Archive for the ‘sexism’ Category
more on ‘evolutionary psychology’, humans and bonobos
bonobo kids have plenty of baby-sitters
So Ryan Ellsworth’s attempt to dismiss the possibility that bonobos can serve as any kind of model for sexual and political behaviour in humans has obviously got my dander up, as this is my third post on the matter, and it has renewed my interest in searching for the origins of patriarchy, and in how we can reduce patriarchal attitudes, at least in the WEIRD world – and especially among the soi-disant intelligentsia.
One important resource I’ll be relying on in this exploration is Angela Saini’s The patriarchs: how men came to rule, but I’ll start again with Ellsworth’s critique of Block, and in effect others who advocate ‘free love’ and other such fantasies through ‘misinterpreting’ bonobo culture, as well as advocating that we [i.e. women] ‘release our inner bonobo’. Of course there seems to be some naïveté in Block’s praise of bonobos, which I find quite forgivable, unlike Ellsworth:
It is egregiously naïve to conclude that, “bonobos reveal that an incredible range of sexual diversity is normal for animals like us” (p. 99, emphasis in original).
The fact is that humans do engage in an incredible range of sexual diversity – though not all at the same time. On the other hand, humans, especially under patriarchal religion over the last few millennia, have sought to stifle sexual diversity with a vengeance, especially among women. And considering that writing to any copious degree has only existed for a few millennia, our sexual practices, dating back to our primate ancestors, are something of a black box – though orgiastic practices get a mention here and there.
Of course one of the obvious barriers to ‘sexual licence’ in humans is clothing – making ourselves ‘decent’, which we learn in childhood, becoming early aware that there are parts of our bodies that it would shock others to see. But would we be shocked if we weren’t told, virtually from birth, that we should be shocked? If we were taught that clothes were solely for decoration and warmth, and were entirely optional? And when did this clothing business start? We can give some sort of vague starting date – say 100,000 years ago – but we also know that Australian Aborigines were shamelessly wearing nothing, or nothing much, when we started wiping them out with guns and germs a little over 200 years ago. So, it was culture wot done it. There seem to have been a mixture of factors – to wrap someone in clothing makes them unavailable to the general public, in sexual terms, and it also becomes a form of decoration, conveying status, or clubbish belonging – business suits, cycling togs, pyjamas (well, maybe not) and haute couture, whatever that may be.
So in modern Australia Aboriginal people will be arrested for indecent exposure if they were wear nothing but strings around the waist for carrying dilly bags and such. This reminds me of an Aboriginal man, of impressive physique, who used to walk up and down a busy street near my home wearing nothing but the skimpiest of budgie smugglers – a fascinating clash of manliness and cultural cringe, or something like that.
So, clothing – the fact and the concept – has played a major inhibiting role. There’s also monogamy, which, for most of its history has been about male ownership of females – though, in some societies the very upper classes got away with polygyny, as described in Joseph Henrich’s The WEIRDest people in the world, and also in Korean historical dramas (though they present a rather tame version for modern susceptibilities).
Ellsworth claims that “Sex differences in promiscuous impulses are minimized in Block’s account”, which is an odd remark, because in order to know whether such sex differences are minimised, or maximised, we need to know what they are. And surely this is more an individual thing than a sex/gender thing. But clearly, Ellsworth is claiming that he knows. It’s funny that, just yesterday, I received a ‘shorts’ video on my feed – presumably ‘shorts’ being a rival to ‘tik-tok’, in which a young woman was admitted to hospital after having sex with 500+ men in one day. According to the video it was all her idea, but she reflected that it was probably ‘a bit much’, as she’d never had sex with more than 29 men in one day before – or was it 59, I’m not sure, and these ‘shorts’ videos disappear as suddenly as they arrive – one day of fame at most. And of course, whether this was promiscuity or an obsession with breaking records is unclear. Anyway, here’s more from Ellsworth, and I’ll make it the last:
Block refers to babies to care for, and reputations to protect, but does not seems to understand the significance of these two things for understanding human sex differences in sexual desire. Perhaps she privately does, but to acknowledge the significance of these forces on the evolution of human sexuality would severely compromise her arguments, as it demands recognition of the fact that women are not expected to have desires for sexual variety and quantity identical to men.
I may have commented on these remarks before, but they’re worth revisiting. Caring for her baby is a mother’s role, but assistance in this task is varied depending on culture. Bonobo females help with birth, supporting both mothers and infants in the post-partum period. Bonobo males also play with and support young infants. The degree to which humans do this is dependent on culture, not to mention class, with wet-nurses and such. As described in previous posts, the pressure in patriarchal societies on women’s sexual behaviour, regardless of their proclivities, has been enormous and often life-threatening. This is all about culture, not evolution in the Darwinian sense.
