Sexism and the Nuances of Libertarianism
Jun. 8th, 2009 12:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
le_bebna_kamniToday I stumbled across a post called "Where the men are" that got my hackles up a bit. As I'm sure many of you know, mention the phrase "gender role" and I'm likely to go on a rant, because I've spent a good chunk of my life feeling remarkably ill-suited to the roles generally attributed to my gender. Likewise, I've met a remarkable number of men whom I respect and like who would never fit the typical "manly" roles and struggled with the same issue growing up.
I generally expect a certain amount of sexism from conservative people. I grew up among such people, and as a result I have a lot of maladaptive conditioning that I've been trying to break for years -- reflexes like feeling uncomfortable in the presence of nudity, even though it doesn't ideologically bother me, or feeling rude for winning at a competitive game, even though I enjoy winning. (That last one has a funny story behind it. I used to play soccer on a team that was almost entirely boys because there weren't enough girls in the league to form a girls' team. I was more aggressive than many of the boys on my team and a good player because of it, but I took a lot of flack for it because I was a girl, and girls aren't supposed to be aggressive. So to make up for my "non girly" behaviour, I adopted the habit of saying "I'm sorry" every time I took the ball from someone -- this was when I was about 10 years old. :D )
But I've noticed that sexism in the form of advocating gender roles is also fairly prevalent among strong libertarians, which seems a huge surprise to me. I've always thought of libertarianism as the ultimate "I can choose to do/be what I want and I respect your right to do/be what you want", but today I realized that there is a nuance in libertarianism I've been missing for quite some time.
First, let me state right off that I don't think that all libertarians, or even most of them, are sexist -- I know many of them who aren't, just as a know a fair number of non-libertarians who are sexist. However, I have noticed a certain trend among strong advocates of libertarianism to use phrases like "real men", usually with a reference to women and small children needing protection showing up somewhere in the conversation.
Yes, that's sexism. If you look down on people because you don't think they're acting in ways appropriate to their allocation of genitalia -- e.g., everyone with a penis has a duty to protect the weaker members of society (implying that people with vaginas don't have the same duty, and that men aren't allowed to belong to 'the weaker members of society" but fully grown women are) -- it's just as sexist as the old idea that women aren't as intelligent as men and have a duty to stay home and raise babies instead of wasting time pursuing college degrees that wouldn't do their weaker minds any good anyways.
So how can you have a group of people who are exceptionally big on freedom and personal choice, but sneer at people who actually use that personal choice to be something other than their expected societal [gender] role? (This seems even more puzzling upon further reflection, because most libertarians I know take great pride in not following other societal norms...)
I think the answer lies somewhere in the nuances of the words "freedom" and "choice". Until today, I've always been confused at the difference between "social liberalism" and "social libertarianism". Yes, I know that liberals and libertarians are completely at odds when it comes to economic policies, but I couldn't quite grasp how there could be two different ways of viewing personal freedom: the government doesn't interfere with your personal life, end of story.
While I still think this attitude towards government generally holds for both "social liberalism" and "social libertarianism", what I was missing was the flip side: interference from other individuals. As a general rule, libertarians perceive something as being free as long as someone isn't using physical force to keep you from doing it1. Governmental pressures always count as physical force because even if the penalty is a fine (e.g. a parking ticket), the government can restrict your physical freedom (i.e., jail) if you don't pay it. For libertarians, social pressures don't count as interference, and even with extreme pressures everyone is considered to have a choice. Contrast this with liberals who believe that social pressures can be just as harmful (and sometimes more so) than actual physical threats.
The mottoes of the two groups might be summed up like this:
Social liberalism:"Personal lifestyle choices or innate traits of any given individual can't be punished or restricted by government, nor should they be regulated by other individuals"
Social libertarianism: "Personal lifestyle choices or innate traits can't be punished or regulated by the government, but individuals have the right to restrict the behaviour of others provided that they don't directly harm or coerce them."
(Bear in mind that these are stereotypical forms for compare/contrast purposes. Statements about what "liberals" or "libertarians" believe don't reflect any given member of the respective group, just general ideological trends.)
