Conference turris::womannotes-v2

    I disagree  with  his premise. There were societies in which women
    were  "chiefs",  and  in  several  of his other examples, it's not
    clear  which  was  the  more responsible/necessary role. Gathering
    food was much more likely to suceed than hunting.

    As for  the  marriage rules: My understanding of Jewish law (which
    at one point allowed polygamy, but always prohibited polyandry) is
    that  knowing  who  a  child's  parents  are is very important, so
    polygamy  is  allowable  because  you  know who the mother is, but
    polyandry is prohibited because you can't tell who the father is.
    In this century, there have always been more women than men (after
    age  25  or  so),  so if everyone is to get married, there must be
    some men with more than one wife.

--David

    Well I'll throw some ideas into the circle and see how
    people react to them.
    
    I think that a lot of it is biology. Men were stronger than
    women, ran faster, threw further, and were thus the natural
    hunters. Women were also handicapped by pregnancy and by vulnerability
    to rape.
    
    Bringing home a deer is much more dramatic than roots and berries
    and gained more prestige as well. Further in a contest of strength
    if a woman disagreed with a man in the vast proportion of encounters
    women came out the loser. Further, the best fighter often became
    the ruler in many societies, a role that it would be unusual for
    a woman to play.
    
    I also think, as I've suggested before, that women were seen as
    needing protection because childbirth is so very difficult for
    our species. We are at the biological limit for the size of the
    baby's head vs the size of the women's birth canal. There is no
    other animal that has as much trouble with birth as humans do.
    (After my C-section due to a large breech baby I found I envied
    the ease with which my goats and cats and dogs gave birth!)
    So women, I believe, became regarded as needing special protection
    because they *died* so easily. This became instutionalized over
    time and exagerated in some periods (cf the Victorian in England
    and America). 
    
    I remember as a teenager that my father and I once talked about
    why there were no famous women composers, writers, scientists,
    etc in the time period before the 20th century. Now I realize that
    such women were systematically written out of history, ignored,
    had their work ascribed to male mentors or teachers, or otherwise
    denied.
    
    I don't think we truly realize how fertility control has
    changed the lives of women in the 20th century, and I lived through
    the time of that change.
    
    okay...
    
    other ideas?
    
    I'm sure I've only touched on the edge.
    
    Bonnie
    
    p.s. to David yes, there were societies where women were chiefs
    but they are so rare that I don't think they invalidate the general
    premise. 
    
    and what's so great about knowing who the father of a child is
    anyway :-)  ;-)
    
    Bonnie

    OOOOO that last line hurt Bonnie... :-)  ;-)
    
    I tend to agree with your entry Bonnie.  I may not like it, but
    I have to agree....
    
    

    .....more responsible/visible/necessary roles.....
    
    I would like to know who found the written record that shows that
    hunters are in a role that is more responsible/visible/necessary.
    A person who was/is a vegetarian would probably disagree.  Could
    it be that a hunter, because meat was a chosen diet, decided that
    the hunter was the more necessary role.  I dare say a vegetarian
    would see the gatherer role to be the necessary role and would
    regard the hunter as unnecessary.

    re .2, Bonnie, I agree with everything you said.  I think it's
    basically pretty simple.  Men are bigger and stronger and they don't
    get pregnant, have painful menstrual periods, or have to take care
    of infants unless they want to.  This has left them with a lot of
    free time to wield their strength in order to run the world.  And,
    the worst part is, they (men) haven't been very fair about it either,
    IMHO, of course.  They *could* have shared their power with women
    but they chose not to.  Now they're paying for it by having to endure
    and try to comprehend feminism.  
    
    The above is of course a generalization.  I realize that there are
    and always have been some women who act like brutes and some men
    who are kind and sensitive.  But, for the most part, the reverse
    is true.
    
    As far as knowing who the father of a child is.  The only reason
    it would *really* concern me would be if I needed the father's help
    in supporting the child.  Then you need to know who to go after
    for money :-).  But, if I had enough money to raise a child myself
    I wouldn't care who the father was, assuming he was at least one
    of several men I presumably thought were attractive enough to choose
    for lovers.  (Obviously, I wouldn't want the father to be some ugly
    looking, half-wit brute who had raped me.)
    
    Lorna
     

    Re .1
    
    On the comment that if everyone is to be married then some men must
    have more than one wife: there is an assumption here.  That is that
    all marriages are composed of one woman and one man.  Lesbian and
    gay marriages certainly exist in practice if not in law (this side
    of Denmark.)
    
    On a comment that rape is one of the reasons that men have held the
    dominant roles in most societies (I don't remember where this was
    stated): Do any other animals commit rape?  Are/were there any human
    societies where rape is unknown?  (It seems to me that rape is an
    effect of male's holding the dominant roles rather than a cause.)
    
    Robbie                                                           

                       <<< Note 757.4 by AQUA::WALKER >>>

>    the hunter was the more necessary role.  I dare say a vegetarian
>    would see the gatherer role to be the necessary role and would
>    regard the hunter as unnecessary.

Actually, it wouldn't matter whether you were a vegetarian or omnivore;
gatherers are still more necessary.  Or so I'm told, in a section on
anthropology, that in hunter-gatherer society, 90% of caloric intake
was derived from the nuts/berries/roots/etc of the gatherer.  The meat
provides necessary protien but was not the substance they live on.

I think that previous replies were correct, though, that the hunter is
more "visible".  Hunters go away for days, and when they return they
carry a huge prize, one that was very difficult to come by.  It's much
*harder* to kill a wild boar than pick a berry.  Less useful, but more
difficult, and therefore associated with more glory.

D!

	There is a basic flaw in the way the question was phased.

		"Why men?"   What and who decides what the what is
		and how important the what is and to whom.

	There is also the need to ask "Who's values are to be used?"
	in determining the "What" and of course "Who is to be
	considered the expert to answer all of these questions."

	Can you say "cultural bias"?????

	To me this is a rathole that ignores all the work that has
	been done by feminist thinkers and writers over the past
	twenty (appox) years.

	_peggy

		(-)
		 |

			"Why a woman in central Africa over
			50,000 years ago?"

 The hunter is generally more respected than the gatherer because of the
relative levels of skill required. It is not difficult to outwit a nut or berry,
but may take some doing to outwit a wild boar or whatever. One of the 
unfortunate results of modern society is that because fewer people hunt,
fewer people are in tune with the environment. [Please note that it is not
necessary to hunt to be in tune with the environment, though it is necessary
to be in tune with the environment to be a successful hunter.]

 I would like to echo Bonnie's sentiments. Men have become accustomed to power
because they are larger and more physically strong. Even today, men attain
personal and political power due in large part to their ability to intimidate
the opposition and through a physically imposing presence. 

 I think biology is the single largest factor. As society continues to evolve,
hopefully less evidence will be placed on the purely physical.

 The Doctah

I've never hunted, and I've never had to find edible plants. I would like
someone who has done both, or is otherwise qualified, to indicate what skills
each requires (or maybe, someone who has done just one, or has qualifications
there).
	Mez

 I've done both. When thrust into a situation where you have no ready source
of gatherable foods (plants and berries, nuts, etc) gathering can be difficult 
or impossible. When finding edible plant forage, you are pretty much at the
mercy of the seasons. It is generally feast or famine. When in season, finding
edible fruit is incredibly easy. You need good eyesight and a good memory (is
this the mushroom I got so sick on last time, or was it more gray?) 

