#RepealThe19th

[Einzige]

Some Trump supporters want to repeal the 19the Amendment to the Constitution - the one that gave women the right to vote.

http://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2016-37639738

Quote:Calls for women to be denied their right to vote have trended on Twitter as polls suggested Donald Trump would win if only men could cast ballots in next month's White House election.

The Republican nominee's supporters were accused of tweeting #repealthe19th - a reference to the US constitutional amendment granting women's suffrage less than 100 years ago.

The hashtag went viral after polls suggested Mr Trump would win election if only men cast ballots.

Mr Trump has struggled to win over female voters, especially since a recent tape emerged of his sexually aggressive boasts.

The hashtag began trending after FiveThirtyEight, a political number-crunching blog, tweeted two polls which showed what the outcome of the presidential election would be if only women voted, and if only men voted.

He found that if the election only counted the female vote, Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton would win the presidency with 458 electoral votes and Mr Trump a meagre 80.

If only men voted in the presidential election, Mr Trump would win the election with 350 electoral votes and Mrs Clinton only 188.

A candidate must win 270 electoral votes to win the presidency.

Some of the tweets calling for a woman's right to vote to be repealed seemed in earnest.

[pbrower2a]

(10-13-2016, 07:45 PM)Einzige Wrote: Some Trump supporters want to repeal the 19the Amendment to the Constitution - the one that gave women the right to vote.

http://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2016-37639738

Quote:Calls for women to be denied their right to vote have trended on Twitter as polls suggested Donald Trump would win if only men could cast ballots in next month's White House election.

The Republican nominee's supporters were accused of tweeting #repealthe19th - a reference to the US constitutional amendment granting women's suffrage less than 100 years ago.

The hashtag went viral after polls suggested Mr Trump would win election if only men cast ballots.

Mr Trump has struggled to win over female voters, especially since a recent tape emerged of his sexually aggressive boasts.

The hashtag began trending after FiveThirtyEight, a political number-crunching blog, tweeted two polls which showed what the outcome of the presidential election would be if only women voted, and if only men voted.

He found that if the election only counted the female vote, Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton would win the presidency with 458 electoral votes and Mr Trump a meagre 80.

If only men voted in the presidential election, Mr Trump would win the election with 350 electoral votes and Mrs Clinton only 188.

A candidate must win 270 electoral votes to win the presidency.

Some of the tweets calling for a woman's right to vote to be repealed seemed in earnest.

It is telling that after liberating France, Italy, and Japan, the British and Americans insisted upon women getting the vote. Fascism is very much a 'bad boys' club. Subordination of women is commonplace in fascist causes (including Nazism, the KKK, and ISIS) in part because women are not as reckless in their support of ultra-nationalist and racist causes as men. Giving women the vote might ensure that democracies would never have to fight fascism in Europe again.

Men are more likely to see war and militarism as adventure and opportunity. Women are more likely to see it war and militarism as devourers of sons, brothers, boyfriends, and grandsons; at best, war is a means for saving a nation from subjection.

Of course, Donald Trump shows some of the warning signs of fascism (avid militarism, contempt for human rights, scapegoating of minorities, anti-intellectualism, exaltation of economic elites, desire to suppress the power of organized labor, obsession with national security, exaggerated fear of crime...)

[Bob Butler 54]

(10-13-2016, 10:55 PM)taramarie Wrote:

(10-13-2016, 10:41 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: "in part because women are not as reckless in their support of ultra-nationalist and racist  causes as men."

Why is that?

There is an answer than not everyone likes, but since you asked...

Hunter Gatherer and Agricultural Age human cultures generally feature division of labor by gender.  While we haven't much knowledge of pre-human culture, it seems reasonable to assume that for millions of years the human genders evolved to fulfill different tasks.  The males are more often hunters and defenders of territory.  The females are more often gatherers and nurturers of the young. (Some, such as Cynic Hero, would disagree.)

