origins of sexism?

[homegrown terror]

most forms of discrimination and fascism have recognisable (and often very natural) origins. racism has its roots in xenophobia, once a useful evolutionary trait to keep packs or tribes safe from competitors for food/shelter and predation. nationalism is a modern representation of tribal bonding, without which humanity would definitely not have made it past prehistory.

where does sexism stem from? the only idea i can imagine is that since in humans and more primates, the male is generally larger and more muscular than the female, which could lead to a dominant/subservient natural order in pre-civilised humans. then again, you have the bonobo which, despite the size differential, organises in matriarchal societies. can anyone shed some light on where the practice of patriarchy (and later sexism) started?

[Vanilla]

It probably has to do with how males were stronger, so they were given the more difficult and laborious jobs where they would probably have to travel/hunt, while females stayed in the community and took care of the kids. Because of this, the men probably started to see the females as inferior after a while, as the man's work provided the food and means of survival. Women were probably dependent on men because of this.

this is just a random theory i have based off of a thing i read once on the internet like a year ago, i'm no anthropologist

[slum]

the origins of women's oppression are not found in some 'ancient' opposition of men to women or dominance of men over women or some secret of evolutionary psychology (yuck), they are found in the opposition of classes. the bourgeois ideologies that have been used throughout the ages to justify class rule and thus women's oppression can be called sexism, and it is fair to ascribe sexism a certain degree of internal logic separate from the phenomenon (women's oppression) that it both explains and tries to reinforce. but neither sexism nor women's oppression are 'natural' or inherent in human society, they are a product of class society and can be understood historically. a very basic summary is as follows:

the beginning of agriculture and animal domestication in certain hunter/gatherer societies resulted in a shift towards sedentary life and surplus. with the rise of surplus the concept of private property emerged and one class of people who had this property and owned means of production became dominant- this is the beginning of class society which would lead to the ancient slave societies marx and engels describe as preceding feudalism and capitalism.

in order for this property to be passed down through generations paternity had to be assured. prior to this children were raised communally and descent was reckoned through the mother's side (since you can be sure of the mother when she gives birth, but not the father). in order to assure paternity, the practice of 2-person 'monogamous' marriage emerged whereby a man who had property to pass on isolated his wife in the house to assure that her children were his own. this led to the situation in places like ancient athens, where 'citizen' women were completely restricted from public and political life and were also portrayed as libidinous and always at risk of having sex with an outsider (when non-family men visited, women had to retreat to the back of the house, etc. this is the athenian sexism, an ideology, that justified the material circumstances of women's oppression- paternity anxiety.)

in the home, the wife became what engels calls the 'head servant', as child rearing, house keeping, and to a large extent textile production etc ceased to be socialized as it was in primitive communist societies and became 'women's work'. this is all part and parcel of the nuclear family, an economic unit which capitalism is now so happy to exploit- the reproduction of workers (both daily- you go home to eat and sleep, and by generation) is done by the family at no cost to the capitalist. this is why capitalist states are so reluctant to pay for any aspect of working-class reproduction- public schools, universal healthcare, etc- and so intent on emphasizing the nuclear family as 'sacred'.

i don't agree that xenophobia is necessarily adaptive and i really dont agree that modern racism can be traced to some evolutionary tendency to revile people with a different phenotype, but there are other posters here who can explain that better than i can.

[MarxArchist]

most forms of discrimination and fascism have recognisable (and often very natural) origins. racism has its roots in xenophobia, once a useful evolutionary trait to keep packs or tribes safe from competitors for food/shelter and predation. nationalism is a modern representation of tribal bonding, without which humanity would definitely not have made it past prehistory.

where does sexism stem from? the only idea i can imagine is that since in humans and more primates, the male is generally larger and more muscular than the female, which could lead to a dominant/subservient natural order in pre-civilised humans. then again, you have the bonobo which, despite the size differential, organises in matriarchal societies. can anyone shed some light on where the practice of patriarchy (and later sexism) started?

Ya, I was going to say, if you apply evo psyche to racism then you must apply it to woman's oppression and that's not a road you want to travel.