 Hunting takes more physical skill as well as cunning. Each animal has its
quirks and habits which you must exploit if you are to be successful. I'll
give you an example. I am going fishing for giant tuna on Saturday. While it
is called fishing, it is alot like hunting. These large animals 500-900lbs
migrate up and down the coast each year, fattening themselves off our coast
before making their trek back to the Gulf of Mexico to spawn. In order to
catch one, you must go to where they are- generally 20-100 miles out
to sea. The sea appears featureless. You have to feed them what they are used
to eating, and in a manner that very closely approaches that which they are
accustomed. In short, to get one to bite, everything has to be right. And
that's just where the fun begins. Once you have the fish on the line, the
more difficult to acquire skill comes into play. The fish are extremely 
powerful. Think of 800 lbs of pure muscle. That is a tuna.

 I'll spare you the rest of the details (I can already hear the sighs of 
relief). But it takes strength, stamina, cunning, the ability to notice
minute changes in the ocean that signal the presence or likelihood of fish. It
also takes luck (which we have not yet had.) It is a time consuming and
expensive venture. It is alot of work. But the reward is (will be?) fulfilling.

 I love the challenge.

 I hope I answered your question.

 The Doctah

    < Note 757.12 by VIA::HEFFERNAN "Mentally diverse" >
    >                               -< some thoughts >-
    
    >RE: .9
    
    >I'm not sure I agree with the premise that hunters were more important
    >or glorious than gatherers.  Is this a reflection of "our" own values?
    
    	I wondered that myself. But the concept that strength equals power 
    seems to me to be somewhat vestigial today. Most of the leaders of 
    the world could easily be beaten up by toughs in their respective
    armies. Same is true for the corporate level executives. Neither get
    to the top today by physical power. So I have doubts that we are
    seeing a reflection of our own values.
    
    	Earlier notes talked about the importance, in the past, of knowing
    who fathered what child. I wonder if it was important because if
    a society is dominated by one group, then the pecking order in the
    group is partly established by the "level" (within the dominant
    group) of the parent. So societies that are male dominated place
    importance on the father of the child. Just a thought.
    
    Gregg

The association between physical strength and power may be vestigial in
practical terms, but I think it's alive and well in terms of psychology.
Recall the recent political campaigns, and the brouhaha surrounding
the logistics of debating. One of the negotiating points surrounded the
fact that one candidate was significantly shorter than the other one.
What camera angles can we use?  What size furniture should we have?
Can we disallow camera shots showing the riser that the shorter man is 
standing on?  It was considered damaging to the shorter candidate to
be shown as physically smaller than his opponent -- smaller is weaker
is less of a leader.

It's nonsense, but it's still here.  

Beth

    Re: .13
    
     Beth,
    
     I had forgotten about that one, thanks. 
    
    Gregg

    Re: .13, another example:
    
    There was a study (sorry, don't remember details of who and when)
    investigating different starting salaries offered to graduates of
    business school.  They looked at gender, race, previous income level,
    experience, grades, quality of school, family background...and couldn't
    find a statistically significant factor.
    
    Just as a joke, they looked at *HEIGHT*.  You got it!!  It was
    *strongly* correlated with starting salaries.  They even came up with a
    chart, showing how many thousands of dollars extra were offered with
    each successive inch of height.  
    
    Strange but true!
    Pam

    Re: .15
    
    >Strange but true.
    
    	Sad but true, I guess. I was thinking that the Great Debate
    Height Row indicated only an unfortunate flaw in Dukakis self-image
    and thinking.
    
    	I wonder if tall salespeople are more intimidating because of
    their height, so you are nervous about saying no to them. :^)
    
    	Height problems can be overcome, though, just ask Napoleon's
    Ghost. :^)
    
    	Gregg

>   	Sad but true,

 I agree. That's one of the many reasons I have for feeling cheated (due
to my lack of height.)

 On the other hand, I consider myself blessed, as the person who hired me
here at DEC was a good 15 inches shorter than I! (And I'm 5'6"). :-)

 The Doctah

    
    re: .2 and .9 hit the nail on the head. Further, remember that life
    spans were MUCH shorter, and that the infant/child death rate was
    MUCH higher ( no figures to back this up, but I think that it is
    reasonable), and you find that in order for a woman to bear enough
    children for the human race to survive, she had to start having
    children ASAP and have them her whole life. 
    As for hunting , it becomes a question of hunting what (and how).
    For instance, our general stereo type of the American Indian or
    African Native shows a brute stalking animals. While this form of
    hunting is not to be dismissed, its a helluva lot easier to put
    out a salt lick or a bit of corn that the women may have grown,
    and ambush (TRAP) the animal. This requires little time and thought.
    .11 talks about stalking an 800lb. fish, but I've watched natives
    in the Bahamas fish with a net from the shore (and haul in HUNDREDS
    of fish). There was a couple that were rescue a few days ago that
    spent the last few weeks stranded on a raft, catching fish with
    their bare hands. When we go fishing in Panama City (FL), the first
    thing we do is catch bait fish...on bare hooks. I dont image that
    with 300 Million bison roaming the plains that it would be too hard
    to kill one from a few hundred yards with an arrow. Or that it would
    be too hard to bash baby seals......you get my drift. Hunting is
    both harder and not as hard as it is made out to be. 
    The point is in controlling the land that had the easy food. 
    
    A closer inspection of the male's time finds him fighting other
    over land (and everything contained on that peace of land).
    Nearly every war ever fought has been over land ( over who rules
    it, rapes it, reaps the benefits of it). Women were not as good
    in that fight as Men were. 
              

    Virginia Woolf's "A Room of One's Own" is very enlightening on the
    subject of woman artists and the difficulties they encounter.  For
    example, Jane Austin wrote all her novels in the family sitting
    room with frequent interruptions.  Remember that a well-bred 
    young woman in other eras was expected to be accomplished, but
    not to seriously pursue a career in the arts, or, God forbid, business
    or politics.  Mrs. Jerome (Winston Churchill's maternal grandmother)
    was scandalized and offended when people suggested that her daughters'
    musical skills were on a professional level  -- how vulgar.  
                                                                                                                                                                                            
    As pointed out in an earlier note, there have been societies in
    which women have taken leading roles.  There is a society in Africa
    in which the women are dominant because of their food-gathering
    skills.  They can pick their husbands and divorce them at will.
    The men are abject;  they are vain and pretty butterflies, totally
    dependent on the woman whom they woo and cajole with palm wine,
    the only food-stuff which they are capable of making.  To be divorced
    is virtually a death sentence since it means slow starvation.                      
                                 
    One must remember the context;  western society is male-dominant.
    It is a tribute to the drive and tenacity of women that we have
    so many artists, politicians, and social reformers.
    
    Margaret Sanger.....Eleanor Roosevelt......Helen Gahagan Douglas         
    a few names that come to mind.......                                           
    
                             
      
    
             
                    
     

    re .18
    Just a point to consider about life spans:  Average life span would be
    shorter than today because of the high death rates for infants and
    children.  Once a person made it to adulthood the chances were good
    that their lifespan would be pretty close to what it is today.  
    
    Dondi

    
      I agree with Bonnie. I think physical stength was the determining
    factor in why males dominated the leadership roles in most societies.
      As physical strength becomes less important and brain power becomes
    more important, females can compete on an even basis. It's not
    happening over night, but it's happening.