It is not always polite to point this out in a culture where all humans are supposed to be created equal, but there is no doubt that this tendency definitely exists to this day.  It's weakening.  Technology makes strength less important and equality based cultures are opening doors once kept firmly locked.  Still, the trend is rather obvious.

There are some who argue that since the genders evolved to fill specific roles, cultures should force their members to do what they are naturally inclined to do.  Thus, males might be drafted into the military while females aren't, while women are kept in the home and aren't given jobs or leadership roles which they are supposedly not inclined or equipped to do.  

Many who live in Enlightenment based 'all men are created equal' cultures are inclined to reject this sort of thinking.  

Not everyone rejects that sort of thinking.

My point of view is that any member of either gender should be allowed to pursue any sort of role, whether traditional or not.  However, I am not surprised when more people follow traditional roles than not.

But getting back to the original question, if male emotions evolved for the violent hunting and defending territory roles,, with both stronger bodies and aggressive minds, males might be more inclined to exercise deadly behaviors.  If during much of human pre-history the cost effective behavior was for the males to form line of battle while the females gather up the young and climb a tree, some echo of these old behavior tendencies might remain.

Frankly, in an age of insurgent fighting and weapons of mass destruction, I'd be inclined to believe that we should promote the female instincts and behaviors more, the male aggressive and lethal behaviors less.

[Anthony '58]

The far right has always been about going back to the 19th Century - so this should hardly be considered a surprise.

[Odin]

(10-13-2016, 08:02 PM)taramarie Wrote: If he would win if only men voted that tells me a lot and also the fact that some of those men are saying to take away the freedom of women to vote. Funny I thought America prided itself on its freedom....I think some forgot all about that.

What I am more worried about though currently is that a political leader in Russia is saying if he wins they will be happy about it. But if Clinton wins, nuclear war. I say you guys are fucked either way.

There are a substantial % of people in every country that has what Canadian political scientist Bob Altmeyer called a "Right-Wing Authoritarian" (RWA) personality. Of course authoritarianism is anathema to American political culture and people are raised to see "Freedom" as "Good", so the RWA American unconsciously butchers the meaning of freedom into a justification of Social Darwinism, where the strong have the "freedom" to oppress and exploit the weak. Hence, ironically, a lot of so-called "Libertarians" are actually extremely authoritarian, racist, sexist Social Darwinists.

[Bob Butler 54]

(10-14-2016, 12:37 AM)taramarie Wrote: Do you think we are more influenced by culture, or our male/female hormonal driven behaviours which dictate how we behave? Are we naturally inclined towards certain behaviours/roles depending on our sex or does culture influence those decisions more?

I really don’t have firm clear answers on that one.  I will say though that the environment and technology have a lot to do with it as well.  I’ll give some examples of cultures and jobs where division of labor by gender might or might not exist.  I can’t give enough examples to firmly answer your question, but perhaps enough examples that you can think though your own view.

Let’s start with Eskimo hunter-gatherers way up north.  The males can get very good at paddling kayaks and throwing harpoons.  The ladies can get very good at sewing kayaks and excellent cold weather gear.  Does paddling and harpoon throwing require the superior strength?  Is it easier to nurture the young while sewing than when paddling a kayak?

This might illustrate how low tech cultures might be more apt to develop specialization than higher tech cultures.  

One of my first jobs was with the local telephone company.  I was with “house services,” which meant I was mowing lawns, emptying trash bins and cleaning.  Not much, but I got to move around to various buildings.  There was the lineman’s garage.  They replaced telephone poles, strung wires, and other outside infrastructure work.  Every one of them was male.  Back in the 1970s they still had buildings full of operators helping to complete calls.  Every one of them was female.  For unknown reasons, house services was all male too.

Five years later, an engineer’s degree in hand, I joined a bunch of people writing software.  Mixed.  Remarkably little difference in gender role.  More males than females, but not by that much.  Through most of my career I had female immediate supervisors.  The ladies did get more maternity leave than the guys, but otherwise…

I live in cranberry country.  Bogs everywhere.  One of the local restaurants features old photographs of how cranberries were harvested back in the old days.  There was a picture of harvesters, wading hip deep in water wearing rubber overalls.  Males, every one of them.  Then there’s a picture of a bouncing room.  Dry high quality berries bounce higher than mushy berries good only for sauce.  Thus, you have rooms full of tables being vibrated up and down, with women at the tables separating out the berries that bounce the highest.

