Translator: Denise RQ Reviewer: Carlos García Braschi
Once upon a time,
a beautiful princess fell under the sleeping curse of a vengeful witch.
Everybody knows how this tale ends:
the dashing prince manages to find the sleeping princess
wakes her up with a kiss,
and naturally, the princess was immediately swept off her feet.
But the tales are just that;
and at the other end of these imaginary stories
we find the products of science.
Tales are the realm of fantasy, and science is the realm of facts.
But the tale of the sleeping beauty got in inadvertently
into the scientific representation of sexual fertilization:
the female ovum lays inert,
until the most intrepid and fast of the spermatozoa that woos it
gets there first, breaks into its wall, and activates it thus starting a new life.
What this projection of cultural ideas about males and females did
was to obstruct the research about the active mechanisms
that the female ovum has in capturing spermatozoa,
and the dissemination processes that the spermatozoon suffers
once inside the female genital tract.
Currently, modern female ova, like the latest Disney princesses,
have their own initiative and are fully awake.
Science provides us
with the most reliable knowledge that we have so far,
that we humans have developed about the world we inhabit,
but it cannot offer simple and ultimate truths.
A good example of this is provided by primatology.
To discover the lives and worlds of these our near relatives:
orangutans, baboons, bonobos, and chimpanzees,
is a fascinating task,
but discovering their world was not the only objective.
Because often times, what was sought when studying primates,
was to find keys to understand the behavior of the first hominids,
a primate model that would help us better know ourselves;
and that's why Louis Leakey, the famous paleoanthropologist,
in the mid-20th century, promoted primate research.
Leakey also thought that women would be the best primatologists
because we have the biggest capacity for empathy.
Well, I'm not sure if Leaky was right or not,
but the women he recruited:
Jane Goodall, Biruté Galdikas, Dian Fossey,
with their example, set through National Geographic documentaries,
became role models
and served as an example for many young women
with their awakening vocation for primatology
and followed their steps.
That's why primatology is a very peculiar science,
it's a field where we find many women,
more than in any other scientific disciplines,
where usually, it's very difficult to find great female scientists,
relevant women names other than the omnipresent Marie Curie.
When these women go to the jungles,
the savannas, the mountains, and the forests to observe primates,
the image we had about our close relatives was very similar
to the stereotyped fairy tale characters.
Males were Tarzans that gathered food for the group,
defended it from external attacks, and competed among them for the females.
Females were basically maternal creatures dedicated body and soul to breeding,
and sexually available for the males.
When women go to the jungles and the savannas offer us
a much more complex image of females, of males,
and the relationships between them,
than these stereotypes of valiant princes and helpless princesses of fairy tales;
and when the image that we have about primates turns into a more complex one
it also gradually makes less sense
the idea of looking at them like in a mirror.
Because now, every individual, every primate species,
including the human species, is unique and has its own value.
Let's take chimpanzees, for example.
Jane Goodall not only discovered that chimpanzees as a species
were able to use instruments, like rocks to open nuts,
or twigs to insert them in a termite mound and eat the termites,
or that they were able to share a culture.
She also revealed that the aggressive behaviors of males
did not really mean that they were really the ones in charge
because, for example, female chimpanzee Flo, in a subtler way,
was able to have a relevant role in the group's social organization
and she also transmitted to her daughters that high status
that she had in the Gombe society.
Jane Goodall was able to see what others hadn't seen before
because she understood
that every member of the group was an interesting individual by itself,
that females were not just another asset in a male-ruled society.
Besides, as she extended in time the field work,
Goodall and her successors, the primatologists that worked with her,
offered us a much more accurate description of female behavior.
Females now hunted, searched actively for sexual partners,
fought to keep their place in the group hierarchy,
they were even able to commit infanticide with the offspring of other females.
When we only see what is obvious,
we can often miss what is really interesting.
This is what happened to the first primatologists
when they went to the savannas to observe baboons:
what they saw in the foreground were the fights and the duels of the males
and in the midst of a Cold War world, they elaborated a story,
that told that baboon's lives depended on the hierarchical structure of the males.
These males were terribly aggressive individuals,
that contended fiercely among them for the females,
but they also were capable of behaving like a very disciplined troop
when it was needed to protect the group against an external enemy.
But when the primatologist Thelma Rowell went to the savanna
what she saw had little to do with this militarized image.
She saw that males were not so aggressive,
that females were not sitting just waiting for their Prince Charming,
that were the relationships between the females
what really structured the group's organization,
and that besides they were totally busy getting food for their offspring,
or cultivating friendships that were going to be more useful
to help their children in the future.
