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Author: C .T.

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Ancient Rome Feminism Kali Yuga Manosphere Men Painting Patriarchy Philosophy of history Women

War of the sexes, 14

Update: The following text is rough draft. The series has been substantially revised and abridged, and the section by the YouTube blogger Turd Flinging Monkey is available in a single PDF: here.

______ 卐 ______

 

The traditionalism cycle

“The worst form of tyranny the world has ever known is the tyranny of the weak over the strong. It is the only tyranny that lasts.”

—Oscar Wilde

The reason that I initiated this series with excerpts from John Spark’s book on the science of animal sexuality is that it is the basis to understand human sexuality. The blogger seems to agree: “In order to understand society one must understand reproduction and sexual dimorphism.” In both animals and humans patriarchy is a system in which the males have the power, not the females. Power here means which gender controls reproduction and the resources of the species.

We have seen in Sparks’ excerpts something that we may call Tournament mating. In tournament species the male skull is larger; males are bigger and stronger but have shorter life spans than females; males compete for or select the females (hence the word “tournament”) and after mating often abandon the family. On the other hand, in Pair-bonding species the skulls are of the same size and shape as well as the bodies of the two genders; they have about the same life spans and the females selects the male; sometimes the female abandons the family. In both forms of mating, the blogger says, “we are addicted to pussy because that’s how reproduction works. Without that pussy addiction humanity would have died a long time ago.” In his videos this blogger mentions other bloggers of the manosphere, and he often quotes them by their pennames. He devoted five videos to one of his favorite subjects, the first under the title “The traditionalism cycle.”

In this blog I have referred several times to The Course of Empire, the paintings that Thomas Cole painted in 1833-1836. The Course of Empire reflected popular sentiments of the times when many saw pastoralism as the ideal phase of human civilization, fearing that an American empire would lead to gluttony and inevitable decay. Cole’s paintings remind me the stages that the blogger tries to explain in his civilizational cycle. Let me rephrase his exposition and add a little input of my own.

The_Savage_StateThe Savage State

Brutal patriarchy. Very harsh for women. In the most primitive or barbarous stage of human prehistory, little reds riding hoods are just the property of the wolves. They can be raped or even killed at the discretion of the lycanthrope in question. There is low child survival and early sexual maturity. Both males and resources are scarce and reproduction is prioritized. Endless tribal wars to obtain young females and resources. The male-female relationship is a master-slave one. Polygamy reigns and the way that males get access to the rather cute bodies of their little reds is through tournament mating (see my excerpts of Sparks’ first chapter).

The_Arcadian_or_Pastoral_StateThe Arcadian or Pastoral State

Humane patriarchy. This is the point when civilization began thousands of years ago. Men stop killing each other in tribal wars and women have already some rights. Survival is prioritized and there is more male stability. Polygamy starts to be abandoned (cf. my excerpts of Starks’ last chapter). Soft patriarchy also marks the beginning of monogamy and a pair-bonding society. The master-slave relationship is replaced for an adult-child one, where men are the adults and treat women as grown-up children. In this society civilization starts to thrive. The economy of the tribe grows and the population develops patterns to work around the environment. There is still high fertility rate but late sexual maturity. Resource stability increases. Although the laws explicitly favor men over women, an embryonic form of feminism begins. Today’s feminists claim that they were oppressed during the humane or soft patriarchy. “They really weren’t,” says the blogger. “It was a very balanced society if you think about it.”

The Consummation of EmpireThe Consummation of Empire

Feminism. High child survival. Low fertility rate and late sexual maturity. Resource stability increases but the welfare state starts to replace the male provider. Women are exempted from their former responsibilities—marriage, motherhood, submissiveness—but men are still obliged to provide resources even after their wives have applied for divorces. Women obtain authority that traditionally was a privilege for men but liberated women cannot be drafted—again, they enjoy authority without responsibilities while men are expected to have exactly the same responsibilities they had in the patriarchal society. The laws favor women and more laws are being issued at the expense of men. The welfare state cannot be reformed because of universal suffrage, and women consist of 51-52 percent of the population. “Once women can vote the slow death begins and cannot be stopped democratically.”

The Consummation of Empire Destruction

Feminism run amok. Harsh for men. The women have now completely betrayed us by claiming that they don’t need us anymore. Since egalitarianism cannot be enforced by laws in a dimorphic species like humans, it devolves into open misandry: an anti-male society, or more specifically an anti-white males society. Right now we are in this terminal stage. All those horror stories of the divorce courts we hear in the men’s rights movement describe this late stage. We can see it in Japan too, even though the Japanese don’t suffer a Jewish problem. If Third Reich Germany was destined to become an Empire of the Yang, what we might be calling the Empire of the yin reigns today throughout the West. According to the blogger this is our paradox: “The more peaceful or successful a society becomes the closer it becomes to collapse.” There are no matriarchal civilizations in recorded human history because it is men who carry civilization over our own shoulders.

