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Hello and welcome to Gaze Reading and this episode of Spill the T. I'm your host, Jason Blitman, and I am joined by professor Dr. Nathan H. Lent And he and I spill the T on Sexual Evolution. He is the author of the book, the Sexual Evolution, and we get into it. And I'm so excited for you to hear this episode. If you. I haven't listened to the other episode in the series. I talked to Elda Rator, who is the VP and publisher of Penguin Classics, and we talk about what makes a classic, a classic. You could find that wherever you get your podcasts or at gays reading.com. A few quick things before we dive in. If you are new to Gay's reading, welcome if you've joined us before, welcome back. Always happy to have you. If you like what you're hearing, please share us with your friends. Follow us on social media at Gaze Reading and like, and subscribe wherever you get your podcast. So you'll be the first to know when a new episode drops. also, I'm partnering with Aardvark Book Club to do An exclusive introductory discount where you can get your first book for$4 and free shipping. Just go to art vark book club.com. Use the code gaze reading and you can get your first order for$4. It's such a good deal. Highly recommend. I think that's all I got for you. I hope everyone is having a wonderful week. We'll be back with our regularly scheduled programming on Tuesday with an author, with a new book coming out. But in the meantime, please enjoy the special spill the t episode with Nathan, HL.

Jason Blitman: 1:38

I am thrilled to have you here on Gay's reading today. And talking about your book, um, the Sexual Evolution, how 500 million years of sex, gender, and mating shape Modern Relationships.

Nathan H. Lents: 1:51

That's it.

Jason Blitman: 1:52

I think that sort of sums it up. How did this book come to be?

Nathan H. Lents: 1:56

Well, um, it's, it's interesting that you ask that because we talk about it now very differently than we thought we would because of how much the world has changed since the book was finished last summer. But I'll tell you how the book came about is, I've been teaching the biology of Sex and Gender for about 15 years. And, um, two, two things really led to me wanting to write this book. One was that. I teach my class as a seminar where we read a lot of papers, original research in the biology literature, so studies that are done on various animals and, and how they, you know, how their reproductive behaviors and how they construct sex and gender. And, I became increasingly annoyed with the way that scientists. Biologists, my fellow biologists, discuss their own data, discuss their own observations. and my original drafts of the book actually was quite a bit more polemical, where I was taking a lot more, umbrage with the way that that scientists discuss sex and gender in animals. I toned that down quite a bit because my editor, I think, wisely was like, you know, you need some allies. You can't just pick on everybody. You

Jason Blitman: 3:01

It's like, it's like when they say, you know, when you have strong feelings, like write the email but don't hit send. Yeah.

Nathan H. Lents: 3:07

Yeah, kind of like that. So we tone, we tone down a lot of the criticisms. Um, but I, but a lot of'em made it in there and, and, and a lot of them do come out when I give book talks, so you can hear more about those. But that was one side. And then the other side was, you know, young people, especially young people, are really approaching these. Issues much differently than the older generation. So, so in, in just two generations, at least in the western world, the approach to sex and gender has changed quite a bit. Um, you know, from people, uh, from the approach approaches to when you get married, I. You know, for example, um, and how you think about your own sexuality, whether or not it's fixed or fluid, and, you know, different labels, you know, pansexual, demisexual, none of these things, you know, these labels anyway existed not that long ago. Um, and even things with gender and gender expression and gender identity, it's just radically different. And young people have had a kind of no labels, no rules approach to these things, including open relationships and polyamory and swinging and all this. And it freaks. It freaks older people out. You know, if you're over the age of 40 or 50, uh, the young people are just kind of incomprehensible to you in terms of sex and gender. And so what I wanted to write a book that sort of explains. This in a way that that reminds everyone that this is not really anything new, actually, that other cultures, other times, other places around the world have done this differently. Um, and creatively more diversely, but other animals approach sex, gender, and, and, and sexual relationships. In this much more expansive, broad fluid sort of way. So what young people are doing now is a rediscovery of a much more expansive relationship with, with sexuality that we used to have that, you know, humans used to have in other cultures, other times, and that our animal cousins enjoy today. And I use the word enjoy because I think it's a better way to live actually, to have a, a much less restrictive approach to sex and

Jason Blitman: 5:03

Yeah. It's so interesting that you say that because it makes me think, I was watching some TV show, I think it was Brooklyn Nine nine, shout out to Brooklyn nine nine.

Nathan H. Lents: 5:13

Great show.

Jason Blitman: 5:14

It's a great show. Um, and there was that, there was a comment made about how dogs mouths are cleaner than humans. And like that obviously is a fallacy. It makes us feel better about having our dogs lick our faces. Right. And I think there's something too about the. The same thing about people, people or animals enjoying sex. Right. I feel like I was, I was taught, you know, it's like humans and dolphins are the two creatures that quote unquote enjoy sex or have sex for the sake of enjoyment. and of course, upon reading your book, I realize that is not true. And there's, there's so many, it's so much more than that. And so it's interesting just to think like why we even. Tell ourselves these things in the first place.

Nathan H. Lents: 5:55

Right. And I think, as I kind of hint at it in the book, I mean mostly our approach to this has been due to very recent social constructions around sexuality. And I think, I think that a lot of biologists looked out at the natural world and they squinted really hard to see sex the way that they, they think it should be in human. So, so it was much easier to sort of live with yourself in a consistent way. If animals only have sex for procreation and they mate for life and they're all heterosexual and all that, that kept it simple. If, if that's how animals do it, then that must be, that's why it's right for humans to do it that way and all of that. And of course all of that's bullshit. It's all bullshit.

