps -- and this case is fairly well made in the book. It can be at least granted for the sake of argument. Of course there are a host of other reasons for the decline in violence, such as changing moral values and widespread emergence of international democratic institutions. For these reasons, as well as for the brilliant and lively descriptions of animal behavior and some evolutionary theory, I can understand why some scholars are praising this work. My point would be that it doesn’t have to be a zero-sum game between men and women as there are many benefits of having both sexes share influence and combine their talents as individuals.

And lastly, the idea that one sex is somehow naturally “superior” to the other in any meaningful, generalized sense is patently ridiculous. It flies in the face of everything we know about evolution, since both sexes face adaptive problems that result in expressed sex differences. The fact that Konner felt it necessary to use such a superficial gimmick in order for people to take women’s rights seriously is truly unfortunate, and it adds a dark taint to an otherwise interesting read. Fortunately, Konner doesn't push this idea as some kind of well-argued case, but rather uses this line of argument as a hook. It seems more like a marketing ploy to sell books, because it is so poorly argued and poorly reasoned compared to the other points the author makes well. The obvious facts are that the sexes are biologically different. They have physiological differences, in both the body and the brain, and these affect behavior. Biological differences are obviously put there by evolution. Some of these favor men, some favor women, but they favor neither sex across the board. Studies in leadership, behavior, and many other psychological domains find that the differences are small and the overlap is considerable. Treat and evaluate people as individuals, not as members of the group to which they belong.

So, I suppose the TL;DR is this: Some good points, interesting insights, and fascinating descriptions delivered at times in the most over-the-top and inflammatory way possible. Konner simply takes a good point too far. If you’re interested in impartial science on sex differences, this book isn't it. The author is presenting this information as an advocate, not an objective observer, If you do read it for it's scientific value, be aware of the author's biases and read with skepticism. Otherwise look elsewhere.

[Brian Griffith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Konner does a competent but heavily data-laden survey on the rising influence of women, which builds on the findings of works such as Ashley Montagu’s “The Natural Superiority of Women,” or Helen Fisher’s “The First Sex.” He puts a lot of emphasis on analyzing the biological factors that shape sexual roles in numerous species of creatures over the course of evolution. To my tastes, he supplies more information than needed for the story. Then he surveys the range of sex-role options developed over the history of humanity. Last he gives overviews of recent research on the rise of women worldwide, and the practical differences this “feminization” of society is making in every area of life. He makes a persuasive, optimistic case. Even Jared Diamond was impressed. But though it’s strong on research findings, I'd say it's weak on story.

[Linda Robinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fireworks display of research, prose, statistics, chromosomes, genes, hormones and nerve circuitry. A guest blog on NPR's 13.7 Cosmos & Culture titled Is It Sexist to Say That Women Are Superior to Men? by Dr. Barbara J. King pointed to Dr. Konner's book. Dr. King was miffed enough to contact Dr. Konner for an interview. The link to that interview is here. http://tinyurl.com/opf5nsm I just love it when scientists duke it out. Anthropology professor/William and Mary College vs. anthropology professor/Emory University. Now that's an intellectual boxing match I'd pay to view on HBO. It is sexist to say that women are superior to men, but that isn't the point to me. Show me the data. Let me decide. Full disclosure: I am female. I respect King, and don't know Konner from page 8 in the phone book. King's argument was about the word choices. Dr. Konner's argument is about the mess made by weak yang: and whether we are on constant war footing because of societal pressures, biology or intergalactic pollen is moot. This book is sitting on my desk not flat. It is stuffed to the spine with bookmarks. Because I was trained not to write in books. Because all women are trained to behave by societal/cultural norms that have been practiced for 10,000 years. But women's brain function works biologically and is wired to perform well in leadership positions. But about 9,800 years ago, when we stopped hunting/gathering and started cultivating in one place, women were made war trophies. Women voices were stilled. There is much more involved and Dr. Konner shows us how this came to be, how domination is changing, and how that benefits the planet and the life on it. Konner is an excellent writer, and for every paragraph that's academically stilted, there is one that will make you laugh. The mating habits of whiptail lizards, octopuses, and marmosets are fascinating reading. Whether you love science, research, statistics, or just a jaw-dropping history tour, get this book. Write in it, don't write in it, but share what you learned with others. Get the book for your daughters and sons.

[Jasmine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Definitive proof that women are superior to men both in nurture and in nature.

I hope people read this and start rephrasing feminism from 'equality' to 'empowerment.'

As equality only shackles us to match the low level of male attainment, but female 'empowerment' allows us to reach for our full potential, far beyond the disastrous rule of men.

[Brittany · Rating 2 out of 5]

“Men have a lower threshold than women for triggering intergroup conflict and are more likely to order preemptive strikes without provocation in war games. Men, but not women, increase their support for war when primed with an attractive member of the opposite sex. The evidence also supports the out-group male target hypothesis: male biases and hostilities get stronger when men’s attention is drawn to out-group males.”

“In one study of 832 college students, 50% of men and 26% of women had positive emotional reactions after hookups, while for negative reactions the percentages were almost exactly reversed. In another, an online survey of more than twelve thousands students from seventeen colleges, 55% of first hookups involved oral sex only for the man and 19% only for the woman; 31% of men and 10% of women had orgasms. In a third study of 761 women, more than half reported at least one experience of unwanted sex. About two-thirds of hookups with vaginal intercourse involved condoms; when only oral sex was involved, the percentage was close to zero.”

“In their classic 1989 study, ‘Gender Differences in Receptivity to Sexual Offers,’ social psychologists Russell Clark and Elaine Hatfield had confederates who were college men and women of average attractiveness approach strange but attractive members of the opposite sex on campus and say, “I’ve been noticing you around campus lately and find you very attractive. Would you like to go to bed with me tonight?” Of the men, 75% said yes; of the women 100% said no."

It's not the first I've heard of this study, but I find it odd the way so few people critique it. Imagine if I had a study where there are two scenarios. In the first, there are ten doors and behind nine of them is something that will punch the person opening the door in the face and behind the tenth door is $1. In the second scenario, there are ten doors and behind, say, five of them is something that will punch the person opening the door in the face and behind the other five doors is $100. If women are presented with the first scenario and men with the second, and you find that women unilaterally opt to forego the experience entirely and men generally accept the odds, you would be wrong to conclude that men like money more than women. So why is it so hard to understand, particularly taking into context the paragraph preceding this one, that a stranger offering sex is not the same as being offered a functionally equivalent thing? I mean, hey, you want to give me an orgasm + oral sex only for me + increased social status + low risk of STDs (which I can mitigate through the options of contraceptives) + ..., I'm all for it. But a strange man offering sex to a woman isn't offering those things the same way a strange woman is offering it to a man.

“Protection from unwanted pregnancy and infection should not depend on men’s goodwill or on a woman’s ability to resist.”

“…During the 2014 Indian elections, the head of a recognized party in the state of Urtar Pradesh responded to the gang-rape convictions by saying, ‘Boys make mistakes. They should not hang for this. We will revoke the anti-rape laws.’ An associated and sitting state legislator, asked a few days later about the party head’s remarks, went further: ‘Any woman, whether married or unmarried, who goes along with a man, with or without her consent, should be hanged.’”