Empire_Desolation Desolation

Economic collapse. Marriage is abandoned. The welfare state becomes overburdened and finally crashes. The demographic winter of whites ends in societal collapse. Once civilization collapses “the whole system resets back to traditionalism.” According to the blogger the best way to keep women at bay is through poverty. More specifically, in order to reestablish patriarchy three factors must come together: a hostile environment, male scarcity and resource scarcity. The blogger believes that there cannot be a return to patriarchy without the three factors because, to use his crude words, women would still use their pussies to obtain what they want. In a non-collapsed milieu they won’t submit yet but trade sex for food and protection. But we represent survival for the weak sex. Once these factors come together women will beg us to protect them as in times of yore. If there are no men around women, the latter start dying like flies.

* * *

As I said, the blogger devoted five videos to explain the cycle that I am paraphrasing here, injecting bits of pro-white concerns absent in his YouTube channel.

In one of his videos he used the paradigm of Ancient Rome, when the father was the judge, jury and executioner of the family (pater familias). Roman history does not even register how many apprentices of feminists were executed by their husbands or fathers, as women are still executed today by husbands and fathers in the Muslim world. In our culture, decadence started after the Second Punic War, when a vital law was abolished. Lex Oppia restricted not only a woman’s wealth (it forbade any woman to possess more than half an ounce of gold) but also her display of wealth. Unsuccessfully, Cato the Elder opposed the abrogation of that law and Roman feminists harvested other triumphs, even in the Senate, and the trend smoothly continued up to the Christian era. By the time of the Byzantine Empire even mudblood women could inherit property.

The Roman Empire disintegrated but the Middle Ages rectified Rome’s mistake throughout Europe by getting back to patriarchy. After the Enlightenment the cycle that Cato opposed started again, with women “reclaiming their rights” and writing pamphlets. The eighteenth century influenced the nineteenth century, especially in England. In the United States the turning point occurred when women obtained the right to vote in 1920, although the women’s movement had started in 1848. The welfare state initiated in 1935 with Social Security and was expanded in 1965 to include Medicare. “No fault divorce” was another escalation of feminism, in addition to the 1967 initiative for affirmative action for women. From the 1990s feminism transformed itself into runaway feminism. In 2010 the welfare state was expanded again to include Obamacare. The beneficiaries of this state are women, especially single mothers, not men. Marginalizing the engine of society will end in economic collapse, something that I believe will happen under the watch of the next US president, whether Clinton or Trump.

For the blogger, the most important question is exactly when we handed power over these creatures of long hair and short ideas. “We dropped the ball when we ceded authority to women.” He illustrates the cycle in an elaborate diagram:

tfm1

Categories
Feminism Manosphere Patriarchy Women

War of the sexes, 13

Update: The following text is rough draft. The series has been substantially revised and abridged, and the section by the YouTube blogger Turd Flinging Monkey is available in a single PDF: here.

______ 卐 ______

 

Guide to the manosphere

 
turd-flinging-monkey
According to the blogger, the manosphere can be divided in (1) Anti-feminists, (2) Men’s Rights Activists and (3) Men’s Going Their Own Way or MGTOW.

The blogger implied that Anti-feminists and Men’s Rights Activists are on half-way stepping stones at the middle of a turbulent river to reach the more radical MGTOW territories. What he said of 1 and 2 strongly reminded me my own awakening path: Counter-Jihadism, White Nationalism and finally National Socialism.

After the eleventh minute of another video, “MGTOW for dummies,” he says that “female nature is detrimental to men.” The only way a society could work is “if men control women—I mean physically control women with a strict patriarchy.” But as this is impossible in what I’d call an anti-white System, “there is no reason to associate with women” because “her nature is going to destroy him.” He adds that it is not the women’s fault: they are hypergamous by nature and we just cannot impose a patriarchal system in a gynocentric society. In other videos he explains these terms:

Hypergamy – The instinct that moves the females (of many species I would add) chose the males for their capacity to obtain resources; thus she can change mates at any time. Hypergamy is materialism plus opportunism plus selfishness. In the case of our species, women want to get married into a higher caste system or social group.

Gynocentrism – A society centered on or concerned exclusively with women; taking the female, or specifically a feminist, point of view. More broadly from a meta-historical perspective, gynocentrism is male disposability. The female is to be protected while the male is disposable.

Feminism – Women using the government to obtain men’s resources by proxy. The welfare state replaces the male provider of the traditional family, and the laws favor women over men.

When I listened the blogger’s words, that we cannot impose a patriarchal system on a gynocentric society, my mind flew over a cute ginger-hair girl I used to fancy while living in England. I indeed had an opportunity—she was the one who approached me on the street—but ultimately I could do nothing. I needed money to move somewhere the System could not interfere with a traditional family. Otherwise the precocious nymphet would escape my patriarchal Diktat.

The blogger also speaks with incredible crudity: something unconceivable for older generations. But that’s the way we must speak out while the fair race, so emblematic in this English girl, is facing extinction. In “Let’s talk about solutions” he proposed that, to fix the problem, our women—:

  • Should not be allowed to vote
  • Cannot have property
  • Cannot work without the permission of their husbands
  • Cannot apply for divorce and
  • In divorces the children go with the father.

