Genes
6:29 a.m. -- 2008-06-22
Let's talk about sex!
And now I've got your attention, I'll clarify. Let's talk about gender. What does it mean to be male? What does it mean to be female?
That's a very complex question, best tackled (ahem) from one angle at a time. Today's subject: reproductive motivations.
First off, if you don't believe in the theory of evolution, this will mean very little to you, and you might even find it upsetting. Apologies in advance, but I believe the planet formed four billion years ago, and we evolved from more primitive forms. If you don't like that... I can't help you today.
So, we're cold-hearted scientists for today's lesson. As such, we acknowledge that the only form of life after death that we have any scientific proof of, is survival of our genes. If you get together with a person of the opposite sex, and have sex, you can pool your genetic material in a new person... who will hopefully still be alive after you've gone, and planning to have children of their own. (This may seem like a pretty poor form of life after death, but it's all we have on the menu, as cold-hearted scientists.)
In evolutionary terms, survival of my genes indicates success. Those genes stay in the game for the next round. Some people are very successful in a particular round: for example, the genes of Genghis Khan are present in about a seventh of all Asians. He didn't just pillage, it's clear.
Now, the urge to mate is an evolutionary characteristic. If you don't have the urge, your genes are less likely to make it through to the next round. But there's more to it than that. It's more subtle: men and women have different game strategies. They must have, for their ancestors to have survived all the previous rounds of the game, to be here now.
A person will be most successful (genetically) if they produce as many healthy children as possible. For a man, this simply means fathering as many children as possible. Have sex with lots of different women: spread that genetic material around! All it costs the male (bunch of flowers and sabretoothed tiger steak notwithstanding) is an ejaculation. There isn't a huge investment of resources from his body, so he can afford to adopt a random strategy.
For a woman, producing a child involves a vastly more substantial contribution, beginning with nine months of gestation, followed by providing milk for a long time. And after all that investment (remembering it's in her interests to have the child live, genetically speaking) she does everything she can to raise it in a safe, healthy environment.
How does she make the environment safe for the child? Well, for one thing, she tries very hard to keep the man around. To involve him in raising the child, instead of letting him continue prowling round the region, contributing a dollop of semen to any woman who takes his eye.
Recap: he wants to spread himself around, and she wants to stop him. And evolution has given both of them a number of mechanisms with which to achieve their aims. Science is only now revealing the full extent to which pheromones play a part. Other mechanisms are being found, too: did you know that a woman walks in a less 'sexy manner' when she's ovulating? In other words, she arouses less interest when it counts: when she's fertile, she doesn't telegraph the fact, and only the male who has stuck around is likely to fertilise her.
There are all kinds of complex things going on in our subconscious. Think about the feminine ideal, according to the image presented in the media.
* She's thin, but she has a good bust
* She has red lips, and blusher
* She has nice hair and shiny nails
* She wears perfume
Can't we just admire that beauty in an abstract way? Nope! If you are a male, you are admiring her because your genes make you want to have sex with her.
She's thin, which means she's young and healthy. But her breasts and bottom have developed, so she's been through puberty. Her hair and nails are in good condition: she's not suffering from a vitamin deficiency which might render her infertile, or cause her to produce sickly offspring. She smells interesting: most importantly, she doesn't smell like your close relations, so you won't be muddying the gene pool through incest. And she has red lips and cheeks, which look attractive to you because (in the days before cosmetics) this indicates that she just had sex.
Your human nature, therefore, says she's worth breeding with! She's somebody you want to be around... and ultimately bed.
A woman, considering a man, will be performing her own evaluation on much the same basis. Is he bald? If so, he's getting old: will he still be a good bet for protecting me and the children for years to come. Is he muscular enough to deal with threats to us? Can he provide for us? ...and so on. Different criteria, leading to a different 'game', but the end result is similar.
I can't tell you much about the thought process that goes on when a woman sees another woman, but I'm told they ALWAYS size up the opposition.
Now, what does all this mean to the transvestite? Well, he's got a very clear image of idealised womanhood, perhaps more so than any other male. Instead of just wanting to get that girl, he also wants to be that girl, at times.
Perhaps this is our way of cheating our evolved nature, just a little. In the same way that we use drugs like alcohol or tobacco to enhance our mood, in a way that evolution never anticipated, perhaps we have simply found another drug.
Perhaps we are a tentative offshoot from the main path of evolution. Everything about modern life started out as a mutation: having a skeleton, lungs, fur, wings, hooves...
With every round of the genetic game, new mutations are tried. Is it a good idea to have heavier bones? To have darker eyes? To store more fat on your behind? To be more aggressive? And with crushing slowness, the game decides who wins and who loses.
So perhaps those of us who have heterosexual tendencies, yet feel an indefinable urge that is most simply expressed as "being more girly" are one possible strategy that will be tried for a few rounds of the evolution game.
The game has been badly skewed for the last few hundred turns, because human beings have been surviving a little too well. Their numbers are increasing, and even two world wars, several natural disasters and the planet-wide spread of some nasty new diseases have failed to really dent the dominance of humans. Back in the days of fighting off cave bears with a sharpened stone on the end of a stick, one might assume a shortage of males would develop, justifying in some part their 'wild oats' tendency.
Nowadays, with much more of a balance between the number of males and females, societal constructs like marriage have appeared. (And very nice it is, too.)
In a crowded, complicated world where you can't really have a knife fight over a woman and expect to get away with it, small wonder that other strategies are emerging. We can't all be the alpha male all the time.
But I wonder if being a transvestite is just a manifestation of a need to opt out from evolution's cruel game?
Evolution has been temporarily thwarted by civilisation. We feed and clothe orhpans, we pay the unemployed, and we care for the sick. We use contraception. Our medics labour to keep sickly children alive, where evolution would simply ensure that those dealt a bad hand came to a dead end.
So if we get to choose, what happens now? Will gender roles remain hardwired into our consciousness, now we're aware of some of the rules of the game... or will we start to split off into a series of separate games for minority interest groups?
I have no idea, and I won't live to find out. But at least I can stop feeling guilty about fancying so many women...
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