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From: steven@qubix.UUCP (Steven Maurer)
Newsgroups: net.singles
Subject: Sex Roles
Message-ID: <1272@qubix.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 18-Jul-84 16:24:46 EDT
Article-I.D.: qubix.1272
Posted: Wed Jul 18 16:24:46 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 24-Jul-84 03:40:46 EDT
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Organization: Qubix Graphic Systems, Saratoga, CA
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>From Eirikur Hallgrimsson, on sex roles:

> >                                    Like, maybe we could make them go away if
> > we  yanked  the  trappings,  and  waited a couple of generations.  I used to
> > believe this, and it *may* be true, but sex roles *evolved*, in the cultural
> > sense,  and  like most things that 'jest grew' they're horribly complicated,
> > and very well adapted.
> 
> As to the argument that sex roles have such a long history and thus are
> next to impossible to change: they said the same things about slavery in
> the U.S. a bit over a hundred years ago.  After all, slavery had existed
> for all recorded history, and is present in the Bible.

	    Ah yes, but sex roles go for quite a bit longer than that.
	Slavery, like war, is a disease of civilization; hunter gatherer
	societies almost never have war, and never have slaves.   However,
	in every society that has ever existed, there are roles assigned
	to each sex.  Like religion, it is a universal constant among
	humanity -- not something easily "given up".

	    But I really wonder why anyone would want to get rid of sex
	roles in the first place.   Again, like religion, it can be a
	powerful source of harm, but it is no doubt an even more powerful
	source of good as well.   I argue this because of the very
	popularity of this social metaphor: if it didn't help people
	somehow, it would have been dropped a long time ago.

	    Now it might be argued - even sucessfully - that a *change* in
	sex roles is what we need most today.   We no longer live in feudal
	times, males no longer have a monopoly on providing a living, so
	females deserve a restoration of the power the lost in the initial
	change towards orgainized societies.   However, sex roles themselves
	will remain regardless, and any serious attempt to "remove them" 
	would do more harm than good.


	Steven (in a social anthropologist mood today) Maurer