The sexism in Ellsworth’s paper is obvious to me, and I assume, or hope, that others have pointed this out before me, as it was published back in 2015. Then again, evolutionary psychology doesn’t have a great reputation, so maybe it’s best ignored. Meanwhile, Angela Saini’s work is much more recent and much more interesting, so that will be my focus in the immediate future.
References
Angela Saini, The Patriarchs: how men came to rule, 2023
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/147470491501300115
Joseph Henrich, The WEIRDest people in the world: how the west became psychologically peculiar and particularly prosperous, 2020
Lies, lies, lies and democracy
what the….?
Imagine a political situation in which only women are allowed to vie for elected positions in government, whether local, state or federal. Further than that, only females over the age of eighteen are permitted to vote for these women. Certainly a delightful futuristic dream, IMHO. Surely the best form of democracy ever developed.
Some would say, however, that such a system is not democratic. And yet, I regularly read about the ancient Athenians as the ‘inventors of democracy’, and US political pundits and historians continually claim that the USA is the first modern democracy. These porkies are so unpalatable, I really should turn vegetarian.
So let’s face the facts (once again, for I’ve been here more than once before). In ancient Athens, only a small percentage of the male population had any say in the city-state’s government, as was also the case during the Roman republic, as Livy’s History of Rome relates.
The word demos means people, or the commonalty of a state. Let there be no mistake. And women are also people, if I’m not mistaken. It therefore follows, as night follows day, that no political system is democratic that does not permit women to be candidates for elected office, or to vote for candidates. Personally, though, I’d accept a political system that prohibits men from participating, as a very worthwhile experiment.
But let’s look at some facts. The USA held its first national election from December 1788 to January 1789. At the time, the new nation consisted of only 13 states, mostly hugging the Atlantic coast. I won’t get into the complex issue of state laws here, I’ll just focus on the federal scene. Only a small proportion of the adult male population was eligible to vote in 1788-9, and of course voting has never been mandatory in the US, so the number of votes counted amounted to a few tens of thousands out of a population of some three million (over half a million of whom were slaves).
But even without considering the missing female vote (which completely disqualifies the vote as democratic), the US claims about being the first modern democratic nation are complete bullshit. Modern democracy has proceeded in a series of baby steps, a step-wise widening of the franchise since Magna Carta in 1215, and did not become complete – if it ever really has – with the vote for women, native populations and ethnic minorities in the 20th century. Also, every vote must have an equal value – no gerrymandering, no ‘electoral colleges’ or any other processes which devalue the vote for some compared to others.
So, just on the women’s vote alone, leaving all the other vital issues aside, New Zealand was the first in 1893, but perversely, that nation didn’t allow women to become candidates until 1919. South Australia, where I live, was the first state anywhere in the world to give women the vote and the right to stand for election, in 1895. Australia changed its laws to allow women to vote and to stand for election in 1902, the first nation in the world to do so. However, not all women were included – indigenous women (and of course men) did not have that right until the 1960s. In fact the more we look at the history of women’s suffrage (and suffrage in general), the more complicated it becomes. The word ‘suffrage’ itself sounds odd, but etymologically it has nothing to do with suffering (never mind Olympe de Gouges). It goes back to Latin, suffragium, meaning something like a voting tablet but also the right to use it. Wikipedia is again magnificently comprehensive on the topic, letting us know that universal suffrage was experimented with in the Corsican Republic of 1755-69 and the Paris Commune of 1871. The French Jacobin constitution of 1793 sought to enact universal male suffrage (never mind Olympe de Gouges, encore) but it was scuttled in all the turbulence.
But let me return to the USA and its hollow claims. Women were given the vote there in 1920, two years after its neighbour, Canada. Voting rights for native Americans have been complexified by, for example, claims that they have their own ‘nations’ and governing systems, and by claims that their rights should be determined on a state-by-state basis, but the landmark federal legislation known as the 1965 Voting Rights Act sought to ‘prohibit racial discrimination in voting’, theoretically clearing the way for native and African Americans to vote. Of course, such racial discrimination has continued, as well as attempts, some successful, to water down the Act’s provisions, but generally it is regarded as the most successful piece of anti-discrimination legislation in US history. Even so, conservative states have constantly battled to restrict voting by minorities. So democracy in the USA has long been tenuous and incomplete, as it still is, with gerrymandering, suppression and the infamous electoral college.
Another bugbear I have with the good ole USA though, and I’ve written about it before, is their breast-beating about being the first modern democracy and their lies about gaining their freedom from ‘the British king’, as if poor sickly old George III was ruling the Old Dart and its colonies with an iron fist. In fact he was non compos mentis during the American Revolutionary War and in any case Britain was then governed by the Tory Party under Lord North, their Prime Minister, and had been a constitutional monarchy, with a Bill of Rights and a parliament, since 1689. Of course the franchise was minuscule, much like that at the ascension of George Washington a century later. Baby steps.