    In the beginning, men hunted, women gathered, all contributions
    were valued equally. One day, the men came home from the hunt,
    and women had invented wine. After the feast, sitting around
    the campfire, the wine was being enjoyed, the men were discussing 
    the hunt. One woman started to discuss the wine-making, whereupon
    the man speaking cuffed her and said, "Shut up, I'm telling a 
    hunting story. And get me some more wine." Being too small to
    challenge him, and being more susceptible to alcohol, she did as 
    she was told. And things have never been the same.

    

    As my friend Tony Lewis describes it, the gatherers (women) in
    modern hunter-gatherer cultures provide 85% of the food (Sounds
    even more authentic than the 90% given earlier, doesn't it?) and
    the hunters (men) provide only 15%.  The men don't hunt constantly,
    but only when they feel like it, like every few days.
    
    Since Jim Burrows is on vacation, I'll describe his hunting experience:
    He was a counseler at a camp for troubled boys.  He led them on
    a hunt.  He would flush a rabbit, and each boy would chase it in
    turn until each boy had touched the rabbit (or until the rabbit
    had gotten so tired that they had to get a new one.)  They found the
    experience exhilarating, but hardly difficult.  (Four legs good, two
    legs better, as They say.)
    
    As Dana suggests, it seems to me that it is only the superior strength
    and size of men that has been the determining factor.  This view
    is reaffirmed each time a woman writes in this file that the time
    she was beaten the worst was the time she tried to fight back (for
    instance) and each time a person writes that a woman would not have
    experienced <a particular violent felony> at the hands of some man
    if she had only refrained from <a legal activity>.
    
    							Ann B.

    Re .22, I think I remember that incident.  I was the one who wouldn't
    get more wine and then spent the rest of my life fighting with men.
    
    Lorna
    

O.K., So men were stronger and bodily dominated women to set up 
the western reality of a male dominated society. (Let's just take 
that as a given for now for the sake of argument).  The question 
arises: Why did he do it?  I mean, why be so hostile to begin 
with?  Well, I can think of two quick reasons; they both bother 
me though.

  - Men discovered it was just plain easier to get their way if
they threatened and bullied the women than it would be if they
had to get their permission and listen to their objections. ("But
I don't _want_ to get you another glass of wine; you get it.")
This doesn't seem too hard to believe does it; we see it all
around us every day in one form or another. 

  - Second (and I got to admit I like this a bit), Men were just
plain intimidated by women and reacted by using force, which was
their only viable weapon.  See, women were (are) the "vessels of
life" (as Joseph Campbell was saying on one of his shows -- which
is where I got this idea), and as such they were God-like (or 
Goddess-like I guess); they had the gift of life and in some way
could bring about the miricle of birth.  Men on the other hand
seemed pretty (pardon the expression) "lifeless" by comparison and
all they could do was tend to the women to help them along in their
task of bringing forth the next generation.  Men felt inferior in
an essential way and reacted to assert themselves by domination
rather than by virtue. Today the cycle continues as we have male
dominated dictatorships with a tight grip on countries like
Chile, yet even there it is the mothers of the disappeared who
challenge Pinochet most effectively and it is the voices of the
mothers that speak most clearly. 
   The point I guess I'm getting at is that perhaps we ended up 
this way just because men were jealous of women and were afraid 
of being thought of as a kind of second-class gender, so they
struck while the iron was hot and made sure it would be the other 
way around. 

Just a thought.

-GlennS.

Or it could be said in a different way that basically amounts to 
the same thing:

For thousands of years in hunter-gatherer societies, women 
were the dominant gender in that they were the life-givers; 
men seemed to be able only to help out and watch in amazement.  
In other words, men were kind of tolerated and allowed what power 
or priviledge the women decided to give them.  Then, when 
agriculture advanced to the point that animal husbandry became 
important and it became clear that the bull (male) was a crucial 
part of the process, the men "woke-up" to their situation and the 
result was a men's liberation movement.  Men, being stong and 
such, not only succeeded in gaining access to power, they had the 
ability to subdue the women and it's been that way for a while 
now.

How's that.

-GlennS.
 

re: Hey! We've been eating GRASS!

 Seems that smoking it is more accurate. :-)

 The Doctah

    I seem to recall that an Egyptian king getting married at 12
    years old and my recollection of readings of the real old days is that
    most people lived to be only to their 20's or 30's. That being the
    case, women were needed to carry on the species, and men did the
    heavy labor. Most women, not being nearly as strong as an average
    man, would have required that more women perform a given heavy labor
    job. This would not be efficient especially coupled with the womens
    ability to conceive offsprings.

    Aggrarian work is no picnic either. Henry Ford once said "A farmer
    without a tractor is a slave" Ever try to cut hay with a sythe?
    
    Steve

    Steve,
    
    An average lifespan in the 20's or 30's means that half of the
    people died before that age, not that most of them died at that
    age. Where the average lifespan is low, this means that infant
    and child mortality was quite high. Often by the time a person
    managed to reach adulthood they were immune to an incredible variety
    of rather nasty diseases, and lived a relatively long life there
    after. 
    
    Bonnie

   The 70- 75 year lifespan that most people enjoy today was more 
the product of the medical advances of the last century than to
any inherent ability of humans to live longer.

   In ancient times, people who lived to be forty were considered 
long- lived.

                                                 -Robert Brown III

    I would say that the average lifespan of those surviving to adulthood
    is longer now than it was.  Medical advances are one reason, but I
    think improved sanitary conditions and food preservation are other
    major factors.

    in re Robert and Chelsea, thanks for your corrections. My original
    statement was inaccurate. (I knew what you both said, I just
    didn't say it right! :-) )
    
    Bonnie

    Hmmm, the president of Boston NOW is named Ellen...

    
    you are gonna be in deep dudu talking like that...

    Sorry, Eagles, I think that men are important for a lot more
    than just providing sperm...the one I'm most closely involved
    with is great to cuddle with, is a super father, does lots
    of jobs that I hate to do, some beyond my strength and expertise,
    etc. etc. not to mention that I love him very much...
    for women like me it would be a very empty world if the men
    weren't there.
    
    Bonnie

What?????

Someone saying something NICE about men for a change?????

In THIS Notesfile?????

Catch me... I'm going to... Uhhhhhhhhh!!!

  
                      ****THUDD!!!!!****

;-) ;-)

                                              -Robert Brown III

                                                                  
       Hey, Robert, don't pass out yet!!!
    
       Wanna hear my true feelings about the men of this conference?
    
       I wish they could be cloned...replicated... and disseminated
       in various parts of the world... influencing and enlightening
       others in their journeys.   
       (but with better endings than the replicants of Blade Runner:-)
    
       While it's true that some occasionally need minor attitude  
       recalibrations :-), and that experiencing so many enlightened
       men in one place can cause unrealistic expectations of non-
       electronic but otherwise similar males encountered in society...
    
       I generally am quite impressed!!!
    
       Oops!  Robert, Robert!!!  Mods, get the smelling salts!
    
    						:-)
    						nancy b. 
    
       (I've been wanting to say this for while, but topic #342, 
        "Male Participation in this Conference"  is write-locked.)
    

    in re .37
    
    Robert,
    
    we've never met, and only exchanged brief mail...but you
    *owe* me for that one!
    
    :-)
    
    Bonnie

    re .38, Nancy, I would prefer the men of this conference be cloned
    and replicated at about 10-15 yrs. older than they actually are!
     (As many women have already realized, there are *no* interesting,
    attractive, intelligent, single men, above the age of 40, alive
    in the world today!)  :-)   (Oh, there may be 1 or 2 scattered around
    but they all have one of the three following negative qualities,
    (1) they have more problems & hangups than you can shake a stick at,
    (2) they are not interested in having an SO or (3) they have incredibly
    bad taste in women, which means they don't find *me* attractive.)
     (Oh, and, of course, some of them are gay, which is fine for other
    gay men, but doesn't help straight women any.)
    
