A central arena for competition between females is sexual behavior itself. Studies show that women tend to criticize and reject other women who are viewed by them as sexually promiscuous. The researcher Zhana Vrangalova and her colleagues at Cornell University recently surveyed 750 college students about their sexual behaviors and attitudes. Then, participants read a short description of a hypothetical person (of their own sex) who had either two (nonpermissive) or twenty (permissive) past sexual partners. Participants then rated this potential friend on several friendship-relevant outcomes. Results revealed that female participants, regardless of their own level of permissiveness, overwhelmingly preferred the nonpermissive potential friend. According to the researchers, this is because women want to guard their partners and because they fear socal stigma: if you go around with someone who’s known to be promiscuous (a “slut”), there is danger that the label will latch on to you, too.
Either way, female competition has a price, and not only on the political level. This competition produces much of the stress that interferes with the happiness of many women, especially young ones. Studies show that compared to men, women tend to be more sensitive to emotional information and are better at decoding subtly encoded social and interpersonal messages. In addition, women’s sense of self-worth is based more on their friends’ opinions of them. This combination of acute awareness of–and sensitivity to–subtle social cues renders women more vulnerable to indirect interpersonal aggression.
For example, the researcher Christopher Ferguson of Stetson University in Florida and his colleagues asked participants to watch two television programs (with a svelte and chubby female star) and interact with a woman (in attractive or casual attire). They found that participants’ mood and self-image were not affected by the TV shows but significantly affected by the live encounters. Interacting with an attractive woman dressed in flattering clothing led the participants to feel distressed and negative about their bodies, especially if the encounters were held in the presence of an attractive man.
At the end of the day, the tendency to engage in intra-sex competition appears to be a part of our genetic hardware and a feature in the heritage of human culture. Our genes and social habits are not easy to change, certainly not overnight. But the first step toward changing a habit is becoming aware of it. To that end, men may want to ask whether ‘getting the girl’ is worth the spilled blood and broken bones, while women may do well to reflect on whether the goal of getting a man (and his sperm and support) justifies the competitive tactics of manipulating, shaming or ostracizing other women and the pain it causes them.
This study and others align with the observation that women are often the chief enforcers of strict and sometimes cruel norms of female appearance and sexual behavior. For example, the ritual of female genital mutilation, still practiced in some Muslim countries in Africa, is primarily designed to make the girl into good ‘bride material’ for men. To that end, clitoridectomy reduces her ability to enjoy sex and therefore decreases the likelihood she’ll be tempted to cheat on her husband. Sewing the vaginal opening shut, which is often performed after the genital cutting, reduces the possibility that the girl will have sex before marriage, again benefitting the interests of the future husband. Still, this ceremony is managed, performed and enforced by women (mostly mothers and grandmothers).
Another example: Girls’ foot binding was a custom in China for over a thousand years (until it was outlawed in the early twentieth century). The ancient custom (which involved breaking the toes of the baby, folding them and binding the feet tightly for years) was valued primarily because women with small feet were considered more desirable sexually (in the eyes of men) and because a wife’s tiny, useless feet were evidence of the husband’s wealth (‘I’m so rich my woman doesn’t need to work; indeed she can’t’). In this case too, the main enforcers and managers were mothers and grandmothers.
The best that can be done on any given epoc or at any given moment is the Dancer is now the author and sits at the center of the vortex the twisting-spinning and sucking of ideas/deceptions/concepts/half truths/quarter-truths/ truthies, lies -that-are-true/ feelings, fake-feelings, fake-feelings-that-are-honest, fake-feelings-exchanged-for-fake celebrity and of course the hidden ideas both new, old, ancient, cultural, identity, sexual, historical, practical. Pick a number any number.
