So it wasn't until I was in my 30s and my grandmother had been dead for a couple of years
0:00:00 – 0:00:05

that I really realized that the core of the tension in my relationship between me and my mother rested
0:00:05 – 0:00:11

in the negative space of this history that I didn't know, and this question of what had caused
0:00:11 – 0:00:16

my grandmother to lose her mind. And so this book was really my attempt to become a prodigal
0:00:16 – 0:00:22

daughter and heal my relationship with my mother by coming back and understanding what had happened
0:00:22 – 0:00:27

to Sun Ye. Tessa Hulls, welcome to Writer's Voice. Thank you so much for having me.
0:00:27 – 0:00:37

Feeding Ghosts, this graphic memoir, was such a powerful book for me, actually, especially,
0:00:37 – 0:00:46

because I could so relate to the central theme of the intergenerational transmission of trauma.
0:00:46 – 0:00:52

And so many people can actually relate to that, where their parents or grandparents went through,
0:00:52 – 0:00:58

you know, extremely traumatic situations, often geopolitical traumas, because we're a trauma
0:00:58 – 0:01:06

generating world. So let's start with the principles. You, your mother, and your grandmother.
0:01:06 – 0:01:13

Your grandmother, she lived with your family when you were growing up. You say that you knew
0:01:13 – 0:01:20

three things about her. She was from China. She had once been a journalist and an author of a
0:01:20 – 0:01:26

bestselling memoir. And long ago, something happened, and she lost her mind. Fill out that
0:01:26 – 0:01:33

story for us. Yeah, well, that really is all I knew when I started. My mom and grandma,
0:01:33 – 0:01:40

they lived in Shanghai during the communist takeover. And I knew that my grandmother had
0:01:40 – 0:01:47

been a journalist covering this really traumatic period of Chinese history, and that eventually,
0:01:47 – 0:01:52

she and my mom had to flee to Hong Kong. But by the time my family had ended up in the US,
0:01:52 – 0:01:59

I think the bones of that family story had just calcified into myth, where you don't realize that
0:01:59 – 0:02:04

those are actually questions and not answers. And so it wasn't until I was in my 30s,
0:02:04 – 0:02:10

and my grandmother had been dead for a couple of years, that I really realized that the core
0:02:10 – 0:02:15

of the tension in my relationship between me and my mother rested in the negative space of
0:02:15 – 0:02:20

this history that I didn't know, and this question of what had caused my grandmother to lose her
0:02:20 – 0:02:25

mind. And so this book was really my attempt to become a prodigal daughter and heal my relationship
0:02:25 – 0:02:32

with my mother by coming back and understanding what had happened to Sun Yi. And you begin the
0:02:32 – 0:02:37

book with both you and your mother together in a train in China. So tell us about that beginning
0:02:37 – 0:02:45

of this book, Feeding Ghosts, and about the evolution of your relationship that brought you
0:02:45 – 0:02:51

to that point. Yeah, so the book opens in 2016, which I kind of loosely consider the present,
0:02:51 – 0:02:57

because that was the first point at which I traveled to China with my mother and met my
0:02:57 – 0:03:02

family for the first time with her translating. And so it felt to me like the journey that my
0:03:02 – 0:03:09

mother took when we replicated the train trip that she and her mother took when they were fleeing
0:03:09 – 0:03:14

China. It felt like something in that process of walking in those same footsteps allowed me to
0:03:14 – 0:03:20

enter the story emotionally and started to let that world and those experiences come to life.
0:03:20 – 0:03:26

And basically, I use the train as almost like a time machine. And so the reader opens with me and
0:03:26 – 0:03:33

my mom traveling back into the past and the book unfolds sequentially from there. But so much of
0:03:33 – 0:03:39

the book is about the process of me losing my own objectivity and allowing the armor that I had built
0:03:39 – 0:03:46

to protect myself from my family to fall away so that I could tell this story from a soft and
0:03:46 – 0:03:52

empathetic place. And so now you say that you had a hard shell that you had to kind of break open
0:03:52 – 0:04:01

through this process. And you talk about the persona that you adopted as a young person,
0:04:01 – 0:04:08

the cowboy. You write about the cowboy persona. She grew up with no models of how she fit within
0:04:08 – 0:04:16

American culture. Her family didn't have TV. The Internet didn't exist. So she spent her formative
0:04:16 – 0:04:23

years reading her way through the public library and roaming alone through the hills with a
0:04:23 – 0:04:29

backpack full of books. I mean, that's such an evocative sentence. Tell us about the cowboy.
0:04:29 – 0:04:34

Well, I think growing up in a town of 350, I was very fortunate to grow up with a lot of access
0:04:34 – 0:04:42

to really beautiful wilderness. And I could walk basically out my front door and just be alone
0:04:42 – 0:04:48

in beautiful rolling hills and oak trees. And I was born in 1984. So it was still kind of during
0:04:48 – 0:04:55

an era of free range childhood. And yeah, I just learned that the place that I felt safe, the place
0:04:55 – 0:05:02

that all of the contradictions and all of the ghosts of my family would just fall away was being
0:05:02 – 0:05:07

in the back country and being out in nature. And so those two seminal loves of stories and the
0:05:07 – 0:05:14

outdoors really formed the threads of everything that I am as both an artist and writer and as a
0:05:14 – 0:05:21

person. And the cowboy, I think, stemmed from my fascination with Western frontier myths. And
0:05:21 – 0:05:27

as somebody with immigrant parents trying to grapple with the question of, well, what is my
0:05:27 – 0:05:31

place within American culture, I think it naturally makes you really interested in what are the
0:05:31 – 0:05:37

stories that America tells about itself. And particularly growing up in Northern California
0:05:37 – 0:05:42

on the West Coast, I was just steeped in so much of that myth of the cowboy that I became really
0:05:42 – 0:05:48

fascinated with it. And why?
0:05:48 – 0:05:50

Because the idea of pathological independence is such a foil to everything that my mom believed
0:05:50 – 0:05:58

in, everything that she hoped that her children would become. Because I think for her, being born
0:05:58 – 0:06:04

in China and having very much a sense of duty with her own mentally ill mother, she didn't really
0:06:04 – 0:06:11

understand that by raising my brother and me in a town where there weren't any Asian families we
0:06:11 – 0:06:17

weren't related to, we weren't being shown what that value system looked like. And so I think a
0:06:17 – 0:06:23

lot of the tension between us was because we really didn't understand the depths of that
0:06:23 – 0:06:27

cultural divide. So the cowboy to me was, I think, in some ways, the negative space of me trying to
0:06:27 – 0:06:34

understand my mother, because it was looking at the rules of what had formed me to try and
0:06:34 – 0:06:39

understand why we were so different.
0:06:39 – 0:06:41

And you called it pathological independence, but there's also pathological enmeshment, which is
0:06:41 – 0:06:48

kind of the twin side of that. And that's something that your mother had with her mother.
0:06:48 – 0:06:54

So let's start there. Talk about the relationship your mother had with her mother,
0:06:55 – 0:06:59

because I think it explains so much of her relationship with you.
0:06:59 – 0:07:03

Yes, very much so. And I say, you know, it's funny because people often ask,
0:07:03 – 0:07:08

who's the audience for this book? And I always say, anyone with a complicated mother.
0:07:08 – 0:07:12

So I think pretty much any human being.
0:07:12 – 0:07:15

Absolutely.
0:07:15 – 0:07:17

Yeah. I mean, I think there's something to be said about the richest relationships in our lives are
0:07:17 – 0:07:23

often the most fraught because there's just so much there.
0:07:23 – 0:07:26

Yeah. So my mom was the result of my grandmother having a fling with a Swiss diplomat.
0:07:26 – 0:07:33