Jason Blitman: 6:37

right. Before we get into some, uh, more nitty gritty and specific things to, things that interest me as as gay reading, let's just say among the things we want to, among the questions we want to answer today is, what is sexual evolution?

Nathan H. Lents: 6:56

Mm-hmm. Well, um, so the, the, well, you mean the title

Jason Blitman: 7:01

yeah. Yeah. I think just like conceptually, what, like if someone said, what does sexual evolution mean? I think obviously we can deduce and make our own assumptions, but to you, in your, in your, as you're embarking on writing this book, what does that mean? How do you define sexual evolution?

Nathan H. Lents: 7:19

So to me it's in recognition that sex has a long history. Hu humans did not just fall out of the sky, you know, a few thousand years ago, right? Humans are the product. Of millions, hundreds of millions of years of evolution. And that is seen all throughout our body, all throughout our behavior. There's a long history to almost everything about us, to truly everything about us has a very long history, and sex is no different. So the way that we approach sex, the way that we approach gender, the way that we have sex with each other is the result of hundreds of millions of years of evolutionary tinkering and selection. And um, and to me. To understand, to really truly understand sex as a behavior, um, in, in forgetting about sex bodies for a second, but just think about the behavior of sex. You can't divorce it from its history. I. You have to, you have to really appreciate the long history of sexual creatures doing what sexual creatures do. Because if you wanna understand the politics of the United States, right, you have to understand its history. You cannot understand the current state of affairs without also looking backwards in time to see how we got here. And it's the same sort of thing with biology. You really evolution. Um, you can't subtract evolution. From anything about the human experience and expect, and expect to understand it all because there's a lot of stuff that's weird and quirky about our biology. It really calls out for an explanation and evolution usually provides that explanation or at least tentatively, uh, provides that explanation. So I, that's why, that's what I mean by it.

Jason Blitman: 8:52

yeah, no, I, I love that. Thank you for, for sharing that. I was in conversation, I don't know, a couple years ago now with the author and historian Peter Franco Pan about his book The Earth Transformed and what's fascinating is he is a historian writing a book of, I mean, it, it was like a. 800 page book that essentially was the history of the world. The first chapter was called the Dawn of Time, and it really takes us to today and part of what, what the book tries to unpack is that there's always been global warming. The earth has sort of always been in peril and the earth will continue to spin after humans are long gone. Right? And, and so it's very interesting. I think that we as humans really, uh, latch on to the time and place that we are existing.

Nathan H. Lents: 9:41

Right. As if it's always been this way, this is the right way. This is, you know. Yeah. Yeah. It's true. We are, we are a very recent appearance on this planet. Uh, and we've transformed the planet tremendously since we've arrived, almost, almost always for the negative, for for the worse. Um, and I mean, humans have, have invaded every, you know, landscape that they arrive in and totally transform it. Um, which by the way is kind of the conclusion I draw in the book. If you go all the way to the end of the book, well wait a minute, actually, no one's gonna read the book.

Jason Blitman: 10:11

Right. Don't, don't give, don't, don't give away the ending. No, no, no. That's, that's what, that's why I shared what Peter Frankel Pan said in his book. Um. Uh,

Nathan H. Lents: 10:19

You gotta read. You gotta read it.

Jason Blitman: 10:22

again, there are so many things I wanna talk about, but I think that, you know, a very hot topic, particularly in the queer community is monogamy. And you do go on to sort of talk about your chapter is fantastically called monogamish, which is one of my favorite words. Um, can, can you talk about monogamy, social monogamy versus sexual monogamy? Uh. And in whatever you feel, uh, appropriate, you don't need to like come out and give me a whole lecture, although I would happily sit here and appreciate it, but I don't want to put you on the spot like that.

Nathan H. Lents: 10:59

Right. Well, so monogamy, is really, you have to understand the two sides of it. There's social or economic monogamy, which is just the tendency to pair up. And lots of animals do this. Lots of animals pair up by far, not all of them, but like for example, birds are, are the kind of the stars of monogamy. They do tend to pair up. Um, whereas mammals, only about 15% of mammal species pair up. Um, that's, that's monogamy the attachment, um, that two individuals have. And you, you form a relationship. That's a, that almost always involves sharing of resources, sharing of a homestead, living together, raising children together if there are children, that kind of thing. That, that relationship that takes priority over all other relationships. That's what monogamy is. It's en enduring, you know, for birds will often just do it for one season, but whatever that, that long-term relationship that's monogamy. And humans, it's, it, it's, it's not a hundred percent universal, but pairing up is a human tendency. We tend to do this, we tend to pair up in these one-to-one relationships. Um, sexual monogamy or sexual fidelity is the exclusion of, you know, of all other sexual partners in favor of the one that you are bonded with, right? So. You, you would be sexual monogamies only even possible if you're already socially monogamous. But it turns out that social monogamies pretty common, especially in birds. Sexual monogamy is almost unheard of in the natural world. It's very, very, very rare. And we only have appreciated that for a couple of decades because when, when monogamy was studied in birds, for example. The tendency to pair up, including multiple seasons in some species, we assumed that it was sexually faithful. Um, it was purely an assumption. It was not really true or tested. And when DNA testing was invented, so paternity testing essentially for birds, all of the ornithologists all around the world, one by one started testing their species and. Kind of scratching their heads going, oh my gosh, they are not sexually exclusive in these pairs. It's almost no birds are sexually exclusive. The females will accept extra pair populations. The males will engage in extra pair populations. And there's various reasons why they do that. And that's, that's how I open the chapters. Talk about what do they get out of it? Why would you want to, what's, why is it not count?'cause all these people would think it's counterproductive to the para bond, but it's really not. And. Um, so we, no hu no birds are really sexually faithful among mammals. It's all small minority that that pair up anyway. Right? So it's only about 15, well, I'm sorry, it's 15% of primates, uh, are monogamous only about 8% in the whole mammal family. But of those primates, do you know how many species have found to be sexually faithful? Eight, eight species out of something like 6,000 mammal species out there. So it's a tiny, tiny minority. Sexual fidelity is just not a commonplace thing out in the animal world, including among creatures that parabon. So when humans approach the issue of monogamy, um, I wanna be clear that I'm not saying that. That if you choose to be sexually monogamous, that that's unnatural and we shouldn't do that, and we need to teach people differently. That's not at all what I'm saying. What I am saying though is we are peculiar for wanting sexual monogamy, uh, as a society, as a culture. We didn't use to have it in our culture that much anyway. And so it's not, it's not a biological imperative at all. So you don't, we're not built for monogamy. Now, I don't think we're really built for anything else either, in particular. I think we're very flexibly built when it comes to our sexuality. Um, but the really, the only big criticism or push pushback that, that is a corollary of that is if anyone tries to tell you that open relationships are unnatural, well, that's just not true

