h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

>>but I'm assuming it was developed as part of a modesty culture which - I'm speculating - has to do with fertility control.<<

Yes, I just don't understand the rationale there. Are you suggesting that naked people can't help themselves and are at it all the time therefore the fertility rate is higher?

My understanding about fertility is that it's controlled by:

- pregnancy, lactation and childrearing (biologically and socially)

- women's choices (and that is in no way a modern thing)

- control of women, and possibly to a lesser extent certain classes of men

- scarcity of food and other resources

- enviromental factors (pollution)



I don't know if pictures is such a good idea, we might get a spike in the h2g2 fertility rate

Just kidding. Pictures would be good, cause then I'd have a better idea of what you are meaning.

They're obviously not underwear though. Sound more like ornamentation than clothing, probably ritual rather than simply decorative.

As to what I'm meaning...think loincloths for starters.

>>Are you suggesting that naked people can't help themselves and are at it all the time therefore the fertility rate is higher?

Not quite. More that a modesty culture regulates both the exposure of genitals and the conduct of sexual relations. The one is off limits because the other is. And versa vice.

I'd be interested in hearing other ideas about the sociobiological/anthropological foundations of modesty, though. Assuming that we don't buy into stories about apples and serpents.

>> More that a modesty culture regulates both the exposure of genitals and the conduct of sexual relations. The one is off limits because the other is. And versa vice.<<

Ah, ok, that makes more sense. I'd be interested to know if that is true.

I still think that understanding control of women is important here. Where women have autonomous control of their fertility, is there a need for modesty? Or, are there reasons for genital modesty other than concerns about who has babies and when? Once you look at overtly patriarchal cultures the connections between power and sex seem to be the overriding reasons for modesty.

>>I still think that understanding control of women is important here.

You're not wrong...although modest cultures also tend to be modest about male genitalia (even if there aren't any that require men to be veiled).

>>Where women have autonomous control of their fertility, is there a need for modesty?

So, for example, the availability of oral contraception gave rise to the miniskirt, yes?

>>Once you look at overtly patriarchal cultures the connections between power and sex seem to be the overriding reasons for modesty.

Is patriarchy more about control of sexuality...or control of property rights though the male lineage? (and thus women, as breeding units, become property and need to have their sexuality controlled). Discuss.



Hats are an intersting one. Until relatively recently, it would have been though disconcerting to see anyone outdoors without a hat. Then hats disappeared for about 20 years. Now they're back.

(I can't wear hats. I've got an enormous head)

Hats are interesting. I seem to remember that St Paul wrote that men should always wear hats in church, but women didn't as they have their hair to cover their heads. Standard practice seems to be to remove headwear as a sign of respect when entering a church.

Hair is a secondary sexual signal, I suppose. We connote gender with different styles.

>>Standard practice seems to be to remove headwear as a sign of respect when entering a church.

But not in synagogues, mosques, gurdwaras...

And in orthodox Christian churches...don't women cover their heads? Also in some modern nonconformist sects.

>>although modest cultures also tend to be modest about male genitalia (even if there aren't any that require men to be veiled).<<

True, but the sanctions on women's bodies is different than men's eg men can still use prostitutes, and men make the rules about contraception and abortion.


>>So, for example, the availability of oral contraception gave rise to the miniskirt, yes?<<

Hmm, I was thinking more about cultures that let women make the decisions about fertility. I'm not sure how much women were in decision making positions in the 60s. Not as much as is often thought.


>>
Is patriarchy more about control of sexuality...or control of property rights though the male lineage? (and thus women, as breeding units, become property and need to have their sexuality controlled). Discuss.
<<

Yes it's related to property and male lineage - if you want male lineage you have to control women. I was thinking about how if you want power you have to control sex, women's sexuality in particular. Not just because of reproduction and property rights but because women's power is not really controllable in other ways and women will always do things differently than men. I don't think women collectively/culturally are particularly interested in consolidating power in that sense and will undermine attempts to gain it. The Christians knew this, or learnt it and turned out to be one of the most misogynistic and pro-modesty cultures on the planet.

>>and men make the rules about contraception and abortion.

Oof! That one certainly needs some backing up. While not denyiong the fundamental patriarchy...I suggest it's a tad simplistic.

We need to establish what these modesty cultures are.

But come to think of it I can't think of any country where men haven't made the abortion laws.

Wouldn´t men have made any laws in most countries?

Are there any places where the women wear loincloths and the men don´t? Otherwise I don´t see a need to blame it on male opression of female sexuality or how you want to phrase it.

The point I was making is that in modesty cultures yes men often have to 'cover up' too, but the rules around men's bodies is different than women's. Because those are patriarchal cultures men get to make the rules.

So even thought here may be an overt value on modesty, men can still have access to prostitutes, can legally rape their wives, there are often high levels of sexual abuse of children by men. That's all about men's sexuality. But abortion is illegal, contraception is often illegal, women often cannot challenge rape legally, and often cannot leave their husbands if they need to. That's all about women's bodies. Who is making the rules there?

