Read Women After All: Sex, Evolution, and the End of Male Supremacy Online

Authors: Melvin Konner

Tags: #Science, #Life Sciences, #Evolution, #Social Science, #Women's Studies

Women After All: Sex, Evolution, and the End of Male Supremacy (47 page)

164
“all their wealth .
. .
and their wives”:
Genesis 34:29.

164
“And the children of Israel took all the women”:
Numbers 31:9–10.

164
“Have ye saved all the women alive?”:
Numbers 31:15.

164
“Now therefore kill”:
Numbers 31:17.

164
“played the whore”:
Judges 19:2

165
“And this is the thing that ye shall do”:
Judges 21:11–12.

165
“Go and lie in wait”:
Judges 21:20–21.

165
“In those days”:
Judges 21:25.

165
David and Bathsheba:
The story is told in 2 Samuel, chapter 11, which in the end does at least tell us that David displeased the Lord.

165
Great Hindu epic of rivalry and war: Mahabharata,
35th anniversary ed., trans. William Buck (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012).

166
The Bhagavad Gita: The Bhagavad Gita
, trans. Laurie L. Patton (New York: Penguin Classics, 2008).

166
“The king may enter the harem”: Indian History Sourcebook: The Laws of Manu, c. 1500 BCE,
trans. G. Buhler, chapter 7, verses 216 and 221; published by Fordham University at http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/india/manu-full.asp, accessed Sept. 13, 2014. Although the text says that men must honor women, it also makes clear that
they are subject to men’s rule. For example, chapter 5, verse 148: “In childhood a female must be subject to her father, in youth to her husband, when her lord is dead to her sons; a woman must never be independent.” We will see that similar views were held in the West until quite recently.

166
Polygyny in various religions:
See the Wikipedia entry “polygamy” at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygamy, accessed Sept. 13, 2014.

167
Despotism and reproduction:
L. L. Betzig,
Despotism and Differential Reproduction: A Darwinian View of History
(New York: Aldine, 1986).

167
Betzig’s 2012 update:
Laura Betzig, “Means, Variances, and Ranges in Reproductive Success: Comparative Evidence,”
Evolution and Human Behavior
33, no. 4 (2012): 309–17.

168
“lesser known chiefs”:
Berys N. Heuer, “Maori Women in Traditional Family and Tribal Life,”
Journal of the Polynesian Society
78, no. 4 (1969): 455.

168
paramount chief of the Powhatan:
See the Wikipedia entry “Chief Powhatan” for the drawing and references: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chief_Powhatan, accessed Sept. 13, 2014.

168
Kamehameha’s wives:
Jocelyn Linnekin,
Sacred Queens and Women of Consequence: Rank, Gender, and Colonialism in the Hawaiian Islands
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1990).

168
six wives and at least twenty-five children:
“Zulu King Zwelithini’s Sixth Wife ‘Needs Palace,’” BBC News Africa, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-19489196, accessed Sept. 13, 2014.

168
“Humans, like most other species”:
Bobbi S. Low, “Women’s Lives There, Here, Then, Now: A Review of Women’s Ecological and Demographic Constraints Cross-Culturally,”
Evolution and Human Behavior
26, no. 1 (2005): 66.

169
“For humans, as for other mammals”:
Ibid., 68.

169
Having co-wives reduces surviving children:
M. Borgerhoff Mulder, “Women’s Strategies in Polygynous Marriage: Kipsigis, Datoga, and Other East African Cases,
Human Nature
3 (1992): 45–70; B. I. Strassmann, “Social Monogamy in a Human Society: Marriage and Reproductive Success Among the Dogon,” in
Monogamy: Mating Strategies and Partnerships in Birds, Mammals, and Human
s, ed. Ulrich Reichard and C. Boesch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 177–89; D. W. Sellen, “Polygyny and Child Growth in a Traditional Pastoral Society: The Case of the Datoga of Tanzania,”
Human Nature:
An Interdisciplinary Biosocial Perspective
10, no. 4 (1999): 329–71.

