Wilson, Sociobiology, and Feminism

When Wilson’s blockbuster Sociobiology appeared in 1975, feminist critics were quick to take issue with what they perceived to be its pervasive sexism. The book bifurcated animal behavior and human nature by gender, an assumption that was questioned and challenged by a group of women scientists calling themselves the “Genes and Gender Collective.” The publication of Wilson’s book was not the first opportunity that feminist critics had to point out the misogyny of the sciences of animal behavior and human nature. The popular ethology of the preceding decade—the writings of Robert Ardrey, Desmond Morris, and Lionel Tiger, among others—had also been subject to feminist criticism from women scientists, including most trenchantly from psychologist Naomi Weisstein in her 1968 piece “Psychology Constructs the Female.”¹ In reply, Tiger, a biological anthropologist and Wilson’s friend, had published a rebuttal in the New York Times in 1970, arguing that if male dominance existed in politics and culture, it was not men’s fault: it was just a fact of nature.²

But the criticism of Wilson’s book differed from this earlier round of charge and countercharge in two important ways. First, the women scientists in the mid-1970s were organized in a way that the critics of the preceding decade had not been. While the earlier critics had written mainly as individuals, the 1970s feminists joined together, held conferences, published edited volumes, and tried to present a united front. The clearest example is the Genes and Gender Collective, comprised of women scientists who both upheld leftwing and feminist politics and envisioned feminist alternatives to “androcentric” science. As they aimed to root sexism out of biology and psychology, they trained a laser focus on Wilson’s sociobiology.

The second key difference was in the response to the criticism. Tiger had answered the charges in a public forum, but Wilson made no public response. Rather, his response was private, shared in a joking correspondence with Tiger. The letters they exchanged show that Wilson—much as Tiger had in his New York Times article—failed to see the charge as a critique. Sexism, for him, was not a problem but an incontrovertible fact of biology. Any reconsideration of Wilson’s legacy on this fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Sociobiology must take account of this lack of outrage—especially since it contrasts strikingly to Wilson’s public and heated repudiation of the charge that sociobiology was racist.

Sex difference underpinned sociobiological theory. Chapter 27 of Sociobiology envisions prehistoric human society on the model of the 1950s nuclear family: “During the day the women and children remain in the residential area while the men forage for game or its symbolic equivalent in the form of barter and money. The males cooperate in bands to hunt or deal with neighboring groups.”³ In On Human Nature, published in 1978, Wilson explained that the root cause of this difference in behavior—male activity and aggression and female passivity—was the differential size and activity of the male and female gametes, motile and active sperm in contrast to large, unmoving egg.⁴

Against such insidious stereotypes, feminist critics—scientists such as Ruth Hubbard, Ruth Bleier, Ethel Tobach, and Rita Arditti—made incisive and persistent objections. They adduced evidence from biology, primatology, and anthropology to upend Wilson’s male chauvinism. They ridiculed his Victorian portrayals of women’s nature. They stressed that scientific theories are human constructs, not direct reflections of reality, and as such they depend on human choices—a point that indicated a wholesale critique of science.⁵ Realizing that the growing debate over sociobiology called for an organized feminist response, in 1977 Tobach and Betty Rosoff launched the first of many meetings of the Genes and Gender Collective.⁶ In 1979, Hubbard helped to edit Women Looking at Biology Looking at Women, a collection of feminist critiques.⁷

Wilson responded to these feminist criticisms not with outraged denial but—as far as I can tell—with public silence. His response was contained mostly in a private correspondence with Tiger, housed now in the Wilson papers at the Library of Congress. The two men clearly had a relationship of mutual admiration; Tiger wrote to praise Sociobiology soon after its publication, and Wilson supported Tiger’s promotion at Rutgers in 1977, stressing his influence on Wilson’s own thinking.⁸ In their correspondence, rather than addressing the criticisms head on, the duo impersonated and made fun of feminists. In one letter from March 1980 to Tiger, whom he addressed as “Cynthia Labyrinth,” Wilson posed as “Gloria Steinem,” on stationery printed with her name at the top in bold:

“Steinem” signed off “Firm Against Compromise.” In July 1980, Wilson wrote to “Nifty Mixhuttler, c/o Prof. Lionel Tiger”:

A footnote after “unmasculine” begged forgiveness for “[a]nother sexist slip.”

Their correspondence shows that Wilson and Tiger noticed the feminist critique; it may even have irritated them. That they chose not to dignify it with a serious response, let alone an outraged one, tells us much about their personal attitudes. As the sociobiology controversy ground on toward stalemate, Wilson sought to mute the criticism and move beyond it, even as he left the charge of sexism unacknowledged and unanswered. Today he is remembered most prominently as a champion of biodiversity: a testament to the successful transformation of his image. But as we reconsider Wilson’s legacy half a century after the publication of Sociobiology, we ought to remember that Wilson’s science inscribed sex difference and gender hierarchy into the heart of human nature, and that Wilson himself met objections to this theorizing with a shrug, private mockery, and ultimately, with silence.