Arpig
Posts: 9930
Joined: 1/3/2006 From: Increasingly further from reality Status: offline
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Men are not hard-wired to lead. They are hard-wired to solve. That's why when a woman tells a man about her lousy day instead of sympathizing, he will offer advice he thinks will help. This comes from the original role of men in hunter-gatherer societies. They were the hunters, and they had to solve problems quickly...their prey would escape if they took too long. This does not mean that men are necessarily any better at solving problems, only that they are biologically designed to determine a solution quickly and to act on it....it may be a stupid solution, and often it is, due to the lack of reflection in it. However given the biological role of the male, it was advantageous to decide and act quickly. If it got a bunch of them killed, that was OK from a biological point of view, as far fewer males are required to ensure the continuation of the species than females. And given the mobile nature of prey animals and the primitive tools available, the chances of over hunting a prey population were pretty slim, so if a solution was somewhat wasteful, that was OK as well (driving a herd of buffalo over a cliff in order to harvest a few of them is a good example of this). Women, on the other hand had a far more long-term biological function. It takes careful planning to survive a pregnancy and raise a child to functional adulthood. As well, women/s traditional "prey" (the gatherer part of the hunter-gatherer equation) is stationary, but it must be carefully harvested to insure it will be there again next year. Therefore women are hard-wired to take a slower decision-making process, they are wired to plan ahead more than men are. They also tend to seek consensus more than men do, again this is because of their role in the tribe, both as the gatherers and the actual child-bearers. Men are no more wired for dominance than women are, men are not more competitive than women (anybody who grew up with at least two sisters can attest to this), they are just more overtly physically competitive...again because the natural role of males favours physical prowess (hunting animals on foot with a spear is fucking hard work, and you bet your ass you want to be in damn good shape to do it). Women's natural role, on the other hand, favoured both mental and emotional strengths, and therefore that is the field where women usually compete. There have always been dominant men and dominant women (think back to your mother, she was one woman you didn't want to cross). The idea that there is some biological reason for one gender to be dominant is based on a misunderstanding of the primitive hunter-gatherer tribe as a unitary entity. It was in fact two separate societies working together to the common good. The male/hunter society favoured certain characteristics,while the female/gatherer society favoured others. The primeval tribe was ruled by the dominant male and the dominant female working together, much the same way a wolf pack has a dominant couple (not exactly the same, but its a convenient example of the principle at work in the natural world). Herein ends today's anthropology lesson.
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Big man! Pig Man! Ha Ha...Charade you are! Why do they leave out the letter b on "Garage Sale" signs? CM's #1 All-Time Also-Ran
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