And this was in 1949, as the communists were coming to power. And so my mom never met her
0:07:33 – 0:07:39

father. Once my grandmother told him that she was pregnant, he disappeared and was
0:07:39 – 0:07:44

just out of the picture entirely. And so my grandmother found herself in the position of
0:07:44 – 0:07:49

being a single mother, raising a mixed race bastard child while also being arrested and
0:07:49 – 0:07:54

held for days and surveilled and persecuted by the communist government. And so she was very
0:07:54 – 0:08:00

anxious, very paranoid, very needy. And after she and my mom fled to Hong Kong, that's when my
0:08:00 – 0:08:06

grandma wrote the memoir that basically was her being able to tell her own version of the truth
0:08:06 – 0:08:12

after being forced to write false confessions for eight straight years. So when my grandmother's
0:08:12 – 0:08:19

book came out, it was this overnight sensation because there was such a hungry audience wanting
0:08:19 – 0:08:25

to know what had actually been happening behind the bamboo curtain in mainland China during
0:08:25 – 0:08:29

those years. And the money from that book, unfortunately, my grandmother was only paid
0:08:29 – 0:08:36

for the initial print run and it was pirated. So she had enough money to put my mom into an
0:08:36 – 0:08:41

elite colonial boarding school for one year. And during that time, that's when my grandmother had
0:08:41 – 0:08:47

a mental breakdown and she ended up committed to Hong Kong's first psychiatric hospital. So I know
0:08:47 – 0:08:53

this is a lot, it's dense. So my mom effectively was left to be raised as an orphan by this colonial
0:08:53 – 0:09:00

boarding school and the money had run out. So they took her on as a charity case and she would
0:09:00 – 0:09:05

secretly sneak out on the weekends to go visit her mother in the mental hospital. And it created
0:09:05 – 0:09:11

this really interesting paradox where my mom was serving as my grandmother's caseworker. So
0:09:11 – 0:09:18

anytime she was released from hospital, my mom would be the one needing to figure out housing,
0:09:18 – 0:09:24

would need to figure out psychiatric care. And she was doing all of this while being raised by
0:09:24 – 0:09:30

an elite boarding school surrounded by the upper echelons of Hong Kong society, even though she
0:09:30 – 0:09:35

herself had nothing. So it made for a really complex dynamic in terms of class, in terms of
0:09:35 – 0:09:43

secrecy, mental illness. And I think that dynamic really carried over when my mom eventually came
0:09:43 – 0:09:50

to the US and brought my grandmother. There was just, there was a lot going on there.
0:09:50 – 0:09:54

Yeah. I mean, she was the classic parentified child, which is something that in some ways your
0:09:54 – 0:10:00

mother wanted to rope you into being. Your job was also to take care of her emotionally. I mean,
0:10:00 – 0:10:08

she took care of her mother in every way and did so until her mother's death, you know, which was
0:10:08 – 0:10:15

decades and decades on from that. And I guess that's what I was referring to as enmeshment.
0:10:15 – 0:10:21

But in some way, your mother was looking to you for the emotional care that she never received
0:10:21 – 0:10:28

from her mom. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's where, because for her, she'd never had a model
0:10:28 – 0:10:35

of a loving relationship that didn't have that codependence. So my mother essentially had never
0:10:35 – 0:10:41

had a model of a loving relationship that didn't have a really wounded level of codependence to it.
0:10:41 – 0:10:48

And she kind of equated that with Chinese culture. And we would have these arguments where she
0:10:48 – 0:10:54

essentially wanted our mother-daughter relationship to be this fused world of two that she had
0:10:54 – 0:11:00

experienced. And when I would try and push back against that, it was all of the complexities of
0:11:00 – 0:11:06

this web of mental illness and damage, but also being framed through the lens of, well, I'm
0:11:06 – 0:11:12

American and I'm Chinese. And I think within my family, there was a lot of really complicated
0:11:12 – 0:11:17

Venn diagram overlap between that mental illness and those legitimate cultural differences.
0:11:17 – 0:11:23

Yeah. And hence the cowboy, what you call pathological independence. Although I think it,
0:11:23 – 0:11:31

I wouldn't go so far. I would say maybe pathological at a certain point or after a
0:11:31 – 0:11:38

certain point, something that kept you from developing until you began this book,
0:11:38 – 0:11:43

but not really pathological when you were a child, because in some way it was self-preservation.
0:11:43 – 0:11:50

Yeah, absolutely. I think there was a point in my life, and I think it's a natural stage
0:11:50 – 0:11:56

of development where you do have to get away from what has shaped you so that you can figure out
0:11:56 – 0:12:03

your own foundation. You can figure out the ground that you stand on. And I think what I came to
0:12:03 – 0:12:09

realize is that the tragedy of my family story is that both my mother and grandmother ended up
0:12:09 – 0:12:15

really severed from the fabric of other human lives. Their response to the traumas that they
0:12:15 – 0:12:21

lived through was to really pull away and to not have close ties or a sense of community belonging.
0:12:21 – 0:12:27

And I saw that the trajectory that I was placing myself on where the answer to everything was just
0:12:27 – 0:12:35

to leave and ride off into the sunset was going to lead me to that same place of self-protection,
0:12:35 – 0:12:42

keeping me from the human ties that make us feel a sense of belonging.
0:12:42 – 0:12:46

If you've just joined Writer's Voice, we're talking with Tessa Hulls
0:12:46 – 0:12:50

about her wonderful graphic memoir, Feeding Ghosts. Now, speaking of ghosts, there were two sides to
0:12:50 – 0:12:59

your mother, the regular mother, the one, I mean, you always knew that she loved you very much,
0:12:59 – 0:13:03

so that was not a question. But she had a ghost twin, as you call it, who was the result of trauma
0:13:03 – 0:13:11

of how did she express that ghost twin? And also, tell us how trauma works. You quote from experts
0:13:12 – 0:13:20

like Besser Foundrycoke, for example. Yeah, I think growing up, I saw that my mom
0:13:20 – 0:13:26

had learned to really sever herself off from her own emotions. And I could see that she moved
0:13:26 – 0:13:33

through the world with this really closed off sense of denial that was visible to everyone,
0:13:33 – 0:13:38

except for her. And so things that would seem like they might be really emotionally challenging to
0:13:38 – 0:13:45

navigate or that might be triggering, she could talk about a lot of really dark, heavy topics
0:13:45 – 0:13:51

with absolutely no emotional response or affect. But then it was like living in a minefield,
0:13:51 – 0:13:58

because you would touch something that seemed innocuous and suddenly everything would explode,
0:13:58 – 0:14:02

because it would be something that she hadn't deliberately taught herself to guard against.
0:14:02 – 0:14:07

And so I would see my mom basically travel through time, sometimes becoming this little girl
0:14:07 – 0:14:14

trying to keep her own mother's mind together as she watched her go through a mental breakdown.
0:14:14 – 0:14:19

And I think because I was a really sensitive child, one of those kids were from day one,
0:14:19 – 0:14:26

it was clear I was going to be a writer and an artist. My mom was really terrified,
0:14:26 – 0:14:31

because she thought the reason my grandmother had lost her mind was because of her role as a writer.
0:14:31 – 0:14:37

She thought that it was a creative temperament. And so I would see my mother effectively
0:14:37 – 0:14:44

disintegrate and just erupt into these spirals of anxiety and fear that to her seemed normal.
0:14:44 – 0:14:51

