Monogamy is unnatural for human beings.
When our ancestors made the so-called advance from being hunters to land-owners, they took a big step backwards.
Malthus, Darwin, and Hobbes were not just wrong but damaging in their strongest claims about human nature.
These are some major claims made by husband and wife team Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jetha in their new book about sex and human nature, Sex at Dawn. The book is one of several popular books of late (see Open, Lust in Translation, The Husbands and Wives Club) that investigate what’s working and what’s not working in the modern marriage. Sex at Dawn argues that society has stifled us with the false notion that we’re monogamous. In turn, we enter marriages to conform, but our extramarital affairs are evidence of a big misfit here.
Sex at Dawn is a strongly argued book, with major sections that argue against Darwin (saying the Darwin-inspired myth that men are wired to spread their seed and women are wired to keep a single man around is false) and against Hobbes (arguing that Hobbes was wrong when he said our lives were nasty, brutish and short. We’re actually just as likely to be happy and cooperative). The book is written in a shocking style, with chapters beginning with sentences like “[We] evolved to be…horndogs” and “The human male takes his genitalia very seriously.”
Ryan and Jetha live in Barcelona, where they reportedly find a more natural cultural attunement to sex than in the States. Ryan came to psychology through a slew of other jobs, like filleting salmon in Alaska, teaching English to prostitutes in Bangkok, and managing real-estate in New York. Jetha was born in Mozambique, fled civil war to Portugal as a child, and became a doctor. She spent years treating rural populations in Mozambique, focusing on AIDS, and she reportedly speaks Portuguese, French, Spanish, Catalán, English, and some Tsonga. I interviewed Ryan on their bold beliefs, sex, and writing style below.
Ilana Simons: In your book, you write that “Homo Sapiens evolved to be shamelessly, undeniably, inescapably sexual. Lusty libertines. Rakes, rogues, and roués. Tomcats and sex kittens. Horndogs. Bitches in heat.” And: “Human beings [are] hypersexuality personified.” But a lot of us don’t need or want so much sex. Are we as “naturally human” as the horndogs?
Christopher Ryan: …Even those of us with relatively low libidos are at least potentially much more sexual than most other animals could ever be. Most humans have sex thousands of times over our lives, while few other species get past a few dozen acts of intercourse. And keep in mind that we are one of just a few species on Earth that can have sex at any time, for any reason. Most animals only mate when the female is ovulating and have zero interest in sex otherwise. Finally, even people who consider themselves asexual live in societies that are highly sexualized. Through advertising, the arts, and the undercurrent of desire in any dark nightclub, they are inundated with evidence of our species’ generally high libido, if not their own.
IS: How is sex seen differently in Barcelona than in the States?
CR: People in Spain tend to be a lot more relaxed about sex than most Americans are. For example, last weekend, I was having a beer with a friend in a sunny plaza. There were lots of families out enjoying the day, having tapas. Suddenly, we heard people start laughing and cheering. Two guys were walking by, completely naked (except for sandals and hats). Everybody had a good laugh—including the naked guys—and I’m sure it never occurred to anyone that their children could be damaged by having seen naked men or that police should be alerted. Similarly, public breastfeeding is a non-issue. Politicians’ sex lives aren’t discussed much—not because it’s taboo, but because nobody really cares. This relaxed approach to sexuality is also reflected in the overall flirtatiousness of Spanish life. Because sex isn’t seen as something that’s dangerous or shameful, people flirt openly with each other, with no expectation that it will necessarily lead to anything but a smile. If a man gives a woman an appreciative look, nobody assumes he’s a pervert or a potential rapist.
IS: One argument in your book is that we’re scared of open marriage because we think it will make us and our partners jealous. Jealousy, you argue, is not a necessary natural feeling; it’s partly imposed by culture. How does society fill us with an unnecessary feeling?
CR: Human beings are…cultural creatures. Why do some people love to eat grubs for breakfast while others would rather starve than eat an insect? The sad truth is that very few of us have the mental freedom (or time) to question our society’s definitions of what is “normal.” …For example, even though I know that eating a sheep’s brain or liver is no different from eating its leg, I find the former nearly impossible and the latter rather delicious.
IS: One myth you debunk in the book is the (Hobbesian) myth that we’re greedy. You replace it with an argument that we’re born to cooperate. Say more?
CR: We are greedy. But we’re also generous and cooperative. The endless debate over whether humans are aggressive or peaceful, sharing or selfish, cruel or kind, is like arguing over whether H2O is solid, liquid, or gas. It’s an argument that really makes no sense because the answer depends on context. Anthropologists agree that in the sorts of small scale nomadic societies in which our ancestors lived, widespread sharing (so-called “fierce egalitarianism”) is demanded and selfishness strongly discouraged. The generosity characteristic of these people doesn’t mean they’re “Noble Savages.” It just suggests that sharing resources and risk is a far more effective strategy than selfish individualism if you’re living in a small group of foragers.
