Early men and women were equal, say scientists

[Hexen]

Early men and women were equal, say scientists

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Hannah Devlin, The Guardian (http://www.rawstory.com/author/hdevlin/)
14 May 2015 at 22:22 ET (http://www.rawstory.com/2015/05/14/)
http://2d0yaz2jiom3c6vy7e7e5svk.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Glyptodon_old_drawing-800x430.jpg"Glyptodon old drawing (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Glyptodon_old_drawing.jpg#/media/File:Glyptodon_old_drawing.jpg)" by Heinrich Harder (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Harder) (1858-1935) - The Wonderful Paleo Art of Heinrich Harder (http://www.copyrightexpired.com/Heinrich_Harder/glyptodon.html). Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/).
Study shows that modern hunter-gatherer tribes operate on egalitarian basis, suggesting that inequality was an aberration that came with the advent of agriculture
A study has shown that in contemporary hunter-gatherer tribes, men and women tend to have equal influence on where their groups lives and who they live with. The findings challenge the idea that sexual equality is a recent invention, suggesting that it has been the norm for humans for most of our evolutionary history.
Mark Dyble, an anthropologist who led the study at University College London, said: “There is still this wider perception that hunter-gatherers are more macho or male-dominated. We’d argue it was only with the emergence of agriculture, when people could start to accumulate resources, that inequality emerged.”
Dyble says the latest findings suggest that equality between the sexes may have been a survival advantage and played an important role in shaping human society and evolution. “Sexual equality is one of a important suite of changes to social organisation, including things like pair-bonding, our big, social brains, and language, that distinguishes humans,” he said. “It’s an important one that hasn’t really been highlighted before.”
Related: How hunting with wolves helped humans outsmart the Neanderthals (http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/mar/01/hunting-with-wolves-humans-conquered-the-world-neanderthal-evolution)
The study, published in the journal Science (http://www.sciencemag.org/lookup/doi/10.1126/science.aaa5139) , set out to investigate the apparent paradox that while people in hunter-gatherer societies show strong preferences for living with family members, in practice the groups they live in tend to comprise few closely related individuals.
The scientists collected genealogical data from two hunter-gatherer populations, one in the Congo and one in the Philippines, including kinship relations, movement between camps and residence patterns, through hundreds of interviews. In both cases, people tend to live in groups of around 20, moving roughly every 10 days and subsisting on hunted game, fish and gathered fruit, vegetables and honey.
The scientists constructed a computer model to simulate the process of camp assortment, based on the assumption that people would chose to populate an empty camp with their close kin: siblings, parents and children.
When only one sex had influence over the process, as is typically the case in male-dominated pastoral or horticultural societies, tight hubs of related individuals emerged. However, the average number of related individuals is predicted to be much lower when men and women have an equal influence – closely matching what was seen in the populations that were studied.
“When only men have influence over who they are living with, the core of any community is a dense network of closely related men with the spouses on the periphery,” said Dyble. “If men and women decide, you don’t get groups of four or five brothers living together.”

Sexual equality is one of a important suite of changes to social organisation, including things like pair-bonding, our big, social brains, and language, that distinguishes humans. It’s an important one that hasn’t really been highlighted before
The authors argue that sexual equality may have proved an evolutionary advantage for early human societies, as it would have fostered wider-ranging social networks and closer cooperation between unrelated individuals. “It gives you a far more expansive social network with a wider choice of mates, so inbreeding would be less of an issue,” said Dyble. “And you come into contact with more people and you can share innovations, which is something that humans do par excellence.”
Dr Tamas David-Barratt, a behavioural scientist at the University of Oxford, agreed: “This is a very neat result,” he said. “If you’re able to track your kin further away, you’d be able to have a much broader network. All you’d need to do is get together every now and then for some kind of feast.”
The study suggests that it was only with the dawn of agriculture, when people were able to accumulate resources for the first time, that an imbalance emerged. “Men can start to have several wives and they can have more children than women,” said Dyble. “It pays more for men to start accumulating resources and becomes favourable to form alliances with male kin.”
Dyble said that egalitarianism may even have been one of the important factors that distinguished our ancestors from our primate cousins. “Chimpanzees live in quite aggressive, male-dominated societies with clear hierarchies,” he said. “As a result, they just don’t see enough adults in their lifetime for technologies to be sustained.”
The findings appear to be supported by qualitative observations of the hunter-gatherer groups in the study. In the Philippines population, women are involved in hunting and honey collecting and while there is still a division of labour, overall men and women contribute a similar number of calories to the camp. In both groups, monogamy is the norm and men are active in childcare.
Andrea Migliano, of University College London and the paper’s senior author, said: “Sex equality suggests a scenario where unique human traits, such as cooperation with unrelated individuals, could have emerged in our evolutionary past.”
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media 2015


Source: http://www.rawstory.com/2015/05/early-men-and-women-were-equal-say-scientists/

Turns out we were right all along...

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

Turns out we were right all along...
Indeed.

[Rafiq]

I mean, what's new here though? Have numerous studies not already confirmed this? What is also particularly dangerous is the legitimization of present political questions through biology and "human nature". What's even more dangerous is how it steps into the territory of evolutionary psychology, almost implying that the present demand for sexual egalitarianism somehow has its basis in our genetic composition. A proper Marxist would recognize that, on the contrary, there is no dissonance between society and human nature - and that sexual egalitarianism existed not out of some kind of evolutionary pressure but as an irrevocable consequence of a specific relation to nature. It's rather simple - a society that lives in precarious existence, that is always on the move, and whose survival is contingent upon food supplies from both sexes will obviously be egalitarian sexually.

Furthermore, is this egalitarianism in the political sense, as we know it today? No. Gender roles still existed, and while they weren't perpetuated through violence, and while both genders may have "shared power", the mere reality of social ramifications being ascribed to biological sex is not a model for 21st century feminism perhaps even by the standards of capitalism following neoliberalism which saw a great rise of women in various sectors and professions (of course followed by a violent and rabid reaction).

The point of what constitutes man is rather simple: Man has never been an animal. The species homo sapiens was already out of the animal kingdom when it possessed the capacity to leave its ecological space and surroundings through the dynamic mobility of the upright posture and the freeing of the hands for intricate transformative tasks. When the species homo sapiens was no longer bound by a specific ecological condition of survival, it was no longer an animal with specific and indefinite ramifications ascribed to its behavior that have political significance today. The truth is that it does not matter what hunter-gatherers actually lived like. There's no reason to think they had war, or sexual domination, but at the same time there's no reason to think that this should inspire an iota of hope into present Communist or egalitarian struggles. Even if they were completely brutal, even if there was horrible shit, we can recognize that this brutality has nothing to do with the brutality of present day society. When scum evolutionary psychologists talk about war being "innate", demand that they give us the exact genetic sequences in our DNA which are responsible for war, and if they can't (just like they can't with intelligence) then they can shut the fuck up and hopefully resign from ever speaking publically. That's how you deal with this. If anything the idea of primitive Communism being a model for the future should introduce a radical anxiety of a basic question: If this is all we have going for us, what's to impede the same conditions which led to class society in a Communist world?

[The Disillusionist]

Ugh... this again. This assertion is not even remotely true. I repeat... it's not true... It's a typical case of Marxists cherry-picking data to suit their own outdated ideas about primitive Communism.

There are a LOT of hunter-gatherer tribes that are not even remotely egalitarian. Among many hunter-gatherer tribes in the Arctic, living in areas where agriculture is virtually impossible, many tribes still consider women to be slaves. Many, many hunter-gatherer tribes also engaged in raiding and warfare, often to obtain more women.

On top of that, the exchange of women as capital, that is, the exchange of brides for a price, has likely been present throughout the entire human history. Evidence suggests that it may have been the most common form of marriage among early humans: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0019066

When talking about tribes outside of the arctic, it's easy for Marxists to say, "Oh, well this hunter-gatherer tribe was actually practicing some form of agriculture, so that must be what caused their gender inequality," but again, this is ridiculous. Archaeological evidence shows that virtually all hunter-gatherer tribes, for as far back as history can possibly be read, engaged in some kind of vegeculture. Hunter-gatherer tribes often didn't engage in full-scale agriculture simply because their own subsistence strategies worked better within the ecology that they were living.

Which brings me to another point... humans are not free from ecology. We don't "create our own ecology". That's also ridiculous. Humans have managed to create a number of cultural/technological mechanisms that mediate our relationship with our ecologies, making us able to live within those environments more efficiently, but ultimately, we do not control our environment, our environment controls us and we simply try to gain what leverage we can through culture.

Hunter-gatherers are widely varied, and don't all have the same cultures. This idealization of hunter-gatherers is a remnant of the old idea of the "noble savage," and it's obsolete.

Finally, humans are absolutely animals... And we act like it too, despite all of our convoluted attempts at pretending we don't. All empirical evidence shows that humans are primarily motivated by food and sex, just like all the other animals.

Finally a second time, the fear that so many people on this website have of evolutionary psychology, and of evolutionary social theory in general, is completely unfounded, and is based on an incorrect understanding of what the field is even about. Without evolutionary and ecological theory added onto it, Marxism is obsolete. It's a narrow worldview incapable of explaining even the slightest variation in societies with similar material cultures. It doesn't even have a basis to compare that variation to, because none of the orthodox Marxists seem believe in psychology...

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Studies like this don't make any sense, as they try to infer the social structure of prehistoric societies from modern hunter-gatherer groups, all of which have interacted with agricultural societies at one point, and most of which are in fact the descendants of agricultural societies forced into marginal areas. It's like inferring what childhood is like from your study of the life of laid-off thirty-somethings.

Meanwhile the archeological evidence has always supported the thesis that there was little to no gender differentiation in early prehistoric societies, not just by the absence of gender-segregated activities and areas in sites associated with these societies, but by observable changes when the gendered division of labour took place. As far as I know, this has never (BB would know better, but they don't seem to post much these days) been in dispute.

Finally the sort of "evolutionary" explanations this paper offers are quite frankly laughable, and they attribute to primitive humans a motive, avoidance of incest, we have no reason to believe they had.


On top of that, the exchange of women as capital, that is, the exchange of brides for a price, has likely been present throughout the entire human history. Evidence suggests that it may have been the most common form of marriage among early humans: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/art...l.pone.0019066 (http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0019066)

Yes, this shows quite well how "evidence" is understood in the evo-psych community. First, you completely ignore history and assume modern hunter-gatherer groups are the same as prehistoric hunter-gatherer bands. Second, you construct a mDNA phylogeny - probably an extremely dodgy one given the time span - and then pretend it tells us something about marriage practices. Then, of course, you boldly conclude that this tells us something about the early human society, because you invented a cute story and it has to be true.


Archaeological evidence shows that virtually all hunter-gatherer tribes, for as far back as history can possibly be read, engaged in some kind of vegeculture.

This is simply not true, unless you wanted to say that all modern hunter-gatherer tribes descend from agricultural groups, which is almost correct. There is no evidence of agricultural activity in e.g. the Magdalenian culture. And the introduction of agricultural practices is apparent in the archaeological record, e.g. with the Natufians.


Hunter-gatherers are widely varied, and don't all have the same cultures. This idealization of hunter-gatherers is a remnant of the old idea of the "noble savage," and it's obsolete.

No one idealises hunter-gatherers. Members of the Magdalenian culture lived in cave shelters and died at fifty if they were lucky. Primmos are the butt of jokes here. The point is, first, that these people were not stupid brutes, and second, that a number of things rightists claim have "always existed" are in fact nowhere to be found among the earliest humans, and that includes class societies.