And I called that other persona, her ghost twin. And I lived never really knowing which mother I
0:14:51 – 0:14:58

was going to see in any given instance. And when I started doing more research into how
0:14:58 – 0:15:05

epigenetics functions and looking particularly at books like Elizabeth Rosner's Survivor Cafe
0:15:05 – 0:15:12

and Susan Griffith's A Chorus of Stones, The Private Life of War, I became really interested
0:15:12 – 0:15:18

in essentially the ways that successive generations form themselves around the negative
0:15:18 – 0:15:23

space of what happened to their parents and grandparents, where on the one hand,
0:15:23 – 0:15:29

they have grown up in a way where they're materially safe. But because they're living
0:15:29 – 0:15:33

within the fear of the people who raised them, it's like they end up still formed by these same
0:15:33 – 0:15:38

traumatic incidences. And that to me was kind of the key to begin to understand these three
0:15:38 – 0:15:43

generations of me, my mom and my grandma. So Tessa Hulls, in Feeding Ghosts, you go
0:15:43 – 0:15:52

deeply into the history behind the trauma that your grandmother suffered. And what I'm surprised
0:15:52 – 0:15:59

about is, I mean, your mother lived through that history. She was seven years old when they fled
0:15:59 – 0:16:05

mainland China to Hong Kong. I wonder why was she unaware that it was actually the incredible trauma
0:16:05 – 0:16:14

that your mother went through? I mean, you referred to your grandmother being forced to write
0:16:14 – 0:16:19

confessions over and over again. This was a part of the Chinese Revolution that I really didn't
0:16:19 – 0:16:25

know about. You know, when I was growing up in the 60s and 70s, you know, I mean, we either heard of
0:16:25 – 0:16:31

communist China, and it was like a blank space. Or there were, once I got involved in the student
0:16:31 – 0:16:38

movement, there was a lot of very heroic reporting, you know, how great the Chinese Revolution was,
0:16:38 – 0:16:47

but wow, this was really torture that went on for a long time. So fill us in with that.
0:16:47 – 0:16:55

Yeah, well, I think the way that you talk about your understanding of it is actually
0:16:55 – 0:17:00

a really perfect encapsulation, where it's either blank space, or it's laudatory. And I think that
0:17:00 – 0:17:06

is very much how the Chinese government has always controlled information about what's going on
0:17:06 – 0:17:11

within its own country, where there's either the cessation of news, there's no information coming
0:17:11 – 0:17:17

out, or everything is being filtered through the lens of a propaganda machine. And basically,
0:17:17 – 0:17:23

you know, my grandmother was a journalist during this time period. And once the communists came to
0:17:23 – 0:17:28

power, they shuttered all the presses and no information was leaving except by way of people
0:17:28 – 0:17:34

who were fleeing predominantly to Hong Kong and Taiwan. And the history that was going on
0:17:34 – 0:17:40

was really the communist government needed to assert this new Maoist reality and anybody who
0:17:40 – 0:17:46

dissented would just be put through thought reform until eventually they fell into line,
0:17:46 – 0:17:52

they learned how to self censor. So my mom and grandma were very lucky, they were able to flee
0:17:52 – 0:17:59

hidden beneath the false bottom of a fishing boat and were smuggled to Hong Kong that way
0:17:59 – 0:18:03

at the tail end of 1957, which was just before the Great Leap Forward, which I didn't really
0:18:03 – 0:18:09

know much about until I started working on this book. And it was essentially a nationwide campaign
0:18:09 – 0:18:16

of science denial, where Mao decided that he was going to transform China into an economic
0:18:16 – 0:18:23

productive superpower. And so he used the massive population to basically turn everyone into
0:18:23 – 0:18:32

melting down every piece of metal, including their cookware, including their farming implements,
0:18:32 – 0:18:38

to try and produce metal, the end of that being unusable. But you have these entire countrysides,
0:18:38 – 0:18:45

where all of the trees are stripped for fuel, people can no longer cook, doctors are pulled
0:18:45 – 0:18:50

from their jobs to man these backyard smelters 24 hours a day. So the entire country comes to a halt
0:18:50 – 0:18:57

for this one obsessive goal that ultimately is producing metal that's not of a quality to even
0:18:57 – 0:19:03

be usable. And reading a lot of the primary documents and starting to learn about that,
0:19:03 – 0:19:09

it was just mass insanity where hundreds of thousands of people were being put into labor
0:19:09 – 0:19:16

positions where they were trying to make water flow uphill. And textbooks were being rewritten
0:19:16 – 0:19:22

by peasants, removing information that they said was academic or elitist. And what this really did
0:19:22 – 0:19:29

is it went against millennia of Chinese culture that really valued education, that valued learning.
0:19:29 – 0:19:35

And the people who found themselves in the crosshairs were China's educated classes. And
0:19:35 – 0:19:40

that was very much the category my family fell into. So my mom and grandma were very lucky in
0:19:40 – 0:19:47

that they actually got out before the worst of it. And it was again, kind of a common story where
0:19:47 – 0:19:52

the members of families who had been able to flee, particularly to Hong Kong, they were able to send
0:19:52 – 0:19:59

support back during the great Chinese famine, which the Chinese government acknowledges that
0:19:59 – 0:20:04

15 million people died, but some historians place that number as high as 46 million. And so families
0:20:04 – 0:20:12

that were fractured because people had to flee, they were able to send cooking oil and food and
0:20:12 – 0:20:17

necessary supplies back during this really dark period of history. And so your grandmother ended
0:20:17 – 0:20:24

up writing obsessively throughout your childhood. This was kind of part of her symptomology of
0:20:24 – 0:20:33

mental illness. What was she writing? You didn't really figure that out until a long time afterwards,
0:20:33 – 0:20:41

is that right? Yes and no. My grandmother literally did nothing except write. She lived with
0:20:41 – 0:20:47

us and she had a little writing desk in the corner of her bedroom. And from sunrise to sunset, she
0:20:47 – 0:20:53

just sat at her desk and she wrote. And I think I was always at least partially aware that it didn't
0:20:53 – 0:21:00

matter what she was writing because that was essentially her way of holding her reality
0:21:00 – 0:21:04

together. And so it was an activity that my mom encouraged her to just throw herself into
0:21:04 – 0:21:10

to keep her from spiraling out into anxiety, because if she was writing, she was relatively
0:21:10 – 0:21:16

safe. And later I learned that she literally never stopped rewriting the same stories of her past.
0:21:16 – 0:21:25

So even into her 80s before she died, she was still rewriting her experiences of childhood
0:21:25 – 0:21:32

and what it was like to live through the Sino-Japanese War and during the years of
0:21:32 – 0:21:37

persecution after the communists gained control before she was able to flee.
0:21:37 – 0:21:42

Now let's shift for a moment to Hong Kong because there's also some really fascinating history that
0:21:43 – 0:21:50

you go into there, and that is the history of mixed-race people. And this is all caught up
0:21:50 – 0:21:59

with your own sense of your own identity. So tell us about your exploration into what you learned
0:21:59 – 0:22:06

about Hong Kong culture and how that helped you define yourself in a way.
0:22:06 – 0:22:12

Well, going to Hong Kong was pretty revelatory because it was the first time in my life where
0:22:12 – 0:22:19

being mixed-race, white and Asian was not seen as some sort of in-between, but was actually
0:22:19 – 0:22:26

just a familiar and known demographic box to check. And so the experience of being somewhere
0:22:26 – 0:22:32

where everyone immediately saw me and knew what I was and just said, oh, you're Asian.
0:22:32 – 0:22:36

It was something that I'd never experienced within the United States. And learning more
0:22:36 – 0:22:41

about the history of why people who are European and Chinese were so embedded in Hong Kong's culture
0:22:41 – 0:22:48

really helped me understand my mother and how she had occupied a known role within the society.
0:22:48 – 0:22:56

So essentially Hong Kong during its time as a colony, because it was an economic superpower,
0:22:56 – 0:23:02

