Re: [Fwd: Re: International Women's Day]

["Mr P.A. Van Heusden" <pvanheus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, 10 Mar 2000, Margaret Trawick wrote:
>
> People and other creatures quiver from fear, and not from sentimentality.
>
> It is just an interesting question, why.  If female human beings have been
> exploited and misused by males since time began, if the most fundamental
> class division is between female and male human beings, and if females can
> get along fine without males, except for basic reproductive purposes, then
> why do not females simply eliminate males, cull them as male calves or
> goats or sheep are culled by farmers and sold for meat.  Because if males
> are allowed to reach adolescence, they only make trouble from then on out.
> They fight and kill one another by nature.  Better to cull them before they
> reach this stage.

Whew. A couple of assumptions here. Firstly, don't you think the fact that
women, by and large (even feminists ones - however you define that) do not
go out and kill men seems to suggest that the divide between women and men
is not quite as fundamental as you suggest? (Anyway, I'm not sure what you
think a 'class division' is - do you mean a division between two 'classes
(types) of thing'?)

Secondly, why are we to assume that men 'fight and kill one another by
nature' (and that, it seems, only after adolescence)?

In an interesting take on all this (and a reversal of the Ancient Greeks),
modern biologists sometimes talk about the 'cost of the males' - i.e. why
have a sex in a species which does not reproduce? The one answer I have
read argues that it is necessary to have a stripped down, wimpish vessel
like sperm because otherwise conflicts between conflicting egg cells would
result in reproduction being more difficult (apparently species where two
females can mate often have the burden of many failed attempts to
reproduce).

>
> But for the sake of argument, while we are all alive and happy and not
> needing to die for each other, I indulge in the luxury of asking, what's
> love got to do with it?
>
Why is love *necessarily* (as opposed to in certain societies, in certain
situations) secondary to any other motivation?

Peter
--
Peter van Heusden : pvanheus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx : PGP key available
Criticism has torn up the imaginary flowers from the chain not so that man
shall wear the unadorned, bleak chain but so that he will shake off the
chain and pluck the living flower. - Karl Marx
           NOTE: I do not speak for the HGMP or the MRC.