[slum]

It probably has to do with how males were stronger, so they were given the more difficult and laborious jobs where they would probably have to travel/hunt, while females stayed in the community and took care of the kids. Because of this, the men probably started to see the females as inferior after a while, as the man's work provided the food and means of survival. Women were probably dependent on men because of this.

this is just a random theory i have based off of a thing i read once on the internet like a year ago, i'm no anthropologist

in hunter-gatherer societies there was sexual division of labour, but women (who gathered) actually provided more calories for the community than men (who hunted, but not always exclusively) did, and ethnohistorians (by looking at similarly arranged extant societies) have argued that women in fact enjoyed considerable political power in these communities. in any event h/g societies were generally matrilineal and/or matrilocal prior to the emergence of surplus and private property, which doesn't have a direct correllation to political power but can give you an idea about how these societies had very different understandings about family, sex, and gender than we do now.

most hunter/gather societies were nomadic or semi-nomadic, given that they often hunted mobile herds and had to move seasonally to follow their resources, so there was no 'staying home' in that sense. the rise of agriculture among specific communities is related to those communities inhabiting regions that underwent rapid climatic changes where remaining stationary became preferable. the best example of this, the Natufian culture, actually hunted a form of game (elk, i think) that did not migrate, which enabled them to be semi-stationary hunters as they began to domesticate plants and animals.

the roots of women's oppression don't come from a 'dependence' on men, they come from the emergence of class society- at least, this is the marxist view, and one i think is borne out by the archaeological record.

[slum]

Ya, I was going to say, if you apply evo psyche to racism then you must apply it to woman's oppression and that's not a road you want to travel.

if you apply evo psych to anything i start to itch a little bit

it's all in that weird category of 'taking our (poor) understanding of capitalist society and applying it back in time to non-capitalist societies'. men are just wired to compete for scarce resources and women are just wired to like big strong mean men ("not like me the nice guy, who grew up to become an evo psychologist who now has figured out why women never want to date me!")

i just read a really charming article that tried to explain the origins of agriculture as the result of some special individuals who had an 'accumulator' gene and therefore were constantly trying to hold bigger and more 'expensive' (in labour terms) feasts to out-compete one another. this is prior, of course, to the idea of private property in the first place (after which, class society and then competitive feasting began). these men apparently just had this capitalist ethic, and thanks to them, we can grow corn now! why they emerged approximately 10,000 years ago and had this crazy idea is, of course, left as a mystery of "human nature".

[bcbm]

most forms of discrimination and fascism have recognisable (and often very natural) origins. racism has its roots in xenophobia, once a useful evolutionary trait to keep packs or tribes safe from competitors for food/shelter and predation.

actually they have a biological imperative to meet and mingle with those other tribes for genetic reasons as well as those of learning about new territory, resources, etc. scarcity wasn't really an issue for gatherer-hunters so 'defending whats yours' wasnt either and, indeed, they were constantly on the move.


nationalism is a modern representation of tribal bonding, without which humanity would definitely not have made it past prehistory.

good lord no


where does sexism stem from? the only idea i can imagine is that since in humans and more primates, the male is generally larger and more muscular than the female, which could lead to a dominant/subservient natural order in pre-civilised humans. then again, you have the bonobo which, despite the size differential, organises in matriarchal societies. can anyone shed some light on where the practice of patriarchy (and later sexism) started?

need to determine if child was your to pass on property and therefore a need to enforce monogamy and control womens sexuality. band humans were polyamorous

[MarxArchist]

if you apply evo psych to anything i start to itch a little bit

it's all in that weird category of 'taking our (poor) understanding of capitalist society and applying it back in time to non-capitalist societies'. men are just wired to compete for scarce resources and women are just wired to like big strong mean men ("not like me the nice guy, who grew up to become an evo psychologist who now has figured out why women never want to date me!")

i just read a really charming article that tried to explain the origins of agriculture as the result of some special individuals who had an 'accumulator' gene and therefore were constantly trying to hold bigger and more 'expensive' (in labour terms) feasts to out-compete one another. this is prior, of course, to the idea of private property in the first place (after which, class society and then competitive feasting began). these men apparently just had this capitalist ethic, and thanks to them, we can grow corn now! why they emerged approximately 10,000 years ago and had this crazy idea is, of course, left as a mystery of "human nature".

"Capitalism is human nature" -evo psych-

[Lenina Rosenweg]

Its after 11, I'm tired so this prob wont come out well...

The OP should read Origin of The Family, Private Property and The State by Friedrich Engels. This was compiled from notes Marx left after he died based on Marx's research into anthropology, esp the American anthropologist Henry Morgan. Morgan was adopted by the Iroqouis and studied traditional cultures of Hawaii, Eastern Europe, ancient Greece and Rome.Marx (and Engels) disagreed with a few of Morgan's conclusions but basically followed his method.

