Man’s libido explained

Sex drive and associated velleities are all over the news headlines once again. Hugh Grant’s little peccadillo and the more grievous misadventure by Sushil Sharma have once again raised queries about rampantly libidinous males and the inevitably tragic consequences the befall them in our society which is frightfully quick to frown upon the slightest of sexual transgressions.
Can it, however, be held that both the protagonists mentioned above are mere pawns in a great biological game where their actions are governed not by free will but by evolutionary history that has condemned man to be promiscuous? The two men, so to speak, were perhaps just helplessly following biological commands!

The startling theory seeks to justify its claims by hearkening to the path-finding works of none else buts Charles Darwin, the first man to successfully elaborate a cogent evolutionary system. Darwin’s paradigm rests upon the simple notion of the survival of the fittest wherein fitness quite plainly means the ability to reproduce successfully and plentifully. It can therefore, be said that species are genetically tutored to adapt strategies, which enhance their procreative potential to the utmost. This is the line that sociobiologists take to adumbrate that sowing wild oats comes naturally to men while women are innately inclined to be conservative when it comes to doing what the birds and bees do!

The empirical evidence is presented in the following fashion. When it comes to reproductive equipment an average man is provided with more than he can handle whereas an average woman has only a precious little store that she must utilize to its optimum. Consider their respective inventories in outline. Very few men possess any less than at least 100,000,000 sperms, which can be used to fertilize myriad women. The opposite sex, on the other hand, has been blessed extremely frugally in comparison. A mere 400 eggs is almost a pittance. What makes it worse for women is the restraining fact that only about 20 of these eggs can be fertilized in a lifetime, and that too only one at a time. A woman therefore puts far more at stake when she embarks upon a reproductive venture than a man whose investment is diffused.
The sensible reproductive strategy for a woman thus is to scout for the best available mate and establish a monogamous relationship with him. A man, however, if he has to obey the evolutionary imperative to spread his genes, must seek to cast his net as wide as possible in search of as many mates as possible to propagate his genetic line. Promiscuity, it apparently follows, is his biological duty.

The argument, if taken at face value, appears very persuasive indeed but several prescient observers of science take it with a pinch of salt as it appears to reinforce several conservative and patriarchal beliefs about women.

Science, despite its obvious contributions, has often tended to besmirch its reputation by passing prevalent prejudices for verified fact. Intelligence tests, heavily under laid by racist bias, which had ostensibly ‘confirmed' the cerebral superiority of the Anglo-Saxons, are one of the best known examples of science going obsequiously haywire when confronted by the dominant prejudices of the day. The fact that most of the socibiological assertions fit in far too neatly with conservative ideals make them immediately suspect in the eyes of several sociologists.

Ms Patricia Uberoi, of the Institute of Economic Growth, is among those who have qualms about the fidelity of the 'masculinist' conclusions of sociobiology. Mincing no words in denouncing the' speculations' of sociobiology she avers that it "sustains the patriarchal schematization of popular assumptions which often betray double standards of morality". Her contention is that human society is fundamentally different from anything achieved by other animals and to confuse certain aspects of mammalian behavior with apparently similar human dispositions is to miss the point completely. In any case human behavior itself is not universal across various civilization and several human communities display widely varying patterns of behavior, which finally end up flying in the face of the facile generalizations of sociobiology.

She cites the case of women in South Asia who are apparently considered far more promiscuous than the males there, thus creating a belief-system entirely disconsonant with sociobiological wisdom, which makes promiscuity virtually a fiefdom of males. The rigid control that men exercise over the freedom of women in these parts is the direct fallout of the socio-cultural conviction that the sexual behavior of women needs to be controlled lest they run amok. A 'free' woman easily acquires the label of 'dangerous'. These are entirely specious assumptions, but so, she hastens to add are those of sociobiology.

Women, Ms Uberoi reiterates, have long suffered at the hands of folklore and ' scientific' attempts to foist respectability upon misogynist tenets is only one of the ways to disparage feminine sexuality. Examples abound, and the most insidious ones are inherent in our daily language itself. 'Bitch' is a nasty word often used to describe unpopular women. The reference to an animal often ' in heat' is an invidious way to run down female sexuality. The implications are that a woman exhibiting sexual proclivities is not to be trusted, and any woman accused of such conduct naturally becomes a fallen woman.

The need, she explains, is to look at specific gender roles in specific historical contexts instead of rooting for slippery ideas that prey upon the prejudices of our times.

