Abstract
This paper examines evolutionary accounts of sexual difference, focusing on the models of sexual selection, from Darwin to today.
Sexual selection has always been a powerful vector for myths of sex and gender, based on the assumption of a two-sex dichotomy. On the basis of Charles Darwin’s work, two mechanisms were put forth under this heading: male competition and female choice. This framework stresses competition for sexual access to females, engendering more or less pronounced sexual dimorphism and the development of armaments or ornaments in the males. This distinction has been interpreted as the manifestation of two kinds of energetic processes (anabolic vs katabolic) revealing the nearly metaphysical essences of “maleness” and “femaleness”. During the twentieth century, those concepts have been amplified on the level of gametes (sperm choice, sperm competition, sperm wars).
Two-sex models have two kinds of limits. First, they are androcentric: both male competition and female choice aim at explaining the evolution of male traits. Secondly, two-sex models tend to associate a peculiar behaviour to a definite genetic formula. But other concepts and theories emphasise that it is not the biological sex that determines the extent or modalities of sexual dimorphism. They have led to a search for gender-neutral models.
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Notes
- 1.
John Hunter (1728–1793), whose Observations on certain parts of the animal oeconomy (1786) were republished in 1840, with annotations by Richard Owen.
- 2.
Darwin did not think males were necessarily more “evolved” than females in the sense of possessing a “higher” degree of organisation. See, for instance, Darwin’s analysis of rudimentary males in barnacles ([5], t. I, p. 255).
- 3.
“Intramasculine” designates a selection that occurs between males, as opposed to “female selection” or choice of mates on the part of the female.
- 4.
I follow here Joan Roughgarden’s suggestion (2004): “sex” refers to the two individuals producing the two different types of gametes (eggs/sperm, conventionally defining what is a male and what is a female), while “gender” refers to the different morphs in one sex. Matt Ridley [21] makes a different use of the terms: “sex” refers to sexual (vs asexual) reproduction, while “gender” refers to the distinction between “males” and “females”, two terms that Ridley understands as defining two different “natures”.
- 5.
The question then arises as to whether such attempts broaden the theoretical framework of behavioural ecology, renew it completely, or rather but underscore certain possibilities already implicitly present within the existing sexual selection framework.
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Hoquet, T. (2013). Beyond Coy Females and Eager Males: The Evolution of Darwin’s Sexual Selection. In: Ah-King, M. (eds) Challenging Popular Myths of Sex, Gender and Biology. Crossroads of Knowledge, vol 1. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-01979-6_6
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