    Lorna
    

>(3) they have incredibly
>    bad taste in women, which means they don't find *me* attractive.)

 That was good. I smiled.

 The Doctah

ps- I think they call it Charlie Tuna Syndrome

    Lorna, we could hang around the intensive care unit at the local
    hospital.  If a man's wife dies an untimely death we could offer him
    comfort and our condolences and maybe in this way we could meet some
    interesting men that have not been spoken for.
    
    Another alternative would be to be a female Professor Higgins.  With
    the proper training and the right clothes any man could be made
    presentable.
    
    I suppose I should add multiple smiley faces.  
    
    ;-) ;-) ;-)

    re .40 Lorna, you forgot one - these handsome, intelligent 40-
    year-old men have discovered that they can now make it with
    the good looking 20-year-old women who wouldn't look twice at them -
    twenty years ago.

    Re .Joyce, very funny.  Reminds me of Carrie Fisher's character
    in "When Harry Met Sally."  When Sally tells her 2 best friends
    she and her SO just broke up, Fisher's character says, "Joe's
    available?"  :-)
    
    Re Dana, why did you have to remind me of *that*? ! :-)
    I just hope the reverse never comes true - that I would date
    guys *I* wouldn't have looked twice at 20 yrs. ago!! :-(
    
    Lorna
    

    Re. -.40 (Lorna)
    
    Well, now I understand why you available women at Digital let Ron
    run around loose long enough for me to find him.  Open your eyes,
    ladies, there ARE some great over-40 guys out there if you're willing
    to look for them.
    
    Either that or I qualify as one of the losers they'll settle for
    if they don't have any taste.  Oh, well, if this is losing, 
    count me out!
    
    Karen

    Re .45, maybe you got one of the last good ones! :-)
    
    Besides, people have different tastes, different ideas of who we
    think is attractive.  I was exagerating a bit, but there still aren't
    many single, attractive men over 40 running around, who are seriously
    interested in meeting someone special for a long-term relationship.
     Obviously, I was joking when I said that anyone who didn't find
    me attractive has terrible taste in women! :-)   (I have to make
    myself feel better somehow!)  And, the fact remains that Nancy was
    talking about the men of =wn= and most of them seem to be well under
    40, or married, or not interested in a relationship/or me/or both!
    :-)
    
    Luckily, for me I am involved with somebody at the present time
    - someone under 40 :-) - but should that end at some future date,
    I can't help reflecting that the pickins are getting slim out there
    for men older than me!
    
    Lorna
    

    
    You mean that in 3 years I'll be even more useless to women than I
    already am? 
    
    

       "Why have men, through the millennia and in most present day
       cultures, found themselves in more responsible/visible/
       necessary roles than their female counterparts."
                                                  
    Why did the instructor believe the roles listed for men were more
    responsible and more necessary?   If the gatherer contributed as
    much food as the hunter, why was the hunters role more responsible
    or more necessary?  Is the leader of a tribe more responsible and
    necessary or is the leader merely an expendable person who has little
    else of value to contribute?  Is having more than one mate an
    indication that one is necessary or is it an indication that one
    is financially able to support a multitude of beings.
                                                         
    Perhaps men assummed these roles because they had nothing better to do
    or perhaps it was because they needed a greater outlet for their egos 
    or perhaps it was because they would rather control than be controlled.
                                                                          
    Mary
    

    Re: .49
    
    >Why did the instructor believe the roles listed for men were more
    >responsible and more necessary?
    
    I assume a "/" is shorthand for "and/or."

Sniff... Ugh... Wha... Huh??? Ohhhhh!

Thanks for the salts, mods! I'm okay now. ;-)

Nancy:

   As I am writing this (12:45 AM 9/6/89), I happen to be watching Blade Runner
(for the umpteenth time. I LOVE that movie!) on HBO. I know what you mean.

Nancy and Bonnie:

   Thanks for your entries (.38 & .39). I am gratified that I can give some 
people something to laugh about (at least, I think you laughed! ;-)).


   But back to the subject at hand:

                    *              *               *

   It can be argued that while men have had positions of visible power in the
world (as represented by the so- called "patriarchy"), the world is not and
never has been really ruled by men. It is true that some societies tended to
value strength (I can beat you up therefore I should rule you), hunting skill
(I can bring down that <fill-in-the-blank> so therefore I'm more important),
and war- making ability (I'm better because I can kill enemies, grab territory,
and take other people's property from them). However, one of the great
weaknesses that many of these cultures had/have comes forth when their people
forget the reasons why they often tried to develop these skills. These reasons,
quite frankly, had mostly to do with impressing their women, "taking" good
wives (a misnomer, because in many cases the wives took them, not the other way
around), and raising/protecting families. Even in societies where their value
was not overtly acknowledged, women still had a great deal of power. After all,
even the "greatest" of hunters and warriors had mothers whose ideals and
behavior shaped their view of all women they encountered, as well as their
behavior as adults. It is unlikely that the influence of mother, wife, and
priestess can ever be ignored in any culture. In fact, every culture had women
playing these three roles in one way or another -- even the European Christian
cultures of the "dark" and "middle" ages.

   Men dominated hunter/warrior groups because for physical reasons they were
better suited for the work required. When agriculture was invented, men tended
to dominate in areas that required more physical strength (such as building
things, repairing huts, controlling certain types of livestock, etc.). But
women were never idle; their roles were more a function of their advantages as
women than they were defined by the men in their cultures. The definition of
"men's" and "women's" roles in societies came later, as some cultures grew
prosperous and more people began thinking about how people can "get along"
together.

   From what I have learned about primitive cultures (ancient and modern), I
suspect that the first organizers of those societies were women. I believe this
because the basic unit of human organization is the family, and the center of
the family is usually the woman (the mother). When families came together to
form groups (first associations, then hunter- gathering tribes, then villages),
the first real cooperation between them was centered around mothers, wise
women, and later priestesses. Women, I suspect, tended to control the inner
life of their tribes. Men tended to concentrate on their tribe's outer life.

   Problems arose in cultures whose members, male and female, started "mucking
around" with the balance between the inner and outer life. People tended to
attach too much importance on some aspects of tribal (and later, city- state,
country, and empire life) and too little importance on others. Where the outer
life became overemphasized, we saw warlike, disrespectful cultures that went
out destroying everybody who wasn't like them. Where the inner life became
overemphasized, we saw overly conservative, stagnant cultures that were ripe
for being destroyed by the aforementioned warlike cultures.

   There were some cultures that stayed balanced. Unfortunately they were
eventually destroyed by disaster or technologically superior cultures (read
here: cultures with better weapons, like guns).

   And frankly, the REAL screwup came when certain European men began trying to
define the inner and outer life of everybody. But even these "patriarchs" never
really ruled anybody; all they were able to do was to "banish" women from the
outer trappings of power, and keep men from looking into the inner realities of
personal empowerment. They ended up making women so powerful on inner levels
that the feminine influence on all cultures is everywhere -- yet invisible to
those (women AND men) without eyes to see.

   All that I have said above is an attempt to express one thought: that while
it is true that many of the outer trappings of civilization seem to be
masculine- oriented, the feminine aspects of all civilizations are always there
if you look closely. While it appears that men seemed to have the most
"dramatic" roles in various cultures, that didn't mean that men were always
valued before women. Sometimes they were, but not as often as we would think.

