W.W. NORTON & COMPANY, MARCH 2015Since life began, males have been a sort of addendum. The earliest organisms were, in a real sense, female—producing new individuals from their own bodies. Sex, although very old, was an afterthought, perhaps derived from other ways of exchanging and shuffling DNA, any of which foiled parasites by increasing variation. Ever since sex, there has been an almost inevitable tension between male and female.
In many species females prevail. Komodo dragons can reproduce parthenogenetically if there are no males around, and whiptail lizards have done away with males altogether, instead engaging in female-to-female intercourse that triggers gestation. Human-size flightless cassowary females dominate diminutive males and fight to form a harem of doting dads who bring up the young while the female waddles on to her next conquest. Praying mantis males keep copulating after their beloveds have eaten their heads, and tarantula females that devour their mates post coitus increase their reproductive success.
Like a spent spider, the human male has a tenuous future, and as I argue in my latest book, Women After All, we’re ushering in a new era of gender equality.
Primate species can go either way. ...
