Thank you for the thoughtful response to my rather terse post on oppression within the human species from some time ago. I have been out of the country but would like to follow-up now if I may:
At 03:48 PM 6/6/2002 -0700, Gar Lipow wrote:
>>Incidentally, there is some (highly disputed) evidence that the beginning
>>of oppression was not the neolithic, but the late Paleolithic. Basically
>>the process is not unlike the one Engel, but somewhat earlier...
>Frederick Engels' analysis was enlightening and important to me when I read it as an undergraduate, but it became apparent that during the entire process laid out by Engels, oppression within the human species was present. Barbara Ehrenreich presents interesting hypotheses and evidence in Blood Rites that at least gives equal billing if not more to an important stage in the process "humans as prey" than "humans as predators (oppressors)." I don't think this conflicts at all with my delineation of the origins of the various ways humans have oppressed the relations within their own species once they became predominately predators.
>The early part of Ehrenreich's analysis does belong in the paleolithic period and it involves relations between species: animals and humans. Animals, especially the animals that preyed upon humans, were ever-present in and weighed heavily upon the minds of paleolithic humans. Rituals that helped them deal with this blood and terror emerged such as animal sacrifices in place of human victims then later human sacrifices. Humans were not predominately predators but the brutality they witnessed and lived with, being torn into by the predator animals, set the stage. There was blood and terror all around. Burying the dead and denying the animal predators what was desired was a step in the direction of control, separation, and humans becoming mostly predators.
Once humans understood how it was done, and with the help of some techniques, they could then use what they had learned where it had never been used before, and so on. I also remember reading in her book that women's vaginal bleeding -- menstruation, child birth -- which is so much more than that found with animals and would have been so undoubtedly in your face for paleolithic humans, added to the blood and terror and may have linked women to predators, hence, a reason for so many predator-like female deities. But how Ehrenreich was connecting that to what really escapes me.
>I have a few additional comments below:
>Here is the process (I'm not claiming it is necessarily true - it is a
>hypothesis I find appealing):
>
>1) In the early Paleolithic humans had spears, and fire, but not weapons >at a distance. As a result humans were prey more often than predator - >foragers, and scavengers with hunting a minor source of anything. Like
>other victims of predation, there was some gender distinction - the less important men were the outer ring of the tribe - to guard the more
>important women and children if possible, to be victims and thus save the >tribe as a whole if not.
>I don't recall that. I thought it may have been the more effective ones on the perimeter battling with the beasts which would have required close proximity to use the spears and close range weapons.
I am filling in a blank - here as to how gender seperation began. There are two reason men would probably be on the outside. One is that men are less important than women or children. Children are the future. Women can reproduce with comparative few men; there does not need to be one man for every woman. Whoever is on the outside is more likely to die than whoever is on the inside. And men, given equal amounts of excercise , do on average develop more upper body strength. So they were probably more effective at using spears than woman as well. But the key is that they were more dispenable. If someone has to die, you are better off that it is a man than a childbearing age woman in those circumstances. (And children and old men and women probably would not be as effective as young men.)
>>While there may have been some gender distinction there was no gender
>>separation.
>True, so there couldn't have possibly been gender oppression at the time. And I don't recall that Ehrenreich suggests that there was gender oppression during this paleolithic time.
Ehreneich very much suggests that there was battle at the time. She even calls it war. But at the very least she presents effective evidence that groups of men at least forty or fifty at a time battled. But no, you dom't have opression WHILE the bow has not been invented. It is after the bow, and the wiping out of predators that it happens. In short, in the early and middle peolithic there is no gender oppression. But it develops in the late peolithic rather than the early neolithic.
>>You could not have had the men going out hunting in one direction while the women went out foraging in another, because that would have left them >unguarded. So foraging, scavenging, and what little hunting they did was >together. Probably both men and women foraged. Some hunting (the drive a >herd off a cliff method) was also done by both men and women. Because men
>were on "guard" duty women probably did the majority of foraging. If any hunting too place other than driving herd off cliffs, it was probably done by the men when the troop wandered onto an opportunity. In general, women probably provided the majority of calories, men doing the guarding and dying. Women probably had as high a death rate as the men thanks to
>childbirth. So the sacrifice and effort was pretty equal - even though there were distinct gender roles. We have no of knowing what degree of gender hierarchy was involved in this. But there is nothing in the situation that required it to be a severe one. None of this is established fact: but is seems to be a substantial minority position
>True.
>>2) Sometime in the mid to late Paleolithic the bow was invented. This changed the balance. Predators could be fought off with a fair degree of success. This is the beginning of the first human caused mass extinction. Quite understandably, once the bow was invented early humans set out to slaughter the creatures that tended to eat them. I have to admit I find the lack of sabre tooth tigers a positive feature of the world. They also set out wipe out herds prey animals over and above what they needed for >their own diet - so as not leave a food source for the big cats, and other predators that threatened humans. (The evidence for this is somewhat stronger; it seems to be a majority opinion but not indisputable fact)
>>3) Two consequences of this was that there was a gender separation rather than merely gender roles in works , and it was a separation where men ended up with most the weapons.