   In fact, not even most of the time.

                                                     -Robert Brown III

    	RE: .51
    
    	> Even in societies where their value was not overtly acknowledged, 
    	> women still had a great deal of power. After all, even the "greatest" 
    	> of hunters and warriors had mothers whose ideals and behavior shaped 
    	> their view of all women they encountered, as well as their behavior 
    	> as adults.
    
    	Without having power, *whose* ideals and suggestions of behavior do
    	you think women passed on to their children?  Were they the ideals
    	that the women would have chosen on their own, or were they the
    	ones that were forced upon them due to their "position" in society?
    
    	> They ended up making women so powerful on inner levels that the 
    	> feminine influence on all cultures is everywhere -- yet invisible to
	> those (women AND men) without eyes to see.
    
    	The kind of power you're talking about here is not invisible.  It
    	is merely *unsatisfactory* for those women who would rather have power
    	in arenas *other* than the "inner levels" to which you refer.
    
    	> But even these "patriarchs" never really ruled anybody; all they 
    	> were able to do was to "banish" women from the outer trappings of 
    	> power, and keep men from looking into the inner realities of
	> personal empowerment. 
    
    	Sorry, but that sounds like "ruling" to me (when a group is able to
    	keep all political, economic, etc. power to themselves by "banishing"
    	another group from getting any of that particular power at all.)
    
    	Would you say that the white minority does not "rule" South Africa
    	(but merely keeps the black majority from the outer trappings of
    	power, too?)
    
    	> While it appears that men seemed to have the most "dramatic" roles 
    	> in various cultures, that didn't mean that men were always valued 
    	> before women. Sometimes they were, but not as often as we would think.
    
    	Being valued is a different issue than having power.  Women (and
    	children, for that matter) were valued in different ways than men.
    	As a matter of fact, women were often valued in much the same way
    	that children were valued (while neither women nor children had
    	power.)
    
    	I guess I don't really see the point you're trying to make here.

    I've just finished reading a book on mysteries of anthropology.
    
    One thing that I'd like to share here was that the author felt
    that the one thing that men did better than women was to fight
    better. They have longer arms for thrusting with spears, can
    run faster both in attack  and retreat, and are stronger in single
    combat. All other tasks can be done by women, tho the women may
    need more time or may need two women to do what one man could do.
    There is in fact, no task other than war fare that has not been
    done by some women in some societies.
    
    The author went on to speculate that this is the major reason why
    women didn't either socialize their male children to be less agessive
    or favor female children by the common methods of passive infanticide
    that were used to favor male children in such societies.
    
    Very simply, women no matter what their personal wishes were,
    still had to fear the men in the other tribes. If they raised
    mostly daughters or daughters and gentle sons, the next tribe
    over would come along and wipe them out.
    
    Bonnie

	Sounds like another attempt to validate male aggresstion
	by omission of reality.

>    There is in fact, no task other than war fare that has not been
>    done by some women in some societies.
             ^^^^          ^^^^
	I seem to remember something about Spartan Women - and that
	mythical race of Amasons and what about all the women in the
	resistance movements of this century.
    
    
>    Very simply, women no matter what their personal wishes were,
>    still had to fear the men in the other tribes. If they raised
>    mostly daughters or daughters and gentle sons, the next tribe
>    over would come along and wipe them out.
    
	As has been stated before - it is not men of other tribes
	that women need(ed) to fear.  Sorry this is simply BS to me.

	_peggy

		(-)
		 |
			The only role a women has not performed
			is to produce sperm and the only role
			a man has not performed is to give birth
			to a child.

    hmm,
    
    If it is not the men of other tribes that the women had to fear,
    then who did they have to fear?
    
    We must assume that women had some sort of emotional control or
    physical control over the men of their tribe. They could socialize
    the male babies into gentler life styles,  they could use selective
    infanticide to produce more female babies...the one difference I
    see is that the neighborhood tribes didn't buy into her or their
    gentler view of the universe and sent more agressive males that
    took away the territory of those who tried to establish a more
    egalitarian society.
    
    Peggy, why did you call my contributions to this disucusion
    "bull shit"? I feel like you dismissed my ideas/suggestions/
    contributions to this discussion as worthless by such remarks, 
    without even talking about them... I am very strongly opposed to any 
    approach to any idea or hypothesis that trys to tell me in
    advance what answers are okay and what are not.
    
    women can do and achieve as well or in excess of men, depending
    on the society and depending on the task, men can also do the
    same in re women except for bearing children and nursing.
    
    But men in war fare can beat women. period. in guerilla warfare
    where cleaverness and dedication to a cause is more importan�t
    women can win in the short run. and in modern day war fare where
    strength doesn't matter men and women are equal at sighting weapons,
    flying fighter planes etc. 
    
    but anyone who denies that men by biology are bigger, stronger
    and faster than women and that women can get pregnant, nurse,
    and endure pain and suffering longer, is arguing from a false
    premise.
    
    talking about the real biological differences between men and
    women and going on from there to try and build a society where
    we all are equal is not an omission of reality...
    
    denying that on the average men are bigger and stronger than
    women and that women conceive and bear children is to me an
    omission of reality.
    
    I'm trying , poorly and haltingly and often failing..to try
    and find a way to encompase a reality where the views of both
    sides are accepted, validated and found real.
    
    Otherwise, I see us divided into the kind of society described
    in sf books like Judas Rose, Native Tongue or the GAte to 
    Women's Country...or to look at a negative version of the same..
    
    try "the Handmaid's Tail"
    
    
     Bonnie

    RE .56
    
    Sounds good to me! (of course, that may be the kiss of death)
    
    Steve

	Bonnie,

	It is the concept that women need to fear men of other tribes
	that I was calling BS.  It is the same as the myth that women
	need to learn to protect themselves from stangers.  When it is
	the men in their lives - fathers, brothers, husbands, lovers,
	uncles, minsters, teachers etc - the men that they know and 
	trust that should be the ones women are taught to protect 
	themselves from.

	_peggy

>	It is the same as the myth that women
>	need to learn to protect themselves from stangers.  When it is
>	the men in their lives - fathers, brothers, husbands, lovers,
>	uncles, minsters, teachers etc - the men that they know and 
>	trust that should be the ones women are taught to protect 
>	themselves from.

    The necessity to protect oneself from members of one's own family
    is not a universal experience.  Though it's tragically too common
    in our own culture, it's far from the norm of human behavior.
    
    --bonnie

	And what are the characteristics of societies where this is
	not the norm?

	_peggy

    Well, you aren't afraid of your male relatives -- but I don't know
    whether there are any universal similarities among societies that
    don't practice domestic violence.  
    
    Most of the examples I can think of off the top of my head are
    hunting or fishing societies in which women have property rights,
    but the Semai (spelling not guaranteed) of the southeast Asian
    jungles are/were nomadic hunters.  I think they don't have the
    concept of personal property or paternity.
    
    And it would seem to me that violence aimed at members of one's
    own family unit, however that's defined, requires concepts of both
    property and paternity, and the confusion or blurring of the two
    to define other members of one's family as property.
    
    I'll dig out my old anthropology texts tonight and see if I can
    come up with anything.  
    
    --bonnie

    Peggy, the book Bonnie is summarising from is one she borrowed from me. 
    The author, an anthropologist at Columbia, is just presenting a theory
    in an attempt to explain some phenomena for which we have poor or no
    understanding.  He acknowledges that it's only a theory and positively
    invites scholarly refutation.
    