IS: Why was the shift from hunting societies to agricultural societies so bad for us? Why did the shift stick through time?
CR: …We see much smaller skeletons just after the shift, suggesting significantly worse nutrition than before. We find evidence of long-term starvation, severe vitamin deficiencies, a dramatic increase in infectious diseases and deadly conflict, a collapse of women’s social status . . . the list goes on and on….
Ironically, while quality of life dropped for most people, agriculture put us on a population-growth wheel we can’t get off. Once population levels were too high to be sustained by foraging, agriculture was the only game in town, so the shift represented a point of no return for our species.
IS: You write with a style of masculine emphasis and suspended closure—in the way that Christopher Hitchens and Stanton Peele also present themselves. I mean that you write by busting myth after myth—in dramatic, fiery sentences—and wait a long while before presenting your own clear theory. You smash and smash, and we follow. This seems to me to be a masculine style. Can you comment on your own writing style? What do you want your writing to do for a reader?
CR: Well, I admire the writing of both Hitchens and Peele, so I guess I’ll take that as a compliment, though I’m not sure my optimism is justified! In any case, we felt it important to devote the first part of our book to establishing (1) that there is a crisis in modern marriage, and (2) that the mainstream understanding of human sexual evolution (which posits that humans have lived in sexually monogamous pair bonds for millions of years) doesn’t fit the facts. We couldn’t just assume that all our readers were familiar with the generally accepted narrative, so we had to spend some time explaining that narrative, before getting into our alternative paradigm.
In terms of style, we hope readers find Sex at Dawn to be both informative and fun to read. While it’s true some of the book is pretty confrontational, I’m not sure I’d agree that this is necessarily a “masculine style.” Some of the best debunkers of conventional wisdom are women. Naomi Klein (The Shock Doctrine), Joan Roughgarden (The Genial Gene), Susan Squire (I Don’t) and Sarah Hrdy (Mothers and Others) come immediately to mind. What do we hope our book does for readers? Dan Savage, the sex-advice columnist, recently said Sex at Dawn “made my head explode about a dozen times!” I guess that’s the sort of response we’re looking for. We want to make our readers’ heads explode—in a good way.
IS: If it’s maladaptive, why has the myth of human monogamy survived so long?
CR: …Once men started accumulating property, they began worrying about who was going to inherit it all. So paternity became a huge concern. Until the very recent advent of DNA testing, the only way a man could assure his paternity was to have complete control over the sexual behavior of his wife (or concubine). Along with wealth, most societies kept political power strictly within family lines. So guaranteed paternity has been central to maintaining economic and political order throughout recorded history. Only within the past few decades have we seen social, economic, and technological developments that are loosening these imperatives.
IS: What’s your marriage like?
CR: We’ve been together just over ten years now. While our relationship is certainly informed by our research, we don’t discuss the specifics of our sex lives publicly. We think discretion is an important part of intimacy, so we try to respect that in our own relationship.
IS: You’re not currently working as a professor in a university. To whom/how do you reach out for good ideas/brainstorms?
CR: While I don’t envy anyone the experience of grading papers or sitting in faculty meetings, I do sometimes wish I had some colleagues and grad students around to debate and hash out ideas. Having said that, Cacilda’s collaboration was worth any number of grad students. She brought so much to Sex at Dawn—not just a woman’s perspective. Her medical knowledge, multi-cultural background (Muslim-Hindu Indian family in Mozambique), sexuality research in African villages, and her psychiatric experience were all invaluable in researching and writing the book.
In addition to our ongoing marital brainstorm, the Internet makes long-distance collaboration easier than ever. Several people were very generous with their time and expertise, reading early drafts of the book and offering ruthlessly helpful criticism. We got this kind of help from Frank Ryan (my dad—a very accomplished writer and editor—who will celebrate 50 years with my mom in August), and several very knowledgeable friends: our editor, agent, psychologists, anthropologists, primatologists, and so on. We found that scholars were generally very receptive to requests for information and clarification—even when we disagreed with their theories. The world-famous primatologist, Frans de Waal, for example, has been amazingly generous despite the fact that we challenge his position on human sexual evolution. People like him, more interested in the pursuit of truth than in stubbornly defending their own preferred conclusions, are what make science the best hope for true human progress.
Ilana Simons is a therapist, literature professor, and author of A Life of One's Own: A Guide to Better Living through the Work and Wisdom of Virginia Woolf. Visit her website here.
"...saying the Darwin-inspired myth that men are wired to spread their seed and women are wired to keep a single man around is false..."
I'd say that has less to do with Darwinism and more to do with observed behaivor 
But seriously - Christopher Ryan just seems to throw out statements and expect the reader to beleive it is true, simply because he said it was. For example
"...Most humans have sex thousands of times over our lives, while few other species get past a few dozen acts of intercourse..."
Well - No. There are many many many other species that have sex a lot of times. Dolphins, Rabbits, Mice, Rats, Monkey's, etc.. etc..
