yet rob, you make absolutely no argument that explains to me how it is that a womb affects the world in and of itself. what does a womb do in the world that shapes social relations? how is it that possessing a womb --with or without a view-- matters to me or anyone else outside of the social relations that make it matter? i may come to have a disease associated with the malfunctioning of my womb but what has that to do with my woman-ness, how i'm thought of by you, treated by you and so forth? men have adam's apples and women don't. does that define them as men?
i have a special necklace--a stuffed trophy cock and pair of balls. i wear it all the time to work and yet i can tell you without a doubt that this does not ensure that i get treated like a man! i certainly don't get salary offers in job interviews that a man would. and yet i have in my possession those things that make me a man, no? is it that i have to get an erection? but then are men who don't have erections not men? ejaculations? what about men who can't ejaculate? oh wait, i need testosterone coursing thru my body, is that it? phooey capooey on that! the research in that arena has a dismal record.
maybe the selfish gene mattered eons ago. i cannot see how it matters now other than we are dealing with the hangover from the eons long drunk we were on making it matter so much.. and as i said, we have social customs, practices and institutions such that we don't need to order our lives according to some biological imperatives in any one-to-one pointer reader way. and what i don't get is that, if this is about evolutionary theory, then why has no one evolved beyond the daze when men dragged women around by their hair? also, how is that you ignore the research that suggests that our social conditions shape the biological? the brain research that shuggests that the brain changes under social conditions ? why ignore research that suggests something counter or fatal to your argument? and don't accuse me of same. i could deal with research about how testosterone makes men more agressive. i'd simply say, so what? that doesn't mean that we have to accept aggression or the behavior they engage in and if it's an issue then we can make special places for them to go to constructively expel it.
and what is so great about older men/younger women relationshps that anyone would feel the need to justify them? there is no imperative to procreate as much as we do. yes, we might like to keep it up if we think humans are important. but surely there is no procreative imperative driving our sexual behavior. and i am praying to all known deities that, even as a het man, you don'tsimplyfuckfor [dd-edit] the sake of making babies. pity your wife if you do! such deprivation no one should have to endure! so what if it's hardwired to desire younger women. social criticism ought to be enough to suggest that maybe the practice isn't so great.
and why have you an objection to my argument about the relative value of men on the dating marriage market. you have yourself told me that you're quite aware that women have standards such that they'd find all sorts of men attractive and for that you thanked your lucky stars, as i recall. these were your observations of the singles scene in canberra, no?
speaking of which, are there some cross cultural comparisons we can draw on , eh? i am absoultely certain that somewhere there is some evidence to indicate that there is something a bit dippy about the selfish gene theory.
i should sub to the anthro list and ask....oh wait wait wait! ihave some dorky family sociology texts which i never use. ahhh hah! here it is. why didn't i think of this before?!!!
sorry this is for the US, but the avg age diff is 2 years, with women two yrs yonger. 1970s, women were older in 12% of marriages; in 1988 they were older in 20% --this says little about *how* much older. i don't think 5 or so years is *that* significant, particularly since folks are, today, marrying at later average ages and are thus exposed to a wider age range of people than they were throughout the bulk of this century.
at any rate, here's some cross cultural historical evidence. yes, historically most societies revealed that men typically married younger women. but the numbers aren't that great.--the differences ranged from 2-5 years for the most part. the one exception is Asian societies where the age differences were sometimes as great as 10 yrs. [still not talking 15+ as i was talking about when i spoke of my academic colleagues.] the argument is that there is a strong correlation between bigger age gaps and greater oppression of women. where women are seen as useless on the market, to be dispensed with and not worth much [recall the hangover of the 'dowry' included with a gal to make her worth taking] because she somehow didn't contribute to her community in as valuable ways as men did. how is it possible that women could have been considered so worthless? if reproduction is so all fired important, one would think that women would be revered and seen as very important, no?
what follows is a bit controversial or rather, it will piss some folks off, but here goes:
there was a "distinctive western european family pattern, characteristic of England, the Netherlands and northern France which was found already in the late Middle ages. [...] the 'modern' family pattern did not have to wait for industrialization and modern capitalism to develop; it was there in these rural farming societies [conversely, there is evidence that industrialism did not cause the breakdown of the family when it became ascendent in the the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries].