    Bonnie's summary didn't make this explicit, but when he talks about war
    being the province of men, he's only arguing that there is no society
    which assigned the _cultural_role_ of warrior to women and survived.  I
    don't even know whether he's right, I've been meaning to re-read Mead's
    account of...(gak, that Pacific-Rim culture whose name begins with M
    but I can't remember what it is) where a *lot* of the behaviors we used
    to think of as being "naturally" masculine and feminine were assigned
    to the other sex, e.g., men are coquettish and flighty, women are stoic
    and sensible.  It's hard for me to believe he would have missed such a
    glaring counter-example, so maybe Mead's work was inconclusive on which
    sex had the warrior role assigned.  (Does anyone remember it better
    than I do?)
    
    We do have some interesting examples of groups that assigned at least
    some subset of the warrior role to at least some subset of women, e.g.,
    the royal guard of Dahomey in Africa, but again I don't really know
    enough about any of them to be able to say he's wrong in his thesis. 
    What I can say is that his argument appears internally consistent and
    not in violation of any evidence I do know about.
    
    He also argues, I believe (it's been awhile), that our global,
    technological culture is not one in which the warrior role (a) need
    still be assigned to men or (b) is indeed even adaptive considering our
    current ability to wipe out our whole "tribe" with a single ill-
    considered move.	 				
    
    						=maggie

    re: .62
    
    The reason for that seems rather obvious to me -- one man can
    impregnate several women, but women only have babies one or maybe
    two at a time.  And the woman has to be of childbearing age; the
    man has a much longer productive time.
    
    Hence young men, the usual source of the warrior class, are, from
    a biological perspective, considerably more disposable than young
    women.  
    
    Callous, I grant you, but nature often is . . .
    
    --bonnie

Suzanne:

   I would like to respond to your questions put forth in 757.52.
Unfortunately, I am just about out of free time. In case you are
interested, Bonnie has expressed much of what I was trying to say
quite well (Thanks, Bonnie!). If you wish, I will address your
questions when I can.

                          I will return.

                                                 -Robert Brown III

    Well, a search through my old texts and notes turned up nothing
    useful.  The discussions of domestic life mention the amount of
    physical force in marital and parent-child relations as one of the
    variables, but they don't seem aware that domestically violent/
    domestically nonviolent societies might be a significant
    dichotomy.
    
    I hadn't really thought about it before this discussion, either.
    
    If I get to the library in the next couple of weeks (i.e. before
    baby) I'll do some grubbing in more serious works . . . this is
    fascinating.
    
    --bonnie

    If the book referenced earlier was "Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches" then 
    I would hardly consider it an unimpeachable source.  I reread the book
    recently and it does have some fascinating ideas, but as someone
    pointed out earlier these were just theories of the author.  He takes
    into consideration a few more variables than usual and makes some
    conjectures.  
    
    He has theories about why some cultures won't eat pork, some theories
    on pot-latch cultures and on why some cultures are so war-like.  He
    includes some details of Yamamota (?) life that are horrifying and 
    make me very glad I was born into this culture.
    
    I believe that one of the theories espoused in this book is that by
    keeping the female population down, a tribe limited its size and 
    therefore kept itself from overworking the patch of land it depended
    on. (Less females = no baby boom).   Having more males than females
    meant some males wouldn't have mates, so they tended to raid other
    villages.  This kept the population from becoming too in-bred. 
    
    The book is very interesting and worth reading, keeping in mind that
    this isn't exactly scholarly reasearch.  The author had a bunch of
    strange cultural puzzles that he studied just long enough to come
    up with a likely sounding answer, then he wrote them up in a book.
    
    			Bb

    Well, I think you'd agree that he's not exactly Mr. Uninformed, either,
    Barbara.  It _is_ his field (cultural anthropology), he _does_ have
    serious credentials (PhD, former head of anthro at Columbia, widely
    published, mumble mumble), and he cites the literature in support of
    his conclusions just as one would expect of any scholarly work.  The
    fact that it's written for the lay/student reader shouldn't be held
    against him, should it?
    
    						=maggie

    re .67
    
    The author is certainly informed, and has done some research to back up
    his theories.  However, in one of the areas I have done some studying
    up on myself, witchcraft, I got the feeling that his research was 
    not exactly in depth.  This made me wonder exactly how much research
    had gone into his other theories.  They may have been researched
    better, or maybe about the same.  The book has gotten itself buried
    again.  I'll have to find it and look through again to see if
    I still hold the same opinion about the research.  
    
    I'm not saying the author is uninformed or wrong, I'm trying to point
    out that just because it is a scholarly text does not mean it is
    gospel truth, which he points out in the preface.
    
    I originally read this as a student and skipped the preface, reading
    only the assigned chapters (I was taking a heavy classload).  I thought
    it was terrific and assumed that if my prof fed it to me it must be
    true. Only on re-reading the entire book years later did I find that
    some of his research didn't jibe with what I had learned from various 
    sources.  So I wasn't so quick to accept the research/conclusions in
    other areas.  
    
    Like I said _Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches_ is an enjoyable,
    interesting book, and worth reading. I'm just careful as to how much of
    it I swallow.  Guess I'm just getting picky in my old age ;-)
    
    			Bb

    Hi, I'd like to get in a late reply.   .0 asks:

    >   "Why have men, through the millennia and in most present day
    >   cultures, found themselves in more responsible/visible/
    >   necessary roles than their female counterparts."

   > The examples used were traditional head of the household, hunter as
   > opposed to gatherer, tribal chieftain, farmer versus housewife/mother
   > and  warrior/soldier versus nurse/camp follower. The instructor also
   > mentioned the fact that in many cultures men were permitted more than
   > one wife, yet few cultures allowed wives more than one husband. 

*******************************************************************************

    I believe that both these points are come from a limited view of
    historical development that is incorrect. Let me now put in a few words
    from one of the different perspectives. :-)  The largest part of human
    history was before recorded history- so there is not much focus on
    unstratified societies based upon hunting & gathering and simple
    agriculture except though anthopological studies. During this stage,
    which Marx calls primitive communism, there was no was no concept of
    private ownership of land or of the nuclear family.

    Below is a bit of what I remember of the economic and social
    development of societies in Fredrick Engel's THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY,
    PRIVATE PROPERTY AND THE STATE  (which drew heavily on the work of
    American anthropologist Henry Lewis Morgan). Engels proposed that
    societies evolve from:

    hunter-gatherers
    	(e.g. Australian aborigines : people belong to a totem group and
    	are "married" to all members of a corresponding totem group;
    	no concept of land ownership),

    to domestication of plants and animals
    	(e.g. Iroquois : matriarchy; children raised by totem group;
    	land owned by the clan),

    to slave-based civilizations
    	(e.g. Rome : patriarchy; children raised w/in an extended family;
    	ownership of land and laborers; the state established to
    	protect private property),

    to serf-based feudalism
    	(e.g. Europe during the Middle Ages : military power 
	supported by each knight's fiefdom),

    to capitalism
    	(e.g. France after 1789 overthrow of monarchy : nuclear family
    	formed with industrialization; capitalists control the monetary
    	resources used in trade and industry). 

    to socialism
    	(I won't add MY definition here :-) )
    
    Engels felt that as a new mode of production was developed, an
    out-moded and  inefficient way of social organization would be pushed
    aside by the class in  control of this new production. For example with
    French Revolution, the monarchy had been in control of the state and
    was supported by landowning aristocrats. However trade and the coming
    industrial revolution were supplanting land as the  major sources of
    wealth. In spite of the fact that most of the fighting was done by
    laborers in Paris and peasants in revolt, the class that was able to
    gain of control the state were the capitalists under Napoleon.