Jason Blitman: 14:53

Sure.

Nathan H. Lents: 14:54

because, because among the para bonded species that are out there, they're almost all in what we would call open relationships.

Jason Blitman: 15:00

and when, I don't know how familiar you are with the history of monogamy amongst humans, but how was that introduced?

Nathan H. Lents: 15:11

Well in different regions of the world, um, what we think of as like marriage, kind of. Um, and, and this is not my expertise either. I'm a

Jason Blitman: 15:20

yeah, yeah, yeah. That's right.

Nathan H. Lents: 15:21

but the way I see it, the lens, I, I say my conclusion of all the reading that I've done on this is that, um, really the one-to-one relationships emerged, um, after Polygeny. So Polygeny became the first kind of, social control where you had a single male dominating a small group of females, and that was what families looked like. So a single powerful, uh, male, uh, dominating a small group. And that was the,

Jason Blitman: 15:48

I want to, I wanna interrupt. Just to say per your book, I was shocked to see that that's how gorillas function,

Nathan H. Lents: 15:55

Yeah, many do. Yeah. In ing. Yeah. So you have a single dominant male that, that dominates over a small group of, uh, females. Um, and just whether it's in humans or gorillas or lion or whatever, a lot of males, especially straight guys, think that sounds very attractive. What they're missing is that what it means is that most males don't get that. Right. They're, they die trying. Um, and even if they're successful, they're always looking over their shoulder because the harem, you know, the next male would love to depose that one male. So it's a very despotic, despotic, kind of hierarchical way that's actually not pleasant for anyone involved, right? But the genes involved in, in, you know, the, the mail being spread, you know, to support that. So evolution doesn't always come up with, uh, fun solutions. Polygeny was sort of first, and then monogamy came essentially as a pushback against Polygeny. Um, by, by males. Mostly by males. Uh, try to have some form of equity. Then you get to marriage. So when civilization started to, uh, build on top of, uh, agriculture, then you started to have city states, and then you have eventually civilizations, which are just cultural steam rollers, right? So they just sort of mow down all of the. Microcultures all around and absorb almost like a planet, forming and collecting rocks, right? It's the same kind of thing, but with cultures. And once you have these big civilizations where it's Greece, roam, it really, Rome is what we're talking about in, in the West. Um, you had to have a system for establishing inheritance. So you have powerful, powerful families with, with resources and who gets them when, when the next generation, you know, when people die and all this. So this invented the concept of legitimacy. Like a legitimate heir. And so a, a man, a woman, a family who gets the, the, the house, uh, in the next generation. Interestingly, sexual fidelity, again, not implied in that I. So, so monogamy was called the Roman custom, uh, throughout most of Europe, and it kind of spread really by force. Um, but it didn't include, you know, sexual faithfulness. Um, at least not originally. That sort of came when the church, when the Christian Church, uh, took over the Roman Empire. Their values started to then, so, so the, the Roman Empire had the tentacles and then the church, you know, got in that, on, on the structure that was already sort of existed politically and then enforced, uh, Christian values onto the marriage structure and,

Jason Blitman: 18:21

Oh, that's so interesting.

Nathan H. Lents: 18:22

Yeah, so it's a very recent sexual fidelity is a very recent idea, even in the West.

Jason Blitman: 18:27

Well, and I think to simplify for me in my brain, the social versus sexual monogamy, learning about birds and sort of how it was, it, it wasn't'cause they liked hanging out. It was, it was because they needed each other, right? One, one is, one is sitting on the gag while the other one is out, you know, getting food and, and vice versa. And, uh, I love my husband and I have no intention of, of breaking up with him, but I need my health insurance. You know? Right. So that's, I think that's the version of sitting on the egg

Nathan H. Lents: 18:59

That's right. Economic monogamy. It's economic monogamy. And, and that's why birds are the masters of monogamy is because their eggs require that constant incubation. So somebody has to be, in order to develop properly, the eggs, really, somebody has to be sitting on'em pretty much all the time. Whereas in mammals, you know, the pregnancy is internal. So that's why mammals are not particularly prone to monogamy as a group. It, you know, pri primates do it a little bit more than others. But, um, it's just one way to, to solve that problem if you're a mammal. Um, the, the problem of taking care of young and, and all of this, and family structures in animals, I really do view them as vehicles for raising families. That doesn't mean that every member has to personally be involved in procreation, but the whole village is involved right? In raising the next generation. And so. Um, you know, the people, people make a big deal about what's the comparison of the human family and other animals. You know, I, I, I have to be so careful in doing that because, you know, they don't live like we live. Right. And the social forces are, are, are the key part of that. So

Jason Blitman: 20:05

you talk a bit about in the book and, uh, in some other. Conversations that you've had about taboos and you know, it's interesting because taboos are taboos because they're not things that are out in the open and they're, they're sort of, uh, behind the, the closed doors, sex being one of those things. And I think sexual non-monogamy or sexual monogamish, uh, is a part of that. And I'm, I'm curious, as you've said, things have changed. Even in the last few years, you were saying things we're talking about things differently than when you were even writing the book. Um, can you share a little bit about what you've seen change in the short term and maybe what you c could project in the long term? Yeah.