Finally a second time, the fear that so many people on this website have of evolutionary psychology, and of evolutionary social theory in general, is completely unfounded, and is based on an incorrect understanding of what the field is even about.

It's not fear, it's derision. Evo-psych people take a theory intended to explain something else entirely and misuse it to proclaim other fields to be obsolete now that the enlightened evolutionary thinkers have arrived. And their "evolutionary" explanations are just hilarious. These are the sort of people who, if they saw an elephant in a cage, would make up a story about how being in cages is evolutionary advantageous.

[Tim Cornelis]

Hunter-gatherer tribe is an oxymoron as far as I know. Hunter gatherer society was band society, tribes followed afterwards.

[Hexen]

I think you all maybe missing on that, the modern concept of "gender" and "biological sex" as we conceive it today (such as CIShet "man" "woman") didn't exist back then hence they were egalitarian since the human body is flexible. All that came afterwords during the invention of agriculture.

[OGG]

I'm skeptical about this. How can we assume that all hunter-gather groups were equal?

[Fakeblock]

I think you all maybe missing on that, the modern concept of "gender" and "biological sex" as we conceive it today (such as CIShet "man" "woman") didn't exist back then hence they were egalitarian since the human body is flexible. All that came afterwords during the invention of agriculture.

Would the existence of a sexual division of labour not suggest that this was not the case, that there were indeed social distinctions between the two sexes?

[Rafiq]

There are a LOT of hunter-gatherer tribes that are not even remotely egalitarian. Among many hunter-gatherer tribes in the Arctic, living in areas where agriculture is virtually impossible, many tribes still consider women to be slaves. Many, many hunter-gatherer tribes also engaged in raiding and warfare, often to obtain more women.

Tell me, Dillusionists, how do you go about living your life? How do you contently fall asleep at night thinking that present day arctic tribes, whose existence has been defined by not only its initial interaction with European settlers, missionaries and their technology, but whose existence is dependent upon trade with non-primitive societies? What a stupid fucking example! To add insult to injury, there is a plethora of evidence which indicates that the various hunter-gatherer tribes, such as the Innuits, were sexually egalitarian for their entire existence before the arrival of European explorers and civilization! It's absolutely shameless, dishonest and disgusting that you would use this example: because the various tribes of the arctic are actually used as primal examples of the alternation of primitive, isolated people's with civilization. The gender roles that are practiced in some tribes, for example, TO THIS DAY resemble the sexual morality of 19th century Britain! Tell me, Dissilusionist, why have there bene no hunter-gatherer societies found (that is, societies which do not practice systemic cultivation of plants, wherein private property does not exist) that were not sexual egalitarian, wherein women were traded and tribal warfare is common? Give me ONE fucking example!

Now this has nothing to do with any kind of innate goodness of man, it simply reflects the fact that there are vast complex social symbolic mechanisms, incredibly complex, learnt ritualistic mechanisms that are necessary to sustain present sexual relations, and so on. What does this mean? It means violence takes EFFORT, it does not exist by default and there is no reason to think it does. The idea that warfare, for example, is an adaptive evolutionary trait is not only unsubstantiated, it makes no sense from a logical standpoint. Considering the vast precarious nature of humanity's existence at several points in history, it makes no sense that human survival, marked by constant migrations, mobility which required vast social coordination and complexity would have been strengthened with warfare. The reality is that this has NOTHING to do with any meaningful analysis of the sexual relations of the pre-historic man, it is simply a means by which PRESENT sexual relations are reified as eternal conditions of man, legitimized and justified in a vulgar manner. You fail to understand that the so-called "evidence" compiled by evolutionary psychologists DOES NOT stand on its two feet as bare empirical evidence, it requires vast metaphysical and philosophical foundations that are simply not questioned. The end result for the cowardly, and cretinous evolutionary psychologist making broad, sweeping conclusions that defile the domain of the philosophical and spiritual WITHOUT REGARDING THEM WITH AN IOTA OF RESPECT. And to be clear, it is not SIMPLY agriculture which causes "gender inequality" but the advent of private property which was a consequence of the cultivation of plants and the domestication of animals. Private property irrevocably leads to women as property - what is hilarious about evolutionary psychologists is how pathetic they are in this respect - relations of sexual inequality, as well as the complex relations to production literally have to be perpetuated through intricate rituals and so on. Even war - war is an ART if anything. These things not only have to be learned, they require immense effort to be perpetuated, for the perpetuation of relations to production!


Hunter-gatherer tribes often didn't engage in full-scale agriculture simply because their own subsistence strategies worked better within the ecology that they were living.


Oh and tell me, which tribes don't engage in the domestication of plants, and whose survival isn't dependent on an external totality, whose existence wasn't defined by interaction with outsiders, can be conceived as not being primitive communist societies in the 'dogmatic' Marxist sense? None. There is a difference between domestication of plants, and continually picking berries out of the bush every season. All evidence points to that the traits conceived as timeless biological realities by evolutionary psycholomagicians did not emerge before the neolithic revolution, or the transition to it. The power which sustains the theory is NOT a plain and direct interaction with empirical evidence, and it is not a coincidence that it rose to prominence and CASUAL popularity (even as a replacement of religion!) at the exact same time that 20th century politics died. Now POLITICAL concerns are given eternal qualities. Evolutionary psychology is a metaphysical doctrine precisely because of this, because it is incapable of fathoming the social dimension of humanity, incapable of conceiving historic change. On evolutionary psychological terms, something like "cultural variation" will NEVER be explained, even in 'natural' environments which are IDENTICAL.


We don't "create our own ecology". That's also ridiculous. Humans have managed to create a number of cultural/technological mechanisms that mediate our relationship with our ecologies, making us able to live within those environments more efficiently, but ultimately, we do not control our environment, our environment controls us and we simply try to gain what leverage we can through culture.

And this is precisely why it is a metaphysical doctrine: I ask a SIMPLE question for you - can you isolate and define this "trans-historical" ecological environment that we simply "altered" with technology and culture (which apparently came from our ass, or even worse, "spontaneous imagination")? What is the eternal ecological existence of humankind, how do you define it, and why? Humans DO create their own ecological existence, and humans are precisely NOT animals because they are unbound by a singular ecological existence. The difference between a human and any kind of chimp (bonobo and common) is that a chimp and bonobo has a definite habitat and environment which it is biologically best suited to, in terms of expressing its behavior, in terms of, for example doing things that are considered irrevocably universal desires of animals - eating and mating and so on. What is the "natural" habitat of a man? It doesn't exist. Because man is precisely distinguishable from the animal in his ability to define his ecological reality, and not as he pleases. This is why your assertion that "Marx didn't pay enough attention to ecology" is a bunch of fucking bullshit - he DID, and he will remain a hero of the miserable and exploited for all eternity for his ruthless destruction of that philistine reactionary Malthus's theories.

Humans are unbound by ecology, precisely because ecology concerns a dimension already superseded by the social. That is to say, it is not that we understand our social reality by looking at the interaction between animals and their environment, it is that we understand the latter by projecting our ideological presumptions about the former. And how could it be otherwise, even by this vulgar Darwinist standard which understands man as a biological being concerned with his own survival, and not some kind of abstract spectator capable of fathoming the universe "as it really is"? The necessity of survival and "environmental pressures", so to speak, ARE present in human societies, the point of the social dimension however is that humans create these pressures themselves (NOT as they please) by constituting definite relationships to production.

What is disgusting about pseudo-darwinism is ultimately that it reveals the perverse nature of man (irony intended): the anatomy of an ape is best understood by the anatomy of a man. We project our own ideological prejudices upon the animal kingdom and because of our metaphysical ideas about "nature", in turn legitimize these prejudices through this.


Hunter-gatherers are widely varied, and don't all have the same cultures. This idealization of hunter-gatherers is a remnant of the old idea of the "noble savage," and it's obsolete.


Again, where does culture come from? Someone's ass? If we are to define culture so broadly as to encompass the humans' very means of survival and life, then the term loses all purpose. Culture is the mere aesthetic representation of this, and what we consider "culture" becomes crystallized only after it is no longer conceived as an essential means of perpetuating social relations. That is to say, some neolithic pottery with icons on it to pay homage to the gods is not a "cultural" thing for those who used it, it has an actual and real utility. The fact of the matter is that natural environmental variation here has made absolutely no difference in this regard - all culture, besides mere aesthetic representation, represents man's relationship to production and survival. The cultural variation that can encompass sexual relations is dependent on an entirely different one - two hunter gatherer societies CANNOT have different sexual relations. If they do, this reflects a poverty of an understanding of their way of life (i.e. one may not be a "hunter-gatherer"). The aztecs or Mayans, ancient despotic societies were not particularly different from ones that existed in the East. And there's no evidence that these societies even interact with each other. "Cultural variation" if it does exist between them, is an aesthetic triviality (Let's worship the panther god instead of the tiger god). This just goes to show HOW definitely the base determines the superstructure.


Finally, humans are absolutely animals... And we act like it too, despite all of our convoluted attempts at pretending we don't. All empirical evidence shows that humans are primarily motivated by food and sex, just like all the other animals.


The vulgarity here is the fact that it ignores that humans are capable of SPIRIT, animals are not. Humans can make a distinction between themselves and the "animal", irregardless of its particularities. An boar, a panther, a chicken and a mammoth all share a particular dimension of animality that we are distinct from. This cannot be explained in vulgar evolutionary psychological terms. What separates man from the animal is simple: People can go on hunger strikes, starve themselves to death for higher spiritual purposes, and humans can go chaste and never so much as touch their dick until they die. How does one explain the monk?

We can see an evolutionary psychologist either doing two things: Dismissing this as "culture" (A game of picking and choosing then?!) or actually going through honestly and claiming that monks can be chaste because of some innate biological mechanism which allows one to refrain from fucking when the population is exceeding its environmental capacity (Right, which is why early humans migrated just about around the whole fucking planet not giving a single fuck about this, constantly defying their respective "capacities"), and that hunger strikes happen because of some mechanism which prompts humans to refrain from eating in a self-sacrificial manner so more food can go to the women and children or some stupid garbage. They don't understand the difference between correlation and causation and instead find these theories NECESSARY because they have no other means of explaining them, being vulgar empiricist philistines with no regard at all for higher philosophical, social or theoretical truths. It's either we explain this biologically, or concede everything to religion.

The fact of the matter is that evolutionary psychology, if it has an iota of truth (which so far, there is no reason to think it does) would only ever concern things that are completely trivial so much so that it can't explain anything about our society.


Marxism is obsolete. It's a narrow worldview incapable of explaining even the slightest variation in societies with similar material cultures. It doesn't even have a basis to compare that variation to, because none of the orthodox Marxists seem believe in psychology...

There is, again, little variation between societies with the same material culture, and this variation has no political significance - it is merely, again, an aesthetic variation. Evolutionary psychologists dismiss that which is attributed to the social-symbolic order to metaphysics, ehem, genetics. They cannot prove any of this is in our DNA, so this already falls flat on its face. Lacanian psychoanalysis, conversely, only begins with the recognition that what is there is already known by everyone. Marxists do "believe" in psychology, but pseudo-darwinist metaphysics is not psychology. It is ideological reification with no scientific basis, again contingent upon ideas that have philosophical significance, which if were for a SECOND regarded as philosophically conceivable would be laughed at. They don't care about philosophy, basically, yet pre-suppose ideas which are philosophically relative, but are deemed as a "given". That's why. It's degenerate nature is apparent once we compare it with the sophisticated psychological theories of the 20th century. What a damned abomination. One almost wishes for another crazy cultural revolution where all evolutionary psychologists, who breed the stepping stone (if they're not already there) to scientific racism and fascism, are crucified en masse.

