“If civilization had been left in female hands we would still be living in grass huts.” - Camille Paglia

[LabubuSixSeven]

I came across this (in)famous quote by feminist academic Camille Paglia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camille_Paglia) a few weeks back, and it has stuck with me.

At first, I was offended. However, as I’ve thought more about it, I can’t help but feel she has a point. Men are risk takers in ways that women are not. There are both positives (technology etc) and negatives (violence, war) to this. Is it the case that culturally and socially women aren’t allowed to take risks? Or is it that we biologically driven to not? If there were no men, would society be as progressive as it is?

I’d like to hear others opinions on this.

It's thought the first tools were invented by women. Baby carriers and, famously, wooden sticks with 28 notches on them. We would have technology without men.

This idea of risk-taking as single concept is flawed. There are different types of risk-taking in different circumstances with differences in possible outcomes. There are some differences in how men and women take risks, but the differences are not large, there is significant overlap, and of course any one individual will behave according to their specific personality not just as a representative of their sex.

"Is it the case that culturally and socially women aren’t allowed to take risks?"

No, but perhaps culture and society affect the kinds of risks that men and women take, dependent on the risk/reward ratio and the circumstances.

"Or is it that we biologically driven to not?"

No, women do take risks, perhaps a little differently on average than men do. "Biologically" could mean all sorts of things, do you mean due to male v female hormones, or differences in the brains of men/women, or something else?

"If there were no men, would society be as progressive as it is?"

I don't think you mean "progressive" in this sentence. Perhaps you meant "if there were no men, would society have progressed as it has?" If there were no men, then society could be very different, but I think it is clearly unsupported to suggest that society would not have progressed beyond the Stone age.

What utter bollocks.

"Necessity is the mother of invention" is the phrase. Not risk taking by men is the father of invention.

Perhaps until recently women viewed childbearing as enough risk, thanks.

Well, caring for babies and young children is a lot of work, so, no, women wouldn't have been building new types of houses if they were in charge. They would be busy with, dare I say it, the more important work of caring for children.

Men can take risks because, in general, they are not caring for children.

Men are also (despite the modern trope of the tiny woman who can kick the butts of all male attackers), physically stronger on average than women. So it would make sense that men would take more physical risks and build more physical stuff than women.

Women are perfectly capable of developing new technology when our lower physical strength is not being used as a means to make us mere chattel of men.

There is plenty of possibility for technological progress without risk. And no shortage of female inventors - just off the top of my head computer programming, kevlar, and the dishwasher were all female inventions. As were most hospital hygiene measures and the idea of formally training nurses - not all progress and innovation comes in the form of machinery.

If you look at other primate societies it's often the females who come up with, are fastest to adopt, and teach others new skills and techniques - whether that's washing rice to get the sand out of it, or using a leaf as a sponge to get at water that's otherwise out of reach. Reseach in humans shows teenage girls and young women are the strongest drivers of linguistic developments.

It's a nonsense idea. Female-led progress might have looked slightly different, but it would still have been progress. Women solve problems, observe, think, innovate at least as much as men do.

Yes, women problem solve and invent. However, what they invent, and which problems they choose to solve, would be different, surely?

As someone pointed out, it’s believed that the first baby carriers were invented by women. This is likely true, but why? Why didn’t men make baby carriers? Because they didn’t need to. Carrying babies wasn’t a problem for them.

If women ran society, we’d have the best schools and hospitals possible. Why? Again, because it’s us who are affected when these services are poor.

Women would invent and take risks for the benefit of their families, friends, and society. However, would they have invented ships, airplanes, and the internet?

The obvious flaw in what she says is that you don't need to be a risk-taker to invent things. Taking risks is one thing. Inventing new technology is another thing. Sometimes intelligent people like Paglia can come out with some extremely stupid ideas.

Yes, in all likelihood, in some form or other. Or something different that fulfills a similar purpose and addresses the same need. Do you think nothing like that would be invented, ever?

Men invented guns.

A woman invented Kevlar.

Nuff said really.

And I have ADHD. I take a lot of risks.