Nathan H. Lents: 20:54

Yeah. Well, so in the short term, we've definitely seen, are you talking about in humans? I, I

Jason Blitman: 20:59

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah,

Nathan H. Lents: 21:00

Yeah. Um, so young people now under the age of, uh, 30, we'll say. Uh, much more likely to identify as queer, much more likely to be in open relationships or polyamory, uh, or, or, or, um, ask skewing relationships altogether. Um, and I've had, you've heard, hear more and more of these terms like, uh, relationship anarchy, which are essentially kind of a no, absolutely no rules, no structure, uh, approach to relationships, relationships. Um, I, I think one, one thing that's I do wanna say about it is that it doesn't escape the drama, right?

Jason Blitman: 21:33

Oh, no, no, of course not.

Nathan H. Lents: 21:35

People are like, oh, well that have people like this just solved the problem of jealousy. And I'm like, oh my gosh. No.

Jason Blitman: 21:42

No. And if someone has learned how to solve jealousy, please call me. I need to know

Nathan H. Lents: 21:48

And, and they won't because if you, if you, as I talked about in the chapter, other animals experience that, right? And it's not that conflict. The reproductive conflict, if you will, is not going anywhere.

Jason Blitman: 21:59

right.

Nathan H. Lents: 22:00

So these other kinds of relationships are not necessarily meant to, you know, be one size fits all and we can, you know, solve all of our problems. It's just another approach. And. Um, personally, I, I see pros and cons with all of them, and my opinion's always been, Hey, you know, work it out for yourself, you and your partners, whatever your partner or partners, you know, work it out. And, you know, honesty, transparency go a long way. Um, and, but if you think it's a, an escape from, you know, having a jealous partner, forget about that. I mean, it's, in many ways it's a lot worse. Um, but, but. But, but you see this, this big difference among people under 30 and under 40, um, and marriage rates, uh, interesting though. So marriage rates are declining big time and, and age of first marriage is, is, is, is on the rise. However, divorce rates are also falling, and they've been falling since the early two thousands, really since the late nineties. Um, the rates of divorce, um, are plummeting because people wait much longer and, and decide to get married after they've already done a lot of the things that cause relationship trouble, um, early in your life, you know, financial insecurity and, and professional, you know, establishment and prioritizing, you know, family versus career versus, you know, all of these things kind of get worked out in your twenties and then people are starting to get married. So marriages are actually more stable than they had been. Uh, from the 1960s through the nineties, marriages are more stable now. Part partly of that is, is uh, same-sex marriages tend to be more stable than opposite sex marriages, but that's working out too. I mean, we now have gay divorce that we never had that problem before. Right. So that's a new problem.

Jason Blitman: 23:39

right. With gay marriage comes Gay Divorce.

Nathan H. Lents: 23:41

Yeah. But, but mar gay marriages do tend to be more stable than opposite sex ones for the obvious reason that you're rarely forced into it by social pressure. Um, but um, anyway, I think it's interesting. People concentrate a lot about marriage, race, declining Those who are, you know, reactionaries, but they're not celebrating the decline of divorce rates. Because to me, a divorce is much more of a disruption than just waiting to get married. Right. So, I don't know. You know they,

Jason Blitman: 24:11

And percentage wise, you would think they sort of balance each other out.

Nathan H. Lents: 24:15

somewhat. I mean, you do have, you do. Right now we have now the majority of adults for the first time since they've had data are unmarried. That's never happened before. So the majority of it's are either formerly married or not yet married. That's now only about half of us adults are in a, in a marriage. Um, and that's very, you know, upsetting and unsettling to some people'cause they think that that's the only way that humans should be. Right. So, you know, it's a failure of our society when this doesn't happen. So personally, I don't see the guy crumbling from something like that,

Jason Blitman: 24:48

Yeah, right. Like that's complicated in its own way of like why that societal pressure comes, comes into play. Um, and so, so the, you don't have a crystal ball,

Nathan H. Lents: 25:02

Mm.

Jason Blitman: 25:03

but in terms of trends,

Nathan H. Lents: 25:06

Mm-hmm.

Jason Blitman: 25:07

what, what does the future of. Monogamy of sexual evolution, what does that look like to you? And, and, and I Maybe that, maybe, I mean, next year, maybe, I mean, in 20 years. And I think, you know, just sort of, obviously none of this is fact or based in, you know, anything specific. But based on your, your experience and your awareness, what would you say?

Nathan H. Lents: 25:31

Yeah, so the trend I see is, is an increasing number. Of people approaching monogamy from an open or polyamorous kind of position. I think that that's pretty clearly on the rise. Like, and we can project that out for a little while. Uh, these things tend to move in pendulums, but there's also progress to the pendulum, if that makes sense. So you'll have

Jason Blitman: 25:49

Two steps forward, right?

