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THE END OF GIRLTALK? | PAGE 2 OF 2 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Many people have been comparing American attitudes toward extramarital sex with French or Italian attitudes. Can we look at this in larger terms? In 84 percent of worldwide cultures, men are permitted to have more than one wife. And if they are rich, they can take as many wives as they can afford. The Kung Bushmen of Southern Africa are polygynous, and if a man is rich or charismatic enough, and he can get more than one wife, everybody admires him for it. When I lived with the Navajo in New Mexico, there were some men who had two or three wives, or even four wives. In every polygynous culture, the first wife is generally the primary or most powerful wife. She gets more resources, she gets the most status, and then there are secondary, tertiary or minor wives. So these households don't breed sexual anarchy. Oh, it's totally organized. Sex is organized in every culture in the world. Every culture has rules about who you can sleep with and who you cannot sleep with. I think that was the first thing that mankind invented -- rules for who you sleep with. Many Americans like to castigate their own culture for being puritanical. How do we rate, in world terms? Among the Ulithi, in Polynesia, there is one day every year on which you can pick any partner you want -- and go and picnic and make love. They have a day off from their normal sex practices. We don't have that. But every culture has sexual taboos. There are a great many societies that won't even discuss homosexuality. And traditional societies often have taboos about menstruation. One group of people in Amazonia, the Mehinaku, regard a menstruating woman as profoundly polluting. She could kill you if she's menstruating, so the moment she starts, she can't touch any of the food or the utensils. She has to leave the community and sit in a menstrual hut for a few days. We routinely see TV commercials that talk about menstruation in great detail. Yes, and we often make love when we're menstruating. Even if we don't, it's not "poisonous," it's not polluting. Many societies have taboos against intercourse before they go on an important trip or during certain festivals. The rest of the world has all kinds of incest taboos. In many cultures, you can't go out with somebody from a particular clan or with someone who has a particular genetic or cultural relationship to you. Mainstream Americans have an incest taboo but it's nowhere near as rigid as the Navajo incest taboo: You cannot go out with someone from your own clan. How large is a Navajo clan? Is this like saying you can't go out with your cousin? Well, a clan is a related group of people -- but it's almost like saying, on any New York City block, that you can go out with anybody who lives on the opposite side of the street but with nobody who lives on the same side. It's a lot of people. Everyone has been making fun of Clinton for apparently believing that oral sex is not adultery. Around the world, adultery is defined entirely differently in different places. The Lozi in West Africa believe that giving a beer to a woman and carrying the beer into the woods is adultery. Is Clinton's predicament somehow a sign of things to come -- or not -- for other important men? Is the party basically over for the American alpha male? Americans are out gunning for men. With the growing economic power of women in the course of this century, we are seeing a real turn toward curtailing male sexuality -- and expressing female sexuality. Adultery in the Western tradition was defined as the woman having extra partners. It's generally men who have been permitted to have extra lovers. With women's growing economic power, the same rules are applying to both sexes. It seems that the alpha male is also being asked to settle for the sex life of a middle management male. Can we really democratize sexual behavior? There is a chemical relationship between rank and sexuality. Testosterone: If you inject a male bird or monkey -- or even a fish -- with testosterone, he will scramble and rise up the dominance hierarchy. The male drive to get to the top is associated with testosterone, and men have 10 times more than women. A high level of testosterone is associated with three things: rank, risk taking and a high sex drive. Generally the males at the top of a dominance hierarchy have more sexual opportunities than those in the middle or at the bottom -- and they take those opportunities. Women around the world and females in other species are interested in these males. Clinton has probably maintained high levels of testosterone all his life. But levels of testosterone go up when you win -- and here's a man who has been on a winning streak. So, when you ask a man of high rank who has very high levels of testosterone -- and he has girls constantly throwing themselves at him -- not to satisfy his high sex drive, you are asking him to rise above his human nature. And, from a Darwinian perspective, we are asking him to settle for less. Hillary Clinton has some important attributes, such as loyalty and shrewdness, that many powerful men seek in a mistress. And Bill -- if he had an affair with Monica -- seems to have very poor judgment. In some societies, you would want a third or fourth wife who is docile and young, who won't compete with the first wife. So you wouldn't want a clever woman who is political. So in some societies, Monica Lewinsky would have been an ideal romantic partner for Clinton? Absolutely. In a different society, he could have moved Monica in, and she could have slowly become the second wife -- and the first wife would not lose her power and status. The second wife wouldn't have the power and status but she would have the resources of the man and the sexual focus of the man. In a polygynous society, a father would be pleased if his daughter attracted the attention of the most powerful male -- but in this society, he might be displeased, because "she's wasting her time." So, in a different society, Monica would be a very good choice. And in ours? Not a good choice -- someone like Camilla Parker-Bowles would be a better deal because she's got political savvy. She's not going to blab to people she doesn't know. She's not going to have that exuberant air when she's around him. She has a sophistication that this girl doesn't have. Oral sex has been getting a bad rap during this scandal. But a man who restricts extramarital sex to oral sex may have reason to feel "less" adulterous because he can't father a child that way. No question about it. That is a different kind of relationship. It protects the woman and protects his existing family. She can't get pregnant and bear a child that demands resources that would go to the child of his first wife. In "Anatomy of Love," you divide love into three varieties: lust, infatuation and attachment. Are they really so distinct? Lust -- or the drive for sexual gratification -- is associated with lots of testosterone in the brain. Infatuation or passionate love -- that elation, that euphoria -- is associated with dopamine and norepinephrine, which are natural stimulants. It certainly appears like an infatuation on Monica's part: the glistening eyes; the gleaming, smiling face; the compulsive need to talk about it -- a person who will wait three hours on the street for him to come by -- this is a brain that is overcome by dopamine. Attachment -- or that sense of calm and security that you feel with a long-term partner -- is associated with different chemicals, basically oxytocin and vasopressin. I would guess that Bill and Hillary feel deeply attached. It's been a long team effort. It may still be a sexual relationship, but it is certainly a strong unit that pulls together in times of stress. So, from Bill's point of view, sex with Hillary would be a cocktail of "testosterone plus oxtysocin" and sex with Monica would be "testosterone plus dopamine"? Any mixture is possible. Bill may experience the sex drive with his wife along with attachment. If he had an affair with Monica, it may have been infatuation plus sex. And with Paula Jones, it may well have been a momentary sex urge, if it was something at all. During the course of human evolution, these three emotions -- lust, infatuation, attachment -- have become somewhat unlinked from one another, and our brain is built to love more than one person at one time. The human animal is not well built for modern American life. Particularly, the brain is not well-suited for living in a glass bowl, as the president does, with everyone watching -- not when we have so many things coming together at the same time.
Tracy Quan is a frequent contributor to Salon. |
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