I have two grand nieces and a grand nephew.  The girls have favorite dolls.  The little guy has a favorite ball.  My nephew and his lady aren’t sexists trying to force traditional roles on the kids, but they take it for granted that trying to force dolls on the little guy when he doesn’t want to play with dolls is really pointless and futile.  I remember my grandmother taking the spoon out of my sister’s left hand and putting it in her right.  It wound up back in her left hand right quick.  Forcing gender roles seems similarly pointless and futile.  

I see human cultures as very flexible.  If there are pragmatic reasons for something, the culture will absorb and encourage said solutions.  Yet, abstract ideas can be influential too.  “All men are created equal” might guide and shape a culture at least as much as practical factors like giving guys the jobs that require more physical strength.

Yet, cultures can also be inflexible.  Gender roles were once much more beneficial than they are now, but some will want to maintain tradition because it is tradition.  Thus the old telephone utility company had more gender segregation than the newer software industry.

The above might not be an entirely satisfactory answer, but there are lots of factors interacting.  I’m not entirely sure how to weigh them all.

[pbrower2a]

(10-14-2016, 12:28 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(10-13-2016, 10:55 PM)taramarie Wrote:

(10-13-2016, 10:41 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: "in part because women are not as reckless in their support of ultra-nationalist and racist  causes as men."

Why is that?

There is an answer than not everyone likes, but since you asked...

Hunter Gatherer and Agricultural Age human cultures generally feature division of labor by gender.  While we haven't much knowledge of pre-human (I think you mean prehistoric -- pb) culture, it seems reasonable to assume that for millions of years the human genders evolved to fulfill different tasks.  The males are more often hunters and defenders of territory.  The females are more often gatherers and nurturers of the young.  (Some, such as Cynic Hero, would disagree.)

As a pattern men were the hunters and women were the gatherers in hunter-gatherer society among some existing hunter-gatherer tribe, the Yanomami in Brazil, according to Marvin Harris in Cannibals and Kings. Men are generally swifter and more powerful, and have more advantages in hunting just for taking down and retrieving such big game as deer or catching such large fish as trout; females are tied down with nursing their babies or teaching the young and aren't as mobile. It is more advantageous to hunt big game like deer for a tribe than to catch such small prey as rabbits.  The weapons of big-game hunters make good defensive weapons, whether those weapons are spears of a human or the teeth and claws of such a large carnivore as... a Rottweiler.

Harris idealized the hunter-gatherer as the true example of humanity without the oppressive hierarchies of agrarian prince-kings (like pharaohs), feudal lords, and capitalists... almost like Karl Marx.
 

Quote:It is not always polite to point this out in a culture where all humans are supposed to be created equal, but there is no doubt that this tendency definitely exists to this day.  It's weakening.  Technology makes strength less important and equality based cultures are opening doors once kept firmly locked.  Still, the trend is rather obvious.

Think of Appalachia in the late 1700s... where the settlers who had left the wilder parts of the British Isles (southern Scotland and norther Ireland) because they disliked hierachical authority that had tried to remake them into near-serfs... found territory in which hierarchical authority beyond that of the family clan was nearly impossible to enforce, and is still difficult to enforce. Think also of the Ozarks, mountains similar to the Appalachians, where such remains true. Such people took on characteristics of hunter-gatherers in many aspects of life, including male domination. Male muscularity and hunting skills are good for defense of the clan. These backwoods folk have maintained folkways that have persisted over  more than two centuries, although if never rejecting the acquisitive drive in areas where the acquisitive drive has few ways of expression. One of those is the clandestine still for making moonshine.

Fast driving necessary for avoiding the Feds when the taxing authorities arrive is a very masculine trait, so few women get involved in moonshining.

