Sociobiology vs. Feminism

I. Sociobiology, the Sociobiology of Sex/Gender, and Parental Investment Theory

Sociobiology is the attempt to explain animal (including human) social behavior in terms of evolutionary (natural selective) incentives.¹ Evolutionists since (and perhaps even before) Darwin have been trying to understand social behavior as an evolutionary phenomenon. In On the Origin of Species, Darwin himself theorized that, like physical traits, behavioral traits are heritable and contribute to differential reproductive fitness; i.e., behavioral traits are subject to natural selection.² Taking this claim as its premise, sociobiology attempts to explain the development of observed social behaviors in terms of their adaptivity, or their contributions to superior fitness.

Since the critiques I will be considering in this paper are largely feminist critiques, it makes sense for us to narrow our focus to the subfield of sociobiology which has caused feminists the most outrage: the sociobiology of sex/gender. Darwinian natural selection is propelled by competition, and, because species-mates compete for the same resources, some of the steepest competition happens within species.³ Sexual dimorphism is one result of this intraspecial competition: Darwin argued that sexual dimorphism came about through the mechanism of sexual selection, or as a result of competition between same-sex individuals for cross-sex mates.⁴ Diamond points out that competition also takes place between cross-sex organisms: cross-sex organisms need each other’s sexual/genetic resources in order to perpetuate their own genes: “It’s as if, at the moment of fertilization, the mother and father play a game of chicken, stare at each other, and simultaneously say, ‘I am going to walk off and find new partner, and you can care for this embryo if you want to, but even if you don’t, I won’t!”⁵ Because of the sexes’ differing reproductive “machinery,” the resources males would like from females do not always coincide with the resources females want to give to males, and vice versa.

This brings us to parental investment theory. This is the idea that females and males try to pass the burden of childcare off on each other in order to free themselves to produce additional offspring. Now, because females (in most species) have a greater pre-natal investment in offspring than males do (due both to the larger size of the female gamete and, in some species, to the energy involved in gestation), they will have lost more if their already-born offspring do not survive. As a result, females often end up being the primary child-care givers, since this is the strategy that most effectively perpetuates their genes. (Not that females make this choice consciously; rather, females who are genetically hard-wired to make this choice are more likely to pass on their genes; thus, this is an adaptive and naturally-selected behavior.) On the other hand, it costs little for males to fertilize many females, and since females, as we have seen, have a genetic interest in ensuring that their offspring survive, males can assume that some of the offspring they sire will survive even if they have little to no involvement in childcare. Males, then, are selected for behavior that leads to the siring of as many offspring as possible; since this takes time that could otherwise be used for childcare, this means that males are selected for low investment in childcare.⁶ (Mind you, this is a simplified analysis of parental investment theory. Jared Diamond points out that each sex’s investment in parental care also depends on certainty of paternity (males are more likely to stay around if they are sure that the offspring they are helping to raise are their own), helplessness of the young (in some species, including humans, it is difficult for a single parent to ensure the survival of young; thus, males must help out at least a little or they risk losing all their offspring), and foreclosed opportunities (if childcare does not foreclose the opportunity of fertilizing additional females, males are more likely to stay around and help out with childcare.⁷)

Sociobiologists of sex/gender have various positions on parental investment theory; also, the sociobiology of sex/gender encompasses other topics in addition to parental investment theory. However, in order to work within a manageable scope, let us draw examples primarily from this “classical” version of parental investment theory as we examine the critiques and countercritiques of sociobiology.

II. Critiques of Sociobiology

Critiques of sociobiology have come on many levels from many sources. Here we consider six main critiques.