It is, however, difficult to dismiss biology entirely from human behavior. Several sophisticated analyses of men-women relationship that have little or almost nothing to do with biological nitty-gritty do feel compelled to hark to at least a few larger biological issues to explain the discrimination that is an ineluctable concomitant of inter-sexual relationships.
Noted psychologist, and currently the Director of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Mr. Ashish Nandy, has included a thoughtful chapter in his book ‘On the Edge of Psychology’ in which he argues that men feel insecure with women as they are conscious of a sort of biological inferiority which springs from their inability to physically bear children.
Our phallocentric society has, however, consistently sought to deny this shortcoming in man and the concerted effort to emphasize the primacy of 'productivity over reproductivity' is a pointer in this regard. It is an unfortunate trend, he feels, and may well be the ruination of human civilization at a later date unless man realizes that nature is essentially reproductive. The phallocentric obsession with putting the woman in her place must yield to more egalitarian impulses.

Perhaps the most cardinal of the errors of sociobiology is its confusion of reproductive strategy with life. A spider's life may be said to revolve around its biology but surely human beings have requirements that transcend the merely physical. This is perhaps the trait that makes them civilized unlike other animal species who can never be worthy of this tag.

In fact the distance between man and other animals is so great that the phrase 'biological instincts' is no longer used to describe the natural urges in man. ‘We nowadays prefer to use the term 'biological needs", says Prof K D Broota, the Head of the Department of Psychology at Delhi University , ‘because man is not as beholden to biology as the other life forms are.’ There are minimum biological requirements that do cry out to be fulfilled but the driving urges in man are socio-cultural attributes like recognition, power or achievement rather than simplistic needs like sex or food.

Indeed the promptings of socio-cultural imperatives may often be so great that a man may sometimes be compelled to act entirely in defiance of the most basic biological considerations. Suicide, for instance, goes against the very grain of the biological rationale of self-perpetuation, yet it is virtually integral to human society. Men are not prisoners of biology, they have overcome it in several ways.

Prof Broota goes on to enunciate that civilizational biological conditioning is the more fruitful way to comprehend the misdemeanors of Messrs Sharma and Grant. The aphrodisiac in their case was not some hyperactive hormone but a false sense of power, the belief that they were above the law and that they could get away with anything. They had definitely been encouraged in this belief by the manner in which our society is structured. A sad laxity in inculpating the high and the mighty is one of the unmissable hallmarks of contemporary life. He hopes that examples are made out of the offenders in the current cases and measures aimed at de-conditioning society encouraged. All the biological hogwash quite obviously does not wash with him.

Certain questions, though distanced from sociobiology per se, remain. Man's ability to apparently transcend biology raises questions about whether the march of civilization depends upon a negation, or denial, of biology. Mr. Nandy's caveat apropos the nature-defying emphasis on productivity over reproductivity is one of the cases in point.

Other, less esoteric, points are raised by Professors R N Saxena, Head of the Department of Zoology at Delhi University. He peers history to explain that several biological functions in human beings have altered the dependence upon, and the subservience to, natural phenomenon. The yearlong birth cycle characteristic of human reproduction is an illustration. Most animal species are characterized by seasonal birth cycles but mankind is not slave to such limitations possibly due to the artificial environments it has cloistered itself with. Several domesticated animals, who too are privy to these artificial environs, display similar freedom from natural limitations.

It is often said that those who best understand biology are the ones least bound by it. Successive human civilizations have tended to manipulate biology for their own ethnocentric ends. Take homosexuality, for example. The practice fell into disrepute only with the onset of the Christian era. The ancient people, particularly the Greeks, thought of homosexuality as a rather refined way of having sex. The Christians however thought of sex as only fit for procreation and homosexuality was immediately branded as 'unnatural'.

Women's sexuality suffered a similar fate. The Victorian fascination for linear, teleological explanations extended itself to the suppression of matriarchy and creation of patriarchy. The monogamous relationship was celebrated as the apogee of civilization and women were warned to keep within its limits. The current sociobiological endeavor to justify male philandering is plausibly a pseudo-scientific conservative backlash to this very effect and an attempt to make occidental moral values universal.

It is therefore prudent to tread carefully when considering scientific assertions, which have cultural ramifications. Science is not an inviolable tool. The popular image of a scientist as an impartial seeker of truth is only half true. Most scientific agenda are governed by hidden factors and several conclusions are premeditated by cultural anticipation. All 'purely' scientific rationale of the conduct of criminals and others must be taken suspiciously lest we fall into the trap of bad science. Our biology has no doubt bound us in certain ways but we are much more than merely the sum of our contributory parts. Life is a gift not a sentence. We are a free species.