And then there is the lie at the very beginning of their revered Constitution. ‘We the People’ was patently dishonest – they should have written ‘We the Men’…
Democracy – a much abused term. And then came Trump…
References
https://academic.oup.com/book/6972/chapter-abstract/151255043?redirectedFrom=fulltext
https://www.senate.gov/about/origins-foundations/senate-and-constitution/constitution.htm
Olympe de Gouges, The declaration of the rights of woman, 1791
on certain ejected fluids
Some years ago I read Bonk: the curious coupling of sex and science, by the popular science writer Mary Roach, having read one of her previous books (Stiff – and no, it wasn’t because I thought it’d be about sex), and of course I found it compelling, but I recall being disappointed at the lack of information in some areas, one of which has come back to me thanks to a YouTube video recently watched. The colloquial term is ‘squirting’, sometimes also referred to as female ejaculation. What’s that about, and is it just urine, with a few womanly additives? That’s what I want to explore today.
So according to popular YouTuber Rena Malik MD, squirting is ‘the emission of fluid from the urethra, during sexual arousal or orgasm, that occurs in some women’. The urethra (I’m writing as a none too sexually experienced male here) is the tube through which urine from the bladder leaves the body, and it ranges in length from about 3.8cm in women to about 20cm in men, and most of that male length is external, and is sometimes called the penis. Malik also educates me about the Skene’s gland. These glands are located ‘around and beneath the urethra and are homologous to the male prostate gland’, so these different glands start to emerge in embryonic development. Again according to Malik ‘the theory is that during sexual arousal these Skene’s glands fill with fluid, then during orgasm the pelvic floor muscles contract, putting pressure on the spongy tissues of the urethra’, causing fluid to be ejected. The question again is, what precisely does this fluid consist of? And one ‘issue’, if you can call it that, is that if it’s just pee, with a few additives, why don’t men pee when their urethra/penis is aroused or manipulated? And we must thank the universe that they don’t.
There appears to be more mystery around these matters than there should be, given their centrality to a sexually satisfying and mind-expanding life. So what do we know?
This, I’m finding, isn’t an easy topic to research. I mentioned female ejaculation, which Malik describes as something quite separate from squirting, while others seem to disagree. A 2015 paper, ‘Nature and origin of “squirting” in female sexuality’, the abstract of which is posted on PubMed, concludes with this:
The present data based on ultrasonographic bladder monitoring and biochemical analyses indicate that squirting is essentially the involuntary emission of urine during sexual activity, although a marginal contribution of prostatic secretions to the emitted fluid often exists.
This accords with my guess, and it also, perhaps, provides a clue to why it’s an exclusively female experience. And here I have to admit that my research comes from viewing Japanese sex videos, in which women are induced to squirt by manual manipulation, often vigorous, of the upper wall of the vagina, near where both the clitoris and the urethral opening sit. It’s not hard to imagine that such vigorous pressure, on both the urethra and the clitoris, by a male or female sex performer with savour faire, can produce the required result. And clearly, males just aren’t anatomically open to such an experience. And of course it doesn’t always require manual manipulation, as my scientific researches have found. Some women are able to squirt through standard sexual intercourse, or by the use of a vibrator or some such device. And presumably some are not. After all, every set of female and male genitalia is as anatomically unique as is every human face. We’re just not looking closely enough!
Now, in inquiring into this, I’ve found commentators claiming that ‘it’s definitely not urine’. They must surely be going not by the look of the fluid – it certainly looks like pee – but by smell and, dare I say, taste. I’ve never tried the taste test myself, and I must admit to being slightly averse to sniffing pee, but I do know that pee can come in slightly different colours and this is obviously due to variations in its chemical composition due to diet, illness and the like. And it would seem obvious to me that ‘squirt’ varies similarly, but also due to the ‘marginal contribution of prostatic secretions’ above-mentioned.
So, are squirting and female ejaculation the same things? Off the top of my head I would say it’s just semantics. An ejaculate (noun) is, arguably, something you ejaculate (verb). It could be vomit, or blood, or, common amongst dictatorial types, verbal diarrhoea. And so I disagree with Dr Malik when she says that ‘ejaculation and squirting are two different things’, though I think she’s trying to make the distinction between what women sometimes release during sex/masturbation, and the semen released by men. In fact she’s fallen for the patriarchal myth, or just the patriarchal way of putting things, that only males ejaculate. Then again, maybe it’s me that’s trying to preserve the term in its broadest sense. Most dictionaries define ejaculation specifically in terms of semen, and describe its broader use as ‘dated’. So I don’t know if I’m an old fuddy-duddy or a post-modern feminist seeking renovation of a patriarchalised term. Enfin, je m’en fous de tout ça!