First, say critics, sociobiology is based on a faulty understanding of natural selection. Sociobiologists assume that any trait that exists is adaptive: i.e., it evolved because it gave individuals advanced reproductive fitness. For example, parental investment theorists notice (or believe) that men (or other male animals) seem to be less invested in parenting than women seem to be. Then they assume that because this behavior is observed, it must be adaptive (and heritable) and therefore must be explainable through evolutionary reasoning. This is a misconception: Darwin himself pointed out that, due to what he called correlation of growth, selection for one trait often brings along with it other traits.⁸ Modern evolutionists have come up with various other explanations for trait evolution, many of which do not presume all traits are adaptive:

Gould and Lewontin (1979), Gould (1980), and Futuyma (1986) critique the ‘traits are always adaptive’ assumption. They point out that some traits may be (1)the result of natural laws…(2)the effects of cultural evolution… (3)anachronisms…(4)the result of developmental allometry, defined as fixed differences in rate of growth of different features during ontogeny; (5) the result of genetic drift…or (6) by-products or consequences (epiphenomena) of other traits that did evolve under selection. Given all of these possibilities, it is not a simple matter to demonstrate either that a trait is genetically based or that it is adaptive.⁹

Second, sociobiology is unscientific: it is non-empirical. There is no way, say critics, to conduct controlled experiments with mutually exclusive hypotheses¹⁰, particularly not on humans. Therefore, sociobiology is unfalsifiable:¹¹ since sociobiologists don’t rely on evidence, their hypotheses are never contradicted, no matter how far off the mark they are. For example, if sociobiology were empirical, sociobiologists could say, “Let’s see whether low parental investment is indeed an effective reproductive strategy for male humans. In order to do this, let’s set up an experiment in which a large group of men demonstrate low parental investment and a separate large group of men demonstrate high parental investment, and let’s compare the reproductive fitness of each group (as evident from number of surviving offspring). In fact, let’s conduct our experiment over several centuries, or perhaps millennia, so that we can study the long-term reproductive success of each strategy, rather than merely the success after a single generation.” Of course, sociobiologists cannot do this. Also, sociobiology relies on circular reasoning:¹² sociobiologists notice a phenomenon, come up with a theory to explain the phenomenon, and then offer the existence of the phenomenon as evidence that validates their theory. Ruse again:

[Marshall Sahlins, an anthropologist responsible for some of the earliest and most scathing critiques of sociobiology,] suggest[s] that…kin selection runs close to the fallacy of affirming the consequent, namely…‘constructing a particular model from a set of postulates, obtaining a result, noting that approximately the predicted result does exist in nature, and concluding thereby that the postulates are true.¹³

For example, our simplified sociobiologist might think, “Men seem to have lower parental investment than women do. Why might that be? Oh, because women, not men, carry gestating babies.” Then our sociobiologist might say, “By the way, colleagues and general reading public, did you know that women are invested in childcare because women carry gestating babies? Don’t believe me? Well then, why aren’t men, who don’t carry gestating babies, as invested in childcare as women are?”

The third critique of sociobiology is that it is culturally biased. Because sociobiology is not empirical, sociobiologists’ biases are not checked by contradictory evidence.¹⁴ For example, as we have seen, sociobiologists justify parental investment theory partly on the differing size of the male and female gametes. Seems like this is an objective and convincing reason prenatal maternal investment exceeds prenatal male investment, right? However, as later critics have pointed out, one egg cell may be much bigger than one sperm cell, but one egg cell is not demonstrably bigger or more taxing to produce than the thousands of sperm cells, along with nutrient-rich fluids, that a male emits in the course of fertilizing a female—particularly if not every ejaculation results in fertilization! Tang-Martinez offers this example:

[I]n the domestic chicken (Gallus domesticus) a male has to produce 100 million sperm per ejaculation to ensure that fertilization will occur….To this can be added the cost of sperm that are ‘lost’ (i.e., have no chance of fertilizing an egg) because of various forms of sperm competition (including mating order effects) or because the female ejects, destroys, or absorbs sperm after the male ejaculates.¹⁵

Culture-bound sociobiologists, looking for reasons for observed low male parental investment in their home (mostly Western) cultures, overlooked this logical flaw in their search for “natural” explanations for this cultural phenomenon.

The fourth critique of sociobiology is that it is reductionist. It ignores many types of complexity. For example, say critics, human behavior is not merely biological. It is not even merely determined by a combination of biology and culture. Humans make choices, within the limits set by culture and biology, certainly, but choices nonetheless. In trying to attribute human behavior to immutable, categorical genetic imperatives, sociobiology ignores human agency, cultural influences, and variability across cultures, within populations, and even within individual lifespans:

[E]volutionary models of behavior are almost never…static….If one imagines that, as do contemporary humans, protohumans found themselves in a variety of different environments, the idea of a species-typical set of reproductive behaviors becomes nonsensical. The logic of natural selection suggests that individuals should vary their reproductive behaviors as a function of the environments in which they find themselves.¹⁶

Sociobiology can argue that men are less invested in parenting than women are, but this means little to the stay-at-home father whose wife spends all her waking hours at the office.