In one of my autobiographical books I tell an early 1960s anecdote. It was the first time that I heard about an unheard of happening: a boy said in our Peugeot he knew of a couple that was divorcing. My father was driving and simply could not believe it!

The bulleted draconian measures are not enough. The final chapter of Kenneth Clark’s Civilisation must always be in the radar of the architects of the ethnostate, as well as LOTR’s penultimate chapter. Later in his video the blogger says, “in order for traditionalism to work we’ll need to give up technology and go back to farming instead of offices.” Unfortunately, he knows nothing about Mammon, energy devolution and the main thesis of the history of the white race in the books of William Pierce and Arthur Kemp. Moreover, I am afraid to say that the blogger’s idiosyncrasy is often as nihilistic and degenerate as that of the typical liberal.

But there are salvable aspects in his philosophy. In the next entry we will see what is perhaps the blogger’s most original contribution to the manosphere, the Traditionalism Cycle.

tfm2

Categories
Arthur Schopenhauer Egalitarianism Intelligence quotient (IQ) Manosphere Men Science Sex Women

War of the sexes, 12

Update: The following text is rough draft. The series has been substantially revised and abridged, and the section by the YouTube blogger Turd Flinging Monkey is available in a single PDF: here.

______ 卐 ______

 

Are men superior to women?

 
turd-flinging-monkey
Those who design computer games depict warrior women as faster than robust men. The same with Hollywood. Remember one of the films of the Matrix trilogy? The black actress who plays Niobe is the best pilot of a Zion hovercraft. In reality women are slower. Men are not only stronger but faster, including reflexes.

The same with intelligence. I used to be a chess player. Generally, the sexes are separated in chess tournaments. Even those female child prodigies in China trained to become chess masters are no match for male grandmasters. (By the way, the 2016 world chess championship is scheduled to start this November 11 in New York City between Magnus Carlsen and challenger Sergey Karjakin: two male whites.)

The same can be said about the careers of physics, mathematics and computing. Men perform far better. The System’s solution? The blogger does not mention race but what is being done with the fair sex is exactly what is done with the niggers: “lower the math standard for women.” That is the official policy in the universities. Once again, Hollywood brainwashes us with poisonous films like Starship Troopers where the main characters, Johnny Rico and his girlfriend Carmen Ibañez, travel in a spaceship to conquer a bug planet. Johnny had obtained low math grades and has to work as a mere infantryman while the smarter Carmen got high math grades, obtaining a job to pilot a starship.

Independently of this shameful inversion of reality in Hollywood and computer games, the blogger says that emotional intelligence is bullshit, that it does not exist. But I agree with Schopenhauer on this point, that “women never see anything but what is closest to them. To consult women when you are in difficulties, as the ancient Teutons did, is by no means a bad idea: for their way of looking at things is quite different from ours, especially in their propensity for keeping in view the shortest road to a desired goal and in general what lies closest to hand, which we usually overlook precisely because it is right in front of our noses”.

The blogger continues to say that the only way that women can win against men is if the system is rigged, exactly what is happening now with the 2016 US election. Sean Hannity is virtually alone in the entire media to openly support Donald Trump!

In his video the blogger has concluded that men are superior to women not only physically but mentally. In a follow-up video, “Men are smarter than women,” he adds that he received critics for his prior video even from the manosphere. He refutes the argument of deceiving IQ studies conducted by dishonest egalitarians showing that pubescent girls score better than boys of the same age. The dirty trick consists that girls reach physical maturity before boys, something that is reflected in IQ studies of the span of puberty where girls score better. But they reach their maximum brain volume at 10.5 years, and boys at 14. (“The nobler and more perfect a thing is, the later and more slowly does it mature. The man attains the maturity of his reasoning powers and spiritual faculties hardly before his twenty-eight year; the woman with her eighteenth” —Schopenhauer.) Adult men have a brain ten percent larger than women, and five more points of IQ (again, the antiracist blogger simply ignores IQ studies among the races). In the case of those humans who reach the Himalayas of IQ, say from 140 to 160, they are all males. “In conclusion, men are smarter than women, period.”

I would add that we men are not only physically and intellectually superior, but morally (honor, nobility) as well—and thus objectively superior.

But like white nationalists MGTOWers are still plugged in the Matrix of political correctness. Remember the hysterical fuss at The Daily Stormer that Andrew Anglin suffered for stating the obvious about women? Exactly the same happened to this blogger in the manosphere community. In a follow-up video, “False stereotypes,” the blogger says that in the comments sections of his YouTube channel he was accused of incredible claims: that he was probably gay; an ugly fellow incapable of getting laid; an unredeemable misogynist who lived in his mom’s basement, etcetera. All false, ad hoc stereotypes coming from those who cannot stand hard facts.