Quote:There are some who argue that since the genders evolved to fill specific roles, cultures should force their members to do what they are naturally inclined to do.  Thus, males might be drafted into the military while females aren't, while women are kept in the home and aren't given jobs or leadership roles which they are supposedly not inclined or equipped to do.  

Many who live in Enlightenment based 'all men are created equal' cultures are inclined to reject this sort of thinking.  

Not everyone rejects that sort of thinking.

Feminism is a product of the Enlightenment, and a rather late one. Combat until at least World War II always was a male role, one in which physical force was necessary not only for soldiering (not so much for firing weapons, but also for digging foxholes and creating earthworks quickly), and it has typically defined where the boundaries are. One of the rewards of military victory was the nubile females of the defeated tribe or nation; think of the conduct of Soviet troops in World War II.  I can only guess what percentage of ancestry in people of Berlin and surrounding cities born in 1946 or in Budapest in late 1945 is from "eastern Europe",  including Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine but not central (that includes Poland, Czech lands, Slovakia, and Hungary). The Soviet Army in World War II was very much a 'rape culture'.  

In the Enlightenment, farming was still the dominant way of getting food, and brute force was necessary for herding, plowing, and reaping. Women got some of the more sedentary work in animal husbandry (like milking cows) but not such an activity as butchering livestock, which was long a male occupation. Brute force has always been the preserve of men. Even in early commerce, such activities as warehousing (pushing barrels around), teamster work, road-building, and law enforcement fostered male dominance.

Industrial work? Now that was more egalitarian in male and female roles.

Quote:My point of view is that any member of either gender should be allowed to pursue any sort of role, whether traditional or not. However, I am not surprised when more people follow traditional roles than not.

Medicine, law, software engineering, architecture, politics, academia, business management, and creative activities give no particular advantage to men because they do not rely on above-average brute force. People wired to expect men to have advantages in such activities as if such find feminism hard to accept. It is telling that Donald Trump still gets his strongest support in communities in which brute force still matters greatly, like logging, mining, and ranching.

Quote:But getting back to the original question, if male emotions evolved for the violent hunting and defending territory roles,, with both stronger bodies and aggressive minds, males might be more inclined to exercise deadly behaviors.  If during much of human pre-history the cost effective behavior was for the males to form line of battle while the females gather up the young and climb a tree, some echo of these old behavior tendencies might remain.

Yes.

Quote:Frankly, in an age of insurgent fighting and weapons of mass destruction, I'd be inclined to believe that we should promote the female instincts and behaviors more, the male aggressive and lethal behaviors less.

Indeed. Even in close warfare, gender makes little difference in fashioning and throwing a Molotov cocktail, as demonstrated by Soviet partisan forces and by the defenders of the Warsaw Ghetto. The more aggressive and lethal male behaviors are marvelously suited to such discredited acts as piracy and drug-trafficking.

Testosterone is not truth.

[Mikebert]

Men are stronger than women? Why? Because we are not a monogamous primates. Polygamous primates (e.g. gorillas) feature males who are much larger than females. Monagamous apes (like orangutans) feature same-sized males and females. In-between primates (e.g. chimps, humans) feature males that are somewhat larger than females.

In hunter-gather societies, the gatherers, often females are responsible for providing most of the bands food needs. The larger sized males evolve their size to fight for and then hold on to mates. If I had to guess, I would think the reason why men engaged in hunting is that it was a way to keep them busy and out of the female's hair and also to allow them to settle the "who gets to fuck who" problem with minimum mayhem.

Human evolved ginormous brains for managing social relationships. Like chimps we fought wars, with is the primary function of males in early human bands. We got good at organizing into larger social groups, far, far beyond anything that chimps can do, and from that has come our cultural greatness.

[pbrower2a]

(10-14-2016, 01:24 PM)sMikebert Wrote: Men are stronger than women?  Why?  Because we are not a monogamous primates.  Polygamous primates (e.g. gorillas) feature males who are much larger than females. Monagamous apes (like orangutans) feature same-sized males and females.  In-between primates (e.g. chimps, humans) feature males that are somewhat larger than females.