And I bet you won't for a second bring your little theories to their logical conclusion regarding race, or rape without taking the risk of being banned from the site. You know this, and I know this.

[RedMaterialist]

On top of that, the exchange of women as capital, that is, the exchange of brides for a price, has likely been present throughout the entire human history. Evidence suggests that it may have been the most common form of marriage among early humans: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0019066

From your journal article:


Marriage is a human universal that unites males and females in socially-recognized reproductive units [1].

Now, I don't think you could have found a better argument for traditional, bible-approved, Christian-certified marriages. Maybe Antonin Scalia will use it in his upcoming opinion.

Next you can tell us how primitive humans refused to implement national health care because it deprived them of individual freedom.

I'm not sure you would tell the woman in that picture that she is a piece of capital.

[Antiochus]

I noticed that Rafiq wrote some rant blog titled "Against Ecology" or something of the sort 0.0. Personally I am against most forms of "Evolutionary Psychology" because much of it has been used in the field as a thinly veiled cover for scientific racism or fuel for the "PUA" community. Nevertheless it is a useful and necessary tool in many instances. As a biologist it would be impossible to describe animal mating behavior without it. For instance there is tons of evidence that highlights the evolutionary advantage of decorative ornaments in birds for example that convey virtually no evolutionary advantage to the individual but nevertheless allow it to mate at much higher rates than individuals without the trait. You cannot explain that without an ecological understanding of the organism. Saying "show me the genes" is as irrelevant as asking a geneticist to "show you the genes" of height, even if it is a self-evidently heritable component.

[Hexen]

Would the existence of a sexual division of labour not suggest that this was not the case, that there were indeed social distinctions between the two sexes?

I think what you're missing at that biological sex is a social construct hence why those "sexual division of labor" exist in the first place.

[Fakeblock]

I think what you're missing at that sex is a social construct hence why those "sexual division of labor" exist in the first place.

Yes, but the existence of a sexual division of labour presupposes the existence of a social distinction between males and females, with regards to tasks, duties and such. It follows that gender distinctions existed before agriculture and that these were very tightly bound with biological-sexual differences.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

I mean, what's new here though? Have numerous studies not already confirmed this? What is also particularly dangerous is the legitimization of present political questions through biology and "human nature". What's even more dangerous is how it steps into the territory of evolutionary psychology, almost implying that the present demand for sexual egalitarianism somehow has its basis in our genetic composition. A proper Marxist would recognize that, on the contrary, there is no dissonance between society and human nature - and that sexual egalitarianism existed not out of some kind of evolutionary pressure but as an irrevocable consequence of a specific relation to nature. It's rather simple - a society that lives in precarious existence, that is always on the move, and whose survival is contingent upon food supplies from both sexes will obviously be egalitarian sexually.

Furthermore, is this egalitarianism in the political sense, as we know it today? No. Gender roles still existed, and while they weren't perpetuated through violence, and while both genders may have "shared power", the mere reality of social ramifications being ascribed to biological sex is not a model for 21st century feminism perhaps even by the standards of capitalism following neoliberalism which saw a great rise of women in various sectors and professions (of course followed by a violent and rabid reaction).

I think this is generally a useful/agreeable contribution (and sorry I seem to be following you around thread to thread disagreeing with you lately - take it as a compliment?) with an important caveat. I think it's anachronistic (similar in some sense to the mistake of evolutionary psychologists) to suggest that sex/gender roles existed in a binaristic way - that men/women were understood as men/women on a sexual/gendered basis and fulfilled social roles on this basis. There is significant instance of societies in which, for example, gendered roles are/were not binaristic and don't conform to notions of "biological" sex (itself something of a chimera).

So, I think imagining a sexual/gendered equality based on notions of a "primitive equality between the sexes" further problematized because it makes reference to discursive categories which likely may not have existed in any given instance.

. . . and I'll leave my disagreements with the rest of your post alone, because that would just be a brutal rehash of other threads, haha.

[mushroompizza]

My teacher taught me all this last year in World History Class. During the paleolithic era there was no farming just hunting and gathering so in order to survive the genders would have to cooperate to attain the food they needed, no hands could be spared from work. Once farming was invented labor became specialized so the genders got different jobs and that's were sexism began.

[Hexen]

Yes, but the existence of a sexual division of labour presupposes the existence of a social distinction between males and females, with regards to tasks, duties and such. It follows that gender distinctions existed before agriculture and that these were very tightly bound with biological-sexual differences.

It a mistake to assume that biological sexual binaries is a objective thing which such concepts didn't exist before agriculture which is my main point.

Perhaps you should read this: http://apfelgranate.tumblr.com/post/46422486620/biological-sex-is-socially-constructed

[Rafiq]

I noticed that Rafiq wrote some rant blog titled "Against Ecology" or something of the sort 0.0. Personally I am against most forms of "Evolutionary Psychology" because much of it has been used in the field as a thinly veiled cover for scientific racism or fuel for the "PUA" community. Nevertheless it is a useful and necessary tool in many instances. As a biologist it would be impossible to describe animal mating behavior without it. For instance there is tons of evidence that highlights the evolutionary advantage of decorative ornaments in birds for example that convey virtually no evolutionary advantage to the individual but nevertheless allow it to mate at much higher rates than individuals without the trait. You cannot explain that without an ecological understanding of the organism. Saying "show me the genes" is as irrelevant as asking a geneticist to "show you the genes" of height, even if it is a self-evidently heritable component.

This is besides the point. I am regrading ecology here in terms of ideology, its application to human societies and so on, as a metaphysical doctrine. The point isn't to discard the whole field of biology. Even if one couldn't find the genes in birds (which you could, meanwhile "scientists" are still looking for the genes that determine "intelligence" and will never find them), the inference its justified insofar as we can recognize that birds do not have history. And for the record, we have largely found the genes responsible for height. We have not even come close as far as "intelligence" goes. Finally height being a genetic trait is not and cannot be a point of controversy, as no alternative explanation could ever hold up.

The vulgarity stems from applying the same mechanisms we use to determine why animals possess the behavioral and physical characteristics that they do, to humans in today's society. This doesn't stem from some kind of wealth of evidence that confirms this among humans, but the presumption that humans are "animals" in the same sense. What is unique about humans is simple - there are physical characteristics we have inherited that were undoubtedly a result of, for example, sexual selection. But the point is that when humanity left the garden of eden, that's all they'll ever be: remnants of our animality long overshadowed by spirit, or our collective social dimension. If we recognize that humans have no innate ecological predisposition, because we change our "ecology", then this is the death of ecology fetishism itself.

The gap between our biological constitution, and our behavior, in other words, is there. We act in spite of our biology.

And to further reply to TGU (by the way, I absolutely take no offense, and I very much appreciate such mediums of discussion), even in primitive societies - of course there was no kind of innate connotations of gender that are comparable to how it exists in class society. It was purely a manner of convenience in approximation of their biological constitution, but the gap was none the less still there. That is to say, if one is born on an island with an axe, one will make do to cut down the trees with it, but the presence of the axe is not integral to your existence when you were born. At the same time, our biological constitution in primitive societies did not have any innate predispositions to gender, merely through the development of the symbolic order in approximation to the social means of survival, sexuality was used no differently than one would conveniently use an axe (of course, the difference is a matter of will).

The human species left the domain of the animal through a collective dance of madness, the same dance that has miraculously defied all the laws of first nature, then the gods, god himself, and finally the bourgeois state.

[The Disillusionist]

There is, again, little variation between societies with the same material culture, and this variation has no political significance - it is merely, again, an aesthetic variation. Evolutionary psychologists dismiss that which is attributed to the social-symbolic order to metaphysics, ehem, genetics. They cannot prove any of this is in our DNA, so this already falls flat on its face. Lacanian psychoanalysis, conversely, only begins with the recognition that what is there is already known by everyone. Marxists do "believe" in psychology, but pseudo-darwinist metaphysics is not psychology. It is ideological reification with no scientific basis, again contingent upon ideas that have philosophical significance, which if were for a SECOND regarded as philosophically conceivable would be laughed at. They don't care about philosophy, basically, yet pre-suppose ideas which are philosophically relative, but are deemed as a "given". That's why. It's degenerate nature is apparent once we compare it with the sophisticated psychological theories of the 20th century. What a damned abomination. One almost wishes for another crazy cultural revolution where all evolutionary psychologists, who breed the stepping stone (if they're not already there) to scientific racism and fascism, are crucified en masse.

And I bet you won't for a second bring your little theories to their logical conclusion regarding race, or rape without taking the risk of being banned from the site. You know this, and I know this.

I don't have the time or motivation to respond to this wall of text, but jesus christ, read a book that diverges from your naive pseudo-religious adherence to orthodox Marxism once in a while, even if it diverges only a little. This is why you are so renowned on this site... you're not making an argument with all that text, you're trying to write a Bible. Your language, your mannerisms, your logic, it's all religious. You are the opiate of the Marxist masses. You are the reigning prophet of revleft, telling these folks what they want to hear and viciously attacking all those who disagree.

I say this, because your comment about my "little theories" justifying race or rape is absolutely asinine and unacceptable. if you had ever read a single damn book about modern human behavioral ecology or evolutionary psychology, or done even the slightest research beyond that extremely limited bit that just justifies your own beliefs, you would realize just how obsolete and extremist your offensive ideas are. Modern evolutionary theory has nothing to do with scientific racism. Modern evolutionary scientists were the ones who demonstrated that race has no scientific basis. Marriage is a human universal, not because it should be, but because statistically, it is present in some form or another in every single recorded culture. To ignore that because it doesn't suit your narrow-minded ideologies doesn't make it any less relevant, it just makes you irrelevant.

I know I won't convince anyone with this rant. Honestly, I'm pretty bored of this site anyway... the intellectual discussion is dead and it's all just recycled, obsolete, useless banter. But you people are gouging out your eyes in your blind rejection of the aspects of evolutionary theory that evolutionary theorists rejected on their own 100 years ago. You're throwing out the baby with the bathwater, and as a result, you aren't going to make any progress. Bah, I'm bored of this. This site isn't worth it any more.

[Rafiq]

Marriage is a human universal, not because it should be, but because statistically, it is present in some form or another in every single recorded culture. To ignore that because it doesn't suit your narrow-minded ideologies doesn't make it any less relevant, it just makes you irrelevant.


And even if this were true (which it is not, frankly), all this suggests is that in various different cultures marriage was necessitated by a definite relationship to survival. This is not evidence that marriage has a biological basis, it is evidence that every culture was not without the same conditions which made marriage probable. The fact of the matter is that you, like any other evolutionary psychologist, can do nothing but repeat the same old metaphysical logical fallacies - that something may have always existed does not mean it is innate.

[The Disillusionist]

And even if this were true (which it is not, frankly), all this suggests is that in various different cultures marriage was necessitated by a definite relationship to survival. This is not evidence that marriage has a biological basis, it is evidence that every culture was not without the same conditions which made marriage probable. The fact of the matter is that you, like any other evolutionary psychologist, can do nothing but repeat the same old metaphysical logical fallacies - that something may have always existed does not mean it is innate.

