What Our Primate Ancestors Can Teach Us About Dismantling the Patriarchy: The Ms. Q&A with Diane Ro
(a lengthy, fascinating read. Her comments about Ashley Judd taking what she learned in her classes and applying it to the Harvey Weinstein situation are very interesting)
What Our Primate Ancestors Can Teach Us About Dismantling the Patriarchy: The Ms. Q&A with Diane Rosenfeld
10/20/2022 by Jackson Katz
The Bonobo Sisterhood cover by Shepard Fairey and a bonobo, human’s closest evolutionary cousins. In stark contrast to other primates, by forming female alliances, they have evolutionarily eliminated male sexual coercion. (Jason Coleman / Flickr)
Women’s organized resistance to male dominance continues to make headlines around the world, from young women leading an uprising against the restrictive policies of the theocratic regime in Iran, to feminist activism in the U.S. in response to the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade. A new book shines an intriguing new light on the possibilities for alliances among women in the ongoing struggle to end men’s violence against women by examining the social organization of one of our closest primate relatives. In The Bonobo Sisterhood, Harvard Law School professor Diane Rosenfeld shows how we have much to learn from the bonobos about how to eliminate male sexual coercion. In a Ms. exclusive interview, contributing writer Jackson Katz, a long-time friend and colleague of Rosenfeld, asked her about her book’s provocative thesis and its relevance to contemporary debates about how to prevent gender violence and advance gender and sexual equality.
Jackson Katz: You’re a law professor who teaches about gender violence and the law, and yet your book takes its title and organizing principle from bonobos, a relatively obscure primate species. Can you explain how a legal theorist came to learn about issues of sex and violence in bonobo culture, and how that helped shape your thinking?
Diane Rosenfeld: It blew my mind when I learned from my friend and colleague Richard Wrangham, the renowned anthropologist, about how bonobos protect one another from male aggression. I saw how this connects directly to my work on domestic violence and sexual assault law.
For those who don’t know, bonobos are primates that look like but are a separate species from chimpanzees. They share 98.7 percent of our DNA, like chimpanzees, but have a completely different social order. If a female bonobo is aggressed upon, she lets out a special cry and all the other females within earshot come rushing to her aid, forming an instantaneous coalition to defend her. They come whether they know her, like her, or are related to her. We can take a critical lesson from that as humans! Evolutionarily, they have eliminated male sexual coercion.
If a female bonobo is aggressed upon, she lets out a special cry and all the other females within earshot come rushing to her aid … Evolutionarily, they have eliminated male sexual coercion.
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Diane L. Rosenfeld is the founding director of the Harvard Law School Gender Violence Program and a lecturer on law. (Courtesy of Diane Rosenfeld)
Patriarchy is not inevitable; the bonobos are living proof of that.
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Protesters set their scarves on fire while marching down on Oct. 1, 2022 in Tehran, Iran. Protests over the death of 22-year-old Iranian Mahsa Amini have continued to intensify despite crackdowns by the authorities. (Getty Images)
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Abortion rights activists at the Women’s March on Oct. 8, 2022 in Los Angeles. (Sarah Morris / Getty Images)
Katz: You write that you explicitly invite men into the Bonobo Sisterhood. Can you elaborate on how men and people of all genders can be part of a movement that prioritizes coalitions among women?
Rosenfeld: Jackson, as you’ve pointed out so brilliantly in your decades of work, men and allies have such an essential role in stopping men’s violence. My work builds upon yours to let men know that stepping outside the harmful tropes of masculinity will be liberating and better for all.
Katz: Ever since the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs in June that reversed Roe v. Wade, the general public has gotten a glimpse into the ways in which legal theory helps to shape everyday life.
Among other notable features of that historic and deeply controversial decision, Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the conservative majority, invoked the deeply misogynous 17th century English jurist and legal theorist Matthew Hale.
You discuss some critical Supreme Court rulings that have served to maintain the patriarchal status quo and tragically failed to protect victims of gender violence. Can you say something about the Court’s role in either advancing or blocking progress in this area?
Rosenfeld: Sure. Even before Dobbs, the Supreme Court had quietly eviscerated democratic attempts led by women’s groups to challenge male sexual violence. Women have no right to be free from gender-motivated violence, even after that important federal civil right was enacted as part of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). An endangered woman has no right to enforcement of her order of protection despite a state law mandating police enforcement of these orders.
I think it’s fair to say that looking to the Supreme Court to protect women from patriarchal violence is barking up the wrong tree. Indeed, the Court’s toleration of such extreme forms of male sexual coercion is what led to my development of the term patriarchal violence.
https://msmagazine.com/2022/10/20/bonobo-sisterhood-primate-ancestors-patriarchy-diane-rosenfeld/