The fifth critique of sociobiology is that it is not terribly useful. Great, say critics, so sociobiology has given us a justification for men’s low investment in parental care. But that low investment still exists, and it creates a gendered double standard for parenting that keeps women, to some extent, either out of the workplace or working the “double shift.”¹⁷ And sociobiology doesn’t provide new insights into how to remedy this inequity (short of finding a way to institute male pregnancy!). Similarly, Fausto-Sterling et al. write:

…Shields and Shields do not intend to condone or excuse rape, but rather to ‘increase our understanding of rape’ and ‘offer practical insight into methods that might permit greater societal control or eventually elimination of rape’….Yet the solutions they offer (i.e., increasing the costs of raping to the rapist, such as by severe punishment; reducing male hostility toward women; reducing female vulnerability) are all solutions that could have been arrived at by a feminist psychosocial analysis, without invoking evolutionary biology or arguing that rape is a biologically based adaptation.¹⁸

Finally, the sixth critique of sociobiology is that it is dangerous, and as such, unethical. This critique assumes three things: first, that sociobiology underwrites on biological determinism¹⁹; second, that the public is gullible; and third, that biology and sociobiology have significant popular authority. Some fear that since sociobiology emphasizes biological bases for human behavioral traits, sociobiology could be used to underwrite a return to eugenics or Social Darwinist thinking. Sociobiologists, say critics, come up with biological arguments for observed social behaviors and tell the public that these behaviors are explainable and therefore justifiable. For example, sociobiologists might say, “Men are less invested in childcare because they have less prenatal investment in the baby,” and then the public might say, “Oh well, we suppose there’s a good biological reason that men have sex and run, so let’s stop forcing them to pay child support.” Thus, through their effects on policy and popular imagination, sociobiological arguments have the potential to reify the situations they describe.

III. Responses to the Critiques

First, as we have seen, sociobiology—and indeed evolutionary biology in general—has been accused of improperly assuming that all traits are adaptive. In response to this, Michael Ruse argues, first, that it is not true that evolutionists assume that everything is adaptive, and second, that it is a relatively reasonable thing to assume:

[T]here are good scientific reasons why evolutionists are justified in assuming adaptive advantage even where they might not be able to tell what it is….[A]ssuming adaptive advantage is a good heuristic guide—it directs evolutionists to look for the precise nature of the adaptive advantage, and has, in fact, often paid rich dividends, for such advantage has been found even though initially it seemed totally lacking. Indeed, I would say that so useful a guide has it proven to assume adaptive advantage, that today evolutionists more readily assume adaptive advantage than they did, say, twenty years ago….²⁰

Second, sociobiology has been accused of being unscientific because it is non-empirical. Patricia Adair Gowaty counters the claim that sociobiology is non-empirical: even though controlled experiments on human subjects are not always possible, it is possible to collect data from well-chosen real-world situations in order to test certain predictions: “It is a given that there are some sorts of experiments that we will never be able to do for ethical reasons on humans that we can do on nonhuman animals. But that does not mean that all experiments are impossible to do on people, nor does it meant that systematic evaluation of predictions of alternative hypotheses are not possible.”²¹ Additionally, Ruse argues that since sociobiology is empirical, it is indeed falsifiable. Also, he points out, “The critics…argue that human sociobiology is false. I must confess that…this in itself strikes me as being a bit of an odd criticism. If sociobiology is unfalsifiable, than I should not have said that it could be shown to be false.”²² To the broader charge that sociobiology relies on circular reasoning and other unscientific modes of thinking, Ruse argues that many of the criticisms leveled against sociobiology are equally applicable to all science:

One cannot offer logical, that is deductive, justification of scientific theories. Although the quotation from Wilson rather implies that only in bad science does one get a kind of backwards progression from fact to theory (which implies the facts), in reality this is the essence of all scientific justification. If possible, one matches one’s predictions or implications to the facts, hoping thereby to add weight to one’s theory, but even if there is a match, one is not absolutely guaranteed that one’s theory is true—there could always be new falsifying facts or rival theories.²³

