Tom Matlack observes animal gender roles while on safari in Kenya.
This week I am in the Masai Mara on Safari. I realize this is a great honor and privilege. I’ve been trying not to think about gender politics and just to soak in the magnificence of our planet, undisturbed by human hands. But wherever I go, the role of sexual hierarchy stays with me.
Our guide, Protus, says that to understand each species of animal you need to know “who the big boss is.” We saw a pride of lions our very first day. It was not hard to see who was the big boss there. The male wandered over to the female and mated with her about 15 yards from our truck. She wasn’t happy about it. But it was over within a few seconds, and he went back over and fell asleep.
♦◊♦
Yesterday we also saw the Great Migration of the wildebeest. Hundreds of thousands of animals moving together quite literally as far as the eye can see. All you hear are the males communicating to each other in alternating low and high sounding snorts. “Those are the guys trying to figure out where to go,” Protus explained with a smile. ”North, South, North, South. Can’t you hear it? They are lost.” Of course they are not. The migration is one of the wonders of the world happening exactly the same way each year. But it sure sounded like those guys were confused.
Today we saw a herd of elephants, including a baby less than a week old. They were all females. The male is still dominant but is not part of the family group. He wanders solo only showing up to mate. The herd is made up of females and their young. It was amazing to watch a baby, well over 200 pounds at birth, pretend to eat grass and then suckle at his mom’s breast.
Then there are the Hyaenas. The live in clans dominated by one female. Each gives birth to two babies. If they are both females, one will become dominant over the other. She will kill and eat her sister to become dominant female once her mother is too old. There cannot be two sisters without a clear line succession.
♦◊♦
I kept on asking Protus who the big boss is in each case, and he would quiz me later on what he told me. What kept occurring to me is that each animal species has its own specific pattern of gender relationships, some male dominant, some female dominant. But human beings are the only ones with the ability to choose and evolve our own pattern of gender interaction. Certainly we have an animal blueprint from which to work, but our sexual preference and our patterns of domination and cooperation are up to us.
That is our blessing and our curse. But if you look out at the animal kingdom, it sure isn’t the case that males dominate all species. Far from it. More often than not, the females are “big bosses.”
♦◊♦
—Photos courtesy of Tom Matlack
About Tom Matlack
TM: “…. each animal species has its own specific pattern of gender relationships, some male dominant, some female dominant. But human beings are the only ones with the ability to choose and evolve our own pattern of gender interaction….”
Don’t get your hopes up. All social engineering may be doomed to fail. We might be hardwired too.
The risk you run, is that if you disrupt traditional human gender roles, the “new man” or “new woman” you create, may be fundamentally unappealing to the opposite sex. As a result, only those who actively resist the social engineering, will pair off and reproduce — terminating your experiment quickly and very Darwinistically. Consider the marriage and birth rates of Mormons vs secular Anglos, Orthodox vs secular Jews, and you’ll see a pattern.
Take it from a famous feminist woman:
“I hate to be critical of our allies in any way, because we need them, but there’s something about that certain kind of hyperfeminist guy that makes them unappealing to date, to me. I suspect it has something to do with our internal conceptions of masculinity, which is terrible on my part.”
http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/sexist/2010/03/26/fucking-while-feminist-with-jaclyn-friedman/
There are various ways to go on a holiday in today’s world. Airlines all around the world make it affordable for passengers to travel all around the world by offering great deals on plane tickets and low cost airlines. Vehicles make it possible for people to go to places a few hours away like the local nature reserve parks or another state. There are several cruise ships to take passengers on board the ship to explore the wide open seas and various vacation deals on cabin or camp sites provide avid outdoorsy people to explore the mountains and forest.