Re: Working Wrong Concepts

On Mon, 7 Nov 2005 mmeron@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

Timo Nieminen <uqtniemi@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes: 

The difficulty isn't being able to breed fast enough; the difficulty is in
not overbreeding. A resort to farming means a (locally) full world.
Infanticide, contraception, extended breast-feeding supposedly for
fertility-reduction etc all suggest that having the occasional
child-producer eaten by predators can be tolerated.

Nah, not under under standard (as opposed to modern) circumstances.
[cut] 
At any time prior to modernity it took 6-8 live births per female just
to keep the population steady.  Under these circumstances letting
females to take part in combat would've been lunacy and the
nation/tribe sanctioning this wouldn't have remained around for a long
time.

Not when said combat is for self-defence. Armed women defend themselves better. Having the women help fight when the enemy attacks the village is better. When defeat means genocide, possible death in combat is a better risk than certain death without combat. I can't think of many cases (and the only ones that come to mind are post-civilisation) where this (ie women as emergency warriors) was the policy. This may well be due only to the lack of prehistoric records.

Weapons prohibitions for women doesn't seem to have killed off the societies that did it, despite increased risk of predation (animal or human). Infanticide etc in surviving hunter-gatherer cultures does show the ability to breed to the limit of local resources. Things might have been quite different earlier, if (and a very likely if) the risk of predation was higher.

Letting too many women seek to take part in combat would, as you say, have been lunacy. Letting some women take part in combat, or many women occasionally, doesn't seem to have hurt. Timur's army travelled around with many wives who (almost always) remained in the camp during battle. They were armed, and guarded the camp. Occasionally they fought; not fighting would have meant capture or death, or weakening the main army for camp security. The Ghengisid Mongol army reportedly allowed unmarried women to enlist. The Sarmatian inclusion of women in their army was legendary (and perhaps as real as most legends). All the above were short on manpower, and had populations pretty much as large as could be sustained.

There were some north American cases of women warriors, but they were afaik usually "officially male", gender-bending often being accompanied by being a magician. (And the reverse occurred, with some men being "officially female", the only socially acceptable way for them to avoid being warriors.)


The point is not male specialisation in weapons and fighting; ie warriors
being (almost) exclusively male, but (a) the disarming of women and (b)
whether women "send out" the men.

Prohibition of weapons for women. It happens. It happened in the past.
This is detrimental to the survival prospects for individual women when
attacked. It works well enough for such practices to survive. What is the
benefit to "society" from this practice? Whatever benefits there are, and
whoever gets the benefits, it isn't the individual woman being attacked.

Read above

Farmers farm in known locations. Gatherers travel, and sometimes travel a
long way. The only examples I know of weapons prohibition are from farming
societies; there may be examples in H/G societies, and likely it's been
suggested in the literature; weapons prohibition was a key plot element
in Clan of the Cave Bear,


Since when are the fiction works of feminist writers credible
reference for anything?

She has a certain facility for plundering the research literature for published, but rather speculative (ie stupid?), ideas.

which freely plundered the literature for
both sound and speculative ideas. Farming might be necessary for weapons
prohibition to be safe enough.

Survival of societies in the clashes between them is not about survival of
individuals. There are lots of social practices contrary to the survival
of individuals that "work well enough". When men go and fight wars 200
days per year (weather permitting), some practices actively unbeneficial
to women, but sufficient to perpetuate the system, may well arise.

The mediaeval feudal system was a nice idea on paper. Being a warrior
required resources: being able to afford a horse, a sword, and armour, and
the time to practice. Solution: a bunch of peasants support a knight, who
fights for them, and protects them. Did the peasants send out the knight
to protect them?

Now that's a valid point.  Doubtless, their consent wasn't required
for every action.  Yet, absent their consent, the system wouldn't have
been created.

Substitute "acquiesence" for "consent", and I would fully agree. People will tolerate a lot of crap before they revolt.

But the case of peasant+knights has a key difference from that of tribal warriors + women. Having the man in charge change doesn't always affect the peasants much; they still have to pay their taxes to their lord. The women are much more likely to die if their warriors are defeated.

I wouldn't say that women sent the men out to fight. That would mean a
level of conscious decision and control that was absent. If the women
could not say "no, today you will stay home and do X", if they have no
real say in it, they're not sending them out. Acceptance of the situation
is not the same as choosing the situation.

I think you underestimate how much say did the women actually have.

When the men all sleep together in the same hut, with the women confined to their (downwind) side of the village, with a fence separating the two sides, private contact only allowed once a week, they can't have much say.

When shooting with arrows is a socially acceptable form of wife abuse, they can't have much say.

30% heavier with monopolisation of weapons specialised for killing humans makes for unequal votes. Not no vote, but still ...

--
Timo Nieminen - Home page: http://www.physics.uq.edu.au/people/nieminen/
E-prints: http://eprint.uq.edu.au/view/person/Nieminen,_Timo_A..html
Shrine to Spirits: http://www.users.bigpond.com/timo_nieminen/spirits.html
.

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