I'm thinking 1950s NZ or UK, or Catholic or other fundamentalist countries, and possibly Islamic countries (although I know less about them).


Compare that to some indigenous cultures that aren't particularly patriarchal. Women have choice about who they have sex with (and this doesn't have to be controlled because paternity isn't such a big deal), and they have choice about when and how many children they have. I'm thinking some Maori cultures, or the Moso of China.

de

You know, on the subject of cultures which are not particularly patriarchal:

I'm reading a very interesting novel right now, 'The History of Emily Montague' by Frances Brook. Ms. Brook was a friend of Dr. Johnson and a bright light of the London literary scene in the last half of the eighteenth century. I'm sure we all have some conception of the roll of women in british society in that period. In 1763, Ms. Brook went to Quebec with her husband, who was a British Military chaplain who was posted to the British force occupying Quebec after the conquest of French Canada (see A2497791). At that time (as at most times in Canada's history, a large number of cultures were living cheek-by-jowl and the influences were interesting. One of the most interesting, for the sake of this discussion, is that Brook describes her respectable young English ladies gradually rebelling against their society's expectations under the influence of the cultures around them. And it really all begins with an encounter with a pair of First Nations women and their children who are off on a long canoe trip while their men are off somewhere else. The independence and happiness of the native women opens the English women's eyes to a whole new world.

It strikes me that 'modesty' is actually about power: those with power worry about the modesty of those over whom they have power. When the power is broken, 'modesty' is irrelevant and happiness is allowed.

de2

Well said anhaga!
I have hitherto avoided comment in this thread which in spite of many intelligent
observations seems to be vacillating between a religious trolling session
and a women's right rant forum.

You've proved there really is much more to be said on 'both' subjects.
And in many ways you've also said all I might have to say.

Except that the other Johnson (Samuel) is the subject of the novel I'm reading,
by 5 time Booker Prize nominee Beryl Bainbridge, "According To Queeney",
an 'adroit, ingenious tale of unrequited love and compelling passion'. Or at least
I'll be getting back to it as soon as I finish Dylan's "Chronicles" and "Pepys: The Saviour
of the Navy" (1939) by Arthur Bryant.


~jwf~

the other Johnson?

I think we each mentioned the same man, my friend.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Johnson

Damn!
Must be the Boswell/Roswell thing.
I got the Bens.

~jwf~

>>
It strikes me that 'modesty' is actually about power: those with power worry about the modesty of those over whom they have power. When the power is broken, 'modesty' is irrelevant and happiness is allowed.
<<

Thanks anhaga, that's what I've been getting at but much less succinctly.


~jwf~ if you think this has nothing to do with gender, please give some examples where men aren't the ones with the power over.

Anhaga's synopsis of the issue describes other power relationships of course, notable what white people (men again I'm afraid) imposed on native peoples in terms of modesty as part of their need to control.

'Anhaga's synopsis of the issue describes other power relationships of course, notable what white people (men again I'm afraid) imposed on native peoples in terms of modesty as part of their need to control. '

I find myself overflowing with thoughts to include in this response, kea.

First of all, I didn't think I said anything about white people, men or otherwise, imposing modesty or control on native peoples in my previous post.

I tried to describe the influence encounters with First Nations women had on European women in 18th century Canada. I mentioned that the European women were on the receiving end of the power structure of European society and that the First Nations women showed them another way.

Certainly, there have since been strenuous attempts to impose white power structures, including the patriarchal, on aboriginal societies, but anyone who paid any attention to the events of the summer of 1990 in the area around the Six Nations community of Kanesatake, a neighbour to the native women and children I mentioned being encountered in the novel in my previous post, will have a vivid memory of Mohawk women forcefully ordering the (male) Mohawk Warriors to stand down from their confrontation with the Canadian Armed Forces.

While I would certainly agree that Europeans have tried to impose their social standards on those they've encountered and tried to dominate, I will not acknowledge that it has always, if ever, been successful.

And such an imposition on the First Nations is precisely opposite to what I was trying to explain about what takes place in 'The History of Emily Montague'. To put it plainly, white women saw the example of First Nations women and chose to impose it on the existing white social structure. And, in the novel, you can clearly see (particularly the older) white males squirm under the new order, when their power is broken and happiness is allowed.

as a footnote to my previous post, specifically referring to the failure of the Europeans to impose a patriarchal order on the First Nations:

'July 11th [1990] the mayor asks Québec Security or the (SQ) to intervene with the Mohawk protest, claiming that criminal activity had been practiced around the barricade. The Mohawk people, in accordance with the Constitution of the Iroquois Confederacy, asked the women, the caretakers of the land and "progenitors of the nation", whether or not the arsenal they had amassed should remain. The women of the Mohawk Nation decided that the weapons should only be used if the (SQ) fired on the barricade and to use them as defensively as possible.'

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oka_Crisis




It should be pointed out that the Constitution of the Iroquois Confederacy predates the constitutions of both the United States and Canada and that both the United States and Canada derive parts of their constitutional structures from the Constitution of the Iroquois Confederacy.