Xref: utzoo sci.bio:3794 alt.romance:5293 soc.men:23634 soc.women:29697 soc.singles:72417 Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!wuarchive!emory!gatech!uflorida!mailer.cc.fsu.edu!sun13!ds1.scri.fsu.edu!pepke From: pepke@ds1.scri.fsu.edu (Eric Pepke) Newsgroups: sci.bio,alt.romance,soc.men,soc.women,soc.singles Subject: Re: Are Humans Naturally Monogamous? Message-ID: <1315@sun13.scri.fsu.edu> Date: 2 Nov 90 02:09:12 GMT References: <1990Oct24.175532.9407@pmafire.UUCP> <1990Oct25.140829.19268@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> <58695@microsoft.UUCP> Sender: news@sun13.scri.fsu.edu Followup-To: sci.bio Organization: Florida State University, but I don't speak for them Lines: 45 In article amanda@visix.com (Amanda Walker) writes: >In article <58695@microsoft.UUCP> rodvan@microsoft.UUCP >(Rod VAN MECHELEN) writes: >>There is this silly idea that men "dominate" in our culture. Not only >>is this a feminist fiction, but a sexist slam against the female majority. > >Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha ... ... ... > >You've got great deadpan delivery, but shouldn't this have been at least >crossposted to rec.humor, if not posted there in the first place? Much as it pains me to agree, he's right. In this society (American, derived from English law and general European custom) men have traditionally taken the leadership role, or have traditionally been suckered into it, depending on one's point of view. Nearly everybody agrees this should be changed, and it is in fact being changed. But the leadership role does not imply dominance, and like the dowagers of Asia, in their own characteristically feminine way, women have shaped this culture roughly as much as men have and deserve roughly the same amount of credit and blame as men for the state of things today. There are advantages and disadvantages to having the leadership role. The main advantage is you get to pretend you control things, but this all stops when you die, and most leaders have already died. You also get to take credit for the good things that have been done. The main disadvantage is that you have to take the blame for all the bad things that have been done. In the current political climate, the disadvantages outweigh the advantages. When was the last time you heard men recieve the credit for public sanitation, anesthesia, vaccinations, contraception, civil liberties? Probably never-- even now I can almost hear the "ping" as the very idea bounces off thousands of skulls. When was the last time you heard men get the blame for war, pollution, poverty? Better ask, when was the last time you didn't have to listen to that? An awful lot of feminist rhetoric amounts to a tunnel-vision of history, empasizing all the awful things that men have done and strutting forth all the great, wonderful things that women have done as examples of superior feminine culture cruelly suppressed by the dominant males. It's easy. Just hold up Hitler and Florence Nightingale as archetypes. What a different sort of equally biased history could be made of Queen Victory and Martin Luther King. -EMP