Feminism in prehistoric times / primitive culture

[Joneser]

Hi. Is it possible in theory that any kind of feminist movement could conceivably have existed in prehistoric times or in any primitive culture? I don't mean matriarchal societies, I mean a feminist movement.

Hang on, ChocChoc, as a former archaeologist, I have to take issue with that comparison. Archaeologists have the ability to extrapolate a whole pot from a small shard because they can recognise the pattern or the style. They've had experience in looking at thousands of shards. I used to study skeletons and I could get a lot out of a small bone.

Evopsych, otoh, is rot.

I'd compare it more with finding a shard of a bowl and then extrapolating from that what kind of table it stood on and what carpet that table stood on. Maybe even what the weather was doing outside

Or finding a shard of a bowl and saying it was made by a man impressing women with his dazzling pottery skills, while the women looked on adoringly, getting moist, then he would get to choose which woman/women to 'mate' with - and that is the reason men started to make pots in our evolution - to increase his sexual access to women and spread his genes.

I think evolution as a driving force can be used to hypothesise (probably fairly speculatively) about human behaviour. Sometimes there are also stats to back it up. However a lot of the time it is "just so" stories and ignores vast swathes of counter evidence so not good science!

My main problem with evolutionary psychology is the assertion that this or that behaviour is 'hard wired' ie instinctive
My understanding is that human behaviour is learned and not instinctive, the various things which evolutionary psychology attributes to conditions from our ancestral past could equally be shaped by current social structures.

It could be argued that the defining characteristic of humans is their plasticity, there is no real human nature, everything about us is contingent.

Indeed peaceout humans behave in such odd ways and can have odd preferences and aversions we're completely socialised in. I can't get my head around people feeling comfortable with a slave in their home, or handing over their baby for child-sacrifice, or going through the ritual of binding their own daughter's feet while she begs for mercy, etc, etc - however entire human societies have bought into these things and lived with them.
And natural selection of instinctual animals can't be applied to humans because our social behaviour is heavily ritualised and controlled as part of belonging to the group.

I can't get my head around people feeling comfortable with a slave in their home, or handing over their baby for child-sacrifice, or going through the ritual of binding their own daughter's feet while she begs for mercy, etc, etc - however entire human societies have bought into these things and lived with them

No doubt our descendants will be appalled and/or incredulous at any number of things which we are currently absolutely fine with

The human species is in an ongoing state of flux

Well if a behaviour/culture enhances the reproductive fitness of the family that does it, then it's likely to spread. Even though it's cultural. It's interesting

OK, OK, I surrender - I bet if pressed you'd admit that it was a guess based on experience though, and that it could be a different pot decorated with flowers rather than rabbits or something.

Thanks for the replies re. evo psych.

I asked as I am a psychology student and we have touched on a couple of evo psych things, but plausible hard-wired stuff (eg. landscape preference, or the way our brains fill in the gaps and see stuff that isn't there and why that might be). It's stressed what is theory and what there is evidence for and to question/theories change. (And most of the other stuff we've covered stresses cultural differences and social influence, and mentions scandals, eg. stuff around intelligenc testing/concept of intelligence.)
The article about the Harvard psych just making stuff up made me think... so more women than men study psychology, and from my fairly uneducated completely unscientific viewpoint (yeh, I shouldn't but...) it seems like women go into psychology to become counsellors/therapists/find out stuff to help the world, whilst the men get Harvad positions and make stuff up for the glory. Hmm now how would I go about testing my hypothesis?

Well if a behaviour/culture enhances the reproductive fitness of the family that does it, then it's likely to spread. Even though it's cultural. It's interesting

Yes.What I dislike is people pretending that, just because something enhances the reproductive fitness of a family, it is therefore "right" in any way.
There is no moral value to evolution. Cultural or genetic.

Patriarchy spread over the whole world, not because it is in any way, shape or form "good", but because patriarchy causes overpopulation, and overpopulation causes expansion politics and war, and patriarchy also facilitates wars (men want to rape and/or marry enemy women, women have no such wishes regarding enemy men).

Peaceful indigenous tribes on tropical islands were killed off by their more warlike neighbours. (Probably lots of other peaceful tribes were killed, but this is one example that historians could still find out about because on the island, the peaceful lifestyle could persist for a while) This does not mean that being peaceful and solving conflicts by talking about them like mature adults is wrong - it is just not evolutionary successful, which is a very different thing.

And of course, reproductive fitness is relative. Foot-binding only enhanced the reproductive fitness of families doing it in ancient China because of the very specific culture there.

We can see in Australia that some of the very interesting animals that evolved there do not have an evolutionary advantage anymore after rabbits and dogs were introduced.

Patriarchy, likewise, can only thrive under specific circumstances, that might end some day.

One could even say that patriarchy will end the human race, as with the human overpopulation comes the destruction of the planet.

Evolution is not intelligent. It just happens. Every scientist knows this. Evolution does not plan long-term. Something can be evolutionary successful for a while, and then spell the end of a species.

I detest people who take evolution and try to make it into a religion.

"I detest people who take evolution and try to make it into a religion"

Well said Vestal.

The phrase "survival of the fittest" was taken out of context in the 19th century to justify all kinds of horrors.