Nathan H. Lents: 25:51

kind of thing. Yeah. You'll see some of that because there's some pushback. Um. You know, even among young people, you know, they see, you know, they'll have a bad experience and then they'll go fleeing back to maybe my parents were right, you know, kind of a thing. Um, it's interestingly though, whenever something goes wrong in a traditional relationship, no one questions whether the traditional relationship itself was the problem. But every time an open relationship goes wrong, people, they, oh, well that's why. What did you expect? You know? Um, and it's, that's a lot of pressure to carry on. And, um, but you know, the speaking of pressure. I, I hope that one thing that will come out of this is understanding that the society doesn't have to be structured any particular way, uh, for things to work out. You know what I mean? Like, you don't have to have marriage as the dominant way that families are made monogamous, you know, dyads one-to-one. That the fact that, that people think that's the only way western society could have worked out. That's, that's remarkably to me that people think that when you consider the diversity of relationships around the world, culturally and historically, So I hope that we'll come out of this as a more diverse approach to marriage and family life. Um, whether or not, um, non-monogamy becomes dominant over sexual monogamy, that I would be very. Hesitant to make any predictions on because I, I do think there will be, you know, a maturing that goes on as we all kind of get used to this as, as something that goes on The gay community is a, you know, good 20 years ahead of the straight community on most of these trends. Um, and what you'll see is a le what I see anyway is a bit of a leveling off, uh, a fair number of gay men. Uh, and I'm, I am particularly, uh, talking about men in this example. Um, having explored sexual, um, non-monogamy, um, open relationships and you, you're starting to see people kind of retrench and go back in and say, well, that was fun for a couple of years, and a couple of bumps and bruises and we're back into a closed, uh, a marriage, you know, uh, for all the reasons I've talked about. You know, they thought it was an escape from jealousy, thought it was an escape from some of this conflict, but it's just another variety of that conflict. there's also an additional social cost when you are against the grain, right? So that you, you do feel some of that pressure just by the fact that you are different than societal expectations and that pressure comes home to roost, you know,

Jason Blitman: 28:16

Mm.

Nathan H. Lents: 28:17

So, you know, with your family, with whatever, and your family might be fine with it, but then your partner's family isn't fine with it. So they try to destabilize your, your relationship because of that, because of their non-approval. Maybe, maybe not on purpose, but you know. They want something better for their son, for example. And so they try to, you know, so you have whispers in your ear, which when relationships encounter difficulties, which they will, those voices in the, in your ear become a little bit louder. So I think that this will, like I said, there's a maturing and a leveling off that will happen and, and then we can see sort of the natural prevalence of this.

Jason Blitman: 28:49

Yeah. You know, something also, of course that comes up in the book and in life in general and in this podcast all the time is, is the idea of binary

Nathan H. Lents: 28:58

Mm-hmm.

Jason Blitman: 28:58

binary thinking. And it, it, it permeates I think every sort of conversation that we're having, including this one. And, and for me in particular, to speak to my own experience, I, when I heard the term open relationship. I assumed a door wide open, a free for all, a, you know, no rules, all fun, and, and for some reason I just had these crazy expectations in my own mind because of society or because of, I guess in my mind it was the opposite of. Monogamy. Right. Uh, and so just, I sort of wanna say out loud to say to you to sort of talk in general about the idea of that it isn't that black and white, you know, I like to use the term and sometimes, uh, a jar instead of open,

Nathan H. Lents: 29:56

Mm-hmm.

Jason Blitman: 29:56

right. Just to sort of paint the picture that it, it, the door can be cracked. It doesn't, it doesn't have to be a free for all. And you can within your, your. Partnership, define it for yourself, which I think for me was a big unlock. Just in terms of like, regardless of how you want to move forward, to be on the same page about what it means to you in a relationship, um, is really important.

Nathan H. Lents: 30:24

I, I think it is, it can be a very empowering exercise to approach these things and decide within a couple, uh, how, how, where the rules are, where the boundaries are, where the, um. You know, where, how you want to define essential relations, all these kinds of things. And one good thing that tends to come outta this is a lot of very open, honest, frank, vulnerable communication. Um, and any marriage anywhere is going to be better off for having more open communication, more dialogue, more vulnerability. I can't imagine a marriage being worse off for having

Jason Blitman: 31:00

Talking too much

Nathan H. Lents: 31:01

detail. Yeah. Um, but I think, so I actually had a section of the introduction originally that was all kind of taken out during editing, where I talked about just some of the most common rules that people. Uh, and, you know, use in these open relationships. And, you know, some people have like a, well, you know, only when you're out of town, uh, or never in the home, or like in the marital bed, uh, or I don't wanna know, I don't wanna hear about, you know, don't ask, don't tell. And then other people are like, no, full disclosure, I want names and faces and, you know, it's all over the place.

Jason Blitman: 31:35

Right. Resumes

Nathan H. Lents: 31:37

Yeah.

Jason Blitman: 31:38

credit score. Right,

Nathan H. Lents: 31:39

Or only they play together. You see that a lot too. Like we can play together but not on our own. And there's good reasons why everyone, you know, these are all potentially good rules. Um, what, what you do end up with though is a lot of these rules, boundaries, uh, pitfalls is what those become, right? Because they're, anytime you have a rule is an opportunity for rural breaking

Jason Blitman: 31:59

Yep.

