by George Kocan
Sen. Hillary Clinton began the primary election cycle in the Democrat Party as the favorite. Now, she has to struggle. Sen. Barack Obama has taken the lead. Her base is evaporating. Democratic women, who have invested their hopes and fortunes on the first credible woman to run for the presidency of the United States are defecting to a man. What happened?
What happened is biology. For generations ambitious women comforted themselves with chocolate and the thought that ruthless men were responsible for their failure to ascend the leadership ladder. They blamed a “glass ceiling,” an arbitrary barrier based on sex rather than competence. Men combined into a power network thousands of years old--a patriarchy--that refused to let women shine.
The last 60 or so years of scientific research into behavioral biology shows that this narrative is not so simple. For example, a sociologist, Steven Goldberg, reviewed the anthropological research from all over the globe and found no matriarchies--not one. He carefully looked into the alleged cases of matriarchy and found that they were either frauds or myths fashioned out of the flimsiest of evidence. Patriarchy is the universal rule. Men hold the leadership positions and the symbols of leadership in every society.
What makes biology relevant to this research is that human social behavior has a physiological basis and parallels the social behavior of other primates, especially the great apes, like chimpanzees. Males have a ‘Y’ chromosome; females do not. Males have testosterone, females have much less. Testosterone influences behavior as well as appearance.
Because of testosterone’s influence over embryonic development, men end up with bigger brains, with the two halves more differentiated than in women. The left brain tends to specialize in language and logic, while the right brain tends to specialize in spacial relationships and emotion.
Throughout the animal kingdom, males show much more aggression than females. When this becomes a problem among domesticated animals like cattle and horses, their keepers simply castrate them, cutting off the source of testosterone.
Male animals often augment their aggression with colorful markings and dramatic visual displays. That is one reason males look different from females. Human males sport facial hair and a muscular ‘V’ shaped body build. In lions, castration results in the loss of their intimidating manes. When men suffer the same indignity, they lose their beards. Some male animals even brandish big weapons to help them in the struggle for social dominance, horns, antlers, and big canine teeth. Large animals tend to dominate.
Obama stands tall, taller than most women. He speaks with a low voice. In humans, a low pitch carries authority. The low pitch comes from vocal cords, which have grown large under the influence of testosterone. Women voices do not sound as low as mens’ do.
In humans, testosterone also correlates with personality traits like thrill and adventure seeking, along with overt dominance behavior. Men depend on aggression for social advancement. Doubters should compare the sex ratio in the prison population. Males far outnumber the females by 13 to 1.
Human males organize themselves into hierarchies. Even as young boys, they run around in packs. They know where they stand in the pecking order. When researchers asked boys, “Who is the toughest in class?” they told them. Every boy knew who he was. Women tend to form organizations based on the “queen bee” principle. This is difficult to recognize, because most womens’ organizations imitate male hierarchies. But in prison, where females only associate with other females, the tendency shows up.
Obama’s confident manner and calm assurance suggests that he has had lots of experience competing in male hierarchies. Girls do not grow up in male hierarchies. In my opinion, even if they operate physically within a male organization, they stay outside the hierarchy. Males do not treat females as merely smaller and weaker versions of themselves. Successful experience in a female social system cannot provide any preparation for competition in a male hierarchy.
In some manner, either testosterone or the ‘Y’-chromosome influences intelligence, too. The bell curve for male IQ spreads out more widely than for female intelligence. That means highly intelligent men outnumber the women--but so do very stupid men. If one looks at the high half of the bell curve, where all the relevant social and political competition occurs, men have the clear advantage.
So, biology has consequences. Women, even feminists, are defecting to Obama because they are responding to his manly leadership qualities. He makes women swoon. Hillary Clinton has yet to make a woman swoon. She had the advantage of popularity and her sex for as long as the public did not see Obama in action. As the primary election season progressed and the drama increased, the public could make side-by-side comparisons of the candidates. Obama came off as the stronger--the manly, Alpha male--candidate. There was no way for Clinton’s handlers to hide it or make it go away.
Masculine leadership exerts an irresistible magnetism. Women love Alpha males. They tend to marry up the social ladder not down. As long as men like Obama participate in Democrat politics, women have a slim chance at securing that party’s nomination for the presidency of the most powerful nation that ever existed.
