Thanks for mentioning something I see very rarely in print. Though
Women's Liberation has been around for a while now, Men's Liberation is
still in the stone age. There are many many instances where women are
favored over men, especially in the areas of hazardous jobs and just
about anything having to do with child care. I suspect there is no
reconciling the difference between some idea of "fairness" and the
different biological imperatives of men vs women. I suspect our very
idea of "fairness" is strongly modulated by this.
An interesting read is Michael Hutichinson's "The Anatomy of Sex and
Power". A point made there is that the investment in offspring for women
is much greater than that for men. A woman has to protect the children
until they reach reproductive age. When dealing with danger and
confrontation it is a bad strategy for a woman to actually become
exposed directly to danger for if the woman dies, so do the children. So
the female strategy is to have others, (men) actually confront the
dangers, for if the men die, the children will survive along with the
female. This script is deeply embedded in our customs and laws.
Here are two examples of this:
1. All services involving protection and enforcement are almost
exclusively male. Examples are police, firemen and soldiers. This
extends to other physically hazardous jobs, such as logging, heavy
construction, etc.
2. Every couple of years the politicans start another campaign to hunt
down the "deadbeat dads". I have yet to hear of a campaign to do the
same to "deadbeat moms".
Musing: Since most Extropians are men, does this imply that being
Extropian is hazardous??
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| Hara Ra <harara@shamanics.com> |
| Box 8334 Santa Cruz, CA 95061 |
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