Pentagon to allow Women into frontline combat by 2016
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FrisianDude
Archduke
Agreed, honestly. For basically the first time, women are regarded as equal.Dodes said:
Dodes said:
What about the fact that eggs (not sperms) are the scarce factor in human reproductive ecology?
rebelsquirrell
Grandmaster Knight
No he means if I lose 50% of the male population our numbers can more easily bounce back than if we lost 50% of females.
Dodes said:You mean the market term right? That's a joke right?
Nope I used the term in the evolutionary biological sense. For example, check out Bateman's principle.
Basically, sperm are plentiful and males are 'cheap.' Eggs and wombs on the other hand are inherently more 'scarce' from an opportunity standpoint because of the time and energetic demands of pregnancy, lactation and infant child care. In many pre-industrial societies, the average woman experienced a 5 year interbirth interval. That means that an average woman, with infant and juvenile mortality factored in might only leave 2 or 3 surviving children who also reproduced. The viability of a community in the long-term would thus be much more constrained by the availability of females than by the availability of males. A single male can father prodigious quantities of children, literally hundreds, whereas even under ideal circumstances the most exceptional females have produced 12. As an example of 'optimum' human reproductive ecology (in the absence of a post-demographic transition decline in fecundity) Hutterites in Alberta and neighboring provinces have an average total lifetime fertility of about 7 or 8 if memory serves.
With these inherent and inescapable biological facts in mind, i.e., that "eggs (not sperms) are the scarce factor in human reproductive ecology" it raises the question of whether preserving females from violent death might not have been motivated more out of a high valuation of them for their reproductive capacity, rather than out of a hatred of them, i.e., misogyny.
There were female soldiers in the Red Armies of few nations, pre-WW2.
In pre-industrial societies, preserving wombs was a rational choice from an evolutionary viewpoint and as long as combat was mostly hand-to-hand, males had such an clear advantage that it would make sense to utilize only men. Remember that before the First World War, there wasn't a single war that completely mobilized population for war - thus there also was not need for soldiers on such a massive scale. Neither the 30-Year War or the Napoleonic Wars came close to emptying the manpower reserves of any combatants.
So when firearms equalized the battlefield AND societies were populous enough that wombs were not a high priority for safeguarding (except for cultural baggage) AND total wars started to require the mobilization of the entire nation, you see women becoming part of armies: hence the large-scale joining of women in the Red Army. Wehrmacht could have used women but Hitler and the Nazi's, in the Romantic ideals, were vehemently against such ideas. German women were not conscripted for factory/farm service until 1942, whereas Britain had done the same in 1940.
In pre-industrial societies, preserving wombs was a rational choice from an evolutionary viewpoint and as long as combat was mostly hand-to-hand, males had such an clear advantage that it would make sense to utilize only men. Remember that before the First World War, there wasn't a single war that completely mobilized population for war - thus there also was not need for soldiers on such a massive scale. Neither the 30-Year War or the Napoleonic Wars came close to emptying the manpower reserves of any combatants.
So when firearms equalized the battlefield AND societies were populous enough that wombs were not a high priority for safeguarding (except for cultural baggage) AND total wars started to require the mobilization of the entire nation, you see women becoming part of armies: hence the large-scale joining of women in the Red Army. Wehrmacht could have used women but Hitler and the Nazi's, in the Romantic ideals, were vehemently against such ideas. German women were not conscripted for factory/farm service until 1942, whereas Britain had done the same in 1940.
At the very least, it would make all those ****ing superheavy tanks redundant.
Yep, Jhessail has pretty much captured the essence of the idea. The paradoxical thing to me is that, there is a reasonable amount of evidence that many paleolithic societies might have been matriarchal if not relatively more egalitarian. In the few forager populations that are known about based on reasonable first hand accounts, extreme sex segregation, patriarchy and institutionalized misogyny are the exception not the rule.
The debate probably will never be settled for certain, but basically, it seems likely that prior to the development of agriculture and permanent communities, sexism and misogyny (or misandry for that matter) may have been fairly unknown.
That seems to have changed dramatically in most of the earliest city-states in which surviving artwork and texts indicate the emergence of a cult of masculinity and indeed a masculinity of the most despicable sort (see quote in my signature). Remember those savages in the Iliad and Odyssey with egos the size of Crete, who loved to kill and steal rivals gear and women? Within an ancient worldview those guys were "heroes."