Imagine the culture that pervades where "we will revoke the anti-rape laws" is something a politician can say unabashedly.

Emily Shaffer, Annique Smeding studies on stereotype threat (priming women positively does not negatively affect boys, but does positively affect girls).

[Peter Tillman · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm reading this in fits and starts, because it's just not very good. Certainly not because of his argument! [looks for notes] OK, here's bit of a letter to a friend:
I'm reading a book called (roughly) The Natural Superiority of Women. It's actually pretty dull because, well, doh. I grew up with 4 sisters! My Mom got a little stressed-out at times, but she raised all of us, without a lot of help from my Dad. Well, he supplied the finances (important!) and was pretty supportive when he was around. Beginning Associate Professor, early on, not much money and you had to hustle to get tenure. And a field job to boot: large animal (beef cattle) nutrition, at what was then Oklahoma A&M. No vegetarians among his children! Everybody turned out pretty well -- albeit with the usual human foibles.

Not all women are superior, of course. But on average, as the author argues. Oh, let's see:
"Women after all : sex, evolution, and the end of male supremacy "
Clunky title. The good one must have already been taken! [By Ashley Montagu. In 1952!] Clunky book.

So. How much more of this I will actually read.... I'll look at the other reviews first. Got to be some reason it got to the top of the TBR!
Maybe I'll just fill this out with Pithy Quotes?
"The trouble with men is that they have limited minds. That's the troublewith women, too." --Joanna Russ, "Existence" (1975)
"Some of us are becoming the men we wanted to marry." --Gloria Steinem
"Women Demand Female Pamplona Bull Run, With Cows" --Reuters, 7-9-07

Abandoned & returned to the library weeks ago. Pretty bad book, up to where I quit. Already vanishing into the fading mists of memory.* Not recommended.
-----
* Which, I'll grant you seem to be fading even faster than in years past....

[Beth · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is so incredibly thought-provoking. I am still thinking about it, several days after I've finished it. The author is this middle-aged professor dude who makes compelling arguments for equality between the sexes. He bases his arguments on biology, anthropology, sociology and many more -ologies. Some of his most succinct arguments: A small minority of men commit the most egregious acts. Egregious acts are rarely committed by women. This is an argument for equality.

Women in hunter-gatherer societies have more of a say in what happens to the group. This often works to the benefit of everyone. When agriculture was introduced, men blocked women off from the village campfires and began seizing all of the power. Let's return to the campfire, ladies!

The list of fascinating anecdotes goes on and on and on. Let's keep shattering glass ceilings until Mr. Konner is happy ;) That's my plan anyway!

[Brian Gee · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great book on a fascinating topic that needs to be written about more. Many feminists I know are dismissive of the concept of biological sex differences, but this book provides convincing evidence that there are some sex differences that are proven to be based on genes and hormones. Having a better understanding of men's biological weaknesses can help men better understand themselves and practice better impulse control, and it can help all of us to make changes to the social environment that would minimize harm to women and other negative effects. However the main argument of this book is that because of biological differences, women are in many ways superior to men, and that the further we move towards equality for women, the better the world will be for all of us.

[Terragyrl3 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not as man-hatey as it sounds. The author is best when he sticks to biology, but he raises an interesting question: how will gender roles change as women gain social power and as technology replaces the need for brawn?

[Brett Williams · Rating 1 out of 5]

Fashionable Bigotry

Tipped off by this author’s Wall Street Journal article, a library copy of his book allowed a clearer picture of his thesis, and a decision to buy it or not. Fortunately, I saved the money. Leave it to an anthropologist from the social “studies” to promote fashionable anti-male bigotry under the guise of academic authority. Support for his position is mere assertion and agenda, without bothering to test his hypothesis against reality, which happens to be quite satisfactory for his tribal affiliations. As a physicist I’ve seen this in the social studies a thousand times. Konner’s bigoted spin is apparent when he submits that hunter-gatherer males engaged in dangerous labor sharing of the hunt in order to “show off.” While unrecorded by any means, but channeled through Konner, women spoke “truth to power every night around the fire,” but were, regardless, oppressed. We find war as the “universal booster of male status.” Tell that to marines slogging through parasite infested mires of Vietnam, Iwo Jima, or French trenches, strangled on mustard gas. For Konner, there is no higher cause for males than dictates of testosterone (is that why he wrote this book?) – not preserving democracy, not freedom, not an end to beheadings. Even nature is “derailed,” writes Konner, when purity of the female body plan is corrupted by the Y male chromosome. The cultural treasures of the Bible, Iliad, and Indian Epics are boiled to simplicity in reductionist acid, serving the author’s anti-male bias, while he displays his ignorance of mythological female figures full of destruction. Emory University may want to check Melvin Konner’s credentials as he’s even unaware of modern day corruption, including assassinations, by women in power in Argentina, Sierra Leon, Chile, and Brazil. Such representation says little for Emory. Books like this function to infuriate or confuse the public as to the nature of real science from physics to biology, while anthropologists like Konner play make believe scientist in a public forum where the public doesn’t know the difference.

[Ronald Lett · Rating 2 out of 5]

So this was a bit of an odd read. With a first sentence like "This is a book with a very simple argument: women are not equal to men; they are superior in many ways, and in most ways that will count in the future.", I was ready to hear what the author had to say. However, while the author cites several great studies and makes some well-reasoned out points, and has some nice moments of quotability, there are the other moments.

The author frequently uses a sort of layman-style speak that talks down a little to his audience (in the internet age, this style is no longer necessary). Most egregiously, the author incorrectly reinforces gender stereotypes by not only citing personal anecdotes and asking the reader to find examples that agree with him, but then goes on to cite studies that clearly either do not conclude what he takes from them or have problems in methodology. A quick summary of the author's main argument is that they want to exaggerate the already extant "positive sexism" in Western society using isolated examples and studies. To clarify these problems, I recommend reading Brainstorm: The Flaws in the Science of Sex Differences or Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference .

In fact, reading either of those books is preferable to reading this one, which, if recommended to anyone who has not spent time researching the topic, may leave the reader with many terrible "scientifically"-reinforced stereotypes about gender and transgender experiences.

[Juny · Rating 1 out of 5]

Melvin Konner presenta una perspectiva que podría interpretarse no solo como una divulgación de los aspectos negativos de lo masculino, sino también como una contribución más a la actual aceptación de la demonización del varón.

A lo largo de sus páginas, se insinúa una dicotomía entre los sexos, atribuyendo solo a las mujeres cualidades positivas como la virtud (así como la imagen de eternas víctimas pasivas), mientras que los hombres son retratados bajo una luz mucho menos favorable, asociados casi exclusivamente a aspectos negativos como la injusticia y la opresión. Konner no se detiene ahí. Hacia el final del libro, sugiere la posibilidad de un futuro sin el sexo masculino en nuestra especie, usando los avances en las tecnologías genéticas para diseñar una sociedad potencialmente mejor sin su presencia, como veremos más adelante.

