A reawakening to gender diversity could have significant social and political effects—and not always in the directions we might expect.
For example, the better we can envision social policies that are more genuinely and non-destructively testosterone-friendly, the more viable choices we can offer to male voters. And with more than just one ideological alternative to choose from, more male voters can begin to question whether a given political faction's claim to support their gender's values and interests actually translates into representing anything more than the narrow interests of the upper reaches of Corporate America—along with its often profoundly testosterone-hostile courtier culture.
A better understanding of gender concerns could also give us fresh insight into other problems that currently appear intractable.
For example, a series of newspaper articles in my city chronicled the experiences of a reporter and photographer who decided to spend some time living in a gang-controlled neighborhood. The relationships between the gang members and the rest of their neighborhood turned out to be a good deal more complex than most of us would expect. On balance, the gang members seemed mainly to be doing what evolutionary biology would urge them to do—establishing themselves as the dominant males, in an environment that didn't have much of an indigenous economy, outside of street drugs; and where fighting and carrying a bit of drug money were the main ways that a male could establish status.
Maybe if our formulators of social policy could see our gang problem through more of a gender-imperative lens, we might get somewhere in dealing with it.