Universal and innate are not the same words, and do not have the same meaning. Universal in this case means that it is present in all cultures. Innate means that humans have some kind of natural drive toward it. These two concepts overlap, but they are not the same, and just because a behavior meets the criteria for one does not mean that it automatically meets that of the other. To assume that just because something is, that it ought to be, is the naturalistic fallacy. The naturalistic fallacy is almost always the very first thing that any class on evolutionary human behavior will discuss. That's day one stuff.

[Rafiq]

And yet was it not you who argued that because marriage was "always present" that it would probably not dissolve with the destruction of class society?

[MarcusJuniusBrutus]

"Equality" is an 18th c. European value. I think it is more accurate to say that neither sex was subjugated by the other. And that is probably true. It's only modern, industrial society that assumes that "domestic" roles like food preparation, child care, and inter-family relations are somehow inferior to earning money, despite the domestic matters literally being the power of life and death. Early man (as in masculine) likely stood in awe over the female power of creation. This may be why stone age religious leaders were probably women, like those who made the cave paintings. Men had their own power, of course, but it was physical rather than "spiritual."

[RedMaterialist]

You're throwing out the baby with the bathwater, and as a result, you aren't going to make any progress. Bah, I'm bored of this. This site isn't worth it any more.

This type of statement is more commonly known as "sour grapes," or sometimes "I'm taking my ball and going home."

[RedMaterialist]

Universal and innate are not the same words, and do not have the same meaning. Universal in this case means that it is present in all cultures. Innate means that humans have some kind of natural drive toward it. These two concepts overlap, but they are not the same, and just because a behavior meets the criteria for one does not mean that it automatically meets that of the other. To assume that just because something is, that it ought to be, is the naturalistic fallacy. The naturalistic fallacy is almost always the very first thing that any class on evolutionary human behavior will discuss. That's day one stuff.

You said humans, being animals, are motivated by food and sex; that marriage is not innate. When, within a few thousand years, did humans begin to evolve the psychological form of marriage?

[The Disillusionist]

And yet was it not you who argued that because marriage was "always present" that it would probably not dissolve with the destruction of class society?

Yeah. With the data that we have, it would be ridiculous to expect marriage to go away completely with the destruction of class society when it is present in some form or another in every recorded society. And given biological/hormonal mechanisms of pairbonding, mechanisms such as the production of oxytocin (a fairly well understood mechanism nowadays), it's highly unlikely that marriage will ever completely dissolve. Marx was probably wrong in that regard.


"Equality" is an 18th c. European value. I think it is more accurate to say that neither sex was subjugated by the other. And that is probably true. It's only modern, industrial society that assumes that "domestic" roles like food preparation, child care, and inter-family relations are somehow inferior to earning money, despite the domestic matters literally being the power of life and death. Early man (as in masculine) likely stood in awe over the female power of creation. This may be why stone age religious leaders were probably women, like those who made the cave paintings. Men had their own power, of course, but it was physical rather than "spiritual."

Again, this is wrong. Plenty of non-industrialized hunter-gatherer people have had stratified societies that were unequal to the point that women were treated like slaves. Hunter-gatherers vary WAY more than those few outdated stereotypes about the "noble savage" would suggest. For example, here's another stereotype: "Hunter-gatherers always value their elders because elders are wiser". That is true in some cases, but some hunter-gatherer people feel the exact opposite, and feel it is best that the elderly die as soon as possible.

That stereotypical new aged idea of female spiritual power, and the whole "mother earth" thing, like most stereotypes, also has some basis in fact, but cannot be generalized to all stone age tribes or all hunter-gatherer tribes. There is wayyyyy too much variance for that to be the case, plenty of tribes have mythology that contradicts that, and the acceptance of male vs. female religious leaders varies wildly as well.

You have to realize that a society's material conditions simply cannot explain every aspect of that society. Marxist theory doesn't have that kind of explanatory power.

[The Disillusionist]

You said humans, being animals, are motivated by food and sex; that marriage is not innate. When, within a few thousand years, did humans begin to evolve the psychological form of marriage?

There is no "psychological form of marriage". That would be as ridiculous as an evolved "psychological form of Communism or Capitalism." You can't evolve any kind of inherent possession of complex psychological concepts like that. Humans have, however, evolved simpler hormonal and psychological mechanisms that tend to encourage (but not dictate) pair bonding. That hormonal connection manifests itself in culture as marriage practices, which vary wildly but are always present.

[Rafiq]

Yeah. With the data that we have, it would be ridiculous to expect marriage to go away completely with the destruction of class society when it is present in some form or another in every recorded society. And given biological/hormonal mechanisms of pairbonding, mechanisms such as the production of oxytocin (a fairly well understood mechanism nowadays), it's highly unlikely that marriage will ever completely dissolve. Marx was probably wrong in that regard.

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is the crux of evolutionary psychology. The point is not to make claims wholly deduced from "data we have", but to justify things which exist today. What you fail to understand is that marriage in a hunter-gatherer society (assuming it existed) existed for entirely different reasons than it does today. And it cannot be called "marriage" in any meaningful sense, as marriage denotes a relationship of power. Even, if we play the devil's advocate, even if it is true that humans are "hormonally" predisposed to pair bonding, this enough does not sustain the structural mechanism of marriage! In present society, most people are capable of having multiple partners and "pair bonding" with multiple people. Communists do not argue that humans will somehow automatically have group-relationships, but that marriage has no biological basis and that only Communism is capable of destroying the foundations which sustain it. Marriage exists to control women's reproductive capacities, in order to reproduce the condition of life. A society that is socially self-conscios does not have to do this, and in addition, with modern day contraceptive methods the entire material basis for marriage in Communism will disappear.

If something is of political significance, it cannot be attributed to "biological mechanisms". Even so, humans do not have
"natural" mating practices. I mean, if anything all you reveal is a lack of imagination. Are you fucking kidding me? We go from the production of oxytocin to the institution of marriage? Oxytocin is not responsible for "committed" inter-sexual relations, it is involved in the facilitation of intimacy. Any idiot with a semblance of experience in matters of love know that intimacy alone cannot sustain not only marriage, but any relationship. The fact that you can't even imagine a world where intimacy between people can exist, but marriage would not, reveals the innate ignorance of the evolutionary psychologist. You simply doesn't understand the variation such biological mechanisms are capable of, you are completely limited by present standards of sexuality. In addition, 95% of marriages at the very least throughout history most likely didn't have a basis of direct intimacy in their inception but were pre-meditated by families. Oxytocin production, if you will, came afterwards as wives learned to adjust to their sexual slavery.

And yet, with all of this in mind, you claim "Marx was probably wrong in this regard". Because of course, during Marx's time, people just didn't know that oxytocin production was real. This philistine, ladies and gentlemen, would have us believe that if Marx and Engels were aware that there was a compound in the brain that was involved in the facilitation of intimacy and its usage in pair bonding, their entire conception of the family would have fallen to pieces. This perfectly encapsulates the sheer arrogance and naivity of those who attempt to challenge Marx in a way that only takes advantage of the fact that he know longer lives to respond, i.e. something that Marx could have been WELL AWARE OF and would have changed nothing.

I mean, even in animals, you're telling me they're monogamous? Let me ask you a very basic question: If marriage 'probably will not disappear' (which is not interchangeable with committed relationships) because we are biologically predisposed to it, why then were societies for thousands of years able to sustain a system of polygamy, i.e. men possessing multiple wives? The question is rather simple: If humans are naturally predisposed to fuck each other solely in pairs, how was this possible? Then comes the hypocrisy: They'll say - "Well men have more sex cells, so it was a biological mechanism all along". They will justify and legitimize any institution which embodies the sexual domination of the female sex, even if it violates their immediate conception of "natural" marriage. So explain away, Dillusionist. Tell us all how humans are "biologically" predisposed to marriage. "It's existed in every human culture". Let's assume this is true (And it's NOT for the last time! There are recorded cultures that simply did not have marriage) - this does not mean it has a biological basis. The fallacy is rather pathetic because hunter-gatherer societies were not the 'natural state' of man, there is no 'natural' state of man wherein he is reducible to an animal. If marriage existed in those societies, it was because it was materially necessiated. Societies that live in a precarious existence, which cannot produce enough food to feed more than small groups, could be posited to have to regulate reproduction in some way. Again, there is no feasible evidence to suggest marriage in any form existed in hunter-gatherer societies.


Again, this is wrong. Plenty of non-industrialized hunter-gatherer people have had stratified societies that were unequal to the point that women were treated like slaves.


Here's your qualifications for material variance? "Non-industrialization"? All of the differences in sexual relations are reflected in the productive domain, and you know this if you have a) a shred of honesty b) even a mere mediocre conception of what constitutes 'material' foundations.

No hunter-gatherer societies ever recorded practiced the domination of women. They were all sexually egalitarian. I challenge you to bring forth the evidence which sustains your claim, what "hunter-gatherer" societies practiced sexual slavery or female subservience? Can't you give us just one example? Even the aborigines in Australia, contra to what people had thought, had complex agricultural practices much longer than with the arrival of Europeans.

[The Disillusionist]

Every animal has natural mating practices. Mating is one of the most fundamental aspects of evolution. If we hadn't evolved mating practices, then despite all our other achievements we would have gone extinct long ago.

Also, "marriage" in the purely industrialized, Western Marxist sense is not the same as marriage across cultures. And even in industrialized societies, Marxist concepts can't be applied to every marriage. Marriage varies far more than Marx said, and really the entire concept was outside of the scope of his imagination, in my opinion.

Of course culture is linked to the productive domain.... but it's also linked just as much to ecology, evolution, and psychology. The productive domain is not capable of explaining everything by itself.

Oh, and as for tribes that practice the domination of women, the Chukchi (along with most other northern Eskimo/Aleutian tribes), the Chenchu (along with many other tribes in India), the Yanomamo, the Sioux (native american tribe), and many of the Pacific Coastal native american tribes as well. I'm an anthropology student, I didn't even have to look those up. Many, many, many hunter-gatherer tribes were very clearly patriarchal, often having practices such as bride kidnapping (or larger scale raiding for women) and considering women to have a status as slaves. We cannot demonize or idealize these past tribes on Marxist principles because Marxist principals are not even capable of explaining them fully.

Also, again, the belief that hunter-gatherer tribes were without agriculture in the distant past and have since been "corrupted" by it is outdated and wrong. Evidence suggests that humans, even hunter-gatherers, have been practicing vegeculture and horticulture (limited forms of agriculture) for as far back as history can possibly be recorded or even estimated. There has never been a time when humans were not modifying plants and plant populations for their own gain. if you really want a more accurate measure of culture change among hunter-gatherer tribes, the shift from mobility to sedentism is more directly linked to Marxist-style culture changes than the shift from hunting/gathering to agriculture (a shift which occurs on a spectrum and is not black and white).

Also, the tribes with the least access to farmable resources, the northern Arctic tribes, tend to be those with the most rigid, most patriarchal gender roles. Farming cannot be automatically linked to patriarchal gender roles.

[RedMaterialist]

There is no "psychological form of marriage". That would be as ridiculous as an evolved "psychological form of Communism or Capitalism." You can't evolve any kind of inherent possession of complex psychological concepts like that. Humans have, however, evolved simpler hormonal and psychological mechanisms that tend to encourage (but not dictate) pair bonding. That hormonal connection manifests itself in culture as marriage practices, which vary wildly but are always present.

"You can't evolve...complex psychological concepts." Isn't that the whole point of evolutionary psychology?

Well, oxytocin is a mammalian hormone which has been around about 500 million yrs, according to wiki. Why did it "manifest itself" in humans only a few thousand yr ago?

Group marriage existed long before pair bonding. What hormonal or psychological mechanism explains group marriage?