To illustrate this, consider a person who is an atheist. Both liberals and libertarians would agree that the government shouldn't be allowed to imprison someone for being atheist, nor should governemnt be allowed to attempt to "force" someone to convert by creating economic or other sanctions (e.g., restricting atheists to certain jobs, levying higher taxes on them, requiring that they attend psychological counseling or preventing them from voting). However, liberals say that individuals also can't do the same thing: employers can't fire someone for being an atheist; medical facilities (even religious ones) shouldn't be able to refuse a patient because of their beliefs. Libertarians say that an individual/company has the right to refuse to serve/hire someone, because the targeted individual can always in theory go somewhere else or change to meet societal norms.
This isn't a post about which perspective right or wrong -- on the contrary, I think that there's a fine balance between the two that has to be met. Rather, it's an exploration about what aspects of libertarian philosophy might allow for a component of sexism. Once again, let me iterate that this doesn't mean I think there are no sexist liberals. However, liberals are better known for taking enforcement *against* sexism even to extremes, rather than talking about how men aren't "real men" any more.
I don't have any hypotheses about why there is a tendency among strong libertarians for certain forms of sexism; but at least I now understand why libertarianism itself doesn't preclude it -- which liberalism does, simply because intolerance and prejudice are treated on the same level as physical or legal force, whereas in libertarianism only governmental force is treated as a valid interference to a person's freedom.
Now as a sub-post:
I think the article has a lot of underlying points that I agree with, but in the author's haste to pin it on a lack of manhood, I think the article misses the larger point: both men and women aren't being adequately prepared for adulthood, and it has nothing to do with "manliness". In fact, I'm sad that he attributes things like inner strength and poise as "manly virtues" that he thinks only a handful of women posses.
Actually, only a handful of men posses them too -- every generation rants about this problem (especially in the younger generations ;P). But in this case I think there is a phenomenon that's more than just the old ranting about the young. I think there's a cultural change happening in the desire to be self-reliant and in certain types of ambition. In many respects it's a breakdown in our culture that conditions people -- both men and women -- to be more helpless. I think why ESR is particularly noticing this trend in men is that while women have historically had these positive traits beaten out of them (sometimes literally, sometimes through other forms of conditioning), men have been traditionally encouraged and even required to develop things like self-sufficiency and bravery from a young age.
I know a lot of people think it's evolutionary, and there's probably something in our genes to that effect, but the chances to strengthen gender characteristics culturally provide more behaviour conditioning than evolution could ever hope to provide by itself. Take for example the concept of courage. As a child most of my friends were boys, although I did have several female friends as well. I remember a few times where one of my male friends would want to do something slightly risk-taking, like climbing up to the top of a barn or riding without hands standing up on a bike down a particularly steep incline -- and most of the time I didn't want to do it with them.
Now, if I were a boy, I would have been called a chicken and I wouldn't have been allowed to forget about it for weeks -- I saw it happen to other boys, who could be as initially reluctant as I was to follow suit. And if I had been a boy, I would have been eventually required to face up to my fears and develop that bravery if I wanted to keep my friends. But I was a girl. Oh, sometimes, they would call me chicken, but if any of their parents heard them they would get in trouble and it always ended then and there -- I sometimes think my friends came to believe that because I had this label "girl" that I was somehow physically incapable of doing what their parents called "boy things", and at some level I picked it up as well.
And I'm sad to say that I lost out because of it. Girls are just as capable of being brave (or stupid, depending on your perspective ;P) as boys. In fact, both genders should be encouraged to take risks, play with dangerous objects under reasonable supervision, and even learn how to hold their own in a fight. And yes, you will always have boys who are risk-averse or have no desire to be protectors, just as there are girls who think guns and knives are cool.
And I'm okay if it ends up that most boys and most girls still end up falling into stereotypical gender roles, if they've been given a chance to try both sides of the coin. Just don't be a jerk to those of us (men and women alike) who don't still fit the preconceived moulds. And don't give me crap about protecting women because babies are a scarce resource. First of all, A) Infant mortality is incredibly low in this day and age (and many countries have problems with overpopulation), and B) I can't tell you how many women -- particularly those who run in libertarian circles -- I've met who choose not to have children.
