Conference quark::human_relations-v1

How is it that we can be **sure*** that it is a good thing that women be treated
as equal?  How can we be ***sure*** that the right thing is not seperate role
for male and female???

Our bodies are telling us to go back to seperate roles, why don't we listen to
them???  Is it impossible to have a just, respectfull lifestyle with different
roles in life?

I don't know if it's 'right', but I sure think that it is possible.  Just as
with problem of segregation, 'bussing' (forcing everyone to be equal) is not the
answer.

Jim. 

    Perhaps if we went back through time to the caves we would find
    there were no roles at all.  Women could live by the sea and feast
    on fish, and shellfish and plants without need of the hunter's skill.
    Children would have survived because their mother's would have seen
    to it.  Men would have stayed with the family tribe because they
    wanted to, they were happier and more comfortable there.
    
    We seem to have a difficult time accepting that we are together
    because we choose to be together....not because we have to be together.
    
    

    And somewhere I read about the theory that the reason men were sent
    out to hunt was not because they were big and strong, but because
    they were expendable!  After all, you only needed one male to ensure
    the continuity of the tribe by enpregnating the females.  Which
    would seem to imply that the aggressive behavior is the aberration,
    and the nurturing feelings that men are beginning to be willing
    to acknowledge are the "natural" ones.  
    
    Just throwing a little more fat into the fire!
    
    G

"if we were to go back to the Cave Dwellers" I expect it most of us
would be looking for the first bus home in a few hours!

the "good old days" that some of us want to get back to are beyond
the pale of (at least) our personal histories, if not back before
recorded history altogether...why?  because we can imagine them
without the problems that are inherent in any real-life history

how about going back to sometime you can remember...wanna go back
to the '50s?  not me thanx...they sucked!  or how about the '60s,
with Eldredge Cleaver saying "women's place in the Movement is...
prone"?  yup, those were the good old days alright (:^))

I agree with .0 100% that there are biological and neurochemical
differences between men and women, but I don't think that makes
certain social roles more natural than others...roles only make
sense in the context of whatever society you're in at the time, so
we ain't gonna cut by trying to me cave min-&-wimmen today--any
attempt to do so would probably be just acting out a stereotype
that has no relation to the mind, the emotion, the sexuality, the
religion, the hopes, the you-name-it of a real person in a primitive
society

(BTW, some primitive societies did seem to have more sex-roles
than just two for "macho" males and "nurturing" females: I seem
to remember reading about societies with transvestite male priests
and female-only hunting lodges and the like...I guess the only
thing you can definitely say is that people had to deal with a
smaller and more constant set of individuals "in those days", which
may have made you more secure in your role (once you established it))

    re .8 >Maybe we men have just out-lived our usefulness in the female-
          >dominated society of today ... Do we only exist so _she_
          >can collect on our life-insurance since we never generate
          >an "estate".
    
    The problem with roles in society is that it makes
    it very easy to blame someone else for the condition of one's own
    life, (she's my wife-she's supposed to make me happy-I'm not happy-it's
    her fault).  It's always easier to blame another person for what is going
    wrong inside ourselves than to assume responsibility for the life
    we have created for ourself.    
    
    Society has certain criteria by which it judges whether or not certain
    people are "usefull",  churches and families do the same.  The best
    judge of whether or not we are "usefull" is ourselves. We are born
    alone, we make our own decisions as best we can or we choose to allow
    another to make some of our decisions for us, we determine our own
    lives, and we die alone.  The only person who really knows why we
    "exist", what function and purpose we serve on this little blue
    planet is ourselves. 
    
    If we choose to share our lives with another that is
    our choice.  If we decide to work at that relationship because it
    is important to us that is our choice.  If we decide to use that
    relationship as an excuse for the failures we perceive in ourselves
    that is our choice too.   Roles won't help us to walk away from
    our responsibility to ourselves, the truth is always there.
                                                               

I have a question...