Still in another follow-up, “Men are smarter than women 2,” the blogger responds to another tactic from utterly dismayed viewers: the denial of the validity of the science of sexual dimorphism.

anas_platyrhynchos

Natural science impossible to refute:
male and female mallards. The male mallard
has an unmistakable green head.

In this follow-up video the blogger responds to a feminist that made a career in so-called gender studies. The woman claimed that men have larger brains because the brains are proportionate to their larger bodies in general. The blogger counters with the fact that even children have more cranial capacity than girls, and the same can be said about adults: the difference between the male and the female brains is of the size of a soup bar. Liberals want us to believe that this has zero relevance for their egalitarian dogma.

The blogger then mentions a crude test for cranial size that we could use at home: measuring tape around the heads of family males and females. But as the staunch antiracist he is, the blogger fails to present the perfect argument. Even tall and robust, muscular niggers have a smaller brain size than skinny Caucasians!

So far for the proportional argument that the feminist used. Finally, remember once more Schopenhauer’s wise words about the fair sex:

Women are suited to being the nurses and teachers of our earliest childhood precisely because they themselves are childish, silly and short-sighted, in a word big children, their whole lives long: a kind of intermediate stage between the child and the man, who is the actual human being, “Man”.

In the girl nature has had in view what could in theatrical terms be called a stage-effect: it has provided her with superabundant beauty and charm for a few years at the expense of the whole remainder of her life, so that during these years she may so capture the imagination of a man that he is carried away into undertaking to support her honorably in some form or another for the rest of his life, a step he would seem hardly likely to take for purely rational considerations. Thus nature has equipped women, as it has all its creatures, with the tools and weapons she needs for securing her existence, and at just the time she needs them; in doing which nature has acted with its usual economy.

In another video, “Women are children,” the blogger implies that today’s westerners are slaves of the egalitarian dogma: a dogma they pursue independently of the data we can gather from nature. Gender equality simply cannot be enforced in the real world, and he concludes his video with the words “Women will always be children.”

Categories
Manosphere Men Women

War of the sexes, 11

Update: The following text is rough draft. The series has been substantially revised and abridged, and the section by the YouTube blogger Turd Flinging Monkey is available in a single PDF: here.

______ 卐 ______

 

Crude facts
 
turd-flinging-monkey

In his video “Unified theory of human interaction” the blogger says that animals are stupid and that, since humans are animals, we are stupid too; the females of our species more stupid than the male.

He reproduced a brain diagram that I knew since reading Carl Sagan in the early eighties (Reptilian brain, Limbic system and the Cortex) and said that the most primitive parts of our brains can easily control the most developed parts. When a man allows being controlled by the impulses of his dick, he’s being controlled by the most primitive part of the nervous system.

Like many animals we humans are a dimorphic species. Guys are several times stronger than the gals. When I was a child I played rough games with my sisters. I could easily put any of them on the floor face up, with my hand holding her two extended arms above her face forming a lock; she could not break free even when one of my hands was on the air. Once I tried the same trick with a skinny boy and was surprised that I could not put my usual padlock even using my two hands and the force of gravity.

Although those were non-sexual games it looks like women have been constructed to be rapable creatures (remember Sparks on “Machiavellian males”), with only other males being capable to impede massive rapes in our society.

So dimorphic is our species that in Nature a woman left totally alone will die. There cannot be such a thing as a Robinsona Crusoe. Women must become attached to the male society if they want to survive. Even in our feminist society, says the blogger, women depend a hundred percent on the protection that men alone can provide.

But males are not the only the puppets of our primitive, R-Complex brain. When an alpha male mistreats a woman or grabs her by the pussy, her primitive brain may be triggered too as they feel protected by sheer brute force. Of course: it is only a psychological hook. They would become tired with someone who always treats them like shit.

In the next entry I’ll quote the blogger regarding the most controversial aspect of sexual dimorphism in humans.

Categories
Jane Austen Manosphere Marriage Men Pride & Prejudice Women

War of the sexes, 10

Update: The following text is rough draft. The series has been substantially revised and abridged, and the section by the YouTube blogger Turd Flinging Monkey is available in a single PDF: here.

______ 卐 ______

 

Marketplace value for men & women
 
turd-flinging-monkey

Successful career women overvalue their sexual marketplace because they don’t perceive they’re not anymore cute little reds riding hoods from our point of view. But we males commit a symmetrical mistake: even when young and handsome we are (or were) clueless about what women are actually chasing in men.

Regarding the first psychological fallacy, the desirability for a woman collapses after her late thirties. Little riding hoods’ beauty is the primary quality that attracts us wolves. That’s why women spend so much time and money in cosmetics. According to the blogger, second to beauty is youth. I slightly disagree because in the marketplace we cannot separate youth from beauty. (Why nature has permitted the genes of fat women, those who even on permanent diet have an endomorph constitution, is a mystery for me.)

The blogger also says that women are attracted by resources, physicality, alpha traits and personality. If men valuate a woman for her youthful beauty from one to ten, women valuate men by their resources.