Once patriarchy and the relegation of women to lesser status was widespread across most or all of the original agricultural city-states, it seems to have prevailed largely unreformed for the past five to ten thousand years. That makes the changes in women's liberation during the last couple hundred years, but especially the last 150 rather remarkable.
The debate probably will never be settled for certain, but basically, it seems likely that prior to the development of agriculture and permanent communities, sexism and misogyny (or misandry for that matter) may have been fairly unknown.
That seems to have changed dramatically in most of the earliest city-states in which surviving artwork and texts indicate the emergence of a cult of masculinity and indeed a masculinity of the most despicable sort (see quote in my signature). Remember those savages in the Iliad and Odyssey with egos the size of Crete, who loved to kill and steal rivals gear and women? Within an ancient worldview those guys were "heroes."
Once patriarchy and the relegation of women to lesser status was widespread across most or all of the original agricultural city-states, it seems to have prevailed largely unreformed for the past five to ten thousand years. That makes the changes in women's liberation during the last couple hundred years, but especially the last 150 rather remarkable.
Interesting stuff there.
Maybe the dominant role of one gender emerged once the settled tribes developed the notion of individual property? Who owned the hut and the field?
There was an interesting tidbit about the Tuaregs. In the groups that lived in a traditional, nomadic way, the tents were owned by the women. Those that settled to farm had male ownership of the farm. Why is that?
Maybe the dominant role of one gender emerged once the settled tribes developed the notion of individual property? Who owned the hut and the field?
There was an interesting tidbit about the Tuaregs. In the groups that lived in a traditional, nomadic way, the tents were owned by the women. Those that settled to farm had male ownership of the farm. Why is that?
MadVader said:
There is quite a bit of variation in these sorts of customs and habits across forager, pastoralist and horticultural as well as true agricultural populations. Being able to own things, or even having lineage traced through female kin doesn't necessarily equate with 'egalitarian' relations between the sexes nor with equivalence in power or rights between males and females. Basically, even in societies where women "owned" stuff, they were often still bereft of much formal power and subject to things like polygyny, so property ownership wouldn't seem to be the explanation for how patriarchy and misogyny became so predominant. I don't know the gender studies literature so I could be ignorant if there are viable and widely accepted theories. However, what little I do know: most explanations seem to simply say "Misogyny" is the explanation for why Neolithic societies became misogynistic, with the implication that it is somehow a reflection on inherent male desire to oppress and exploit women.
There may be such an inherent desire for males (and females) to oppress or exploit others, but given the variation in the extent to which there is sex-based inequality--and especially the case that, the most ancient norm for human natural history may well have been relative equality if not even some degree of matriarchy--inherent individual drives do not seem to explain the evolution of misogyny during the Neolithic and into recent times. It would seem to me that the shift to misogynistic societies had to do with militarism and the intensification of inter-group competition in the areas where the first city-states emerged. This would mean that it is really a question for the archaeologists not so much the gender-studies folks per se.
My humble, non-archaeological opinion: there was variation in the factors that seem to be associated with increasing sedentism of communities, increasing reliance on and intensification of domestication, and all the changes that went along with that (status differentiation, permanent architecture, defensive architecture, innovations in tools and weapons, work role specialization, writing, etc.). But there is one factor that seems to be common across most or all of the 'cradles of civilization:' intensified competition over resources as a result of growing population densities, and in some cases growing scarcity of resources as a result of climate change or over use.
That leads me to suspect that intergroup competition leading to increased militarism was the main cause for the beginning of the transition to misogyny, and may well have been part of what caused it to evolve to extreme extents and remain entrenched for centuries. When your communities very survival depends on having a potent fighting force to fend off would be conquerors, perhaps a value system that proclaims men dominant and women subservient was somehow advantageous or perhaps even inevitable.
If this idea were true, it would make the 'recent' changes in the opening of combat roles to females all the more remarkable.
Dodes
Count
While I don't believe and personally disagree that the reason of misogynistic society is predisposed misogyny of males, I believe instead it was that males have biological predisposition for more strength/muscles, which caused males to dominate society and become leaders. If females had this biological predisposition, then females would have become dominant.
