Re: After 2000 - some thoughts on Order, Male Dominance and Innate Behavioral Imperatives.

12 August 1999

Perry Arnett

Picking up on the theme that 'all survival is local...', one key to predicting what life may be like after the roll-over is knowing 'human nature' : i.e.

Will human nature change due to y2k ? I think not.

What do I mean by "human nature" and how can we know what portions or aspects of human nature may remain, change or be reinstated?

Philosophical Principle :

In order for a society to function there must be some degree of 'order', since order leads to a certain predictability of human behavior. Without some predictability of behavior, chaos exists; chaos is not 'civilized'. Thus, some degree of order is necessary for a society to function smoothly.

Example : as one approaches a Green light at an intersection, it is reasonable to assume [predict] that those travelling across ones direction of travel will stop if the light is showing Red to them. Whether we need more order or predictability of human behavior than this is surely debatable; but this much order DOES allow for the maximization of individual self-actualization and initiative.

Second example :

Two individuals driving 75 miles per hour in opposite directions on the same road, each, separated only by a 5" wide yellow paint stripe; - the law, convention (and fear of death) motivate each to stay on their own side of the line. Result? societal 'order' has been created, and each can, with some reasonableness, 'predict' the behavior of the other - (while admitting there is a substantial risk) - we all do it - all the time.

[Obviously, one can argue how much order is necessary in a society; and when does order begin to limit individual freedom in ways that are counter-productive to the self- actualization of the individual and the interests of the society. There are numerous answers to the question, [for another time] but I submit that few would disagree that SOME order is necessary for a 'society' to exist, function and to preserve the rights of the minorities [individuals] in that society.]

To my Main Point :

For thousands of years in patriarchal societies, men have beat their women and their children with impunity in a supposed attempt at creating order out of disorder in the family; ["I earn the money, I provide the food, clothes and shelter, I'm the boss, you mind..." etc.]

Some say that family violence tended to create order and a certain predictability of behavior in the family members; that that dominance tended to inculcate into some of those family members the attributes of self-control and self-discipline; not withstanding the fact that many of those who were "in control of themselves" were messed up emotionally regarding to their own self-worth.

With the advent of the 60's and women's lib, corporal punishment of wives and children by male heads of households became not just 'politically incorrect', but in some locals, became a crime. As a result, some say female and younger members of families became freer in their ability to act since the 60's; while others suggest that those same family members became less self-disciplined and less in control of themselves; [some would even say], to the detriment to society as a whole. [that can be argued at another time, too]

However, the larger question is :

Though the societal and legal response to acts of violence committed by men against their women and children have changed recently, did the perpetrators of the acts change their BASIC NATURE? i.e. have men, by legislative edict and threat of imprisonment, suddenly stopped being dominant, aggressive and violent? - I think not.

[Do I wish to perpetuate the 'old way'? No. ]

What I do hope to do is to cause one to think about whether the nature of men to be dominant, aggressive and violent in their homes and families will ever change; and to think further, about whether in the 'grand scheme' of things, Nature would have it any other way - i.e. -

To ponder whether there may be an 'innate male behavioral attribute' that tends toward dominance, aggression and violence? And if that is so, as a general trait and attribute of 'maleness', will those traits and behavior be with us after the rollover?

I realize that we like to call ourselves civilized and enlightened, and 'social' creatures, law abiding and moral, etc.; (and some men ARE in control of themselves enough that they are not violent to others), - but in the end, is male dominance in family settings a 'biological imperative'? Is male dominance in family settings a mechanism Nature has created to provide for familial order and continuation out of familial chaos; - and has Nature, in the end, created this male behavior in order to allow for the perpetuation [the providing for the survival needs] of the family and species?

And, more importantly, is it an aspect of male nature that will become more prevalent again, as laws and social trends change due to forecasted famine, poverty, death, societal destruction, etc.? i.e. - if a major breakdown of society occurs, and if central governments become less involved in the affairs of individuals in the privacy of their homes, may we, perhaps, see a return to the "what-happens-behind-closed-doors is no one else's business" ethic?

The same could be asked of polyandry and polygyny - i.e.

If the ratio of marriageable males to females changes due to war, famine, disease, etc. will the biological imperative to perpetuate the species drive fertile women to openly initiate polygyny more than they do now; and if the ratio between the sexes is reversed, would that drive women openly to polyandry?

