today is also Friday , January 19th . We're doing a double record here because we took such a long , long hiatus . And this is . This is episode three of season two . Hi , Josh . Hi , Eric . Careful in the minefield . 40 00:00:19,546 --> 00:00:00,-01 Dr. Josh Stout: Yeah , indeed . So today I'd like to talk about gender and the Barbie movie and primate mating systems . Originally , I'd been thinking about talking about how the mating systems of the great apes influence modern gendered society .
And then I saw the Barbie movie and said , Oh , well , as a society , we're talking about this . And it was it was it was much more fun than I thought . I had expected something very lightweight and and just sort of a girly lightweight , kind of whatever it is . And that is not what it was . 135 00:01:02,146 --> 00:00:00,-01 Eric: No , no , Greta Gerwig is not . 142 00:01:04,066 --> 00:00:00,-01 Dr. Josh Stout: And it was it was much more interesting than I'd expected .
It didn't it didn't really extend the conversation , particularly in most ways . I think it was mostly covering well-trodden ground . 174 00:01:16,366 --> 00:00:00,-01 Eric: Enabled the converse , but . 179 00:01:17,506 --> 00:00:00,-01 Dr. Josh Stout: It definitely enabled conversations .
And what it really did was focus on gender stereotypes , which is a little bit different from what I was thinking about with the primate mating systems , which was sort of gendered society , gender , social relationships and the Barbie movie was more focused on personal gender stereotypes , like how you are as a person , as a person with a gender . And it's a little bit different , but I thought it would go well together since it was , you know , they're both roughly plus at the same
time . 271 00:01:49,986 --> 00:00:00,-01 Eric: At the end , she actually becomes physically gendered , but . 281 00:01:54,946 --> 00:00:00,-01 Dr. Josh Stout: Well , she eventually has a vagina . Is that the same as gender ? And that's sort of what's being explored the entire time . 304 00:02:03,456 --> 00:00:00,-01 Eric: Yes . That is the issue , isn't it ? 312 00:02:04,756 --> 00:00:00,-01 Dr. Josh Stout: Yes .
And this this this is sort of where things become problematic and there's an entire minefield . And it's difficult to talk about something that is linguistically a binary . And we now no longer live in a society that is defining gender in a binary terms , necessarily . Yes , the larger society certainly still does . But those of us who are progressively minded are realizing that that is a limiting way to look at the world .
And it is what I would call overly determined that things are too much one thing or another , and the world isn't really like that , and that a less determined set of genders in the world , I think actually reflects reality better than a purely binary one . And this is coming as a biologist . So , you know , as as as a biologist , I understand that there are that there are males and females , right ? So we have this , you know , perfect binary situation , but it is in no way really that right .
These are sets of behaviours and their sets of physiology . 490 00:03:16,336 --> 00:00:00,-01 Eric: I mean , well I mean there's , there's an egg and there's a sperm . Exactly . And that's . 507 00:03:20,416 --> 00:00:00,-01 Dr. Josh Stout: All right . And that's that , that , that , that , that's like hard fact . Physiology binary . Male , female . But you know there is , there is , there's many sort of intersex kind of things . These are rare . You can be sex . Why , why ,
why . 549 00:03:34,126 --> 00:00:00,-01 Eric: We are not eggs . 554 00:03:35,566 --> 00:00:00,-01 Dr. Josh Stout: Right . Right . All right , people . So we have we . So there's there's there's chromosomal differences . But but it's it's . It's well , well beyond that . So , for example , my female dog acts like a female dog . I mean , that's a misnomer . Female dog is like dog means male . But whatever my bitch is , is is a female and she acts like a female dog because that's how they do .
They , they , they , they squat to pee and they , you know , I will will , you know , lower their hind end submissively . That's , that's a female behaviour . But if I lie on the ground suddenly she acts in a much more masculine way and starts trying to jump my head . You know , this is a male activity .
Female dogs will sometimes raise their leg in a male activity , so the actual behaviours for animals are much less fixed than we normally think of them and that they're somewhat dependent and society influenced . So for example , hyenas , the . 719 00:04:41,536 --> 00:00:00,-01 Eric: Way we interpret them , are society . 726 00:04:43,006 --> 00:00:00,-01 Dr. Josh Stout: No , no , no , no , no , no .
