I have a friend (I’ll call her Jane) who I have known for ages, and she is just about the brightest woman I have ever met. Not only does she teach and write and travel all over the place, but she also finds time to read a dozen or so books each month and there’s hardly anything she doesn’t know something about. She is a walking encyclopedia on such varied topics as which museum has the best paintings, what exactly happened to the population of Europe during the Black Death, and what life was like for slaves during the time of our Founding Fathers. She also has a passion for liberal politics and her car is always plastered with provocative bumper stickers that wouldn’t go over very well in some of our red states. In other words, she is a very interesting person to have a conversation with and one of those people who do not suffer fools gladly.
Jane also knows most everything there is to know about the history of the women’s movement (especially in the United States) and is not at all uncomfortable with the label of being called a feminist. And, as I have learned over the years, she is not all that impressed with men in general, and married men in particular, having once passed along to me this little Katherine Hepburn quote: “If you want all men to stop admiring you just so that one can ignore you and constantly criticize you, then get married.”
So, knowing of Jane’s somewhat less-than-lofty opinion of men, when I come across something that just might jerk her chain a little on that subject, I can’t help giving her a call, which I did last week, and our conversation went a little something like this:
“Hey, Jane, how are you?”
“Well, considering the fact that the world looks like it is going to hell in a hand basket, I’m okay I guess.”
“I assume you’re talking about all the wars that are going on all over the place?” I asked.
“You men just have to start yourselves up another war every few years, don’t you?”
“I’m afraid that’s pretty much the way it’s been down through the centuries,” I admitted.
“Anyway, what are you up to, and why the phone call?”
“Well,” I said, “I just wanted to pass along something I ran across in a Los Angeles Times article.”
“About what?” she asked with interest.
“About this new scientific study that’s out on how promiscuous males might be able to be reprogramed into becoming monogamous. The title of the article is `Gene study tames males’ roving eye in rodents’.”
When Jane had stopped laughing, she said, “So, they’ve gone and finally figured out how to keep you married guys at home, have they? I don’t believe a word of it, but do tell me more.”
“Well,” I said, “the article says that scientists working with voles….”
“Now what in the world is a vole?” she interrupted me.
“I think it is like a mouse, only bigger.”
“Okay, go on.”
“Well,” I continued, “these scientists say that just by introducing a single gene in a vole male brain they can get them to hang around the family more and even cozy up with their female partners after sex.”
“Wow,” said Jane, laughing again, “now that would definitely be a scientific breakthrough, if we could actually get most men to want to hang around with their partners after the sex act is over. It’s been my experience that most of you guys have a detailed plan for escaping before you even stroll into the bedroom.”
“According to this article,” I said, “there are two kinds of voles, prairie voles, which pair up like happily married humans with the male inevitably returning to his nest and mate, and meadow voles, which spend most of their time prowling around looking for any available female they can find.”
“There’s nothing new in that,” said Jane. “That’s probably true of a lot of animals.”
“I know,” I said, “but apparently prairie voles have a brain receptor for a hormone that the meadow voles don’t have, and all the scientists had to do was inject a gene to correct that and it made the promiscuous voles behave more like the loyal ones.”
“Very interesting,” said Jane.
“Here,” I said, “let me read you some of the results of the study; `Each male was placed in his own plexiglass complex. Leashed in one room was the original partner. Down the hall was another female primed for mating. The eleven genetically altered voles overwhelmingly stuck to their first partner. The couples mated. Then they nested together and even exchanged licks’.”
“Kind of romantic in its own way, isn’t it?” asked Jane.
“I just thought you would be interested.”
“So, just what are trying to tell me here, Daryl?”
“Just that the day may come when scientists will discover that the only difference between promiscuous men and loyal-to-their-mate men is that their brain chemistry is different. So it could be that we guys aren’t so bad after all and that some of us just have a defective gene.”
“And you discerned all of that from this one little study about eleven voles?” asked Jane, laughing again.
“What’s so funny?” I asked.
“Just that I think there’s a really big difference between the behavior of tiny voles and you great big human male rats!”