Herzog contrasts the adaptationist and non-adaptationist principles toward "the evolution of orgasm in human females" and conveniently omits a modern framework for understanding the human female orgasm. He states about adaptationists' propositions: "that orgasms evolved as a signal to help women tell which men have good genes and which ones are evolutionary losers, and--my favorite--that by making them woozy, the throes of orgasm keep women women lying down after sex so sperm don't have to swim uphill to reach the egg," (Herzog 89). Herzog's tone when mentioning the beliefs of adaptationists on human female orgasm is one of humorous mocking, and leaves the reader expecting a more well-rounded perspective on the matter that the author might actually respect. So imagine my surprise when the only alternative provided to this adaptationist perspective, the nonadaptationist perspective, is the following proposition about human female orgasm: "Skeptics of adaptationist thinking scoff at these ideas. They explain orgasm in women as the side effect of the fact that orgasm has reproductive benefits for men--just like the presence of nipples on men is the nonfuntional by-product of the fact that nipples evolved so that female mammals can feed their infants," (emphasis mine) (Herzog 89). Both of these options for explaining the evolutionary "purpose" of the female orgasm quite simply fall short of a modern, evolved and gender-equitable perspective; Herzog simply abandons the single paragraph spent on this issue with the non-adaptationist's perspective, not offering a pragmatic alternative to either, and likening orgasm in females to the "nonfunctional" presence of nipples in men. I am a "sex-positive" person, and I take offense to the belief that a female orgasm in a heteronormative relationship only exists as a byproduct of a male's reproductive impulses; the satisfaction of both individuals in a partnership is the way human sexuality has evolved and survived today. Not to mention, Hal, a woman has borne your children, assumedly kept house for and cooked for you, kept up her appearance to remain attractive for you after all these years, and you are willing to imply that her sexual pleasure only matters in relation to your evolutionary need to "spread your seed"? This is an antiquated, incosiderate view of human female sexuality. He unwisely overlooks non-heteronormative relationships as well, in which sex does not have reproductive implications; what of the human orgasm in these cases? Herzog immediately lost some points here for me, but as I kept reading, hoping for a light at the end of the figurative tunnel, I realized this was only the beginning.
Herzog also cherry-picks evidence on the continent of Africa to attempt to add an air of credibility in his claim that "in many parts of the world most people do not form close bonds with animals," (Herzog 90). The singular example he provides to back up this claim reads:
This is particulately true in Africa. My anthropologist friend Nyaga Mwaniki is from rural Kenya. In the village…people never become attached to individual animals. Indeed, there is no word for pet in Kiambu, his native language. The villagers to keep dogs to guard against intruders and to chase elephants from their gardens. But they never allow dogs in the house, they do not think of them as companions, and they would be horrified at the idea of letting one sleep in their bed. (Herzog 90)
Herzog claims himself to be a scientist and a professor, yet he cites one example, in rural Kenya, to formulate the judgement that it is "particularly true in Africa" that "most people do not form close bonds with animals." One cannot really back up such a bold claim with a single personal anecdote. He ignores, for one, other parts of Kenya, which are highly developed and/or such attitudes about animals do not persist. He ignores nations like Mozambique, in which many people in suburban areas keep and love their dogs, birds, rabbits, and other animals. He ignores nations like South Africa, with booming economies that are the cultural polar opposite of the "rural" areas, where primitive attitudes towards animals simply do not survive; especially granted that much of the South African economy benefits from highly trafficked non-hunting animal safaris in national parks like Krueger National Park and Balule Nature Reserve in Hoedspruit. He also later contradicts himself in talking of the movement in South Korea, China, and other Asian nations toward domestication of dogs and animals previously consumed as commonly as beef or chicken (Herzog 186-187). In conclusion, a respectable professional cannot cherry-pick anecdotal information, especially when attempting to summarize a continent as large and diverse as Africa!
The book also frequently dips in and out of the cause for animal rights. A perfect example occurs when Herzog cites the UPenn C-BARQ research study, which aims to compare and contrast behavioral differences between different breeds of dogs (if interested, you can contribute cruelty-free to the ongoing research on your dog's breed at w3.vet.upenn.edu/cbarq). It is particularly his terminology that bothers me most of all: "The [C-BARQ] researchers…found that some types of dogs are easy to train while others are not politically smart," (emphasis mine) (Herzog 113). Are we to believe that the man writing this book thinks that just because a dog does not respond to certain training commands, the dog is necessarily dumb? Many breeds, such as dachshunds, for example, are known to be incredibly intelligent but also incredibly stubborn, strong-willed and thus, difficult to teach. This fact does not imply their "political stupidity" by any means. Ask an owner of dachshunds, and they will tell you so.