These I , you know , you know the , the , the , the , the , the actual like when a dog grips your leg and starts humping your leg , that is an absolutely male activity that is not interpreted . That is a biologically determined . Okay . It is what you do if you have a penis . Right . And you want to put it in a vagina . Right . Okay . That is an only male , you know , purely binary kind of situation that my female dog does . She's I wouldn't say that's a trans behaviour .
It's just she's doing what dogs do . And there's , there's a variety of behaviours that dogs can have . Yeah . And we generally put them into this binary system , but it's not nearly that cut and dry . 857 00:05:27,786 --> 00:00:00,-01 Eric: That's what I meant . The way we
interpret . 866 00:05:29,236 --> 00:00:00,-01 Dr. Josh Stout: It , the way we interpret it , and that this is normal , that that these kind of non-binary behaviours are normal in the animal world , In the animal world , which is fundamentally binary , it's sort of a chromosomal level , but not even necessarily that I for example , when there are dyes , I got a twins and one is male and one is female .
Not only are there hormonal influences each twin on each other in the uterus , but they have found y chromosomes in the brain of the mother . So some of the fetal tissue is not only getting through the placenta , which it's not supposed to do , but then getting all the way to the brain , which it's really not supposed to do , mother of the mother . 994 00:06:23,296 --> 00:00:00,-01 Eric: So and crossed two barriers that it's not
supposed . 1004 00:06:26,926 --> 00:00:00,-01 Dr. Josh Stout: That it's not supposed to . And she becomes a chimera . So these are things that have only being able to be done with with the way modern genetics works . If you want to look for something , you put in a primer for it and it makes you know , it's it makes , you know , billions of copies of whatever that thing you're looking for . And so even very small amounts can be amplified to the point where you can find it .
And so if you put a Y chromosome in , no one would ever do this for a female . But they started trying and they found y chromosomes in the brains of mothers who had had male children . Wow . And they found it was partially protective against Alzheimer's . So it's not just that this exists , but there's an actual physical like benefit to it to having this Y chromosome and your brain starts to change the way proteins are encoded in the brain .
So this this even even at a at a very , very basic cellular chromosomal level , things are not perfectly cut and dried . And when you get to where you're looking at actual mating behaviour . So for example , if you know the interesting situations where due to some pollution , some endocrine receptors , all the males were no longer interested in the females and you know , a group of gulls in New Jersey . So the females started cohabitating and laying all their eggs in the same nest .
The researchers were counting gull eggs and they discovered that suddenly they doubled the number of gull eggs and had zero chicks . And they were going , What the heck's going on ? And they realised what had happened is the females had just adjusted their behaviour because they needed a partner to nest with . Right . It didn't work out biologically for them , but it but it satisfied their behavioural needs now they had a partner to nest with .
So there's a ton of flexibility at essentially every level within the biological world . And gender is both biologically and societally determined and evolutionarily determined , but it's not fixed . It tends to be binary , but there is a lot of grey areas and movement within it . So for example , hyenas , the female hyena is the dominant member of her group of hyenas , her her pack , I would guess I would call it , I don't know , really . Goat cats have prides wolves have packs .
Hyenas are sort of halfway between the two quarter pack . Okay , I think it's a pack of hyenas . All right ? I mean , she not only has stereotypical male behaviours , but actually develops what it's called a pseudo penis . It looks like a penis and looks like a scrotum just from , you know , her own anatomy is now formed . This thing that looks like one . So when she goes and dominates the other hyenas , she's going to mount them and press against them with her pseudo penis and act like a male .
And so this is part of her whole dominance display . It's part of her dominance behaviour . So sex and gender is not always about reproduction . It's also about dominance relationships . It's about position in a hierarchy and relationships . And so concept of biological gender can include hierarchical relationships and is also fluid where where , you know , it's often accusation about a dominant woman appears masculine because we associate dominance with masculinity .
And this is this is something that's part of biology . And these associations are , you know , absolutely part of the way . Certainly vertebrates , higher vertebrates work within a , you know , biological duality that there is there is much more fluidity . So anyway , let's get to the Barbie movie . I want to talk about what gender stereotypes are for me as a biologist . The interesting thing was that you have these extreme gender stereotypes without any sexuality , so they have no genitals .
