Stating the obvious

On the one hand, this is a good and interesting book exposing the fallacies of androcentric sociobiology. On the other hand, it occasionally looks rather silly, since it's simply stating the obvious. Did you know that women enjoy sex? Did you know that women want to be just as sexually active as men, and that men therefore attempt to control their sexuality? Of course you did. But Meredith Small states this as if it was some kind of stunning revelation. And her book was published in 1992!

The reason for this sad state of affairs is, of course, that Small is a sociobiologist herself. She is something as oxymoronic as a feminist sociobiologist. Her book sounds like a strange cross of extreme Neo-Darwinism and NOW. Her book is presumably directed at the sociobiological community, pointing out that their paradigm is...well, wrong. Although the author still sees herself as a sociobiologist, her book is another nail in the coffin of sociobiology.

Small compares humans with other primates (read apes, monkeys and prosimians). According to sociobiology, males should be promiscuous, while females should be coy and choosy. Are they? No, not exactly. It turns out that males and females of most primate species are equally promiscuous. Indeed, female primates often take the initiative in mating. In some species, males rather than females are a "limiting resource", again disconfirming sociobiology. Sociobiology further predicts hypergamy: females should choose male partners of a higher rank than themselves. This too turns out to be more complicated in real life. Alpha males do "have their way" with the females, but the females turn out to have affairs with lower-ranking males in secret. It seems nonhuman primates make a sport out of confounding sociobiological expectations!

It also turns out (surprise) that female primates seem to enjoy sex, that some primate species are matriarchal, and that at least one species of nonhuman primate, the bonobo, is bisexual and has sex for non-reproductive purposes! Less than straight relations have also been reported among other nonhuman primates.

As a good Neo-Darwinist, Small also discusses various evolutionary reasons for female primate promiscuity. It could be a defense strategy against male infanticide. Or it could be a way of avoiding inbreeding. Both alternatives sound probable. The main weakness of the book is that it attempts to explain humans in mostly biological terms, instead of emphasizing patriarchy as a *social* construction. Indeed, it's unclear what position Small takes on the sociobiological idea that patriarchy is universal among humans. Here, sociobiology seems to constrain the author.

That being said, I nevertheless found "Female Choices" both interesting and revealing. In some socially constructed circles, stating the obvious is still necessary.