Sus argumentos se alinean con lo que se ha denominado «sesgo gamma», una tendencia observada en ciertos sectores de la cultura occidental que hace hincapié en el «privilegio masculino», centrándose en los aspectos negativos de los hombres, al tiempo que subestima o ignora lo positivo, las contribuciones y los desafíos a los que se enfrentan. Konner amplía este sesgo diciendo que el sexo masculino podría considerarse un «defecto de nacimiento», y lleva esta narrativa más allá de una simple crítica social para convertirla casi en una patologización de todo un sexo.

El autor desafía la idea de que la cultura es la única artífice de nuestra identidad, concediendo un papel importante a la biología. Esto me sorprendió, ya que tantos antropólogos y científicos sociales usan el papel de la socialización o de la cultura para demonizar al género masculino, mientras ignoran las influencias biológicas. La sorpresa duró poco. El autor acepta el papel de la biología, pero, por supuesto, su análisis refleja un sesgo biológico que beneficia exclusivamente a las mujeres. Así que estoy de acuerdo con Richard Reeves (2022), que señala una tendencia actual, incluso entre la comunidad científica, a interpretar las diferencias biológicas entre los sexos de un modo que favorece solo a las mujeres. Esto está ampliamente aceptado y permite un debate sobre las diferencias biológicas que, sin embargo, se centra en resaltar las «patologías» masculinas y nada que desfavorezca lo femenino, como hace Konner en este libro.

Existe además el encasillamiento moral, que se refiere al hecho de que tendemos a clasificar a las personas como agentes o como víctimas (o pacientes) en situaciones morales. En algunos enfoques, especialmente en ciertas teorías feministas y en la política de la identidad, las personas se clasifican en estas categorías fijas. Los agentes morales son los que tienen poder y responsabilidad, y no pueden ser víctimas. Y los pacientes morales son los que pueden sufrir y tienen derechos, pero no se les considera responsables de las acciones. Según esta perspectiva, un hombre siempre será visto como agente y nunca como paciente, mientras que las mujeres siempre serían vistas como pacientes y nunca como agentes. Esto también se aplica a los grupos definidos como opresores y oprimidos, en los que el mismo acto se juzga de forma diferente según el grupo al que pertenezca la persona. Históricamente y debido a factores evolutivos, «los hombres son percibidos más fácilmente como agentes y como causantes de daños, mientras que las mujeres son percibidas más fácilmente como sujetos pasivos y como víctimas». Konner encarna todo este concepto casi a la perfección.

A continuación se exponen algunos puntos del autor que reflejan todo esto, llegando al extremo de un mundo futuro sin hombres.

La mujer es buena y virtuosa; el hombre, malvado

Konner postula una superioridad intrínseca de las mujeres sobre los varones, y señala varios aspectos conductuales y emocionales. Sugiere que las mujeres tienden a ser más constructivas, lógicas y presentes en sus acciones y emociones, a diferencia de los hombres, cuyos comportamientos y emociones describe como más destructivos y desconectados de la realidad actual. Usa la expresión «síndrome de deficiencia del cromosoma X» para enfatizar los problemas que percibe asociados al sexo masculino, dando a entender que las características biológicas y de comportamiento masculinas son deficientes en comparación con las femeninas.

Konner argumenta que la lógica y la emoción, comúnmente atribuidas en mayor medida a hombres y mujeres respectivamente, están mal atribuidas; propone que las mujeres son de hecho más lógicas y menos emocionales que los hombres, cuyas emociones a menudo conducen a conflictos y desafíos globales. Además, sugiere que la historia de competencia y dominación masculina ha generado numerosos problemas en el mundo, por lo que se podría perdonar a las mujeres que miraran «con ojos hastiados a cualquiera que fuera el antepasado que dio a luz al primer macho».

En cuanto a la sexualidad, Konner presenta la sexualidad masculina como impulsiva y centrada en el acto sexual, en contraste con la sexualidad femenina, que describe de forma más positiva. También sostiene que las mujeres son intrínsecamente más empáticas y menos inclinadas a la violencia y al comportamiento impulsivo que los hombres, que serían más egoístas y mucho más ambiciosos. Este punto de vista apoya la idea de que un mayor número de mujeres en puestos de liderazgo redundaría en un mundo más seguro, eficiente y armonioso.

Esta perspectiva, aunque pretende resaltar las virtudes femeninas, cae inadvertidamente en la simplificación excesiva y en la perpetuación de los estereotipos de género —que tanto se han intentado eliminar— al asignar cualidades y defectos de forma tan categórica a uno u otro sexo. Al hacerlo, Konner minimiza la complejidad de cómo se expresa el sexo y promueve otra visión sesgada que no contribuye a la comprensión de las mujeres y los hombres.

Ya no queremos a los hombres

Konner, en su análisis, explora las estrategias reproductivas de ciertas especies no humanas, como los lagartos cola de látigo exclusivamente femeninos, que se reproducen solo mediante partenogénesis, un tipo de reproducción asexual, y los caracoles hermafroditas, que poseen ambos órganos reproductores sexuales, como fuente de inspiración potencial para futuras generaciones y adaptaciones humanas. Esta línea de pensamiento también se ve reflejada en la obra de Lucy Cooke, que explora conceptos similares en su libro Bitch . La idea de que tales estrategias puedan ser admiradas y posiblemente emuladas por científicos principalmente con una perspectiva progresista da que pensar.

El autor amplía este pensamiento proponiendo la posibilidad de que los humanos adopten en el futuro formas asexuales de reproducción, como la mencionada partenogénesis, que por fin harían innecesaria la contribución de los hombres. Además, sugiere que los humanos podrían desarrollar la capacidad de cambiar de sexo, de forma similar a algunos peces de arrecife, manteniendo un estado predominantemente femenino con la opción de volverse masculinos cuando las circunstancias lo requieran.

No menospreciemos a la mujer; alabemos a la bonoba

Konner observa que las diferencias en la crianza de los hijos, que están presentes en todas las culturas, han servido para amplificar las distinciones biológicas entre los sexos. Defiende que estas diferencias, en lugar de minimizarse o usarse para menospreciar, deberían apreciarse y valorarse. Aplicable solo a las mujeres.

Además, Konner cree, cómo era de esperar, que la humanidad podría beneficiarse de la adopción de un modelo social más parecido al de los bonobos. Describe a estos primates como ejemplos de cooperación y relaciones pacíficas, destacando las fuertes coaliciones femeninas y el comportamiento más respetuoso y menos agresivo de los machos, donde prevalece el amor. Esta visión idealizada y pseudocientífica de los bonobos se ha popularizado en ciertos círculos como un espejo potencial para la sociedad humana, a pesar de que es una visión demasiado simplista y muy equivocada. (Esto ya lo critiqué en mi reseña de Bitch. Spoiler: Bonobolandia no sería un mundo mejor).

Un futuro utópico (... o distópico)

En el epílogo, Konner concluye con una proyección futurista que algunos, especialmente las feministas mainstream, podrían considerar utópica. Otros la verían más apropiadamente como distópica.

Propone una evolución controlada extrema en la que los hombres podrían convertirse en entidades parasitarias, dependientes de las mujeres para su existencia, aludiendo con humor a prácticas de especies como la viuda negra y la mantis religiosa, en las que el canibalismo sexual de la hembra hacia el macho es habitual. La visión se extiende a la posibilidad de que, mediante la ingeniería genética y la selección dirigida, la humanidad pueda prescindir por completo del sexo masculino, inspirándose, de nuevo, en especies de lagartos exclusivamente femeninos que se reproducen asexualmente.