>I don't recall this in her book at least not during the paleolithic eriod. Ehrenreich's book is on war and she moves very quickly beyond the aleolithic. Even the weakest person can pull back a bow string and in rder for bows/arrows to be effective the archer has to have an accurate im -- not gender specific...remember calamity Jane [:)] . At any rate, weapons ending up in the hands of men seems to suggest a pre-existing oppression based on gender.
Unforunately I lent my copy of blood rites, so don't remember how much of this is Ehrenreichs and how much mine. Again I will note that she places war (or at least battle) as beginning in the Paelothic, not the Neolithic.
And in terms of weapons ending up in the hands of the men. It comes from the fact the in the earlier stages, custom had developed that men would do the dangerous work of guarding so that women would survive to do the dangerous work of child bearing. Now that better weapons have developed, and guarding is less dangerous work it could be shared evenly by women and men. But why would a long standing custom suddenly change. People change long standing customs very relunctantly. Also if men share the guard work evenly with the women, they will be in a position where "a woman can do everything a man can do , and have a baby besides". Having a baby is something only a woman can do. Letting her guard against predators evenly with men leaves men with nothing they can do to make up for this. So I suspect men would tend to resist any change in custom
quite strongly, while women would not press for it strongly if at all. After all, this is not an obvious gender opression, Men and women are still doing equally important work. But men's work instead of being equally dangerous is now a great deal less dangerous than child-bearing. The problem is that even if women took part in the guarding, they still have the babies. So an inescapable (at the time) inequality has developed. No matter how social roles change, women will die in larger numbers than men. Childbearing has gotten no easier. Guarding against predators has become easier. Even if women share the hunting, men can't share the child-bearing. So the overwhelming tendency is for men to do the guarding and go off hunting. If women share the hunting, the inequality of risk will get bigger not smaller.
>>So when the Sabre tooths etc. were either wiped out or reduced to a non-threatening level there was suddenly not a whole lot of work for the men to do. Women's foraging provoked the majority of the food.
>When a group has access to a majority of what is needed, how can those group members be oppressed?
Well we are not quite at the point where they are oppressed. Women control the majority of the food. Without, oppression, simply do a change in the means of production, men have gained access to the majority of the weapons. But now , just as before they no longer risked as much as women do, now there is suddenly a lot less work for them to do. They not only have the lower death rate because hunting is a lot safer than child bearing; they now have almost no work to do. Many dangerous species have been wiped out. Others have been reduced, and probably have learned to fear humans. There are only two jobs for hunters now - hunting the occasional human eating rogue, and hunting for food. Neither take much; and the more imporant one - hunting the rare rogue takes almost no time. Food hunting is a luxury; the tribe can live quite comfortably on what the women provide. So as I said before you have a bunch of armed unemployed hunters looking for something to do.
>>4) There is one dangerous creature out there still to hunt - other men. All sorts of excuses are available for hunting them - religious tokens, hunting territory, taking offense at some imagined insult.. So you end up as I said with pretty much the situation Engels described. The women have nothing to gain in this, protest it and are over-ruled by force. The winning hunters, probably the ones who come up with idea, probably soon come up with idea of capturing women from enemy tribes. So now they have wives who are enemies - and treat them as slaves (which in fact they are). And they probably encourage their sons to think of women that way too. And it is not just women who end up as slaves ; as the American Indians show, you can have non-agricultural people who take enemies captives and make them slaves. So if class oppression mixed with tribal oppression does not happen immediately, it begins so close to the beginning of women's oppression as to happen at the same time.
>I think this depiction is way beyond the paleolithic period and it is obvious that women are already oppressed.
I hope my explaination above shows the transition could (and probably did happen) in the paeolithic period. The transition is from gender roles, to gender seperation and inequality (but with nor requirement for oppression) to gender oppression.
>>The only real difference between this and what Engels suggested is that the material condition is not the invention of agriculture, but the invention of the bow, and the subsequent extermination of the most threatening non-human predators.
>The invention of long range weapons like the bow did exterminate the beasts and make various kinds of oppression easier, but even as Ehrenreich mentions human technologies also played a role -- techniques used in agriculture assisted. Separation precedes oppression. How did the bow separate based on gender? I don't see it and I don't recall that Ehrenreich suggested that. This seems to be the "humans as hunters hypothesis" that she attempts to debunk.
I'm pretty sure that Ehrenreich at least implied seperation based upon the bow. If not I think I have suggested the transtion. And no, this is not the classic "humans as hunters" hypothesis. "Humans as Hunters" tends to suggest a genetic tendency towards predation w hich this certainly does not suggest.It also suggests hunting as a source of cooperation, and a lot of what makes us human - which this is also does not suggest. It suggest hunting as a mixed blessing or perhaps a mixed curse. That is the bow, which allowed significant hunting , was a change in the means of production which allowed humans to be comparatively free from predation by other species. But it also turned (proabably non-opressive) gender roles to gender separation, then finally to gender opression. This has nothing to do with the "boy are we killer apes at heart" schools of thought. That does not mean I am right.
And while I may be interpeting Ehrenreich wrongly in some details, I am certain that she places the beginning of war and other opressions in the late Paeolithic and that she ties this to invention of the bow, and the extermination of dangerous predators.
And the details I've provided seem to be a plausible explanation of how this could happen.