The Origins of Moral Virtue in Hunting explained in Anthropology
A consequence of this research has been to restore the human female to a central position in any account of cultural origins. By perceiving a problem in certain “selfish” tendencies of the dominant primate male, we are led to examine hunting-behaviour in a new way – in terms, that is, of its sexual politics. Instead of seeking the roots of development in the behaviour of the male, we look at the activity of the female – activity which lies behind the more visible male activity of the hunt. Interestingly, in traditional cultures, a collective hunting-expedition is typically preceded by a ban on sexual relations lasting for anything from a few days to two weeks or more. Women are centrally involved in enforcing this ban, and may be blamed if the hunt fails. In other ways, too, sex and hunting are intimately intertwined: in almost all hunter-gatherer cultures, women measure male sexual desirability in terms of their hunting-success. A finding of the research is that womankind’s pivotal accomplishment was to assert conscious control over her own sexuality, obtaining meat by refusing sex to all males except those who came to her with provisions. This is the essence of the argument of the thesis.
This female strategy could not have worked on a purely individual basis. Hunting being necessarily a group-activity, the females likewise had to act collectively. The strategy of saying “no” to males when meat was in short supply would have been completely undermined if certain females were willing to engage in sexual relations on any terms. In short, when the male community
Introduction
_____________________________________________________________________________________ Chris Knight Menstruation and the origins of culture Page 13
was unsuccessful in obtaining meat, the female community as a body had to refuse all sexual favours. This withdrawal is referred to in the thesis as women’s periodic “sex-strike”. A ban on sexual relations, it is argued, was necessary as the prelude to each successful hunting-expedition; it was the means through which women motivated men not only to hunt but also to concentrate their energies on bringing back the meat.
The value of this hypothesis lies not so much in any immediate plausibility as in the fact that it can be tested. It involves a number of logical consequences which can be formulated as predictions. The thesis examines each prediction in turn, showing not only that each is confirmed but also that the hypothesis as a whole is fruitful in intelligibly reorganizing our perception of the evidence bearing on human evolution, cultural variability and origins.
Testing the model: an overview
An implication of the model is that women should assert themselves periodically as being “on strike”, and that this should motivate male hunting and female access to the resultant meat. If human culture really originated on this basis, we might expect to find evidence for the centrality of this sex-strike logic somewhere in the relevant ethnographic record.
Where is there any evidence for a periodic female “sex-strike” of the kind predicted? At first sight, it might seem, there is none. Nowhere in the world today are wives permitted to organize autonomously against their husbands or declare themselves “on strike”. However, It is not on an appeal to immediately- obvious “facts” of such a kind that the argument of this thesis rests. The aim, rather, is to present a full, coherent account of the richness and complexity of human cultural symbolic systems, particularly those of hunter-gatherers and other traditionally-organized peoples.
A consequence of this research has been to restore the human female to a central position in any account of cultural origins. By perceiving a problem in certain “selfish” tendencies of the dominant primate male, we are led to examine hunting-behaviour in a new way – in terms, that is, of its sexual politics. Instead of seeking the roots of development in the behaviour of the male, we look at the activity of the female – activity which lies behind the more visible male activity of the hunt. Interestingly, in traditional cultures, a collective hunting-expedition is typically preceded by a ban on sexual relations lasting for anything from a few days to two weeks or more. Women are centrally involved in enforcing this ban, and may be blamed if the hunt fails. In other ways, too, sex and hunting are intimately intertwined: in almost all hunter-gatherer cultures, women measure male sexual desirability in terms of their hunting-success. A finding of the research is that womankind’s pivotal accomplishment was to assert conscious control over her own sexuality, obtaining meat by refusing sex to all males except those who came to her with provisions. This is the essence of the argument of the thesis.
This female strategy could not have worked on a purely individual basis. Hunting being necessarily a group-activity, the females likewise had to act collectively. The strategy of saying “no” to males when meat was in short supply would have been completely undermined if certain females were willing to engage in sexual relations on any terms. In short, when the male community
Introduction
_____________________________________________________________________________________ Chris Knight Menstruation and the origins of culture Page 13
was unsuccessful in obtaining meat, the female community as a body had to refuse all sexual favours. This withdrawal is referred to in the thesis as women’s periodic “sex-strike”. A ban on sexual relations, it is argued, was necessary as the prelude to each successful hunting-expedition; it was the means through which women motivated men not only to hunt but also to concentrate their energies on bringing back the meat.
