Ian McDonald
ONE OF the strangest paradoxes in the history of the human race is that while men have commonly dominated by virtue of their greater strength and aggression, women time and time again have been the cause of their downfall and defeat. It is as if some great universal arbiter constantly wishes to remind us who in the end has the upper hand.
The story of why Adam fell from grace is so well known it hardly needs mentioning. That downfall may have been symbolic of what was to happen throughout history. The examples are never-ending and each of us will have his favourite. There is Helen of Troy, of course, whose beauty launched - and sunk - a thousand ships and burnt the topless towers of Illium. There is Lady Macbeth tempting her infatuated husband into bloody regicide. Perhaps most compelling of all is Cleopatra, Egyptian queen, in whose captivating arms poor, muscular Antony found it preferable to languish than to go out and fight for the whole Roman Empire. There are a hundred, a thousand, other examples.
COMTESSE DE PORTES
My own favourite is not well known. She is the Comtesse de Portes, mistress of Paul Reynaud, Prime Minister of France at the beginning of the Second World War. At the greatest crisis of Paul Reynaud's life, and in the history of his country, as the German army flooded into France, this amazing lady plagued the Prime Minister incessantly, at all hours of the day and night. She wanted him to give in and make a separate peace. In the middle of War Cabinets she would telephone him on the private line on his desk and, we are told, if, in despair, he disconnected the phone, she would even burst into the council chamber itself to harangue him. As he was meeting Churchill in a final conference about continuing to fight the war, she sent a message into him: "We must give up, give up. We must make an end of it. I insist on it." Reynaud did give up, and so did France. She was an extraordinary woman, Helen de Portes, but by no means unique in her influence on her man, as history has shown over and over again.
Woman as temptress is a theme as old as history itself. Evidence is accumulating that woman's power to tempt and seduce is not just a matter of individual fate. It begins to look as if man is programmed within his deepest genes to succumb to woman through all the ages. What scientists have found is that man inherits his weakness in the face of woman's wiles. He is helpless by force of nature itself, not by chance or individual circumstance.
TWO-SPOT LADYBIRD
Dr. Peter O'Donald and his colleagues at Cambridge University conducted a comprehensive study of females of the two-spot ladybird species called Adelia Bipunctata. This study shows enhanced female ladybird preference for the darker sort of male ladybird to the extent that this preference doubles the darkness over four generations. Conclusive proof is therefore available that female prejudice for or against this, that, or the other male characteristic can be handed on from generation to generation. This explains, for instance, the peacock's exotic tail growing in glory through the ages at the prompting of the supposedly drab little peahen. Have no doubt about it - he struts, she controls the strutting and always has.
The implications are considerable, but not really surprising.
From generation to generation women manipulate the genetic material, subtly, gradually, until they get what they want in their male counterparts. Without being aware of it the male is moulded to the liking of the female. We are involved in a giant genetic trap from which there is no escape. How they like us best, is how we are going to be.
Ian McDonald is an occasional writer who lives and works in Georgetown,Guyana.
