Subject: File: "FEMINISTSF LOG0206C" ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 17 Jun 2002 04:18:58 -0700 Reply-To: "friendly discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature and other media" Sender: "friendly discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature and other media" From: John Snead Subject: Interesting Anthropological Info Comments: To: FEMINISTSF@uic.edu MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Check out: http://matrix.uel.ac.uk/news/press_releases/releases/two_dads.htm It's a press release about a new book detailing a culture in the jungles of Venezuela, where most children are believed to have multiple fathers (women announce who the fathers of their children are) and the social implication of this. Among other things, the books looks to be a another nail in the coffin of some of the regressive sociobiological ideal about evolution and human sexuality that became so popular in the US in the 1980s and are only slowly dying out. -John Snead sneadj@mindspring.com -------------------------------------------------- This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF Contact FEMINISTSF-request@UIC.EDU if there are problems. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 17 Jun 2002 10:14:16 -0400 Reply-To: judithberman@earthlink.net Sender: "friendly discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature and other media" From: Judith Berman Subject: Re: Interesting Anthropological Info Comments: To: "friendly discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature and other media" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sarah Hardy is quoted in the article as saying that now the evolutionary psychologists, etc., will have to deal with partible paternity and polyandry. Maybe -- these ethnographic facts have been known for many decades already, without noticeable awareness in those fields. The theory of multiple fathers is found elsewhere across indigenous lowland South America. The consequence to gender relations is not always the same. A fairly interesting 70s ethnography by Tom Gregor, THE MEHINAKU (a Mato Grosso group) describes this, along with Mehinaku theories of gender dominance (which include a past age when women still owned the sacred flutes [long phallic things more like bassoons!] and the now-men's hut with its secret rituals). Polyandry sounds as if it would be more antipatriarchal than it is. In the classic polyandrous area of the Himalayan foothills, it's a result of selective female infanticide, with the result that there are far too few marriageable women than men who need wives. Usually it's a group of brothers who have one wife (so the whole pass-on-your-genes ownership issue is not negated here). She's responsible for feeding, clothing, keeping house for and providing sexual services for all the brothers, be it two or seven. One wonders if this type of polyandry will spread as fetal sex selection against females becomes ever more widespread in India, with similar demographic result. Most of the evolutionary psychology/sociobiological discussion also fails to deal with matrilineal systems, which were historically quite numerous. Women's status tends to be higher but they are by no means devoid of male dominance. The woman's brothers and other relatives are the ones who own most rights in her children, are responsible for discipline, etc. (The father is often a beloved avuncular figure to his own children, but is the authority figure for his sister's children.) A man has no evolutionary stake in his sister's chastity, as his genes will get passed through her on regardless of who her partners are. Then there's the West African female husband. Women merchants can become quite wealthy, but to gain social and political status they need lots of wives and children. So they marry wives, whose wifely duty is to have children however they like. The social/legal father is the female husband. John Snead wrote: >Check out: > >http://matrix.uel.ac.uk/news/press_releases/releases/two_dads.htm > >It's a press release about a new book detailing a culture in the >jungles of Venezuela, where most children are believed to have >multiple fathers (women announce who the fathers of their children >are) and the social implication of this. Among other things, the >books looks to be a another nail in the coffin of some of the >regressive sociobiological ideal about evolution and human >sexuality that became so popular in the US in the 1980s and are >only slowly dying out. > >-John Snead sneadj@mindspring.com > >-------------------------------------------------- >This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for >discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To >unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to >LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: > unsubscribe FEMINISTSF > >Contact FEMINISTSF-request@UIC.EDU if there are problems. > -------------------------------------------------- This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF Contact FEMINISTSF-request@UIC.EDU if there are problems.