#RepealThe19th

[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.