The constant belief that a male run society is innately oppressive, in contrast to a female run society (who would of course be egalitarian by instinct because… women?) Is a myth that plagues bonobos to no end (sigh). Feminist themselves have looked at bonobos as a marker of how to change society for the better; example of cringe feminism here and here (CW, this media contains depictions of critical levels of male guilt). Hilariously enough they have a ‘darwinian feminist’ (Dr. Amy Parish) who has the ignorance to call bonobos “the feminists of the great ape family”, but I suppose that is up for interpretation, as I’ll demonstrate.

This book (The Bonobos, 2008), thoroughly demystifies this myth constantly paraded by liberals.

Contrary to the common view derived from single-group studies, we found many variants from the presumed conciliatory, peaceful, and egalitarian bonobo. Bonobos exhibit relatively low conciliatory tendencies. Furthermore, serious aggression occurs. Intersexual aggression is especially common; females gang together against lower-ranking males (Parish 1996). We observed fierce female attacks on lower-ranking males in Planckendael, Twycross, Apenheul, Wuppertal and Frankfurt Zoo. Often they result in the temporary or permanent removal of the target males, though lethal aggression that occurs among chimpanzees (de Waal 1986) is not recorded. The orphan males, which have been hand-reared, have no mother to back them up during conflicts, and may lack social skills to cope with the attacks, are typical scapegoats of redirected aggression and suffer most from violent female attacks.

On top of the abuse and mutilation targeting males near exclusively, there are instances of females coercing males. These male victims expressing panic and ultimately distress during submission, as I’ll quote from this article here, where an interviewer talks with Amy Parish.

Parish described a male bonobo in Frankfurt with only eight digits intact, and another male that had had its penis nearly severed. Intrigued, Parish looked at zoo veterinary records and discovered that more than 95 percent of serious injuries were inflicted on males by females.

[...]

But sometimes an unenthusiastic male may try to shake off a female, to little avail. A female may “solicit” such a male again and again, putting her arms around him repeatedly as he attempts to slip away, refusing to be refused. Eventually, they have sex.

[...]

Female bonobos force males to have sex with them against their will. This is not difficult to do, she pointed out, since the males frequently have erections from the anxiety of being dominated and coerced. During the sex, she elaborated, males may give distress vocalizations and attempt to escape.

Violence against males is frequent and has nothing to do with female defense (as in, these attacks are better described as occuring due to slight annoyances) as detailed by this abstract, you can witness female-female aggression here. There’s also a myth that infanticide doesn’t exist, when there are females who will kidnap infants from other mothers, this having been seen to kill an infant (source from wiki, sociosexual behavior). For some reason this is not classified as infanticide by evolutionary anthropologist / primatologist, but anyawy.

Stepping into the arena of the common myth that male bonobos are the most feminist of primate males, we have this one lovely statistic where one dominant male sires 62% of offspring in contrast to chimpanzee where the highest dominant male sires only 51% [source30575-4.pdf)]. The reason being the obvious: “Male reproductive skew was higher in bonobos than chimpanzees because high-ranking bonobo males more effectively monopolized reproduction.”

But what it means to be a dominant male as a bonobo is not the same for a chimpanzee. Instead of individual displays of dominance by a chimp, a bonobo relies upon his mother’s status. A high status mother = a dominant son. And apparently, the feminist of the great apes, are not so feminist in this regard as high status mothers will aid their sons in coercing lower status females, and this works 71% of the time. As easy as that you get the 62% stat and can grasp quickly why dominant sons don’t usurp their moms and convert into a chimpanzee style dominance system, seems to be working as intended (kinda similar to male feminists minus the sire rate).

We observed 56 attempts of direct sexual coercion performed by two males with a combined success rate of 71.4%. Of the two males who engaged in direct sexual coercion behaviors, the son of the alpha female (Gander) participated in direct sexual coercion events significantly more than any other male. We also observed that all but two females were targets of direct sexual coercion, where only the alpha female and mother to Gander (Unga) and mother (Susie) of the previous alpha male (Donnie) did not receive any direct sexual coercion… conflicts in which [Gander] was involved were almost always met with coalitionary aggressive support from his mother, the alpha female, who was frequently observed to engage in intense forms of retaliatory aggression including physical contact that would often result in the wounding of targets. All individuals in this group were highly deferent to the alpha female, and she received the least amount of aggression from males during the course of this study.

and here is a quote from this article.

The researchers evaluated the determinants of mating success in male bonobos using data from nine males in a wild population and determined kinship relations using genetic markers. Results reveal a steep, linear male dominance hierarchy and a positive correlation between dominance status and mating success. In addition to rank, the presence of mothers does indeed enhance the mating success of sons and thereby reduces [increases?] the proportion of matings by the highest ranking male.

Just like humans and chimps, bonobos partake in out-group aggression against males (I’m not sure if these are fatal like chimp raids) [source].

And to no suprise to many of us, these are one of our closest ancestors along with chimpanzee and gorillas, who we share 98.7% of our DNA with. And as it stands now, it is becoming a common statement among evolutionary anthropologists to say that bonobos are far more similar to humans than chimpanzees, and that the chimpanzee model is useful but not the full picture. Here's a list of reads on human and bonobo similarities: muscularity similarities, hormonal similarities, some social cognition stuff. It’s a joke to think bonobos magically ended up as some kumbaya species among great apes. They're a hierarchical species, a great ape species: like chimpanzees, like gorillas, like orangutans, like humans.

Not so feminist are they, but I’ll leave the definition of feminist up for interpretation. Here’re two good reads, one is an abstract and the other is the full article where I found the 71% male coercion success rate stat.

As a side note, the inability for us to see any of this, is a clear indication of how misandry, the lack of empathy for men, and benevolent sexism within academia, inhibits our ability to understand humans and maybe even other primates. Giving us lovely articles like “is that man a bonobo or a chimp?” or the title “the absence of sexual coercion in bonobos” or here and here, in fact you can google scholar female bonobo sexual coercion of males and get the idea pretty fast.

Anyway, to me this is a really important tool for any MRA or men’s advocate who wants to debate feminist on female aggression and the severity of female aggression against males. With this, maybe we can get feminist to admit whether they are bonobos or egalitarians.