Deena Emera and the Politicalization of Biology

 

In the July 24 "Ideas" section of the Boston Globe, Deena Emera, who is identified as a "senior scientist" at the "Center for Reproductive Longevity and Equality"  (a pretty loaded and packed name in itself) tells us that female elephant seals have "learned to mate in open water--not a trivial task--with males of their choosing" to avoid the "brutish 'beachmaster' who controls the harem of female seals on shore, where sexual intercourse ordinarily occurs, and at the discretion of the dominant male. 

One can only imagine Dr. Emera interviewing these female elephant seals about their motivation for free water frolic, and asking them if these extracurricular activities with non dominant males were really their choice, or whether they were simply accosted by off brand male elephant seals when the females thought they were freed from copulation obligations on shore.

Did Dr. Emera actually make direct observations, or did she simply read about all this?

Better yet, Dr. Emera tells us, female bottlenose dolphins, have devised an even more elaborate scheme to select who will be the biologic fathers of their children: "The dolphin vagina evolved elaborate flaps and folds that give a females some freedom of choice. Not the choice of sexual partner--male dolphins are aggressive and unrelenting--but of whose sperm she'll allow to fertilize her eggs. Females may position themselves during copulation , and contract or relax their vaginal muscles, to steer wanted sperm toward their eggs and unwanted sperm toward on of the end end folds."

And this, in the Boston Globe!

The Phantom has never fancied himself much of a scientist, but he has absorbed enough about the scientific method to wonder about those vaginal folds in the bottle nosed dolphin and how they work. The folds are, of course, anatomy. You can look at them, touch them, feel them, but you would need very special equipment and techniques, presumably, to be able to see them in action. Masters and Johnson, in their breakthrough research in human sexuality, had to position cameras and pressure sensors inside human vaginas. That required a great deal of cooperation from willing subjects, permissions, negotiations, special laboratories, and facilities. The Phantom can only imagine the difficulties doing these kinds of measurements cross species and in the water. Talk about dancing backwards in high heels.

And even if you could, somehow, trace the semen in its journey inside toward the eggs, and even if you could see that the semen from dolphin A gets diverted away from egg country, but semen from dolphin B gets directed toward the egg, you would still need to ask how the female dolphin does this, if it is a voluntary, conscious decision and for that, presumably, you would have to be able to interview the dolphin.

"These are just a few of the many examples in nature illustrating the choices that female animals are constantly making about reproduction and the lengths they go to make these choices...Males often have different interests and strategies for reproductive success, which may involve sexual intimidation, coercion and other methods to control female reproduction."

Having watched untold hours of David Attenborough's nature flicks showing aroused elephants, birds doing mating dances, frogs, wolves, buck deer, and most of all tigers (where sex can result in a dead male) and spiders, where the male is routinely devoured post coital by the female,  I was stunned to learn that, in nature, males are guilty of sexual intimidation, i.e. rape, of the female counterparts of their species.

But it is the last paragraph with illuminates Professor Emera's position:

"In the reversal of Roe v Wade, the Supreme Court's majority decided that abortion isn't deeply rooted in the history and traditions of the country, so it shouldn't bee protected by the Constitution. But in fact, female reproductive choice is one of the most deeply rooted 'traditions' of nature, one that can be traced back hundreds of millions of years."

So there you have it: Dobbs denies evolutionary history.

Dr. Emera

Dr. Emera has perhaps done such interviews with dolphins and elephant seals--her space in the Globe was limited and she could not cover all the details, but the Phantom remains dazzled by the idea of a bottlenose dolphin giving up her deep preference for dolphin B because, you know, he's just so cute, or maybe intelligent, or gentle and kind. 

Somehow, somewhere, the Phantom gets the idea that Dr. Emera's desire to come to the conclusion that females, ultimately, rule, throughout the phylum, across species, as an evolutionary imperative, guided her in the direction of seeing what she wants to see in her "science."