I took one anthropology course in the 90s, about gender and was struck by one theory. The prof was talking about areas where resources were scarce, and therefore warfare high. Some of these societies developed very male centered societies--where sperm is sacred, and there are manly rituals and such.
And some academic theorized that women participated / helped create this culture, because it benefitted them to have men going out and fighting battles. (By "benefit" I mean = to protect their children, and the survival of the tribe.) That in this sort of harsh setting you have to find a way to convince all your young men to go out and get killed. And one way to do that is to elevate their status in the tribe.
This was a big revelation for me, at the wee age of 19. It was a paradigm shift for me--exploring the possibility of women creating a male-centered culture for their own survival.
The one other factor I know of is farming, which Matt Ridley talked about in his book on how our entire evolution has been driven by sexsesex (The Red Queen--fantastic book.) Farming and animal husbandry did away with both hunting and gathering as the basis for subsistence, and it's what allowed for the accumulation of wealth. Which also means the accumulation of power. And that might be when a lot of our inequality began.
Alright. That's all I got. Anyone else?
8 comments:
Fear. The way I learned about this subject was that the power men "thought" they had was never really as strong as they'd like it to be. We bled and did not die, we birthed the babies and knew they were our own, we held ancient knowledge that they were never privy to. It scared the ever-livin-shit out of 'em.
I agree with Julie's assessment of fear. Also, in one anthro class I took, there was an article that suggested that men could not create life, they could only create culture, so they elevated that above Nature and creating life. Women (and children) straddled the line of Nature and culture. Women were part of Nature because they gave birth. They turned the little animals they gave birth to into little people who could partake of culture. They prepared raw foodstuffs into food that everyone could eat. Etc.
No theories. I just don't like it!
I'd like to take that professor and beat some sense into ... oh never mind ...
If women created any society where resources were scarce, it would be a cooperative one. Because, a resource shared is a resource that is preserved and probably renewed. A resource that is fought over, usually results in the resource being trampled underfoot and disappearing a whole lot faster.
Julie/Skye - But couldn't women have done the same? Elevated nature over culture? Why did men "win" so to speak?
@JJJ - You're hilarious.
@widders - I wish I still had some kind of reference for it, because who knows how accurately I'm recounting it. But the idea was that maybe women aren't always as victimy as we think they were/are.
I don't believe women are inherently more cooperative than men (if that's part of what you're saying, I'm not sure.) And there are definitely areas where human beings (like animals) do cooperate... well, society is based on that. And men and women both do it.
But when resources are REALLY scarce? What if your options are:
(a) my family starves and dies
(b) your family starves and dies
(c) we share, both families don't get enough calories, we all die
?
We're also, if I've got the literature right, "gene programmed" to cooperate more with people we're related to, which in a small tribe would be the case. As opposed to people in That Other Tribe. (But that's just from Matt Ridley's also super book on cooperation. He's actually a zoologist.)
(Hope I don't sound argumentative. Just thinking out loud. :-) I don't really know eff-all about this. )
I think the men won because they are bigger and stronger and in many situations are not averse to violence. At least, that's my theory. Why that wasn't the case in all cultures baffles me, but I like that there have been quite a few matriarchal and matrilineal cultures and still are some in tribal form.
I think all of this feeds into why men in Western culture are feeling lost and angry. They don't know what their role is, what with women's roles expanding. Men's roles just haven't expanded as much into the nurturing range because it still isn't considered manly. But women are stepping into the "manly" arenas and many men feel swept aside, disenfranchised, etc. because of that. We need to teach a wider range of roles for men and we need to be willing to accept them in those other roles, rather than expecting them to still be the guy who kills the spiders and takes out the trash and brings home the bacon. That's my ramble for today.
I agree. While we don't know how much of maleness and femaleness are nature or nurture, the general consensus is that it's both. But there are people who are outwardly one gender, and inwardly the other. A woman who feels very *masculine* might want to join a dude's club, for example, because she relates in the same ways, on the same level.
We need to be expanding these definitions, and allowing for more complexity and fluidity. Not being so judgmental. Like a recent article that criticized those who use "transsexual" as an insult for Ann Coulter.
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