For many years, research Zoology makes me feel like a sad outcast. Not because I love spiders, love to cut dead things I find by the roadside, or happily root around in animal dung for clues about what their owners ate. No, the source of my confusion is my gender. As a woman there is only one thing: I am a failure.
“Females are exploited and the basic evolutionary basis for exploitation is the fact that eggs are larger than sperm,” wrote my college tutor Richard Dawkins in his best-selling evolutionary bible, Selfish Gene.
According to the laws of zoology, we egg-makers have been betrayed by our bulky gametes. By investing our genetic heritage in a few nutrient-rich ovaries, rather than millions of motile sperm, our ancestors shortened the early lottery of life. Now we’ve got to play the second game with sperm shooters for eternity, a feminine footnote to the masculinity’s main event. I was taught that this seemingly small disparity in our sex cells laid the cast-iron biological foundation for gender inequality. Dawkins told us: “All the other differences between the sexes can be explained by this fundamental difference. “The exploitation of women begins here.”
Male animals lead the tumultuous lives of propulsion. They fight with each other for leadership or possession of children. They huddle around indiscriminately, motivated by a biological imperative to propagate their seeds far and wide. And they dominate society; where the male leads, the female obediently follows. A natural woman’s role as a selfless mother; Thus, the maternal efforts are considered the same: We have no competitive advantage. Sex is more of an obligation than an incentive.
And as far as evolution is concerned, it is men who drive the bus of change. We women can dance thanks to our common DNA, as long as we have promised to keep the peace and silence. As an evolution geek, I can’t see my reflection in this ’50s sex role sitcom. Am I the wrong kind of woman?
The answer, thankfully, is no.
In the natural world, women’s shapes and roles vary widely to include a fascinating array of anatomy and behaviors. Yes, the doting mother bird was among them, but so was the jacana, which abandoned her eggs and left them to a harem of horned males. Females can be faithful, but only 7% of bird species engage in monogamous sex, which causes many deceitful females to seek sex with multiple mates. Not all animal societies are dominated by males in any way; The alpha females have evolved through various classes and their power ranges from benevolent (bonobo) to brutal (bee). Females can compete with each other as fiercely as males: Topi engage in fierce battles with huge horns to reach the best males, and matriarchal meerkat are animals with The most deadly breast on the planet, killing competitors’ offspring and preventing their reproduction. Then there are the stout females: cannibal female spiders eat their lovers as snacks after birth or even before birth, and “lesbian” lizards have completely lost their need for cubs. male and reproduce only by cloning.
A sexist myth has been introduced into biology, and it distorts the way we see female animals. But fortunately, in the last few decades, there has been a revolution in our understanding of what it means to be a woman.
