The ideology, call it theology if you will, of sanctified male domination over women, must be examined in the light of reality rather than mythology. It must be examined in the light of evolutionary biology, evolutionary neurobiology and social evolution. There is no other way to examine it with truth and integrity.
The impetus to breed and pass on one’s genes is an evolutionary construct which began to develop many millions of years ago. The creation narrative in Genesis is a meaningful allegory, but it is not history and it is not a true story. This much must be realised at the beginning. Women are not a spare rib from a man. The female gender existed before the male gender and the evolution of the male gender has far more to do with genetic variation in offspring than any other factor. In many instances in nature, the male of the species is a little more than a parasite which serves only to add genetic variation to the female eggs. We can trace such developments all the way back to primitive, single-celled eukaryotes – the precursors of all living things.
This is why all human zygotes begin life as female, and XY chromosome foetuses only develop into males through a rather complex procedure, which we will not discuss here.
The idea of “herding” females and controlling them for breeding purposes is obvious in many species. At some point, males of various species had an instinct to limit a females experience so that he could be sure that it was his genes which were being passed on and not those of another male. In some species, such as lions, when a male takes over a harem of lionesses, he systematically hunts down and kills any cubs which were sired by a different male. He has an instinct to ensure that it is only his genes which are being passed on through his harem. This is true of other species, and it has been true in some human societies historically.
This is reflected especially in the hunter/gatherer era of human history. In the hunter/gatherer era, and especially in nomadic tribes, men kidnapped women from other tribes precisely for breeding purposes. In many instances, including the history of the Hebrews, whole tribes were slaughtered wantonly, except for the virgin females, who were taken captive for breeding purposes. That the Hebrews participated in this mass murder – what we would now call war crimes and genocide – is undeniable as it is recorded more than once in the Hebrew Scripture.
Biblical marriage was not monogamous. Biblical marriage gave men a right to have as many wives as they wished and mistresses in addition, but punished women with death if they had more than one man. This harkens back to the evolutionary instinct to ensure that one’s own genes were the only ones being passed on through the females under a male’s control. Among humans, male offspring were valued much higher than female offspring primarily because male offspring among humans were warriors and also we are responsible for the care of their parents in old age.
The sexual “passions” are a result of the evolutionary drive to procreate, actually, to pass on one’s genes. We can see this in the way that most species exhibit a life or death struggle among the males for the privilege of passing on their genes. This is why the males of so many species fight so vigourously and in such a bloody manner for control of the females of the species.
The reason this evolutionary drive becomes what they call “passions” in humans is because humans do not have specific periods of estrus and rut. The development of the human brain involves memory and has the capacity to remember and seek pleasure. In human beings, sexual drives are not simply about reproduction – about passing on one’s genes. This situation developed thousands of years ago as the human brain evolved. However, the primitive instinct for men to control the women that they possessed has mellowed only over the eons.
At the same time, among women, the sense of equality and the desire to control their own reproductive role in their own bodies has been steadily growing. The evolution of social structures has made this an imperative among human beings. Women are no longer content to be owned by men. We see a last vestige of this in Western wedding ceremonies where the father “gives away” the bride to her husband so that he transfers ownership of her from himself to another man. While this is becoming a mere ceremonial action, it is a definite reflection of the fact that the woman had no personhood apart from the man who owned her and controlled her reproductive functions.
Social evolution no longer permits this domination to pass unchecked. While men still fight for instinctive and now atavistic rights and power over women, society is less and less accepting of this atavism, and the majority of women are less and less inclined to accept a role of subservience and being owned by men, and are more demanding of freedom and control of their own bodies and reproductive agencies.
This is something that can be turned back only through violence and harsh intimidation of women on the part of men. Attempts to base this atavism in religious doctrine are singularly unconvincing and unacceptable. The long struggle of women for recognition as legal persons did not bear fruit until the 1930s at least in English based societies. The right of women to vote was viewed with absolute horror on the part of many men. It is not only that men had a fear of no longer being able to control women, but men had actually come to consider women inferior and incapable of the judgment necessary to vote.
Subconsciously, men, and even some women, who are of a fundamentalist and right-wing bias still see women as an instrument for men to pass on their genes through her reproductive agencies. Such men also fear the loss of their dominance and control over women, and try to fight against this with ideologies handed down from Bronze Age written documents.
We can see this even in the Hebrew Scripture, which was written by Bronze Age herdsman and warriors who portray God as a warlord, and the language of the Hebrew Scripture is replete with this idea. While the holy prophets, with divine revelation, began to modify this vision of God as a divine warlord, the impact that this had on the idea of masculinity in many societies still lingers on. And this is the cause of much social conflict, of much of what right-wing fundamentalist label as “culture wars”, thoughtlessly striving to continue male dominance in the control of women’s bodies and reproductive agencies. This struggle is bound to fail as women have become much more educated and much more desirous of participating fully in the individual liberties and freedoms of democratic societies. They have become less accepting of being dominated and subverted by a misplaced concept of what constitutes masculinity.
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