One more point. It’s often claimed that squirting is a more or less involuntary occurrence. It’s said to happen unexpectedly, causing a degree of shock and embarrassment. Women just can’t control themselves, as we all know, while men ejaculate by means of freely-willed effort. It almost takes us back to the days of Aristotle – men are the seed-bearers, women the mere receptacle. It’s enough to make me piss myself laughing.
All in all this is a most stimulating topic. I might try to get a handle on the g-spot next, so to speak.
Reference
Mary Roach, Bonk: the curious coupling of sex and science, 2008
Stephen Jay Gould, ‘Male nipples and clitoral ripples’, in Bully for brontosaurus, 1991
a century’s creeping progress towards a bonobo humanity? – 1: this unsporting life
Having read, in Virginia Woolf’s A room of one’s own, about women and football, of all things, to the effect that women were no more allowed to play football (meaning soccer) than they were allowed to obtain a decent education, and given that Woolf’s lectures are almost a century old, it might be interesting to note the differences in women’s opportunities, and achievements, in sport but also in science, academia, business and politics, in the WEIRD world in particular (since that’s also my world), over the past 100 years or so.
Soccer first – my favourite sport. By the 1920s it was very much international (the first World Cup was in 1930, but soccer was an official Olympic sport from 1920), but of course the idea of women playing it at a serious level was barely conceivable. Fifty years on, in the 70s, it was a different story. At the beginning of that decade the first unofficial women’s world cup tournament was held in Italy, but it took another 25 years for FIFA to stage the first official tourney. The most recent one was held in 2023 here in Australia, and New Zealand, and was hailed as the biggest and best yet. Women’s soccer clearly has a bright future, though it’s very much worth noting that the total prize money pool for the 2018 FIFA World Cup was $400 million, compared to that for the women in 2019, a ‘mere’ $30 million. Of course these are eye-watering figures, but there’s obviously no excuse for awarding the men 13 times more than the women. I don’t have figures for the most recent tournaments (2022 and 2023), but I suspect the gap has narrowed a bit more, given how vocal a lot of female players and officials have been about the matter.
The one obvious sport, to me, in which women have had, historically, as much of a profile, or almost as much, as men, is tennis. Which raises a question which came to me even in my early youth – why are women’s professional tennis matches best of three sets when men’s are best of five? Does it have to do with women’s physical stamina being measurable at three compared to men’s five? Is the women’s marathon distance measured at three fifths that of men? Of course, the answer is the obvious one – women were traditionally considered to have less stamina, along with all their other limitations vis-à-vis men. But then there’s this:
From 1891 to 1901, women played best-of-five matches in the finals of the US National Championships, the predecessor for what is now known as the US Open. A lot of those finals went to five sets, but the United States National Lawn Tennis Association Council reduced the format to best-of-three sets, thinking five sets would be too strenuous a task for women.
The same site points out that this is a good excuse for awarding less prize money to women than to men, but currently the prize money for the Australian open is equal for men and women, as has been the case since 2001. Wimbledon and the French Open have had equal prize-money only since 2007, but the US Open was by a long way the first, in 1973.
So if equal pay is now the standard in elite tennis, what about equal work? It’s easy to see that in making big tournaments best of three for women, tournament organisers (and they’re apparently to blame for maintaining this format, not the players) have made a rod for women’s backs. Their excuse, apparently, is that having best of five matches for women too would be a scheduling nightmare. Just not enough hours in the day… So why not make the men’s matches best of three as well? Problem sorted? Ummm. Presumably they’ve found, or assumed, that the men’s games are a bigger drawcard, and better suited to longer, gladiatorial-style combat? It’s, mucho macho, a puzzlement.
Okay so what about golf, another internationally-watched sport with oodles of thrills and spills, and skills-per-gender equally celebrated. I won’t go into mixed play just as I haven’t mentioned mixed doubles in tennis, but of course it’s worth mentioning that in both sports the equipment used differs along gender lines, though there is individual variation too. Women in general have less upper-body strength and will tend to use lighter clubs (though with racquets there are likely complex aerodynamics involved which I won’t explore).
I’ve found a useful article, ‘How big is golf’s gender pay gap?’ on a golfing website (linked below) which unfortunately is undated (a constant source of irritation for me), but the mention of ‘the Rio Olympics this year’ dates it to 2020. Here’s a quote:
Golf has been a slow mover in the gender equality stakes, as only a year and a half ago, the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews issued their first women’s memberships. As the home of golf, St Andrews are to lead by example. But what example does it set for the next generation? And the vast gender pay gap is unavoidable, as our research shows professional male golfers can expect to earn 83% more in winnings this year than the next winner on the female tour. They play the same game, to the same level, the only difference is one chromosome, yet their trophies and achievements are worth less.