And again, so too of the possible rise of matriarchal societies... i.e. will the Scottish 'Warrior Women' of old, rise again?

Thus, how might things 'be' post-Y2K? A look at how human nature functions now, in all its subtle and mischievous ways, might show how human nature may function in the future.

I'm sorry I don't have many answers - just lots of questions...

Thanks for your time.

Perry Arnett

-- Perry Arnett (pjarnett@pdqnet.net), August 14, 1999

Answers

My rather recent casual dabbling in anthropology and paleontology has raised more questions which I won't burden you with right now, Perry. You seem to have enough thoughtful questions of your own. But my reading of Richard Leaky, Rianne Eisler, Chellis Glendinning and others leads me believe that our pre-agricultural ancestors were considerably more considerate of their women and progeny.

Daniel Quinn and many more current examiners of long-span history posit that something very fundamental in our worldview as well as our social structure changed radically when we chose the adaptation of sedentary agriculture. I wish I could be more specific. But, as I said, this is a recent and quite casual interest of mine.

Suffice it to say that the "Brutal nasty and short" Hobbesian paradigm is being overthrown by recent new evidence and interpretation. A human adaptation a mere ten-thousand years old doesn't, to my mind, seal the verdict on human nature. I'd be very interested in what Forrest Covington would say about this.

Hallyx

"Carried away, perhaps by His matchless creation, The Garden of Eden, He forgot to mention that all He was giving us was an interglacial."--- Robert Ardrey

-- (Hallyx@aol.com), August 14, 1999.

Lots of interesting questions, Perry!

I have often wondered if the present urbanized, mechanized society wasn't creating most of its own troubles by running directly counter to some very basic human instincts. Nah - I take that back because it's not honest. I very firmly believe that it does. [veritable TOMES of opinion and argument omitted here] Most of your wonderings seem directed at male agression or suppression of it as the impetus for changes. I believe that is a large factor, too - I just don't believe it's the whole story. And I won't buy for an instant that only some kind of better-evolved male craves peaceful order in his society. Men have been creating war and peace (both) throughout known history. Most of the most "evolved" ideas in human history have come from men (though for all we can tell, they heard it from their mothers first! ; ) As a matter of fact, males had just a little something to do with the amazingly suppressive order we live in right now. And of course, any one individual may make both war and peace by turns. I tend to think of the usual male predisposition more as a kind of energetic agression, rather than merely violent. Yang is a fascinating concept, that way.

Now, what happens if you take a bus driver (a sedentary job), and suddenly he has to plow fields (hard manual labor, whether you have a tractor or an ox). Is he better suited to the task than me? Oh, big time! (I'm fem, BTW.) Not only does he have mass and muscle I don't possess and can't grow, but he will do some serious violence to some dirt clods! Which is exactly what is needed (unless, of course, some brilliant female engineer finally turns up a design which could allow me to do the job efficiently). But the point here is that the job, as done by a male, is a pretty much an agressively energetic operation. Most well-formed males can become expert at such a thing without too much trouble. Plus, it suits that yang disposition admirably! In a physical fight or in a sports arena, he can use those same characteristics. The question you seem to pose is whether he would immediately revert to using those characteristics more if his society were less tightly ordered, and my answer must be - God I hope so! It is well that men should be men in every sense of the word. But does such a thing necessarily mean that I suddenly lose my ability to discipline children or keep a lid on my own behavior? I hardly think so! Does he go home and beat up on his wife? I doubt it - that's gonna be one tired guy coming home from the fields.

A good look at this can be had from some recent history. When the whites came to North America and finally pushed Native American people onto reservations, a lot of social problems erupted in the tribes. Now this is, and always has been a collection of matriarchal cultures. It has always been understood that women can and will fight and do hard physical labor, as well as make decisions and form the bounds of order. Women are thought to obtain more spiritual enlightenment with a whole lost less formal effort. Being unable to give birth an also being more outwardly agressive, men need more ritual and physical activity to grow in a balanced way. But when Native American people were forced onto reservations, many came face to face with two big problems. 1, farming was thought by some tribes to be a female job not suitable for men to do. The men objected, and refused to have any part in it. And 2, since they were no longer allowed to fight, the men had to way to establish their position in local society - a thing which had always been decided by physical prowess in battle. This was especially hard for the young men coming of age, since they now had no way of actually BECOMING men in their society. Alcoholism and suicide became major problems amongst both men and women, and still are. One sort-of solution was found when a disproportionate number of American males began joining the American military. Now they could fight again and become warriors. Not a perfect solution by any means, but it serves a purpose. The men can fight, the tribal members, both male and female, can recognize them for it, and the men can be men. The point being, that when you strip away centuries of European-influenced history and look at some people who live much more basically, you have a real-time example of what happens when big changes and male instincts collide. The major feature of this whole thing was to establish a necessary rite of passage, since young men are usually just full of all that agressive energy. Immature and undisciplined, it's a fury and there's hell to pay for everyone around them. Done right, you grow decent, upright men that way. Granting recognized outlet certainly doesn't fix everything by a long shot, but it goes some distance toward giving men an acceptable (to them) means of claiming their places.