Hong Kong society was structured in a way where the white scions of business needed an ethnically
0:23:02 – 0:23:09

Chinese labor force. And so Eurasians were kind of a perfect go-between because they were bilingual,
0:23:09 – 0:23:15

they were sort of intermediaries where they were seen as less other than the ethnically
0:23:15 – 0:23:21

Chinese population. And so what happened is that over the span of generations, Eurasians actually
0:23:21 – 0:23:28

came to hold a lot of political and economic power and they started to feel like they kind
0:23:28 – 0:23:34

of had to take care of their own. And so because a lot of white men were in Hong Kong for business,
0:23:34 – 0:23:40

they would end up with ethnically Chinese mistresses who would then have mixed-race children.
0:23:40 – 0:23:46

And because the white businessmen would never stay, it ended up with the situation of a lot
0:23:46 – 0:23:51

of Chinese women with bastard Eurasian children who then needed social support and care. And
0:23:51 – 0:23:58

that was for me kind of when the light bulb moment happened, realizing that my mother's school
0:23:58 – 0:24:04

had some ties to being a Eurasian orphanage. And so the entire reason my mom was accepted
0:24:04 – 0:24:12

into this organization that gave her her proper Queen's English, which is what single-handedly
0:24:12 – 0:24:17

allowed her to eventually get a scholarship and come to the U.S., was basically because
0:24:17 – 0:24:22

of the fact that my grandmother had been abandoned by a white man. And that blew my mind.
0:24:22 – 0:24:28

Right. So your mother was mixed, you were mixed. I'm curious why you use the term
0:24:28 – 0:24:35

bastard. I mean, my parents were not married, so technically I'm a, quote,
0:24:35 – 0:24:40

bastard. But I would never use that term because of its pejorative kind of weight in this culture.
0:24:40 – 0:24:45

Why do you use it? Well, I think I use that pejorative intentionally because my mom was not
0:24:45 – 0:24:52

wanted. And because she ended up in Hong Kong in a very kind of proper British colonial society,
0:24:52 – 0:25:00

there was a stigma around that, where my Swiss grandfather, who I managed to learn quite a bit
0:25:00 – 0:25:06

about him for this book, my grandmother had tried to give my mother his last name. And so when my
0:25:06 – 0:25:13

mom entered DGS, this colonial boarding school, her headmistress told her, oh, you're a bastard,
0:25:13 – 0:25:19

you have no right to that name, and just gave her another one, a Chinese name. And actually my mom's
0:25:19 – 0:25:26

Western name, Rose, that was just given to her by one of her ex-pat British teachers who told her,
0:25:26 – 0:25:33

oh, you need a Western name now. So my mom was given an arbitrary first and last name
0:25:33 – 0:25:39

upon entering school, and that's what she went by. And so how has this changed how you do feel
0:25:39 – 0:25:46

about yourself? I mean, this was so revelatory to you, but how did it translate to your own sense
0:25:46 – 0:25:53

of identity back here at home? I think for me, as somebody growing up between categories within
0:25:53 – 0:25:59

a family that doesn't really fit cleanly into any binaries, I've always been really comfortable just
0:25:59 – 0:26:05

seeing myself as a perpetual sociologist. And I think I'm a bit of a chameleon, and that hasn't
0:26:05 – 0:26:11

really shifted for me. And as somebody who feels a really deep need to explore and be in a lot of
0:26:11 – 0:26:20

wildly different circumstances, I think I just tend to read the room and sort of shift depending
0:26:20 – 0:26:27

on how I'm being read. So I wouldn't say that this book necessarily changed my conception of my own
0:26:27 – 0:26:33

identity, but I think it gave me a lot more context that I didn't have previously. Now,
0:26:33 – 0:26:40

your cowboy personality was somebody, well, who remains in a way, this is like taking the best of
0:26:40 – 0:26:47

the cowboy personality, a prodigious researcher. I mean, you learned Mandarin, you're an adventurer,
0:26:47 – 0:26:56

you're a muralist, a historian, a writer, performer, cartoonist, and you describe yourself
0:26:56 – 0:27:03

as somebody who is a researcher, who really likes to, you know, know all the facts of what's going
0:27:03 – 0:27:10

on. But this is very much a book of the heart, Feeding Ghosts. It's an emotional journey that I
0:27:10 – 0:27:19

think you certainly carried me on with you. And I'm sure it will be the same for anyone who reads
0:27:19 – 0:27:27

your book. It's built on the foundation of the research you did, but it ultimately is an emotional
0:27:27 – 0:27:33

journey. Talk about that process of bringing mind and heart together. Oh, I was determined when I
0:27:33 – 0:27:41

started, it was going to be historical, it was going to state the facts, I was not going to be
0:27:41 – 0:27:47

a character in it. I think I went into this book very much hiding behind two personas. My persona
0:27:47 – 0:27:55

as a cowboy and my persona as a historian. And I think because for me growing up within the
0:27:55 – 0:28:02

volatility of my mom and grandma's emotional world, I was very wary of emotions and sort of saw them
0:28:02 – 0:28:11

as things that could be understood, corralled, analyzed, but things I didn't like to get too
0:28:11 – 0:28:18

close to. And I think the process of working on this book and really learning what had happened
0:28:18 – 0:28:25

to my mom and grandma made me see that the only way to tell this story honestly was by essentially
0:28:25 – 0:28:33

confronting my own fear of emotions and allowing the story to shift from being something about
0:28:33 – 0:28:40

history to being, like you say, a book about opening one's heart. And that was an infinitely
0:28:40 – 0:28:47

more challenging task. And I'm glad to hear that it resonated. But yeah, it was really going into
0:28:47 – 0:28:56

the heart of the one thing that truly scared me. And I felt the only way I could really do that
0:28:56 – 0:29:02

was to just be transparent about how hard I found that territory. And so honestly and eloquently
0:29:02 – 0:29:11

also written and drawn. Finally, you say you went into, you began with a question,
0:29:11 – 0:29:19

what broke your family? But that your questions changed along the way. And, you know, maybe you've
0:29:19 – 0:29:27

already said that, but if there's something that you wanted to add to what you've already said,
0:29:27 – 0:29:31

why don't you go there? And then I have just one more question after that.
0:29:31 – 0:29:35

Yeah. So my original question was what broke my family? And that ended up taking me
0:29:35 – 0:29:41

nine years and over a hundred books of research and multiple international research trips to
0:29:41 – 0:29:48

answer because ultimately I think where I settled was history broke my family. And
0:29:48 – 0:29:54

what kept us from being able to get to a place of repair was that nobody ever confronted those
0:29:56 – 0:30:02

fractures and put them back together. And for me, the story was really about allowing the question
0:30:02 – 0:30:11

to be, what does it mean to come back to a place of belonging? What does it mean to
0:30:11 – 0:30:19

acknowledge wounds and create a home that accommodates that damage rather than just
0:30:19 – 0:30:25

denying that it's there. And I think my mom and I really did find our way to a place. We never
0:30:25 – 0:30:34

could have arrived at otherwise, if I hadn't done this book, because part of the reason so much of
0:30:34 – 0:30:40

feeding ghosts ended up with all of these complex braided, sometimes contradictory narratives
0:30:40 – 0:30:46

is because I think it was a quest for both my mom and I to find a way to love each other with
0:30:46 – 0:30:53

there also being room for our contradictory stories to be true. And we did ultimately get there.
0:30:53 – 0:30:59

That's so beautiful. Yeah. And what really struck me at the end was that so much of
0:30:59 – 0:31:07

what your family story is about is about trying to protect your family. Your grandmother tried
0:31:08 – 0:31:17

to protect her family in China. Your mother tried to protect her mother. And in writing this book,
0:31:17 – 0:31:27

