The Shere Hite Reader by Shere Hite

Author:Shere Hite
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
Published: 2010-05-26T16:00:00+00:00

FAMILY VALUES AND LOVE: IS THE FAMILY’S DESIGN FIXED OR FLEXIBLE?

Do hierarchy and inequality in families keep popping up because they are “human”—or is this behavior exaggerated by ideology?

As noted earlier, one of the most important ways through which the hierarchical system of unquestioning obedience to authority (or “what is”) is transmitted through the biblical tale of Abraham taking his son Isaac up on a mountain where God/Allah had commanded that he “sacrifice” the boy. Abraham is given no reason other than that the Lord commanded it, and that therefore the action was “right.” From this command, Abraham learns that he must obey the system and not ask why the rules are the rules. He must show his loyalty by not questioning authority. This system, it is said, rewards men with elevated status.

Today this elevated status continues to be reinforced in men by the daily use in the English language of the pronoun “he,” the adjective “his,” and the generic term “man” to refer to all humans. Further, as noted, men are reminded in “nature” specials on television (and popular biology textbooks) that they have a “natural” tendency (therefore a “right”?) to be “dominant,” to “rule”—that “competition for dominance” is “part of their natural behavior.” But even if this phenomenon were true in some species of animals, it is certainly not true in all, and who is to say which is the “model” for our species? And even if it were “natural,” would this make it “right”?

Some theorize that the idea of some people “owning” others came about when men first observed the animals reproducing and giving birth; men wanted to control female sexuality and reproduction and thus “own” their offspring. Perhaps this hypothesis is true, since men would lose control of inheritance and reproduction if women had choices of other family systems and were not forced to be focused on men, as perhaps they were not in the earliest Greek, Cretan, and other societies around the Mediterranean basin.

Most men who believe in democratic government have not applied the same principles to the family. This glaring inconsistency is not widely questioned.bb In the nineteenth century many men “found” support for the idea of male superiority in “science” (or popularized science). Although as early as 1776 Abigail Adams (in a letter) asked her husband, working on the new American Constitution, “not to forget the ladies,” he declined to comply.

The nineteenth-century version of “male domination” succeeded the old idea of the God-given inherited right of kings (and men) to rule, in the following way: humans, it was said, had come to dominate other animals as we evolved, because we were superior; similarly, within our species, it was claimed, males “naturally” competed with females and each other for “dominance”; therefore, if we have a social structure in which men are dominant, this fact is clearly proof that males were and are “naturally” superior—that is, stronger, “smarter,” and so on. (Similarly, adherents of slavery in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries argued that blacks were

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.