Re: THR FEMINAZI PROBLEM

[supertimer@aol.com (Supertimer)]

regnirps@aol.com (Regnirps) wrote:

>supertimer@aol.com (Supertimer) wrote:
>
>>The division of labor you speak of began after humans began
>>taking up agriculture.
>
>I would say that evolution pretty much ended with the taking up of
agriculture.
>The Inuit and American hunting tribes had pretty strong division of labor
>without agriculture.

Most Native American tribes had some form of agriculture (corn/maize, etc.).

I agree absolutely that evolution ended with the taking up of agriculture (a
recent discussion on sci.bio.evolution came to the consensus that if you
take a Homo sapien from the era of Cro-Magnon and bring that human to
present day...if properly educated from childhood, he'll be no different than
modern people intellectually and physically).  That was the point...since
division of labor happened after the last of the evolutionary changes leading
to modern humans (meaning when the first humans discovered agriculture,
they were already moderns like us today) you don't have "millions of years
of evolution" backing up the claim that being female makes you somehow
innately less capable, on the average, an engineer...

>I still wonder how old you are. Not as a put down, but my ideas were much like
>yours in my twenties. I was acrried along by the modern  hysterical demand
that
>there be no diversity among the sexes.

Absolutely there are differences.  Physical differences...men are physically
stronger due to the effects of testosterone on the muscles.  The differences
do not greatly affect mental capabilities though and that's my point.

If it were just ME making up the "it is the environment that causes the
differences" argument, then you can put me off as an idealist, but there
is actually research supporting my view, as I have pointed out.  Unlike
what you posted originally, the verdict is far from clear.  It is just that I
see more evidence supporting my point of view than the evidence you
cited supporting yours.

I wouldn't mind seeing what the researchers think on the subject (I am
SURE this discussion will open up a whole can of worms on BOTH sides
on sci.bio.evolution...and some of the participants there are in their
sixties).

>They are swept up in the Marxist ideas
>that we cellibrate diversity but it turns out naturally enough that we really
>cellibrate diversity of color and herritage. Diversity of thought on the other
>hand is intollerable and labeled "hate speech".

Am I more a Marxist than that Don Wilson fellow is a racist?  Really...

I don't think yours is hate speech (unlike Mr. Don Wilson), however I do
think you've only heard one side of the argument with regards to the
evidence and studies supporting some sort of innate difference in abilities
due to gender...I'm trying to show the other side of the argument and
the evidence and studies supporting it.

>The Leakys are guessing based on miniscule samples from a million
>years ago.  Why would you expect there to NOT be sexual diversity in
>humans? This puzzles me most.

That's true...there is still a debate going on.  Some researchers cling to
the notion that Homo erectus was a hunter, but you have to wonder.
The stone tools dating to that time were simple and showed no evidence
of being mounted to spears, etc.  It is hard to imagine how this prehuman
could have hunted big animals.  On the other side, we find where the
stone tools and the animal bones are associated, the bones were found
first to be scored by predator teeth marks, then the stone tool marks
were scored on top of the predator teeth marks.  The predators killed
the animals first, feasted, then our ancestors came in and scavanged the
rest.  The Leakys' hypothesis may be only that, but it is better supported
than most.

Your second question...why don't I expect modern humans to be more
sexually dimorphic.  Well, by all indications we are not.  Men and
women have relatively the same body size (compared to something
like the gorilla where the female weighs half that of the male).  Males
don't have huge canine teeth.  There are also evolutionary reasons
...our young are born in a helpless state.  When this happens, the
pattern in most other animals is the advent of parental care by the father
as well as the mother so that your genes will get passed on.  Instead
of a bunch of male vs. male competition (like lions) to round up a bunch
of females to try to have many babies, males following this strategy lose.
The babies can't survive with the support of just one parent.  He loses
...and the genes for this behavior die out.  Meanwhile, the genes that
support the other strategy...settle down, take care of your children...win
out.  With two parents, the children live...these genes and behaviors get
passed on.  Thus, without the need to be super large with super big
canines in order to defend a whole bunch of females like the lion would,
differences between the sexes diminished.  This is the EXACT pattern
seen in most birds, such as the Emperor Penguin in Antarctica.  Males
and females look the same...and their chicks also need two parents to
survive...each taking turn to keep the young chicks from freezing by
sitting on them while the other goes out to sea to fish...they alternate.

This is actually very interesting stuff and pops up often in sci.bio.evolution.

The basic rule is...when you see a species in which the young are born
helpless and need a great deal of parental care, there is going to be
little sexual dimorphism (ie. difference).  Lions are very dimorphic while
most birds are not.  You see a baby cub walk within minutes of birth,
but a chick can't fly for weeks or months.  Look at human babies...