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each society adopts specific social distinctions and imagined hierarchies

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race became very important in American society, but was relatively insignificant to medieval Muslim society

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caste was a matter of life and death in medieval India but in modern Europe it is practically non-existent

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one hierarchy, however, which has been of supreme importance in almost all human societies is the hierarchy of gender

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gender

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in most human societies throughout history, men have been seen as the superior gender

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in many societies, women were seen to simply be the property of men, most often the property of their fathers, their husbands, their brothers or the male community in general

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the most extreme example of this although very common in human societies, the rape of a woman was seen as a crime, but as a violation of property and the victim of the rape according to the legal system, was not the woman, but the man who owned her and now owned defective property

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in the Bible in Deuteronomy, Chapter 22, verses 28 to 29: "If a man find a damsel that is a virgin, which is not betrothed, and lay hold on her, and lie with her, and they be found. Then the man that lay with her shall give unto the damsel's father fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife."

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in most legal systems in history, if a husband rapes his own wife, this is not considered a crime at all

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this was even a legal contradiction in most societies since a husband owning a wife meant he had full control of her sexuality, it would be like saying a man stole his own wallet

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in 2006, there are still 53 countries around the world where a husband cannot be persecuted in court for the rape of his wife

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in Germany, marital rape was amended to laws in 1997

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is this division between gender a product of the human imagination like the caste system in India or the racial issues in America?

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or is it a division with roots in biological reality?

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if there is a natural, biological division between men and women, is there a natural hierarchy with men over women?

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there are, of course, biological differences between women and men

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are their biological justifications for the preference of men as the superior gender within historical societies?

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there are obvious differences which are not attributed to the imagination

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child-bearing has always been considered the job of women in all societies for the biological fact that men do not have wombs

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but around biological facts, every society has accumulated social norms regarding the sexes which have very little to do with biology

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e.g. 5th century B.C. Athens, the cradle of democracy, women could not vote for any of the offices, nor could they be elected

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Athenians would reply that it is unnatural for women to take part in politics since they do not have the moral standards and intelligence to do such things

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today, most people in Western cultures, of course, think there is nothing in the female body or of the female brain that should prevent women from participating in elections either as voters or candidates

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in many cultures today, it is argued that men should not have sex with other men

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the response is often the same, because it is unnatural

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but in fact there is nothing about the male body or the male brain which prevents men from enjoying sex with one another

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in Ancient Greece, homosexuality was not only fairly common, but also normative and legal

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all societies have notion about what is natural and unnatural for men and women to do

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some of these are grounded in biology and some are not

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throughout history, however, most of the differences that societies have attributed to men and women are not rooted in biology

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how can we determine what is really determined by biology and what people merely try to justify through imagined stories and myth

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a good rule of thumb is: biology enables, culture forbids

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biology is willing to tolerate a very wide spectrum of possibilities of behavior and human relationships

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it's culture that obliges people to realize some of the possibilities that biology open up and forbidden others

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biology enables women to have children, it doesn't force them to, they don't have to use their womb for that purpose, but it gives them the possibility

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some cultures suggest that women who do not have children are not true women and are doing something that is unnatural

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however, this is not unnatural from a biological sense (biology gives women the option but doesn't care if they exercise it), it is only unnatural from a cultural point of view

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biology enables men to have sex with one another, but whether it is considered natural or not is determined by culture

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when cultures forbid something they tend to argue that they forbid only what is biologically unnatural

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from a biological perspective, everything that is possible is natural, an example of something unnatural according to biology would be something that is not possible, for instance, that men can have babies, this is not possible so it would be unnecessary to prohibit it since it isn't possible anyway.

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when people talk about actions being natural, they do not mean unnatural in terms of biology but in terms of their theology, i.e. something is "natural" if it is in accordance with the God happen to believe in, i.e. that God created the limbs of the human body and mean them to serve a particular purpose, so if humans use their organs for the purpose that God intended them, then this is natural in a theological sense.

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from the biological point of view, the human body was shaped the evolutionary processes, and evolution doesn't prescribe purposes

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none of the organs in our body evolved to fulfill just one one particular purpose

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e.g. hands and feet, they initially evolved from the fins of fish so seen in this way it would be unnatural to use them other than fins

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the same is with sexual organs and behavior

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it's true that sex evolved for procreation

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courtship ritual evolved to examine the fitness of a potential mate

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mammals use sex and courtship rituals for many purposes other than having babies

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chimpanzees use sex in order to cement political alliances, establish intimacy, and to diffuse tension between individuals in the band

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but these activities are not unnatural, these are simply one of many uses chimpanzees have for their sexual organs and bodies

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therefore it makes little sense to say that it is unnatural if a woman doesn't give birth or that homosexual love is unnatural

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through biology we have these abilities, whether to use it or not and for what purposes is up to our cultures and religions to decide

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most of the laws in societies which concern the genders reflect human imagination and not biology

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sex is a biological category

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objective

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have remained fairly constant throughout history

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being a female in ancient Greece and modern Greece is the same thing, it simply means that you have the XX chromosome

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does not change from culture to culture

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gender is a cultural category

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gender defines men and women

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being a woman in ancient Greece and in modern Greece are two very different things

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defined by masculinity and femininity

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most of what King Louis XIV wore would today be considered feminine, e.g. the wig, the tights, the high heels, furs

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the way powerful men look in modern Western society is historically very strange: men never looked so gray and dull and dreary, throughout history powerful men (King Louis XIV, American Indian Chiefs, Hindu Priests) wore very colorful and elegant clothing, wigs, headdresses, tights, high heels

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changes a lot from culture to culture

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in each culture there is a sense of being a "real man" and a "real woman" and this varies from culture to culture

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women spend a significant amount of time each day working to convince others that they are up to the present day ideal of femininity, as well do men for masculinity

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success is not guaranteed, people may not see them as real women or real men

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men particularly have a fear that they will lose their claim to masculinity

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they even sacrifice their lives (bull fighters) just so people will say about them: he's a real man

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in most cultures since the agricultural revolution, men have had to fight for privileges that were withheld from other males

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most give men economic, political and

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patriarchy: a society which values masculine qualities more than it

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in almost all societies in history, to be a man was better valued what it sees to be feminine qualities

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they educate men to think and act in a masculine way of acting

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women are supposed to act in a feminine way and in many cultures often punished if they do not

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often men in patriarchal societies are rewarded with much more power and many more privileges for living out the ideal of a man, than it rewards women for living out the ideal for a woman

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with very few exceptions, all known human societies in history were patriarchal and almost all gave men economic, political and legal privileges and discriminated against women, how can we explain this?

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it can't be the product of some chance vicious circle like the caste division in India, or like the racial division in America, since all cultures in all parts of the world developed to be patriarchal

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even before 1492 when the Europeans began melding the two continents into a similar political unit, even the native societies in North and South America were patriarchal

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anthropologists and historians have many theories why most cultures valued manhood more than they valued womanhood (topic of next lecture)