And that that's that's important for Barbie . But it was really important for Ken , and it became sort of part of the analysis of their relationship was , you know , he could only have a good day if she looked at him . And that was really , really clear . And so what that what that made me think of was was incels who are , you know , basically miserable people because a woman won't have sex with them and that he lives in a world of of of essentially pure desire with no gratification .
And he's always , always wanting that gratification from Barbie , but it's never going to last beyond . She looked at him that day and there's no further to it . And the other interesting thing is , after removing the sort of I am sexual male female relationship aspects , he started looking really gay in a way that friends of mine , when they saw the movie before me , said , Look , as a gay man , this is really interesting to me .
And that the people were talking about the the they feminism aspects of the Barbie movie , but there was a whole nother level which wasn't being talked about and that so so my neighbour was saying you should watch this and look for this when you see it . And I found it really interesting so that when they go into the , into the real world , Ken and Barbie are both having people look at them . It makes Ken happy and it makes Barbie uncomfortable .
And Ken mentions , yes , it's men and it's it's men who do this , this gazing the male gaze at men and at women and made it was making Ken comfortable and happy and it was making Barbie less comfortable and less happy .
So it was really interesting to see almost like a Greek take on homosexuality as a relation , a manly relationship between men in a manly way , that this was an ultimate , manly , dominant kind of way , so that suddenly the pinks and the fuchsias in his costume were were were bright and assertive and not how we normally think of . I know homosexuality is as , as being feminine , you know , male homosexual is seen as being somehow lesser because they're more feminine and this is seen as lesser .
And he was saying , no , I am the ultimate man . And so when they went back to Barbie land and he took over , he took over as relationships between men didn't need women anymore , entirely left them out , it seemed very much like the way , you know , the marshal spirit of Greece would have taken these things . Fascinating . Women just lower your manliness . And so we don't need them . And so what are we going to do ?
We're going to have a giant non-lethal fight with each other where we wrestle around on the ground . And this is great . And and it seemed like paradise . They seemed really happy doing that . And , you know , you can you can you can see the sort of incel paradise in some ways of , you know , long No , you don't need sex . You just need men . And there's everything you need is there ? And it was just a very interesting take on how genders are derived , the way we think about gender .
I don't really have a larger point to that . It was just something I was observing that the movie was covering that hasn't been discussed much . And the the , you know , the aspects of of the difficulties with are you , you know , trying too hard to be pretty Are you pretty ? Are you not pretty ? All of these things that women deal with on a daily basis was covered , I think , very well . And , you know , shown by the Barbie movie . What was happening to Ken ?
I don't think his is as has been as well described . There are some people who describe the entire movie as too binary . But I start to wonder about that because by removing sex and just dealing with gender stereotypes , you start being able to have stereotypes not be attached to sex . And so you could you can move stereotypes around . Yeah . And as costumes that dolls can wear essentially . And so so it actually undercuts the binary system in a certain
way . 2374 00:15:35,006 --> 00:00:00,-01 Eric: It's fascinating . And they moved through every single . 2383 00:15:38,026 --> 00:00:00,-01 Dr. Josh Stout: Costume , every single 2387 00:00:00,-01 --> 00:00:00,-01 . Eric: Cop 2389 00:00:00,-01 --> 00:00:00,-01 showed every everyone . 2393 00:15:40,606 --> 00:00:00,-01 Dr. Josh Stout: Yeah , yeah , yeah 2397 00:00:00,-01 --> 00:15:41,476 , yeah 2398 00:00:00,-01 --> 00:00:00,-01 , yeah , yeah , yeah . Magic earring Can . It was delightful .
Yeah , I think so . Yeah . So I found it interesting in both defining and undermining gender stereotypes and a discussion of , as I was saying , personal stereotypes . What I've been doing , looking at evolutionary history , like deep evolutionary history , is how gendered societies form . So I know in the great apes there are different ways that groups of great apes can form , an they involve males and females and they usually have a dominant male and then some sort of groups of females .