[Rafiq]

Every animal has mating practices, but humans are not animals in this qualified sense. That is because animals have a define, static relationship to survival and the environment around them, they are genetically predisposed to behave within a single, definite habitat or one that is similar to theirs. Meanwhile the human, and the bipedal apes which proceeded it capable of migrating in a way that is not pre-determined biologically (i.e. animals can migrate, but they have patterns, seasons and so on which determine their patterns) is defined by its departure from animality. We do have mating practices, but these are not biologically innate to the slightest degree. There are chemicals involved with matters of sexuality, but they do not DETERMINE it, they are involved in it.

So your argument is worthless. Why respond to me if you aren't even going to address my fucking argument? I already demonstrated, with logic alone, that humans do not have definite mating practices. For someone so keen on stressing "cultural" differences, this should be rather obvious. Every historic epoch (that is, class society) has different rituals, customs and institutions which have defined the regulation of female's reproductive capacities. To conceive these in evolutionary terms is to demonstrate a staunch inability to understand the very essence of what it means to be a human.

And frankly your "opinion" is worthless. Firstly, let's scrap this "culture" fetishism. I do not understand how people can go about their lives acting in such a predictable manner. Can't you realize that "culture" fetishism is SOLELY a neoliberal, globalization phenomena? Cultures do not come from nowhere. They reflect definite relations to production and survival. This is not some kind of general tendency, there is no exception to the rule. The means by which man feeds and clothes himself defines the domain of the cultural, which only serves to reproduce the conditions of man's survival. This is the dilemna of the evolutionary psychologist at its purest - for all the harking of "cultural" variance, they cannot explain cultural difference in evolutionary terms. It is the excess of their vulgar inability to explain ANY behavior in evolutionary terms. The notion that it is has its sole basis on geographic difference is also worthless, because two entirely different "cultures" can exist with the same geographic conditions and furthermore, the evolution of different "cultures" in different geographic circumstances does not fit any scientific or consistent paradigm of geographic difference.

With of course the exception of the fact that more temperate places were able to undergo historic change in a faster way as a result of being unbound by the precarious, subsistence dictated harsh climates of freezing cold or burning hot.

Marriage cannot be understood outside of an understanding of property. There is a difference between "marriage" and regulated "pair-bonding". Societies with marriage are societies wherein women are an extension of the logic of property relations. So marriage varies "far more than Marx said" and yet you aren't able to demonstrate this at all. How does it vary in a way which shatters the Marxist conception of marriage? What variations can we not account for?

[Rafiq]

"You can't evolve...complex psychological concepts." Isn't that the whole point of evolutionary psychology?

Well, oxytocin is a mammalian hormone which has been around about 500 million yrs, according to wiki. Why did it "manifest itself" in humans only a few thousand yr ago?

Group marriage existed long before pair bonding. What hormonal or psychological mechanism explains group marriage?

By no means am I fan of Mao, or his notion of dialectics, but he accurately pointed out (after Lenin did) in a very succinct way that bourgeois rationalists are incapable of conceiving the notion of one thing changing into another. Things for them cannot change in terms of quality, only quantity. Hence, the pre-conditions of capitalist society in their mind have always existed throughout history, they have just expanded - through technology or "cultural" (a category defined by globalization) evolution.

[RedMaterialist]

Every animal has natural mating practices. Mating is one of the most fundamental aspects of evolution. If we hadn't evolved mating practices, then despite all our other achievements we would have gone extinct long ago.

Thousands of species use asexual reproduction. Salmon don't mate when they reproduce. Taking women in war is not mating, it used to be one of the traditional ways of providing wives for single men. Even today groups like Boko Haram practice it. Mating through sexual intercourse is one thing, marriage is a completely different thing. In fact, marriage does not necessarily have anything to do with sexual reproduction.[/QUOTE]


Also, "marriage" in the purely industrialized, Western Marxist sense is not the same as marriage across cultures. And even in industrialized societies, Marxist concepts can't be applied to every marriage. Marriage varies far more than Marx said, and really the entire concept was outside of the scope of his imagination, in my opinion.

You're the one who said that marriage is universal. You're right that marriage, in the Marxist sense, varies across cultures. It has developed as an institution along with the development of the social forces of production. Marriage developed as a form of property along with patriarchy, slavery, feudalism and capitalism. As socialist production begins to replace capitalism the contract nature of marriage will begin to disappear. As someone once said, "Can't buy me love."

[The Disillusionist]

"You can't evolve...complex psychological concepts." Isn't that the whole point of evolutionary psychology?

Well, oxytocin is a mammalian hormone which has been around about 500 million yrs, according to wiki. Why did it "manifest itself" in humans only a few thousand yr ago?

Group marriage existed long before pair bonding. What hormonal or psychological mechanism explains group marriage?

Sigh.... guys, I'm not even an evolutionary psychologist, I'm a human behavioral ecologist (in terms of theoretical adherence, I'm still a student)... there's a difference. But, no, that is not even remotely the point of evolutionary psychology. Evolutionary psychology is most strongly influenced by the field of cognitive psychology, in that it seeks to discover the direct, measurable, evolved cognitive mechanisms that influence people's behavior. Capitalism is not a cognitive mechanism, it's too complex. However, capitalism could be influenced by other cognitive mechanisms... for example, the reward center of the brain activates when people consume goods in a capitalist system. Therefore, it makes sense that one of many reasons capitalism exists is that it makes use of a previously existing cognitive mechanism that had evolved for a different purpose, to draw people in to consumer culture. That argument does not state that capitalism should or should not exist in any way, that would be an example of the naturalistic fallacy. It just helps us understand better why capitalism would be so successful, even among people who are not ultimately benefiting from it.

Also, who said that oxytocin only manifested itself in humans? Oxytocin is only part of the overall picture. Different animals have different mating systems... birds lean far more strongly toward pair-bonding than humans.

Humans, have a lower rate of sexual dimorphism (the size difference between males and females, with male size in comparison to females being linked to increased male competition over females) than our previous primate ancestors, as well as our previous proto-human ancestors, which suggests that we have, and have had, over our evolutionary history, decreased competition between males over females.

Finally, if you do some research into group marriage, you will find that across cultures, it is still marriage, and it is still based around the mechanisms of pair-bonding, with the inclusion of brothers and sisters. Usually the reason group marriage takes place (by the way, group marriage is an unspecific term, a better term is either polygyny or polyandry, or a combination of the two) is because ecological resources are limited, and it is best to keep those resources among limited bloodlines. This is common on islands and in high-altitude mountainous regions, and is actually linked to agriculture, rather than hunting and gathering. Just as in the case of polygyny alone (one man, several women), it has been shown that group marriage is an economic institution, based around a pre-existing pre-dispossession to pair-bonding (otherwise it wouldn't even be considered to be marriage). It has also been shown that in cases of these types of marriages, usually women in these relationships are getting impregnated by one man. For example, in polyandrous relationships (one woman, many men), usually it is either the first-born man, or the man who was favored initially as the primary husband, who actually has children with the women (genetically this has been tested), while the other men serve as economic helpers. In polygynous relationships this is similar... though men in many cultures prefer polygynous marriage because it gives them more children (thus increasing their evolutionary fitness), there is often hidden conflict between men and women over this, because really, only a preferred wife in a polygynous marriage stands to gain from it, the rest of the wives actually do worse in those relationships in general than in pair-bonded relationships.

If you do the research, it will show that yes, group marriages are relatively common, and tend to be economically motivated, but there is still a foundation of pair-bonding underneath them. Again, that is NOT to say that pair-bonding is "correct" or "better" in any sense, that would make use of the naturalistic fallacy, it simply says that humans as animals tend to be predisposed to pair-bonding, though not as much as some other animals, such as many birds. As a result, a simple change in material conditions, as Marx predicted, is not likely to change that as fundamentally as Marx thought.

[Rafiq]

Oh, and as for tribes that practice the domination of women, the Chukchi (along with most other northern Eskimo/Aleutian tribes), the Chenchu (along with many other tribes in India), the Yanomamo, the Sioux (native american tribe), and many of the Pacific Coastal native american tribes as well. I'm an anthropology student, I didn't even have to look those up. Many, many, many hunter-gatherer tribes were very clearly patriarchal, often having practices such as bride kidnapping (or larger scale raiding for women) and considering women to have a status as slaves. We cannot demonize or idealize these past tribes on Marxist principles because Marxist principals are not even capable of explaining them fully.

Are you fucking kidding me? The Chukchi are not even primarily a hunting based society. The Chukchi were introduced to modern and advanced means of survival through state-run enterprises during Soviet times, and afterwards these were privatized. This is hardly an example of a hunter-gatherer society which is patriarchal. Furthermore, ample evidence suggests that in their prehistoric days (as hunter-gatherers) (just as the innuits were) they were completely sexually egalitarian. Are you literally using poor examples on purpose?

The Yanomamo practice a very complex form of cultivation of plants, they are not a hunter-gatherer society. How is this an example? What evidence suggests that hunter-gatherers practiced agriculture in a form even a fraction as complex as the primitive agricultural societies in the Amazon? None! Furthermore, the region itself is by no means an a-historical one. Unless of course we want to say the Aztecs, Mayans, etc. were all hunter-gatherers. This is the crux of the fucking problem here - you are unable to differentiate any society which is "primitive" by western standards. And while it has been recorded that petty practices regarding the cultivation of plants were present in hunter-gatherer soceities, there is no evidnce that hunter-gatherer societies practiced the domestication of plants and animals. Picking out of the berry bush every year and maybe destroying the poisonous berry bush next to it isn't domestication. Meanwhile, the Yanomamo do this.

As for native american tribes like the Sioux, first of all, these tribes were defined and ripe with complex historic changes, most definitely including their interaction with the Europeans. Throughout the past 300 years the Sioux have dramatically underwent drastic social changes. Sexual relations among the Sioux, furthermore, were recorded in the 19th century, long after they were in contact with Europeans and had integrated into a larger totality of European civilization. But to add insult to injury, finally, the Sioux, in historic terms, were much past the stone age way before European arrival. The Sioux were not simply "marginally" a farming society, they were an agricultural society period that also had hunting practices. You may as well designate fucking vikings or Germanic tribes as hunter-gatherers, because they lived in tribes and so on. From every example you have provided, none of them properly fit the qualifications of a hunter-gatherer society, so much so that if we are to accept that any one of these are hunter-gatherers, the whole term loses meaning and we then become unable to properly establish qualifications for what it means to be a hunter-gatherer.


Is it a coincidence that you can't provide a single example which isn't muddied with aesthetic prejudice? These societies "seem" primitive, so you assume that they are. It's so pathetic. I ask you again - give us an example of an actual hunter-gatherer society that is patriarchal.


There has never been a time when humans were not modifying plants and plant populations for their own gain.


This only reveals your dishonesty - look how you WORD it! Plants were modified not through a selective process of domestication but modified consequentially of complex gathering practices. These societies are hunter-gatherers, not "hunters" only. There is a difference between the domestic cultivation of plants, and the alteration of plant populations as a result of picking them. All of the examples you provided that were not already completely conformed to higher social totalities practiced complex agricultural practices. These practices are not known to pre-date the neolithic era, some 10-12 thousand years go.


Also, the tribes with the least access to farmable resources, the northern Arctic tribes, tend to be those with the most rigid, most patriarchal gender roles. Farming cannot be automatically linked to patriarchal gender roles.