The western european family did not exist everywhere. it had some distinctive characteristics not found elsewehere in the world. the household was nuclear [prior to the ind. rev.], consisting only of parents with their young children. [my insertion: it was the wealthy who had extended families. the working class did not].
[...]
In the western Euro family, there was a rleatively small age gap between husbands and wives. typically the husband was about two or three years older, although as many as one fifth of all marriages the wife was older. [this was probably due to the strong tendency for a widow to inherit her husband's business] in eastern europe or asian societies, husbands were likely to be much older than wives. [...]
in the western european family, women inparticular put off marrying and chidbearing until they were older. this is one reason that the complex, extended family is more often found in non-western societies where women married young, bore more children early....
[...]
finally, the western euro family was unique in having a high proportion of servants and in typically sending its members out to work as servants during their early adult years. in nonwestern euro societies, servants werw much less common. typically only upper class households would have servants, whereas in england and w euro even small peasant proprietors were likely to have them.
[...]
if by the 'modern family,' then, we mean the nuclear family it is certainly not a recent development. why it should have appeared in western euro already by the middle ages but not elsewhere in the world is a puzzle that has not yet been solved. but this is not to say that no important changes have occured in the wetern family in the last few centuries.
[...]
looking at the comparative evidence, it appears that the socities in whcih there is the largest age gap between the spouses are the ones in which men have the most power over women. these are the socities in which the marriage market is treated most callously, as a way for powerful men to acquire women as their sexual property. the improvements in the status of women in w. society are related to the shortening of the age gap. there is some indiciation that, as women's status now undergoes another important change, the age gap between husbands and wives is narrowing further still.
it is also true that women are marrying later than ever before. at the same time, women feel pressure to marry and have more incentive aws well as more economic resources to stay independent. as this happens, it may well be that our conception of the peak of physical attraactiveness may shift to an older age: toward the woman in her late twenties or thirties rather than the teenager."
randall collins and scott coltrane, sociology of marriage and the family:
gender, love and property 1991. kelley
At 04:35 PM 11/25/1999 +1100, you wrote:
>Writes Doug,
>
>>This will no doubt exasperate the Judy-haters, following Butler's in
>>Bodies That Matter, it's interesting to watch how & when "biological"
>>arguments are invoked - as a last ditch effort to limit the
>>social/discursive analysis of social/discursive phenomena and ground
>>them instead in some unalterable Real. That's just what Rob is doing
>>here - resisting arguments based on gender (and class) relations and
>>shifting attention to the realm of the gene. Last time I looked,
>>genes couldn't talk, though lots of people profess to talk for them.
>
>
>So is it a theory you reject, Doug (I acknowledge 'the selfish gene' is
>'only' a theory - but what isn't)? And am I resisting arguments based on
>gender, or rather suggesting gender theory might not explain everything?
>This could conceivably matter, as it would be sad, I think, to see in every
>older man/younger woman sexual relationship a manifestation of structural
>tyranny. I realise I'm a bit theoretically old-fashioned (theorising a
>natural realm at play in our experience 'n' all), but all we're doing is
>discussing theories that can either contend or complement.
>
>I don't see why the latter is out of the question unless we insist that,
>for instance, the only way a womb manifests in life is according to the
>idea of it and the concomitant positioning of its owner - as I took
>Catherine to be suggesting. Sure, to apprehend something is inevitably to
>allocate meaning, a meaning at once conditioned by, and itself conditioning
>of, material relations.
>
>But wombs would still be there, and still affecting our world, if we did
>not apprehend them and they were not part of our structure of meanings.
>Same with genes. But, of course, how genes actually operate in
>conditioning our behaviour, and how powerful they are as against the
>determinations of a gendered society, I can't know. Only theorise.
>
>I was being consciously political in my little intervention only so far as
>to question possibly tyrannical certainties (which can blight the
>constructivist left as much as the uncritically naturalist mainstream).
>Or, at least, that's what I thought I was doing.
>
>Anyway, I subscribe to quite a few theories that don't sit well with how
>amenable to our desires I'd like the world to be. Just as genes might
>condition sexual preferences in a sexually reproducing species, so might
>members of such a species be consigned to inevitable death. Don't like
>that theory much, either, but as a theory it's a hard one to best.
>
>Cheers,
>Rob.
>
>
>
>