Tal vez esto sea demasiado extremo, así que reduzcamos el nivel. Konner especula sobre un futuro en el que las mujeres podrían diseñar genéticamente hombres más pequeños y menos agresivos, en un esquema poliándrico que favorecería la armonía social, porque, como ya hemos visto, dos cromosomas X son más beneficiosos para el mundo. También imagina una sociedad en la que la dinámica social de los lémures o los titíes, con hembras dominantes y machos sumisos, también podría emularse en los humanos. Y plantea la posibilidad de modificar genéticamente a los hombres para que solo se ajusten a las preferencias femeninas, reduciendo su número y limitando sus roles a servicios específicos.

«Será un gran comienzo para las mujeres y un nuevo comienzo también para los hombres»…

•

Así que ya tenemos una idea de la imagen que se crea de los varones y del sexo masculino. Al final de su libro, Konner pinta un retrato de las mujeres imbuidas de cualidades positivas: inteligencia, determinación, firmeza, equidad, serenidad, fortaleza, optimismo, capacidad, inclinación democrática, cooperatividad e imparcialidad, destacando también su autoconciencia y gratitud hacia los puntos fuertes y las contribuciones de los demás. Un marcado contraste con todo lo que se ha dicho anteriormente.

Para terminar, inspirándome en Reeves (2022), la proclamación de la superioridad inherente de un sexo/género sobre el otro no es constructiva. Reeves termina diciendo sobre este libro:

[E]n cierto modo, este es el mensaje más peligroso de todos: los hombres son naturalmente diferentes a las mujeres, pero solo en formas que son malas. El aparente desprecio de Konner por el mayor impulso sexual masculino, por ejemplo, se acerca peligrosamente a las ideas puritanas de pecado sexual. No sirve de nada afirmar que los hombres o las mujeres son de alguna manera mejores por naturaleza que el otro. Simplemente somos, por término medio, diferentes en algunos aspectos que pueden ser negativos o positivos según las circunstancias y la forma en que se expresen las diferencias.

La creciente tendencia a demonizar a los varones tiene un impacto tangible, sobre todo en los hombres jóvenes, que se enfrentan hoy y se enfrentarán en el futuro a las consecuencias de esta narrativa en su desarrollo y bienestar mental. Esta demonización contribuye a crear una atmósfera de división y desconexión entre los sexos, que afecta negativamente a la forma en que los chicos y nuestros hijos varones perciben su propio valor y su lugar en la sociedad. Esta tendencia, asociada predominantemente a ciertos sectores del feminismo y de la izquierda progresista, puede no sorprender que esté siendo un gran factor al empujar a algunos hombres, especialmente los más jóvenes, hacia posiciones más conservadoras y hacia la derecha.

El punto de vista de Konner, aunque posiblemente bienintencionado en su esfuerzo por valorar y empoderar a las mujeres, oscila hacia un extremo que puede ser igualmente perjudicial: la idealización de un sexo sobre el otro. Tal enfoque no solo simplifica indebidamente la realidad de los atributos humanos, sino que perpetúa la división y la incomprensión entre los sexos y sus relaciones.

[Rosie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Melvin Konner,M.D. has authored a very readable and thought-provoking book. Scientific findings show that the differences between men and women are based on evolution and biology . To quote the author "Empowering women is the next step in human evolution", and "The end of male supremacy is nearly here". Thoroughly enjoyed this information packed book. It will stimulate discussion. Goodreads winner.

[Bob Wrathall · Rating 5 out of 5]

This issue has occupied my mind for at least three decades. Konner and I agree absolutely. I loved the book.

He starts by observing that the only real need for males is to maintain diversity in the species by mixing chromosomes and genes. Parthenogenic species without males are at a disadvantage to species with males because of the lack of genetic diversity. In many species that is almost the only use males have. Black widows and praying mantises find another use by eating the male.

Every species has evolved a secondary role for the male beyond the simple maintenance of diversity.

Konner argues that the human male role evolved as hunter-gatherers in small groups of about 20 individuals. This evolution happened over a million years, ending just 5 to 15 millennia ago. What human females created was the ability of males to organize and be social, which they did. The males used this ability, however, to form armies and governments to oppress almost everyone, women included.

This unfortunate circumstance was a maladaptation from the hunter-gatherer norm. We, at the start of the 21st century are seeing the end of that maladaptation and the reassertion of the role of women as the determinant of the destiny of the species.

I recognized this, personally, some 30 years ago as my wife and I were raising six children. I saw clearly that she was the determinant and the chooser, that she had chosen me, a man, as a provider and husband, and had entrusted her care to me. I realized that I had an important role to play, but she was the master and I was the servant.

My male sexual desire for her was just one of the components of my willingness to support and to protect. But it was mine toward her, not much hers toward me.

As far as I am concerned Konner explained my early perception. His prognostication, however, is not accurate. In my estimation we are entering a long time of change where the good guys will be chosen as the preferable fathers for women's children. This will leave many non-preferred men without female partners. Konner thinks that this will be a social change, a change of memes. I assert that it has to be an evolutionary change, a change of genes. I perceive a long, hard struggle to free women from the maladaptation stemming from the end of hunting and gathering. In this new age, violent and disruptive genes will cease to propagate.

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Konner's done it. He's provided scientific support for why women are superior physically, mentally, and evolutionarily than men — not that any woman needs proof. Konner recognizes the flaws and limitations of his argument, but the truth is undeniable: This world was made by women and dominated by men, and, as a result, has been ruined by men — okay, that's not Konner's argument, but it's mine. In all seriousness, the book is not about man-bashing feminism. Konner takes you on a journey through the animal kingdom and the research that connects the best — and some of the worst —parts of man (and woman) to our animal roots. For example, we, humans, share the same amount of genetic similarity to chimps and to bonobos. How is this possible? One might ask. At the time of their divergence, a small population of the bonobo/chimp ancestor became marooned on an island. Their isolation likely created a social dependency that resulted in the free-loving bonobos that are vastly different from the aggressive chimps that we know today. The reader is left to make up her own mind about what this means for her desire to love more than one person (man or woman) or her boyfriend's short temper. Konner simply provides the science to put what you know about men and women into context. If you're a woman, you love a woman, or grew inside one for 9 months, read this book. You'll gain an appreciation of the life she's given you and the world that would thrive if she has a hand in it.

[Sandy Graham · Rating 4 out of 5]

Women After All, an attention grabbing title for a thought provoking journey through the many permutations and combinations of sex and gender behavior from single cell organisms to tomorrow’s humans.

With respect to humans, during our hunter-gatherer age, there was roughly equality between genders. However, when population outgrew resources available, humans were forced to band first into tribes and eventually to civilizations we know today. The male role changed to capture and protection of territory and resources, including female reproduction. The resulting aggression spawned the evil effects of male dominance on society in general and women in particular. However, women’s progress back towards equality over the past century or so has allowed them to apply their unique attributes toward building stronger, peaceful societies.