    Engels describes that in a hunter-gatherer culture, most calories are
    obtained by women so their source of power; men hunt for needed protein.
    Among the agricultural Iroquois and Hopi, men lead the war or religious
    groups while  the women elders had a council that decided economic
    affairs - this can be compared to the Dept.'s of Defense and of the
    Interior. These societies were often matrilineal, descent and property
    inheritance was via the mother. Morgan notes that if Hopi man comes to
    his wife's house in the evening and sees his clothing piled outside the
    door, he quietly picks them up and goes back to the housing of the
    totem group that he belongs to. :-) 

    Engels relates how matriarchies evolved into the patriarchal family as
    men changed from hunters into farmers (supplanting women
    agriculturally), the increasing amount of stored food and items were
    transformed into private property and men wished to pass on the
    this property to their recognizable heirs. Not all stone-age societies
    were matriarchies. For example, the Hawaiians had evolved into a highly
    stratified patriarchy. The Navaho's (neighbor to the Hopi) were based
    upon herding rather than agriculture - they were patriarchal.

    We can still see remmants of matriarchy, mother-goddess worship and
    association with a clan. That maybe why some feminists are interested in
    Wicca and why I'm interested in Celtic culture. Jewish identity is
    matrilineal. I feel Moses was angered when the Jewish people (who had
    earlier been pastoral) began worshipping the golden calf fertility
    symbol of the agricultural societies around them. The novels of Mary
    Renault (The King Must Die & Bull From the Sea) have a motif of the
    transition from matriarchy to patriarch in ancient Greece. Evangeline
    Walton's series based upon the Welsh Mabinogion (Prince of Annwn, The
    Children of Lyr, Song of Rhiannon, Island of the Mighty) discuss the
    Celtic transition from worship of the mother goddess to the shy god
    from the east. (There is a funny passage where a male character lodges
    with a crofting couple. The wife invites him to share her bed, saying
    "I'm a good old-fashioned woman without the pretension of these modern
    hussies.")

*******************************************************************************

    The previous few notes discuss COWS, PIGS ... . Was this book written
    by Marvin Harris? I got interested in anthropology studying his
    CULTURE, MAN AND NATURE. Harris seems to take the extreme view that
    material conditions determine the culture. I feel that the material
    base is a driving force, but it exists in a dialectic interplay with
    the form of social organization and the society's ideology. I'm most
    familiar with Chinese development. I feel that Harris too narrowly
    defines China as a totalitarian hydraulic society - missing the forces of
    development. Engels's book is readable; my copy has a good intro by
    Eleanor Leacock.

    I feel that it's important to understand how cultures develop in order
    work for a better world. It's also important to see examples from the
    past (which have been intentionally obscured) that can give us hope and
    guidance for the kind of society we want to build.

    -Weimin

    This is taken from "Cultural Anthropology" by Marvin Harris and
    seems to answer the question "why men?". liesl
    
        "As we have seen, male supremacy may be linked to warfare. In
    preindustrial combat with hand held weapons, victory belongs to the
    group that can put the largest number of the fiercest and brawniest
    warriors into combat...The problem therefore is two-fold: to
    maximize the number of male warriors and at the same time minimize
    the pressure of population on resources. The solution...is to rear
    boys preferentially over girls, as indicated in the correlation
    between warfare, high male sex ratios in the junior age cohort,
    female infanticide, preference for male children, and higher rates
    of junior female mortality from neglect and nutritional deprivation.

    There remains the question of how men are to be trained to be fierce
    and aggressive so they will risk their lives in combat. Since the
    preference of rearing males over females means there will be a
    shortage of women as marriage partners, one way to ensure that men
    will be aggressive in combat is to make sex and marriage contingent
    on being a fierce warrior. Logically, one might suppose that the
    solution to the problem of a shortage of women would be to have
    several men share a wife. But as we have seen, polyandry is
    extremely rare. Indeed, just the opposite: in prestate societies
    practicing warfare, there is a strong tendancy for men to take
    several wives - that is, to be polygynous. Thus, instead of sharing
    women, men compete for them, and the shortage of women is made even
    more severe by the fact that some men have two or three wives. This
    leads to much jealousy, adultery, and sexually charged antagonism
    between men and women, as well as hostility between men and men,
    especially between juniors with no wives and seniors with several.

    There is much evidence, however, to indicate that the aggressive and
    sexually jealous male personality is itself caused by warfare,
    whereas warfare itself is caused by ecological, demographic, and
    political-economic stresses."

	Quite a few years ago I saw a BBC TV programme in which Prince
	Charles visited various places with very diverse cultures.

	He visited a tribe (I can't remember where) where a lot of the 
	men's time was taken up with what that society considered a very 
	important activity - embroidery (yes, really, I'm not making 
	this up!) and the women did most of the physical labour.

	He said that in his travels he had found that the nature of the 
	work done by each sex varied enormously in different places, but 
	the common factor was that the male activities were always 
	considered the valuable/important ones, whatever they were.

	Sigh!

	June.

    I believe somebody's study or analysis showed that the work men do
    becomes more valued than the work women do.  In other words, men aren't
    "assigned" to the more valuable tasks, but the tasks become valuable
    *because* mostly men do them!  So when men begin to enter what has been
    a predmoninatly female job in our soceity, the salary starts climbing!

    I seem to remember Margaret Mead making much the same observation,
    June: that in every culture work is divided into "men's work" and
    "women's work" and that regardless of what work was assigned to which
    group, "men's work" is considered (a) more prestigious/valuable and (b)
    something only men can do, even when (as embroidery) it's considered
    "women's work" elsewhere.
    
    						=maggie

   Got this from the comic section from today's Boston Hearld...

  "Men are lioke cats, step on their egos and they howl,
stroke their egos and they purr...."

              REK

    What happens when you scratch them behind the ears?
    ;)
    
    -Jody

    
    I wonder why this is though.  Why?
    
    When we first creeped up out of a primordial swamp we couldn't have
    thought one of us ate algae more importantly than the other.  So
    when did this happen? 
    
    The pre-historic hunter wasn't more important than the gatherer.  He 
    contributed one kind of food and she another... both were needed for 
    nutrition. So why did this happen?
    
    Was it institutions that did this?  Was it civilization or religions?
    Was it the male of the species himself?  Acting perhaps in response
    to justification of genetic agression?  Or have females always
    considered men to be important thereby instilling the thought into
    various cultures?
    
    I've often wondered about this.
    
    Mary
                     

 I notice a general trend that the larger and stronger individuals command
a presence. Since more males fit into this than females, the results are not
entirely unpredictable.

 The Doctah

    To continue the thought of .77
    
    .....and the females who *do* fit into that category are ill-treated,
    insulted, and ridiculed.
    
    

re: 757.76 (Mary Stanley)

>    I wonder why this is though.  Why?
    
>    The pre-historic hunter wasn't more important than the gatherer.  He 
>    contributed one kind of food and she another... both were needed for 
>    nutrition. So why did this happen?
 
Simple.  Because men are physically stronger than women. 
         (the _root_ cause of all social, political and economic
	  inequalities women face today in 1990)

Even though what the gatherer did was as important, she could not protect 
herself from the men unless she *paired* with a man who would protect
her from being raped and otherwise abused by the other men.  The price
she paid for this protection was great.

