The First Sex

[Arwon]

That seems like a weak argument, actually. With no fixed borders and a transitory lifestyle anyways, hunter-gatherers didn't need to worry about that. They fought over resources, and often those resources included women. This has been observed in modern hunter-gatherer societies.

Why do hunter gatherer societies fight now? A big part of it is fear of the unknown (they might attack us!) which is, indeed, a form of the security dilemma. I'm NOT arguing that hunter-gatherer societies are or were more peaceful, just that the fruits of war for them (in a state of relative egalitarianness which makes them unable to gain permanent advantage through warfare) are different than what happens in a complex agricultural society. And that, therefore, war has a different role, and that therefore, the warmakers had a different status.

 

[Eran of Arcadia]

Well they might not get permanent advantages through war, but they can get resources. It is a fact that some hunter-gatherer societies were more violent than others. It was about resources, and status, which odten had the very real benefit of access to women - those taken in war and those of your own tribe you impressed through captured resources or tales of your exploits. I mean, we still do it.

 

[Brighteye]

Never said it did, but stuff like the goddess statues and the importance placed on fertility means that a full-on culture of patriarchal oppression doesn't seem to predate institutions like the complex state, property ownership and organised religion. In other words, gender roles and traits mostly aren't biologically determined but socially constructed!

Not at all. Patriarchal oppresion does not predate institutions because it is an institution. This doesn't mean that gender roles are socially constructed.

Bollocks. That men strong/women weak hunter-gather he-man stuff is all a matter of perspective and an attempt to justify the current status quo.

Who said I was attempting to justify anything? As you must have read, I specifically stated that those conditions do not apply any more

Watch how easily it gets turned around: In pre-agricultural hunter-gatherer society women were far more valuable. They bore children, they were key to survival.Why do you think the men went out and did all the fighting and all the dangerous stuff? They were expendable donors of genetic material, and even then their role in actual reproduction wasn't really well understood.

Key to whose survival? When predators and enemies will kill you quickly and easily, are fighting men really so expendable?

It wasn't until stuff like ownership of land and the rise of complex civilisation that women started to occupy a weaker position. One example: once the dudes found it essential to keep track of who their kids were for purposes of property transfer to future generations, it became necessary to essentially own women so you could control their procreation.

Women have always had the weaker position. It comes from being weaker. Strange that. Now that strength is unimportant, they have an equal position. Goodness me! It makes sense. Owning women is not necessarily a product of property. I can be a mindless man and still fight over women and 'own' them, as animals do every spring.

The key difference is that this stuff was ephemeral and temportary when you were living in a subsistance fashion. Agriculture and organised statehood gave males as warmakers the ability to take lasting control of the new primary source of power.

Lasting? For how long? For as long as they were fit and able to make war? And this differs from before in what way? The strong led the weak, and always have done. Nowadays the strong aren't physically strong. That's the only difference.

... War-making therefore gained a higher prestige than in previous relatively egalitarian preagricultural societies. Hunter-gatherer societies needen't have been more peaceful, nor utopian, just more equal and less able to gain lasting advantage over each other through war.

Previously egalitarian! Are you making a joke? Societies almost certainly did gain a lasting advantage over each other. I thought that we were talking about males and females though, not different societies.

I am simply arguing that our incredibly patriarchal and male-normative culture has its roots deep in history and in material historical processes, but it is not biologically determined and is thus not insurmountable now. Since most of what we call "gender differences" in our society are historical results of these processes, they're not innate aspects of our genetics and that's an important thing to understand in order to work past a lot of the damaging assumptions we've been making for the last 5000+ years and still continue to make despite our best efforts.

And I am arguing that patriarchal cultures of the past were biologically determined, and that gender differences are a result of our history. The 'assumptions' are now a problem, but previously were not assumptions. The problem with any residual lack of gender equality is not that the sexes are actually the same, but that, because of our history, we are valuing men for traits that are no longer important.
But those traits were very important for almost all of mankind's history.

 

[Eran of Arcadia]

I don't think that anyone here is seriously claiming men are inherently superior to women or that equality is bad, just thought I should mention that.

 

[Tank_Guy#3]

Yeah, that's about it.

Thousands of years ago humans were living peace with each other, hunting prey together and both male and female could had sex whoever they wanted with, and these ever happy communities followed natural evolution very closely that suddenly was disturbed by raising tide of male chauvinism...

Give me a break. It's a total fantasy.

