The Eternal Conflict Between Society and Biology
By Myron Gananian (July 2025)
Call me Toro. I am told that a very famous animal tale begins in the same manner. You must learn about me for this story to make sense. I am a full-time resident of a very large ranch. While many like I come and go, I am the only one staying here permanently. This makes me feel a very privileged inhabitant of this special place. You see, I am the only male with what you humans call a Harem, the members of which are never the same. I have gained a great deal of awareness because of my long tenure here and very close association with the ranch owners. Their treatment of me is superb. My special position has allowed a long and close observation of how they live. This gave me a keen sense of their ways since I have so few responsibilities and much leisure time to compare theirs to mine.
What is most noticeable, and a satisfaction and delight to me, is the pleasure they experience during my attempts to find and select one of my harem which is suitable for my attention and as you will surmise, my workings to ensure her fecundity. On these occasions they often create a festive atmosphere by bringing food, children, and crowds to observe my doings. Most often at these times I perceive the master and mistress being very close together, reacting with excitement at my movements, and sometimes doing things that seem to imitate my actions. When I have been stabled they sometimes appear in an adjacent stall to mimic what I do in the corral.
After many such occasions I perceived the owner with one of the crowd I had seen previously but never together until I saw them in the stall. When the mistress returned from being away I heard terrible sounds from one to the other. I even heard something repeated that I still do not understand, “…night stand”. Soon after that the master came to me and even more affectionately than usual caressed me and as is his wont, talked to me, this time sadly.
I felt his sadness and wished that I had the ability to console him. Had I the faculty to do so, this is what I would have told him.
Dear Master:
I see that in imitating me as I do with many of my harem that you have upset the mistress. Tell her, if you can and if she will listen, that the very things that give her and her friends so much delight in the corral are what caused you to do the same to the other member of your harem. You must be aware that when I leave one of the objects of my work and attend to the next one that the crowd becomes even more excited. Above all, when I am about my business, doing what I am here for, my mind is a blank for I have no awareness of my surroundings. I have only one intent and that has been obvious to all of you. Nothing, but nothing, can keep me from my blind task. I sense that what has caused the trouble between you and the mistress is what happens to me after my time with a harem member and my seeking the next one. The unstoppable attraction, fulfilled, has now become one of aversion, and all of the same attraction then shifts to another, any other. Maybe aversion is an overstatement. It is rather an avoidance or indifference. The force of desire for each event is immediately transferred to the next and is undiminished. Each preceding one is put aside, not even as a memory. So, Dear Master, since your kind and mine have evolved together, we share some very basic attitudes because of the juices we have in common in our loins. Could it be that you are imbued with the same feeling after an encounter that drives both of us to another? Could that feeling in you be the same as it is in me? Neither my brothers nor I have ever been diagnosed as sex addicts. For the reason that we are rather closely ordered, is it accurate to ever say that of any of you? For your kind it is more of an accusation of criminality than a diagnosis.
You may recall the words of a well-known actor: “I pay them not to have sex but to leave.” That is likely the most succinct explanation for your troubles. Better than you will find in any biology or psychiatry book.
On one hand you and I are blessed with similarities. You are burdened by those blessings, while I am not. I even admired for them. On the other hand, my mistress does not and cannot understand or accept that our common heritage has placed on us the only role for which we are alive; assuring that we do not die off. I am not serving my harem. I am saving my kind. There is no choice in this task. I do not understand her being upset for never have one of my ladies become angry at me for not staying with her after I have fulfilled my obligation to her. It is likely that you will find it difficult to soothe her. If you tell her that what you did was thoughtless and reckless that might quiet things down, but you would be lying to yourself. Rather, what you did was to react to the demands of your biological imperative. Of course you can’t tell her that. None of you accepts that your imperative is the same as mine. But that is the cause of a conflict which will never be solved; the mastery of testosterone over our brains and the inability of your harem to recognize that. This remarkable thing called testosterone, about which your females often laugh, is not only the cause of your being with the mistress, but encourages the seeking of another. It is not in you for the cementing of your society, but like in mine, for its perpetuity.
I hope you will understand her grief and not bring it back for we all would be very unhappy to leave this happy place.
Toro
So we humans stand here, befuddled and humiliated by what comes out of the front end of a bull, better for wisdom than from its nether end. We would profit from his insight, for verily he stands superior to us in defense of his kindred’s best interest by providing stability and harmony within his family. Disharmony and rancor seem to be mankind’s preferred stance. A difficult but necessary recognition of biological reality would salve the hurt resulting from its disregard. The ignorance wrought by denial seems self-perpetuating.
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Myron Gananian is a retired physician living in California.
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