Observing a troop in Gombe, Tanzania, Jane Goodall discovered that chimps have personalities, intimate relationships, and agendas. Her work and that of scientists who followed in her footsteps also taught us that chimps are a male-dominant species, prone to not-infrequent violence, with males harassing and sexually coercing lower-ranking female troop members. Aggression, many primatologists, academics, and nonexperts extrapolate from our body of knowledge about chimps, is in our “nature,” as is the dynamic of males attempting to control and dominate females with physical attacks, forced copulation, and even infanticide. Harvard primatologist Richard Wrangham, a chimp guy, famously asserted in Demonic Males that we humans are living out “a continuous, five-million-year habit of lethal aggression,” driven by a male will to dominate strangers and females. We can expect male dominance and male sexual coercion of females, we’ve been taught, because we’re “wired” that way. [...]
Notably, bonobo females approached by a female and a male simultaneously for sex (it happens) tend to choose girl-on-girl action. Lying one on top of the other or side to side, they press and grind their vulvas together, often shrieking. Their clitorises—richly innervated, larger than a human female’s, and more externalized—probably explain why female bonobos so eagerly practice genito-genital, or G-to-G, contact. It feels good, possibly even better than intercourse with a male. [...]
What gives female bonobos all this power? To eat first, be groomed, coerce males, and rule the roost in general? Parish believes that it’s the lesbian sex. G-to-G rubbing feels so good it bonds female bonobos, allowing them to create formidable coalitions. This in turn gives them the upper hand in matters across the board. In fact, an adult male bonobo is likely to run to Mom when in a dire situation—because among bonobos, it’s females who are alphas and whose support is critical.
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