It’s a bit confusing – does it mean St Andrews should lead by example? It’s something of a personal issue for me as my mother’s family are from Fife and my brother was born in St Andrews, and I was born just across the Tay, in Dundee. Anyhoo, to claim that ‘the vast gender pay gap is unavoidable’ makes no sense. And the rest of this short article doesn’t provide any answers, or confidence in the future. It does point out that equal pay for women, in standard employment, has been achieved in many countries (though equal pay is only a part of the battle given that women alone are the child-bearers, and need to have employment scenarios that can accommodate this), so why such disparities in elite sport? The only answer I can think of is patriarchal tradition. As with may other ‘sports of kings’, golfing history is rooted in sexism (and racism). The US Masters is played every year at Augusta, Georgia, where women were first allowed to become members in 2012. The first section of a female tournament played on the Augusta course was in 2019! So much for the self-proclaimed land of freedom and opportunity. But then, Georgia is so far from New York that to call that country ‘the United States’ is a bit of a joke, at least to us outsiders.
So that’s enough of sport, or the ‘fun’ side of life, for now. I’ll look at other aspects of inequality – and matriarchal improvements – in future posts.
References
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/04/08/masters-tradition-is-rooted-racism-sexism/
a bonobo world 60?: sex, gender and other species
matriarchs in a complex society
Jacinta: So we need to talk about sex. Though of course bonobos never talk about it.
Canto: Yes, bonobos appear to have sex to calm each other down, and perhaps just for fun or because they’re bored.
Jacinta: I prefer to read books. It’s all about sublimation, they say.
Canto: Ahh sublimation. We had a lot of Freudian stuff around the house when I was a lad. So eros and thanatos, the superego and the id, polymorphous perversity and the Oedipus complex, these were some of the first smart-alecky terms I ever learned. And sublimation was a big favourite. The idea that all our creative and scientific activities were just a way of channelling or subverting the massive force of our sex drive seemed perfectly coherent to a horny teenager. I thought I’d found the secret of life – just stop channelling and subverting, get our perversity back to being unimorphous, and the life of sexual bliss would be ours.
Jacinta: Yeah – I don’t know where to begin. Humans have created effective theories about the universe, about species diversity, about nanoscale quantum behaviour and whatnot – I mean, would we ever have developed the means to have this conversation if we’d never managed to separate our brains from our genitals?
Canto: Okay, back to bonobos. Of course sex doesn’t completely dominate their lives, but what makes them so attractive to many of is the fact that they’re so relaxed about it. I blame religion.
Jacinta: Hmmm, but it’s entirely possible to have a religion that’s pretty relaxed about sex.
Canto: Okay, I blame those religions that are not relaxed about sex – that’s to say, most religions that have dominated our species, at least recently.
Jacinta: Well, my question is, can we as a species ever evolve to be as relaxed about sex as bonobos, without giving up on fully understanding or exploring life, the universe and everything?
Canto: Ah but, though it might be true that we are but one species, we’re tremendously diverse. There are doubtless many individual humans that are just as relaxed and free about sex as bonobos, and even the odd sub-culture that takes sex far further than any bonobo ever would.
Jacinta: Well, no doubt, but they tend to be underground – in dungeons with leather, chains and whips. Weekend fun, and then back to the office on Monday. We tend to cut sexual play off from the rest of our activities, if we engage in it at all. That’s not the bonobo way.
Canto: Well, even bonobos probably recognise there’s a time for every purpose, under heaven. But apart from the problems of sex in the workplace and the school playground, there’s also the interesting question of the relationship between bonobo sexual activity and the prominent role of females. Presumably that’s not coincidental. Do you think our sexual sides will get more airplay with the coming matriarchy?
Jacinta: Well, male societies seem to be more aggressively controlling. And more hierarchical. Controlling the females would’ve been a priority from the start. Making them feel inferior and dirty during menses, taking advantage of their reduced capacity during late pregnancy and the postpartum period, when they’d be reduced to ‘menial chores’, which would gradually – since they performed them so well – be seen as the chores they were designed for. And so the division of labour would result in more hierarchy.
Canto: And with bonobos female supremacy, if that’s not too strong a word, seems to have been the result of female-female bonding. Hard to know how that got started, but I imagine that the move, in humans, to separate unit housing and nuclear families would’ve militated against such bonding. And with bonobo promiscuity, males wouldn’t know which children were theirs, if any. One of the major purposes of human monogamy, I presume, would be to ensure that males would know who their children were, for patrilineal purposes, among others.
