If you would ask me to hazard a guess, though, I’d say it had to do more with the social rules of bonobo life. Male chimps do create such alliances (though they’re frequently ‘fickle’), for defense from other chimp groups, to secure alliances, and to hunt. However, no bonobo groups have ever been known to attack each other as in chimps, bonobo hierarchy for males is determined by one’s mother’s status, and bonobos do not hunt for meat. There’s really nothing to gain by forming a group for a bonobo male, so why bother?

There are too many unanswered questions about this story to come to judgement about whether it is right, wrong, applicable to humans, or whatever. I get the distinct impression that it was written with the intention that the reader should come to a particular conclusion, but that conclusion only follows if you make a certain choice of assumptions, without evidence.

Why did Tatango attack Mimi? Was it justified? It is mentioned that Mimi was alpha female – what does that mean, and how does one become an alpha female? Is it through forming alliances able to dominate by violence, or through wisdom and knowledge, or popularity, or what? Why do the males not form gangs as well? What’s going on? What does it mean in a Bonobo cultural context?

Suppose we reverse roles and species, and see how our assumptions stand up. You see a teenage woman run up and slap the alpha male across the face. A group of five of the alpha’s male friends charge, and beat the girl up, until she stops her attacks. She never causes trouble again.

Do you see how our human-based social assumptions lead us into deducing more than we’re actually told? Anthropology is famously a very difficult subject; trying to get the level of cultural detachment to see things as they are, not as you expect. If Bonobo society is matriarchal, wouldn’t it be valid to reverse the sex roles before interpreting? Or is Bonobo society an entirely separate thing – without direct human analogue – to be judged on its own terms?

I can’t see how to extract any moral from the story without a lot more information. And isn’t that what law is about?

And Shirley? The author is Vanessa Woods.

I do not believe that the author of the book was ascribing bonobo behavior as natural to humans, or that chimp behavior was somehow not. That they are both natural models is clear. Humans, unlike apparently either bonobos and chimps, can alter their behavior models, and this is clear in female-dominated societies in our own world, as much as in male-dominated. The latter happens to outnumber the former by an exponentially large number, and even then some human male-dominated societies do not always treat their females in such a manner as others do, and this tells us that we can flexibly alter the way it works. White society is still male-dominated, and no amount of apologetics will solve this.

Feminist campaigners might find it useful to keep that in mind, when you get male support and male protection from violence. Don’t protect yourself by building a fence against men.

1) I totally agree that women sometimes contribute to “victim blaming” in violence against women, we can’t forget that the most frequent perpetrators are actually men, and that without men speaking up against sexual assault, it will continue to be used as a weapon of power against women.

2) Most sexual assaults occur with someone we know, not out in the woods with some rogue stranger. If we can create an environment where it is not so taboo for women to talk about sexual assault, or not so legally daunting, then maybe women can work together in a more open and empowering way than simply retaliating.