If all us males are superfluous, why are all those ex-es out there collecting
child support, claiming that they need it?

Jim :-)

    re .12 Its the children who need it Jim, not the ex-es.  And very
    few men could support themselves on the amount of child support
    they pay.  No one said anything about men being superfluous you
    know.  It's that old male ego rearing up.  At the risk of making
    matters worse....
    
    Our scientists have recently determined that our chromosomes are
    handed down through the female only.  If I remember the article
    in Omni correctly they have been able to trace our genes back to
    a small group of women in prehistoric Asia.  your son's may bear
    your name but its your daughters who carry your genetic imprint
    down through the course of time.  One definition of a matriarchy
    is "A social system in which descent is traced through the mother's
    side of the family".  I guess that means that biologically speaking,
    we are a matriachial species. :-)
    (good thing we don't get into power trips eh guys? ;-)
    
    

Nobody said it in that many words here, but militant woman's liberationists
say it all the time...  What they probably should be saying is 'I have no
use for men'. Which is fine, since most men have no use for them...

It's hardly my 'old male ego'...  *I* wish that the money was *not* necessary...

Jim.

    re .13:
    
    If you're referring to the research I think you are, I believe you're
    misrepresenting it.

    	Jon

    
    The level of hostility toward women and children doesn't really
    surprise me.  It is reflected in all of our society.  It is reflected
    in the high teenage suicide rates.  It is seen in the family battering
    cases in the courts.  It shines in the faces of little children
    and teenage mothers who live far below poverty level for their
    sin.  Men, in general, have done a very good job of running the
    world and men, in general, have done a very bad job of running the
    world.  The same qualities that have poured billions of dollars
    into defense while cutting education and social services have also
    brought our culture into a new technological age.  Those same qualities
    have brought much of our society into despair and poverty and
    unhappiness.  
    
    Reading back through this note, I know you will hear what you want
    to hear and intepret this in ways that justify your own feelings.
    The world has become a very small place.  Our technology has become
    very sophisticated.  Our values are such that we can spend billions
    helping people to die and begrudge the little we spend helping people
    to live.  The qualities that men possess are now and always will
    be essential to our continued social growth and advancement.  But
    the qualities that women possess are essential to our survival.
    If you continue to treat those qualities as inferior and unimportant
    we, as a species, will surely die.  We will distroy ourselves in
    our quest to compete, to win, to control.  We began as partners
    in a hostile world.  What happened?
     
    
    

RE: .18

Don't try and tell me that I'm hostile toward women and children!  If I were
hostile toward my son and his mother, I would just disappear, and have nothing
to do with them.  And I am not contributing to family battering, teenage
suicides, or the poverty of little children and teenage mothers.  I am against
defense spendiong, and for education, but against social services.   Don't try
any feed me this line of sop!

Yes, men and women started out as partners; what happened? Sin.  How do we
correct it?  Love.  Don't be discriminating, love each person as much as you
can.  Don't be seperate from people, living in a seperate world.

The Child Support/Custody discussion has been moved to AIMHI::PARENTS where
it belongs.

Jim.

    Please move this discussion back on track--hormones, neurochemicals,
    and evolution. This note is not for the discussion of specific roles,
    but for how society may have overshot our physical evolution. 
    
    Tamzen
    

    Have any of you read "Clan of the Cave Bear"?  It may be fiction,
    but it gives a very interesting view of the possible ways a tribe
    lived in the cave dwelling days.  As we also know from anthropological
    studies, men and women did have specific clear-cut roles.  But were
    they personally happy with them?  What about the individuals who
    didn't fit in, like the young girl in the above-mentioned book,
    who has a strong intelligence and curiosity to learn to use a
    sling-shot even though it is against the clan's rules.  Individuality
    was obviously suppressed in any of these cultures due to the group's
    survival needs.  Everyone had to work as a team even if at the expense
    of personal fulfillment and expression.
    