Nathan H. Lents: 32:00

So, yeah, so you end up with this kind of, this navigating and what happens is a lot of times the people who are, who aren't in the marriage, but who are tangentially uh, involved, can feel very kind of depersonalized, dehumanized as if they're now just a means to an end. Like I, okay. I'm just. Sexual gratification for you. That's all that's allowed or whatever, or, oh, well I, if I had met you in another city, we could have sex, but because I live here, we can, you know what I mean? And it makes the other person feel very expendable and very, so, you know, it's one of these things where I think we're evolving into all of that too, and being, being an extra person in somebody else's marriage, um, until you've done it yourself, you know, there's some, we some weird psychology. Um, that's involved, that nothing has really prepared us for. Um, and that was the thing you mentioned, like when you heard open marriage, you had this expectation because who were your role models for that? Who sat you down and talked to you about any of these? Nobody. Right. So we're all having to invent this stuff for ourselves. So of course there's gonna be hiccups, there's gonna be fender benders, um, um, along the way that's normal. And I, there's always people just aren't too terrified of making mistakes and, you know.

Jason Blitman: 33:09

Yeah.

Nathan H. Lents: 33:10

Grace and forgiveness also go a long way, right?

Jason Blitman: 33:13

You know, it's interesting just like thinking about role models and exposure in general. You know, my husband and I talk all the time about. Uh, having a limited number of queer role models in a generation or two above us. Um, certainly not, or, uh, it's, it's uncommon that they might be married or uncommon that they have children or un like there are a lot of un non-com things or uncommon things. Um. I have 2, 1, 1 comment and one, one question, but I, in our, in the last apartment building that we lived in, one of our neighbors or a, a neighbor of ours, they were in a polyamorous relationship and the couple that was living in the apartment, they were not the primary couple.

Nathan H. Lents: 34:01

Mm-hmm.

Jason Blitman: 34:01

And so to know that like one person had their primary partner living in a different city and a secondary partner was the one that they were sort of sharing their everyday life with. Was a very new experience to see and

Nathan H. Lents: 34:17

That's quite unusual.

Jason Blitman: 34:18

So unusual. I was like, well, and, and fascinating. And of course like the more you think about polyamory for me, I'm just like, oh, there's always someone to cook. There's always someone to clean. There's always, you know, if you're not in the mood, there's someone in the mood. I was just like, oh, there's a, there are positives to having multiple people around. But from there, you know, you talked about, things that can lead to a social cost and, being a neighbor to a polyamorous relationship at first was jarring simply because it was something I'd never experienced before, your work is very specific and so I'm, I'm asking this sort of as a person in the world who is very familiar with all of this, do you as a human, have advice for navigating the taboo? For breaking it down?

Nathan H. Lents: 35:11

Yeah. Well, so yeah, you, you have to learn, you have to spend a, you know, a little time doing homework is what I, why I say, because you have to fill in some of these gaps that society didn't provide for you, you know, some of this knowledge. So, um, people who just march into an open situation, never having done it before, never having read much, whatever are just, or they're destined to make. Errors and mistakes and things. So you want to communicate a lot, communicate a lot before you even start your journey. Communicate a lot. And also read, learn from other people's experiences and that way you can propose some hypothetical situations and talk them through. And then once you've kind of feel comfortable, you've done some. And they're great books out there, right? Some of them are in the recommended reading of, of my book, but there's lots more Just, you know, Google Ethical, Non-Monogamy. And you'll see, you'll see lots of good. Things to read. I read, you know, Dan Savage's column for years. Um, and I, I, of course listened to to his podcast. So I think that's a good starting point to just see whatever other people are doing and talk it out with your partner. But then also don't get too rigid with yourself, with your partner, and allow some understanding, some grace just because you know, you can do all this learning and then your first experience might change your mind about something. You know, so be open to changing your mind. Be open to taking a break and, and not being too, you know, locked in on anything. And that doesn't necessarily lead to relationship anarchy, which is, you know, the extreme in some cases. Um, and I know a couple people who approach their relationships with this anarchy. No hierarchy, no primary, no secondary, um, you know, and they have boyfriends, they have, uh, hookup buddies. They'll also just kind of, things happen, all this, and they have all, and I'm always like. There's also friends with benefits, which are different than hookup buddies, right? They have all these different levels to it. And I'm just like, I talked to this guy for about 45 minutes and I needed a nap just, just to digest everything I'd

Jason Blitman: 37:03

or like to take a look at the Google sheet or something like I.

Nathan H. Lents: 37:08

right? And but their approach is like, no, we don't put anything in sheets. We don't keep track it. It's all non non accounting. They're trying to get away from the accounting and

Jason Blitman: 37:16

Yeah, that's fair. That's

Nathan H. Lents: 37:18

Yeah, I think that's fine in your twenties.

Jason Blitman: 37:21

right?

Nathan H. Lents: 37:21

harder to pull off as you get older. cause stability, there's something to be said for stability. Right. But, um, but you know, I often say like, people are like, I've been accused of like, oh, you're trying to tear down monogamy and marriage and all this. I'm like, not at all. Not at all. I, I think if someone's happy with a very, um, you know, restrictive as I would put it, relationship, you know, married, monogamous. Heterosexual, whatever. And you're happy. No one's gonna challenge you. You're fine. No, you, you don't need protection for your marriage. You're the default. No one cares. No. And no one's gonna try to convince you otherwise. And if they do, then they're just, you know, they're evangelizing. But, but if you can accept that humans can approach these things differently, maybe you'll give your neighbor the same understanding that you expect in return. You know? That's all I'm saying.

Jason Blitman: 38:10

Totally. Well, and you know, again, I, I am, I am pro whatever anyone is choosing for themselves in the same way that you are

Nathan H. Lents: 38:18

Mm-hmm.

Jason Blitman: 38:19

though, I say this all the time about vegetarianism.

Nathan H. Lents: 38:24

Mm-hmm.

