7 May 2022 | New Scientist | 43“Humans police the expression
of sex and gender much more
than other primates do”
Apes give us a better understanding of
gender behaviour and identity in humans, says
Frans de Waal. Once we start hunting for
variation, it may turn out to be more common
than we thought, he tells Rowan Hooper
WHERE once we thought of ape behaviour
only in terms of sex and war, we now
understand that our closest relatives live
a much more nuanced life. A huge part of
that understanding comes from the work
of primatologist Frans de Waal, a professor
of psychology at Emory University in Atlanta,
Georgia. Over the past five decades, he has
shown that cooperation is at least as important
as competition in explaining primate
behaviour and society. His work has revealed
that the great apes might fight, but they
also reconcile their differences. They have a
capacity for empathy and a concept of fairness
that de Waal proposes is the foundation of
the human moral compass. He believes that
chimps, bonobos and humans are simply
different types of ape and that empathetic
and cooperative behaviours are continuous
between these species. Now, he has turned
his attention to gender and identity in his
new book Different: What apes can teach
us about gender. We spoke to de Waal to
find out what he has learned.Rowan Hooper: You are well known for
writing about the inner lives of chimpanzees
and bonobos, but your new book is a bit
different, because it discusses gender roles,
gender identity and biological sex differences
in both apes and us. What do we mean by
gender in non-human primates?Frans de Waal: Well, some people insist that
we have genders and chimps and bonobos have
sexes, and that is the end of the discussion.
I think that is nonsense. Gender as a concept
exists mainly because we are a sexually
reproducing species. Sex is predominantly
binary – male and female – plus a small
percentage of people who are intersex.
Imagine if we reproduced by cloning and
were all basically identical. No one would have
even conceived of the concept of gender.
Aspects of gender, such as social roles and
gendered behaviour, represent the cultural
side of biological sex. Gender in this respect
is not male or female, but rather masculine,
feminine and everything in between. It is a
much more fluid concept than biological sex.
This concept of gender roles and behaviour
may also apply to apes, because they are
cultural beings, too. They develop slowly
and are adults by 16 years of age, so there is
an enormous amount of learning that goes
into their behaviour, which includes their
sex-typical behaviour. Like our children, the
young pick up aspects of their gender roles
from the adults around them.In your book, you say that while gender roles and
gendered behaviour can be influenced by culture,
gender identity seems to arise from within. You
write about a chimp called Donna who seems
NA to exemplify this. Can you tell us about her?
BIL
NE
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AR
Donna, who is biologically female, is very
masculine in her appearance and her
behaviour – and unlike the majority of female
chimps, she likes to hang out with the males.
I do not know how she identifies and I can’t
ask her, but she looks like a male and acts like
a male most of the time.
You also have biological males who are big,
but are not interested in being high-ranking.
They avoid confrontations. They can be well
accepted in the group, but accepted as a male
who is not involved in male politics. So we have
this variability in individuals. Few individuals
act like Donna, and few males act non-typically,
but it is important for us to recognise that
science hasn’t been looking into the issue of
how individuals express sex-typical behaviour.
Once we start explicitly hunting for it, our
perceptions may change and gender non-
conforming behaviour in primates may turn
out to be more common than we thought.What we might call gender-stereotyped play
is seen in young primates. There are reports
of young female chimps in captivity playing with
dolls, and some in the wild using a wooden log
as a doll and even building a nest to put it in. Male
chimps, when given a choice of toys, tend to play
with toy trucks and trains. What is going on here?
With the males, people have speculated that it
is because these are movable objects and males
are more physically active in their play. With >