But there's one group of great apes that has monogamy . They do not have a dominant male . They have a male and female who are just together . These are these are the givens . The male is not larger than the female . They're the same size . And it has to do with the resource . So their resources are distributed all throughout the forest . There's no way to defend them because they're not located in a particular place . And there's a small amount of fruit in each tree .
So when you get to the tree , you just eat , you eat the fruit . If there's another gibbon in the tree , you don't worry about it . And then you move on to the next tree that that resource is going to be depleted before it's worth defending . And so they they don't need large groups . T have relatively small families . So it's basically a nuclear family , male and a female , and then a few juveniles moving with them in a group . And that's it .
Interestingly , when I was in in Java , when we went to Penang and Darwin went to this forest there where they had the sea among which are a kind of gibbon , and this man had access to the garbage dump . Again , just like the . 2705 00:17:40,216 --> 00:00:00,-01 Eric: Garbage dump here , we dump you . It's always a garbage . 2716 00:17:42,706 --> 00:00:00,-01 Dr. Josh Stout: Well , it changes the amount of resources in a society .
And so for them , they weren't they weren't coming up with some sort of gibbon paradise because they were already in a relatively non-hierarchical society . What they had now was a defendable resource . Right . And so instead of just these two gibbons and a couple of juveniles , I saw troupes of 2030 gibbons . It would be really interesting to see if they are starting to make hierarchies in this defendable resource . How is it working ? I didn't see any
conflict . 2807 00:18:10,696 --> 00:00:00,-01 Eric: Between them that defendable resource is still there . Is that garbage dump still a garbage dump ? 2824 00:18:15,406 --> 00:00:00,-01 Dr. Josh Stout: Knowing Indonesia ? Yes , probably . 2829 00:18:17,356 --> 00:00:00,-01 Eric: It might be worth going back to take a . 2839 00:18:18,706 --> 00:00:00,-01 Dr. Josh Stout: Look .
It would be a place to do a really interesting study because it's it's there's the garbage cans that you throw your garbage in right before or right after you leave the forest . And so it's just the garbage cans right there . And then a couple other it's not a major garbage dump . It's just sort of like garbage . So it's if there's any tourists going in and out , this is it . It tends to accumulate there . And they don't always make it into the cans .
So there's a bunch of like bags and things and there's strewn stuff and they have access . 2944 00:18:47,536 --> 00:00:00,-01 Eric: To a 20 to 30 . Gibbons You think . 2953 00:18:50,116 --> 00:00:00,-01 Dr. Josh Stout: That's what I saw ? I saw a troop that should not have existed and I couldn't I couldn't make out the hierarchies . But I'm sure if you spent some time there , it would be a lovely place to go . The great hotels right there definitely recommend it too . Where was Pong and
Darren ? 3007 00:19:05,146 --> 00:00:00,-01 Eric: It was in Penang during . Yeah . Okay . 3015 00:19:07,756 --> 00:00:00,-01 Dr. Josh Stout: That's great . Yeah . Love that town . Y love that town and great place to do a study . Anyway , there is . There is this there's this study waiting to go on on a on a given society that has never been seen before . So anyway , resources are essentially what determines the kind of society that then grows up .
So I was I was giving the example of the gibbons with monogamy because they they they don't defend a particular set of resources . They just sort of travel around the forest as opposed to this , let's say , a a a gorilla . A gorilla has distributed resources of leaves , but they're actually going to guard the females . So the females become their resource .
And so the male guards , the females , and they move around the forest , they're not guarding any one particular set of food because it's all leaves . But the male is going to be guarding all the females . Now , the females want to be with the male because any new male is basically going to rape them as soon as he can . And so as long as they stay with that , that male , they're safe and so the male protects them is the only one who gets mating opportunities .
As soon as they come into estrus , he gets to meet with them . Boom , it's over . Very easy for them . Not a lot of violence . The females happy . Everything is done with . He has a very small penis and very small testicles . No competition , not really about anything other than just quickly mating and you're done . And so the females are highly incentivized to stay with the male . And the male is obviously he gets all the mating opportunities .
He's twice as big as the females because to be that dominant silverback gorilla is tremendously important . Evolutionarily , you're the only one who gets the mating opportunities . And so he has to be the biggest possible gorilla to to to win and basically get a heron . And so that is one form of of of primate polygamy . There's a very similar one that orangutans do , orangutans the male is also twice the size of the female .
