Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors

“I’m a celebrity. That’s what celebrities do,” offered one-time heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson in explaining his scattershot propositioning of virtually every contestant at a beauty pageant. Former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, not known for his looks, explained a beautiful actress’s attraction to him in these words: “Power is the greatest aphrodisiac.”

Dominant males preferentially copulate with attractive females. The females are as accommodating as they can be. They crouch down, they raise their hindquarters, they lift their tails out of the way. (We’re back to hamsters.) In Brown’s rodents-in-motorcycle-jackets experiment, during the first half hour of mating the number of “intromissions” by dominant males averaged 40; those subordinate males able to score at all (usually after the dominants were done) averaged a measly 1.6 for the half hour.

Now suppose you grow up in a society in which such behavior is the community standard. Wouldn’t you tend to conclude that the animal who mounts and who makes repeated pelvic thrusts is the dominant partner, while the animal who crouches, who is receptive and passive, is subordinate in rank? Would it be surprising if this powerful symbol of dominance and submission were generalized in the gestural and postural vocabulary of the status-obsessed males?

Before the invention of language, animals need clear symbols to communicate with one another. There’s a well-developed non-verbal language, which we’ve already described, including “My belly’s up and I surrender” and “I could bite you but I won’t, so let’s be friends.” It would be very natural if everyday reminders of status in the rank hierarchy were established by brief ceremonial mountings of males by males. He who mounts is dominant; he who is mounted is subordinate. No “intromission” is required. Such symbolic language is in fact widespread, and we will discuss it in greater detail in later chapters. It may have little or no overt sexual content.

Under natural conditions, ordinary Norway rats—the same common variety whose social structure collapsed in Calhoun’s overcrowding experiments—arrange themselves into social hierarchies. A dominant might approach a submissive animal, sniff and lick its anogenital area, and mount it from the rear, holding on with the forepaws. The submissive animal might elevate its hindquarters so as to indicate its eagerness to be mounted. Male aggression in maintaining the dominance hierarchy includes banging flanks, rolling over and kicking, pinning the opponent with the forepaws, and boxing—the two animals actually stand toe-to-toe and let loose with left jabs and right uppercuts. Under normal conditions it’s rare that anyone is injured.

Even among lobsters the aggressive posture is to stand upright—indeed, on their toes (or at least the tips of their claws). The submissive posture is flat on the ground, legs somewhat akimbo. The idea is to show that you can’t (quickly) do any harm, even if you want to. Many gestures in a similar spirit can be found among humans. Police confronting possibly armed suspects will order them to raise their hands (so it’s clear they’re weaponless); or clasp their hands behind their necks (ditto); or lean at a high inclination angle against a wall (so their hands must support them); or lie prone. Submissive words are well and good (“I didn’t mean nothin’, honest”), but a police officer putting his or her life on the line requires a firmer postural guarantee.

In almost all higher mammals copulation occurs with the male entering the female’s vagina from behind. The female crouches down to assist the male in mounting her. She may make special motions to aid his entry, and those motions, like the bump and grind, become part of the symbolic language of enticement. The reason for the crouch is partly to present a favorable geometry for entry, but it also indicates that she has no intention of going anywhere. She’s not about to run away. Something similar can be seen in many other species. A male beetle come a-courting taps on the female’s carapace—in different beetle species, drumming with his feet, his antennae, his mouthparts, or his genitals—and she is instantly immobilized.¹⁹ The strange attractiveness to men of grotesquely deformed small feet (in China for nearly a millennium), and of very high heels (throughout the modern West), as well as traditional, constraining women’s clothing²⁰ and the fetish of female helplessness in general, may be a human manifestation of the same symbolism.