Jacinta: Yes, and certainly monogamy is still very much the norm, though it has become slightly less patriarchal in the wealthier economies. I do think the key to women getting on top is sisterhood, but not an exclusive sisterhood. We need to encourage men to realise that it’s in their interest to join us, and do what we tell them to do. But really we’ve got a long way to go. Men have been dominant for a very long time, and they still are.
Canto: There’s also the blowback from feminism. Men with guns, proud boys, oath keepers and shitkickers. And men who have been ‘stiffed’, according to the book by Susan Faludi.
Jacinta: Yes, men who feel their purpose in life has been shattered because their kids’ school principal is a woman. It depresses me to think about the enormity of the challenge, when female leadership seems so obviously superior by and large, and yet this superiority is so regularly denied.
Canto: This is an interesting question. Women generally talk about gender equality, while men – some men – worry about women taking over, as if we’re anywhere near that happening. But actually gender equality isn’t a thing among our primate cousins – that’s to say, chimps, bonobos, gorillas, orang-utangs and gibbons. They’re either female-dominant, like bonobos, or male-dominant, like more or less all the rest. And if you look at the multifarious human cultures, its probably the same thing – 99% patriarchal, 1% matriarchal, 0% gender-equal. It’s a bit like a see-saw, the guys at each end are virtually never exactly the same weight, so the see-saw has almost zero chance of being equally balanced.
Jacinta: So, might as well be honest and go for female supremacy. But maybe we should look more closely at your claim, and we don’t have to limit ourselves to primate examples. Take dolphins, for example. We’ve had huge difficulties in studying them, gender-wise, because it’s so hard to tell the sexes apart. All they’ve been able to find is that male dolphins tend to range more widely from the pod than females, which doesn’t appear to say anything about dominance.
Canto: Hmmm. Isn’t that the same with cats – I mean the domesticated types? The males range more widely at night, presumably for sexual purposes.
Jacinta: Males chase, females choose? It’s a thought. Anyway, elephants are essentially matriarchal, and as to birds, some species of which are now regarded as having smarts that are up there with the smartest monkeys, many of them seem to fit the bill for gender equality, but they’re maybe too far removed from us to provide us with too much guidance.
Canto: Well, hang on a minute. Corvids are a super-social lot, with a lot of extended family support in bringing up chicks, warning of danger and so on.
Jacinta: Yes but elephants are at least mammals, and they also live in extended families, and what with the obesity epidemic, we’re beginning to look more like them.
Canto: Okay, so next time we’ll talk about gender roles in other species, particularly primates, at least for starters. That’ll allow us to avoid the sticky subject of sex for a while longer.
References
https://www.simplypsychology.org/Sigmund-Freud.html
9 of the Biggest Lies Christianity Tells Us About Sex and Marriage
Susan Faludi, Stiffed: The betrayal of the modern man, 1999
https://phys.org/news/2016-06-world-dolphin-gender.html
https://www.elephantvoices.org/elephant-sense-a-sociality-4/elephants-are-socially-complex.html
a bonobo world: the thirty percent rule
the parliamentary glass ceiling?
Canto: We talked about the thirty percent rule before. So where did it come from and what does it signify?
Jacinta: Well that’s very much worth exploring, because if it’s true that a 30% ‘infiltration’ of women into various social organisations – such as business corporations, governments, political parties, law firms, military organisations, NGOs, whatever – improves the efficacy of those organisations, then what about a 40% infiltration – or 60%, or 80%?
Canto: Or total control? The ‘males as pets or playthings’ argument comes up again.
Jacinta: So yes, before we go there – and I do think it’s a fun place to go – let’s look at the origins of the 30% rule, or the 30% aspiration, or whatever. The UN’s Fourth World Conference on Women, held in Beijing in 1995 was considered, by some, as a major step forward, at least theoretically. It developed, and I quote, ‘strategic objectives and actions for the advancement of women and the achievement of gender equality in 12 critical areas of concern’, one of which was ‘women in power and decision-making’. In that section, I found this passage:
Despite the widespread movement towards democratization in most countries, women are largely underrepresented at most levels of government, especially in ministerial and other executive bodies, and have made little progress in attaining political power in legislative bodies or in achieving the target endorsed by the Economic and Social Council of having 30 per cent women in positions at decision-making levels by 1995. Globally, only 10 per cent of the members of legislative bodies and a lower percentage of ministerial positions are now held by women. Indeed, some countries, including those that are undergoing fundamental political, economic and social changes, have seen a significant decrease in the number of women represented in legislative bodies.