Now draw a line between that picture and the present all-volunteer army which no longer accepts young men with discipline problems into its ranks as a _big_ favor to society (especially if a judge thinks it's a good idea), and you have a pretty good parallel demonstrating what happens when young men cannot find an acceptable means of making that passage under some strong guidance from older males. It's not a race issue, it's a real gender issue. Violent crime, substance abuse, and generally destructive behavior rise abruptly for that group when they can't get a grip within their own society. It follows that if you disallow a young man from attaining his proper majority, and you end up with an older man who still has problems claiming his place in a mature way. He doesn't necessarily "just grow out of it".

Could that problem evidence itself even more in a societal breakdown? I think so. Does it implicate changes in the way men might see themselves and they way they might treat women and children in that circumstance? I'd imagine so, but it might be heavily ameliorated by two factors - 1, how much acceptable (to him) agressive energy can that man expend in other ways, such as the physical work demanded by that new order and necessary _genuine_ protection of the family; and 2, how much crap would his wife and children put up with if he returned to his needful place in society but _didn't_ find a better way to handle his relationships with others?

I suspect that that whole question may rest very squarely on how well women choose to assume their own roles. A pregnant woman is no match for a lot of untoward male agression. She has her own rites of passage to cope with, and they, too are gender-based and natural to her. Still, a woman not otherwise disabled might think that coping without the muscle is more than she could do. In some situations, she might even be right. A woman who believes the myth of natural male dominance will likely fall for it and live a hellish existence with or without the societal upheaval scenario. That happens right now, every day, both in poorly-male-dominated societies and individual male-dominated households right where you live. It isn't always a noisy process. Bottom line, sending girls to school and inventing birth control and a bunch of machines didn't fix it for those who suffer, even though it _may_ have gotten better for some. Women who work on domestic violence hotlines tell me there's not a thing you can do for a woman who accepts her supposed fate.

I still would have to think, then, that it takes a strong combination of close-community disapproval and _effective_ enforcement to stop those situations from continuing where they exist and to operate in a more gender-balanced sort of way. Lacking all the contemporary social paraphernalia, maybe all that means is that she had better be strong, willing to defend herself, and maybe attached to a community of other people who agree kick butt for her or allow her to do so herself without legal retribution. After all, if even a large fraction men were somehow basically inclined to be brutish, and if most women were basically inclined to prefer passivity, then we would never have even found ourselves in the present situation where I can write well enough to argue the matter with you! Instead, I'd be off baking bread and nursing babies, and probably with injuries from the neaderthal thug who would rule my life, children, and property until or unless he decided I should not live at all. Since that is not the case right now, nor is it a large case with less-ordered societies, we'd have to say that such a male-dominated social order is not a really direct consequence of being more loosely-ordered. But you can always expect some trouble with men who don't handle themselves well AS men. In a time of upheaval, it would seem almost natural that _some_ men would certainly seize the opportunity to behave in ways they would not presently dare. If we think such men are likely to exist (and I think we agree here), then I guess the next question would be, how would we choose to handle them?

-- J. Perez (bluefthr@earthlink.net), August 14, 1999.

If you're a religionist, remember that "God" created man in HIS own image (including authoritarianism, spite, vengefullness, jealousy, murderousness [remember the flood and Sodom and Gomorrah]...)

If you're an evolutionist, all you have to do is look at chimps, babboons, lions ... for plenty of "role models" for human male behavior.