Besides which, since men frequently went off to war or on extended hunting trips (one tribe I studied sent hunting/mining parties as far as 2000 miles away), women frequently fell into the role of protecting the children and the elderly. Biologically, women are well adapted for it: women have better hearing, better senses of smell, and can't be knocked over as easily in a fight. Our adrenaline patterns are best suited for getting small children out of harm's way, and then turning around to take out the threat -- anyone who's seen a mad momma bear knows that the male isn't the scary one. Obviously *we're* the protectors, you're the hunters -- now go sit down and stop trying to take our biological roles. ;)
In regards to gun shows...I'm sorry, but gun shows are incredibly unwelcoming to women. Yes, I've been to one - I like guns and knives, and going to one can be fun if you can ignore the men there. No, the unwelcoming atmosphere isn't a "we don't want your kind" feeling; rather, it's a combined feeling of being an object of novelty that the guys want to poke at with a stick, and a piece of meat or a prize deer that someone would like to bag for a trophy. And many of the men are incredibly patronizing or a little too "friendly".
It's not the fact that I'm the only woman in a crowd of men. I'm used to that: I've played tuba since middle school, and in college I was in a marching bands with 17 other male tubas; I've done soccer and martial arts; I even chose the field of computer science. Yet none of my experiences can compare to what it feels like to walk into a gun show. Yes, I know there are plenty of women who enjoy gun shows -- but I think you have to be either pretty thick-skinned or oblivious not to find it an unwelcoming atmosphere (I think most gun-savvy women are the former and not the latter, by the way :D).
What actually sparked this post was a reply to blog entry by grendelkhan. The previous comments to the article had centred around the discussion of evolutionary biology as a justification for why men should fill the 'protector' role. The particular post I linked to was a continuation of other comments grendelkhan had made where he questioned the "biology, therefore society" conclusion:
Note that I'm not advocating that nation-states are biological *imperatives* any more than I think that different social roles for men and women are imperative. What I'm saying is that Grendelkhan has an incredibly pertinent point to make regarding sexism and libertarianism. If sexist libertarians accept the evolutionary biology argument as a justification for why "men must be men", then by the same logic they should also accept that evolution justifies maintaining national governments.
Yes, it can be argued that comparing years-long dominance of a single gorilla or chimpanzee until they're too old to maintain the position by physical/political2 force is nowhere near comparable to, say the Aztec Empire or the United States government. There's a lot of cultural choices that were made in between there, and that's what we can change. The same goes for sexism. Studies that male chimpanzees often give gifts to female chimpanzees to entice them to have sex don't justify why men have to be breadwinners in a relationship. And men don't hunt mammoths any more, just as feudal lords and castles no longer act as necessary protection to farmers in exchange for servitude. (Actually, men didn't really "hunt" mammoths so much as drove them off of cliffs by setting fire to nearby brush and scaring them into running in the wrong direction. Same with buffalo prior to the introduction of the domesticated horse to Northern America -- but that doesn't sound quite so heroic or dangerous, so I can see why "hunted" is frequently the image evoked. ;D )
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1 I've always heard this definition and taken it at face value, until I started writing this paragraph. It then occurred to me that "no physical interference" requirement seems to be a bit nebulous. I've seen a couple libertarians scoff at people who have been beaten up for dressing the wrong way in a particular town or neighborhood, saying it's their "own damn fault" for not knowing better. Whether they should or shouldn't know better, it's still a form of physical interference preventing people from choosing their own dress code -- is the difference who is carrying it out?. If police officers beat a person up because they weren't following written dress code laws (e.g. a woman refusing to wear an abaya Iran), that's another example of why government is wrong, but if regular people beat someone up for unspoken dress codes (e.g., a person refuses to stop dressing like a "dyke" or a "queer" in a conservative town), it's the stupidity of the victim? I don't know, I'm still puzzling this one out...Back
2 Yes, being top chimpanzee isn't just about physical prowess. Chimpanzees do political maneuvering that allow them to stay in power long after they're physically incapable of maintaining it. They manage to convince, bribe, or coerce other chimpanzees -- including females -- into keeping the would-be usurpers at bay. I highly recommend the book "The Ape and the Sushi Master" for a good non-technical introduction to primate behaviour (including humans ;P) Back
I generally expect a certain amount of sexism from conservative people. I grew up among such people, and as a result I have a lot of maladaptive conditioning that I've been trying to break for years -- reflexes like feeling uncomfortable in the presence of nudity, even though it doesn't ideologically bother me, or feeling rude for winning at a competitive game, even though I enjoy winning. (That last one has a funny story behind it. I used to play soccer on a team that was almost entirely boys because there weren't enough girls in the league to form a girls' team. I was more aggressive than many of the boys on my team and a good player because of it, but I took a lot of flack for it because I was a girl, and girls aren't supposed to be aggressive. So to make up for my "non girly" behaviour, I adopted the habit of saying "I'm sorry" every time I took the ball from someone -- this was when I was about 10 years old. :D )
But I've noticed that sexism in the form of advocating gender roles is also fairly prevalent among strong libertarians, which seems a huge surprise to me. I've always thought of libertarianism as the ultimate "I can choose to do/be what I want and I respect your right to do/be what you want", but today I realized that there is a nuance in libertarianism I've been missing for quite some time.