The military model of the baboons was dismantled little by little,
and other primatologists: Jean Altmann, Shirley Strum, Barbara Smuts,
also contributed to dismantle very deep-rooted ideas.
For example, the idea that dominant males have priority access to females and so,
there are more offspring in the group that are their children.
What they discovered is
that the male bragging the most was not the one seducing the most,
and that females appreciated discretion a lot when choosing with whom to mate.
Building this image about baboons required looking in the background,
what occurred beyond the noisy brawls of males.
Jean Altmann did this by elaborating systematic observation protocols,
that guaranteed that each individual and member of the group was observed,
and not only the most noisier ones or the ones standing out the most.
Precisely the sexual life of primates is a great example
of the force that beliefs have to direct our observations
and our interpretation of them.
For a lot of time the traditional idea was that sexual initiative
was only a privilege of males and it was doubted, debated,
if primate females enjoyed sex, and even if they had orgasms;
when it was never debated if males had orgasms.
But the work of Amy Parish with the bonobos,
or the work of Sarah Hrdy with langurs,
shows us that females are individuals that actively look for sex,
and that for them,
sex is not only important for its role in reproduction.
According to Sarah Hrdy sex for primates is also pleasure and strategy.
Sarah Hrdy maintains that the pleasure
that the orgasm provides to female primates
encourages them to have relationships with many males.
The advantage of this is preserving their young,
because males often do kill offspring that they haven't fathered
to induce females that are breast feeding again into heat.
In this way offspring are kept somewhat safe.
This image of female primates as sexually active individuals
is at odds with the traditional image that we had
about why we female humans have orgasms.
What was commonly said was that human females had orgasms
because this reinforces the monogamous ties of the couple.
In that way, we women offer men unlimited access to sex
and in return, they help us care for our children.
Then, Sarah Hrdy what does is to turn around this traditional tale
and the females that were passive, were faithful,
were turned into assertive promiscuous females.
What we think we are and what we think we should be,
in these adaptation tales,
seems to be tied by the strength that evolution has to define us.
These transformations that female primatologists inserted
into scientific methods and theories,
show us that the viewpoint and perspective are really important.
What they do with their partial perspective is show us
that the dominant perspective that had been the male's
is also a partial one.
This also happens, for example, in paleoanthropology,
where for a long time,
the dominant hypothesis was that of hunter:
the idea that humans are what we are because the men of the past went hunting,
and that's why we have developed language, tool use, even bipedalism.
Adrienne Zihlman, Nancy Tanner, Sally Slocum showed
the bias of the hunting hypothesis
proposing the hypothesis of the harvesting woman.
They say: "No, we are not what we are because the men of the past went hunting,
we are what we are because the women of the past reared and harvested."
This theory was well supported by the empirical evidence,
but was not a even little bit accepted by the scientific community,
because its evident bias was too obvious.
But what this evident bias did was to show
that the perspective that had been dominant
was also a partial perspective,
but of a partiality that had been hidden and invisible.
In archeology, psychology, anthropology, sociology,
in all those disciplines, we find examples through which female scientists show us
that gender stereotypes had a big force to define what we accept as true.
There are also other disciplines, such as medicine,
where this gender blindness is shown.
The idea that the male is the universal individual of the human race
had hampered for a long time research into specificities
of cardiovascular disease in women,
excluded from clinical trials because we are unstable subjects;
all the knowledge of diagnostic and treatment of coronary disease,
was built on data gathered from men.
When epidemiology what it suggests is that the coronary disease
is a very important cause of death in women.
Although maybe it's more adequate to say that the cause of death of many of them
was ignorance about the specific symptomatology,
about the risk factors,
or about the efficacy, and safety of drugs when treating women.
Ultimately, what is decided to be ignored
is as important as what is decided to be investigated in science.
And these decisions that male and female scientists take
are conditioned by their own partial situations,
that condition the questions they ask, and the methods that are used,
and the data that are considered relevant,
and the questions that are acceptable and are accepted.
We tend to see and hear what best matches
with what we believe to know or what we in fact know.
And because of that, these examples show us
that perspective and viewpoint are very important in science.
In any case, women's perspective is not more objective
than the perspective of men,
but it does contribute to a greater objectivity
showing what was hidden,
in this case, that the male viewpoint is a partial one.
Perhaps, the most important value for scientific objectivity
would be that of plurality.
Because a more plural science, is a science that is better prepared
to identify blind spots,
induced by a unique dominant perspective that is partial.
A more plural science then, will be a more robust science;
because as Richard Levins said:
"The truths we accept are the intersection of independent lies."
(Applause)