If you're a fan of Sitchin ("The Earth Chronicles"), the "gods" that created man (The Adam) by genetic manipulation had personality traits and lived lives that give an modern soap opera or a Shakespearean play and their characters a run for their money (power struggles, murder, incest ... all the good stuff) :-)

-- A (A@AisA.com), August 14, 1999.

My point is -- human nature hasn't changed significiantly in 2000 or 10,000 or more years, and isn't likely to, in one year.

If TSHTF, I predict a reversion to historical "norms." Uppity women and uppity children will be, shall we say, scarce.

The longings of some for the supposed equality and equal status for women that supposedly existed while hunter-gatherers rather than farmers or city dwellers is a longing for something that never existed.

-- A (A@AisA.com), August 14, 1999.

Perry, I think you are way off base.

Y2K may indeed influence the relations between the sexes, but not in the ways you envision. Women in the 1960's and 1970's abandoned the ideals of family and marriage largely because they were enabled to do so by increasing levels of prosperity and technology. A single parent (woman with children) family became a barely viable option. Women opted for this family model because it relieved them of the compromises inherent in dealing with another adult in the family. To justify their actions, women demonized men (all men are brutes) and belittled their role as breadwinner.

Should a serious Y2K crisis hit (7-9), women are likely to try to retrace recent social evolution. It will be likely that muscle will become more important to survival. If we have a depression, the service economy, where most women work, will be hit much harder than the goods producing part of the economy, and it will take much longer to recover. In this scenario, men are likely to do better economically than women.

With fewer job prospects, women will seek to recreate the 1950's family, with Dad as breadwinner, which will be a newly esteemed role. One key will be the response of the men. Men may be dumb, but they aren't that dumb. A single man who is suffering from a loss of income and a fall in living standards may be very wary of becoming a father or a stepfather. A husband may very well resent the shift of the breadwinning role to himself. Neither group will find the newly 1950's women to be very believable. Whether the women have the manipulative skills to pull this transition off is another matter.

Men like women a lot, and feel very protective towards them. If they decide to buy into the 1950's fantasy, it will a triumph of kindness over experience. It will also materially reduce the suffering caused by Y2K.

-- Dick Patton (patton@ra.msstate.edu), August 15, 1999.

It's difficult to say whether patricarchal societies are the "natural" way humans are. What is natural? Hmmm... I've no solid idea, only guesses.

We know that...

1) Testosterone is what makes males male. Without it, men would be essentially female in anatomy (kinda like Jamie Lee Curtis, rumored to be XY in chromosomes but androgen-insensitive).

2) Every single type of social order (or disorder) has been experimented on by humans in one group or another at one time or another. This includes matriarchal societies, societies where sex roles are defined but considered to be of equal importance, societies where women participate in government, societies where wife-beating is taboo or considered necessary, etc. What it boils down to is that we humans have more LEARNED behaviors and fewer insticts than any other species on earth. Much of what we assume to be "biological" is really a product of culture.

3) The brain is in a yin-yang relationship with its environment. The brain works to modify the enivronment, but the environment modifies the brain. Neural connections--even approaching the macroscopic level of anatomy--are shaped and changed by behavior and habits. Thus, while there really are differences between male and female brains, it's still too early to tell how much is nature and how much is due to nurture.

4) Furthermore, the roles of sex hormones in personality is very complicated. Yes, testosterone makes animals more violent and dominant if you inject it into them. But stress hormones inhibit both testosterone and estrogen. That's why alpha males in primate societies are so darn alpha. They are under less stress (ie., "It's good to be the King!") and so their testosterone works more effectively, but they are also bigger and brawnier to begin with. On the other hand, supposedly men beat their wives in the West more often than not under times of severe economic stress. There's complex interplay going on here.

5) Looking at our closest living primate cousins, the chimps, doesn't tell us much. Pygmy chimps and Trog chimps are at about the same genetic distance to humans. Our common ancestor lived 5-6 million years ago. But Pygmy chimps and Trog chimps are different. Pygmies adopt a more bohemian, free-spirited life style while the regular chimps are more stratified in their society. Pygmy females copulate for sheer pleasure with males and other females, while regular female chimps only have sex when they are in heat. Pygmy society is more egalitarian with more social standing given to females, while regular chimps enforce strict hierarchy with females getting no power. Bloody wars have been fought between bands of chimps, but not pygmies. Which chimpanzee are we more like? Perhaps we have a little of both in our nature? Perhaps we get to decide how much we listen to Nature?