Third, sociobiology has been criticized for being culturally biased. There are several possible responses to this challenge. First, some claim that sociobiology is culturally biased because it is not bound by empiricism. To these critics, it is possible to point to the countercritique that in fact, as we have seen, sociobiology is bound by empiricism. Other critics claim that even empirical science is culturally biased. Cultural biases determine the questions, the relevance of results, the lens through which observations are made:

During the 1970s women flooded into the field of animal behavior—especially the study of primates….[T]hey started carefully watching the behavior of female animals in the field—with astonishing results. They found, for example, that female kin groups are responsible for determining much of the social lives of baboons. Why didn’t earlier observers see what today seems obvious? It is possible that their a priori notions about sex roles hindered their abilities to observe.²⁴

To these critics, it is possible to say only that the critique must be directed at all of science, rather than solely at sociobiology.

Fourth, to the critique that sociobiology is reductionist, and in particular is biologically deterministic and ignores the effects of culture and learning, we might answer thus. We can acknowledge that some sociobiology has indeed been reductionist, but that as an approach sociobiology is not inherently reductionist. To say that sociobiological arguments have some explanatory power is not to say that cultural arguments have no explanatory power. Ruse writes: “Perhaps we have evolved in the way that the sociobiologists claim, but this is not to say…that we are total slaves of our genes….[N]o one seems to want to deny that in significant respects humans escape their genes through their culture.”²⁵ More forcefully, Hutcheon writes:

[N]either [Wilson] nor his fellow sociobiologists are claiming that either animal or human social behavior is attributable solely to genes. He is talking about the interrelationship of genetic and environmental factors in all aspects of evolution. Even in the case of relatively simple behaviors in relatively simple animals, he suggests, the process of learning plays an important role. In his first book he devotes an entire section to socialization….²⁶

Fifth, to the critique that sociobiology is not terribly useful there is not much possible response except to point to the productive insights sociobiology has already offered. Gowaty does just this:

…I see no power or legitimacy to the claim that evolutionary biology is irrelevant because other analyses suggest similar conclusions….I am convinced that Darwinian analyses uniquely can provide activists with non-intuitive information about who allies are likely to be in particular struggles. For instance, when one uses Mildred Dickemann’s (1979) hypergyny model to explore existing variation in severity and within-population distributions of female genital mutilations, one is struck by the idea that the reproductive interests of relatively poor men are not more served than the reproductive interests of (some) women. People in the social-change business (and that is probably every single human being alive) might use such information in their attempts to guide human cultures away from practices that subordinate women.²⁷

In addition to its arguable success in offering concrete insights, I think sociobiology has proved to be productive in another way. By stirring up the controversy under discussion here, sociobiology has provoked thoughtful dialogue about topics such as the ethics of science, the nature of scientific rigor, and the possibilities for feminist methodologies in science.

Sixth, to the critique that sociobiology is dangerous, Ruse and others have pointed out, in the words of a title of an article by Pat Hutcheon, that it makes sense to “Fear Ignorance—Not Sociobiology!”²⁸ Even if sociobiology has potentially dangerous effects, this does not make sociobiology inherently dangerous or suspect as a field, any more than genetics itself is suspect as a field because it provides a scientific substrate for eugenics. Ruse writes, “[I]t does not follow at all that what exists through evolution must be passively accepted as what is best or right….[I]t is far from being the case that what is, or is natural, is in itself an absolute good.” He goes on to admit this:

…I must confess that…on occasion sociobiologists (although not sociobiology!) do make these assumptions. Thus, for example, at one point, Wilson argues for ‘an evolutionary approach to ethics,’ claiming that sociobiology shows that ‘no single set of moral standards can be applied to all human populations, let alone all sex-age classes within each population’…But simply speaking, Wilson is wrong: sociobiology shows nothing of the sort. The fact that different people have different sex drives does not imply that different moral codes apply to them. If we found that certain genes turned men into rapists, we would (and should) certainly not sit back passively and let them go ahead.”²⁹

Thus, Ruse points out, censorship of sociobiology itself is not the answer. Rather, sociobiologists (and their readers) must be careful not to jump to ignorant conclusions.

