@georgetakei

Clearly, according to those who feel the need to drive a big truck to compensate for something.

@georgetakei

They are wrong because they confuse a chosen sexual role with an innate personality trait, and they mistake historically forced oppression for biological destiny—willfully ignoring that women possess the exact same diverse spectrum of human dominance and assertiveness as men.

@georgetakei

It all has to do with biology. Over a period of time the roles may change. Being a #transsexual, coming out at work, it's funny how the next day, some men asked, “ How will you be able do your job now that you're a woman?” Maybe by trying not to muscle fuck everything.

@georgetakei

#patriarchy #archeology

I recently engaged in a conversation with a man who was trying to convince his readers the #patriarchy has *always* been the natural state of the human species. This is patently false. Neither is patriarchy built into our genes.

"Always"!?! Oh, please. Anatomically modern humans have been around for at least 300,000 years. Patriarchy is, at most, 4-5,000 years old. It's not universal, ubiquitous, or omnipresent. It's not genetic. It's an aberration in the human story.

The belief that genes determine group behaviors is pure eugenics. It is the essence of Nazi ideology. People who think like that are thinking like Nazis.

Patriarchy is behavior. All culture is behavior. Behavior can change. Culture can change. One way we can tell is archeology. For example, we can study their graves. How people are buried can tell us a lot about how they lived.

Before the Steppe Culture expanded out of what's now Ukraine and into Europe and South Asia, burials were conducted much differently. Let's look at Europe because of the abundance of data available. When Steppe Culture met what Marija Gimbutas called "Old Europe" they slaughtered most of the males and, in most places, just took over. This *is* written in our genes. At this point in the story, burial customs shifted dramatically.

Prior to then, European burials were communal, with little or no individual grave goods. This implies a more or less egalitarian culture. Then the Steppe people imported their custom of exalting certain individuals by entombing them in kurgans, often with grave goods that included weaponry. This implies hierarchy.

The patriarchal bias of European archeologists assigned maleness to these skeletons, solely of the basis of their martial grave goods, without the advantage of modern paleogenetic technology or, often without even measuring the width of their pelvises. If they are armed, they must be male is how the thinking went.

The technology driven rise of paleogenetic science is discrediting this bogus analysis. Archeologists have had to begin to reconsider gender roles throughout human history.

While the luxurious grave goods clearly indicate persons of standing, graves with weaponry weren't all luxurious, they weren't all leaders, and they weren't all male. Many were what we'd call common soldiers. Some, in some contexts many, of them were women.

Women have fought since time immemorial. For example, the Scythian peoples (Tomyris's Massagetae, etc.) were famous for their coed cavalry. They are probably the kernel of truth behind the Amazons of Greek mythology and the valkyries of Norse mythology.

A female archer on horseback had a distinct advantage over male equestrians. They're lighter, so they can ride faster and turn sharper while riding on comparable horses. They were a formidable fighting force.

Not all women have been warriors. Most have not. Neither have most men. But as the central aphorism of anthropology clearly states, any behavior not universal is not human nature, it's cultural, idiosyncratic, or both. There are a lot of exceptions to the "only males fight" paradigm. Even today the Kurdish Women's Protection Units (YPJ) and the Bethnahrain Women's Protection Forces (an Assyrian all-female brigade of the Syriac Military Council) that they inspired, have a recent history of kicking ISIS's butt. Tradwives they are not. "Submissive"? Oh, please.

And so on. To summarize, the absurd notion that the fate of women has *always* been in the hands of men needs to be discarded. As for its believers, I take their reliance on ad hominem, rudeness and vulgarity to defend their position as proof positive of their beliefs themselves lack of worth. What they themselves are worth is a matter of opinion. I personally fail to see any worth at all in men like that. I'm not the only one.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe they can change. After all, behavior is cultural and behavior can change. If any Mastodonians want to try, be my guest. I don't hold out too much hope, but hope dies last.

You try to change their minds, not me. I'm ill equipped. I'm far too reactive. Just listening to this crap raises my blood pressure. It's already high enough that I take medication for it. My diet and exercise regimen can't be at fault. I'm pretty good about that stuff. I blame it on the stress of living in late stage capitalism, especially the cruel and unusual crap we find on social media. And patriarchy and its results. The results of patriarchy are abominable. War is the worst of them but there's more. Domestic violence comes from the same source. So does bullying. So does our foolish and deplorable tendency to just believe anything the ranking males say without first applying critical fact checking.

I've done my best to convince these people that they're wrong. I've failed. Now it's your turn. If you have what it takes, please engage with these people. We will never yeet patriarchy from the human story until we understand it and we will never understand it until we are extremely clear on its etiology. Short version: it is *not* genetic.

The role of patriarchy in the problems and failures of modern civilization is an important subject. It should be discussed. But not by me, not with people who insult me and put words in my mouth. That stuff belongs on #xitter not on Mastodon, and not in my timeline. I muted the whole conversation.

But if you're interested in that sort of thing, check it out. Just ignore the ad hominems, vulgarity, tone policing and general rudeness. They are off topic and thus irrelevant. Bypass them. Cut to the chase.

I jumped into the thread here:

https://kolektiva.social/@LevZadov/116354514795706418

You can take it from there. Good luck. Thanks in advance.