[lbo-talk] Ward Churchill responds to U. of Colorado investigation]

[Chris Doss]

Hell, I just think when you get right down to it the
reason human societies are usually run by men is
probably the same reason cow herds are led by bulls
and hyena packs are led by female hyenas
(hyenaettes?). The hominid known as homo sapiens is
"built" with that tendency. It was selected for, or
accidentally arose, in evolution for whatever reason.
If you stuck 50 people on a desert island and left
them there for 50 years, the society that emerged
would probably be patriarchal. If civilization ended
tomorrow, the society that emerged in 100 years would
probably be patriarchal.

(I hope I don't have to mention the is/ought problem
and the naturalistic fallacy here.)

--- Miles Jackson <cqmv at pdx.edu> wrote:
> 
> I can't resist the bait here.  CB will probably
> provide some 
> anthropological perspective, but here's my take,
> based on the historical 
> and cross-cultural evidence that I'm aware of:
> 
> 1.  Truly matriarchal societies (women as the
> politically, economically, 
> socially dominant group) have not existed or are
> extremely rare, as 
> Chris argues.
> 
> 2.  The intensity of gender stratification varies
> dramatically in 
> different societies.  In some societies, women have
> virtually no 
> political or economic power; in other societies,
> women as a group have 
> more or less the same political and economic
> standing that men do.  To 
> simplify: gender stratification is most intense in
> agrarian societies, 
> least severe in hunting and gathering societies.
> 
> Given these data, any argument about gender
> stratification that points 
> to "very broad reasons" for male domination must be
> wrong.  If it were 
> true that (say) the structure of human reproductive
> biology or Joanna's 
> "fear of women" was the primary cause of patriarchy,
> we wouldn't see the 
> dramatic differences in gender stratification that
> we have observed in 
> different societies.
> 
> So what explains the differing levels of gender
> stratification in 
> different societies, if it cannot be simply
> explained in terms of 
> general psychological or biological differences?  We
> have to analyze the 
> social relations in a given society--the means of
> production, 
> ideological apparatuses like religion and education,
> family 
> structure--to understand gender oppression.  Engels
> (and later socialist 
> feminists!) made a start at this kind of useful
> analysis.
> 
> Miles
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>
http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
> 

Nu, zayats, pogodi!

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