Male-Female Aggression and the Importance of Sisterhood

[yeves]

@xerx's post about the unprovoked aggression of male monkeys towards females has led me to this article on Discover magazine, which has made some very important and interesting points about the importance of female alliances and bonds in protecting females against the aggression and sexual coercion of males.

which made me think of the numerous situations where I've seen women being envious of other women, viewing them as competition for resources and males (who literally gave little shit about them) and try to fight them off, belittle and disparage them, while the males followed the "bros before hoes" code and tried play these women against each other, laughing as they would fight among themselves and enervate each other.

what do you think of the gender relations from human purview?


http://discovermagazine.com/1995/aug/apesofwrath548

"Decreasing women’s vulnerability to sexual coercion, then, may require fundamental changes in social alliances. Women gave voice to this essential truth with the slogan SISTERHOOD IS POWERFUL--a reference to the importance of women’s ability to cooperate with unrelated women as if they were indeed sisters. However, among humans, the male-dominant social system derives support from political, economic, legal, and ideological institutions that other primates can’t even dream of. Freedom from male control--including male sexual coercion--therefore requires women to form alliances with one another (and with like-minded men) on a scale beyond that shown by nonhuman primates and humans in the past. Although knowledge of other primates can provide inspiration for this task, its achievement depends on the uniquely human ability to envision a future different from anything that has gone before."

[xerx]

extra facts:

Female primate social hierarchies are fixed (more or less). Male social hierarchies aren't: males inherit their social status from their mothers but compete to rise or retain their position. Males can form alliances to depose a leading alpha male.

An alpha female stays alpha her entire life. In many species, females make up for the lack of competition by ingratiating themselves with higher ranking females through grooming and whatnot.


Like females, male bonobos have wild gay sex to cement bonds. Bonobos engage in all kinds of sexual behaviour, including oral sex. A meeting between two groups of bonobos can result in an orgy; a meeting between two groups of chimps risks starting a war. Bonobo society is a matriarchy with women forming alliances to attack aggressive males.


If you're interested, I suggest checking out the differences between "tournament" and "pair-bonding" species. Tournament species have a great deal of female-male competition, with rape being a common occurrence; a tournament father is more likely to abandon both his kids and his mate in pursuit of fresh sexual conquests. Humans, averaged out, are somewhere in between the two extremes.

[Esaman]

Do tell what is the future you envision and how "sisterhood" is going to help achieve that future. Do try to be realistic. Since you mentioned political, economic, legal and ideological institutions how will "sisterhood" be involve in that?

I am of the opinion that "war of sexes" paradime is a loss by default for everyone.
Rape/violence should be illegal and punished, abortion should be legal, biological parents should be responsible and carry financial burden for their children, paternity must be automatically established medically. Equal opportunity between sexes politically and economically is already effectively established in most western countries. Sums things up for me.

[ashlesha]

Do tell what is the future you envision and how "sisterhood" is going to help achieve that future. Do try to be realistic. Since you mentioned political, economic, legal and ideological institutions how will "sisterhood" be involve in that?

they quoted an article. they didnt say anything about their own vision.

[Hot Scalding Gayser]

The comparison to humans and bonobos makes me a little uncomfortable. We have a complex psychological identity of our sexualness and 'alpha male' status or whatever. I get that we share a lot of dna with them but I am not a bonobo lol. I am a human.

Having wild gay sex with other males, I'm not sure that cemented the broness between us. More often it was like one of the males got away with feeling like the 'straight man' of the group and one other person felt more like the blatant homosexual (ie "The Girl"), because of society's gender roles and how we fit that yin-yang pattern even when talking about two males or two females. It was actually pretty equal to the sort of 'nice straight girl vs. bad boy straight man' thing that heterosexuals go through. Two obviously 'gay' males have a hard time starting up an erotic charge...real authentic tension only happens when one more masculine 'in the closet' gay man seduces a more open and innocent gay person. (or vice versa) People are snobbishly heteronormative because there's truth to the concept, the error is to think it applies to just heterosexuals or something.

People have this stereotype of gay men being sweater wearing musical theater loving sweethearts that are there to emotionally support you. Now I don't completely hate on this stereotype because I'm on that end of the spectrum more than the other end, but there are other gay men on the opposite end of the spectrum, whom I share an erotic fetish with- that are your 'straight gays.' But we as a society don't really look at those guys as being gay, we automatically think of str8 man when we see a hot athletic bad boy 9 times out of 10... and therein lies the issue. It's akin to looking at a man and seeing a woman when no woman is really there.... and that's why people say so many offensive and homophobic things like 'having gay sex is like putting batteries in backwards.' NO IT ISN'T. Not when you get the right compatible guys involved lol.

((I was just with a gay guy that choked me during sex like an abusive heterosexual man. It was so hot, I like most people didn't think a gay man had it in him but boy was I wrong.))

[Aquagraph]

Do tell what is the future you envision and how "sisterhood" is going to help achieve that future. Do try to be realistic. Since you mentioned political, economic, legal and ideological institutions how will "sisterhood" be involve in that?

I am of the opinion that "war of sexes" paradime is a loss by default for everyone.
Rape/violence should be illegal and punished, abortion should be legal, biological parents should be responsible and carry financial burden for their children, paternity must be automatically established medically. Equal opportunity between sexes politically and economically is already effectively established in most western countries. Sums things up for me.

From the little that I read of the article, it doesn't require political changes. I think the emphasis is better to be kept purely in the cultural realm that would reflect the actions of everyday life.