169
“Sex
is
power”:
Paglia,
Sexual Personae,
23.

170
“The violent subjugation of women and girls”:
Kathy L. Gaca, “Girls, Women, and the Significance of Sexual Violence in Ancient Warfare,” in
Sexual Violence in Conflict Zones
, ed. Elizabeth D. Heineman (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), 87.

170
“the objective of taking captive”:
Ibid.

170
“have control over the procreative capabilities”:
David Wyatt,
Slaves and Warriors in Medieval Britain and Ireland, 800–1200
(Leiden: Brill, 2009), 132.

171
“cut the throat”:
Ibid., 143

171
The Nuer organization for predatory expansion:
Raymond C. Kelly,
The Nuer Conquest: The Structure and Development of an Expansionist System
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1985).

171
In the Crusades, rape was standard practice:
Wyatt,
Slaves and Warriors,
124; and Anne Curry, “The Theory and Practice of Female Immunity in the Medieval West,” in
Sexual Violence in Conflict Zones
, ed. Elizabeth D. Heineman (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), 173–88.

171
Sixteen million descendants of one man:
Tatiana Zerjal and twenty-two other authors, “The Genetic Legacy of the Mongols,”
American Journal of Human Genetics
72, no. 3 (2003): 717–21.

172
the same proportion of Irish men:
L. T. Moore, B. McEvoy, E. Cape, K. Simms, and D. G. Bradley, “A Y-Chromosome Signature of Hegemony in Gaelic Ireland,”
American Journal of Human Genetics
78, no. 2 (2006): 334–38.

172
War as runaway sexual selection:
Bobbi S. Low,
Why Sex Matters: A Darwinian Look at Human Behavior
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), 217.

Chapter 7: Samson’s Haircut, Achilles’ Heel

175
A classic study of how well women do:
Martin King Whyte,
The Status of Women in Preindustrial Societies
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978).

175
“solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”:
Thomas Hobbes and C. B. Macpherson,
Leviathan
(New York: Penguin Classics, 1968), 89.

177
The take included 11,000 tons of wheat:
Robert B. Coote,
Early Israel: A New Horizon
(Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990), 37.

177
“The scribe arrives”:
Ibid., 5.

179
Nazis kept Jewish sex slaves:
Sonja Maria Hedgepeth and Rochelle G. Saidel, eds.,
Sexual Violence Against Jewish Women During the Holocaust
(Dartmouth, NH: University Press of New England, 2010). Chapters in this book also describe other Nazi sexual crimes against Jewish women.

179
“comfort women”:
Yuma Totani, “Legal Responses to World War II Sexual Violence: The Japanese Experience,” in
Sexual Violence in Conflict Zones
, ed. Elizabeth D. Heineman (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), 217–31.

179
Soviet soldiers raped German women:
Anthony Beevor,
Berlin: The Downfall 1945
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007).

179
“Copulation without conversation”:
Osmar White,
Conquerors’ Road: An Eyewitness Report of Germany 1945
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 98.

179
all occupying armies have left children behind:
For an overview, statistics, and references, see the Wikipedia entry “War children,” accessed April 9, 2014, at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_children#War_children_of_World_War_II. See also Maria Hohn,
GIs and Fräuleins: The German-American Encounter in 1950s West Germany
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002).

180
Pinker’s
Better Angels
:
Pinker,
Better Angels of Our Nature
.

181
“They were supposed to draw the line”:
Walter Scheidel “A Peculiar Institution? Greco-Roman Monogamy in Global Context,”
History of the Family
14, no. 3 (2009): 283.

181
“could marry several in a row”:
Ibid., 283.

181
Jews allowed polygyny:
Harvey E. Goldberg,
Jewish Passages: Cycles of Jewish Life
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 143–45.