But what the orangutans are doing is the females are each essentially in their own little patch of forest . So they're living in , say , a bunch of durian trees and they'll be a female and she'll move around maybe ten trees in a small area that are producing a lot of fruit . And she's actually guarding her area . And there'll be a bunch of different females in these little patches and they're each guarding their patch of fruit against the other females and then the male is guarding all of them .
So like the silverback gorilla , he has maybe ten or 20 females and a territory . But instead of moving around through leaves , which are all sort of the same value , each one of these females is guarding a high value area and he's guarding all of them . So it's another form of polygamy . The male is also twice the size of a female , but it's a slightly different arrangement .
And so these are generally male centered polygamy , where the females are coming in are going to be related to other ones in this group . And then the male comes in from the outside . So a group of females that a male is guarding tend to be related to each other , and then the male is coming in from the outside . So this that , that , that sort of , you know , male male centered polygamy like that . In chimpanzees you have what is called multi male polygamy .
So chimpanzees the the the males are brothers and they're all guarding a very large territory because in this territory are lots of fruit trees and other , you know , worthwhile sources of food . It's able , but it's pretty big and you need help . So one male can't guarded on his own . And so he needs to work with brothers . And the reason you want to work with your brothers is because they have your same genes .
And so even if you don't get invading opportunity by guarding this large , this large area with your brother , you're supporting your brother's genes passing . So they have multi male communities that are much larger . So these can be 60 , 80 individuals . So you'll have a large number of males guarding a large number of females and a large . 3760 00:23:35,356 --> 00:00:00,-01 Eric: It's basically the mafia . 3765 00:23:37,036 --> 00:00:00,-01 Dr. Josh Stout: It's something like the
mafia . 3771 00:23:38,866 --> 00:00:00,-01 Eric: The family runs the . 3776 00:23:40,126 --> 00:00:00,-01 Dr. Josh Stout: Family runs it , but it's , but it's , but it's the males are all related as opposed to say in the , in the , the gorillas or the , or the orangutans where the females are related and a big male comes in and this the males are there , females come in from the outside and so a female comes
in . 3835 00:23:57,256 --> 00:00:00,-01 Eric: Genetically , don't you always have to have someone from there ? 3846 00:23:59,806 --> 00:00:00,-01 Dr. Josh Stout: Someone has to come from the outside . But there's different ways it can be Right . 3862 00:24:01,786 --> 00:00:00,-01 Eric: Right , right . 3865 00:24:03,076 --> 00:00:00,-01 Dr. Josh Stout: And so in this case , the female comes from another troop usually is going to be accepted in when she is reproductively ready .
So she goes into estrus , she has a giant pink sexual swelling that everyone can see . She is accepted in every male has sex with her in the troop , every single male , every single male , multiple times . And then she's accepted into the troop and there's there's there's there's , there's yeah , she has to accept the females just accept with males there's some , you know , going back and forth .
But mainly the initiation is a gang bang to be initiated into the group I and this happens to the junior females , the more senior females form alliances with each other and with the males , and when they start coming into estrus , they sneak into the woods and we'll have a friend that they've been helping up through the hierarchy . So they'll , they'll back a male to move up through the hierarchy , become more powerful .
And so that male will be high in the hierarchy and then they'll sneak away together . And so she won't have to have sex with every single male in the group . She will be able to just pick who she wants , and then that person can protect her because he's higher in the hierarchy . So this is very much sort of Machiavellian toing and froing where you are . And if you're at the bottom , you have sex with everyone and the males at the bottom also have fewer opportunities . So it's
mostly . 4125 00:25:28,986 --> 00:00:00,-01 Eric: In the fact that as they get older , they change . That means they don't like that . 4142 00:25:33,076 --> 00:00:00,-01 Dr. Josh Stout: They don't like it . They never liked it . Yeah , exactly . Yeah . So these are the systems that we are based on . We are sort of amalgams of these things . When we moved on to the Serengeti males were twice the size of females .
When we became Homo erectus hunters , males were about 20% bigger than the females , about the same distance difference between male chimpanzee and a female chimpanzee . So we went from vegetarians , essentially , who had to guard a group of females and the male got all the mating . So we went from gorillas to chimpanzees . We started as chimpanzees . We transition to a more gorilla like lifestyle and we transition back to a chimp lifestyle .