Perhaps a pharmacist or someone in the medical field could give us a list of possible hallucinogenic drugs that are strong enough to make one have such delusions. Wait, I don't think there is a drug on the planet that could produce such a great caliber of insanity.

It's very interesting, and hilarious to read though.

Originally Posted by Arwon
Watch how easily it gets turned around: In pre-agricultural hunter-gatherer society women were far more valuable. They bore children, they were key to survival.Why do you think the men went out and did all the fighting and all the dangerous stuff? They were expendable donors of genetic material, and even then their role in actual reproduction wasn't really well understood.

Yes, the men are useless until they're all gone. At which time everybody in the village is massacred as there is nobody to defend them. They must really lack value

 

[aneeshm]

Then why all the goddess statues from pre-agricultural times?

All the primary pre-agricultural deities of Aryans like me are masculine.

And we have a long, looooooong collective memory.

 

[aneeshm]

In other words, gender roles and traits mostly aren't biologically determined but socially constructed!

In a truly free society, gender roles pretty much are biologically constructed.

 

[puglover]

She also believed that these societies developed a very high degree of civilization that was wiped out as a result of the "patriarchal revolution", which she believes introduced a new system of society based around property rights rather than human rights, and which worshipped a stern and vengeful male God – as seen today in Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

Oh yes. The Abrahamic religions are always woman-hating. Never mind the fact that Jewish history honors several female leaders and the resurrected Christ's first witnesses were women. That's right, folks. God hates women. Don't you wished we were back in the good ol' days of fictional female-ruled prehistoric societies?

Why on Earth is this taught in school?

 

[aneeshm]

As I said as one example: "Once the dudes found it essential to keep track of who their kids were for purposes of property transfer (of farms and stuff) to future generations, it became necessary to essentially own women so you could control their procreation."

Maybe the initial spur was the male's role as warmakers aquiring a secondary "aquisition of resources" aspect. In a hunter-gatherer society war was for defence and maintaining the status quo, and as I've said, a case can be made that women were pretty damn valuable, maybe more than the expendable men

BUT farming and food surpluses changed this. Farms and produce were the first "above sustinence" resource, and as we know, the first powerful civilisations grew as a result of that power derived from agriculture. Suddenly, war's status rose... being able to take control of these sources of power would have given greater status and control to the dudes as war-makers. The roles stayed the same but their statuses changed. "Home makers and carers" no longer had high status. Things like patriarchal organised religions followed from this new culture of institutional male supremacy.

Once inheritance of land became the main source of power, a way to keep control of war-aquisitions it was necessary. But how could you be sure whose kids where whose given that WOMEN are the babymakers? You had to take exclusive control of the babymakers (or the "home makers and carers"), that's how. Hence, a culture was created in which exclusive bonds, even nonconsensual bonds, which subjugated and abused women, was the norm thanks to the increased status of war in societies where you could own property. Women were a victim of history.

The more I think about this, the more it seems that the initial roles were biologically determined, but the way they manifested socially and culturally was very very historical.

Can you actually provide some proof for any of this?

 

[punkbass2000]

I don't think anyone's provided any proof of anything thus far...

 

[Ecofarm]

"This" is being taught in school because the beliefs posited in the book are held by some members of the population and examining the belief will help to inform us of the opinions of others. The book report does not require a positive review, I'm sure. The purpose of the exercise is to examine a theory and critically evaluate it. I doubt very much that the purpose of the exercise is to put forth the book as fact.

 

[puglover]

"This" is being taught in school because the beliefs posited in the book are held by some members of the population and examining the belief will help to inform us of the opinions of others. The book report does not require a positive review, I'm sure. The purpose of the exercise is to examine a theory and critically evaluate it.

A belief not based in any substantial claim whatsoever and held by feminists only found on university campuses. Honestly, what would a study of this theory give?

 

[Ecofarm]

Know your enemy? An understanding/exposure to a theory (that does, in fact, exist outside college campuses)? An exercise in critical thought so as to improve your ability to do so?

The exercise is not only about this particular book.

 

[silver 2039]

A belief not based in any substantial claim whatsoever and held by feminists only found on university campuses. Honestly, what would a study of this theory give?

Oh thats so rich coming from a Christian.....

 

[Eran of Arcadia]

Well, more people hold his beliefs than hers . . .

 

[puglover]

Oh thats so rich coming from a Christian.....