    We as Americans have always believed in personal freedom and the
    expression of the individual, so when you look at JLamotte's
    discussion, in the light of a group's survival, individuality can
    be harmful to the existence or survival of the entire group when
    they are solely concerned with food-gathering and a safe shelter.
    Now most of us (but not all of us) are no longer concerned with
    just survival.  We have all the basics, so human nature being what
    it is, we begin to strive for the "higher planes" in life being
    art, music, self-expression in all its forms.  Women in just the
    last 100 or so years have had the opportunity for higher education,
    which trains them to be curious and analytical, among other things.
    After all this education, it does seem a waste to just stay home
    and raise children, and not do anything else.  Some women have tried
    to do it all, pursue a career, care for children and a home, and
    it's damn hard, especially if her male partner is not willing to
    help out.  The roles have definitely changed, and calling each other
    names and becoming angry at the opposite sex does not help the
    situation at all.
    
    I have lately thought about those situations where women have chosen
    to become surrogate mothers, or where single women choose to become
    artificially inseminated.  In doing these things, we as humans are
    really going against nature's original plan, which is that a child
    should be born into a family unit and raised there.  It is very
    hard for a woman to be both a father and mother.  Role models of
    both sexes are needed for a child.  Some may argue that this can
    occur with the visitation of male or female friends, relatives,
    etc.  But it's not the same thing.  I have no answers by any means,
    but we definitely have some very serious familial problems in our
    high-tech society, which hopefully will be solved as we evolve into
    other levels of existence.  
    
    I hope I live long enough to see what those changes will be.  It's
    like we are all part of a large laboratory experiment.  When you
    think about it, it is mind-boggling.
     

    re .13 and .16
    On evolution and genes. The study referred to was on the chromosomes
    in the mitochondira - the energy producing structures in the cells,
    *not* the genes that are found in the nucleus. 
    
    What the study showed was that our mitochondrial genes are so similar
    that they must have originated from one woman or a small group of
    related women only a few thousand years ago. (Mitochondria are passed
    down in the egg from mother to child, the sperm conributes no
    mitochondria to the fertilized ovum or zygote.)
    Bonnie

    Thank you, Bonnie. I had read that recently, and knew that it was
    cytological, but couldn't remember the details. 
    
    	Jon 

    Thanks too, Bonnie - I love bio and appreciate this info on the
    mitochondria!  Boggles the mind!
    
    re: .21  Education does not 'create' curiosity and analytical ability
    in men, women or anyone.  You're born with it or you're not.  Don't
    blame education for women's 'yearnings'.  Highly curious and analytical
    people always have and always will exist.  These qualities make
    you WANT education.  The difference is men were allowed to be educated
    and women were stuck, pregnant and raising children, with yearnings.
    
    Also, what makes you think it's "nature's plan" that children "should
    be born into a family" thus surrogate motherhood and artificial
    insemination goes against this "plan"?  Socialization, (which your
    concept of family falls under), is separate from the physical
    realities.  Physical nature says that children are born to women, period.
    The physical world is not affected if a woman gives her child to
    someone else or has no 'husband'.  These are social issues.  And who 
    really knows if there is any 'plan' of any kind, natural or otherwise 
    anyway?  We all must decide for ourselves what we assume the reasons
    for the physical world are.  I'd be cautious about trying to deal with 
    any blanket 'assumption' such as a 'natural plan'.
        
    
    

re: .22

My memory is a little vague, but back when i went to school the
theory put forth was that mitochondria were actually the remnants
of a virus that had invaded the "ancestral cell" and then stuck
around to form a symbiotic relationship.  Does that square with
what you read, Bonnie?
							paul

    re .25
    Close. Mitochondria (and chloroplasts) were very probably
    once free living *bacteria* that invaded the ancestral cells.
    Lyn Margolus in her book Microcosmos develops the theory that
    all multicellular organisms arose from associations of bacteria
    a very long time ago. Not everyone accepts her point of view
    but she has some very compelling evidence.