The 2005 movie adaptation of Pride and Prejudice is an absolutely must-see film for the architects of the coming ethnostate, even when the 1995 television series depict more faithfully the early nineteenth-century England. Women must be educated that way. In both the film and the novel, Elizabeth and Jane (dressed in black and blue in this pic) were impressed by Mr. Darcy’s and Mr. Bingley’s fortunes. In the specific case of Elizabeth, she changed her mind about smug Mr. Darcy only after she saw his awesome mansion. This is fiction of course: both the women and the men were valuated as 10 in resources and youthful beauty respectively.

The market value for a woman always falls in a descendant spiral, says the blogger. He doesn’t talk about Pride and Prejudice but we can remember the scene when 27-year old Charlotte becomes engaged with the ridiculous Mr. Collins for elemental survival. As in the Jane Austen world, in the ethnostate women should not be allowed to make careers or inherit property, not even their late fathers’ estates, to force them getting married and fulfill the 14 words.

Back to the blogger. He says that even if a woman is married properly, her marketplace value diminishes because she has lost her virtue as is now sexually active. On the other hand, we males don’t fall into a descendant spiral with age. Even I, in my late fifties, could find a much younger spouse if I won the lottery.

Categories
Aryan beauty Egalitarianism Feminism Manosphere Men Women

War of the sexes, 9

Update: The following text is rough draft. The series has been substantially revised and abridged, and the section by the YouTube blogger Turd Flinging Monkey is available in a single PDF: here.

______ 卐 ______

 

turd-flinging-monkeyIf the overwhelming majority of white guys died tomorrow, that would not threaten the white race. But if the overwhelming majority of white gals died tomorrow, said the blogger, it would be a catastrophe for the race. That’s why women are allowed to abandon sinking ships or burning buildings first. This is not only chivalry: it’s an unconscious drive to protect them, especially the young and fair. Attractive women detonate something in our reptilian brain: we unconsciously want to make love with them even when we experience no overt sexual desire at a specific moment.

Women are also programmed: but programmed to find a man who protects them and provides for her needs. In the animal kingdom female mammals are vulnerable and require food and protection. They will look after an alpha male.

Men and women have different biological impulses: they experience love in different ways. We are attracted by youth and beauty: a sign of good genes and health. When a man loves a woman he loves her directly. This is not the case with women. They are attracted by the resources the male can provide. In one of his early videos the blogger reproduced the pic of a silverback gorilla and commented that if the alpha male disappears, the females don’t care much and would simply go after the next alpha.

In female humans the saying, “I need a man who can take care of me” is an euphemism that they are long-term whores. If the provider gets sick, loses his job or becomes handicapped, love disappears. For the blogger, “women understand marriage as a business relationship.” In his video Women’s suffrage caused the Welfare State he cites academic articles supporting such claim, and in another video about the same subject he reproduces pie charts showing where does the welfare money really goes. The YouTube blogger concludes that the government is taking our money to give it to women, especially single mothers.

But this blogger is an antiracist. He claims to be anti-egalitarian but he is sleeping like any normie regarding race, collectivist fascism, and the Jewish question. He is not alone. MGTOWers in general fancy themselves awakened and ubiquitously use the first Matrix film to advance the red pill metaphor.

They are wrong.

Naked and weak, they have woken up in the liquid-filled pod finding themselves beside countless people connected by cables to an elaborate electrical system. But the giant spider-like robot of the film still has to unplug them from the System. The blogger that I’ll be quoting is one of them: already awoken in a pod he’s incapable to wrap his head about what exactly is the electrical plant he’s now seeing.
 
redpill_handFatherly advice to MGTOWers

You are not red pilled as you believe but merely purple pilled. The feminism you so rightly condemn is a subset of a broader principle of non-discrimination. Today’s religion of whites is that discriminating on race, gender or sexual orientation is the most serious sin of the West and the white man in particular. You have picked a secondary issue—gender—and ignore the other two.

If you claim to be anti-egalitarians start right from the beginning: race realism. Read for example this article by Jared Taylor. If you can digest that piece without throwing up (as Neo popped in the film) read the book that I edited, also available in PDF.

If you start following the white rabbit through the articles and books linked on the sidebar, you’ll find how deep the rabbit hole really goes.

Categories
Manosphere Science

War of the sexes, 8

Update: The following text is rough draft. The series has been substantially revised and abridged, and the section by the YouTube blogger Turd Flinging Monkey is available in a single PDF: here.

______ 卐 ______

 

My extracts of John Sparks’ Battle of the Sexes may give the reader a taste of the flavor of his book. I ordered Sparks’ book while living in Manchester in 1999 and found this scientific area of observation of Nature more than fascinating: it contains the ABC to decode human sexuality.

turd-flinging-monkey

From this entry onwards I’ll be quoting and paraphrasing the blogger Turd Flinging Monkey, who uses this gravatar in YouTube. The most conspicuous difference between this blogger and academic naturalists is the blunt language he uses to state the obvious (keep in mind Spark’s excerpts in the previous entries):

  • Humans are animals too
  • Our primitive brain naturally overpowers our rationality
  • We are controlled by our primitive biological urges (e.g., sacrifice ourselves pursuing reproduction)
  • The enemy that would betray us males is our own biology
  • Men are wired to acquire resources, compete with other men and sacrifice ourselves in order to attract a mate.

