Leonidas
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Joined: 2/16/2004
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I see, a nefarious plot, was it? Well, I certainly can't fault you for something that worked.
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We do have a past full of male domination. It's hard to say where genetics leaves off and traditions begin -- it could be that the genetics were gone by the dawn of history, but that the environment encouraged male dominance. Wherever it came from, we've had it for quite a while.
Apply Occam's Razor. a) There was a massive worldwide conspiracy among 99.9% of the peoples in the world to create male dominated traditions to slight females. We have no idea how these cultures communicated with each other, but somehow, they did. b) Only a woman can be sure that the baby that she is carrying is hers. Until very recently there was no way to prove paternity. Evolution favors those who successfully reproduce themselves. Evolution favored men who could both keep sexual control over their mate, and warn off (or fight off, if need be) rivals. Males of our species evolved to be bigger, stronger, more naturally agressive, and with a stonger instinctual drive to assert dominance and control than females.
The most parsimonious explaination is?
It's really a little more complex than that, but not much. There are competing reproductive strategies. Less dominant males have always been able to get sex (to a degree) by sucking up to women. Women have two competing priorities when it comes to men. They want to mate with the "champion", but they often can't keep that guy around to care for their young unless they are an "alpha female" type (read beautiful, and smart). He'll fuck them willingly enough, but that's about all they'll get from him. Then there is the male that they can keep around. The one that will provide for their young. Think that this is "frozen science"? In my state 10-20% of babies born were fathered by a man other than their mother's husband or the man who thinks he's the father. It's against the law here, by the way, for the hospital to tell hubby he's not the dad (which they often discover when they do routine newborn blood-tests). The only study that I've ever seen done on this showed (shockingly to everyone but someone like me, probably) that the dad was fairly consistantly someone of higher socio-economic status than hubby. The study didn't show it, but he was probably stronger and better looking too. He's the champion that the woman instinctively desires, but also instinctively knows that she probably won't convince to stick around.
As a historian, you might recognize this pattern, though, as far as I know, Sparta was the only culture where men actually thought it was a good thing for their wife to fuck the "champion". It made for a stronger Sparta. A man would be proud to raise the son of the best sprinter, or the hero in war.
That our higher, "rational" minds govern what we do sexually is largely an illusion. We're still obeying what we are (as best we can).
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As a person who spends his days in a cubicle, doing technical work, my combat and survival skills seem quite irrelevent. I know that there are many women who could do my job better than I do. If I were to accept the idea that male dominance is part of our genetic heritage -- and in my opinion, it could be so -- should I care? Does it matter at all anymore?
I work on a computer all day too, these days. There was a time when my combat and survival skills kept me alive, but that was a long time ago. Yes, I personally think that it does matter. I think that men need physical challenges and adversity to remain mentally and physically sharp and balanced. It's just part of what we are. We can turn our backs on it, but in doing so, we diminish ourselves in a very real way.
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Human teachings about good and evil conduct have varied a lot over the centuries, as a result of changes in conditions and technology. In 1000 BC, it made sense to tell people that eating pork was a sin, because people didn't always cook it well and they got trichinosis.
As a historian, you are surprisingly off base about these traditions. Even the most learned rabbi will tell you that he has no idea why the dietary laws (kashrut) exist. It doesn't have anything to do with trichinosis. Land animals have to both have cloven hooves and chew the cud to be kosher, and they have to be slaughtered in a specific way. Horses aren't any more kosher than pigs, though their meat is no less healthful than beef when cooked similarly. Aquatic animals have to have both fins and scales. Sharks aren't kosher and neither are catfish, though again, their meat isn't any less heathful than that of a salmon or halibut (which are kosher).
Adam and eve were told to be fruitful and multiply in the bible, but that isn't where the prohibition against birth control comes from. It comes from a passage where a man "spilling his seed on the ground" after fucking a woman was displeasing to god. A fundamentalist reads that passage and proscribes all birth control. An ethicist like me looks at it and sees it (I think) for what it is. At the time, bearing an important man's child was the ticket to higher status for a woman. Fucking her and "spilling your seed on the ground" was, in effect, cheating her. God, from the quotes acribed to him, seems to think that cheating is uncool fairly consistantly.
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... and in Western religions they were forbidden from leading or teaching
Shakyamuni (the historical Buddha) also forbade women from teaching, even though one of his earliest and most devout followers was a woman. It isn't just western traditions. When you see something repeated over and over in widely different cultures, NorCal, it is a good idea to look for a common (and parsimonious) cause.
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as well as being incapable of making contracts due to their deceitfulness, being almost invariably slutty.... [snip] “Who can find a virtuous woman?”
