The Theory That Men Evolved to Hunt and Women Evolved to Gather Is Wrong - eviltoast
  • BarqsHasBite@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    assumed evolution was acting primarily on men, and women were merely passive beneficiaries of both the meat supply and evolutionary progress.

    He was superimposing the idea of male superiority through hunting onto the Ainu and into the past.

    This fixation on male superiority was a sign of the times not just in academia but in society at large.‘’

    At that time, the conventional wisdom was that women were incapable of completing such a physically demanding task

    Scholars following Man the Hunter dogma relied on this belief in women’s limited physical capacities

    Today these biased assumptions persist in both the scientific literature and the public consciousness.

    “Powers of Estrogen” infographic.

    This is quite the charged language and I’m not even halfway through. Throw in a bunch of other stuff about the Boston marathon and gender presentation in movies, yeah this isn’t that good of an article.

    Before I’m downvoted into oblivion, we probably all took part in hunting. They’ve found the speed differences in running between ages and gender are not extreme, so we likely all went out running and hunting together. But men probably took on the more dangerous and physical aspects, but everyone with a spear is a more capable unit.

    • EatATaco@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      I read most of it, not bothering with full paragraphs when I could see the idea at the beginning, and from what I saw it doesn’t get any better.

      It points out that the only physical sport activity they women excel at is ultra marathons. it then goes on to day that flexibility when it comes to family roles was important for survival. And this I absolutely agree with and it is certainly the case that women can hunt too.

      But the author just seemingly completely ignores the argument that women can still fill the role, even if there is some kind of specialization that makes one sex generally better at one task then the other. The fact that we are different almost certainly means this is the case.

      • Tavarin@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        the only physical sport activity they women excel at is ultra marathons

        And men still have much better record times at every ultra-marathon distance. Testosterone is a hell of a drug.

        • rambaroo@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          The author’s argument isn’t that women are faster but that they can sustain physical exertion for longer. I have no idea if that’s true, but citing marathon times really misses the point.

        • EatATaco@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          I admitted to the amount of effort I put in, then made an actual argument against what they said. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe not.

          What did you do? Nothing but an empty criticism. Bet ya felt real smart doing so too.

    • wesley@yall.theatl.social
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      1 year ago

      And speed and strength aren’t even the only attributes needed for effective hunting in the first place. Seems to me that a variety of skills would be beneficial