Sex, Time and Power: How Women's Sexuality Shaped Human Evolution

by Leonard Shlain

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New York: Viking Penguin 2003.  420 pp $25.95  15 pp References

Leonard Shlain proposes that a need for the nutrient, iron, drove women to adopt the granting of sexual favors in return for their hunter partners’ providing them with meat from their kills. He develops an elaborate Darwinian evolutionary theory that monthly menses (rather than annual estrus) provided a genetically selective advantage, allowing women to have the sexual availability that they could then trade for favors with their sexual partner.

More than just helping with survival, Shlain argues eloquently that the moon cycle of menses, linked with the periodicity of lunar phases, opened women to the awareness of time – past, present and future.

The correlation between her menses and the moon led Gyna sapiens to appreciate the significance of a month. After she had vaulted over a bar set at 29.5 days, she raised it until she cleared nine months, and by so doing finally connected sex with birth. Men learned the art from the women, and, to their eternal dismay, they also learned that their life was limited. (p. 273)

Foresight has proved to be the sexiest idea that Mother Nature came up with since Her clever invention of the penis two hundred million years earlier. Whereas the penis significantly advanced the fortunes of every reptile and mammal species that acquired one, foresight dramatically increased the fortunes of only humans, as the expense of all other species.

Here, then, is the answer to the key question I posed in the preface. The reason women bleed so copiously every month is so that humans could anticipate the future. Gaining the ability to maneuver conceptually in the dimension of time was so powerful an adaptation that whatever price the human species would have to pay would be worth it, because it guaranteed that they would exercise dominion over all the other animals. Unfortunately, one sex was more disadvantaged than the other. The Faustian bargain Gyna sapiens unwittingly and involuntarily entered into was an awesome tradeoff. Iron-deficiency anemia, loss of estrus, and potentially debilitating menses were the tolls she paid to do something no other animal had ever done before - see beyond the moon to the next month. (p. 184-185)

Shlain’s discussion of the possible roles of sexual favors granted by women in prehistoric times, in return for male support and protection, is highly speculative. On the one hand, it appears to overlook the loyalty of males of many species – from birds to wolves to elephants – without monthly menses. On the other hand, it suggests a guiding hand in evolution because the appearance of monthly menses and the growth of brain size to enable the conceptualizations Shlain hypothesizes must have preceded the benefits that they conferred. While Shlain repeatedly suggests an anima mundi, a collective consciousness that guides the course of evolution – while explicitly stating that he subscribes to transpersonal beliefs.

The basic thesis is original, well argued, and supported with a wealth of historical notes, images from art and history, and written in a very engaging style. After the first half of the book, however, the discussions appear repetitive. Shlain puts a series of propositions related to sexuality through the same analysis, to the point that this reviewer became bored. Despite these criticisms, this book is well worth the read.

A DVD with a lecture on these materials is rich with imagery. This provides a more succinct presentation, a feast of pictures, and the pleasure of the author’s voice and screen presence. The book, however, is a richer experience in concepts and discussion.
Lshlain@aol.com

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