The section went on to expand on the need for female decision-making input in ‘art, culture, sports, the media, education, religion and the law’…
Canto: So this 30% target goes back even before the Beijing Conference. Fat chance of achieving it by 1995!
Jacinta: It’s a bit ironic that this conference was held in China, where women are supposed to hold up half the sky. You could hardly find a nation more male-dominated in its leadership. They’ve virtually outlawed feminism there, as yet another decadent western thing.
Canto: So, looking at this document, it includes an action plan for governments, political parties and others, including women’s organisations, NGOs and even the UN itself, but it doesn’t present any argument for this 30% target. Presumably they feel the argument is self-evident.
Jacinta: Interestingly, in the UN section, they’ve made the demands upon themselves even more stringent: ‘monitor progress towards achieving the Secretary-General’s target of having women hold 50 per cent of managerial and decision-making positions by the year 2000’.
Canto: Haha, I wonder how that went? No wonder many people don’t take the UN seriously.
Jacinta: Well, maybe there’s nothing wrong in aiming high. Aiming low certainly won’t get you there. Anyway, there’s a 2015 update on women in power and decision-making, which finds slight improvements in political power positions, very unevenly distributed among nations, and there are problems with obtaining data in other decision-making fields. In short, creeping progress in empowerment.
Canto: What’s interesting, though, is the argument that having a higher percentage of women in decision-making is a good thing due to basic fairness – women being 51% of the population – but because women are somehow better.
Jacinta: Well I haven’t found that argument in the UN documents (though I haven’t looked too thoroughly), but I must say it’s an argument that I like to put to anyone who’ll listen, even though I’m not too sure I believe in it myself. And when I do, I get a fair amount of pushback, as the Yanks say, from men and women.
Canto: Well I do believe in it, because bonobos. They’re an example of a female-dominated culture of advanced apes, after all. And they’re sexy, if somewhat more hirsute than I’d prefer.
Jacinta: Yes – I’m not quite sure why I’m not so sure. I think maybe it’s just the blowback I get – though it’s often anecdotal, some story about some lousy female boss. A recent article in Forbes (authored by a male) has this to say:
Over the past decades, scientific studies have consistently shown that on most of the key traits that make leaders more effective, women tend to outperform men. For example, humility, self-awareness, self-control, moral sensitivity, social skills, emotional intelligence, kindness, a prosocial and moral orientation, are all more likely to be found in women than men.
Check the links for evidence. He goes on to list the ‘dark side personality traits’ which are more common in men: aggression (often unprovoked), narcissism, psychopathy, Machiavellianism – see the recent global financial crisis, the current pandemic and white collar crime…
Canto: And they’re the cause of most road fatalities and injuries, by a factor of almost 2 to 1, on a per capita basis. Mostly due to the 17-25 age group, crazy aggression and risk-taking, like elephants in musth.
Jacinta: Yes, and I’ve met men who seriously think women shouldn’t be allowed to drive. Moslem men actually, presumably brainwashed. And no doubt intent on brainwashing their kids. Anyway good on the UN for pushing this issue, and surely the success of women leaders in Germany, Taiwan, New Zealand, Finland and elsewhere, and the absolutely disastrous leadership of so many men during this pandemic – much of it yet to be properly investigated and assessed – will spur us on to more rapid change in the leadership field.
References and links
https://www.unwomen.org/en/how-we-work/intergovernmental-support/world-conferences-on-women
https://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/beijing/platform/decision.htm
Trump’s downfall: more palaver
dream, dream, dream
As I’ve often said, I’m lazily distracting myself by watching Trump’s downfall and commenting on it. I don’t seem to have the staying power at present to write anything too sciencey, and the Trump disaster is easy to attend to, though I must say I mute the TV or youtube every time the Trump comes on (isn’t it funny how the name itself smacks of the con man). I much prefer hearing about him second-hand. Again, though, I must say my prediction of him being out by the end of the year looks more of a dead cert than ever. It’s just a matter of the Mueller team having too much on their plates to digest. It’s likely they won’t have finished their meal by year’s end. But Trump may well have been spat out and into gaol by then. It depends of course on how Mueller organises his indictments – bottom up or top down. It could also be a bit of both.
But Trump is America’s tragedy. What happens, after all, once he and his family are ousted? The Presidency itself, the institution, will be seriously damaged. I’m sure the nation will manage to limp along until 2020, and a likely big turnaround in the mid-terms will largely put the nation’s affairs in safer hands, but new, tighter laws will have to be enacted, re nepotism, emoluments, financial disclosure, vetting of candidates for office, inter alia. These are essential to make the USA safe, and to allow it to be taken seriously again on the global stage.