From an anthropological viewpoint, Doctor Konner suggests this trend will continue with suppression of male dominance and aggression as its goal. The book is both entertaining and provocative. It should be mandatory reading for aggressive politicians, corporate leaders and extremists. For the rest of us, it can be a guide for better selection of our leaders, male and female.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Subtitled ‘Sex, Evolution, and the End of Male Supremacy’, the jacket blurb of this non-fiction book tells it all:

"There is a human genetic fluke that is surprisingly common, due to a change in a key pair of chromosomes. In the normal condition the two look the same, but in this disorder one is malformed and shrunken beyond recognition. The result is a shortened life span, higher mortality at all ages, an inability to reproduce, premature hair loss, and brain defects variously resulting in attention deficit, hyperactivity, conduct disorder, hypersexuality, and an enormous excess of both outward and self-directed aggression.

It is called maleness."

A very well-argued book with the thesis that women, not men, are the naturally superior gender, that they are slowly claiming their rightful place in our societies, and that we’ll all be much better off once that trend is complete.

Konner is no populist ideologue in saying this. He is a very well-respected academic, the Professor of Anthropology, and of Neuroscience and Behavioural Biology at Emory University. He lived with and studied the Kalahari San people in Africa for several years alongside his first wife.

[Elyse · Rating 1 out of 5]

When I flipped through this book at the bookstore, I was intrigued by the biological components that the author offered, but had no idea when I sat down to read it that I would be instantly bombarded by the author's general idea of "I'm not saying all men... but all men." I cannot fathom how Konner can live life with such a negative attitude towards himself and his gender. It must be an awful way to live.

His entire outlook on history and biology are so skewed by his dislike for men that it takes away any real credibility about anything that he discusses. His ideas are incredibly black and white, and he refuses to acknowledge or rightly place blame on the negative things that women have done throughout time without somehow also blaming men for it.

If you want a fair argument about the "battle" of the sexes, don't waste your money on this book. This is clearly written for ignorant people who just want to be "right", no matter what.

[Matt · Rating 2 out of 5]

Author's viewpoint is too schizoid to be a cogent read, but worth skimming.

"...Man and woman are the complement of one another..." frontpiece

"...women are on average and in aggregate better than men..." p. 13

Also, author seems to assume the reader should automatically concede his authority as a "M.D." but he fundamentally misunderstands many basic concepts of biology and evolution which leads him to eventually make really absurd and poorly-reasoned conclusions. At least he doesn't hide his true feelings.

The author should re-write the book co-authoring with a political scientist because his real viewpoint is that "the world will be better when women have an equal if not dominant role in running it." p. 16. The author prevails on the biology of this stance but lacks the tools to bear out the fundamentally political core of this viewpoint.

[Sparhawk Mulder · Rating 4 out of 5]

Exactly what I’ve been wanting to find; a compelling, evidenced case, made by a man with both the sociology and biology credentials, that women are simply better people on average. I’ve been coming to this conclusion myself for a while, and am pleased to see it’s not unprecedented.

I should note that there are, in fact, a few studies he cites that have since been disproven (eg. Women giving subtle ovulation cues subconsciously), but that sheer BULK of evidence can take a few hits and stay up.

I personally found his final section where he speculates the potentially more feminine future slightly odd. Not because he had outlandish options - that’s the point of the section, that was fun - but because he didn’t investigate the option of a future with NO men. He simply stops at his female friend saying “I and I think 98% of women want men around”, which strikes me as quite incurious for an author that has just spent a whole book deconstructing any inherent value of human sexuality (MALE desire is a serious antagonist here) and who explores much more bizarre options in the end (for fun tbf). If “(most) women (in the current form) like men (debatable)”, that seems like a thin barrier to stop an otherwise very determined book. Nevertheless, interesting book! At the very least you’ll learn a lot of feminist statistics.

[Bonnie McDaniel · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was okay, but I've read better (particularly Cordelia Fine's Delusions of Gender). The author is at his best when discussing various animal mating strategies, and not so good when trying to apply this to the human species. I think there's an interesting question at the heart of this book: now that modern life is emphasizing technology instead of brute physical strength, which has propelled male dominance over the centuries, how will society and relations between the genders change? That would be an intriguing book, I think, but it isn't this book.

[Graham Seibert · Rating 3 out of 5]

Women After All showed up in an Amazon search for books on the evolution of the difference between the sexes. It was endorsed by many authors I like – Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, Steven Pinker and Jared Diamond.

Author Melvin Konner cites Ashley Montagu’s 1952 “The Natural Superiority of Women” as one of his inspirations. The authors have a lot in common. They write well, they know the literature and the substance of their fields fairly well, and they have feminist agendas that transcend the pure pursuit of knowledge.

Most people are all of a piece politically. A statement from Konner’s website having absolutely nothing to do with the subject at hand somehow tells you everything you need to know: ”I said I was done with coddling and cajoling the anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers and I called for urgent widespread mandates and shaming.” He is an advocate.

Konner has produced an amalgam of two books. The first is factual – useful accounts of the evolution of the mating strategies of a wide range of animals. He demonstrates the phenomenal diversity among successful strategies. The second is polemical. Following in the Montagu’s footsteps, he presents the strongest possible argument in support of Montagu’s “Natural Superiority of Women.” It is a moralistic argument – what ought to be, as much as what is.

Two books from long ago entitled Evolution and Ethics, by Thomas Henry Huxley in 1893 and Sir Arthur Keith in 1947 make the point that Konner willfully overlooks – that evolution is an amoral process. Evolution does not care a whit about fairness. As Konner himself notes, it works for black widow spiders and praying mantises that the females eat the males just after copulation. To ask whether it is fair is irrelevant.

He gets moralistic when it comes to people. Nobody can question that the social order –patriarchy – which came to being with the advent of agriculture has been vastly successful. Homo sapiens’ numbers increased from an estimated 10,000 at the time we were migrating north out of Africa to something in the hundreds of thousands at the dawn of agriculture to one billion at the time of the Industrial Revolution and 8 billion today. Successful though it may have been, Konner condemns it as having been unfair to women. He celebrates the fact that women are now free to assume just about every role formerly restricted to men. Blithely noting that women now have the choice of career or family, he overlooks the stark reality of plunging birth rates. He celebrates the success of women without addressing the collapse of the species to which women belong.

There are contradictions. Konner believes that a woman’s body is sacrosanct, but (per the above) forcing vaccines on everybody is OK. He does not recognize that history is equally replete with histories of torture, rape, mutilation, and murder of men. Per Roy Baumeister, 80% of women ever born had children vs. 40% of men. It begs the question whether it is better to bear a child with an unwanted partner or none at all?

Here’s a brief Cliff Notes style, chapter by chapter analysis.
Introduction: "Stronger Than All Besides"
His first sentence is unambiguous. “This is a book with a very simple argument: women are not equal to men; they are superior in many ways, and in most ways that will count in the future.” He addresses, chapter by chapter, systematic differences between males and females.
Chapter 1: Diverge, Say the Cells
This chapter is on the biology of sex. Human females have two X chromosomes, males have an X and a Y chromosome. The Y chromosome being much smaller than the X chromosome confers some disadvantages on male children. Whereas a female who inherits a defective X chromosome gene from one parent is most likely to have inherited a good one from the second, and hence suffered no damage, male children do not have this backup. As a result a great many disorders are more common among male offspring than females. They include hemophilia, autism, color blindness and many others.