I was wondering as I was posting that who would be immature enough to say that. Congratulations. You win.

Know your enemy? An understanding/exposure to a theory (that does, in fact, exist outside college campuses)? An exercise in critical thought so as to improve your ability to do so?

The exercise is not only about this particular book.

And that would be the ideal. Unfortunately, the teacher mentioned in the opening post who shares that material probably doesn't have that motivation.

 

[silver 2039]

I was wondering as I was posting that who would be immature enough to say that. Congratulations. You win.

Maybe now you can emphatize with how atheists view religion perhaps....

 

[C~G]

Like chicks support free love anyway, that's a male fantasy.

Well, yeah.

The point is there are fantasies that women were more free to choose their partner in those early communities or in the "state of nature" compared to the times dominated by male values.

This is of course total BS.

As I said as one example: "Once the dudes found it essential to keep track of who their kids were for purposes of property transfer (of farms and stuff) to future generations, it became necessary to essentially own women so you could control their procreation."

This is actually the primary illusion of this feminism research.

The idea that there was time of "free sex" which gave both women and men rights after which men suddenly took over this "natural process" is outright silly. It's writing history backwards.

I bet men were interested about who women slepth with ages before any kind of children appeared. The fight for dominance of females is present in quite many species of mammals including humans.

It's indeed so that probably societies in general wanted to look closely whose child was in question since someone had to provide for the children their living and it's obvious the role is best for the mother and the father rather than whole community. Maybe there just wasn't enough wannabe-babysitters and people decided that it was time that fathers carry some responsibility of their children. It's strange how some feminist theorist seem to forget that the idea of marriage example is to protect children rights to two parents. It's obvious fathers then want to know who their children is. I bet if mother's child would be taken after labour from them and given back after a while, she would like to know whether it's her child or someone elses child.

But there's no evidence this happened because of agricultural revolution, in fact it could have happened much much earlier. I bet it has however do with the size and organizational level of the community which would mean that agriculture probably played role creating enviroment where this was necessary but not in the sense you explained it. I suspect it's much more older phenomena.

The question whether it's natural/social is false dilemma.

 

[Arwon]

"This" is being taught in school because the beliefs posited in the book are held by some members of the population and examining the belief will help to inform us of the opinions of others. The book report does not require a positive review, I'm sure. The purpose of the exercise is to examine a theory and critically evaluate it. I doubt very much that the purpose of the exercise is to put forth the book as fact.

I am curious as to why somebody's been given a 35 year old anthropology/history book in an English class. Perhaps the teacher has an antifeminist agenda!

Brighteye: That last paragraph of yours is certainly a valid argument, but can you spare me the tedious slice-by-slice quote wars? I tend to lose interest once that happenss.

C~G: I don't think we substantially disagree. We're both saying these gender roles are historical in origin and no longer necessary, yet still exercising a massive influence over society. We don't even disagree that the culture and institutions date back to roughly the agricultural revolution.

Sure this stuff that you and Eran are talking about existed in pre-agricultural times and exists in hunter-gatherer societies but it seems to me that it really coalesced and cemented with the rise of organised states and such... the culture of patriarchy goes a lot deeper than "men are stronger and can rape women" though that's certainly a part of it. Basically: It's a lot easier to create oppression with institutions and abstract cultral norms and organised inequalities than it is in the more "up-close-and-personal" environment of a hunter-gatherer society. When I call them more egalitarian, this is part of what I'm talking about. Egalitarian doesn't mean undifferentiated, just that the nature of power in these societies is such that it has to be more equal.

Now, I think there's enough evidence that the nature of hunter-gatherer societies was (and is) fairly heterogenous... with some being relatively gender-balanced, some being fairly matriarchal, some being quite patriarchal, and with lots of different rules and norms and dispositions from group to group. With groups that small, individual personality quirks probably even played a role. Not that anyone is directly doing this, but I think trying to argue about the exact nature of these pre-historical societies as a whole is futile, because they were most likely pretty diverse and heterogenous. The point, for me, is looking at reasons why one particular pattern rose to dominance, for which there's some pretty compelling arguments in historical processes surrounding the nature of warfare and property and power in the first organised civilisations.

Also, I don't think you're giving enough credit to the "ownership" aspect of marriage. Even today, it's essentially an institution that is all about property arrangements. Including the ownership of children, actually.

 

[Ansar]

the title was misleading.

Misleading and led to disappointment.