Okay enough of the high-minded lecturing, let’s get down to wallowing in the grubby details. Everybody’s waiting for the next indictment or subpoena from the enquiry. Kushner? Trump Jr? Erik Prince? Roger Stone? Take your pick from these and a host of others. And what about this Stormy Daniels affair, another follow-the-money rib-tickler? Where do I begin?
A shady Lebanese-American wannabe mover-and-shaker, George Nader, has been questioned by the Mueller team, presumably primarily about a meeting in the Seychelles involving himself, an even shadier mover-and-shaker Erik Prince (an advisor to and supporter of Trump), and UAE diplomats with financial ties to Russia. There was apparently a dodgy Russian banker, Kirill Dmitriev, at the meeting as well. There’s little doubt that getting Prince to testify will reveal more dirt, but the team will have to make sure they know everything before asking the questions. I just wish I could listen in on what they do know.
Meanwhile there’s a special election in Pennsylvania and Trump has been there big-noting himself and insulting opponents, mostly women. He’s even promoted the idea of executing drug-dealers, because he’s a great admirer of Phillipines dictator Duterte. I’m currently reading Chasing the scream, a fast-paced narrative and denunciation of the disastrous war on drugs, but of course Trump doesn’t read, and certainly doesn’t care. He just likes the idea of killing people. I’m waiting for the result of this election, waiting for the next subpoena, the next indictment, waiting waiting…
I’m also hoping that women will play a major role in Trump’s downfall. I’m a little wary of the Me Too movement, having been falsely accused myself. True, I wasn’t accused by a woman, but it has taught me very effectively that accusations can be easily made, and with devastating consequences. But what the movement highlights is that, because of power imbalance, men have been treating women too badly for too long, and women are fighting back. It’s interesting to note that the Politico article just linked to cited recent research which ‘found women were nearly twice as likely as men to be deterred from running for office because of potentially having to engage in a negative campaign’. Such campaigns are what so many men like Trump choose naturally as their MO. And here’s another interesting quote, with an Australian theme:
In 2016, the Guardian published an analysis that found Hillary Clinton received abusive tweets at almost twice the rate of her Democratic primary opponent Bernie Sanders, while former Australian prime minister Julia Gillard, too, received about twice as much abuse as her male challenger, Kevin Rudd.
Actually, Rudd and Gillard belonged to the same party, but it’s probably right to describe them as opponents.
So I’m hoping that after the carnage of this Presidency, with Trump and his family in jail and his successor discredited, that the President after 2020 will be a woman. Obviously she will be a Democrat.
Elizabeth Warren has struck me as very impressive, from my still fairly minimal observations of her – a leftish liberal more palatable to the squeamish Americans than Sanders. After some more research I may write a piece about her. I certainly wouldn’t want any ‘celebrity’ female candidates running for office, and I suspect Hillary Clinton has done her dash.
As I slowly write, things keep happening. Rex Tillerson has been sacked. Silly man, he should’ve resigned long ago. I’ve had a bit of a fantasy in which all the top White House staffers and Trump appointees get together, decide enough is enough, and stage a mass resignation. It would actually be better for them – instead of being stuck in utterly thankless jobs, they’d come out of it as instantly employable for having the guts to take a stand. But of course, this would take organisation and co-ordination, and we’ve seen no evidence of that in this administration.
Finally, Putin has attempted to murder another Russian expatriate, along with his daughter. Many others have been poisoned too. Trump has belatedly come out in support of the British government’s rather tepid statement that Russia is ‘highly likely’ to be behind the nerve agent attack – though the whole statement is worth reading. Putin’s minions are saying that given Putin’s recent announcement that they’ve created some kind of super-weapon, it’s dangerous to accuse Russia of wrong-doing. To me, this is tantamount to an admission of guilt, and fairly solid proof of Monsieur Putain’s mafioso scumbag credentials. How to deal with this? Internationally and with unassailable solidarity. Russia has already been brought to its knees by Putin’s thievery, but we need to apply more pressure and provide as much support as we can to the millions of Russians who want to be freed of this scumbag so they can enter the adult world.
I’m a little disappointed that the Trump is still holding good at 40%, which should ensure he doesn’t get re-elected (yes yes, out of office by year’s end), it seems that only more indictments of the inner circle will drop him down below 35. Not sure if I mentioned this before, but I’m reading Chasing the scream, the racy but horrifyingly tragic bestseller by Johann Hari about the spectacularly disastrous ‘war on drugs’ in the USA and Mexico (disastrously forced on it by the US). The Trump recently threw red meat to his base by promoting the idea of execution for drug dealers (in the campaign for the Pennsylvania by-election, won by the Dems, haha), another know-nothing piece of squawking from someone who knows nothing but the idea of crushing, stamping, beating. It’s Mussolini without the hanging – yet.