The value of this hypothesis lies not so much in any immediate plausibility as in the fact that it can be tested. It involves a number of logical consequences which can be formulated as predictions. The thesis examines each prediction in turn, showing not only that each is confirmed but also that the hypothesis as a whole is fruitful in intelligibly reorganizing our perception of the evidence bearing on human evolution, cultural variability and origins.
Testing the model: an overview
An implication of the model is that women should assert themselves periodically as being “on strike”, and that this should motivate male hunting and female access to the resultant meat. If human culture really originated on this basis, we might expect to find evidence for the centrality of this sex-strike logic somewhere in the relevant ethnographic record.
Where is there any evidence for a periodic female “sex-strike” of the kind predicted? At first sight, it might seem, there is none. Nowhere in the world today are wives permitted to organize autonomously against their husbands or declare themselves “on strike”. However, It is not on an appeal to immediately- obvious “facts” of such a kind that the argument of this thesis rests. The aim, rather, is to present a full, coherent account of the richness and complexity of human cultural symbolic systems, particularly those of hunter-gatherers and other traditionally-organized peoples.
A consequence of this research has been to restore the human female to a central position in any account of cultural origins. By perceiving a problem in certain “selfish” tendencies of the dominant primate male, we are led to examine hunting-behaviour in a new way – in terms, that is, of its sexual politics. Instead of seeking the roots of development in the behaviour of the male, we look at the activity of the female – activity which lies behind the more visible male activity of the hunt. Interestingly, in traditional cultures, a collective hunting-expedition is typically preceded by a ban on sexual relations lasting for anything from a few days to two weeks or more. Women are centrally involved in enforcing this ban, and may be blamed if the hunt fails. In other ways, too, sex and hunting are intimately intertwined: in almost all hunter-gatherer cultures, women measure male sexual desirability in terms of their hunting-success. A finding of the research is that womankind’s pivotal accomplishment was to assert conscious control over her own sexuality, obtaining meat by refusing sex to all males except those who came to her with provisions. This is the essence of the argument of the thesis.
This female strategy could not have worked on a purely individual basis. Hunting being necessarily a group-activity, the females likewise had to act collectively. The strategy of saying “no” to males when meat was in short supply would have been completely undermined if certain females were willing to engage in sexual relations on any terms. In short, when the male community
Introduction
_____________________________________________________________________________________ Chris Knight Menstruation and the origins of culture Page 13
was unsuccessful in obtaining meat, the female community as a body had to refuse all sexual favours. This withdrawal is referred to in the thesis as women’s periodic “sex-strike”. A ban on sexual relations, it is argued, was necessary as the prelude to each successful hunting-expedition; it was the means through which women motivated men not only to hunt but also to concentrate their energies on bringing back the meat.
The value of this hypothesis lies not so much in any immediate plausibility as in the fact that it can be tested. It involves a number of logical consequences which can be formulated as predictions. The thesis examines each prediction in turn, showing not only that each is confirmed but also that the hypothesis as a whole is fruitful in intelligibly reorganizing our perception of the evidence bearing on human evolution, cultural variability and origins.
Testing the model: an overview
An implication of the model is that women should assert themselves periodically as being “on strike”, and that this should motivate male hunting and female access to the resultant meat. If human culture really originated on this basis, we might expect to find evidence for the centrality of this sex-strike logic somewhere in the relevant ethnographic record.
Where is there any evidence for a periodic female “sex-strike” of the kind predicted? At first sight, it might seem, there is none. Nowhere in the world today are wives permitted to organize autonomously against their husbands or declare themselves “on strike”. However, It is not on an appeal to immediately- obvious “facts” of such a kind that the argument of this thesis rests. The aim, rather, is to present a full, coherent account of the richness and complexity of human cultural symbolic systems, particularly those of hunter-gatherers and other traditionally-organized peoples.