Curiously, in the YouTube audio where the blogger stated the above he used an example of male birds trying to impress females quite similar to what Sparks wrote in the third entry.

In the next posts I’ll follow closely what the blogger has said in his videos and audios, starting from his oldest videos.

Categories
Science

War of the sexes, 7

The battle continues

By nature, the negotiation between the sexes is a dynamic process. The tension between males and females continues and, accordingly, the compromises struck between them in their quest for genetic supremacy are ever changing.

The seeds of change can be detected on the rocky beaches of Rona on which grey seals breed. Rona is a small island well to the west of the Orkney Islands off the north coast of Scotland. At the best of times it is a wild and windy place, bearing the brunt of the Atlantic swell. In October, when the seals give birth and then immediately mate again, it is frequently lashed by gales; the exposed cliffs and gullies shudder under the pounding waves. But the appalling conditions are apparently of no consequence. Rona hosts the densest population of grey seals in the North Atlantic—about 600 breeding females.

The grey seal is a classical polygamous species with a very marked size difference between the sexes. Whereas every cow can expect to breed, the bulls are not so fortunate. Each one lives in the hope that one day he will be big enough and sufficiently good fighter to win his own harem of cows. Sexual selection among bull grey has therefore favoured the most powerful pugilists, and the biggest warriors get their chance to mate with perhaps a dozen females each season.

However, a few of the lesser bulls, which stand no chance of succeeding in combat, turn luckily—and it is all down to the cows. Although most happily fall for the victorious bulls, a minority of females take a fancy to the males of a more gentle disposition which lounge on the sidelines. Luckily grey seals can be recognised by their individual markings. It has therefore been possible to discover that these cows tend to return in successive years to the same males, and they appear to strike monogamous ‘marriages’.

greysealmatingClearly two separate mating strategies are underway, but perhaps the female grey seals are beginning to exercise a preference for less disruptive and less heavy bulls to father their pups. If so, their choice is nudging evolution towards establishing monogamy in place of the current strongly polygamous arrangement.

We know that the nature of habitats favours some breeding systems over others. Perhaps this is the case with these seals, which probably bred on sea ice during the last Ice Age. Now that the climate has improved and the ice retreated, grey seals may still be in the process of adapting to the change—and this includes establishing a new relationship between the sexes.

Categories
Science

War of the sexes, 6

 

Family affairs

Sex is divisive, disruptive and often destructive. The urge to reproduce frequently manifests itself in aggression, shattering social groups and driving animals to lead independent lives. Males are especially violent, battling over territories, jealously fighting for what they regard as their own and making as many sexual conquests as possible. Females, too, are capable of spinning their own webs of intrigue. As each mother is rooting only for her own offspring, she may attempt to spoil a rival female’s chances of breeding, or even surreptitiously maltreat or murder another mother’s infants to enhance the prospects of her own. Such activities are hardly conductive to smoothly running societies.

And yet a whole range of creatures manage to live in communities of one kind or another. The question arises as to how sex as a major source of tension is kept under control in species which, perhaps for environmental reasons, need to live in highly organised communities? The lifestyles of the gelada baboon illustrates how the uneasy relationship between oppressive males and fearful females works out in this very social primate…

No member of the troop is immune from the male’s temper. His most violent attacks are likely to be saved for the confident young bachelors which dare to challenge him for the harem, but even his ‘wives’ are wary of his anger and may be beaten without mercy, especially if they refuse to submit when he tries to force them into copulating… Of course, the mother of all fights for the despot is his final-show down when, after perhaps two years in power, he is toppled by whichever of the bachelors feels confident and strong enough to mount a challenge for the females… The takeover generally heralds a period of instability for the harem. The victorious male is inevitably inexperienced at disciplining a group of females, so they tend to wander apart and become prey to the attentions of other overlords and feisty bachelors.

Despite all the violence and apparent chaos in gelada groups, these animals still live together in troops up to 600 strong—bigger than the societies of any other primate, barring our own. So why do animals live in such super-families if this means exposing themselves to daily lives fraught with tension?
 
Machiavellian males

In Renaissance Italy, the statesman and author Niccolo Machiavelli realised the virtues of oppressive rulers with no moral scruples in uniting human societies, and pondered the relative merits of being loved or feared. Love, he reasoned, is maintained by obligations which can easily be broken when it is advantageous to do so. Fear, on the other hand, never fails to command respect because of the dread of punishment. So it is with many of our closest relatives; in a number of primate species, tyrannical males constantly chastise insubordinate members of their troops and coerce reluctant females to mate with them.