People invent stuff when they have free time to dream, or when they have a repetitive task they want to speed up, or when they have a war they need to win.

If women were running society then men would be dealing with the drudge work, freeing up the women to spend far more of their time on blue sky ideas. It would be nice to think we'd have fewer wars and therefore less invention of weapons but who knows.

I have another. Men invented cars. A woman invented windscreen wipers.

There's a theme here. And the theme is stop men making dangerous shit without thinking it through. Risk is often bad, not good.

Women do invent. They even take risks to invent. What they don't do is expect to have lots of people fawning over them for solving said problem. They just need to fix the problem.

Risk? Isn't having a relationship with a man dangerous enough?

Brake pads, too.

If women don't take risks or invent aeroplanes, explain the Bland Mayfly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bland_Mayfly

"Bland collected the 20 hp (15 kW) Avro engine from the Avro works in Manchester in mid 1910. When first fitted she had not received the petrol tank, and initial ground trials were conducted by feeding petrol from a whisky bottle via her aunt's ear-trumpet"

Women invent or discover stuff, but most of the credit is stolen.

Not so sure what’s wrong with grass huts anyway, in their place. I’m sure women in a UK climate would have come up with something more practical and waterproof with or without men.

Lots of innovation occurs due to wars of course, so if women were in charge, we might have less technology and weaponry. Not sure we’d be less happy though.

"However, would they have invented ships, airplanes, and the internet?"

There would be no internet without Ada Lovelace.

We wouldn't understand DNA as we do without Rosalind Franklin. (Watson and Crick acknowledged they did not give her the credit she deserved).

An adaption to the Merlin aircraft engine carburettor which gave Royal Air Force pilots an advantage during the Second World War wouldn't have happened without Beatrice Shilling.

We wouldn't have modern day penicillin without Dorothy Hodgkin.

Men make/take the headlines. Women are just as brave, innovative and risk taking - perhaps more so given the limitations placed on us.

“If civilization had been left in female hands we would still be living in grass huts.”

Modern straw houses are a highly sustainable, eco-friendly, prefabricated building method. Nothing wrong with 'grass' huts.

I think it is true that women are less likely to take risks, and that's partly soclalised and partly related to biology, in that they birth and raise children and know and - crucially - care that those children will also be impacted by an adverse outcome.

They also tend to be less vainglorious and/or narcissistic so that competitive drive for Glory is dramatically reduced, I think.

Otherwise, as you've all pointed out, it's bollocks - invention in the sense of technological progress isn't inherently related to risk and is probably evenly split when adjusted for relative opportunity and access to tools and materials across the sexes.

Paglia has some pretty shite views on lots of subjects.

She's a climate change denier.

Here she is on lowering the age of consent to 14. , "I fail to see what is wrong with erotic fondling with any age."

Described Sinead O'Connor's child abuse as "justified"

She supports the legalisation of child pornography.

Her Wiki page is a fucking car crash.

Okay. I am new to Paglia and hadn’t come across all this yet. Apologies. Those views are disgusting.

Why on earth wouldn't they?

Perhaps they wouldn't have invented the exact same things in the exact same order with the exact same result, but I imagine that if given the time and opportunity with a matriarchy they would have invented something that achieves the same result, e.g. an effective mass transport system across water if not necessarily "a ship" (how do you even know that the first person who created a boat wasn't a woman, by the way?), a way to communicate instantly across countries if not the Internet etc. Although arguably without Ada Lovelace we might not have "the internet" in its present form anyway.

Not really sure why you seem convinced that "risk taking" is the sole or main driver for inventions either. The saying is necessity is the mother of invention (n.b. interesting that it's mother and not father!), and women have no fewer needs than men...

There would undoubtedly be less war. And war is a huge sucker of time, life and resources. So there would be more time, life and resources to do other things.

Some things that were needed for war would not have been invented. For example the nuclear bomb. But those scientists would have done something else instead.

(My grandfather was a scientist and did not fight in WW2. I don’t know what he did do as he wasn’t allowed to say. I think it might have been something pretty awful though.)