Bonobos chilling to the beat — as well as being pansexual and gender-fluid, bonobos like music. How cool is that?
When we did the research for Why Men Made God we spent a lot of time looking at how societies might have been structured in the era before the development of agriculture and the establishment of the patriarchy (I will be calling these ‘traditional’ societies.) Clearly, we can’t directly study the human groups that existed outside Africa between 50,000 and 5,000 years ago, because they no longer exist.
They left very little evidence. Although they did use stone and bone, a great deal of their artefacts were made of wood or leather and were perishable. The few that we do have are somewhat mysterious.
To try to shed light on this, we reviewed a wide range of anthropological literature. We especially concentrated on extant traditional societies, of which there are a surprising number, despite the attempts by the patriarchy, especially the Christian and Muslim ones, to eradicate them. (As a matter of fact, Islam has been less damaging to many traditional societies than Christianity, as we see from the number of traditional groups still living, and respected, in Indonesia.)
We reviewed the mythology that was recorded soon after the invention of writing in the culture that leads to the Western Patriarchy, which appeared in Sumer in the 5th Millennium BCE. We then compared this to modern mythologies which form part of traditional cultures.
We also looked at close relatives of humans, particularly our closest, the Dwarf Chimpanzee or bonobo, Pan paniscus.
Bonobos bonding
Bonobos have a fascinating social model. They are pansexual and gender-fluid. Males are not dominant and rape has never been observed in bonobo society, either in the wild or in captivity. Generally speaking, they have very relaxed, cool societies with notably low levels of aggression and stress.
In fact, bonobos use sex as the antidote to aggression and stress. Instead of fighting, they love each other, to be blunt. What is interesting is that when they do this, there is no dominance imperative: partners in bonobo sexual relations are equals. Females and males are equally likely to initiate sex. Furthermore, they have no defined preferences — they will as happily have sex with same-sex partners as with opposite.
Sex is a powerful bonding agent in bonobo society. It holds groups together and prevents division. This protects the group from falling apart and thus the individuals within it are more likely to survive. So sex has an evolutionary imperative alongside the reproductive one. In fact, bonobos don’t have sex to make babies, they have sex with their friends and for fun, because they like it. However, they have so much sex that there is no shortage of bonobo babies. Bonobos are evolved to be pansexual and gender-fluid, and we argue that this is the case for humans too.
It should be clear how this torpedoes the ‘homosexuality is an evolutionary dead-end’ argument. It might be, as far as individuals are concerned, but when everyone is having sex with everyone else, this is not the case. Being exclusively homosexual does mean an end to the individual’s genetic line, but this is not how same-sex sex works in either bonobo or traditional societies. The individual male only has to impregnate one female to reproduce his genes; and given the amount of sex in bonobo society, and the variety of it, this is easily achieved. The same, of course, holds true for females — if they give up having sex with each other occasionally to have it with a male, job done. Bonobos are naturally pansexual, to accommodate this, and we argue that the same is true of humans, and back it up with examples.
Further, bonobos are gender-fluid. This does not mean what some people think it does; it is not about wearing a miniskirt and sporting a beard. It means being happy to play either the penetrating or receiving role in sex. Bonobo males are routinely observed having sex, in which one penetrates and the other receives, and immediately after, having sex again and swapping roles. Then they will go off and have sex with females, who probably were having sex with each other in the meantime. Bonobo children are brought up by the group.
Bonobo females having fun sex.
We share over 98% of our DNA with bonobos and our traditional social models are almost identical. We wondered if we would find something in traditional societies that pointed to similar behaviours in humans and we found it.
All over the world, traditional societies exist that do not follow the patriarchal model, which is, men appropriate women as their mates for life; women in the patriarchy are the literal possessions, the property of men, initially their father, then their husband and brothers. Yet in traditional societies, this is not the case.
In many such cultures, same-sex activity is normal; frequently this is observed between adult men and boys. (Unfortunately, and probably due to the fact that the anthropologists doing the research were men, there is far less information about the women’s sexuality.) The adult men in these relations have women partners too. We cite quite a few examples and refer to over 400 sources in Why Men Made God that develop this.
We know of the Spartans that not only the men but the women had normalised same-sex relations, and while Sparta was a matriarchy, this appears also to have happened in more patriarchal pre-Abrahamic cultures too, which surprised me, frankly.
In fact, being gender fluid (in a sexual sense) and pansexual appears to be as normal for humans as it is for bonobos. However, bonobos have had to do without the curse of organised patriarchal religions, so are still happily having sex with anyone they like, while we invented a whole raft of ridiculous rules and conventions about it.
So in a way, this question is the wrong way round; it should be ‘When and why did strict monogamy and heterosexuality become enforced?’ and the answer to that we give in the book.
Now a caveat: we are talking about sex. The modern idea, that one is only ever attracted to a specific gender, is a modern idea, a by-product of the artificial sexual model imposed by the patriarchy. In fact, we should be having sex with all our friends and developing stronger bonds with them; instead we invented golf. However the patriarchy doesn’t want people being relaxed and loving each other; it wants people to compete, so they miss how it’s shafting them. Again, we explain this in far greater detail in the book than I can go into here.
Gender in the patriarchy is a construct which was developed and is used to suppress women. Gender, in fact, is how you are having sex at one specific moment in time. That’s all. In five minutes you might swap. It confers no advantage or superiority, and one gender is not intrinsically more attractive than the other. Most of what you have read or heard about this is a patriarchal lie.
With that in mind, it is disappointing to see how the modern gay ‘accommodationist’ movement has modelled itself on the patriarchy and imposes rules of behaviour on those whom is sees as being under its aegis. There is nothing that says ‘once gay always gay’ or that a man may not enjoy sex with other men, and also with women and vice versa. These are pseudo-patriarchal rules of behaviour invented by white gay male academics and activists who seek access to patriarchal privilege. I never thought that would happen; but then, the patriarchy is devious and good at perverting people to its ends.
People will not be happy and at peace until the patriarchy, and all its ridiculous rules and conventions, is utterly destroyed. Can’t come quick enough for me.
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