181
Christian monogamy in a Greco-Roman context:
Scheidel, “A Peculiar Institution?” 289.

183
A tendency with adaptive flexibility:
See Quinlan, “Human Pair-Bonds,” for a thoughtful review and discussion.

183
The Nayar of India:
Kathleen Gough, “The Nayars and the Definition of Marriage,”
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
89 (1959): 23–34; Melinda A. Moore, “Symbol and Meaning in Nayar Marriage Ritual,”
American Ethnologist
15, no. 2 (1988): 254–73.

184
Monogamy
independently
arose sixty-one different times:
D. Lukas and T. H. Clutton-Brock, “The Evolution of Social Monogamy in Mammals,”
Science
341, no. 6145 (2013): 526–30.

184
Opie looked at 230
primate
species:
C. Opie, Q. D. Atkinson, R. I. M. Dunbar, and S. Shultz, “Male Infanticide Leads to Social Monogamy in Primates,”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
110, no. 33 (2013): 13328–32; see also C. Opie, Q. D. Atkinson, R. I. M. Dunbar, and S. Shultz, “Reply to Dixson: Infanticide Triggers Primate Monogamy,”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
110, no. 51 (2013): E4938.

184
The controversy continued:
D. Lukas and T. H. Clutton-Brock, “Evolution of Social Monogamy in Primates Is Not Consistently Associated with Male Infanticide,”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
111, no. 17 (2014): E1674; C. Opie, Q. D. Atkinson, R. I. M. Dunbar, and S. Shultz. “Reply to Lukas and Clutton-Brock: Infanticide Still Drives Primate Monogamy,”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
111, no. 17 (2014): E1675.

186
Fathers paying dowries for grandsons’ reproductive success:
M. Dickemann, “Ecology of Mating Systems in Hypergynous Dowry Societies,”
Social Science Information sur les sciences sociales
18, no. 2 (1979): 163–95.

186
“Graze where you will”:
William Shakespeare,
The Yale Shakespeare: The Complete Works,
edited and annotated under the direction of the Department of English, Yale University (New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1993),
Romeo and Juliet,
act 3, scene 5, p. 925.

186
Falling in love a “discourse of defiance”:
Lila Abu-Lughod,
Veiled Sentiments: Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), xix.

187
Women in ancient Greece and Rome:
This discussion is based on Sarah B. Pomeroy’s
Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity
(New York: Schocken, 1995). See also the Wikipedia entry “Women’s Rights” at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_rights, accessed Sept. 13, 2014.

187
The drama of Jane Austen:
Jane Austen,
Pride and Prejudice
(New York: Knopf/Everyman’s Library, 1991); and Jane Austen,
Emma
(New York: Modern Library Paperback, 2001).

188
“And
by the way in the new Code of Laws”:
Miriam Schneir,
Feminism: The Essential Historical Writings
(New York: Vintage, 1994), 3.

189
de Gouges’s
Déclaration des droits de la femme et de la citoyenne
:
The full text in English was accessed Sept. 13, 2014, at http://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/d/293/. The French text was available on the same date at http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/D%C3%A9claration_des_droits_de_la_femme_et_de_la_citoyenne.

189
Wollstonecraft’s
Vindication
:
Mary Wollstonecraft,
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
(Dover Thrift, 2012), Kindle edition.

189
Willard’s “Female Education”:
Emma Willard, “Mrs. Willard’s Plan for Female Education: An Address to the Public; Particularly to the Members of the Legislature of New-York, Proposing a Plan for Improving Female Education,” accessed Sept. 13, 2014, at http://www.emmawillard.org/archive/mrs-willards-plan-education, on the website of the Emma Willard School, still in Troy, New York.

190
the first women’s rights convention:
Judith Wellman, “The Seneca Falls Women’s Rights Convention: A Study of Social Networks,”
Journal of Women’s History
3, no. 1 (1991): 9–37.

190
“We are continually told that civilization”:
John Stuart Mill,
The Basic Writings of John Stuart Mill: “On Liberty,” “The Subjection of Women,” and “Utilitarianism”
(New York: Random House, 2010), 154. For other editions, the quote is near the beginning of chapter 2 of “The Subjection of Women.”

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