This is a worthless hypothesis. The arctic tribes don't have rigid, patriarchal gender roles because of scarcity of arable land, but because they were at present day defined by their interaction with other people's. Again, the innuits still have the sexual morality and customs carried over form the British in the 19th century. Before then, ample evidence suggests they were sexually egalitarian. There is no exception to this rule.

[The Disillusionist]

Hence, the pre-conditions of capitalist society in their mind have always existed throughout history, they have just expanded - through technology or "cultural" (a category defined by globalization) evolution.

If this was not true, Marxism could not be true in any way. If humans had no psychological mechanisms that allowed capitalism to develop, it wouldn't have. If we weren't capable of the abstract thought needed to develop financial systems for example, then we wouldn't have. Cats, dogs, and manatees do not have the pre-conditions of any kind of complex economy in their minds, and thus, surprise, they have not formed complex economies... That is not to say that capitalism is the natural end result of any kind of process, it is just to say that, as Marx argued with his theory of CULTURAL evolution, capital is a response to certain technological, material (and ecological and psychological) conditions.

[The Disillusionist]

Are you fucking kidding me? The Chukchi are not even primarily a hunting based society. The Chukchi were introduced to modern and advanced means of survival through state-run enterprises during Soviet times, and afterwards these were privatized. This is hardly an example of a hunter-gatherer society which is patriarchal. Furthermore, ample evidence suggests that in their prehistoric days (as hunter-gatherers) (just as the innuits were) they were completely sexually egalitarian. Are you literally using poor examples on purpose?

The Yanomamo practice a very complex form of cultivation of plants, they are not a hunter-gatherer society. How is this an example? What evidence suggests that hunter-gatherers practiced agriculture in a form even a fraction as complex as the primitive agricultural societies in the Amazon? None! Furthermore, the region itself is by no means an a-historical one. Unless of course we want to say the Aztecs, Mayans, etc. were all hunter-gatherers. This is the crux of the fucking problem here - you are unable to differentiate any society which is "primitive" by western standards. And while it has been recorded that petty practices regarding the cultivation of plants were present in hunter-gatherer soceities, there is no evidnce that hunter-gatherer societies practiced the domestication of plants and animals. Picking out of the berry bush every year and maybe destroying the poisonous berry bush next to it isn't domestication. Meanwhile, the Yanomamo do this.

As for native american tribes like the Sioux, first of all, these tribes were defined and ripe with complex historic changes, most definitely including their interaction with the Europeans. Throughout the past 300 years the Sioux have dramatically underwent drastic social changes. Sexual relations among the Sioux, furthermore, were recorded in the 19th century, long after they were in contact with Europeans and had integrated into a larger totality of European civilization. But to add insult to injury, finally, the Sioux, in historic terms, were much past the stone age way before European arrival. The Sioux were not simply "marginally" a farming society, they were an agricultural society period that also had hunting practices. You may as well designate fucking vikings or Germanic tribes as hunter-gatherers, because they lived in tribes and so on. From every example you have provided, none of them properly fit the qualifications of a hunter-gatherer society, so much so that if we are to accept that any one of these are hunter-gatherers, the whole term loses meaning and we then become unable to properly establish qualifications for what it means to be a hunter-gatherer.


Is it a coincidence that you can't provide a single example which isn't muddied with aesthetic prejudice? These societies "seem" primitive, so you assume that they are. It's so pathetic. I ask you again - give us an example of an actual hunter-gatherer society that is patriarchal.



This only reveals your dishonesty - look how you WORD it! Plants were modified not through a selective process of domestication but modified consequentially of complex gathering practices. These societies are hunter-gatherers, not "hunters" only. There is a difference between the domestic cultivation of plants, and the alteration of plant populations as a result of picking them. All of the examples you provided that were not already completely conformed to higher social totalities practiced complex agricultural practices. These practices are not known to pre-date the neolithic era, some 10-12 thousand years go.



This is a worthless hypothesis. The arctic tribes don't have rigid, patriarchal gender roles because of scarcity of arable land, but because they were at present day defined by their interaction with other people's. Again, the innuits still have the sexual morality and customs carried over form the British in the 19th century. Before then, ample evidence suggests they were sexually egalitarian. There is no exception to this rule.

I see you don't believe in archaeology or the ability to understand the pre-contact history of any tribes either... Ethnoarchaeology and other research has demonstrably proved that, yes, these tribes were patriarchal before contact. The only counter-argument to that is "Well, no, I don't want to believe you, therefore that must not be true." If you want to talk about modern day tribes, RIGHT NOW, then no, you aren't going to find any examples of tribes that haven't been influenced by agriculture (conveniently allowing you to dismiss any evidence that doesn't support your ideas).

Oh, and yes, the domestic cultivation of plants is exactly what I was referring to. Hunter-gatherer tribes not only picked plants, but replanted those that they saw as favorable in order to encourage continued growth of plants with that quality. It was hunter-gatherers that caused corn to evolve from the relatively non-productive grass that it was into the major food source that it is today. It was hunter-gatherers that bred the poison out of the earliest potato species, and it was actually hunter-gatherers that bred stronger poison INTO many species in South America (the poison repelled other animals, and could then be processed out by hunter-gatherers). These are ancient processes that go back as far as humans do.

[Rafiq]

For example, in polyandrous relationships (one woman, many men), usually it is either the first-born man, or the man who was favored initially as the primary husband, who actually has children with the women (genetically this has been tested), while the other men serve as economic helpers. In polygynous relationships this is similar... though men in many cultures prefer polygynous marriage because it gives them more children (thus increasing their evolutionary fitness), there is often hidden conflict between men and women over this, because really, only a preferred wife in a polygynous marriage stands to gain from it, the rest of the wives actually do worse in those relationships in general than in pair-bonded relationships.

In reality, group marriages are not always reducible to polyandrous relationships. Some group marriages can have, for example, three men and three women, with swapping in between. So this already falls flat on its face. And how ironic that you do EXACTLY what I predicted - claiming that polygamy has an evolutionary basis! For fuck's sake! Any idiot with an iota of an understanding of evolutionary behavior knows that the intentional strive to increase evolutionary fitness does not exist. Evolutionary fitness can be increased consequentially, but among humans, whose relationships to each other are not defined by their DNA, it is a meaningless category. There is no application to the strive for "evolutionary fitness" among humans. The reality is that men tended to have more than one women as wives only in circumstances wherein women were regarded as property, in patriarchal societies where property relations can be extended down more than one line. It is vulgar and quite frankly rather disgusting to claim that this is because of some kind innate desire to "increase evolutionary fitness". There have been multiple recorded instances wherein the children of a mother have multiple different fathers in such relationships, i.e. where all women would become pregnant. Provide insight on these genetic "studies" so we can evaluate them in a meaningful way, otherwise, we can assume theyr'e just as credible as the examples you've provided regarding hunter-gatherers that were patriarchal.


As a result, a simple change in material conditions, as Marx predicted, is not likely to change that as fundamentally as Marx thought.


You begin with the premise that humans are biologically predisposed to marriage, and then go on to claim that Marx was wrong because of this. Yet you have provided no evidence to support this assertion. Of course, you can't fuck two things at once. That reality alone is enough to explain why two humans together, as far as intimacy, will never be the same as four humans together. This doesn't demonstrate anything of consequence, however, it doesn't explain marriage and it doesn't explain long term "pair-bonding". I mean, again, intimacy and pair-bonding are not enough to sustain a monogamous relationship. You can have multiple different partners, but not in the same proximity at every degree. That is to say, on all seven days of the week you can have seven different lovers. This alone demonstrates marriage has no biological basis.

[The Disillusionist]

In reality, group marriages are not always reducible to polyandrous relationships. Some group marriages can have, for example, three men and three women, with swapping in between. So this already falls flat on its face. And how ironic that you do EXACTLY what I predicted - claiming that polygamy has an evolutionary basis! For fuck's sake! Any idiot with an iota of an understanding of evolutionary behavior knows that the intentional strive to increase evolutionary fitness does not exist. Evolutionary fitness can be increased consequentially, but among humans, whose relationships to each other are not defined by their DNA, it is a meaningless category. There is no application to the strive for "evolutionary fitness" among humans. The reality is that men tended to have more than one women as wives only in circumstances wherein women were regarded as property, in patriarchal societies where property relations can be extended down more than one line. It is vulgar and quite frankly rather disgusting to claim that this is because of some kind innate desire to "increase evolutionary fitness". There have been multiple recorded instances wherein the children of a mother have multiple different fathers in such relationships, i.e. where all women would become pregnant. Provide insight on these genetic "studies" so we can evaluate them in a meaningful way, otherwise, we can assume theyr'e just as credible as the examples you've provided regarding hunter-gatherers that were patriarchal.



You begin with the premise that humans are biologically predisposed to marriage, and then go on to claim that Marx was wrong because of this. Yet you have provided no evidence to support this assertion. Of course, you can't fuck two things at once. That reality alone is enough to explain why two humans together, as far as intimacy, will never be the same as four humans together. This doesn't demonstrate anything of consequence, however, it doesn't explain marriage and it doesn't explain long term "pair-bonding". I mean, again, intimacy and pair-bonding are not enough to sustain a monogamous relationship. You can have multiple different partners, but not in the same proximity at every degree. That is to say, on all seven days of the week you can have seven different lovers. This alone demonstrates marriage has no biological basis.

I can see that this is not going anywhere. Our paradigms our way too different, and you don't have the evolutionary understanding to even see why polygyny could have evolutionary roots, or to see why sleeping with "seven people in seven days" is not a structural argument against evolutionary pair-bonding. If you don't even want to see those arguments, then there is not really any argument here to be had.

[Rafiq]

If this was not true, Marxism could not be true in any way. If humans had no psychological mechanisms that allowed capitalism to develop, it wouldn't have. If we weren't capable of the abstract thought needed to develop financial systems for example, then we wouldn't have. Cats, dogs, and manatees do not have the pre-conditions of any kind of complex economy in their minds, and thus, surprise, they have not formed complex economies... That is not to say that capitalism is the natural end result of any kind of process, it is just to say that, as Marx argued with his theory of CULTURAL evolution, capital is a response to certain technological, material (and ecological and psychological) conditions.

The reason this is a worthless assertion is that it is akin to saying that without having two hands, capitalism would not be able to exist. of course capitalism is COMPATIBLE with human biology, but it is NOT a logical extension of it. That's the point. Saying that our relations to production "use" this or that process which has a biological basis means nothing. Take racism for example. Racism requires black people to have black skin, but this isn't the cause of racism. Saying that because blacks have black skin is the reason why racism exists is a worthless statement. Capitalism has existed for the past 500 years. That is a rather small fraction of humanity's existence


I see you don't believe in archaeology or the ability to understand the pre-contact history of any tribes either... Ethnoarchaeology and other research has demonstrably proved that, yes, these tribes were patriarchal before contact.

Where's the fucking evidence? What evidence is there that supports the notion that, for example, the Chukchi were patriarchal societies before contact? Show us.


Oh, and yes, the domestic cultivation of plants is exactly what I was referring to. Hunter-gatherer tribes not only picked plants, but replanted those that they saw as favorable in order to encourage continued growth of plants with that quality. It was hunter-gatherers that caused corn to evolve from the relatively non-productive grass that it was into the major food source that it is today. It was hunter-gatherers that bred the poison out of the earliest potato species, and it was actually hunter-gatherers that bred stronger poison INTO many species in South America (the poison repelled other animals, and could then be processed out by hunter-gatherers). These are ancient processes that go back as far as humans do.