Monkeys and baboons are among the cleverest and craftiest of all animals. Living in troops, they are big-brained, bright creatures, capable of playing politics, all attempting to influence those around them for their own selfish ends. Indeed, it is thought that the need for complex interactions led to the evolution of intelligence in the first place, rather than vice versa. While feeding or mutually grooming, these animals appear peaceful, but they are keenly aware of each other’s rank, who is friends with whom and who must be treated with kid gloves. Such considerations create tensions that are liable to surface without much warning into bouts of bickering, or worse.

Sexuality is a major cause of strife. The ever-willing mature males are constantly exposed to the females within their troops and, when the latter come into full oestrus, the highest-ranking male—or ‘clique’ of males in some baboons and macaques—dictates which mates with them; this means either the top male or those which have curried favour with him. Less fortunate rivals which try to get in on the action are beaten up.

This monopoly of copulation in groups where there are several mature but subordinate males is bound to lead to frustration; this in turn can explode into jealous rages in which animals may be hurt. If dominant males do not get their own way, they are likely to punish whoever they see as the culprit. Even females are frequently bullied because they are not willing to mate as often as the males would like them to—a situation which can lead to rape. In one study, almost half of all copulations in a group of wild orang-utans happened after fierce resistance by the females had been overcome by the males.

In many primates, sexual aggravation is rather subtle, but in hamadryas baboons—the sacred baboon revered by the ancient Egyptians—the harassment is often gratuitously handed out by males and easy to observe. Hamadryas are swarthy animals with rather stocky legs admirably suited to scrambling around the steep gorges in the Middle East and the adjacent part of Africa where they live. The sexes are quite different from each other. Although the females look like regular brown baboons, their overlords are dressed to impress, with dog-like faces and bare buttocks in matching pink. Their drove-grey fur is fashioned in ‘poodle cut’, with tufts on the head and a long cape flowing from the shoulders to the hips, making them appear as large and as formidable as possible.

These Machiavellian tyrants are dedicated polygamists, each shepherding as many as ten females to form his own personal harem, which he maintains during his prime years. Each keeps his females close by to satisfy his smouldering sexual demands. They in turn keep him company for fear of being trashed or bitten should they wander too afar from his side. Their fear is well founded, because the males are aggressive disciplinarians and frequently threaten violence by eyebrow-raising, thumping the ground, ‘yawning’ and whetting their upper canines against the teeth of their lower jaws. Any breach of etiquette incurs the male’s wrath, often resulting in a humiliating neck bite for the offending female or a trashing for an immature male.

ape-orgasm
 
Machiavellian male. The dominant male hamadryas baboon is a bully, but has complete access to all the females of his harem. Females depend upon him to protect them.
 
The females exploit the male’s permanent interest in sex. They are able to vie with him for food and escape punishment simply by proffering their pink hind quarters. Presented with such an erotic appeasement gesture, the male is more likely to mount than to lash out. However, a female hamadryas which refuses to copulate with her male when he wants her to does so at her peril. Even so, many mating encounters look more like acts of aggression.

But why do females and low-ranking males stand for such oppressive treatment? As explained at the end of the last chapter, fierce males have their uses.

Categories
Science

War of the sexes, 5

The parental dilemma

There is a fascinating aspect of avian parenting. Birds perhaps more than any other group of animals show how the environment plays a key role in driving the separate interests of males and females.

Jacanas inhabit tropical pools and lakes and can pick their way across floating vegetation, spreading their weight on their very long toes—hence the alternative name of ‘lily-trotters’. Bearing a vermilion shield of their foreheads, American jacanas have reddish-brown plumage with brilliant golden-green pinions which are conspicuous in flight. But it is their breeding arrangements that make these birds especially interesting: the females practice a particularly extreme form of polyandry, with the males undertaking all the duties normally performed by their partners.

A female jacana enjoys the services of several males, which do all the work of building the floating nests, incubating the eggs for nearly a month until they hatch and then caring for the chicks for a further two months. They make devoted fathers and when danger threatens any of the brood, the chicks either shelter beneath his wings or, on a call from him, sink under the water with only the tip of their bill showing so that they can breath.

The females are 75 per cent larger than their mates, do all the courting and scrap among themselves for territories. The most successful fighters are the heaviest with the biggest, reddest wattles. The shields display a record of their owner’s fighting history, as the scars of old injuries are yellow. Such fierce females may manage to defend a territory with as many as six males. Within her area, each male has his own nest located in his own patch of vegetation, but as he is relatively puny, he is unable to drive off the trespassing females. When there is a female intruder, he screams for his own mate to defend his share of her freehold. In the event of a new hen taking over, the males make a feeble attempt to expel her, but within a few hours they have accepted the inevitable and mate with her. Such takeovers are bad news for the vanquished females, because the victor will set about destroying the eggs and methodically hunting down the chicks of her predecessor so that she can immediately employ the males to look after her own eggs.

In effect, a female jacana acts like a fierce egg factory with no constraint on her production line, completing a clutch of four every ten days or so. By contrast, the reproductive potential of each of her partners is severely limited because, once he has received a clutch of eggs, the male is tied up with parental responsibilities for the best part of three months. The female’s sexual potential is limited only by the number of males she can exploit and retain in the face of serious competition from other hens.