He goes a bit overboard in claiming that “A thirty-six-year-old father passes on twice as many [deleterious mutations] as a twenty-year-old; a seventy-year-old , eight times as many.” Not quite. Per Crumbling Genome: The Impact of Deleterious Mutations on Humans the statement applies to de novo mutations – the current generation. Most of a person’s deleterious mutations are inherited from prior generations.

The chapter includes a lot of information on relatively rare sexual ambiguities – hermaphrodites and the like – while emphasizing that the vast majority of individuals are biologically either male or female. This includes most who consider themselves homosexual and transsexual. While Konner had the utmost sympathy for people who felt they were in the wrong body, at least in 2015 he held an orthodox view of the biology of their situation.

Konner addresses the systematic differences between men and women in terms of violence, libido, assertiveness and other characteristics. While some may be cultural, a lot is clearly genetic.
Chapter 2: Hidden in Darkness
This chapter is on the amazing diversity of sex differences in practices within the animal world. Some animals are able to reproduce without sex, others are able to change their sex, and yet the others have both sexes. Evolution has led to a huge number of successful strategies for perpetuating a species.
Chapter 3: Picky Females, Easy Males
Konner puts forth the general principle that the female of the species controls the mating process, selecting from available mates. This is true even among species like the cassowary, hyena and bonobo in which the females are dominant.

The underscores the evolutionary truth that all that matters is what works. There are advantages and disadvantages to different mating strategies. Monogamy, polyandry and polygyny would be three. There are two indistinguishable species of voles, living not terribly far from one another, one of which is resolutely monogamous and the other resolutely promiscuous. There are advantages to both approaches. Polygyny allows the alpha males to most widely disseminate their superior seed. Monogamy provides the best protection for the young.

In species such as the peacock the male invests most of his sexual energy in elaborate displays for the female and makes no contribution to bringing up the chicks. Among penguins and seahorses it is the opposite – the male is at least as involved as the female in helping the offspring reach adulthood.

Sexual selection is a broad theme. See The Evolution of Beauty- How Darwin's Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World - and Us. Konner could do a better job of explaining it. Men select for large breasts. Our ape cousins show that they are not necessary for nursing children. Both men and women select for verbal intelligence. Singing ability does not appear to have been selected for any purpose other than sexual attraction.

Chapter 4: Primate Possibilities
Konner gives a survey of the relation between the sexes among primate groups. We learned that the most primitive primates are lemurs, which gave way to more advanced primate such as monkeys everywhere in the world except the isolated island of Madagascar.

He contends that the females dominate in all species of lemurs. Konner is fond of the word “dominate,” no doubt building to his thesis that men have always dominated women. He assesses every primate species, judging which of the sexes dominates the other. This falsely reduces domination to a one dimensional metric.

Certain factors are consistent throughout primate species. It is most frequently the females who choose with whom to mate, even to the point of mating with aggressive males who have recently killed their infants. Males generally display the greatest degrees of aggression, to the point of infanticide, although there are exceptions.

Konner has interesting observations on the way females fight back. They will defend their infants against more powerful aggressive males. They will steal a tryst out from under the eyes of the powerful male who would like to dominate them. Domination, by whatever dimension is being measured, is never complete.

Climbing the evolutionary ladder, more intelligent apes learn to form coalitions to advance their evolutionary interests. It becomes a coalition of males who dominate the mating opportunities within a troop, apportioning sexual opportunities among themselves, and coalitions of females who defend their infants against marauding males.

The behavior of bonobos differs radically from that of chimpanzees, from which they split two million years ago. Male chimpanzees are more aggressive with their partners; the sisterhood among the bonobos quite successfully keeps the males in their place. The bonds of the sisterhood are strengthened by sexual relations with each other, although Konner does not mention exclusive homosexuality.

Konner marvels that such differences in sexual behavior could have evolved over a mere two million years. I refer the reader to J Philippe Rushton’s analysis of the significant differences in sexual behavior among human races that diverged only 30,000 to 70,000 years ago. See Race, Evolution and Behavior

Chapter 5: Equal Origins?
Konner begins this chapter by going to the heart of his argument: “When we consider the change since the emergence of what we like to call civilization, the contrast is greater, and when we consider the last few centuries, greater still.”

Women and men specialized more as society became more highly structured. Greater material abundance supported constant growth in populations. Larger polities and stored wealth meant that there was more incentive for war. Women suffered rape, slavery and concubinage. Men suffered death, castration and slavery. Konner considers the women’s fate to be worse than that of the men. Roy Baumeister writes in Is There Anything Good About Men?: How Cultures Flourish by Exploiting Men that whereas 80% of women have, only 40% of the men who have ever lived have left offspring.

As Frank Salter writes in On Genetic Interests Family, Ethnicity and Humanity in an Age of Mass Migration, the deepest interest of human beings, like every form of animal and plant, is passing on our genome. In those terms women have been twice as well favored as men. On the review is a video expanding on the theme.

Chapter 6: Cultivating Dominance
As society became more complex, the affairs of state became farther removed from the household. Since women were tied to the household, governance became more exclusively a male domain. This is of course a matter of degree. The big decisions among the Stone Age Kayapo Indians of Brazil are made in the men’s house.

As society became more complex, violence became more organized. Reading parties evolved into standing armies. Nonetheless, as Steven Pinker notes in a book that Konner often cites, The Better Angels of our Nature despite the increasingly organized nature of violence the proportion of people who die violent deaths at the hands of their conspecifics has continually decreased over evolutionary history.

The decrease in the level of violence of course took place primarily during the epoch of patriarchy. Warfare among developed nations has been at a historical low. However, feel-good policies espoused by women have made the streets more dangerous.
Chapter 7: Samson's Haircut, Achilles' Heel
In this chapter Konner addresses the rights of women as individuals. Under patriarchy, prior to the Enlightenment, the man was indeed the head of the household and the ultimate decision-maker. At that time family was the primary economic unit of society. As it had been stipulated in the Bible, the man was the external face of the family.

Konner gives an accurate account of the gradual enfranchisement of women over the past three centuries, being granted the right to own property, vote, initiate divorces and so on. These rights were accorded them by men, who were in charge, in recognition of the economic and social changes taking place. Just like the end of child labor, the emancipation of the slaves in the end of colonialism, they were ideas whose time had come and which at the time they were enacted had widespread support among men as well as women.
Chapter 8: The Trouble with Men
Konner pounds home his major point which echoes Ashley Montagu’s “Natural Superiority of Women.” He notes that women CEOs run "General Motors, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Archer Daniels Midland, Lockheed Martin, DuPont, General Dynamics, Oil States International, Xerox, Duke Energy, Gannett Company, Yahoo, Alliant Energy, Schnitzer Steel, ITT, International Game Technology, Clearwater Paper, and Benchmark Electronics."
Eight years later we don't remember the names of many of these women. We remember that Carlie Fiorina at Hewlett-Packard, Melissa Meyer at Yahoo and Ginny Rometty at IBM didn't accomplish much and are gone. Mary Barra remains at the helm of General Motors, the stock price of which has surged from $35 to $36 in her nine years of leadership.
The most dynamic business leaders of the past few decades, for better or worse, have all been men, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Jack Welch, Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison and Jeff Bezos just to name a few. It is not just American culture – the same has been true in China, Japan and throughout Western Europe.
Why not? Men have to be good for something. Quite a bit, in fact. Fans of Konner should read Roy Baumeister’s Is There Anything Good About Men?: How Cultures Flourish by Exploiting Men as a counterbalance.
Our concepts of our own genders are formed by a combination of genetics and culture. Media has a big influence. Little kids are exposed all day long to TV and other electronic devices.
Konner claims that female brains are proportionally larger than men’s, and that the sexes are of equal intelligence. Researchers agree with him that the sexes excel in different areas of intelligence. See Sex Differences in Intelligence, The g Factor: The Science of Mental Ability (Human Evolution, Behavior, and Intelligence), and Race and Sex Differences in Intelligence and Personality: A Tribute to Richard Lynn at 80 .

