After a billion years of sex differences, let people just be themselves. Review of the book ‘A Billion Years of Sex Differences’, by Steve Stewart-Williams
“Let people be themselves! If they defy traditional gender norms, that’s fine. But if they conform to traditional gender norms, that’s fine too. In the absence of harm or injustice, we should let people do their own thing.”
This quote from Professor of psychologySteve Stewart-Williams’ new book captures the idea of gender-role individualism, and echos my own position very well. As a therapist favouring a humanistic approach, I believe you will get the best out of people by helping to engage those parts of themselves that are going to bring them the most happiness and minimise their pain.
One of the interesting things about life is that if you let people be themselves, they will tend to – on average - opt for behaviours and lifestyles that look a lot like traditional gender norms. In other words, the differences between men and women tend to become larger when they have freedom to choose how to live. As Stewart-Williams says: “in societies with better living standards and greater gender equality […] sex differences are often larger, rather than smaller”.
By extension, it follows that just because there are modest sex differences on average doesn’t mean all men should do X and all women do Y: that would be turning something that is generally true of people by choice into a rule enforced on people, depriving them of choice. We should always leave room for the choices of the outliers in the distribution.
But there’s a lot more to the book than that. Let’s take a look at the table of contents:
“Chapter 1: A Can of Worms Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex Differences but Were Too PC to Ask
Chapter 2: What’s the Difference? The Landscape of Human Sex Differences
Chapter 3: Born and Bred The Nature and/or Nurture of Human Sex Differences
Chapter 4: Nature’s Blueprint The Evolution of Human Sex Differences
Chapter 5: Sex on the Brain Men and Women in the Bedroom
Chapter 6: Sex, Love, and Rock ‘n’ Roll Dating, Mating, Deviating
Chapter 7: Breaking Bad Sex and the Dark Side of Human Nature
Chapter 8: Family Matters Mum, Dad, and the Green-Eyed Monster
Chapter 9: Sex at the Frontier New Directions in the Evolutionary Psychology of Sex Differences
Chapter 10: The Peacock’s Predicament Why Sex Differences Matter – and How We Can Learn to Live with Them”.
There is also a very useful appendix listing the effect sizes for the most common sex differences.
I don’t want to pick out too much from the book because I don’t want to deprive you the pleasure of reading the book and finding them for yourself, but I’ll just highlight one or two points that will be of particular interest. Many readers of Male Psychology are interested in men’s mental health, and Chapter 9 has lots of thought-provoking explanations for issues such as suicide and help-seeking. As Stewart-Williams cautions: “we need to get our facts straight if we want a decent chance of improving people’s lives”.
In Chapter 1, Stewart-Williams unpacks some of the basic problems facing people who want to understand the topic of sex differences. One of the issues is “the war on sex differences”, which stems from the problem that some people are “deeply uncomfortable with the suggestion that men and women differ above the neck, and especially with the possibility that the differences might come from nature rather than nurture.”
Part of the reason for this discomfort is encapsulated in the concept of ‘gamma bias’, where some types of sex differences are systematically celebrated but other types of sex differences are systemiatically not. (Declaration: Martin Seager and I coined this term, and welcome the inclusion of it – and the term delta bias – in this book). Although gamma bias is a concept that is catching on, delta bias has been less recognised. Delta bias is the “simultaneous denigration or celebration – depending on the gender of the performer – of an archetypal masculine gender behaviour or characteristic”. For example, competitiveness has been discouraged in schoolboys as a problematic aspect of masculinity, whereas girls are encouraged to engage more in competitive sports. In Chapter 10, Stewart-Williams gives the example of marks given for maths and sciences in school, where the motivation to boost girls’ confidence in subjects which are traditionally seen as male dominated may lead teachers to inadvertently inflate girls’ marks.
There are lots of other gems in this book. If you are concerned that it is a rehash of The Ape that Understood the Universe, don’t be – there is a world of difference. Both books are similar though in that they are written in an intelligent but accessible way.
The spirit of gender-role individualism, as shown by the quote at the start of this review, pervades the book, and is a breath of fresh air in a world where the rejection of gender roles seems almost to be a rite of passage in the West since the 1960s, when liberation seemed to lead to just another kind of knee-jerk conformity. The paradox here is that people can often be derailed from being themselves not just by being forced into gender conformity, but also being forced into gender non-conformity. For example, when people are taught that masculinity is a bad thing, this potentially causes all kinds of problems, including damaging men’s mental wellbeing. Being taught to reject or minimise core parts of yourself isn’t going to lead you to achieving your full potential.
In conclusion, people who don’t like evolutionary psychology, or those who are wed to the idea that gender roles should be rejected on principle, are probably going to find reasons not to like this book. But for everyone else, it’s hard to find examples of where Stewart-Williams puts a foot badly wrong. This book is a mine of interesting and sensible information, engagingly written, and I thoroughly recommend it.
Steve Stewart-Williams’ new book ‘A Billion Years of Sex Differences: How Evolution Shaped the Minds of Men and Women’ is out today, and can be purchased online from various outlets including Amazon.
You can read the interview with Steve Stewart-Williams for Male Psychology magazine here.
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Disclaimer: This article is for information purposes only and is not a substitute for therapy, legal advice, or other professional opinion. Never disregard such advice because of this article or anything else you have read from the Centre for Male Psychology. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of, or are endorsed by, The Centre for Male Psychology, and we cannot be held responsible for these views. Read our full disclaimer here.
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John Barry
Dr John Barry is a chartered psychologist, researcher, clinical hypnotherapist and co-founder of the Male Psychology Network, BPS Male Psychology Section, and The Centre for Male Psychology (CMP). Also co-editor of the Palgrave Handbook of Male Psychology & Mental Health, co-author of the textbook Perspectives in Male Psychology: An Introduction (Wiley), and presenter on Centre for Male Psychology training courses.