Her binoculars are getting increasingly heavy to hold, the crick in her neck ever sharper, as she strains to discern the soap opera playing out in the branches 50 feet above. Suddenly, a monkey snatches a fig from another, driving the subordinate away. It had Charlie s ear tuft, but no he d never get driven off like that. Yet it was Charlie who dashed off, tail between his legs. Subconscious preconceptions can snowball into erroneous theories with unwarranted outcomes as you may well explain to the traffic judge next time.
Darwinian feminists scrutinize sex research for such subtle biases.
No challenge delights them more than the assumption of female passivity. Primatologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy revived Antoinette Brown Blackwell s century-old critique in her landmark book, The Woman Who Never Evolved , published in 1981. Hrdy too challenged Darwin s assumptions. But now she had supporting evidence from long-term studies of primates and other animals. Doing the fairer sex a disservice perhaps, Hrdy showed that female primates can be just as domineering, back-stabbing, and philandering as males.