Sapiens: a brief History of Humankind

22.
 Eighteenth-century masculinity: an official portrait of King Louis XIV of France. Note the long wig,
stockings, high-heeled shoes, dancers posture – and huge sword. In contemporary Europe, all these
(except for the sword) would be considered marks of effeminacy. But in his time Louis was a European
paragon of manhood and virility
.

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23.
 Twenty-first-century masculinity: an official portrait of Barack Obama. What happened to the wig,
stockings, high heels – and sword? Dominant men have never looked so dull and dreary as they do today.
During most of history, dominant men have been colourful and flamboyant, such as American Indian
chiefs with their feathered headdresses and Hindu maharajas decked out in silks and diamonds.
Throughout the animal kingdom males tend to be more colourful and accessorised than females – think
of peacocks’ tails and lions’ manes
.
To make things less confusing, scholars usually distinguish between ‘sex’, which
is a biological category, and ‘gender’, a cultural category. Sex is divided between
males and females, and the qualities of this division are objective and have
remained constant throughout history. Gender is divided between men and women
(and some cultures recognise other categories). So-called ‘masculine’ and
‘feminine’ qualities are inter-subjective and undergo constant changes. For

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example, there are far-reaching di erences in the behaviour, desires, dress and
even body posture expected from women in classical Athens and women in
modern Athens.
6
Sex is child’s play; but gender is serious business. To get to be a member of the
male sex is the simplest thing in the world. You just need to be born with an X and
a Y chromosome. To get to be a female is equally simple. A pair of X chromosomes
will do it. In contrast, becoming a man or a woman is a very complicated and
demanding undertaking. Since most masculine and feminine qualities are cultural
rather than biological, no society automatically crowns each male a man, or every
female a woman. Nor are these titles laurels that can be rested on once they are
acquired. Males must prove their masculinity constantly, throughout their lives,
from cradle to grave, in an endless series of rites and performances. And a
woman’s work is never done – she must continually convince herself and others
that she is feminine enough.
Success is not guaranteed. Males in particular live in constant dread of losing
their claim to manhood. Throughout history, males have been willing to risk and
even sacrifice their lives, just so that people will say ‘He’s a real man!’
What’s So Good About Men?
At least since the Agricultural Revolution, most human societies have been
patriarchal societies that valued men more highly than women. No matter how a
society de ned ‘man’ and ‘woman’, to be a man was always better. Patriarchal
societies educate men to think and act in a masculine way and women to think
and act in a feminine way, punishing anyone who dares cross those boundaries.
Yet they do not equally reward those who conform. Qualities considered masculine
are more valued than those considered feminine, and members of a society who
personify the feminine ideal get less than those who exemplify the masculine
ideal. Fewer resources are invested in the health and education of women; they
have fewer economic opportunities, less political power, and less freedom of
movement. Gender is a race in which some of the runners compete only for the
bronze medal.
True, a handful of women have made it to the alpha position, such as Cleopatra
of Egypt, Empress Wu Zetian of China (
c
. 
AD
700) and Elizabeth I of England. Yet
they are the exceptions that prove the rule. Throughout Elizabeth’s forty- ve-year
reign, all Members of Parliament were men, all o cers in the Royal Navy and
army were men, all judges and lawyers were men, all bishops and archbishops
were men, all theologians and priests were men, all doctors and surgeons were

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men, all students and professors in all universities and colleges were men, all
mayors and sheri s were men, and almost all the writers, architects, poets,
philosophers, painters, musicians and scientists were men.
Patriarchy has been the norm in almost all agricultural and industrial societies.
It has tenaciously weathered political upheavals, social revolutions and economic
transformations. Egypt, for example, was conquered numerous times over the
centuries. Assyrians, Persians, Macedonians, Romans, Arabs, Mameluks, Turks and
British occupied it – and its society always remained patriarchal. Egypt was
governed by pharaonic law, Greek law, Roman law, Muslim law, Ottoman law
and British law – and they all discriminated against people who were not ‘real
men’.
Since patriarchy is so universal, it cannot be the product of some vicious circle
that was kick-started by a chance occurrence. It is particularly noteworthy that
even before 1492, most societies in both America and Afro-Asia were patriarchal,
even though they had been out of contact for thousands of years. If patriarchy in
Afro-Asia resulted from some chance occurrence, why were the Aztecs and Incas
patriarchal? It is far more likely that even though the precise de nition of ‘man’
and ‘woman’ varies between cultures, there is some universal biological reason
why almost all cultures valued manhood over womanhood. We do not know what
this reason is. There are plenty of theories, none of them convincing.
Muscle Power
The most common theory points to the fact that men are stronger than women,
and that they have used their greater physical power to force women into
submission. A more subtle version of this claim argues that their strength allows
men to monopolise tasks that demand hard manual labour, such as ploughing and
harvesting. This gives them control of food production, which in turn translates
into political clout.
There are two problems with this emphasis on muscle power. First, the
statement that men are stronger than women’ is true only on average, and only
with regard to certain types of strength. Women are generally more resistant to
hunger, disease and fatigue than men. There are also many women who can run
faster and lift heavier weights than many men. Furthermore, and most
problematically for this theory, women have, throughout history, been excluded
mainly from jobs that require little physical e ort (such as the priesthood, law and
politics), while engaging in hard manual labour in the elds, in crafts and in the
household. If social power were divided in direct relation to physical strength or

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stamina, women should have got far more of it.
Even more importantly, there simply is no direct relation between physical
strength and social power among humans. People in their sixties usually exercise
power over people in their twenties, even though twentysomethings are much
stronger than their elders. The typical plantation owner in Alabama in the mid-
nineteenth century could have been wrestled to the ground in seconds by any of
the slaves cultivating his cotton elds. Boxing matches were not used to select
Egyptian pharaohs or Catholic popes. In forager societies, political dominance
generally resides with the person possessing the best social skills rather than the
most developed musculature. In organised crime, the big boss is not necessarily
the strongest man. He is often an older man who very rarely uses his own sts; he
gets younger and tter men to do the dirty jobs for him. A guy who thinks that the
way to take over the syndicate is to beat up the don is unlikely to live long
enough to learn from his mistake. Even among chimpanzees, the alpha male wins
his position by building a stable coalition with other males and females, not
through mindless violence.
In fact, human history shows that there is often an inverse relation between
physical prowess and social power. In most societies, it’s the lower classes who do
the manual labour. This may re ect