I wouldn't say that you're trying to protect your family. You are healing your family.
0:31:27 – 0:31:34

Yes, absolutely. And I think for me, healing the past does change the present. And in a way,
0:31:34 – 0:31:45

maybe that is a form of protection because it's allowing all of us to step outside of
0:31:45 – 0:31:52

this cycle that we've been so trapped by for so long. And it's such a beautiful book,
0:31:52 – 0:31:57

Feeding Ghosts, a Graphic Memoir. Tessa Hulls, thank you so much. It's been a privilege to
0:31:57 – 0:32:02

talk with you about this wonderful book. Yeah, thank you so much for having me and
0:32:02 – 0:32:06

for spending so much time with my family story.
0:32:06 – 0:32:09

Thank you.
0:32:09 – 0:32:09

Thank you.
0:32:09 – 0:32:10

Thank you.
0:32:10 – 0:32:10

Thank you.
0:32:10 – 0:32:11

Chimpanzees and bonobos are our closest living relatives. We share nearly 99% of our DNA
0:32:39 – 0:32:48

with both of these primate species. Yet the two couldn't be more different.
0:32:48 – 0:32:53

You could almost say that chimps are from Mars and bonobos are from Venus.
0:32:53 – 0:32:59

In his new book, world-famous primatologist Franz De Waal draws on decades of research into both
0:32:59 – 0:33:08

human and animal behavior to parse the difference between biological sex and gender in determining
0:33:08 – 0:33:15

behavior. De Waal shows that sex differences are no excuse for justifying gender inequality,
0:33:15 – 0:33:23

and he challenges widely held beliefs about masculinity and femininity and common assumptions
0:33:23 – 0:33:30

about authority, leadership, cooperation, and competition. Franz De Waal is professor emeritus
0:33:30 – 0:33:37

of primate behavior at Emory University and the former director of the Living Link Center at the
0:33:37 – 0:33:43

Yerkes National Primate Research Center. He's the author of three previous books, including
0:33:43 – 0:33:49

Mama's Last Hug. This book, Different, rests on comparisons between chimps, bonobos, and humans,
0:33:49 – 0:33:58

and sometimes other animals as well, what we share with them and how we differ. But it's also about
0:33:58 – 0:34:04

what males and females share and how they differ from each other. So first of all, just tell us
0:34:04 – 0:34:12

about your approach to difference. Well, the term different relates to the sex differences or gender
0:34:12 – 0:34:18

differences that we see, and that males and females are really different in their behavior.
0:34:18 – 0:34:24

It is not a statement like everything is different. You know, it's not like a statement
0:34:24 – 0:34:29

like men are from Mars and women are from Venus, which I think is a total exaggeration.
0:34:29 – 0:34:34

So I'm not exaggerating the differences, but I'm pointing out a few that exist.
0:34:35 – 0:34:39

You know, I love the way you start the book with Mama. You wrote a book about Mama.
0:34:39 – 0:34:44

Tell us about her. And tell us about her as the example of the kind of leadership
0:34:44 – 0:34:51

that females practice in the primate world. Yeah, I think it's often overlooked by people
0:34:51 – 0:34:59

that there are female leaders. So the images people have of primates is a male boss who
0:34:59 – 0:35:06

orders everyone around, including the younger males and including all the females. And that's
0:35:06 – 0:35:12

all there is to it. And I think it's much more complex than that. And Mama was the alpha female
0:35:12 – 0:35:17

of a very large, the world's largest chimpanzee colony in captivity. And she was alpha female for
0:35:17 – 0:35:25

40 years. So she saw a lot of alpha males come and go. And these alpha males actually depended
0:35:25 – 0:35:32

on her because I think it was impossible for a male to become, to reach the top without her support.
0:35:32 – 0:35:39

So she was extremely influential. And so that's in a society like the chimpanzee,
0:35:39 – 0:35:43

where the males dominate physically. Still, you can have an alpha female with enormous leadership
0:35:43 – 0:35:51

capacities, as Mama had. And she sort of was the one who kept the whole group together.
0:35:51 – 0:35:56

And female leadership is found everywhere, not just in the chimpanzee. And I describe
0:35:56 – 0:36:04

also bonobos, where female leadership, the alpha female is actually alpha over everyone,
0:36:04 – 0:36:08

including the males. Yeah. And tell us a little bit more about Mama. And I mean,
0:36:08 – 0:36:13

you have enormous respect for her. And tell us about her, not just as an example, but as
0:36:13 – 0:36:19

an individual in her own right. Well, she, she reached the top in that colony very early in her
0:36:19 – 0:36:26

life and before she even had children. And I knew her at that time. So I left the Netherlands when I
0:36:26 – 0:36:35

was a student, and she was already alpha female then. And I've seen her being alpha female all
0:36:35 – 0:36:41

that time since. And she was the one who sort of kept the group together in the sense that
0:36:41 – 0:36:47

if there was a major commotion in the group, and sometimes there were major fights, especially
0:36:47 – 0:36:52

involving males, Mama would be the one who afterwards would fix all the relationships.
0:36:52 – 0:36:58

She would literally bring males together afterwards. She would approach one of them,
0:36:58 – 0:37:04

if they were not reconciling by themselves, she would approach one of them and even pull at his
0:37:04 – 0:37:09

arm to get him to move towards the other. She would literally bring them together. And then
0:37:09 – 0:37:15

she would wait till they groomed each other, and then she would leave. And so she, she fixed
0:37:15 – 0:37:19

problems in the society. She was clearly the most respected female. So if there was any
0:37:19 – 0:37:24

trouble among the females, they would all look at her, see what she would do at that point.
0:37:24 – 0:37:31

And the males, even these big, big dominant males, physically dominant, they would seek her out and
0:37:31 – 0:37:39

groom her and be very nice with her kids, because they needed her support for their political
0:37:39 – 0:37:45

machinations. So yes, he was a very central figure, and not mean at all. You know, sometimes
0:37:45 – 0:37:53

high ranking individuals can be can be bullies, both males and females, that's a possibility.
0:37:53 – 0:38:01

But she was not like that at all.
0:38:01 – 0:38:02

And talk a little bit about the difference between dominance and power. You know, I remember
0:38:03 – 0:38:10

during the second wave feminist movement that began in the 1970s, that we talked about
0:38:10 – 0:38:18

the difference between power over and power to, or empowerment. So can you apply that to
0:38:18 – 0:38:26

the case of Mama and to her kind of leadership in general?
0:38:26 – 0:38:31

Yeah, I think we need to make a distinction. So for example, in chimpanzee society, you may have
0:38:31 – 0:38:37

a young alpha male, who got to his position with the support of some older male, that's very typical,
0:38:37 – 0:38:44

actually, the older males, they cannot reach the top anymore, but they play a lot of political
0:38:44 – 0:38:49

games. And so then you have a young male who is basically in the pocket of an old male, who
0:38:49 – 0:38:55

cannot do anything without the approval of the older male, cannot also not exclude the older
0:38:55 – 0:39:01

male from, for example, meeting with females or from food, because the old male is his supporter.
0:39:01 – 0:39:07

So yeah, you then you have an old male who has actually more power than the alpha male.
0:39:07 – 0:39:12

