Is Cattiness an Evolutionary Trait?

Patriarchy isn't the problem. We are.

Photo by Ayu Anggraini on Unsplash

Coming off of the #metoo era and running smack dab into the summer of Barbie, I still find myself in the minority of man-hate culture. I think women are the problem. My greatest heartbreaks, many of which have occurred within the last five years, have all been because of women. Women I’ve genuinely liked, respected, trusted, and confided in have repeatedly and increasingly engaged in abhorrent behavior because we’ve been giving each other permission to do so. Friends and therapists will tell us that we should feel absolutely justified in walking away from difficult or uncomfortable situations and conversations in order to protect our own mental health. ‘Safety’ is the thing. Not safety from real-world actual harm such as hornet stings, food poisoning from dinner at a friend’s house who has questionable hygiene, a rabid skunk attack, contracting a parasite while barefoot, or risking life and limb on a Lime Scooter. ‘Safety’ is the new rabid skunk attack where you have to suffer a painful series of rabies shots - but it’s all in your head due to a feeling of vague discomfort or even a fear of the potential for discomfort. It is the therapy of ‘me. me. me. And, oh, yes, only what’s best for me.’ This selfish approach to ‘protection’ discounts any harm caused to the one getting ghosted, disparaged, called out, or attacked. Working through misunderstandings using the age-old tools of compassionate dialogue is so 1993. That’s work and leaves one open to having to endure more harm so let’s instead just block, cancel, unfriend, (or get sneaky revenge by taking to social media) and cocoon yourself in mental bubble wrap. Taking an opportunity to understand another human being, to give grace or benefit of the doubt, to allow for mistakes or explanations, to meet in the middle or find common ground, to give each other the gift of maybe just learning a bit more about one another, and therefore the complicated, messy human experience? Nah. Why bother with all of that? The only thing that matters is that you not challenge yourself or anyone else because it is uncomfortable. And discomfort is not ‘safe.’

This new therapy-think is one of the most recent ways in which feminism has failed us or we have failed it. The biggest proponents of feminism and the concept of sisterhood that I know have also consistently been the first to turn on one another. It’s really not our fault. This behavior is innate. We have evolved to cooperate with one another in certain instances such as childcare, food foraging, and protecting one another from lions (actual harm) but throughout human history in the vast majority of cultures, we women also necessarily competed for resources. Early human communities were overwhelmingly polygynous, which helped to increase human populations. Women evolved wily ways in which to ensure they remained in the good graces of the keepers of resources (the menfolk). However, in today’s societal structure, I’d say we’ve achieved the goal of having enough humans to protect us from rogue, raging wildebeests. We no longer need polygyny to further our mission of spreading as many of our progeny as possible. Although we have evolved to become the humans we are through thousands of years of evolutionarily advantageous polygyny, even though this societal structure has left a deep thumbprint on our bodies and psyches, we also have free will which allows us to make different choices that are more advantageous in today’s complex world. Most of us have rejected the ancient pull of survival and turned instead to monogamy as the simplest way to navigate our modern existence. We can also make the same conscious choice for how we relate to strangers. Human survival depended upon detecting others from outside your community, which more often than not, posed a threat. That urge remains incredibly strong today but, again, we have within us the power to recognize it, examine why it exists, and then change our thought patterns. Just as many of us have worked so hard over these last tumultuous years to analyze our internal, deeply held beliefs about others, identify this fear of ‘the other’ as racism, and then work to correct this evolutionary dungeon, we need the same sort of reckoning amongst women.

Women no longer need to compete with one another to ensure that our basic needs are met. Unfortunately, our conscious minds have yet to catch up to this ‘new’ reality. But we know our minds can change with our gentle, consistent nudging. We’ve already experienced that we have the ability to overcome our most powerful survival instincts and rewire our brains to adopt the types of behaviors that would have led to our ancestors’ certain and rapid demise. Modern culture is much more conducive to a monogynous family structure. Globalism and the tenets of basic fucking kindness have instructed us that fearing others and outsiders is no longer a tool for survival but a tool for tools and small-minded assholes. Having recognized and named this vestigial trait as ‘racism,’ we can better understand why it exists, how it is obsolete for day-to-day survival, and how we can evolve beyond this animalistic urge by recognizing it, naming it, and rejecting it in modern society. We need the same reckoning among women. We need to stop pointing the finger at men and look to ourselves and the ways in which we have failed each other by not acknowledging that the innate behaviors we exhibit today, every day, are as unnecessary to contemporary life as our appendix. We must understand that we are no longer our own worst enemies and we must stop giving lip service to meaningless concepts like ‘sisterhood’ until we take a deeper look at our behaviors, understand their origins, and work to correct them. The gossip, sabotage, rejection, and backstabbing that we ALL engage in are behaviors that should be capsuled to early human history along with polygyny and racism. Yet, we women are woefully behind in this effort. As long as we continue to support those who engage in online take-downs and call-outs, as long as we give ourselves permission to ‘ghost’ one another, using ‘mental health’ as a scapegoat when it is actually a lack of resilience with a side of laziness, as long as we allow ourselves to disparage one another publicly or privately, we are participating in the most rudimentary and basest of behaviors. Men aren’t to blame for keeping women down. Women are. I’m ready for a new wave of feminism that rejects victimhood and blame but, instead, holds us all accountable for not evolving as much as we should have by now. We need support from one another now more than ever in our changing world, support that truly lifts us up (not cheers on when attacking one another). We need to create the kind of support where our first thought when we see another woman struggling is to offer assistance, not see it as a potential opportunity for our own gain. That’s our inner Australopithecus (aka Lucy) talking. It’s beyond time to reject our inner Lucy and embrace our contemporary female selves for the amazing, powerful creatures we are. Imagine just how much more accomplished, happier, and less anxious we could be if we recognized, named, and corrected our primal urges and instead, truly leaned on, trusted, and cared for one another. It is possible but it is work, just as is marriage and anti-racism. It is worthy work that will collectively get us to where we need to be in this world.