6) How will y2k affect how men and women get along? If y2k is severe, humans will simply do what WORKS. That is, what "works" equals whatever social practice leaves behind the most offspring who can survive to adulthood and, in turn, mate again.

If things ever get so bad that people have to be subjected to strong selection pressures, I certainly hope that behaviors like wife beating are eliminated from the gene pool!

-- coprolith (coprolith@rocketship.com), August 15, 1999.

Hi folks,

I've been an interested lurker on both this and Ed's older y2k forum for awhile, and consider myself a good y2k 'apprentice'--coming into awareness of the issues in play has changed my life both materially and spiritually, as seems to be true for many others.

I'm a history professor at a Canadian U.; my own research focus is labouring-class women in early modern England, and my work falls within the general areas of gender theory, cultural studies, economic history and law/criminology. I teach two women's history surveys that together cover the whole 'Plato to NATO' span.

Archaeologists, historians, and anthropologists have never discovered evidence for a fully functioning matriarchal society anywhere in world history. Sometimes you get matrilocality (villages established according to wives' and mothers' residence) and matrilineality (inheritance along the maternal line), but those terms still describe facets of a larger patriarchal world-system.

The point here isn't that it can't happen, only that it hasn't happened yet. A good feminist might tell you that we're in a clearer position for acknowledging this as a fundamental social reality.

That said, western feminism has a long and noble history, and for all of the setbacks the cause of women's rights has endured, I believe we do see a linear progression forward in the past three hundred years.

The cultural movement toward gender equality is slow and painful, but it is movement nonetheless: the women who are my students sometimes need reminding that at the beginning of this century perks like an independently held bank account and a right to vote would not have been available to them. We've endowed our daughters with the luxury of forgetting what it used to be like.

So how does this relate to y2k? My thought is that men and women are moving toward social parity, and y2k may help that process along. If we return to small, regional, decentralized economies after the rollover, women's cultural strengths will come surging forward: women have always participated in hidden economies not recognized as part of the nation's GNP, and these are hugely varied.

Couple traditional skill sets w/ women's increasing sense of their entitlement to be full participants in public culture, and you've got a powerful combination of forces.

I don't think many women will sit still for post-millennial bossing by men in the abscence of state power to enforce it. I'm thinking in particular of the women who ride horses, or play hockey, or hold karate blackbelts, and all the female doctors, lawyers and indian chiefs. Supreme Court justices. Union leaders. You get the picture.

Profoundly glad you're all out there thinking on this stuff.

PH

-- Paula Humfrey (ag3@interlog.com), August 15, 1999.

I suspect that a Y2K social collapse or even just an economic collapse (depression) will change the current attitudess of men and women toward gender equality. Equality between the sexes only arises in a socio/economic system in which physical strength is not essential in order to survive and prosper, which is the case today but probably not the case in 2000 and beyond.

If strength and aggressiveness resume their

-- cody varian (cody@y2ksurvive.com), August 15, 1999.

(Oops, hit the wrong spot, sorry) If strength and aggressiveness resume their age-old roles in human survival, men will become dominanat again. This is not subject to human choice; rather it's a natural fact of nature.

-- cody varian (cody@y2ksurvive.com), August 15, 1999.

Cody,

'Men will become dominant again' presumes we presently operate under some other cultural arrangement than male dominance...which would be what?

Women having power isn't a question of warm'n'fuzzy gender choice in a civilized world; to my mind it's more an issue of women having made cultural gains that may well flourish in the vacuum created by a collapse of systems. Physical strength doesn't have a whole lot to do with it, simply because both women and men advance feminist points of view. My male partner can be said to be a fine specimen of nature, in that he has the skills for following as well as leading--and if you're under 250 lbs, I'll take you on whether he's around or not. :]

-- Paula Humfrey (ag3@interlog.com), August 15, 1999.

Paula:

Whatever else the US may be, it is not a male dominated society. It is a female liberated society. Female values are pretty much dominant culturally. This is a cultural evolution that has occurred before, e.g. in ancient Rome after the 2nd Punic war.

Female liberation always seems to occur in a context of wealth. Thus, if Y2K makes US society poorer, then female liberation may reverse. 'Womens's Lib', in the American context, has always been dependent on high levels of technology, such as the pill, as well as reasonably good paying jobs for women. These jobs depend on the division of labor. If the division of labor collapses, these jobs may be replaced with jobs requiring much higher levels of physical strength, which would preclude most women (possible not you, but most women) from performing them.