Considering meso-america underwent actual history and civilization, the origins of corn as a domestic plant was not through the workings of hunter-gatherers. There is a difference, also, between the consequential alteration of plant populations (which would have required tasting poisonous foods and knowing what you can, and can't eat in the wild) and conscious domestication. There is no evidence that the domestication of plants existed before the epi-paleolithic, which marked the transition to agricultural practices. Your claims regarding potatoes and so on is based purely on speculation, and not actual hard evidence. So clearly these are not "ancient processes" that go as far back as humans do.

[Invader Zim]

I think what you're missing at that biological sex is a social construct hence why those "sexual division of labor" exist in the first place.

Biological sex is not a social construct. Gender, on the other hand, is a social construct.

[Rafiq]

If you don't even want to see those arguments, then there is not really any argument here to be had.

We have a word for "seeing" arguments. It is ideology. And clearly, you are on the wrong side. And before you claim that I obfuscate facts with partisanship, remember that taking a side is a pre-condition for properly understanding "facts", without which facts have no meaning.

[Invader Zim]

We have a word for "seeing" arguments. It is ideology. And clearly, you are on the wrong side. And before you claim that I obfuscate facts with partisanship, remember that taking a side is a pre-condition for properly understanding "facts", without which facts have no meaning.
That said, ideology is like theory - a tool for interpreting facts and generating questions. Theory and ideology should be updated to reflect the available evidence, if the evidence makes the questions posed through the ideological or theoretical paradigm invalid it is time to update the theory/ideology or jettison it entirely.

[The Disillusionist]

I think we need a new rule... like Godwin's Law ("As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1."):

"As internet arguments become less and less productive, the probability of someone invoking postmodernism exponentially increases until science has ceased to become relevant and the nature of the argument has completely devolved into a matter of opinions about perceived opinions."

[Rafiq]

"As internet arguments become less and less productive, the probability of someone invoking postmodernism exponentially increases until science has ceased to become relevant and the nature of the argument has completely devolved into a matter of opinions about perceived opinions."

Yes, let's not play this game. In an earlier thread I already explained how Marxist epistemology has no basis in postmodernism or relativism. The point is not that science is relative to opinion, for the notion that subjectivity is reducible to individual opinion is itself the real postmodernism. Rather the point is the opposite - scientific truth can only be conceived if the social predispositions which make it possible are there. That is to say, only with the existence of an antagonistic proletariat does the linguistic, and ideological space that allows for the rejection of bourgeois metaphysics, and ruling ideology open up. Otherwise, we ideologically reproduce the conditions of production as they exist, in spite of knowing its reality. The ideology of Communism designates an unknowable reality only insofar as it designates a reality no one is capable of knowing (the future, the horizon of Communism). Meanwhile, the reality bourgeois ideology designates (one that is understood scientifically by Communists) can be known by those who oppose it.

That is to say, 'reality' is designated ideologically with or without Marxism, but it is not made knowable in thought. There are unknown knowns, things that we designate and believe that we are incapable of fathoming. That's ideology.

Marxism replaces bourgeois ideology with science in designating the social scientifically, rather than substituting it with unworkable metaphysical notions of "nature" or inconsistent, paradoxical biological arguments in explaining the complexity of human behavior. The only reason evolutionary psychology exists is precisely because the social dimension is substituted ideologically, and the only meaningful means by which our outwardly behaviors, consequential of our social totality is understood is in the same fashion that we understand animals. Because like any good bourgeois rationalist, they recognize religious ideas of divine providence, and the religious elevation of man into a creature made in god's image of course have no basis in science.

[Guardia Rossa]

Desilusionist does have a non-basic view of the hunter-gatherer societies, but his argumentation line on culture is flawed: even if there were very different cultures between the H-GS he can't guarantee that they haven't came from different material conditions. Groups wich can sustain the elders for their knowledge will "respect/venerate them" [LF] and groups wich can barely sustain themselves, leave alone some "old fools who can't even work" will certainly leave them to die, sacrificing an unthinkable acumulation of knowledge for the survival of the group.

Also, the argument that Marx can't prove that marriage will end with the end of capitalism is failed in itself: Marx can't prove that it will end, it is impossible until it happends. What we can be sure is that all past forms of marriage/monogamic relations are going to be completely different from the new one that will emerge from a anarchist/communist society.

So we can not call it marriage as it will differs substantially from the bourgeois, the feudal, the theocratic, of all past forms of "marriage" that are also in fact completely different between themselves. The only trait that the term "marriage" carries in itself (not counting group marriages) is a monogamic, sexual relation between two individuals. There is no need for "love" or "mutual personal knowledgement" [LF] or "fidelity/unique belonging" [LF]. And there is plenty of monogamic sexual relation out of our understanding of modern marriage.

[LF] stands for linguistic failure. I need to update my english.

If I wrote something stupid for a marxist (this is quite common) please point it out.

[RedMaterialist]

Evolutionary psychology is most strongly influenced by the field of cognitive psychology, in that it seeks to discover the direct, measurable, evolved cognitive mechanisms that influence people's behavior.


So, exactly, what is a "cognitive mechanism", not biological, which has evolved in the past 250k yrs? Walking upright is a specific, evolutionary development. What is an evolutionary psychological trait similar to that?


Capitalism is not a cognitive mechanism, it's too complex.

In one sense you're right. Class exploitation and antagonism on a world wide scale involving billions of people is certainly complex, but it's not too complex. It's only during a crisis that the direct, simple, undeniable class exploitation is exposed. But if capitalism is not a cognitive mechanism (what does that mean anyway?) and is not a biological mechanism, then how does it develop in the first place?


However, capitalism could be influenced by other cognitive mechanisms... for example, the reward center of the brain activates when people consume goods in a capitalist system.


The reward center of the brain of a slug activates when it consumes something. How come slugs did not develop capitalism? Or does a serf use a different reward center when consuming the product of feudalism?


Also, who said that oxytocin only manifested itself in humans?

You said oxytocin was a biologically evolved hormone which had something to do with the psychological evolution of human marriage.



Finally, if you do some research into group marriage, you will find that across cultures, it is still marriage, and it is still based around the mechanisms of pair-bonding, with the inclusion of brothers and sisters.

In what human culture has pair-bonding ever preceded group marriage? Marriage, in this sense, means someone with whom you are allowed to have sex.


If you do the research, it will show that yes, group marriages are relatively common,

There is no where on the planet that group marriage is still common, unless you count bonobo society.


As a result, a simple change in material conditions, as Marx predicted, is not likely to change that as fundamentally as Marx thought.

Group marriage was probably the first form of marriage. However, it increased dramatically the incidence of in-breeding and the associated birth defects, etc. Unrelated groups probably inter-"married" for various reasons (including political) and there would have been a tremendous benefit to any group which began to establish some type of sexual taboo within its own group. The first taboo was older/younger generation, then brother/sister, then cousins to several degrees. You couldn't "marry" your mother, father, aunts, uncles, etc; you couldn't "marry" your siblings or your cousins.

The material conditions, i.e. group population, genetic health, ability of the group to survive, etc., led to the institution of marriage as a limiting definition of who could be sexual partners. The cultural form of marriage inevitably had an effect on the material condition of the group and vice versa. As material conditions (agriculture, etc.) changed, the definition of marriage changed.

The definition of marriage is changing before your very eyes. Is gay/lesbian marriage possible because of some sudden genetic change in the psychology of marriage? Of course not. It's changing because of modern, late-stage capitalism. Capitalism has reached the stage where no one, absolutely no one, can be excluded from the process of production. Gays possibly are more skilled at computer programming and finance speculation, but no bank can take the risk of excluding a competent gay by hiring an incompetent straight.

I read a few years ago that anthropologists, psychologists, sociologists, etc, from the 50s-80s were especially sensitive to accusations that Marxism was infecting their work. Unbelievably, it's still the case.

[Vogel]

used to be that the women raised all the children collectively, while the fathers didn't have much time to get to know the kids and hunted for the group. Before homo sapiens, i believe.

[Hit The North]

Biological sex is not a social construct. Gender, on the other hand, is a social construct.

There is no such thing as human biological sex outside of human communities where sexual desires and conduct is shaped and organised around particular social norms, values and gendered assumptions. Therefore, in any meaningful way sexual relations are socially constructed and to talk about "biological sex" free of social determinations in the case of humans makes little sense and has zero explanatory value.

[Fakeblock]

It a mistake to assume that biological sexual binaries is a objective thing which such concepts didn't exist before agriculture which is my main point.

Following this logic, we should also dismiss all modern science as subjective.


Perhaps you should read this: http://apfelgranate.tumblr.com/post/46422486620/biological-sex-is-socially-constructed

Calling the concept of sex a social construct is tautological. Concepts aren't found in nature, they are produced through discourses, they are all social constructs. Sex happens to be a concept that is absolutely indispensable in biology (and not just in the biology of humans but of plants and animals too). While it may very well be a social construct, it is scientific nonetheless. In fact, by denying this the poster lapses into complete subjectivism, as with this section:


Humans created biological sex just like they invented everything else. It’s a category that humans created and as such cannot be objective, can only be biased.

...which clearly shows the author's idealism.

Furthermore, the function of a theoretical concept is absolutely misunderstood in the post. The point isn't to construct labels that can classify every single biological phenomena and cover every single discrepancy. The function of a theoretical concept is to allow us to explain the structure and mechanics of our theoretical object - e.g. sexual reproduction, the capitalist mode of production. And in fact, only with a scientific concept of sex can we adequately account for irregularities, however frequent they may be.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

Biological sex is not a social construct. Gender, on the other hand, is a social construct.

Actually, you're totes wrong, and it's ridiculous that you'd make such a huge statement without any supporting evidence beyond "common sense".

Seriously, go read the first chapter of Judith Butler's Gender Trouble.

[RedMaterialist]

There is no such thing as human biological sex outside of human communities where sexual desires and conduct is shaped and organised around particular social norms, values and gendered assumptions. Therefore, in any meaningful way sexual relations are socially constructed and to talk about "biological sex" free of social determinations in the case of humans makes little sense and has zero explanatory value.

Rape is created by society?

[Guardia Rossa]

Wow do I just said so much crap everyone ignored me?

[Comrade Jacob]

*cracks open can of cider*

[Hit The North]

Rape is created by society?

Sure. Rape is a legal category. Rape is about power relations.

[Invader Zim]

There is no such thing as human biological sex outside of human communities where sexual desires and conduct is shaped and organised around particular social norms, values and gendered assumptions. Therefore, in any meaningful way sexual relations are socially constructed and to talk about "biological sex" free of social determinations in the case of humans makes little sense and has zero explanatory value.

We are clearly talking at cross purposes. Sex is a term from the biological sciences to distinguish between males and females of a given organism, based on physiology. Thus the human female sex has xx chromosomes and the male sex has xy chromosomes, etc.

What you are talking about here 'human communities where sexual desires and conduct is shaped and organised around particular social norms, values and gendered assumptions' is what social scientists and humanities scholars are refering to when they talk about gender - a deliberate semantic device to avoid confusion.

http://www.apa.org/pi/lgbt/resources/sexuality-definitions.pdf

[Invader Zim]

Actually, you're totes wrong, and it's ridiculous that you'd make such a huge statement without any supporting evidence beyond "common sense".

Seriously, go read the first chapter of Judith Butler's Gender Trouble.

Why did you employ quotation marks around words I didn't use? And why would I want to try to re-read Judith Butler? Life is too short to bother with the academic fad that was poststructuralism and which ceased to be relevant (not that it ever really was for historians) to working academics in empirically minded fields after the backlash against such crap in the 1990s, let alone to try to parse her godawful, unintelligable prose.