First, let me state right off that I don't think that all libertarians, or even most of them, are sexist -- I know many of them who aren't, just as a know a fair number of non-libertarians who are sexist. However, I have noticed a certain trend among strong advocates of libertarianism to use phrases like "real men", usually with a reference to women and small children needing protection showing up somewhere in the conversation.
Yes, that's sexism. If you look down on people because you don't think they're acting in ways appropriate to their allocation of genitalia -- e.g., everyone with a penis has a duty to protect the weaker members of society (implying that people with vaginas don't have the same duty, and that men aren't allowed to belong to 'the weaker members of society" but fully grown women are) -- it's just as sexist as the old idea that women aren't as intelligent as men and have a duty to stay home and raise babies instead of wasting time pursuing college degrees that wouldn't do their weaker minds any good anyways.
So how can you have a group of people who are exceptionally big on freedom and personal choice, but sneer at people who actually use that personal choice to be something other than their expected societal [gender] role? (This seems even more puzzling upon further reflection, because most libertarians I know take great pride in not following other societal norms...)
I think the answer lies somewhere in the nuances of the words "freedom" and "choice". Until today, I've always been confused at the difference between "social liberalism" and "social libertarianism". Yes, I know that liberals and libertarians are completely at odds when it comes to economic policies, but I couldn't quite grasp how there could be two different ways of viewing personal freedom: the government doesn't interfere with your personal life, end of story.
While I still think this attitude towards government generally holds for both "social liberalism" and "social libertarianism", what I was missing was the flip side: interference from other individuals. As a general rule, libertarians perceive something as being free as long as someone isn't using physical force to keep you from doing it1. Governmental pressures always count as physical force because even if the penalty is a fine (e.g. a parking ticket), the government can restrict your physical freedom (i.e., jail) if you don't pay it. For libertarians, social pressures don't count as interference, and even with extreme pressures everyone is considered to have a choice. Contrast this with liberals who believe that social pressures can be just as harmful (and sometimes more so) than actual physical threats.
The mottoes of the two groups might be summed up like this:
Social liberalism:"Personal lifestyle choices or innate traits of any given individual can't be punished or restricted by government, nor should they be regulated by other individuals"
Social libertarianism: "Personal lifestyle choices or innate traits can't be punished or regulated by the government, but individuals have the right to restrict the behaviour of others provided that they don't directly harm or coerce them."
(Bear in mind that these are stereotypical forms for compare/contrast purposes. Statements about what "liberals" or "libertarians" believe don't reflect any given member of the respective group, just general ideological trends.)
To illustrate this, consider a person who is an atheist. Both liberals and libertarians would agree that the government shouldn't be allowed to imprison someone for being atheist, nor should governemnt be allowed to attempt to "force" someone to convert by creating economic or other sanctions (e.g., restricting atheists to certain jobs, levying higher taxes on them, requiring that they attend psychological counseling or preventing them from voting). However, liberals say that individuals also can't do the same thing: employers can't fire someone for being an atheist; medical facilities (even religious ones) shouldn't be able to refuse a patient because of their beliefs. Libertarians say that an individual/company has the right to refuse to serve/hire someone, because the targeted individual can always in theory go somewhere else or change to meet societal norms.
This isn't a post about which perspective right or wrong -- on the contrary, I think that there's a fine balance between the two that has to be met. Rather, it's an exploration about what aspects of libertarian philosophy might allow for a component of sexism. Once again, let me iterate that this doesn't mean I think there are no sexist liberals. However, liberals are better known for taking enforcement *against* sexism even to extremes, rather than talking about how men aren't "real men" any more.
I don't have any hypotheses about why there is a tendency among strong libertarians for certain forms of sexism; but at least I now understand why libertarianism itself doesn't preclude it -- which liberalism does, simply because intolerance and prejudice are treated on the same level as physical or legal force, whereas in libertarianism only governmental force is treated as a valid interference to a person's freedom.
