Sunday, Jul 20, 2008
Darwinian anthropologist Helen Fisher talks about polygamy, loyalty and why a bubbly young chick like Monica Lewinsky would confide in a sour stepsister like Linda Tripp.
Feb 4, 1998 | I wake to a horrifying thought, as I contemplate the relationship between Monica Lewinsky and Linda Tripp, the big-sister confidante who betrayed her: Is this the end of girl talk? I think about the times I've chattered out of turn. Then I pick up the phone and call Dr. Helen Fisher, a Darwinian anthropologist -- and a fellow girl -- who has plenty to say about the origins of girl talk.
Fisher's Manhattan apartment -- in a quiet eastside building around the corner from Central Park -- is meticulous yet cozy. In her bedroom hangs a small colorful painting by one of her former boyfriends of Fisher pulling off her blouse, naked from the waist down. Her body is neat, lean and feminine -- rather like her apartment. Although she's had many opportunities, Fisher has only been married once -- for about six months -- to a man she divorced "in order to continue the relationship," she tells me. Fisher has been on the board of Planned Parenthood of New York City for over a decade because, she says, "if there is something I would lie down in front of a tank for, it's the right of a woman to have children when she wants to." Fisher chose not to, but she points out: "My twin sister has a child, so I passed on my genes." A longing to perpetuate your own DNA lurks in almost every human heart, she assures me, and informs our most intimate decisions.
On the lecture circuit, her audiences include federal judges, fellow anthropologists and sex workers. Her latest book, "The Anatomy of Love: The Natural History of Monogamy, Adultery and Divorce" (Norton, 1992), explores mating and divorce among humans and other animals. In 1982, Fisher published "The Sex Contract: The Evolution of Human Behavior" (William Morrow). She is currently finishing a book about "how gender differences in the brain will play out in the next century." She's also studying "the brain physiology of infatuation" -- what actually happens inside the brain when humans fall madly in love.
Americans "love love," she tells me -- and Fisher is mad about the subject, herself. She recently shared some of her thoughts on her favorite subject with Salon.
My first thought, when I saw Monica Lewinsky's face on the front page of the New York Post was: "If you're sleeping with a head of state in this day and age, you don't tell anyone!"
Women talk. That's human nature. Any woman having an affair with the president would talk -- but usually, it's who you talk to. If Bill Clinton had an extramarital affair, he should have picked a woman who had a lot to lose. Monica didn't have a lot to lose -- she's young. And her mother has bragged about sleeping with an opera singer -- they both seem to be a little questionable.
When men gossip, they talk about sports and business. Women talk about feelings and lovers because women are more interested in "connection."
Why are men less likely to discuss sex?
It's adaptive strategy. If a man tells a man whom he's sleeping with, he may be in competition with that man tomorrow afternoon. It's not adaptive for men to talk about their sexual connections because they may get cut off from them. But it's often adaptive for a woman to talk about her sexual connections because, by gossiping, she's building networks with other women.
We think we're building something, but girl talk can be self-destructive, as Lewinksy may have discovered. Don't you think Linda Tripp's behavior was profoundly hostile?
Very hostile. That part of it troubles me more than any other -- that Linda Tripp betrayed her friend and used all that information for her own purposes.
Are we in denial about the animosity that exists between females?
Yes. Primatologists have discovered what American women somehow have missed: Women are in direct competition with other women. This whole thing of getting together for women's rights has clouded our eyes to the Darwinian nature of "survival of the fittest." Women will compete with other women just as men will compete with other men, and they do it very cleverly.
You take one look at Lewinsky and Tripp and you have to wonder: Why did this young, bubbly chick confide in such a sour-looking stepsister? That's a recipe for betrayal.
You've got to pick your friends, and it's remarkable how many women don't! It's stunning. Even me -- I said something to somebody recently that could be used against me! But we do this to connect.