And anyway, Butler's major treatment (also over written to the point or torturing the reader) of the sex/gender divide is actually Bodies That Matter (1993), but whatever.

The reason to continue utilising the term sex and gender in the fashion I outlined, is because they are useful semantic devices, to easily convey two seperate sets of concepts, that are widely understood and that continue to enjoy widespread currency across the humanities and social sciences from gender history to psychology. It isn't a matter of common sense, but how terms are used and the meaning that words are commonly understood to denote.

Anyway, Lacan...performativity...Judith Butler...scandal...(en)gendering (w)holeness...Lunch!

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

Why did you employ quotation marks around words I didn't use?

Because, given that you don't provide any coherent theoretical basis for what you're saying, it follows that you can only be leaning on "common sense". Which I insist on always putting in scare quotes, because of its disturbing ideological character.


And why would I want to try to re-read Judith Butler? Life is too short to bother with the academic fad that was poststructuralism and which ceased to be relevant (not that it ever really was for historians) to working academics in empirically minded fields after the backlash against such crap in the 1990s, let alone to try to parse her godawful, unintelligable prose.

"Critical theory? Naw, just give me some numbers - unemcumbered as they are by ideology."

Gag.



The reason to continue utilising the term sex and gender in the fashion I outlined, is because they are useful semantic devices [. . .]

Except, the thing is, they're not. As in this thread, they serve to obfuscate matters. They're an appeal to common sense that falls apart when confronted with serious critical examination.


[Sex and gender are] two seperate sets of concepts, that are widely understood and that continue to enjoy widespread currency across the humanities and social sciences from gender history to psychology. It isn't a matter of common sense, but how terms are used and the meaning that words are commonly understood to denote.

Oh, capital's ideology-factories endorse this idea? My bad, sign me up.

[Rafiq]

Life is too short to bother with the academic fad that was poststructuralism and which ceased to be relevant (not that it ever really was for historians) to working academics in empirically minded fields after the backlash against such crap in the 1990s, let alone to try to parse her godawful, unintelligable prose.


Indeed, because such academics hold the kingdom of truth. What is your point that this "ceased to be relevant"? Is there supposed to be some kind of aura of legitimacy we are all to recognize by merit of your own predictability? The fact of the matter is that it's quite coincidental that during the "1990's" the international worker's movement underwent a staunch ideological retreat, it's quite coincidental that it was during this era that the most vile and black counter-revolution in virtually all domains of life arose victorious.

There are no "empirically-minded" fields that concern that which critical theory regards. Even the actual empirically-minded fields are only "empirically minded" because they rest upon philosophical foundations that are not a point of controversy, i.e. mathematics has no political significance, so when a field can solely rely upon it, it means we simply all agree and so on.

It is rather easy to understand that all empirical knowledge rests upon a wide variety of assumptions. Those assumptions by default cannot have an empirical basis. Amid the confusion, the point is that something like biological sex can exist objectively, but only if the point of reference is solely the process of reproduction. So biological sex can exist objectively, but one should question just how far this goes beyond reproductive functions. Even as far as physiology goes, and other "empirically minded" fields, it goes much further. Much of what we attribute to each sex exists to reproduce gender.

[Invader Zim]

Because, given that you don't provide any coherent theoretical basis for what you're saying, it follows that you can only be leaning on "common sense". Which I insist on always putting in scare quotes, because of its disturbing ideological character.

I explained why I suggest using gender and sex in the fashion I describe: because that is what the words mean to the vast majority who use them in these kinds of discussion. The fact that Butler and a few other pomos in 90s wrote some impenetrable critiques, that only ever held currency in niche circles of the (primarily North American) cultural studies world, and have had little significant impact beyond that intellectual space, doesn't alter the fact that if you talk about 'gender' in the way I described the majority of people will instantly be on the same page.


"Critical theory? Naw, just give me some numbers - unemcumbered as they are by ideology."

Gag.Because empirical research paradigms like historical materialism, which involve evidence (numbers and stuff), are unencumbered by ideology? And the intellectual and political wellspring that Butler emerged from is the New Left, which is why she rejected activism... Gag indeed.

But we're straying from the point, and this is rapidly getting weirdly hostile for no good reason; look, I'm open to changing my mind but you need to explain what you think is compelling about Butler's thesis, because to my mind she essentially tries to reduce everything (in the worst and least compelling traditions of the lingustic turn) to langauge. And yes, I'm an unashamed and unrepentent empiricist - it goes with being a (real) leftist, you know, ideology. Butler and the rest of the pomos are not compatable with a materialist epistemological outlook. So, basically, no.


As in this thread, they serve to obfuscate matters.How so? Plenty of people conduct first rate research into how gender is constructed and how cultural perceptions of gender influence society (historical and contemporary) which are perfectly clear, based on this understanding of what the terms gender and sex mean.


They're an appeal to common sense that falls apart when confronted with serious critical examination.OK then, like I said, please explain explain what you find compelling in Butler's arguments. Because, at the moment, I see no good reason to buy into it.


Oh, capital's ideology-factories endorse this idea? My bad, sign me up.Capital's ideology-factories (or at least parts of it) also endorse Butler's work, and Butler is a product of said factory. Your objection is therefore conspicuously inconsistent and logically flawed - if it is a product of capitalisms intellectual engine, it must be faulty? This is an invitation to reject all knowledge created under capitalism. Does thhis mean that we should cast doubt on climate change is a thesis produced/endorced by capital's ideology-factories? Sorry, I know that is a little unfair, but like I said, let's hear your argument and not a guilt by association fallacy.

[Invader Zim]

Indeed, because such academics hold the kingdom of truth.

Given that your epistle, here, is apparently a defense of Butler's thesis - an academic thesis penned by an academic, for academic purposes, and for a niche academic audience - you clearly seem to think so.


What is your point that this "ceased to be relevant"?

That the pomo arguments were tried and tested and found to be of little practical value. The purpose of theory is that it is supposed to help us to generate questions, frame those questions and inform how we consider the answers to those questions. Poststructuralism, by and large, didn't do this and devolved into intellectual circle jerking - and the tried and tested modes of exploring the world and our own existence carried on, with researchers perhaps slightly more prone to critical introspection but essentially unphased. As I said, it was a fad that, with the exception of a few outposts here and there, did not prove durable. Compare that to Marxism; it is impossible to pick up a history book written since pretty much the 1920s which is not, at least in some way, informed by historical materialism even if only very indirectly.


Is there supposed to be some kind of aura of legitimacy we are all to recognize by merit of your own predictability?
I have no idea what this means.


The fact of the matter is that it's quite coincidental that during the "1990's" the international worker's movement underwent a staunch ideological retreat, it's quite coincidental that it was during this era that the most vile and black counter-revolution in virtually all domains of life arose victorious.

Again, I don't really know what to make of this, because the conflict I'm talking about was the theoretical disputes between leftists and feminists in academia arguing with other academics, this time New Left academics and feminists.



... the point is that something like biological sex can exist objectively, but only if the point of reference is solely the process of reproduction ... but one should question just how far this goes beyond reproductive functions.

That is already the sole point of reference. It doesn't go any further.

"Sex refers to a person’s biological status and is typically categorized as male, female, or intersex (i.e., atypical combinations of features that usually distinguish male from female). There are a number of indicators of biological sex, including sex chromosomes, gonads, internal reproductive organs, and external genitalia."

http://www.apa.org/pi/lgbt/resources/sexuality-definitions.pdf

[Rafiq]

Given that your epistle, here, is apparently a defense of Butler's thesis - an academic thesis penned by an academic, for academic purposes, and for a niche academic audience - you clearly seem to think so.

This is meaningless. The point is t =hat any defense of Butler has nothing to do with her credibility or standing among academics, or indeed whether or not she is one herself. The point is that you attempted to argue by authority by speaking on behalf of academics. While you may or may not be qualified to speak on their behalf, it doesn't matter what the "majority" of academics think. If anything, the only useful indication of this is the spontaneous ideological inclinations of capitalist ideology. And to be clear, regarding Butler, I fully identify with Zizek's criticism of her. Namely, not so much her notion of gender, but its intertwined relationship with her solution to it is fully a consumerist ideology, i.e. to express yourself in such a way that cannot be systematized by any ruling ideological designation of gender, to break the binary logic of sexuality, etc.

There is nothing here which is incompatible with ruling consumerist ideology, nothing particularly radical about it. This criticism, however, was not wrought out by letting others think for you, by disregarding critical theory in favor of "empirically minded" fields or whatever you want. It is possible only through critical theory. This fetishism of the 'academic' as some kind of category that is either a pejorative, or a scepter of legitimacy is staunchly anti-democratic and reactionary. That is to say, nothing can be disqualified because it is "academic", indeed the intellectual apparatus of society is there - but at the same time, nothing should become legitimate, nothing should command respect BECAUSE it is 'academic' either.

Things must be taken for what they are, no matter where they come from. Conclusions can be drawn about how the nature of the author influenced this or that idea, but this is not grounds for dismissal. That is the unspoken rule of every Communist.




That the pomo arguments were tried and tested and found to be of little practical value.


And this alone is evidence of the ultimately unscientific, hypocritical and totally ambiguous nature of empiricism. It automatically assumes that "practical value" is useful to everyone universally, i.e. or "society as a whole". That it is not useful pre-supposes a definite system which allows one to designate something as useful or not. But where is the point of reference? In other words, not useful to who? There is no "objective" drive to "understand our existence" as you put it, not independently of the fact that our existence is divided into several antagonisms.

Exploring the world, and "our own existence" is not only ambiguous, it pre-supposes coordinates of importance and relevance that are solely ideological.


I have no idea what this means.


In other words, are we supposed to care about what's popular among academics for the sake of itself? Should we care that most "experts" agree with you?

[Invader Zim]

The point is t =hat any defense of Butler has nothing to do with her credibility or standing among academics, or indeed whether or not she is one herself.

Touché. What she said might be correct and useful on its own terms, rather than the terms upon which Butler wrote it. That's true. Sadly, it isn't.

Her work is a mixture of derivative ideas wrapped as new and often indecipherable prose - and that Bodies That Matter is no different. I'm sorry, but if its possible to get past cultural influences on how we think about anything or conceive of anything at all, then what's the point in thinking about anything or searching for any kind of truth? Her's is the classic problem with all things pomo, nothing can be read with any hope of acheiving anything approaching truth. Sorry, but no.

[Rafiq]

Because the question of truth is a practical question, not one reserved for the neutral and curious spectator.

[L.A.P.]

And to be clear, regarding Butler, I fully identify with Zizek's criticism of her. Namely, not so much her notion of gender, but its intertwined relationship with her solution to it is fully a consumerist ideology, i.e. to express yourself in such a way that cannot be systematized by any ruling ideological designation of gender, to break the binary logic of sexuality, etc.

There is nothing here which is incompatible with ruling consumerist ideology, nothing particularly radical about it.

Rafiq, this solution you're referring to is 'resignification', and it was a notion proffered in her early work. Butler has since distanced herself from this notion in light of criticisms from other feminists, particularly Seyla Benhabib and Nancy Fraser. "Beside Oneself: On the Limits of Sexual Autonomy" is a good example of this turn away from 'resignification', and towards what she deems an 'ethics of co-habitation'.

Anyways, since that turn, Butler has p. much abandoned the structural-linguistic prose prevalent in post-structuralist works, and has taken more of an interest in humanism and Jewish philosophy.