See the 10%-20% of babies statistic above. Since we were "dragging our knuckles" we have been selected to be suspicious of the sexual motivations of our mates, and not without reason. Traditions don't form in a vacuum, NorCal.
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We now know how to eat pork and shellfish safely. We can go uncircumcised without consequence, and use of birth control has become a virtuous act.
See the above about shellfish and pork. Consider too that we were eating olives safely around the same time (I still can't figure out how we discovered how to do that). Making those foods safe was not out of reach, even at that time. Birth control a virtue? It might be if its practice were classless. It seems to me that the ones practicing birth control are the most intelligent and socially aware among us. Are you sure that limiting those genes in the pool is a virtue?
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I see the human race as having huge challenges ahead of it, and I am very fond of the hope that our species might survive. Great ideas may come from individuals, but great works are the result of the skills of many.
I too hope that our species survives, but I'm not overly optimistic. I don't trust intellect to save us as much as you do. I simply don't think that we are wise enough to abandon the evolutionary forces that shaped us. These processes may well be too complex for us to comprehend fully. Our ethical notion of what is right, and good, has evolved to be honoring the desires and heroically defending the welfare of each and every individual. What if this way of thinking is a disaster that will destroy our species in the end? Through heroic (and costly) interventions, children survive to adulthood and reproduce today that would have died in infancy just a couple of generations ago. As a species, we're getting fat, and soft, and in many ways fragile. Maladies are common today that were rare in my grandfather's time. Like you, most trust our intellect and technology to save us in the end. What if it can't? What if the ugly, irreducible truth is that for a species to survive there have to be winners and losers? What if it can't be fair for everyone, and when you meddle and try to make it so, you do so at the peril of your species as a whole?
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So, while male domination might or might not be natural to our species, I don't think we can afford to perpetuate it any longer
And I think it's quite possible that we can't afford not to. See above.
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What of forbidding women from leading?
What of it? I'm not any more for it than you are. What I am vehemently against is "toning down" men so that women have a better shot at it. For the reasons that I stated above, I think that men are evolved to be more interested in asserting dominance than women are. It's just how we are built, and for good reason. We should encourage both our men and our women to express what they are, fully, and with pride. I don't think that men have to forbid women from doing anything that they can do. I think that in an environment that celebrated the differences between men and women, rather than treating them with distain as part of our unworthy "simian" past women leaders would be rare. They would exist, but they wouldn't be the rule. Male leaders are the rule today. Women leaders are the exception, our social agendas not withstanding. I think it's just part of our inate humanity to look to strong men to lead. Many people think it's some repressive cultural conspiracy. That is the basic difference between us.
You are arguing that by excluding (or even failing to encourage and prefer) women as leaders you would lose whatever contribution that they would make. It's not so. Though women lead relatively rarely, they have always been the confidants and counsel of strong men. Even some men are spectacular councelers, but would never be accepted as a leader. Henry Kissenger is the best example that comes to mind. He would never have been elected president, and he knew it, but he made a tremendous contribution nonetheless.
Women have no disability when it comes to organizing to effect political change when it's something that matters to them. They make up half the electorate (a little more than half, actually). If the ardent feminists really represented "women" and not just themselves, we'd see lots more women leaders by now. We don't. Women by in large still look to men to be strong for them, and lead. To my way of thinking, they are justifiably disgusted and disappointed when men don't.
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Of course, in my own house, I walk around on my knuckles, grunting. All that stuff goes right out the window, because it's my household and it's nobody's fuckin' business.
Yes. It makes you happy. When you look at the men around you, you don't see the general malaise and unhappiness? Yes, there are some men who suck up to women. Always have been, always will be (see alternative reproductive strategies above). If that's what makes them happy, then that is what they should do. If it makes them withdrawn, vaguely dissatisfied with their lives, fat, complacent, diseased, stressed, and old before their time, or worse yet, self loathing and self destructive, they need to knock it the fuck off and reclaim what they are. I think that these men are the big sweet spot in the middle of the bell curve right now, and we are making them that way in the interests of what you call "progress". Maybe it is progress, but then again, maybe not.
< Message edited by Leonidas -- 9/16/2004 10:50:25 AM >
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Leonidas
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Forget Old Guard .. More Like Stone Age - 
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, but I believe that all of us need to remember that our interests within this lifestyle is so varied that we above all others should be tolerant. I understand Prankster's point, but the derogatory comment given to a sub should remain with the sub. The sub should not repeat the comment and should think to themselves, "this Master is slightly close minded". JMO. 
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