Young men, of course. Older men? To the sidelines if they have survived. Marvin Harris may have seen the hunter-gatherers living the good life because they cannot accumulate capital -- but surely their lives were as Hobbes put it, "nasty, short, and brutish". Just think of what happens if the big cat (jaguar or leopard) turns the predator into prey.

I suggested that men were more likely to do the hunting for big game, a very macho activity that pays off well and gets men away from women and girls for long times.

Quote:In hunter-gather societies, the gatherers, often females are responsible for providing most of the bands food needs.  The larger sized males evolve their size to fight for and then hold on to mates.  If I had to guess, I would think the reason why men engaged in hunting is that it was a way to keep them busy and out of the female's hair and also to allow them to settle the "who gets to fuck who" problem with minimum mayhem.

They collect the vegetable food and perhaps some small game. But many of them have babies and small children to which to attend.

Quote:Human evolved ginormous brains for managing social relationships. Like chimps we fought wars, with is the primary function of males in early human bands.  We got good at organizing into larger social groups, far, far beyond anything that chimps can do, and from that has come our cultural greatness.

The hunter-gatherer world collapsed at times -- when climate change forced people to try herding or agriculture. At one time the Sahara was fertile grassland and not the brutal desert that we now know. Fertile grassland which has flowing rivers is wonderful terrain for hunter-gatherers.




Note that 'extreme' (nearly barren) desert was then restricted to the Namib Desert, where cold currents offshore precluded rainstorms inland. Today the permanent subtropical high pressure system prevents almost all rain due to sinking air that cannot rise into rainstorms throughout North Africa.


Africa is now like this:



Arnold Toynbee explains how the dense populations in the Nile Valley came to be: the Nile became the only fresh water still available in a wide band from Mauritania to Egypt. While North Africa was mostly grassland (except for the northern Maghreb), the Nile Valley was an inhospitable place with thickets too dense for people to live easily enough. As the Sahara desiccated, people had to migrate northward into the Maghreb, south into tropical Africa, or into the Nile Valley -- or perish. To live in the Nile Valley people had to go to heroic efforts to cut the thickets and control the water for irrigation. But once they could cut the thickets and expand farmland along the Nile, people could live well enough again. The Nile went from being a barrier of thickets to the artery of life. But people living in the Nile Valley could no longer be hunter-gatherers. Those people would be the Egyptians of antiquity. They would need bureaucracy, hierarchy, record-keeping, food storage, domestication (including cats), to keep their system going. That's civilization.

I love this source for information on the ecology of times up to antiquity; people might want to bookmark it, especially for use in school projects:

http://www.esd.ornl.gov/projects/qen/nerc.html

[Mikebert]

You do know that the onset of agriculture resulting in a decline in stature (and indicator of health). This is strong evidence that the adoption of agriculture led to a large reduction in the well-being of humans. It has been suggested that the Garden of Eden story is a folk memory of this transition from an idealized hunter-gatherer existence to agriculture around four millennia before Abraham.

[pbrower2a]

(10-15-2016, 03:52 PM)Mikebert Wrote: You do know that the onset of agriculture resulting in a decline in stature (and indicator of health).  This is strong evidence that the adoption of agriculture led to a large reduction in the well-being of humans.  It has been suggested that the Garden of Eden story is a folk memory of this transition from an idealized hunter-gatherer existence to agriculture around four millennia before Abraham.

All possible. But agriculture became necessary for human survival in many places when desiccation turned many places into milieus unsuited for hunter-gatherers. The cultivation of grain coincided with a time of great hunger.

[Eric the Green]

(10-15-2016, 11:13 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(10-15-2016, 03:52 PM)Mikebert Wrote: You do know that the onset of agriculture resulting in a decline in stature (and indicator of health).  This is strong evidence that the adoption of agriculture led to a large reduction in the well-being of humans.  It has been suggested that the Garden of Eden story is a folk memory of this transition from an idealized hunter-gatherer existence to agriculture around four millennia before Abraham.