Men are indeed more aggressive than women. Aggression drives evolution. We are descended of survivors of competition with other ape-men and our conspecifics in other tribes. This is the same in all male animals. It is a feature, not a bug. Konner would deny the function of evolution. Sir Charles Sherrington summed it up a century ago in an epigram: Nature represents in the case of man a revulsion of the product against the process." Sir Arthur Keith explains that "Here product stands for modern or evolved man; the process for the means used by Nature in his creation."

Konner notes that “white women expressed more negative opinions of black men when their fertility risk was high . In fact , the monthly curves for racial bias and conception risk were almost identical.” Absolutely. This is an evolutionary adaptation.

Sexuality is different between men and women, as it is in every mammalian species. The males are driven to sex by their hormones. Konner overlooks the fact that it is only since the 1960s that we even imagine it might be different. He spends several pages describing women’s disappointment with the hookup culture, one night stands and so on.

Konner says that women do not pay for sex or use pornography. While this is generally true, there are exceptions. Regulating Sex: The Politics of Intimacy and Identity discusses the ways in which professional white women enjoy sex tourism in the Caribbean.

Konner does not mention the high numbers of Chinese, Japanese and Korean women who are totally uninterested in sex. Race, Evolution and Behavior says this is an evolved characteristic. In those societies cultural mechanisms displaced hormones as a means to ensure reproduction. Those cultural elements were lost in the move to the cities.
Konner is right that women are more emotional than men. Making decisions on the basis of emotions rather than logic can have negative consequences. Women are more inclined to avoid problems rather than grapple with them. Angela Merkel’s admission of a million immigrants to Germany is a case in point. Abandoning capital punishment, largely at the insistence of women, has left more criminals on the streets and decreased public safety. Free speech and the resultant arguments is a centerpiece of democracy. Women are inclined to stifle it.
Chapter 9: Developing Daughters
Konner uses this chapter to advocate for the removal of the “glass ceiling”, as if the only thing preventing equal representation in every sphere of life were residual discrimination.

He discusses the rapid declines in birth rates in countries in which female literacy in the standards of living have grown. He also credits the improvements in mother and child care and the decrease in mortality during childbirth.

Konner goes on at length about how AIDS affects both sexes equally. This has not happened. It still mainly affects homosexual men. Though it is a very complex situation, Inventing the AIDS Virus makes a strong case to be made that it is predominantly a lifestyle disease. Celia Farber Serious Adverse Events: An Uncensored History of AIDS describes the politics of characterizing it as a heterosexual disease.

Konner describes female circumcision, rape and other abuses that women suffer in the Third World. His observations are accurate. Whether we in his reading audience are in a position to do anything about it is a good question.
Chapter 10: Billions Rising
Women have done all right in the world of business. As per this title, they are The Richer Sex. For better or worse, America and the west are experiencing Sexual Utopia In Power

Women are in control. Konner’s writes “Women are more in favor of government - sponsored social programs and more opposed to war but less in favor of marijuana ; they are more in favor of equality for gays and lesbians but less in favor of sexual liberation generally . Marriage , motherhood , divorce , labor participation , socioeconomic status , and other factors contribute to women’s voting patterns.”

He writes as well “…it seems likely that future increases in women’s influence on women ( among other things ) will expand government programs that provide jobs and increase equality.”

Both are true. Politicians pay a great deal of attention to the woman’s vote and less to traditional conservative notions such as a balanced budget. One could attribute the burgeoning deficits and the demographic collapse to

[Nuria · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lo que más me ha gustado es que parecía un libro sobre feminismo, pero no. La psicología evolutiva me atrae mucho y casi la mitad del libro versa sobre ese tema. Termina con datos y razones por los cuales más mujeres en el poder serían algo beneficioso para todos. Recomendado. 4 estrellas porque algunos pasajes se me han hecho pesados, pero la temática un 10.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was amazing. I read the first few chapters twice, in part, because the second time around I understood it better after taking more anthropology and biology classes. I finally finished it today, after starting it two years ago.

This is the perspective I was looking for, and trying to formulate, when I was reading Homer, Aristotle, Hobbes etc. back in the early 2000's and feeling incredibly frustrated and dismayed that we (as a class and college) seemed to be emulating and admiring sexist, violent, and stupid men who viewed my sex as merely a beast of burden and an object for his sexual fulfillment. This paradigm didn't match with reality. It seemed to be an obviously deeply flawed and skewed perspective but we rarely discussed this when we discussed Agamemmnon or the Sabine Women. This book is a great example of why I love anthropology: history, biology, evolution, anthropology, sociology, etc. all come together to tell a much fuller, honest story, rooted in reality and not just male fantasy, about who and what women are and have been to the human species and our history.

Some great quotes:
"In addition to women's superiority in judgment, their trustworthiness, reliability, fairness, working and playing well with others, relative freedom from distracting sexual impulses, and lower levels of prejudice, bigotry, and violence make them biologically superior. They live longer, have lower mortality at all ages, are more resistant to most categories of disease, and are much less likely to suffer brain disorders that lead to disruptive and even destructive behavior. And, of course, most fundamentally they are capable of producing new life from their own bodies, a stressful and costly burden in biological terms, to which men literally add only the tiniest biological contribution -- and one that in the not-to-distant futre could probably be done without. As we will see, there are species that have evolved that way and very nicely, thank you; with our growing mastery of biotechnology, we could get there much faster than they did and do it even better than they do.
"I am not recommending that, you understand; I am merely saying it is feasible, whereas the reverse situation is a biological impossibility. As a man, I would like for me and my kind to be able to stick around and maintain some sort of usefulness. I also have it on pretty good authority that most women would not like to get rid of men. But the vast majority of women, and many men as well, want to see a world in which opportunities, responsibilities, and rewards are shared more equally between the two sexes. This is not because they are so similar -- although they are in many ways -- but, above all, perhaps because they are different. . . . Extreme male domination is an anomaly in our history -- a long-lasting one, but nevertheless, temporary. In terms of the relationship between the sexes, we are recovering equality, not inventing it. And if we look around the animal world, we find many excellent models among our closest relatives and beyond." p. 5-6