Jason Blitman: 38:24

You're allowed to one day really crave a burger and eat a burger, and you're still a vegetarian. And that's okay. That one day you had a burger, life goes on, you know, and so I, I, not to evangelize anyone, but to the, to someone who might be really digging their heels in on monogamy, might say, if one day you really want a burger, I. It's fair, right? Like it's fair to, to want something extracurricular or whatever that means because we're human, because we make mistakes, because we can break our social contract. Because if there are rules, that means that rules can break, you know? Uh,

Nathan H. Lents: 39:03

then hopefully it leads to a conversation.

Jason Blitman: 39:05

right,

Nathan H. Lents: 39:06

because there are, there are moments of, let's say, infidelity of rule breaking that can reveal, you know, deep cracks in something. And there's other moments that were just like, oh, I had a little too much to drink. And, you know, the, you know, and, and, and to contextualize that, you know, for what it is and what it isn't. And I, you know, here's the thing. I didn't know anybody who was non-monogamous growing up, but one thing I did. Find very strange was when you would see a lifelong marriage dissolve because of a single indiscretion. Even as a kid. Even as a kid, I knew that was wrong. I was like, that's insane that you walk away from a whole life that you've built together because one person or the other made a mistake. And how many moments in your life have you been not at your best? Right. We're no one is at their best all the time. Right? You, we all have low points. We all have rock bottom. We all have, uh, psychological challenges and your needs get the better of you or whatever. Come on. Like, can't we? I've, I've always known that that was, that was, and I, I will say that even morally wrong to walk away from a marriage for a single indiscretion.

Jason Blitman: 40:11

And that's, that's sort of what I, what I'm saying. Okay. We have to talk about the, the gay stuff. There's a lot of gay stuff in the book too. Can you share, again, I don't want to give too much away from the book, but, but one of my favorite takeaways was about the humpback whales. Would

Nathan H. Lents: 40:27

Uh huh.

Jason Blitman: 40:28

you mind sharing a little bit about the humpback whales?

Nathan H. Lents: 40:30

So, you know, humpback whales had never been seen to have sex. Um, they just hadn't been observed'cause they're fairly shy about it in the wild and they won't mate much in captivity. And so people had never really directly observed humpbacks having sex. It finally happened in the fall of 2023. Two humpbacks were, were spotted copulating off the coast of Oahu. And it was two men, two males. Uh, uh, having sex and, um, they are ba so baling whales. The toothless whales, um, are known for their singing, right? You have blue whales and, and, uh, humpback whales and, and they sing their songs for hours and, and they, they travel distances. And we've, again, always assumed that the males were singing to the females, but all this time, males could have been singing to other males, and the singing could have been. Um, not just about attraction, but it could have been, you know, scaring someone off. It could have been establishing territory. We're still figuring out what the hell these whale songs are really for. Um, and I like that example because it's one of these things where animal male animals have been having gay sex all this time, and we just didn't, we just didn't call it that we either we didn't know or we didn't call it that. And, uh, Bruce Beman makes this point. He was like, you know, you would have. Males humping each other with anal penetration and orgasm. But that was a dominant struggle. The scientist would not call that sex. That wasn't sex, that was a dominant struggle, a dominant competition. Um, but, but then if a male just sniffed a female, that was a sexual interaction. You know what I mean? So, and that's part of what I've been reacting to in the book is the way that scientists approach this and why wouldn't we call two males having sex, having sex? I mean, if it, if it's not procreative. Well, then turns out that we, gay people have never had sex. I, I guess I've never had sex. And so it's like, of course it, it's, yeah. Yeah. It's absolutely sex. It's just there's, and, and that's why that's the lead up to the next chapter in the book where I talk about the many purposes of sex. Sex does so many different things for a social species. It's not just about fertilizing the next generation. It performs a lot of important social functions. And when you think of it that way and when you realize it, that it's that way, of course. Two, two males and two females will have sex because there's lots of other things that they get out of it. It's not just about procreation anyway, so why wouldn't they do it? In fact, it would be weird if they didn't, you'd be writing off half the population. Um, if you were strictly gay or strictly straight, you would just, you would miss out on all these social opportunities. So.

Jason Blitman: 43:08

And you know, you go on to then talk about sexual diversity and you know, I'm curious, why do you think we fear sexual diversity? Even though it's a feature of our species?

Nathan H. Lents: 43:21

Social control. I, I, I think that, I think that social control gets so embedded and so taught, and the power of taboo, um, is really strong. And the reason I, the reason I say that so confidently is that there are lots and lots of other cultures that don't have any of these taboos. And it's not like they, it's not like they struggle with it and they have to teach, they, they don't have to unteach these taboos. If you don't put these taboos there in the first place, they won't form, right? And so there's lots of cultures that. Um, and, and by the way, they're not all great, right? It's not all positive, right? There are, there are cultures out there that don't really respect consent or or age of consent, so I'm not, I'm not saying, hey, it's all fine. I'm just saying that there isn't a biological imperative. That's all I'm saying on a lot of these things and that we can, we can, we can take it or leave it on a lot of, a lot of these different things, but I do think it does come down to social control. But, but there's one taboo that does seem almost universal, and that is, as you mentioned, we have sex in private

Jason Blitman: 44:22

Yeah,

Nathan H. Lents: 44:23

and that's not, animals don't do that, right. They don't go off and secretly.

Jason Blitman: 44:28

a lot of things in private.