Here I want to include one final countercritique, even though it does not fit as a response to any one in particular of the six critiques I listed above. In 1994, Robert Wright, an apologist for sociobiology, wrote an article for The New Republic entitled “Feminists, Meet Mr. Darwin.” These are the words with which he opens his article:

History has not been kind to ideologies that rested on patently false beliefs about human nature. Communism, for example, isn’t looking very robust these days….It would be melodramatic to say that today feminism is where communism was at midcentury. Still, it’s tempting. Once again an ideology clings to a doctrine that, for better or worse, isn’t true—in this case the idea that ‘gender’ is essentially a ‘construct’: that male and female nature are inherently more or less identical.³⁰

Snarky comparison to communism aside, this is a common response to feminist critiques of sociobiology. Wright claims that feminists who complain that sociobiology reifies difference are ignoring “the facts of life” and painting a utopian picture in which difference does not exist. Such an approach, claims Wright and similar critics, is neither credible nor likely to be productive, based as it is on a liberal fantasy. Those who cry out that sociobiology is dangerous sometimes seem to be threatened not by sociobiology, but by the reality that sociobiology merely highlights: the inescapable differences between groups of people.

IV. The Outcome of the Battle and Tools for Synthesis

We have given each side its chance to speak. Who has won the great debate between sociobiology and feminism?

Neither: by looking at the basic critiques and countercritiques of sociobiology, we have seen both that sociobiology is not easily dismissed and that it is not as incompatible with feminism as it seemed at first glance. In some sense, this means that both sides win: if feminism and sociobiology are not incompatible, each side can benefit from the insights and the intellectual tools of the other. In the interest of furthering this interdisciplinary partnership, I here offer a synthetic viewpoint. My hope is that the following tools preserve the productive power of the discipline of sociobiology at the same time as they correct some of the flaws of current practice. Here, then, are the three P’s of feminist sociobiology:

1. Positioning. Sociobiology, like all science (and indeed all fields of study), is shaped and limited by the motivations and biases of researchers. There is no way to get around this. However, this does not mean that sociobiology has no explanatory power, worth as a creative human pursuit, or ability to encourage productive dialogue. It just means that sociobiology’s explanatory power is limited and situated within a specific context. By working to understand and report their own biases, sociobiologists can help other sociobiologists, as well as the lay public, to appreciate both the power and the limitations of their results and theories. Similarly, Patricia Adair Gowaty writes:

Does being aware of the potential implications of a particular scientific theory or observation make scientists unscientific? I do not think so, because science can never be and never was ‘objective’….My definition is: Science is the practice of systematic observation and experiment as a means to test predictions from hypotheses while reducing or eliminating (i.e., controlling) the effects of perceived and possible biases on results and conclusions. So, what it means to be self-consciously political is that one is thereby in a scientifically better position relative to those who are unaware of the political and social forces potentially affecting their science….Buttressed with better controls, controls against potential biases we are able to perceive, makes our conclusions more reliable. ³¹

2. Presentation. Perhaps, as Ruse argues, it is true that sociobiology does not inherently imply any of the dire things that it sometimes seems to imply. However, it is easy, particularly for a lay audience, to jump to conclusions. Sociobiologists, particularly those writing for a popular audience, ought to warn readers away from easily-inferred, dangerous implications of their work.


3. Pluralism. Yes, there are differences between men and women, as well as between other groups of people. However, these statistically significant group differences are not more “real” than differences among individuals within these groups or, indeed, than differences within a single individual over the course of a lifespan. Sociobiology already has a rigorous way to acknowledge and theorize statistically significant group trends. Sociobiology must find an equally rigorous way to acknowledge and theorize variability, fluidity, and potential for agency. Gowaty has begun to gesture toward such an analysis:

Any time selective forces are the social acts of individuals in conflict (i.e., are dialectical), the outcomes are unlikely to be fixed invariant traits. So universal selection pressures may not lead to universal traits….It seems to me that cultural variation in humans may be an excellent example of how some universal selection pressures acting on the interactions of women and men could have led to the enormous within- and between-cultural variation that characterizes humans. ³²