I think this is why homosexuality is not looked upon by many as a 
acceptable way of life today. The Thalias of yesterday were given 
no alternative (except for rape and abuse and murder) except to pair
with the Thors.

>  Was it institutions that did this?  Was it civilization or religions?

It started with biology.  

Strength ... ability to instill fear ... enabled by biology.

							nancy b.

    
    re:.79
    i hate to disagree with strong convictions, but i would suggest
    it is not physical strength (genetics) but the conscious choice
    to *use* physical strength against others (ethics) that is the
    'root' problem.
    

          re: 757.80 (Joe White)   -< biology is *not* destiny >-

          Joe, I didn't mean that "biology is destiny" in way I've heard
          that phrase used before... but that's not clear from .79,
          I admit.   Here's another try...

          >  re:.79
          >  ... but I would suggest it is not physical strength (genetics)
          >  but the conscious choice to *use* physical strength against
          >  others (ethics) that is the 'root' problem.

          Right (kinda...) : I understand what you're saying and (I think)
          I know how I can better explain what I'm trying to say --

          In the last phrase in the exchange between Mary and me below:

               Mary>  Was it institutions that did this?
               Mary>  Was it civilization or religions?

               me>  It started with biology.

               me>  Strength ... ability to instill fear ... enabled by
                    biology.

          I wanted to convey that _biology_ was the **enabling** factor
          that allowed ancient man to intimidate... to rape... to abuse
          ancient woman.  Yes, the **cause** was that some men acted on
          their desire to dominate by using their biological strength
          against women.  Not *all* men did this, but **some** did...
          **enough** did so that ***all*** women recognized the need for
          protection (a man). [hmm...what a shame the women didn't have
	  Smith & Wesson 4516's then]

          Early man's territorial instincts were to early woman's benefit
          in terms of receiving protection, because she was looked upon as
          part of his territory - one of his possessions that he fought
          tooth and nail to protect.  Thalia was *finally* safe. (From
          almost everyone except her husband, that is.)

          >     i hate to disagree with strong convictions,

          No!  I understand it better now - thanks, Joe.


          I would now describe this strong conviction (the answer to "Why
          Men?") as:


          the _reason_ :  PHYSIOLOGY

                          because men are physically stronger than women

          the _cause_  :  [would someone please fill in this blank?]
                          ("misemployment"?)

                          because enough men chose to use this physical
                          advantage to generally oppress women (as a group)
                          into  2'nd class humans.

          Clearer?
                                                         nancy b.

    re .81 the _cause_
    
    Call it laziness (stealing is  easier than earning) or
    short-term thinking (I got mine and to hell with the
    future.) 
    
    A philosopher once called it the desire for the unearned.
    It's *still* a strong element in many people's makeup.
    The cure ? A morality of trade among equals.
    
    Dana
    

Re: .80

    Sociobiology argues that men should go around raping women. That's
    the  best  way  to  make  sure  that their genes have the greatest
    chance of surviving. If strength is what it takes to survive, then
    women  should want to have children, because that is what it takes
    for their genes to survive.

    There is  a  population  of  monkeys(?)  in which the females only
    raise  females  if  they  have little food, because the males will
    fight  to  mate  with  any  female, so females always have (a few)
    offsprint.  If  the  mother  is  well  fed,  she will raise males,
    because  a  well-fed  male  (presumably strong and a good fighter)
    will have many offspring.

    How much of this applies to humans? Not all, but probably some.

--David

    
    re, last few about males being stronger and that's why the
    gender imbalance:
    
    I'm not sure I buy all this.  Sure, strength is an enabling
    factor.  But men and women lived in peaceful harmony in
    American Indian cultures, the Eskimos, and various native
    African tribes, to name a few.  So there's a *lot* more to
    it than that.  It's only when European culture permeated those
    peaceful cultures that the balance was tipped in "favor" of men.
    

>    I'm not sure I buy all this.  Sure, strength is an enabling
>    factor.  But men and women lived in peaceful harmony in
>    American Indian cultures, the Eskimos, and various native
>    African tribes, to name a few. 

 I'm sure it wasn't quite all "peaches and cream" like it sounds, but it would
be interesting to see what cultural differences contribute to this phenomenon.
I suspect that their is a lack of male domination in these cultures more
through the choice of the males than anything else.

 The Doctah

    Perhaps it's not only greater strength, but a greater tendency to
    aggression.  It's all in the hormones....  (Perhaps this explains why
    men are more prone to megalomania....)

    In re: .77
    
    > I notice a general trend that the larger and stronger individuals 
    > command a presence. 
    
    I remember seeing a study reported several years ago in which an
    economist analyzed the starting salaries of new graduates of a
    prestegious business school. Much the strongest corelation was with
    _height_. Women on average earned less than men, but this was more
    fully explained by height than by gender.
    
    I didn't see the full study, and don't vouch for the conclusion; but it
    is interesting, and raises other interesting questions. Thus, could
    something attract/compel taller people into high-paying fields like
    consulting or investment banking, while short people gravitate toward,
    say, management in the non-profit sector? Or, does height lend a
    special advantage in a selection process in which interviews play an
    important part? 
    
    	- Bruce  { whose height is entirely medium }
    

>    I remember seeing a study reported several years ago in which an
>    economist analyzed the starting salaries of new graduates of a
>    prestegious business school.

 I remember the study. The economist was amazed at the correlation between
height and starting salary- it was much closer than "qualifications" and salary.
It was even more closely matched than gender and salaries.

 Evidently, the further you go up the management chain, the more closely tied
height and salary/power get. Not an especially comforting metric for one who's
less than average in height.

 The Doctah

    re physical power:
    
    i think it is more the power to impregnate than the power to beat up.
    
    you're pretty vulnerable for a few months near the end of the
    pregnancy, and need help - fending off carnivores can't be easy when
    your whole body is in a different shape with a different center of
    mass.  at that point, you need help, some kind of protection.
    
    all it took to disable a woman was to impregnate her.  
    
    lt

<    I'm not sure I buy all this.  Sure, strength is an enabling
<    factor.  But men and women lived in peaceful harmony in
<    American Indian cultures, the Eskimos, and various native
<    African tribes, to name a few.  So there's a *lot* more to
<    it than that.  It's only when European culture permeated those
<    peaceful cultures that the balance was tipped in "favor" of men.

    Yes, there have been peaceful cultures that valued women. See my
    note .70 (I think) in this string as to why some anthropologists
    think men became dominant. I has to do with the needs of hand to
    hand combat and war.

    As to your examples above, I heartily disagree. Eskimo women are
    nearly slaves to their husbands. They have no choice in sex at all
    and wives were routinely given to guests as part of the hospitality.
    Rape was a fact of life and a man had the right to strip a woman and
    rape in her infront of others if he chose to. This is taken from the
    same book I quoted in .70 "Cultural Anthropology" by Marvin Harris.

    From the National Geopgraphic book "Indians of the Americas" I read
    about the Tklingit (not sure of the spelling) Eskimos where women's
    lives were so terrible they killed their baby girls so the men had
    to raid other tribes for wives. The women couldn't bear the thought
    of their daughters having to suffer as they did.

    Marvin Harris postulates that in cultures where men controled the
    distribution of food, in the Eskimo culture it was total control
    becasue the food was all from hunting and fishing, men had more
    control. Women in gatherer societies provided food for their
    families but the food from the hunt was distributed to the entire
    tribe therefore giving men more political control through debt and
    favor with others. Just a theory but interesting. liesl