And the same situation arises between males and females, you may have females who have more power
0:39:12 – 0:39:20

than than the high ranking male. So I described, for example, in the book, a situation in a macaque
0:39:20 – 0:39:25

troop, where we had an old alpha male, who certainly could not have kept his position,
0:39:25 – 0:39:32

if the alpha female had not decided that he needed to stay in power. So each time he was
0:39:32 – 0:39:37

challenged by a younger male, the alpha female would walk up to him and stand right next to him
0:39:37 – 0:39:43

and the young male would back down because there was no way he was going to go against the alpha
0:39:43 – 0:39:47

female, which in a macaque troop is the central figure of everything. So yeah, I think it's very
0:39:47 – 0:39:53

important to point out that female leadership exists, that females have hierarchies, you know,
0:39:53 – 0:39:58

it is often the misconception that hierarchies are for males and not for females. But, you know,
0:39:58 – 0:40:04

the word pecking order comes from hens, doesn't come from roosters, hierarchies are found everywhere
0:40:04 – 0:40:10

in the animal kingdom, and the females have plenty of them. And so we need to realize that we have a
0:40:10 – 0:40:17

sort of simplified image of the primate world, and sometimes simplified of the human world,
0:40:17 – 0:40:22

because we live by wishful thinking very often in the human world. And then you hear people say,
0:40:22 – 0:40:28

well, men are hierarchical and women are not, and women are not competitive with each other. Well,
0:40:28 – 0:40:33

I think that's all nonsense. I think women are plenty competitive with each other.
0:40:33 – 0:40:37

You call yourself a feminist, but you make a distinction between sex and gender,
0:40:37 – 0:40:44

Frans de Waal, in this book, Different. Tell us about that difference and also explain to us
0:40:44 – 0:40:51

where your feminist perspective has influenced the way you see this.
0:40:52 – 0:40:56

Well, the term gender comes from John Money, a sexologist, who was the first one to found a
0:40:56 – 0:41:03

gender clinic in 1965. And he had noticed that sometimes people are born with one sex,
0:41:03 – 0:41:13

but they don't identify as that sex, which we now call transgender people. And so he had discovered
0:41:13 – 0:41:20

that that's the case. And he was very upset by the negative terminology. These people were called
0:41:20 – 0:41:26

abnormal or weird or queer, or that we had all sorts of negative labels for these people. And
0:41:26 – 0:41:32

he didn't agree with that. And he said, I'm going to introduce a new term. And this was the term
0:41:32 – 0:41:36

gender, which relates more to the cultural side of sex differences and how you identify and how
0:41:36 – 0:41:43

you behave and how you express yourself. And I am in full agreement with him on the term gender,
0:41:43 – 0:41:49

that it is a useful term, because we cannot act as if the differences between men and women are
0:41:49 – 0:41:55

purely biological, that there's only biology. Because we can see if you travel from nation to
0:41:55 – 0:42:02

nation, you can see how gender differences are expressed quite differently in different cultures.
0:42:02 – 0:42:08

And so I fully agree that the term gender is useful to draw attention to the cultural side of
0:42:08 – 0:42:14

things and the learning side. And my own position, when you say I'm a feminist, what I mean is that
0:42:14 – 0:42:21

I'm all for gender equality. I'm not for glossing over the differences that exist,
0:42:21 – 0:42:29

especially the biological differences. I think we need to take them very seriously. But I don't
0:42:29 – 0:42:35

think that's a good reason to have inequality. And when people speak of gender inequality,
0:42:35 – 0:42:39

we have to realize the problem is not with gender. The problem is with the inequality and the
0:42:40 – 0:42:46

injustice and the backward thinking that still exists in some corners. That's where the problem
0:42:46 – 0:42:53

is. And so my book is written partly to clear up what we know about sex and gender differences and
0:42:53 – 0:43:03

how that relates to other primates, but also to make the argument that none of that is a reason
0:43:03 – 0:43:09

for inequality. I don't see how that works. And of course, traditionally, we have always
0:43:09 – 0:43:15

justified in our societies inequality by saying that men are smarter than women, men have more
0:43:15 – 0:43:22

intellect. That's what the philosophers always have declared is the male is the smarter of the
0:43:22 – 0:43:28

two. And I've worked all my life on animal intelligence, and I've never noticed sex
0:43:28 – 0:43:35

differences. And actually, our field doesn't talk much about sex differences, because they're
0:43:35 – 0:43:39

basically non-existent. And I would say nowadays in human society, now that our education for boys
0:43:39 – 0:43:46

and girls is identical, all of that has evaporated. The so-called intellectual differences, I think,
0:43:46 – 0:43:52

are non-existent. So the intellectual differences
0:43:52 – 0:43:56

are non-existent, but you do address in this book different differences that you say are innate.
0:43:58 – 0:44:07

Maybe the intellectual, there's no intellectual difference, but brains are different between
0:44:07 – 0:44:12

males and female. You point to, for example, the choice of preferences around toys, not just in
0:44:12 – 0:44:20

humans, but also in primates that fall into kind of the conventional view that females are more
0:44:20 – 0:44:30

interested in nurture, males are more interested in competition. So could you address how that
0:44:30 – 0:44:37

works without falling into the trap of equating difference with inequality?
0:44:37 – 0:44:45

Yeah, I think those differences in, for example, play behavior of the young, they have very little
0:44:45 – 0:44:52

to do with intellect, I think. I'm not sure what the role of the brain is in that, but we do know
0:44:52 – 0:44:59

that if you give dolls, for example, to primates, like a teddy bear or something, the females will
0:44:59 – 0:45:07

pick it up and very eager to pick it up and will hold it and put it on their back, on their belly,
0:45:07 – 0:45:13

hold it against the nipple. The females will take care of the doll, and sometimes for weeks on end,
0:45:13 – 0:45:19

if you give it to a male, if he's interested at all, most of them are not, he will probably take
0:45:19 – 0:45:26

it apart or fight with his friends over the doll or something like that. The males are not
0:45:26 – 0:45:32

caretakers in that regard, and young females are also very interested in infants. So as soon as
0:45:32 – 0:45:37

there's a newborn baby, the mother is surrounded by young females who want to get their hands on
0:45:37 – 0:45:43

the baby. The young males are not interested in that. And what the young males do most is
0:45:43 – 0:45:49

roughhousing, it's what we call rough and tumble play. And that's universally also in the human
0:45:49 – 0:45:55

species, universally boys do more of that than girls. And in the primates, all the primates,
0:45:55 – 0:46:01

the young males do more of that than the young females. And so yes, in the play behavior,
0:46:01 – 0:46:06

we see already major differences in all the primates and in human society. And those
0:46:07 – 0:46:13

differences probably relate to adult behavior, because when females are adult, they will have
0:46:13 – 0:46:19

infants and they will have to take care of them. And that's a very complex task.
0:46:19 – 0:46:23

We often speak of the mother instinct, but mothering is really a complex business. And
0:46:23 – 0:46:30

if females have had no experience at all with babies, and that happens sometimes at zoos,
0:46:30 – 0:46:35

that you have, let's say a group of gorillas, where the females have never had a baby,
0:46:35 – 0:46:40

then everything goes wrong. We know that is that you have to somehow instruct them.
0:46:40 – 0:46:45

That's interesting how zoos do that. Zoos will bring in a mother with a young baby and have her
0:46:45 – 0:46:52

nurse in front of the gorillas. And she will do that every day. And the gorillas will learn from
0:46:52 – 0:46:57

that. So instruction is absolutely essential for maternal behavior. And that's why at a young age,
0:46:57 – 0:47:05

the young females need to learn a little bit about that.
0:47:05 – 0:47:08

And they bring in human mothers.
0:47:08 – 0:47:09

They bring in human mothers, because, of course, anatomically, humans and apes are very similar.
0:47:09 – 0:47:16

