An interesting contribution to the role of sexual selection in the making of human nature and human genders:
Briffault's Law: Women Rule | Psychology Today https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/machiavellians-gulling-the-rubes/201610/briffaults-law-women-rule
See also this discussion—a number of people have commented on a paper by John Horgan I posted to the Evolutionary Psychology facebook group: Do Women Want to be Oppressed?
discussing John Horgan's
"Do Women
Want to Be Oppressed?" Scientific
American (Cross Check) 29 Dec. 2017.*
2017
(Note: Horgan's short answer in the article is NO, or perhaps 'i'd much rather think they wouldn't have wanted to').
—my own answer is women have historically bought the oppression+protection pack, as one tends to do in Mafia-ruled neighbourhoods.
Here's my comment to Horgan and the discussion:
Well, here's a 'succès de scandale' if there ever was one. Nobody has ever given more than one comment, or rather zero, to anything posted by me. There are some insightful arguments in the commentary as well as in the paper. I have to say though that I do not agree at all with one of its key points—when Horgan says that war is a recent development and it started 10,000 years ago, with agriculture etc. New political structures will of course produce new forms of war, but the highly violent inter (and intra-) group dynamics of hunter-gatherer societies is so well established that the article is quite weak as regards one of its key points arguing for a "nice" or "feelgood" egalitarian interpretation of human evolution—which it seems to be crying for.
The full reference for the 1st paper:
Hartley, Dale. (West Virginia U, Parkersburg).
Machiavellians: Gulling the Rubes.
Blog at Psychology today
_____. "Briffault's Law: Women Rule." Psychology Today (Machiavellians: Gulling
the Rubes) 31 Oct. 2016.*
2017
______
I get some abuse from one of the participants as a male chauvinist prick etc.; another makes some good points about the recent development of war as a generalized strategy, and the importance of social prestige rather than violent dominance as a means of achiveing social prominence. I respond:
This is a thoughtful and well-argued response to some of the issues involved. However I think you are addressing a weak point in Horgan's article, or perhaps a blind spot, involving the confusion of masculine violence with war (understood as a recent development), and a concomitant confusion or insufficient distinction between dominance and violent aggression. I think the dynamics of male dominance in all kinds of societies, beginning with leadership and social prominence, are much more diverse, subtle and varied than a focus on overt violence or aggressive behaviour would reveal. Although no doubt there has been no lack of the latter throughout history either. And it is not just a matter of women vs. men, either: one could argue that the oppressed have everywhere been complicit in their own oppression, since by their very nature structures of oppression tend to replicate themselves as subjects play out their 'ordinary and expected' social roles. One could argue that about labourers, slaves, or women, in their different positions as subaltern classes or castes—insofar as women's roles have lergely been subordinated to the men's ones in social and political organization. So on the whole I would argue that the paper first shows, and then tries to shy away from, one of the many disagreeable truths about human evolution. But doing so is a well-established tradition, and it also serves some social purposes (conciliation, social bonding, etc.)—man does not live from truth alone, nor woman neither.
______
I get some abuse from one of the participants as a male chauvinist prick etc.; another makes some good points about the recent development of war as a generalized strategy, and the importance of social prestige rather than violent dominance as a means of achiveing social prominence. I respond:
This is a thoughtful and well-argued response to some of the issues involved. However I think you are addressing a weak point in Horgan's article, or perhaps a blind spot, involving the confusion of masculine violence with war (understood as a recent development), and a concomitant confusion or insufficient distinction between dominance and violent aggression. I think the dynamics of male dominance in all kinds of societies, beginning with leadership and social prominence, are much more diverse, subtle and varied than a focus on overt violence or aggressive behaviour would reveal. Although no doubt there has been no lack of the latter throughout history either. And it is not just a matter of women vs. men, either: one could argue that the oppressed have everywhere been complicit in their own oppression, since by their very nature structures of oppression tend to replicate themselves as subjects play out their 'ordinary and expected' social roles. One could argue that about labourers, slaves, or women, in their different positions as subaltern classes or castes—insofar as women's roles have lergely been subordinated to the men's ones in social and political organization. So on the whole I would argue that the paper first shows, and then tries to shy away from, one of the many disagreeable truths about human evolution. But doing so is a well-established tradition, and it also serves some social purposes (conciliation, social bonding, etc.)—man does not live from truth alone, nor woman neither.
—oOo—
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario
Se aceptan opiniones alternativas, e incluso coincidentes: