Sex at Dawn

Extreme as it sounds, this is no overstatement. In his classic 1972 paper on “parental investment,” biologist Robert Trivers remarked, “One can, in effect, treat the sexes as if they were different species, the opposite sex being a resource relevant to producing maximum surviving offspring.” In other words, men and women have such conflicting agendas when it comes to reproduction that we are essentially predators of one another’s interests. In The Moral Animal, Robert Wright laments, “A basic underlying dynamic between men and women is mutual exploitation. They seem, at times, designed to make each other miserable.”¹

Don’t believe it. We aren’t designed to make each other miserable. This view holds evolution responsible for the mismatch between our evolved predispositions and the post-agricultural socioeconomic world we find ourselves in. The assertion that human beings are naturally monogamous is not just a lie; it’s a lie most Western societies insist we keep telling each other.

There’s no denying that men and women are different, but we’re hardly different species or from different planets or designed to torment one another. In fact, the interlocking nature of our differences testifies to our profound mutuality. Let’s look at some of the ways in which male and female erotic interests, perspectives, and capacities converge, intersect, and overlap, showing how each of us is a fragment of a greater unity.

CHAPTER TWENTY On Mona Lisa’s Mind

Do I contradict myself?

Very well then I contradict myself,

(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

WALT WHITMAN, Song of Myself

Faced with the mysteries of woman, Sigmund Freud, who seemed to have an answer for everything else, came up empty. “Despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul,” he wrote, “I have not yet been able to answer . the great question that has never been answered: what does a woman want?”

It’s no accident that what the BBC called “the most famous image in the history of art” is a study of the inscrutable feminine created by a homosexual male artist. For centuries, men have been wondering what Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa was thinking. Is she smiling? Is she angry? Disappointed? Unwell? Nauseated? Sad? Shy? Turned on? None of the above?

Probably closer to all of the above. Does she contradict herself? Very well, then. The Mona Lisa is large. Like all women, but more—like all that is feminine—she reflects every phase of the moon. She contains multitudes.