People don't always recognize that, but we are extremely similar. And that's why gorillas,
0:47:16 – 0:47:22

by watching a human mother do her thing with the baby, they learn something from that,
0:47:22 – 0:47:27

and they can apply that to their own body as well.
0:47:27 – 0:47:29

You say that these kinds of innate differences, sex differences between males and females,
0:47:30 – 0:47:38

and the behavior is due to evolution. So explain, what is the survival or the fitness
0:47:38 – 0:47:47

preference for, I mean, this may be obvious, but it wasn't actually obvious to me when I read your
0:47:47 – 0:47:54

book, Frans de Waal, when I read Diff'rent. It was a new thing to me that this difference is really
0:47:54 – 0:48:00

rooted in evolution. So explain that. Well, the difference we just discussed,
0:48:00 – 0:48:05

you know, the play behavior and so on, and the interest of young females in infants and in dolls,
0:48:05 – 0:48:12

that is easy to explain because, as I said, these females, they will later become mothers,
0:48:12 – 0:48:18

and they need to learn a lot of things. And so evolution has made them interested in that issue
0:48:18 – 0:48:24

because they need to learn so much about it. And the competitiveness of young males in the
0:48:24 – 0:48:29

roughhousing has sort of two functions in evolutionary sense. One is it prepares them
0:48:29 – 0:48:34

for a life in which there's going to be quite a bit of competition and rivalry with other males.
0:48:34 – 0:48:40

And so they need to learn how to fight, and they do that by having mock fights that they do mostly
0:48:40 – 0:48:45

for fun. But they also need to learn to control their strengths because they are so much stronger
0:48:45 – 0:48:51

often than females, and certainly much stronger than the young. So an adult male gorilla,
0:48:51 – 0:48:58

with his fists, if he puts a little bit of pressure on a baby, he's going to kill the baby.
0:48:58 – 0:49:04

And so adult male gorillas do play with baby gorillas. And so they have learned all these
0:49:04 – 0:49:11

enormous inhibitions that they need, and they learn them during play behavior as young males.
0:49:12 – 0:49:19

And so there's a functional side to these differences. And there's other differences,
0:49:19 – 0:49:24

of course, between the sexes that probably also have a functional side and are due to evolution.
0:49:24 – 0:49:29

Now, chimpanzees are much more of a male-dominated society, mama notwithstanding,
0:49:29 – 0:49:35

than our other closest primate relatives, the bonobos. Talk about the differences between
0:49:36 – 0:49:44

these two primates. And you also say in the book that it's possible that we are actually
0:49:44 – 0:49:49

more closely related to bonobos, or they may be our more recent primate relative than even
0:49:49 – 0:49:56

chimpanzees. Chimpanzees and bonobos are actually genetically equally close or equally distant from
0:49:56 – 0:50:04

us. There's no difference in that regard. The bonobo is a totally different character than the
0:50:04 – 0:50:10

chimpanzee. And the comparison that you always hear between humans and apes is with the chimpanzee,
0:50:10 – 0:50:18

the chimpanzee male-dominated, male violence, territorial. And that's the comparison that the
0:50:18 – 0:50:26

anthropologists generally like. They don't like the bonobo because the bonobo is peaceful
0:50:26 – 0:50:32

and sexy and female-dominated. And the anthropologists, for some reason, they have
0:50:33 – 0:50:38

invested very heavily in a human evolutionary scenario with violence and warfare, and they
0:50:38 – 0:50:46

are not ready to adopt a bonobo. And I'm arguing in the book, especially from a gender perspective,
0:50:46 – 0:50:51

I think the bonobo is awfully interesting. And the bonobo is exactly equally close to us. There's
0:50:51 – 0:50:56

really no good reason to exclude the bonobo from the story that we tell. And so in the bonobo,
0:50:56 – 0:51:02

the females are not larger than males. The females are smaller than males,
0:51:02 – 0:51:06

but they collectively dominate them. And they can do that because they live in an environment in
0:51:06 – 0:51:13

which they can travel together more than the chimpanzee who needs to spread out over the
0:51:13 – 0:51:18

forest to find enough food. The bonobos can travel together and hang together. And that's what the
0:51:18 – 0:51:23

females do. They develop some sort of sisterhood and they collectively dominate the males. And
0:51:23 – 0:51:28

they have an alpha female who usually relies on a small clique of top females, like four or five
0:51:28 – 0:51:35

top females, and they together run the whole show and are in charge. And it's so interesting to
0:51:35 – 0:51:42

compare these two. Also, the peacefulness of the bonobo is, of course, very interesting when people
0:51:42 – 0:51:47

say, we have always waged war, we will always wage war because we are a violent species. Then I
0:51:47 – 0:51:54

think, well, we have a very close relative who is more like a hippie than like a warrior. And so
0:51:54 – 0:51:59

it's interesting to think about that. Right. They're the make love, not war primates.
0:51:59 – 0:52:06

And tell us more about this make love, not war. How do the bonobos approach sex,
0:52:06 – 0:52:12

you know, and also who they have sex with? Yeah, bonobos have, I consider them bisexual in the
0:52:12 – 0:52:20

sense that I don't see much of a preference in them for males or females to have sex with. They
0:52:20 – 0:52:26

have sex with everybody. And the females have a large clitoris. It's interesting that the clitoris
0:52:26 – 0:52:33

has been downplayed by since Freud in human psychology and human biology. But some species
0:52:33 – 0:52:40

like the dolphin and the bonobo and the human, they have a large clitoris, which must relate to
0:52:40 – 0:52:47

female pleasure. There's no other function for the clitoris. And we now know from anatomical studies
0:52:47 – 0:52:54

that the clitoris has as many nerve endings as the penis. And so it is certainly an organ of
0:52:54 – 0:53:01

pleasure. And the bonobo has a very prominent one. And bonobo females engage in a lot of female,
0:53:01 – 0:53:08

female sex. And that has probably to do with the bonding that is necessary for that kind of
0:53:08 – 0:53:14

society. Since they have this sisterhood of solidarity between females who together dominate
0:53:14 – 0:53:21

the males and keep the males from being too aggressive with them or killing infants, as
0:53:21 – 0:53:27

happens in some species, the females need to bond and need to resolve issues between themselves. And
0:53:27 – 0:53:34

the way they do that is with these brief sexual contact. I add the word brief because people
0:53:34 – 0:53:39

always think that they must be having sex the whole day. That's really not the case. They have
0:53:39 – 0:53:44

these brief sexual encounters. They last 10 seconds, maybe 20 seconds maximum. So these are
0:53:44 – 0:53:51

brief genital encounters that they have. And they have them regardless of this males and females,
0:53:51 – 0:53:59

and the combination of partners is very variable.
0:53:59 – 0:54:03

You know, it's so interesting. They have very prominent genitalia, the females, but also the
0:54:03 – 0:54:20

males. And so prominent with the females that it actually can be kind of uncomfortable for them to
0:54:20 – 0:54:26

sit. So what is the evolutionary advantage or purpose of that kind of prominence?
0:54:26 – 0:54:35

Well, it is intended clearly to attract males. So it's what we call in biology,
0:54:35 – 0:54:42

we call it this sexually selected. It's selected because the males are attracted. And so females
0:54:42 – 0:54:47

who have these genital swellings, they are more successful in attracting males. And actually,
0:54:47 – 0:54:52

when the females don't have these swellings, which is in between their cycles, or when they're
0:54:52 – 0:54:59

pregnant, when they don't have these swellings, then the males are not really interested in them
0:54:59 – 0:55:04

for sexual reasons. And so it's an uncomfortable structure. And we humans can be very happy,
0:55:04 – 0:55:12

I think, that we don't have that structure. But I must also add that they don't always
0:55:12 – 0:55:20

have these swellings, because females get pregnant, and then they have a long nursing
0:55:20 – 0:55:26

period. They nurse their offspring for four to five years, they have a very slow development.
0:55:26 – 0:55:32