In a nutshell the vast majority of human history (or prehistory) was at the hunter gatherer stage. Society was egalitarian. Men and women had different roles but each role was equally valued. With the development of more complex societies and the development of material possessions, families developed (earlier the hunter gatherer band was a "family"). In these societies it became necessarey to keep property in the family. It was necessary for a father to know who his children were. This resulted in control over women "word historic" decline in the status of women with the rise of private property and government.Its a great read, IMO and essential for a Marxist. It was written over a hundred years ago but its conclusion has stood the test of time.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1884/origin-family/index.htm

The more recent Blood Relations by Chris Knight takes these ideas further back into prehistory, saying that human culuture itself originated in a change in the relation between the sexes, ie a prehistoric "sex strike". Fascinating contribution to Marxist anthropology, its difficult to give a summary. Its online somewhere.

http://www.amazon.com/Blood-Relations-Menstruation-Origins-Culture/dp/0300063083

http://books.google.com/books/about/Blood_relations.html?id=TECGMrey5UEC

[bcbm]

The OP should read Origin of The Family, Private Property and The State by Friedrich Engels.

this is a good read but i have kind of a problem with the 'go to' book about these issues being this old when so much has happened in antrhopology, etc since then

[Skyhilist]

Someone mentioned that sexism originates from opposing classes. Were there not patriarchical societies when the world was under primitive communism though? If so, then can't sexism be dated back to something existing prior to classes?

[bcbm]

Someone mentioned that sexism originates from opposing classes. Were there not patriarchical societies when the world was under primitive communism though? If so, then can't sexism be dated back to something existing prior to classes?

originally, no. or rather, probably not. barbara ehrenreich speculates in her book 'blood rites' that as gatherer-hunter society developed during a period where large game became more scarce the hunters (men) began to hunt other humans as a means of maintaining some sort of 'status' formerly achieved by hunting animals and this laid the ground for the development of early patriarchal cultures ruled by a warrior class

[slum]

originally, no. or rather, probably not. barbara ehrenreich speculates in her book 'blood rites' that as gatherer-hunter society developed during a period where large game became more scarce the hunters (men) began to hunt other humans as a means of maintaining some sort of 'status' formerly achieved by hunting animals and this laid the ground for the development of early patriarchal cultures ruled by a warrior class


this is... interesting. does she have any archaeological evidence to support organized exocannibalism? does she associate this with the introduction of permanent settlement and agriculture?

[slum]

Someone mentioned that sexism originates from opposing classes. Were there not patriarchical societies when the world was under primitive communism though?

no. when goods were held in common, before the emergence of surplus and private property, there was no 'patriarchy' to ensure inheritance by patriliny.

[bcbm]

this is... interesting. does she have any archaeological evidence to support organized exocannibalism? does she associate this with the introduction of permanent settlement and agriculture?

being perfectly honest i cannot remember right now off the top of my head its been about a year since i read the book and leafing it through it i can't find anything specific (its friday... you know). her theory is more about the origins of war and religion and touches on relations between early female goddesses and their (in her interpretation) link to older relationships between predators and religion. as i recall my impression after reading it was that while it may not have addressed this issues specifically it provides at least a theory about a sort of 'bridge' between gatherer-hunter spiritual ideas and those of early civilized peoples and trying to discern the common thread. not necessarily a direct link, but a piece of the puzzle so to speak? hope this makes sense

[slum]

yeah, definitely, i'll check it out. ty for looking

[bcbm]

its definitely worth a read. its from the late 90s too and i wish there was an updated and expanded edition based on more current research

[slum]

only (very) tangentially related but there's a fascinating ethnography called 'consuming grief' by beth conklin that examines the Wari' tradition of mortuary endocannibalism. it contains a great summary of the history of western study of and explanations for cannibalism (besides the racist colonialist garbage you'd expect, there have been fairly developed materialist/biological theories and psychoanalytic theories) and shows why they are inadequate. it's a fantastic read.

i'm in agreement that engels needs an update- i need to do some looking around and see if there's anything as comprehensive out there as the origin is. i do still recommend eleanor burke leacock's introduction to the origin; i think she picks out a lot of what is wrong with the original text, but i don't know of any studies that really incorporate anthropological research done since then. one of the main issues you'll run into reading engels, or trying to argue his/marx's theory of social development isn't so much about him as it is about morgan, who has fallen out of favour in the field (not without reason) and who's ideas about human history are now considered 'uni-linear', reductive, and ethnocentric. engels and marx are seen as guilty by association, and according to those who set up the straw man of marxism being a mechanical materialist doctrine of inevitable human 'progress' this is only to be expected.