Modern society has become so obsessed with finding gender discrimination that we are now finding it in animal behavior.
First let me point out that this is being done by just a handful of researchers, in a single scientific journal. Science isn’t (I hope) suddenly going to lurch toward explaining almost every behavior as having to do with sexism.
The researchers have suggested that one of the reasons that females in the animal world are not as colorful or pretty as males of the same species is so that they can avoid sexual harassment. Big eyeroll.
It’s a little more nuanced then that. Basically the researchers are saying that if female animals were more “ornamental,” it would take energy away from producing and caring for eggs because they would have to fight off more male suitors.
“We suggest that female ornaments could lead to increased sexual harassment by males and this could be especially costly to the number of offspring you leave behind,” said one of the researchers, Professor David Hosken of the University of Exeter in England. “The energetic cost of harassment — by either avoiding males or dealing with unnecessary sexual attention — would reduce your egg production.”
Here are some of the other theories for why female animals just aren’t as pretty to look at as males (all of which I find more believable):
- Males are the ones competing for females, so they need to look good to do so and display the best genes for mating.
- Females are less colorful so that they can blend in with their surroundings — camouflage — and better protect their eggs.
- Lots of color and ornamentation would reduce female fertility, as they would have to exert more energy to produce those ornaments.
Hosken wanted to make clear that he and his fellow researchers “are not suggesting that male harassment of attractive females is the only explanation for lack of sexual ornamentation … but want to alert researchers to the idea that this could be a contributing factor.”
I’ll take Hosken at his word, but this does seem like just another excuse to use “sexual harassment” as a way of explaining human behavior.
Ashe Schow is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
