Saturday, September 27, 2014

The Male-Female Separation Hangover

It's fairly common for me to read something on a topic I think I know pretty well but come away with an improved view. This is usually not because of any new information--although that does happen--but because the tone and way the words are strung together are fresh. That is happening again as I'm reading Before the Dawn by Nicholas Wade, a book on what we know about the ancestors to humans.

In this case, my improved view has to do with the male-female relationship structure. The book touches on the fact that males and females generally interact with each other differently than with each other, which is, of course, no surprise. But Wade expresses this obvious fact in a way that stresses the independent nature of males and females as separate groups among our pre-homo sapien ancestors. Individual males and females generally only came together for mating purposes and generally interacted little otherwise. (They probably came together as groups for other purposes such as eating, migration and protection from enemies, but these were exceptions to separate group lives.) It is also thought that males and females had separate power structures and rules of behavior. What each group did on a daily basis was also different. When it came to day-to-day life, it's as if they weren't members of the same species at all. They lived together in the same band or group, but each was almost an autonomous subgroup. The males were dominant, but the power didn't need to be exercised very often when it came to things other than sexual activity.

This did change, of course, and continues to change today. But what this emphasis has me thinking about is any lingering effects on our modern behavior. If this notion about the behavior of our distant relatives is true, can we still see its remnants in ourselves? I think the answer is yes.

Pockets of the world's population do actively promote the idea that men and woman are distinctly different and should be separated from one another as much as possible. Some groups go to extreme and violent measures to insure this happens. When the topic of male-female equality comes up, there is vehement opposition. Men who take this position act like our ancestors in wanting to keep their dominant position, an assertion that is supported by many women who support the same structural view.

In what I think is an interesting and relevant point, there are existing tribal cultures in places like the Amazon rain forest that still do physically separate the sexes. There is one hut for the men, another for the women. If they do have some sort of marriage-bonding process, the couple comes together for sexual activity and other issues related to offspring, but they do not live together. The cultures, if you will, of each sex is separate with any inter-group activities usually highly structured.

I would suggest that most of those in what we call the First World who support sexual separation are not really all that different from both our modern and ancient relatives. There are lots of differences, of course, but the root idea is still alive and kicking.

There is probably some benefit to a society that structures itself in such a way that members of each sex have at least some methods of coming together on their own. For men and women to each have a support group of people like them is not an alien idea; we do this all the time with a plethora of points of commonality between various individuals. But like with most things, this kind of separation can become a way for one group to suppress another, making any potential benefits evaporate. I'm not sure of a specific answer, but it's something we should admit and talk about.

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