On first looking into "Sex at Dawn"

Last Friday, I finished a first reading of Christopher Ryan's and Cacilda Jethá's latest book, Sex at Dawn. Then no sooner did I finish it than I left it with D while seeing her. I want her to read it because I think it will give us a lot to talk about. Anyway, I haven't thought deeply about it yet, but it is a really interesting book.

The basic thesis of the book is that humans evolved as a sexually promiscuous species. Even though we now (most of us) live in monogamous societies, our instincts haven't had time to catch up with the change yet so by and large we still want to sleep around. That's the gist of it, right there. All the rest is argument.

The arguments are interesting, and come from several directions. Ryan and Jethá spend a lot of time comparing human sexual behavior with that of our genetically-closest non-human relatives, chimpanzees and bonobos (neither of which species is even remotely monogamous).* They examine sexual and social behavior (so far as it is available to us) in foraging** societies that exist today or that we know from reliable documentation. They even explain (at some length) that the erect human penis has a number of highly unusual features when you compare it to the penises of the other great apes, and they draw relevant conclusions by thinking through what the purpose of these features could possibly be. On the other side of the bed, they offer a very long discussion of multiple orgasm and "female copulatory vocalizations."

It will be no surprise to anybody to hear that we all -- men and women alike -- find it totally natural to want to fuck multiple other people. The interesting part, to me at least, is the suggestion that early communities relied on this very impulse as a way to forge a social bond that held tribes together. In the past, I have argued that yes, it is natural to fall in love (or lust) with multiple others; but that it is also natural for your partner(s) to get jealous. (See, esp. part 3 of this series.) Ryan and Jethá say no, jealousy is not "natural" in the sense of being biologically inevitable. They agree that fear of abandonment may well be genetically-programmed. But who ever said that you were about to be abandoned, just because your partner went and fucked somebody else? That part -- the connection between fucking others and being abandoned -- is a cultural assumption and not a biological imperative. And they argue that early foraging societies held exactly the opposite assumption. It is a fascinating*** treatise.

The most important part, though, is what they do not say. I have seen reviewers write as if this book gives us all permission to run out and fuck the milkman and the dairymaid and our neighbors down the street, all because that's what they did in the Stone Age. In a way that could sound exuberant and delightful, but the authors don't say so. In fact, while they talk a good bit about the modern day, they are hesitant to make concrete recommendations of any kind. Right at the beginning they say explicitly that they do not know what to do with their findings. They do not know what direction we all ought to go, now that we know the things they tell us. The critical fact, to which they return again and again, is that Man is incredibly adaptable. Early promiscuity worked for foraging societies in the Stone Age. But everything about our lives has changed between then and now, including the special features of their communities that made promiscuity work so well. There is -- to put it gently -- very little evidence that it can work the same way today, except in a few isolated cases**** so specialized that they really don't disprove the rule. Of all the reviews they post on the book's website, I have found only one (by Stephen Snyder, M.D., a sex therapist) that truly seems to get this point. It is sobering to realize that knowing even so much can tell us so little.

But it is a fun book. By all means read it.


* I use the phrase "genetically-closest" very deliberately. I have two good friends who are both anti-Darwinians. Personally I don't understand why, but there it is. On the other hand, the genetic code is known and mapped; so regardless what you think about Darwin (or even evolution) it is indisputable that chimpanzees and bonobos have a genetic code that is closer to ours than any other animal.

** Ryan and Jethá use the term "foraging" society as a short-hand for "immediate-return hunting-and-gathering" society: i.e., a society that has no way to store food. Such societies are generally nomadic, because they have to wander to find enough to eat. They don't have much property, because too much crap is a bitch to carry around everywhere. And they probably represent what most human societies were like during most of human history.

*** The authors explain that the word "fascinating" comes from the Latin fascinum, which means an artificial phallus, often worn, e.g., as an amulet for good luck.



**** One of the most interesting to me was the "swinging" sub-culture of top-gun fighter pilots during and after World War Two.