"But in science we ask whether generalizations are possible. I will show you that in the domain of sex differences in brain and behavior, they are not only possible but fully justified by the evidence. We will see, as well, that it is not just a difference in average levels of violence and egotism that has made all the difference in history, it is also that when men get together in groups that exclude women, their higher average levels of these emotions produce a toxic dynamic that has poisoned the stream of history." p. 7

"There is a birth defect that is surprisingly common, due to a change in a key pair of chromosomes. In the normal condition the two look the same, but in this disorder one is shrunken beyond recognition. The result is shortened life span, higher mortality at all ages, an inability to reproduce, premature hair loss, and brain defects variously resulting in attention deficit, hyperactivity, conduct disorder, hypersexuality, and an enormous excess of both outward and self-directed aggression. The main physiological mechanism is androgen poisoning, although there may be others. I call it the X-chromosome deficiency syndrome, and a stunning 49 percent of the human species is affected.
"It is also called maleness.
"My choice to call being male a syndrome and to consider it less normal than the usual alternative is not an arbitrary moral judgment. It is based on evolution, physiology, development, and susceptibility to disease. Once in our distant past, all of our ancestors could reproduce from their own bodies; in other words, we were all basically female. When biologists ask why sex evolved, they are not asking rhetorically -- the fact that sex feels good was a valuable addition. What they are really asking is: Why did those self-sufficient females invent males? It had to be a very big reason, since they were bringing in a whole new cast of characters that took up space and ate their fill, not to mention being quite annoying, but could not themselves realize the goal of evolution: creating new life." p 8-9 (by the way the answer is, in part at least, genetic variety and division of labor).

"Both tales [Samson and Achilles] deal with the limits of male strength. Both reveal the dependence of even superheroes on women -- mothers and lovers. Both teach us that the man -- and it has always been a man -- who lives by strength and violence alone will die by them, often beccause of something to do with sex. And both foretell an end to the hubris of unbridled, simplistic, classic masculinity. Physical strength matters little in today's world, and martial prowess is less and less admired as a solution to human problems. For our two superheroes, the end came in their lifetimes. For us as a civilization, it is just ahead; yet unlike with Samson and Achilles, it will not mean a tragic end for men, just a triumph for women." p. 197

Ashley Montagu (a man) wrote, "The Natural Superiority of Women" which Konner discusses and quotes from. "It [Montagu's book] was about women's intrinsic biology and why it is just plain better.
"Of course, he recognized men's biological advantages: greater size and muscle mass, a higher basal metabolism, the ability to make sperm throughout life, performance in sports that demand speed, muscle, and fierce bursts of energy. But women's advantages were much more impressive; women were longer-lived than men, had lower mortality at all ages, and were more resistant to many diseases, both infectious and chronic. This implies greater fitness and better adaptation. And there were specific achievements as well, even in sports. Because of their fat stores and specialized metabolism, they are superior at long-distance swimiming and other endurance challenges. . . .
Most importantly, women had in their bodies the ability to reproduce -- really reproduce, not just donate a micropacket of genes. They could conceive, carry a hugely burdensome pregnancy to term, cope with its massive physiological challenges, give birth with great courage in the face of pain and danger, and produce, for years if need be, a nourishing, disease-suppressing fluid from their bodies that is the ideal food for human infants. And in most cultures they did all this without slowing down very much in the rest of life.
Montagu (and Konner) go on to list women winners of the Nobel Prize in various fields and then says this, "It is beyond our scope to say what these women accomplished, other than this: theirs were among the most important human ahcievements since the start of the twentieth century, and they were made by people with one hand tied behind them. Or as someone said about the famous movie dance team, Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but in high heels, going backward.
"What Montagu meant was: We have not yet begun to see what women can do. 'May it not be,' he asked 'that women are just about to emerge from a period of subjection during which they were the menials of the masculine world . . . in which the opportunities and encouragements were simply not available?' He went on to quote Oscar Wilde, 'Owing to their imperfect education, the only works we have had from women are works of genius.' Wilde was a professional exaggerator, but there is more than a grain of truth here. Who but the most inspired, the most impassioned, the most disciplined, the most willing to sacrifice, and the most truly gifted could win on such a steeply tilted playing field?" p. 208-9

[Amy Layton · Rating 4 out of 5]

I knew this book was a good book right from the first chapter. He begins discussing genes and genomes and other scientific things that I don't know much about, and how in the womb, these turn into male, female, and intersex. The mere fact that he recognized intersex, was stunning to me. And, a few pages later, he mentions gender reaffirming surgery, and how that plays into his theory as well. Intersex and trans folks are being represented in what would normally be a male/female binary within the biological world? Sign me up.

I also figured this book would be right up my alley because of how blatantly feminist it is. I was a little worried, at first, that it would be bashing men (#notallmen), but once I started reading this book, I realized that Melvin Konner was a man (I didn't look at the author until I got home from the library). And, I must say, Konner tackled this subject matter very well, and he did it in a way that was not at all confrontational, but actually extremely humorous--I ended up sending my old roommate quotes of his because I didn't want to be the only one getting enjoyment out of this book.

All in all, I was very impressed. He started with a biological framework--a framework that I rarely see anymore in feminist nonfiction works--and discussed both humans and animals and insects and arachnids within that realm. He included intersex and trans folks. He discussed both ancient history and current history from many different cultures. He addressed current history, such as Daesh (called ISIS/ISIL in his book), #bringbackourgirls, and #yesallwomen. He discussed gendered socialization, and how socialization can vary from culture to culture, and how it can vary when you need boys to do girls' work, and girls to do boys' work. He finally ends on a note mentioning his children and grandchildren, and how he hopes that with the end of male supremacy, the world will become a better place to them. It is an ending note that is filled with authenticity and genuineness.

Get the full review here!

[Aidan O'gain · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really good. There are plenty of statements the author makes that are sure to cause fights, or at least arguments in the first few chapters. They're very astute observations, and I was very happy to be given a contrary point of view to the patriarchal assumptions that are deeply engrained in world cultures. The later chapters were also very interesting, but it became more like a news article about current trends. while those are really interesting, too. I was in it more for the change in mindset, so the first half was far more interesting to me. Five stars are for giving me exactly what I wanted, and then a little extra. Thanks for giving me a new angle from which to look at the question of gender differences!

[D.R. Oestreicher · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Women After All, Melvin Konner strives to answer both the questions of nature vs nurture and the future for human sex roles. Four conclusions are argued.

Stereotypical male/female behavior is biological.

Evolution has created a wide variety of sex roles

Sex trafficking, slavery, and rape is still everywhere.

Women are returning to power and men are optional.

The is a comprehensive and readable, though sometimes bogged down in credits and citations, history of human sex roles and sex roles genrally since the beginning of life on earth. An exciting treasure trove for non-fiction readers.

For more see: http://1book42day.blogspot.com/2015/0...

[Danielle · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars A good review of other literature and studies on the history and current trends in women's rights and advocacy throughout the world. Anyone who keeps up with those trends will find the book a bit repetitive. I found almost nothing new. It would be an excellent read for someone seeking to become acquainted with the historical treatment of women in our world and the hopeful future continuation of the gains achieved thus far. Eventually, I hope that everything in this book becomes common knowledge but until then, read up and pass it on!