A simple example: being the teller at the gas company ( a job done in my area by women) vs. chopping wood with an axe. I submit that most women don't have the upper body strength for wood chopping.

-- Dick Patton (patton@ra.msstate.edu), August 15, 1999.

For the past decade, I have maintained a home and family in a wilderness area that has many elements of a self-sufficient homestead. I am female and will be 50 this year.

Admittedly, some things are beyond my strength. Once I attached a cable from my truck's hitch to an old freezer and pulled it up the basement stairs. I have also moved a dead horse carcass this way.

I have even been known to use pulleys, although at times I wish there were such things as sky hooks. Without a man's strength, some things like moving lumber take a lot longer to do, but wheelbarrows and wagons help. The principals of leverage (fulcrums et al,) and practical physics are useful.

Anger, stubborness and a good "birthing" growl help muster that extra umph I sometimes need to lift or move something. Sometimes I sit down and cry in frustration, but that doesn't ever seem to change the situation, just make it worse by loss of focus. Sometimes I go to bed with bruises on my shoulders or hips from shoving something. In the spring, I have bandages all over my hands until the callouses form. Often I hit the pillow dead tired.

I am very grateful for electricity and my power tools, rototiller and truck.

There are limits to my strength and endurance of which I am acutely aware. There are things I know now that I would really rather not have to do, but these are from preference, rather than capability. I wish I were more than happy to let a fellow do them while I stand and watch and go ooo and ahhh. Unfortunately, I am more apt to contribute my labor to make the load lighter. I guess that makes me "liberated."

I was shocked at some the reactions women were voicing to the challenges of preparing for y2k. I don't think they would have survived 100 years ago.

-- marsh (armstrng@sisqtel.net), August 16, 1999.

I was disgusted by the blatant male-bashing exercised in this posting. The prevailing opinion that all males are woman and child abusers, and they are only good for manual labour, is as beneath any decent person as it should be beneath the supposedly 'intelligent' persons who submitted to this posting. Perhaps you could go turn a few clods of dirt to work off all that pent-up aggression.

I implore you, please take these rather extreme and insulting views to the appropriate websites, and leave this one for material harmonious with the spirit in which it was created.

Furthermore you might also like to consider this: If Y2k, or any disaster, presents humanity with an enormous survival challenge, then only with concerted effort and co-operation will each member of the human race survive. This involves drawing upon the strengths, and weaknesses, unique to each individual -- regardless of colour, age, ideology, and gender.

Marsh, I would like to thank you for your contributions. It is wizened persons like yourself who we could all learn valuable lessons from, Y2k or no.

Thanks for your time,

JQ

-- JQ (onca@hotmail.com), August 17, 1999.

JQ and others--

I really don't see a lot of examples of male bashing here. All I was saying was that males tend to be bigger and more aggressive, and that the reasons for this are a complex and intertwined mix of nature and nurutre. I wasn't saying that ALL males were violent. I and others (i gather) aren't saying that being male is inherently evil.

I'm sorry to say, though, that spouse battery and and child abuse is all to common. If you've ever gone on rounds with a doctor--or heard stories from police or criminal prosecutors--or done work at a women's shelter--you'd find women and children scared out of their wits and smarting from the most ghastly injuries. These people are broken and their physical and emotional scars may never heal again. It's enough to make you seethe with angry sometimes. How could someone be so cruel? How could human beings treat other human beings this way? (From a purely selfish perspective, it certainly makes finding companionship difficult when the apple of one's eye happens to be jaded, walled-off, cold, and man-hating on closer inspection, due to past abuse she's sustained from other bastards who treated her bad. Luckily I was blessed enough to find blissful companionship, but God only knows how many times I'd been in the above situation during years and years of "striking out"...)

Yep it's true that women hit men and batter their husbands, but the vast majority are women who are victims of men. Pointing this out isn't male bashing. It's simply fact, because of reasons I listed before: (1) men tend to be bigger and physically stronger and (2) men tend to be more aggressive.

But hey, I like being a male. I like the freedom of leaving the "seat up." I don't feel like I am a politically-correct "trendinista," even though I think we have much to thank the feminists for during their century of struggle. I consider women's liberation to be liberating for men as well, although we men have a long way to go with a few issues.