All possible. But agriculture became necessary for human survival in many places when desiccation turned many places into milieus unsuited for hunter-gatherers. The cultivation of grain coincided with a time of great hunger.

Yes; you can always say that older times were simpler and better. But evolution and history push us into new and more complicated arrangements, new solutions, and ever larger social relationships. Civilization resulted from agriculture, some millennia after it began. But it's a mixed blessing; more division of labor and oppression by authority, but more possibilities for the arts and science and inventions.

Civilization has proceeded from agricultural towns and villages, to stone age civilizations, to the bronze and iron age of war and empire and society as conquered territory (civic hero's favorite age), to the age of faith, to the secularized age of kingdoms and early humanism and science, to the age of revolution, individual liberty movements, electricity and entreprenuers, to the socialist age of collectivism, mass industrialism, nationalism, and racial and class war, to our current age of the greening of culture and society, globalism, political correctness, diversity and post-modernism, and beyond-- to increasing integral culture and society.

[pbrower2a]

(10-15-2016, 11:21 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(10-15-2016, 11:13 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(10-15-2016, 03:52 PM)Mikebert Wrote: You do know that the onset of agriculture resulting in a decline in stature (and indicator of health).  This is strong evidence that the adoption of agriculture led to a large reduction in the well-being of humans.  It has been suggested that the Garden of Eden story is a folk memory of this transition from an idealized hunter-gatherer existence to agriculture around four millennia before Abraham.

All possible. But agriculture became necessary for human survival in many places when desiccation turned many places into milieus unsuited for hunter-gatherers. The cultivation of grain coincided with a time of great hunger.

Yes; you can always say that older times were simpler and better. But evolution and history push us into new and more complicated arrangements, new solutions, and ever larger social relationships. Civilization resulted from agriculture, some millennia after it began. But it's a mixed blessing; more division of labor and oppression by authority, but more possibilities for the arts and science and inventions.

True. But "simpler" is not better, and worse, may not be possible or even satisfying. A prime example: The Old Order Amish have no bureaucracy (a cause of much of the oppression and exploitation in America)... but they also limit formal education and as a consequence the acquaintance with the highest achievements of Western culture. Their denial of even radio ensures that one gets no chance to listen to the most cynical expressions of popular music, but also the richness of classical music.

For people who could not live as they do... maybe we need to constrain the worst tendencies in our elites. Maybe we need to make the liberal arts the focus of university education at the undergraduate level again so that our potential leaders can believe in something other than their own indulgence.

The finest technology can make access, if not content, simple.

Quote:Civilization has proceeded from agricultural towns and villages, to stone age civilizations, to the bronze and iron age of war and empire and society as conquered territory (civic hero's favorite age), to the age of faith, to the secularized age of kingdoms and early humanism and science, to the age of revolution, individual liberty movements, electricity and entrepreneurs, to the socialist age of collectivism, mass industrialism, nationalism, and racial and class war, to our current age of the greening of culture and society, globalism, political correctness, diversity and post-modernism, and beyond-- to increasing integral culture and society.

If we are to use the old criterion of material use as defining ages, then we have stone, bronze, and iron... I would now suggest aluminum. Silicon? Plastic?

The most wondrous technology allows us to achieve more with fewer inputs of materials and toil.

[Eric the Green]

Well, certainly silicon is a candidate. I think though that the bronze and iron age was the age of metalwork per se; that was the age when it was a primary shaper of how people lived and what their world view was. The transition from stone to metal was a big deal in shaping the culture. But the next age was shaped by religion and church authority and by religious empires, rather than a material that was used. After that, it was the secular state, the kingdom. So over time, it was the social organization and its size that even more marked the times.

As you may know, I use the planets as symbols of the various memes and world views that were dominant at different levels of social evolution, and the change to new periods has happened faster and faster, in something like a fibonacci spiral pattern. This is also partly based on the integral philosophy tradition.
http://philosopherswheel.com/planetarydynamics.html