So these are all flexible ways of living that we can change in response to our environment . We can change evolutionarily , actually change our size over time , but also behaviorally . And so this is , again , what I'm talking about with the sort of flexibility of of of gendered stereotypes . But now I'm talking about a more of a societal level . And I like to think about it in terms of the kinds of organizations we make for ourselves .
So the dentist office or the doctor's office classically is one big silverback gorilla doctor and a whole bunch of nurses and secretaries working under them . And it's almost always that situation now , very frequently as time goes on , that doctor retire often be replaced by a female . But she will now be a female silverback gorilla . The whole hierarchy remains the same . Very few males at the lower end no matter what . So that the shape of the hierarchy essentially remains the same .
Whether you have a male or a female like X , Y , or Z , sex doesn't really matter because they're essentially filling that same societal gendered stereotype . So that's one form of , of , of sort of way that society can work . We can have we can have the big silverback at the top with a bunch of females under them . And there are many organizations that sort of amount to that . My classroom is somewhat similar to that at this point . I have I have mostly female students .
I'm the male at the front . Now , obviously there are female teachers . I think there's maybe almost exactly the same number as male teachers . I haven't done the math , but we're not a we're not a diverse department . But in in in terms of like a primate behavior , it's very much like this one big male at the front and the females all learning , even if those females are male and even if that male is a female .
So , you know , these these these these are societal stereotypes that we work within that have nothing to do with our personal genders and I think they need to be addressed in a similar way that we're addressing our personal gender . I don't know how to do that , but I think that these create artificial hierarchies . They make us comfortable , right ? So they make they make us feel good that we're protected by the silverback gorilla .
I think this is what a lot of people are running to Trump for . He's the silverback gorilla and we all want to feel comfortable and we want him the big daddy , to tell us what to do . And he's literally a large guy and he's going to protect us from all of these things , particularly weirdness with gender and all of the things that make us feel uncomfortable . He's he's he's going to be this really big daddy protecting us all . So this is something that we seek in our lives for stability .
What other kinds of gendered societal organizations do we have ? Think about all the things that call themselves a band of brothers . Okay , This is the chimpanzee society . So armies , gangs , football teams , all of these things , they tend to be really rapey . Think of frats , okay ? Frats literally means brothers . Okay , so the new female coming in gets abused by the whole group . I suspect this is why frats have hazing . The new person coming in isn't literally a female . They're .
They're the new person . They're the pledge or whatever . But there is an abused by the entire group to make them part of the group . This is something that's very deep in our psychology , is the way we move into these brother brother groups . Brother Hoods . Yeah . So , so for example , I Silicon Valley has tried to be very un hierarchical . They have to have open floor plans . Everyone's working at the same , then sort of in the same open area .
They tend to be very masculine and they tend to be really abusive of women coming into this situation . I suspect if a woman has been there for a while , then she gets accepted into the group , she works herself into the hierarchy . She could figure out a way to no longer be abused and have made alliances with certain of the males there so that she can fit into the entire group .
I suspect that we are playing out these same gender societal stereotypes over and over and over again , and we seek them out because they make us feel comfortable , but that these can be addressed the same way we do our our personal stereotypes , you know , not just moving a female into a male situation and then just it's the same situation . It just happens to be a female . But actually looking at these hierarchical relationships , how are we dealing with each others ?
Are there ways to be closer to , say , the Gibbons ? Right . So Gibbons really have equality between males and females . They're literally the same size . They have the same access to resources . They don't have no one's raping anyone . They make an alliance and they're the same size because you can't physically dominate the other . And while we still have sizes between the sexes and this is definitely historically been something males do , right ? We dominate females by raping them .
We dominate societies by raping the other society . It is absolutely sexual violence is part of dominance and it is part of something that is done on purpose . And we have been doing this for a long time . 5194 00:31:30,391 --> 00:00:00,-01 Eric: Defini on
purpose . 5198 00:31:31,411 --> 00:00:00,-01 Dr. Josh Stout: Yes , we need to think about this in a more egalitarian sort of sexual stereotype role in terms of the way the Gibbons are , where we have equal access to these resources and we become comfortable as essentially monogamous units . I would really like to see what these Gibbons are doing . And Pam and Darren , are they now comfortable with each other in a larger group ?