I think this is a good thread. Let's keep it going. One aspect to point out: In "middle" y2k scenarios, we have to consider the possibility of a rise in crime due to economic hardships. Some of this crime will involve men who beat their spouses or girlfriends during arguments about money. This is bad. What's do be done?

-- coprolith (coprolith@rocketship.com), August 17, 1999.

This is very interesting, I have been reading about brain differences between genders. Apparently the male brain "idles" in the limbic, considered to be the lower, primitive brain. The female brain never really idles a function attributed to the evolutionary development of responsibility for child rearing. (An example of this can be found in two-heterosexual-parent households when the mother wakes up at the first cry from the baby while dad snores on) The male brain when startled out of idling becomes active in the "aggression centers" which is one reason men supposedly become hostile when disturbed in their workshops. It seems impossible to deny that evolution shaped the genders for different tasks and strengths.

Is this an excuse to oppress or devalue the labor of women? Of course not. Has this been used as such? Of course and it still is. I believe, however, the rise of the two parent working family, and the trend of leaving children in substitute care had/has more do with corporate consumer culture then the true liberation of women. True liberation would allow women who choose to raise their own children to experience the same esteem as women who can get out their and exercise their consumer rights, keeping the economy going. We would have to overhaul or whole value system, which wouldn't that be swell for kids to be really cherished as they should be on a national level.

I also have a young son and I work tirelessly to counteract the messages given to young men and boys in our culture about what they must be. Anyone who thinks males and females are not inherently different has not spent much time around children. I thinks males do have a need for aggressive interaction with other males, for strong discipline (not physical discipline, which I feel is wrong for any child) and to be a leader and a subordinate in various venues.

That said, will a societal breakdown result in predatory, opportunistic and violent males wreaking harm and havoc? Look at our prisons, so many men know no other way to be thanks to our consumer culture. So, yes of course, some men will be bad. To that I only can be grateful for the great equalizer of firearms and try to avoid detection. It is impossible to believe that my husband or other men in my Y2K circle would revert to such actions, but I am ready for anything. No one is going to dominate me and I think the exception to male superiority in the wild is a mother who percieves a threat to her children.

-- (y2kfallback@yahoo.com), August 17, 1999.

From what I've seen, intra-familial male violence of a husband against wife or children is essentially motivated by frustration. Mostly, I believe, from circumstances perceived to be beyond his control and from outside the home. Exacerbated by booze, etc...

Male aggression or violence directed outside the home is, I believe, more germane to the various posts, above. I believe the motivations are more ego-driven; greed, material goods, place in a pecking order.

Two different areas of aggression; generally different types of motivations...

Regards, Desertrat

-- Desertrat (arthur@surfsouth.com), August 21, 1999.

From: Y2K, ` la Carte by Dancr near Monterey, California

In tribal culture individuals were protected from excessive violence by living in close proximity with their relatives. The tribe could quickly intervene to protect them if things even began to get out of hand. This could happen in a subtle, continuous and face saving fashion. As society has moved more and more toward living in mobile nuclear families, this protective mechanism is lost. A distant police force is no substitute if early intervention has to come at the cost of giving one's mate a criminal record.

Abuse increases in times of stress, especially stress relating to money. Under these circumstances, loss of 911 service may be catastrophic for a surprisingly large segment of the population. This would be not so much because emergency services would not be there to deal with the injuries that do occur, but more because they are not there as a layer of prevention. We cannot fall back on the extended family if they live thousands or even hundreds of miles away. We may not even be able to call them for advice or to let off steam.

I do not accept the premise of this question, that: For thousands of years in patriarchal societies, men have beat their women and their children with impunity in a supposed attempt at creating order out of disorder in the family. Outrageous spousal abuse has probably been a recent invention of only the last few millenia. A gun is not the greatest way to prevent such abuse, since it cannot be used to deal with slight infractions.

A greater danger, initially, may be violence experienced at the hand of strangers. There seems to be a small number of men who have some pent up anger which they direct at women, and they may go on a long violent spree if there is a breakdown of authority. For this threat, a gun or a protector may be the only answer.

In the long run, I believe that people will be quickly grouping together for mutual protection and co-operation. Such groups could provide the kind of gentle peer pressure needed to keep aggressive urges under control. It may be a long time, though, before it will be safe for women to travel outside a small protected area.

-- Dancr (addy.available@my.webpage), September 21, 1999.