Allow me to illuminate the debate on the aggressiveness/innocence of a particular breed of dog on which Herzog provides information, but fails to take a personal moral stance: the pit bull. As Herzog states in Some We Love, "between 1982 and 2008, pit bulls were responsible for 700 maimings and 129 human deaths in the United States and Canada," (115). These are startling numbers, but the violence of pits is out of their own figurative hands. The real root of such violent attacks against humans is a self-repeating cycle of bad advertising about the pit bull, the so-called "bad rap" they get when they are rescued from dog fighting rings as starved, emaciated, wounded, and not unpredictably so, aggressive. Yet I venture to say that human beings who satisfy their bloodlust by projecting it onto otherwise docile, properly domesticated, human- and animal-friendly animals, taking advantage of the animals' evolutionarily wild hunting and territorial instincts solely for entertainment purposes, are truly the ones at fault. And the rest of us accepting anti-pit-bull "breed-specific legislation" (115) in states like Ohio and cities like Denver, are equally at fault. The laws should convict the human perpetrators of the violence, the ones responsible for their caretaking and reared behavior, not the comparatively innocent dogs who have been bred, trained and underfed to carry out their owners' sadistic wishes. As far as the dogs are concerned, they are simply being "good dogs" by obeying their owners' wishes. I liken the Pit Bull Guilt Complex--in which the animals are considered more at fault than their owners--to blaming child soldiers for the crimes they are brainwashed to commit. Raise a pit bull pup from birth in a loving, non-violent home, with a yard in which he or she can run freely, and plenty of nutritious food, and I dare you to show me that dog is still aggressive.
What Some We Love makes up for in providing unbiased information on both sides of the pit bull debate, it strongly lacks in its overtly sexist slant. As a woman, I trusted that a man progressive enough to write a book on "Why It's So Hard To Think Straight About Animals" (subtitle), would also have less-than-traditional views on women's behavioral roles. I was wrong. To his credit, he displays honesty by saying, "I have always assumed that males and females play with pets differently. After all, boys are more apt to engage in the mock wrestling and hand-to-hand combat that developmental psychologists call rough-and tumble play. In my house, there is a gender bias on how we relate to our family pets," (133). This example does not even begin to prove that males are necessarily "rough-and-tumble" with their pets while females only "gently pat…dogs on the head" as was the case in the isolated example of his own family. I happen to know a number of women--even some who live in heteronormative relationships--who more often than not play "rough-and-tumble" with their dogs! Lots of us are just as playful with our pets as many men. Herzog continues by citing the research of Gail Melson, a developmental psychologist whose research, in some ways, takes the gender-normativity issue back half a century. Although Herzog states, "to my surprise, [Melson] found no sex differences in how kids play with or nurture their pets," he also states in conclusion that, "Gail believes that for boys, pets are often the only vehicles that give them experience in caring for another living being," (133). Here lies the existing flaw in Melson's research: her lack of consideration for marginal cases. For example, a case in which young boys would have a vehicle other than a household pet for caring for another living being is one in which the boys have infant or toddler siblings they watch mom and dad care for, as is the case with my nieces and nephews. Children can learn a great deal about how to care for another being by being raised alongside younger siblings as well as pets; and it is not just boys who benefit from such an arrangement, as Herzog's references to Melson would have us believe, nor just individuals who dream of having their own children one day. As one continues to read, he or she will experience a sort of "a-ha!" moment when Herzog states, "glib generalizations about sex differences and animal attitudes, however, can be misleading," (134). Hallelujah! He goes further to conclude that, "in most cases, the differences within the sexes are bigger than the differences between the sexes," (135). Yet his next section entitled "Women Take Action!" only further underscores the statistical differences between women and men in terms of which gender participates in animal rights activism, on a small or large scale. What does adding statistical information that distinguishes between people solely on their gender add to the forward-movement of the animal and human equality debates? I am almost always mistaken for someone who has little practical know-how amidst the aisles of Home Depot, simply because of my appearance which is strongly linked to my gender, or granted lower pay, because of my gender, despite equal or greater competency, or brushed aside as a nuisance when I have an opinion I dare to express, based mainly on my gender; forgive me if I am a little tired of the perpetuation of gender-based distinctions. Though it would be positive to say women lead the animal rights movement, I am loathe to admit this based on statistics alone, as many of the violent crimes perpetuated by radical animal rights groups are committed by more men than women. Perhaps the sexism could be overlooked if Herzog had come to a conclusion such as that the animals rights movement is all the stronger having so many women leaders attached to the cause, unlike political representation in which women are highly underrepresented; yet, he reaches no such conclusion, instead letting the statistic--that 85% of the ASPCA and Humane Society membership represents only women--dangle in front of us. Considering the opposite case, in which women have been documented to commit heinous crimes against animals, only polarizes viewpoints on females' roles in the lives of animals, and willfully ignores the highly populated middle-ground.