Can pairs of gibbons as long as they don't have to fight for the same resources , have this non-hierarchical relationship in a larger organization ? I don't know what be really interesting to find out . Yeah , I think it's something as humans that we could work on . I think we can be , you know , dyads seem to work very well with humans . Multiple dyads start to get complicated , you know , five , six people in a group .
Yeah , I think things things , things can things can get weird , but I think it is possible to have groups without a leader who is either a silverback or a bunch of male rapists . You know , those are basically are two models right now . Yeah . Yeah . And the other other model that we have in our lineage is , is monogamy with equality between the sexes . And it's right there . We just don't know how to make that into a larger organization with more
resources . 5424 00:32:49,351 --> 00:00:00,-01 Eric: Especially while fighting an entire culture and civilization that is against it . 5437 00:32:55,771 --> 00:00:00,-01 Dr. Josh Stout: Well , the males are still larger than females , and polygamy is one of the most common human mating systems .
It's not the one that most people are doing , but it is one that if you just count the number of societies monogamy versus polygamy , there are more polygamous societies than there are monogamous males . Just in terms of numbers of societies , not numbers of people in them , because many , many traditional societies are polygamous and there's lots of traditional societies .
However , there is there from a sort of economic standpoint , there are destabilizing and automatic inequalities built into polygamy . So in societies like Sudan and Northern Sudan , I older males tend to have multiple wives . Mm hmm . This causes an automatic instability in the entire society . One , it means that younger males do not have a wife , any wives , and they then tend to go and try and steal them from South Sudan .
And so we have this constant battling between , you know , the Janjaweed and groups groups in southern Sudan where they're trying to essentially steal women from , partly created simply by their particular polygamous . 5624 00:34:21,811 --> 00:00:00,-01 Eric: System , literally going to steal a woman and hold her captive to be your wife . 5640 00:34:26,221 --> 00:00:00,-01 Dr. Josh Stout: Yes . Yes . This this was probably the first resource that could be easily stolen .
So once you have farming , you know , you can steal whole grain silos . But before farming , the main source of conflict would have been stealing women . And you see that in pre farming societies still . And it's a destabilizing factor . As soon as you have polygamy , you have young men who either need to be killed or find a wife . So they might as well go fight for one . Yeah . And and so that that that's what a lot of human history has been .
And it's you could imagine groups of young men working together like brothers to go bring wives in . Or you could imagine one really strong one going and getting a bunch of females is usually within a group . The strong one gets the females from the group , and it's usually a group of young men working together to go to depose that , to cloak to another group and steal their women . Yes . And so those group of that group of young men working together tends to go with a chimp model . Mhm .
Tends to be rapey and tends to be brothers and related . 5842 00:35:37,621 --> 00:00:00,-01 Eric: Right . 5844 00:35:38,041 --> 00:00:00,-01 Dr. Josh Stout: And the , the , the model for within the society tends to be the king . Right . He's the silverback gorilla and he's got his hair . And so those are sort of the two ways we generally exist and neither one of those systems is egalitarian or is good for women , that's for sure . But , but I don't think it's good for men either .
I think an egalitarian system is is more efficient in every way and is less stressful . 5923 00:36:04,141 --> 00:00:00,-01 Eric: An abusive system is not good for the exact cause or the . 5936 00:36:07,171 --> 00:00:00,-01 Dr. Josh Stout: Exactly exactly to be to be one of those , you know , young men who has to either get killed or die , l go into a battle and then live with something they acquired through rape . You know . 5974 00:36:21,781 --> 00:00:00,-01 Eric: None of it sounds good .
None of it rape . 5984 00:36:23,671 --> 00:00:00,-01 Dr. Josh Stout: Rape literally means to carry away . It's not it it's actually not sexual . It's just that assumed . But the rape of the savings , like literally , you see them picking up the women and running off with them rapacious . You know , the idea of grabbing raptor , the claws of the raptor , grabbing something . Yeah , it's all the same word .