V. Why Does it Matter?

Why has sociobiology sparked such heated controversy? Anyone who has lived in the world knows that insecurity is often at the root of aggression. What makes sociobiology seem so threatening to so many people? Does its power to threaten imply that it also has great power to explain? Ruse points out that people working outside the sciences might find sociobiology threatening because, by working to explain things like morality, consciousness, and emotion in biological terms, sociobiology encroaches on traditionally extra-scientific terrain. Is the controversy over sociobiology then, merely an academic turf war?³³

I don’t think so. Indeed, sociobiology grounds things like morality, consciousness, and emotion in our physical biology. I think this is what makes sociobiology both scary and powerful—even radical. Scary, because anything that deals with the fact of our physicality runs the risk of reducing us to the merely physical.³⁴ Powerful, because we are physical, and as physical beings, we face a certain set of challenges that we can only hope to surmount if we deal with the reality of our physicality. Because sociobiology deals with both body and mind, both matter and spirit, it is a fringe field. The fringe is a hard place to be, but it is also a productive place. Only a field that deals with both body and mind has the power to solve, or at least work on, some grand puzzles that we face: How can we mend the rift between body and mind? How can we acknowledge and serve the body without dehumanizing the mind? How can we admire the power of the mind, particularly the power of choice, without eclipsing the enabling/limiting presence of the body?

The irony, and the miracle, is this: these questions are those that lie at the heart of the intellectual feminist project. Intellectual feminists, then, cannot afford to ignore sociobiology. As we continue to work to unlock these puzzles, will we find that sociobiology offers one of the keys?

1 Michael Ruse, Sociobiology: Sense or Nonsense? (Dordrecht, Holland: D. Reidel Publishing Co., 1979), 1.

2 Ruse, 6.

3 Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species (London: John Murray, 1859), 76.

4 Ruse, 32.

5 Jared Diamond, Why is Sex Fun?: The Evolution of Human Sexuality (New York: Basic Books, 1997), 19.

6 Ruse, 33, 58.

7 Diamond, 29 and 35.

8 Darwin, 12.

9 Zuleyma Tang-Martinez, “The Curious Courtship of Sociobiology and Feminism: A Case of Irreconcilable Differences,” in Patricia Adair Gowaty, ed., Feminism and Evolutionary Biology (New York: Chapman & Hall, 1997), 138.

10 Tang-Martinez, 139.

11 Ruse, 111.

12 Tang-Martinez, 136.

13 Ruse, 104.

14 Now, some would argue that even empirical knowledge, including something as widely viewed as objective as physics, is culturally situated, and as such even empiricism would not cure sociobiology of its biases. We will return to this more radical critique later.

15 Tang-Martinez, 129-130.

16 Anne Fausto-Sterling, Patricia Adair Gowaty, and Marlene Zuk, “Evolutionary Psychology and Darwinian Feminism,” Feminist Studies 1997(23:2), 411.

17 That is, both working outside the home and performing a role as primary caregiver within the home.

18 Fausto-Sterling et al., 122.

19 That is, the assumption that “biology is destiny,” or that a biological predisposition to behave in a certain way means that a person will invariably behave in exactly that way.

20 Ruse, 114-115.

21 Patricia Adair Gowaty, “Introduction: Darwinian Feminists and Feminist Evolutionists,” in Patricia Adair Gowaty, ed., Feminism and Evolutionary Biology (New York: Chapman & Hall, 1997), 11.

22 Ruse, 119.

23 Ruse, 105.

24 Fausto-Sterling et al., 409.

25 Ruse, 84.

26 Pat Duffy Hutcheon, “Fear Ignorance—Not Sociobiology!” Humanist in Canada (Spring 1996), 12.

27 Gowaty, 12.

28 Hutcheon, 9.

29 Ruse, 85.

30 Robert Wright, “Feminists, Meet Mr. Darwin,” The New Republic (28 November 1994), 34.

31 Gowaty, 14.

32 Gowaty, 7.

33 Ruse, 169.

34 Hence the fear that since sociobiology can be seen to underwrite biological determinism, it might lead to dehumanizing movements such as eugenics.