Nathan H. Lents: 44:29

do a lot of things in private, and that's, that's one thing that there's, there's something interesting there to explore and I don't know what it is, I don't know what it is, but there's, you know, it has to, I'm sure it has to do with a little bit with paternity certainty and that kind of thing, and obscuring that, whatever. But, um. And, and we lived in very tight-knit small social groups. We evolved that way for hundreds of thousands of years. Very small groups, you know, 150 or members or less. You knew everyone there. And so it, it's conceivable that sex in private was also a way to you to reclaim autonomy. Um, you know, that, that, that way you were in control of what other people knew about your sexual life,

Jason Blitman: 45:08

I mean, and that's true with clothing.

Nathan H. Lents: 45:11

mm-hmm. Clothing's also very human peculiar, right?

Jason Blitman: 45:14

Yeah. Well, and it's like, it's, it's an element of privacy. We are keeping pieces of our body that we don't wanna share with other people. Private,

Nathan H. Lents: 45:22

And there's, and you could think about the reasons why that would be socially beneficial. So I think that's kind of nudity and sex and private, I think are part of that same coin.

Jason Blitman: 45:32

Yeah. But it's so interesting'cause like if we were to get naked, sort of. Literally and metaphorically, if we, if we got rid of our clothing, if we were more open with our thoughts, feelings, desires, hopes, dreams, whatever, uh, it would sort of break down all of that socially. So it's really like, it's the glue that's, it's, it's, it's this weird chicken egg, the thing that's keeping society

Nathan H. Lents: 45:56

Mm-hmm.

Jason Blitman: 45:58

together.

Nathan H. Lents: 45:58

Yeah, I, I think in general that, that, you know, that the modesty, the secrecy, that all that is, it's. Is it a net positive or is a net negative? I don't know. I think it, it opens up opportunities for coercion and manipulation. Definitely has a dark side to all of it, but at the same time, it's also nice to have, I really like my privacy. You know, it's something that's a, an important value to me. I'm a fairly private with a lot of things I do, so, you know, I don't know if it's a net positive or net negative. I, I, that's, that's, that's really for sociologists, I guess, to

Jason Blitman: 46:29

Totally. Yeah. Well, and it just an interesting. Thing for us as humans to think about, because this is sort of how we're going about our daily lives,

Nathan H. Lents: 46:38

Yeah, exactly. We're steeped in it and you know, and people have talked about like, for example, sex differences when it comes to behavior. And I, if you notice, I don't talk about sex differences when it comes to behavior. I do a little bit when it comes to biology, but not behavior because we still to this day have no idea how much culture imprints gender. In a way that's not bi, you know what I mean? Like no one's been raised free of gendered culture. So we really have no idea how men and women might behave differently if they weren't imprinted on this. They, they, we are told to do and want different things even before we're born. Right, that's, newborns are described differently by even the most progressive parents based on whether they're male or female. You know, if it's a male, they'll say they're strong and robust and tough and big, and, and there's no biological differences between little boys and little girls at infancy, right? There's not size difference, strength difference, none of that stuff. But the, the women, the, the little girls are delicate and cute. And the boys are robust and strong. And so when you think about that, that imprinting starts literally on the first day of life, we have no idea how different men and women would be free from that. So apply that same logic onto relationships, onto being queer, onto, um, you know, marriage, um, when, you know, the, the taboos associated with that are so deeply embedded that we don't know. We don't know what we would be like free of that.

Jason Blitman: 48:13

Right. There are so many great chapters. There's, you know, great chapter about gender and sex. There's a great chapter about the gauging. I'm so excited for folks to check that out. I'm curious, before I let you go, is there anything in the process of you writing this book that surprised you or that you discovered?

Nathan H. Lents: 48:32

Yeah. I would say the most surprising thing is basically everything that's in chapter two, which is. Which is gender and animals. So I believe that the same thing prior to about 15 years ago. The same thing that biologists are teaching, you know, all over the world, is that there's male behavior and female behavior and animals behave in male typical ways and female typical ways, and that's all there is to it. I was totally unprepared before I did the research for this, on how much diversity there is within the sexes in animals. There are different ways to be a male. When, whether you're a sunfish or a cricket or a gorilla, there's ma there's not just one kind of male. There's male diversity and there's female diversity, and there's your, these are real biological differences. It's not just like a strategy that you can pick and choose from, and today you'll try this, and tomorrow you'll try that, or, or when you get bigger, you'll try something else. There are different flavors of maleness, different flavors of femaleness in the animal world. And when I was teaching this class, I was telling you about on sex and gender, and we kept encountering examples of gender diversity right there in the papers that we're reading. And the scientists themselves missed it. Like they just did. They just ignored it. There was this one on Bluegill Sunfish that talked about, um, oh, well there's these, um, they called them, uh, coupled, uh, males, but then if you look at, and they kind of discarded them.'cause they didn't build nests, they didn't attract females. They didn't do what we expect male sunfish to do, but 40% of the offspring were fathered by those other males. 40%. That's not. It's small, like that's a significant part of the social life of Bluegill Sunfish is to be a different kind of male. You can't just dismiss 40% of the males as being suboptimal, whatever. They have a different strategy. A strategy that's clearly successful. So that's, that was the most surprising thing to me, was gender diversity in animals. I wasn't expecting to see that.

Jason Blitman: 50:28

That's so cool. What a fun thing for you to learn. Um, Dr. Nathan Lz. Nathan, HL. Thank you for being here. The sexual evolution. I I, to the listeners, I hope this conversation helped break a little bit of those taboos, enlightened you a tiny bit and the book, uh, I know will do the same. So I'm so excited for you to check it out and thank you again for being here.

Nathan H. Lents: 50:51

Thank you for having me. This was a wonderful conversation and I'll be subscribing to your podcast. Don't worry.

Jason Blitman: 50:55

Oh, fantastic.