Menstrual Synchrony.
Any sex strike presupposed solidarity. The timing of menstruation, however, is a randomised phenomenon, isolating women rather than uniting them. How, then, could this have had anything to do with feminine solidarity or the need to go “on strike”? For menstruation to express solidarity, all menstruating women would have to have bled at the same time – a seemingly-difficult requirement. Moreover, if the model presented here were relevant at all, the moment selected would have needed to be consistent with the requirements of the hunt, and therefore (it is argued) with the presence or absence of nocturnal moonlight. Such a logic could not have been glimpsed, even as a theoretical possibility or ritual ideal, unless human female physiology possessed some mechanism through which menstrual cycles could become phase-locked, both with one another and with the periodicity of the moon. Medical and other evidence for such potentialities, however, is now well-established and is surveyed in Chapter 7. It is argued that at times marked out by the moon’s phases, women used ritual means (e.g. sexual
Introduction
_____________________________________________________________________________________ Chris Knight Menstruation and the origins of culture Page 17
intercourse and/or dancing) to bring their emotional energies into harmony, this cultural intervention in turn assisting in the realisation of women’s physiologically-given potentialities for synchrony. Again, with respect to any specified prehistoric population, it is not argued that we have evidence that this actually happened. But a finding of the theoretical analysis is that such synchrony must have been widely experienced as on some level possible and ideal: it was something which should and would happen if circumstances were sufficiently favourable. Some reasons for underscoring this conclusion will become clear in the course of the cross-cultural analysis of ritual and myth which takes up the bulk of the thesis.
Women’s rule – the conspiracy of the flows
Having presented the model of origins outlined above, along with an overview of suggested methods for testing it, the thesis goes on to use the model as an analytical tool in approaching ethnographic studies of traditional cultures Among hunter-gatherer societies, those in which sexual relations are relatively egalitarian and in which female solidarity clearly exists (in Africa the Mbuti, !Kung, Nharo and similar “pygmy” or “Bushman” cultures provide examples) present less obvious difficulties for the hypothesis than certain others which can be thought of. Perhaps the greatest problems for the hypothesis are posed by those hunter-gatherers among whom women are forcefully excluded from ritual power by men. The focus is therefore on the latter category – in particular on Australian Aboriginal and other traditional societies in which men, through secret initiation rites, claim a monopoly on the exercise of ritual power.
It is in fact an apparent difficulty for the hypothesis that in most cultures known to anthropology, ritual power is monopolised largely by men. On this basis, the hypothesis may seem to be disproved. However, a deeper analysis produces an important finding: in precisely those traditional simple cultures in which ritual power is most emphatically said to be monopolised by men, the language of ritual action seems peculiarly inappropriate to the male sex. In order to demonstrate their masculine ritual potency, men must “menstruate” and “give birth”. The ordinary, unaltered penis is insufficient for such purposes: men must be circumcised, subincised or otherwise mutilated in order to bleed.
With the collapse of all possibility of menstrual synchrony and solidarity, male sexual-political power comes to prevail. But such has been the centrality of menstruation to the language of ritual potency that when men do gain the ascendancy, no alternative language is available to them in which to express their power. Consequently, ritually-potent men must prove themselves guardians of the sacred blood. They must abstain from sex and “menstruate” in synchrony with one another, turning the traditional menstrual sex-strike against women themselves. At this point, female menstruation no longer has the force of a collective sex-strike; men keep control over their wives even during their
With the collapse of all possibility of menstrual synchrony and solidarity, male sexual-political power comes to prevail. But such has been the centrality of menstruation to the language of ritual potency that when men do gain the ascendancy, no alternative language is available to them in which to express their power. Consequently, ritually-potent men must prove themselves guardians of the sacred blood. They must abstain from sex and “menstruate” in synchrony with one another, turning the traditional menstrual sex-strike against women themselves. At this point, female menstruation no longer has the force of a collective sex-strike; men keep control over their wives even during their
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