Are women in other cultures more realistic about rivalry and less likely to talk freely with other women? Or does every culture have its trusting, chatty Monicas and scheming Lindas?
Every culture in the world. This scenario happened two million years ago in the grasslands of Africa, and it happened in ancient Greece and ancient China. Gossip evolved along with the evolution of language, and gossip is very useful. It is basically gossip which may pull down this president.
Do you think Clinton's sex life should be of concern to us?
No, it's really nobody's business. I don't even think it's anybody's business that he lied. Americans seem to assume that, if you have poor judgment in your sex life and you lie about it, you are also going to have poor judgment in your business or political life and lie about that. But there's no evidence of this. There's a great deal of evidence from around the world that men who have sticky sex lives can still conduct the business of running a country perfectly well. We have had about 14 presidents about whom there were allegations of either a mistress or an extra affair or even an illegitimate child. And these men still ran our country.
Do you find that you have to tone down some of your ideas in order to reach the public?
I almost got into trouble when I appeared on CNN's "Talk Back Live." They asked: What is all this discussion doing to our children? There were three of us -- [former Nixon advisor] John Dean, myself and a history academic. So I jumped in and said, "Well, in many traditional societies, children grow up knowing everything about the community. They start knowing about sex and even seeing sex as soon as they're conscious." I got that far and the academic leapt down my throat. He basically said that children should not be seeing this kind of "seamy" sex. What I didn't have time to say was: If you want children to have moral values, then you've got to show them the bad parts as well as the good so that they can build their moral understanding of what is good and what is bad. You can't pull them out of a glass box at age 21 and expect them to make intelligent moral decisions about sex -- or about anything else -- if you don't let them ride through the times. In the New York school system, when a few teachers come in and talk only about anatomy -- it's called an organ recital.
A surprising number of baby boomers in this country were deprived of a real education when it comes to sex. How about you?
My first memory of sex in my family involves walking on the beach in Cape Cod on a beautiful sunny day in late October with my twin sister, my mother and my father. I must have been 5 or 6. My father came over to my twin sister and me, gave us his watch and said, "You go up the beach, take this tennis ball and have fun. And don't come back -- don't look back -- until the minute hand ..."
How long did they take?
I don't remember! But I do remember shuffling up the beach, very sad to be ostracized, waiting for the time to go by and then coming back. Mother and dad were very different: Dad was smoking his pipe, and mother was acting kittenish! I remember that moment distinctly -- something had gone on that was good, that made my life easier in this family. Mother had turned into a very sweet person and it turned into being a very nice day at the beach.
All through my childhood, sex was something that was natural and that one should learn to do well so that you had a good life. I was never sneaking in to look at my parents' sex books -- their sex books were right there. The only thing I inherited from my father was 20 books on sex. He was a wonderful man.
America is the collective child that hasn't been taught about the closed door. We're experts on sexual morality yet we're ignorant about sexual etiquette. Why?
Americans are very religious about sex -- compared to other Western people and to Asian people. Asian societies do not connect sex with sin. They connect it with social responsibility. In Japan and China, there are many sexual taboos -- what you're supposed to do and what you're not supposed to do. But you're not supposed to do it because it will be offensive to your family, not because it will be offensive to God.
Is this fuss really about whether Clinton's sexual behavior offends God?
Actually, this fuss is about people thinking he has lied, about lying. Unlike most people in the world, Americans have this belief in rugged honesty at all costs: If you aren't honest, you're not good. Whereas many peoples in Latin America, for example, and throughout much of Asia, will graciously say dishonest things in order to be polite. I would say that, in most tribal societies, where community is absolutely essential, most people are willing to tell white lies to smooth over difficult social situations.
In much of the world, in fact, greasing social relations is far more important than what would be regarded as brutal honesty. Americans will tell you the truth even when it's insulting. It may be the frontier mentality that we come from. Throughout Asia and Europe, people have been trying to get along with each other for thousands of years.
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