[MD] The whole yin yang thing

[John Carl]

Marsha,

I'd like to just sorta start from scratch on a few issues that you brought
up, without doing the whole line by line thing.  I wanna talk about your
charges of the oppression of women through patriarchical organizations of
politics and religion, especially religion.  And I figure the best place to
start is by looking at what I'd call our predessesors, the victorians.   It
doesn't make as much sense to discuss the fallout of mesopatamian attitudes
toward women, they're so far removed their effects have been blunted.  The
victorians, on the other hand, we feel more immediately present.    Not to
mention, the Lila connection.

Furthermore, I'd say the victorian culture most exemplified the kinds of
oppression you describe of  masculine denigration of women to mere roles in
kitchen and bedroom.   Primogeniture and all that.


However, I think you are mischaracterizing this as "male" domination -  I
think, much more you are seeing patterns of feminine domination of society -
other women, than you are male patterns.    You do know Victoria was a
woman, don't you?  You blame religion all the time, but you know who the
real church goers are?  Go sometime.  Look around.  It's almost all women.
And if you looked deeper into the relationships, the men who are there are
there because their wives dragged them.  They'd much rather be at home
watching tv.  It's probably always been like that.


Do you honestly think men came up with rules about strictly covering female
flesh?  Hah!  Believe me, if men were in charge the rules would be way more
lax.  Even during the Victorian era.  Concerns of fashion appropriateness is
women controlling other women's dress.  Well, until modern times.  I think
gay men are in charge now, and I must say it's an improvement!

 You think it's men who burn witches?  It's usually women who gossip about
the outcast or gang up with social networks to ostracize the different
other.   Men just give them the muscle and intellectual justification to get
it done.    It's this way because it's in  women's interest to rein in the
purely biological urges in the interest of a social arrangement.  The human
infant is the longest-developing in infancy of any animal, and it takes
teamwork to survive while raising one.  Therefore the woman has the most
vested interest in social controls, and it's women who shape the society's
leanings.

Also, women are just more in tune with social cues and facial expressions
and communicating from infancy.

Until they find a way to raise children in test tubes or whatever, men need
women and the acceptance by a woman has always been the driver behind all
civilizing progress, all intellectual or athletic competition among males.
So what you see as a male dominated society, I see as a female-dominated
one.