    14

    14

    14

    Even T.S. Eliot's terribly erudite "Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"

    is the intellectualized cry of a man who feels women will not look on

    him with admiration and bear his children unless he wins their

    attention with a few violent deeds.  "I have heard the mermaids singing

    each to each," mopes the protagonist, "I do not think that they will sing

    to me."  What would get these lovely girls in the sea to give the poet a

    second look?  Well, he could be a bit more like Prince Hamlet--able to

    finally make a decision and kill.  But the poet hesitates.  He is not the

    kind of person to take decisive measures.  He imagines himself

    growing old, a foolish, lonely man, ignored by women all his life.

    Finally, he consoles himself.  "There will be time," he says, "to murder

    and create."  Yes, the man said murder.

    But females do more than provoke violence among males.  They

    engage in it themselves.  Primatologist Jeanne Altman, studying the

    female baboons of Kenya's Amboseli National Park, noted that when a

    new baby baboon arrived, the females all rushed  over to see it.  As it

    grew older, the baboon ladies come back time and time again.  At first

    glance, their interest looked touchingly affectionate.  But on closer

    inspection, it was anything but.

    During a typical incident, a mother and baby sat in the savannah

    grass.  A high-ranking female walked haughtily over to the pair.  She

    tugged gently at the baby's arm.  When the mother would not give up

    her child, the socially superior female grew impatient.  She tugged the

    arm more violently.  Then she yanked at the baby's leg.  The mother

    reared back, bared her teeth and made a warning sound.  She knew

    what this meddler was really up to.  Given half the chance, the lady of

    lofty social standing would grab the infant, manhandle (or is it

    womanhandle) the squealing child like a rag doll, drag it around, pass

    it back and forth to her friends, and in the end injure it so badly that

    her "interest" might very well prove fatal.

    The chattering anger of the mother did its work.  The female

    from a higher social sphere went back to her clique.  The mother was a

    member of the underclass, looked down on by the haughty and

    none-too-kind members of the female in-group.  The worried soul

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