My advice to Herzog in elevating the credibility of future works is that he consider more thoroughly the so-called "marginal" cases and unpolar extremes around the world and through history. In referencing Brian Luke's point that "our culture instills indifference to animal suffering in boys practically from birth," (142) he completely excludes that the same indifference to animal suffering is often instilled in girls as well. "Culture" is a complicated, dense term, and although there is a majority scenario, within "our culture" there are many sub-cultures, wherein variations do exist. In a modern day hunting family that has been killing animals for sport for generations, values are instilled, often regardless of the child's gender, that humans have more firepower than animals, and have killed animals historically for generations, and are therefore justified in killing them, for food or wall decoration. This contrasts starkly with someone raised in a wholly nonviolent atmosphere, boy or girl, whose parents are vegetarians or vegans because of the moral implications of eating animals and animal byproducts. Both families are included in "our culture," and should therefore be given consideration when weighing which values are instilled to which gender.
In addition to a subtext of sexism in the book, Herzog aims to underscore differences in gender by utilizing the notorious bell curve. The low-point of Some We Love hits at page 145, when Herzog tries to convince us that, "Bell-curve thinking is sometimes--and wrongly--thought of as racist…because in a 1994 book called…The Bell Curve, Richard Herrnstein…and Chares Murray…used normal distributions to support their contention that racial differences in IQ are inherited. But bell curves are just shapes. They say absolutely nothing about whether differences between groups are due to genes or environment, or both." Bold claim, considering the aforementioned--rightly coined--"racist" history of the usage of bell curve statistics. And did I catch him correctly? Did he suggest that "differences" do necessarily exist "between [racial] groups"? I am of the camp that to formulate any conjectures on a person or group based on superficial qualities of any kind limits the person(people) being categorized and can even perpetuate oppressive notions. By considering bell-curve statistics necessarily non-discriminatory, Herzog opens up the possibility for further discrimnation based on principles of statistical "normalcy." It only takes one sentence for him to draw his own discriminatory observations based on the bell curve, "While bell curves do not explain the ultimate causes of sex differences, they can help us understand why most animal activists are women and most animal abusers are men." I rest my case.
The list of gripes I have with the text would go on so that this piece were twice as long, at least. Yet I digress. Relax, Hal Herzog, your victimization is as of now over! I guess most of my anger toward the book comes from the fact that were it not for its sexism and cultural biases, I would want to read and re-read it just to align myself with the knowledge of the underlying hypocrisy in the modern human-animal relationship. As a whole, I found the majority of the book, omitting the aforementioned complaints, an interesting consideration of opposing perspectives on the value our varying cultures place on animals. Some We Love forced me to face some inconvenient inconsistencies in my own wavering vegetarianism and life-long "companion animal" ownership, as well as the inconsistencies in some acquaintances who fight in the name of gender equality, who find puppies adorable, but would probably openly test thousands of lab mice for the benefit of a human physiological discovery, and are therefore highly speciest in ideology. (Testing chimps might be a different story, though). It also encouraged me to call to mind someone I once knew who vehemently claimed to be a vegetarian (no meat at all), then over a few months this changed to a pescetarian (no meat except fish), and finally once at dinner she openly said to me, "You know what, I tried the chicken, and it didn't taste half bad!" essentially writing off her initial moral intention in becoming vegetarian. The truth is, though, that hypocrisy lies within all of us, in varying shades, in particular concerning the morality and rights of humans juxtaposed to our fellow animals. As Jonathan Haidt states in the introduction to chapter nine of Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat, "Stop smirking. One of the most universal pieces of advice from across cultures and eras is that we are all hypocrites, and in our condemnation of others' hypocrisy we only compound our own."
………………
©erika haines 2014