Now as a sub-post:
Thoughts on "Where the men are"
I think the article has a lot of underlying points that I agree with, but in the author's haste to pin it on a lack of manhood, I think the article misses the larger point: both men and women aren't being adequately prepared for adulthood, and it has nothing to do with "manliness". In fact, I'm sad that he attributes things like inner strength and poise as "manly virtues" that he thinks only a handful of women posses.
Actually, only a handful of men posses them too -- every generation rants about this problem (especially in the younger generations ;P). But in this case I think there is a phenomenon that's more than just the old ranting about the young. I think there's a cultural change happening in the desire to be self-reliant and in certain types of ambition. In many respects it's a breakdown in our culture that conditions people -- both men and women -- to be more helpless. I think why ESR is particularly noticing this trend in men is that while women have historically had these positive traits beaten out of them (sometimes literally, sometimes through other forms of conditioning), men have been traditionally encouraged and even required to develop things like self-sufficiency and bravery from a young age.
I know a lot of people think it's evolutionary, and there's probably something in our genes to that effect, but the chances to strengthen gender characteristics culturally provide more behaviour conditioning than evolution could ever hope to provide by itself. Take for example the concept of courage. As a child most of my friends were boys, although I did have several female friends as well. I remember a few times where one of my male friends would want to do something slightly risk-taking, like climbing up to the top of a barn or riding without hands standing up on a bike down a particularly steep incline -- and most of the time I didn't want to do it with them.
Now, if I were a boy, I would have been called a chicken and I wouldn't have been allowed to forget about it for weeks -- I saw it happen to other boys, who could be as initially reluctant as I was to follow suit. And if I had been a boy, I would have been eventually required to face up to my fears and develop that bravery if I wanted to keep my friends. But I was a girl. Oh, sometimes, they would call me chicken, but if any of their parents heard them they would get in trouble and it always ended then and there -- I sometimes think my friends came to believe that because I had this label "girl" that I was somehow physically incapable of doing what their parents called "boy things", and at some level I picked it up as well.
And I'm sad to say that I lost out because of it. Girls are just as capable of being brave (or stupid, depending on your perspective ;P) as boys. In fact, both genders should be encouraged to take risks, play with dangerous objects under reasonable supervision, and even learn how to hold their own in a fight. And yes, you will always have boys who are risk-averse or have no desire to be protectors, just as there are girls who think guns and knives are cool.
And I'm okay if it ends up that most boys and most girls still end up falling into stereotypical gender roles, if they've been given a chance to try both sides of the coin. Just don't be a jerk to those of us (men and women alike) who don't still fit the preconceived moulds. And don't give me crap about protecting women because babies are a scarce resource. First of all, A) Infant mortality is incredibly low in this day and age (and many countries have problems with overpopulation), and B) I can't tell you how many women -- particularly those who run in libertarian circles -- I've met who choose not to have children.
Besides which, since men frequently went off to war or on extended hunting trips (one tribe I studied sent hunting/mining parties as far as 2000 miles away), women frequently fell into the role of protecting the children and the elderly. Biologically, women are well adapted for it: women have better hearing, better senses of smell, and can't be knocked over as easily in a fight. Our adrenaline patterns are best suited for getting small children out of harm's way, and then turning around to take out the threat -- anyone who's seen a mad momma bear knows that the male isn't the scary one. Obviously *we're* the protectors, you're the hunters -- now go sit down and stop trying to take our biological roles. ;)
In regards to gun shows...I'm sorry, but gun shows are incredibly unwelcoming to women. Yes, I've been to one - I like guns and knives, and going to one can be fun if you can ignore the men there. No, the unwelcoming atmosphere isn't a "we don't want your kind" feeling; rather, it's a combined feeling of being an object of novelty that the guys want to poke at with a stick, and a piece of meat or a prize deer that someone would like to bag for a trophy. And many of the men are incredibly patronizing or a little too "friendly".
It's not the fact that I'm the only woman in a crowd of men. I'm used to that: I've played tuba since middle school, and in college I was in a marching bands with 17 other male tubas; I've done soccer and martial arts; I even chose the field of computer science. Yet none of my experiences can compare to what it feels like to walk into a gun show. Yes, I know there are plenty of women who enjoy gun shows -- but I think you have to be either pretty thick-skinned or oblivious not to find it an unwelcoming atmosphere (I think most gun-savvy women are the former and not the latter, by the way :D).