And so during all that time, the female is not ovulating. So the interbirth interval in
0:55:32 – 0:55:39

apes like chimps and bonobos is five to six years. So there's a long period of time where they don't
0:55:39 – 0:55:45

have these genital swellings. And then all of a sudden, they start cycling again. And then they
0:55:45 – 0:55:49

come up again, and they are there to attract the males. So it's not like they have them all the
0:55:49 – 0:55:55

time. And bonobo males also have sex with each other. Is that right? Yeah, but much less so.
0:55:55 – 0:56:01

And you would expect that because they are not as bonded as the females are. So males have sometimes
0:56:01 – 0:56:06

sex with each other. In other species, that's actually more common. So homosexual activity
0:56:06 – 0:56:12

in the primates is not unusual at all. The only thing that's maybe unusual is exclusive
0:56:12 – 0:56:19

homosexual orientation. But you know, in human society, the exclusiveness of sexual orientations
0:56:20 – 0:56:27

is also in question. So for example, a recent study suggested that men who are heterosexual,
0:56:27 – 0:56:35

you better should call them mostly heterosexual, because almost all men have some homosexual
0:56:35 – 0:56:43

tendencies. So we suppress that in our culture, of course, we want people to choose, you're either
0:56:43 – 0:56:48

going to be gay, or you're going to be heterosexual. We like to put people in pigeonholes,
0:56:48 – 0:56:55

and say what they are. But in reality, and that's what Alfred Kinsey already said long ago,
0:56:55 – 0:57:01

in reality, it's more like a spectrum of sexual preferences.
0:57:01 – 0:57:05

So talking about males, you have a chapter on violence, violence and rape, and you point out
0:57:05 – 0:57:14

that males, male primates, including humans, are the overwhelming source of violence, but that
0:57:14 – 0:57:22

there are also differences between humans and other primates when it comes to violence and rape.
0:57:22 – 0:57:26

Talk about that. Yeah, I think rape is extremely rare, even in the chimpanzee where the males
0:57:26 – 0:57:34

dominate physically. Rape, what we call usually forced copulation. So copulating by a male as a
0:57:34 – 0:57:43

female against her will, so that she's struggling to get free or something like that. That is
0:57:43 – 0:57:50

extremely rare behavior. And I think rape is more common in human society than in other primates.
0:57:50 – 0:57:56

And that is partly, that's my guess, I'm not a psychologist or a sociologist. But my guess is
0:57:56 – 0:58:05

that in humans, we have these nuclear families that live separate, in separate homes, where you
0:58:05 – 0:58:11

have a male and a female, sometimes more, but at any rate, the male is in a situation where he can
0:58:11 – 0:58:18

control the female without an enormous amount of resistance from the group. That's an impossibility
0:58:18 – 0:58:25

in a primate society where everything is out in the open. If a male tries to force himself on a
0:58:25 – 0:58:31

female, the females will usually collectively object to that. And so we have created this
0:58:31 – 0:58:37

artificial situation of individuals who are more or less isolated, at least for some periods of
0:58:37 – 0:58:43

time. And we've seen, for example, during the COVID crisis, that domestic violence went up,
0:58:43 – 0:58:48

because people were cooped up at home. So I think we have created a situation where we actually have
0:58:48 – 0:58:54

more rape than you will ever find in a primate society. And that has implications for human
0:58:54 – 0:59:00

evolution as well, because, you know, after all, for most of our history, we're probably,
0:59:00 – 0:59:05

we're living in bands of 50 or fewer individuals. You know, it's interesting to speculate whether
0:59:05 – 0:59:14

rape is more a product of civilization, as opposed to, or so-called civilization,
0:59:14 – 0:59:20

as opposed to natural to humans. Well, the small groups is an interesting point,
0:59:20 – 0:59:26

because in small groups, of course, everyone has a reputation. And I think a rapist in a small
0:59:26 – 0:59:34

society may get into deep trouble. So one anthropologist, Kim Hill, has one time set up a
0:59:34 – 0:59:41

mathematical model of how would a young man do in a hunter-gatherer society, if he were a rapist,
0:59:41 – 0:59:49

with all the pluses and all the minuses. And he concluded that the family of the woman would
0:59:49 – 0:59:59

probably take revenge on a guy like that. And they might exclude him, or he might lose friends,
0:59:59 – 1:00:05

or he might need to move to another place, if he can, if he's accepted in another place,
1:00:05 – 1:00:10

or the woman may not adopt the kid and may not take care of it, the product of rape. And so he
1:00:10 – 1:00:19

concluded that, because people have argued that rape is possibly an adaptive strategy, is possibly
1:00:19 – 1:00:27

evolved to produce more offspring. People have speculated about that. And it's unlikely, I think,
1:00:27 – 1:00:34

in a small-scale society, I think it's unlikely that a young man can get away with it easily.
1:00:34 – 1:00:40

So that's also the argument I use in my book. I'm not a big fan of that kind of theories.
1:00:40 – 1:00:46

I think rape is a bit of an artificial product of the way we have set up our societies nowadays.
1:00:46 – 1:00:53

And, in fact, you say that there has been a shift. I mean, you spend,
1:00:53 – 1:00:57

Frans de Waal, you spend a lot of time in this book, Different, examining how the scientific
1:00:57 – 1:01:05

establishment has approached gender from, we could say, a fairly biased point of view.
1:01:05 – 1:01:12

But you say, recently, there's been a shift to a more optimistic view of human nature,
1:01:12 – 1:01:18

not the kind of male-dominated one that we are inevitably a war-making species and, you know,
1:01:18 – 1:01:23

survival of the fittest, et cetera. Could you talk about that more optimistic view and what we can
1:01:23 – 1:01:29

take away from our fellow primates? Yeah. The view in the 70s and the 80s
1:01:29 – 1:01:36

was very much like the selfish gene view, like we are selfish, competitive,
1:01:36 – 1:01:43

violent. There's actually nothing good about the human species. That was sort of the view,
1:01:44 – 1:01:49

which maybe after World War II was a realistic view based on how we had behaved as a species.
1:01:49 – 1:01:56

But nowadays, there's a lot of attention in the literature, both by anthropologists and
1:01:56 – 1:02:03

economists and psychologists, on the cooperative side of the human species. Humans are really
1:02:03 – 1:02:09

special in how cooperative we are and how we do things together. And so, that whole view of humans
1:02:09 – 1:02:15

and by extension, other species as entirely selfish and competitive is sort of falling apart.
1:02:15 – 1:02:22

And, you know, it's also reflected in, you know, in biology, we talk about the struggle for life,
1:02:22 – 1:02:28

and we usually mean by that competition. But, you know, there's an enormous amount of animals,
1:02:28 – 1:02:35

think of the ants, think of elephants, there's an enormous amount of animals who survive by
1:02:35 – 1:02:40

cooperating with each other, doing things together, or helping each other against their enemies,
1:02:40 – 1:02:46

or hunting together, which is what wolves and dolphins and so on do. So, I think there's much
1:02:46 – 1:02:52

more emphasis on cooperation nowadays, and less on violent competition. And I think that was
1:02:52 – 1:03:00

absolutely necessary, because I felt that during the period of the 70s and 80s, the way people
1:03:00 – 1:03:06

talked about animals and humans, I was extremely biased towards these negative depictions of human
1:03:06 – 1:03:13

nature. And of course, the lessons that we can learn from our closest relatives, the bonobos
1:03:13 – 1:03:19

and the chimpanzees. It's a fascinating exploration in your book, Different Gender Through the Eyes
1:03:19 – 1:03:26

of a Primatologist. Frans de Waal, thank you so much for talking with us here on Writer's Voice.
1:03:26 – 1:03:32

You're welcome.
1:03:32 – 1:03:34