Anyway , I just wanted to talk a little bit about sort of our deep history and relate it to I the personal sexual stereotypes within Barbie and then talk about societal ones . 6075 00:36:55,531 --> 00:00:00,-01 Eric: And you know , you say that the the , the , the possible seeds for change are also in our evolutionary history . 6096 00:37:03,421 --> 00:00:00,-01 Dr. Josh Stout: Absolutely they
are . 6100 00:37:04,401 --> 00:00:00,-01 Eric: You you what was the what was the prior podcast where we discussed the the the other garbage dump . 6120 00:37:11,581 --> 00:00:00,-01 Dr. Josh Stout: Right right right when we talked about that was that was just the hierarchy of the baboons . And we were talking about it . 6144 00:37:15,961 --> 00:00:00,-01 Eric: Was a whole baboon civilization . 6150 00:37:17,631 --> 00:00:00,-01 Dr. Josh Stout: Baboon civilization
was . 6154 00:37:19,141 --> 00:00:00,-01 Eric: Isolated right from from the others and lived completely differently . 6165 00:37:24,331 --> 00:00:00,-01 Dr. Josh Stout: And they and they , they ended up with a matriarchal system where the where the women were deciding who got to bite , who so . 6190 00:37:29,581 --> 00:00:00,-01 Eric: So , so much of much of what we see as our evolutionary , evolutionarily defined behaviors are actually not just they're not it's not immutable . It's
it's . 6217 00:37:43,441 --> 00:00:00,-01 Dr. Josh Stout: Sort of . 6220 00:37:43,741 --> 00:00:00,-01 Eric: It's based on environment combined with personality . 6228 00:37:48,271 --> 00:00:00,-01 Dr. Josh Stout: Its resources and and how the society works . 6237 00:37:52,201 --> 00:00:00,-01 Eric: The resources change the environment . 6243 00:37:54,221 --> 00:00:00,-01 Dr. Josh Stout: Changing all . 6246 00:37:55,021 --> 00:00:00,-01 Eric: Can change
behaviors . 6250 00:37:56,461 --> 00:00:00,-01 Dr. Josh Stout: Absolutely . 6252 00:37:57,451 --> 00:00:00,-01 Eric: Even in the animal world . 6258 00:37:58,891 --> 00:00:00,-01 Dr. Josh Stout: Even in the animal world , these are not fixed . None of this stuff is fixed . It has . 6276 00:38:02,851 --> 00:00:00,-01 Eric: To be possible to change these things that we see is completely . 6289 00:38:06,631 --> 00:00:00,-01 Dr. Josh Stout: Out of that .
So I guess that's sort of what I was trying to get at with with this whole thing is , is how I we we're now exploring , changing personal stereotypical gender behavior . We need to do this at a societal level and understand how we're doing
it . 6339 00:38:22,651 --> 00:00:00,-01 Eric: But what you're talking about is that to be able to to to have a completely different societal mode of behavior , we need to somehow change our environment or change something fundamental in the things that we're reacting to and have to live with . Like , well , we . 6387 00:38:35,701 --> 00:00:00,-01 Dr. Josh Stout: Have changed our environment . You know , we women started going to work . They have access to to all the resources .
We're not we're not fighting for women . That's not you get a woman . You don't need to be bigger than the other men anymore . Being bigger than women is not the only way you have sex with them . So we really have changed our environment and we can change and we and we move more towards monogamy . Right ? So in many ways , we're moving towards a more gibbon like society , but we tend to do it at the individual level we form these little dyads , we form nuclear families .
We need to we need to think about this on the larger societal levels . 6511 00:39:14,041 --> 00:00:00,-01 Eric: But I love I love the I love the I mean , the the message of almost every episode that we've done is that , you know , we need to understand evolution , to understand why sometimes we do things that are that seem against our best interests , right ? Because of evolution . But but what you're saying here is that evolution also will can show us a path to be
different . 6580 00:39:40,801 --> 00:00:00,-01 Dr. Josh Stout: These are flexible behaviors . Absolutely . And what seems to be written in stone is not and never has been . 6600 00:39:46,861 --> 00:00:00,-01 Eric: That's great . Yeah , yeah , yeah . That's a lovely message . Thank you , Josh , Thank you . All right .