Apart from laying eggs, hen jacanas behave just like the strutting cocks of other species—they are big, aggressive, passionate and less choosy than most females about their sexual partners. On the other hand, their mates act like traditional hens—the caring, gentler sex. This is such a reversal of the normal situation that it raises the question, what are the special circumstances which favour the evolution of polyandry on such a scale?

The answer may be found in the rich environment which jacanas inhabit. With no shortage of moisture and heated by the tropical sun, the swamps are among the most productive places on the planet. Such is their immense fertility that it has been estimated that the calorific value of the food available on 1 square metre (10 square feet) of ground is equivalent to two dozen chocolate bars. In fact, for the jacanas, these places are like open bird tables groaning with goodies. So easy are the pickings that, unlike most female birds, hen jacanas have evolved into ‘battery hens’, churning out egg after egg with little physiological stress. They have therefore seized the reproductive initiative, pursuing a strategy of continuous egg production while coercing a coterie of males into incubating the eggs and guarding the chicks…

Jacanas are not the only birds to indulge in polyandry. Several kinds of shore birds practice it on the Arctic or sub-Arctic breeding grounds.
 
Single mothers

Examples of polyandry are few and far between for the simple reason that the environment rarely gives females such an easy ride as it does the jacanas and Arctic wading birds. For most birds, finding enough extra food to manufacture eggs packed with nutrients is an arduous business. World wide, hen birds are constrained in the number of eggs they can lay in a season and so they, as the limited resources, are fought over as the males—which are free to copulate with as many partners as they can secure. In most wading birds, wildfowl and members of the pheasant and goose family, all parental duties are sifted firmly on the females. Their mates play no part in incubation or protecting their vulnerable chicks after they have emerged from the eggs.

In all of these cases, the young are hatched in a relatively advanced state and can run around and forage for themselves. The parent which defects—whether it is the cock or the hen in the polygamous species—is therefore not needed as provider of food, which makes his or her desertion that much easier.

But there can be intense rivalry between single mothers and lone fathers. Barrow’s golden eye, for example, is a tough little diving duck and one population breeds on Lake Myvatn in Iceland. The females nest alongside fast flowing rivers leading out of the lake, and when the ducklings hatch the mother leads them on a perilous journey upstream to the best feeding areas. The journey is dangerous because they literally risk their lives getting there.

If they pass a male whose female is late hatching and still sitting on eggs, he mercilessly beats them to death, because he doesn’t want any ducklings competing with his own offspring. If they survive the hurdle and reach the feeding area, other females already there will also attack and kill newcomers to protect the best sources of food for their own broods. In July each year, the upper reaches of Lake Myvatn can be a scene of carnage, with hundreds of dead ducklings—the result of mothers furiously fighting for the interests of their own broods at the expense of others.
 
Mammals: natural-born mothers

In just over 90 per cent of birds, monogamy prevails. This reflects the near impossibility of females producing an unlimited supply of eggs in most habitats, and the fact that male birds are able to make a significant contribution to the survival of the chicks. But there is one major group of creatures in which this is not so—the mammals. Among these equally hot-blooded, very active animals, monogamy is confined to a mere 5 per cent; in the rest the males have completely opted out of parenting…

male-and-female-klipspringersDwarf antelopes—such as the klipspringers and dik-diks of southern and eastern Africa—are unusual among hoofed animals in that they go around in pairs. They frequent clustered bush and thickly vegetated forest where nourishing herbage of the kind that they like is widely scattered. It therefore pays these animals to be territorial so that they can acquire an intimate knowledge of the places where their food occurs.

The buck, which is often slightly smaller than his mate, ensures success in the paternity stakes by commandeering an area of desirable bush and then behaving as a constant consort to his female, never moving more than a few paces from her aside for fear of losing sight of her in the dense vegetation—and possibly losing his sexual monopoly of her as well. It has been recorded that a pair of klipspringers spend their entire adult lives literally within 5 metres (16 feet) of each other. When the fawns arrive, the female cares for them, though the father is always nearby, preoccupied with guarding the mother. Such long bonds lessen the competition between males and so preclude the need for large, aggressive bucks of the kind found in deer and some larger antelopes.

A similar situation prevails in gibbons. These singing apes from South-East Asia appear to live like happily married couples together with their immature children. However, on close inspection, it can be seen that a male gibbon is not so much a caring father as the guardian of the adult female with whom he has chosen to breed. He is also a valiant defender of the swathe of jungle through which she and their joint offspring need to forage for tender leaves and ripe fruit. For a male gibbon, monogamy pays reproductive dividends; by keeping a close track of his ‘wife’ in the complex, cluttered canopy of the rain-forest, he can be sure of fathering her offspring. Unlikely among apes, male gibbons are virtually indistinguishable from their mates—a characteristic that reflects the low level of competition for females.

Only the male siamang—the largest of the gibbons, from the Malay Peninsula of Sumatra—shows a high level of paternal interest, taking over the daily care of his infant when it is about a year old and continuing to look after it closely for the next two years.