Does nature make men brutes and women sluts?

fools for science

Evil Sisters: The Threat of Female Sexuality and the Cult of Manhood
By Bram Dijkstra, Knopf, 480 pp.
Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence
By Richard Wrangham and Dale Peterson, Houghton Mifflin, 350 pp.

By LAURA MILLER | Illustration by Elizabeth Kairys

"Patriotism," according to Dr. Johnson, "is the last refuge of the scoundrel." Nowadays, scoundrels have a better one: sociobiology, the theory that human behavior is mostly determined by biology. The dictates of evolution and "the selfish gene" neatly explain why our societies are the unfair way they are, and how, really, we can't expect them to change much, any more than we can expect pigs to fly. As a protective wrapping for prejudice, injustice and routine inhumanity, the lab coat beats the flag, hands down. Who, after all, can argue with science? Actually, history can. Critic Bram Dijkstra, in his new book, "Evil Sisters: The Threat of Female Sexuality and the Cult of Manhood," proves as much. Dijkstra is primarily a cultural critic who concerns himself with images from popular books, art and film with the intention of exposing the misogyny therein. In "Evil Sisters," his tone is hectoring and doggedly sarcastic, a step down from the supple, evocative writing of his justly praised "Idols of Perversity: Fantasies of Feminine Evil in Fin-de-Siècle Culture." But the same fevered indignation that makes Dijkstra's voice a bit tiresome in this book has inspired him to amass a prodigious amount of research into "scientific" and popular theories about gender, race and evolution in the early 20th century. If Dijkstra's appetite for outrage is enormous, here he has found plenty to feed on. The early chapters of "Evil Sisters" describe a catalog of bizarre sexual paranoias masquerading as sober fact. The social evolutionists of the turn of the century observed the principle of natural selection unfolding in human society, but, interestingly, they chose different interpretations from the ones that prevail among sociobiologists today. Here, in short, are the widely accepted tenets of that era: The brain, which is the summit of humanity's evolutionary triumphs, is made of a powerful vital essence that's basically the same stuff as semen. This is why men possess superior intelligence and the drive toward excellence that has led to civilization. To foster further evolution of the race, Man must conserve this vital essence and resist the natural tendency of Woman to drag him back down the ladder. Women, propelled by the mindless biological imperative to reproduce, will sap the vital essence of men by demanding sex, feeding off men's vitality in the form of semen, and reducing men to weak, passive slaves of sensuality. If these vampire women had their way, we'd be reduced to a degraded, do-nothing society of self-indulgence, androgyny, promiscuity, communalism, and racial and gender equality. A meek, dependent, asexual woman — like those produced by superior cultures — is the only wise choice for the man who wished to conserve his masculinity for the arenas where truly evolved individuals proved themselves: the battlefield and the free marketplace. Next: Save your semen!