Final Thoughts
What actually sparked this post was a reply to blog entry by grendelkhan. The previous comments to the article had centred around the discussion of evolutionary biology as a justification for why men should fill the 'protector' role. The particular post I linked to was a continuation of other comments grendelkhan had made where he questioned the "biology, therefore society" conclusion:
I’m also a bit fuzzy on why folks seem to ready to take the jump from “there are good reasons in our past for double standards” to “these double standards should inform our present-day society, in the absence of those reasons”. Doesn’t that veer more than a little into is-ought confusion? (previous post -- not the one I linked to)Whether you believe differences between men and women are caused by evolution or culture, the last point of his comment that I linked to is particularly relevant to libertarianism, and bears repeating:
Our ancestors had no concept of the nation-state, but our tendencies toward tribalism manage to map seamlessly onto following flags and symbols, or sports teams, or vague pronouncements using phrases like “where liberty dwells”. So, while we inherit plenty of behaviors (or at least tendencies that influence behaviors), we should bear in mind that the behaviors they influence today may not be very similar to behaviors they influenced in the past, and that claiming that they must be there for some good reason, hence we should build our societies around supporting and reifying them, is, at best, unsupportable.While gender-specific traits are still hotly contested in academia, human tendencies toward hierarchy and authority are far more difficult to academically dispute. Our closest relatives, Pan troglodytes (the common chimpanzee) are so similar to humans in this regard that 'alpha male' is now part of common parlance (ESR even used the phrase himself earlier in the discussion). Our modern nation-states, which libertarians so detest, are a direct extension of these natural tendencies. True, they're not the only way we can organize ourselves -- but the fact is that almost every civilization above a certain population threshold (and it's not very high -- less than 1000 people) has generally turned towards centralized rulership. When that many cultures separated by entire continents and thousands of years of history follow the same pattern, it's a reasonably strong case for a biological basis.
Note that I'm not advocating that nation-states are biological *imperatives* any more than I think that different social roles for men and women are imperative. What I'm saying is that Grendelkhan has an incredibly pertinent point to make regarding sexism and libertarianism. If sexist libertarians accept the evolutionary biology argument as a justification for why "men must be men", then by the same logic they should also accept that evolution justifies maintaining national governments.
Yes, it can be argued that comparing years-long dominance of a single gorilla or chimpanzee until they're too old to maintain the position by physical/political2 force is nowhere near comparable to, say the Aztec Empire or the United States government. There's a lot of cultural choices that were made in between there, and that's what we can change. The same goes for sexism. Studies that male chimpanzees often give gifts to female chimpanzees to entice them to have sex don't justify why men have to be breadwinners in a relationship. And men don't hunt mammoths any more, just as feudal lords and castles no longer act as necessary protection to farmers in exchange for servitude. (Actually, men didn't really "hunt" mammoths so much as drove them off of cliffs by setting fire to nearby brush and scaring them into running in the wrong direction. Same with buffalo prior to the introduction of the domesticated horse to Northern America -- but that doesn't sound quite so heroic or dangerous, so I can see why "hunted" is frequently the image evoked. ;D )
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1 I've always heard this definition and taken it at face value, until I started writing this paragraph. It then occurred to me that "no physical interference" requirement seems to be a bit nebulous. I've seen a couple libertarians scoff at people who have been beaten up for dressing the wrong way in a particular town or neighborhood, saying it's their "own damn fault" for not knowing better. Whether they should or shouldn't know better, it's still a form of physical interference preventing people from choosing their own dress code -- is the difference who is carrying it out?. If police officers beat a person up because they weren't following written dress code laws (e.g. a woman refusing to wear an abaya Iran), that's another example of why government is wrong, but if regular people beat someone up for unspoken dress codes (e.g., a person refuses to stop dressing like a "dyke" or a "queer" in a conservative town), it's the stupidity of the victim? I don't know, I'm still puzzling this one out...Back
2 Yes, being top chimpanzee isn't just about physical prowess. Chimpanzees do political maneuvering that allow them to stay in power long after they're physically incapable of maintaining it. They manage to convince, bribe, or coerce other chimpanzees -- including females -- into keeping the would-be usurpers at bay. I highly recommend the book "The Ape and the Sushi Master" for a good non-technical introduction to primate behaviour (including humans ;P) Back
