السلام عليكم و رحمة الله
Some women are not happy with the standard story of evolution. Why you ask? Because the male is the hero all the time. Think about it. When was the last time you heard of the female ape-human creature saving her husband and child? When was the last time you heard the female hunting in the open Savannah of the desert of Africa for food? It's always a he always a male. The female is the lonely ape-like creature on the trees. She's only mentioned at breast feeding the baby and mating with the heroic ape-human creature. And Elaine Morgan (1920-2013) tries to break this male-centered view in the standard evolutionary theory stories on human evolution.
She has wrote a whole book entitled The Descent of Woman (get it? Darwin wrote The Descent of Man). The whole book is one long speculative fairy-tale story about how ape-human women evolved. She starts with how men think of women; as a man gone wonky,
"Throughout most of the literature dealing with the differences between the sexes there runs a subtle underlying assumption that woman is a man gone wonky; that woman is a distorted version of the original blueprint; that they are the norm, and we are the deviation"[1]
She thought that "It might have been expected that when Darwin came along and wrote an entirely different account of The Descent of Man [sic], this assumption [i.e. that women are men gone wonky] would have been eradicated... But it didn't"[2]
Even though she said that at least Darwin's idea made woman and man "contemporaneous" rather than woman created a while after from man, she did forget to mention more than just that from Darwin's Descent.
In the Descent[3] Darwin argues that women are inferior to men. But why are men superior to women? Darwin explains,
"It is generally admitted that with women the power of intuition, of rapid perception, and perhaps of imitation, are more strongly marked than in man; but some, at least, of these faculties are characteristic of the lower races, and therefore of a past and lower state of civilisation."
So because women have the power of intuition, rapid perception and imitation that makes the women inferior.
Let's define the words.
Intuition: knowledge or perception not gained by reasoning and intelligence[4]
Perception: (1) the act or the effect of perceiving (2) insight or intuition gained by perceiving (3) the ability or capacity to perceive (4) the process by which an organism detects and interprets information from the external world by means of the sensory receptor
Imitation[5]: (2) to pretend to be or to impersonate [something]
What Darwin is saying is that the savages (the blacks, like the Fuegians, Australians etc and religious people) are very intuitive (i.e. gaining knowledge without reasoning or intelligence) and that the womenfolk are similar to the savages in this respect. He's also saying that the savages are good at perceiving (isn't that good?) and women are good at perceiving therefore women are inferior to men and finally savages don't make anything new (they do and Darwin himself admits to that but he's talking in the general sense) rather they need to be taught by/copy the superior beings (i.e. the male whites) and somehow women also only imitate therefore they are inferior.
Darwin carries on throwing fanciful statistics around too,
"The chief distinction in the intellectual powers of the two sexes is shewn by man attaining to a higher eminence, in whatever he takes up, than women can attain - whether requiring deep thought, reason, or imagination, or merely the use of the senses and hands.If two list were made of the most eminent men and women in poetry, painting, sculpture, music,-comprising composition and performance, history, science and philosophy, with half-a-dozen names under each subject, the two lists would not bear comparison. We may also infer, from the law of the deviation of averages, so well illustrated by Mr Galton,[6] in his work on 'Hereditary Genius,' that if men are capable of decided eminence over women in many subjects, the average standard of mental power in man must be above that of women"(585 - italics are mine)
Most of that requires no explanation but the last sentence does. What Darwin means by "average standard of mental power in man must be above that of women" is that if statistics were shown that men are always smarter, then women are inferior (as Darwin believed). But the opposite is true, if statistics show that women are smarter then, men are inferior. Which also means that there is such a thing as "inferior" and "superior" not just among races of man (which Darwin also believed in) but also between the genders!
(Hold on a minute... If women imitate... Where did they learn kindness and sweetness? Men allegedly were hunting in the desert with brutal power in order to eat and be biped over millions of years. Did the man have kindness too over the kids? If yes what did the women do then? Something sounds fishy).
Then he beautifully summarizes what he means (should be written in gold! Joking)
"Thus man has ultimately become superior to woman" (586 - bold are mine - I felt greatness after reading that - joking again).
He even says that it is fortunate or else man and women would've been the same!
"It is, indeed, fortunate that the law of equal transmission of characters to both sexes has commonly prevailed throughout the whole class of mammals; otherwise it is probable that man would have become as superior in mental endowment to women, as the peacock is in ornamental plumage to the peahen" (586)
I am not sure whether this is a sign of happiness that man is superior to woman but it does seem that Darwin did feel fortunate/happy that man is superior.
In another passage Darwin says,
"Man is more powerful in body and mind than woman..." (620)
But did you know that Darwin used to call his own wife mammy?[7] So much for inferiority.
But that's not all. Darwinist started (before Darwin even published Descent) to try to prove that women are inferior to men not just by the fact that men occupy the seat of knowledge but also by the fact that women generally have smaller heads to men. That has a meaning for the Darwinist. The idea that women have smaller heads than men meant only one thing: inferiority. Carl Vogt, an admirer of Darwin (and whom Darwin mentions in the Descent) said,
"By its rounded apex and less developed posterior lobe the Negro brain resembles that of our children, by the protuberance of the parietal lobe, that of our women... The grown-up Negro partakes, as regards his intellectual faculties, of the nature of the child, the female, and the senile white..."[8]
And Paul Broca (whom also Darwin mentions) claimed that women's brains are inferior to men.[9]
This is of course where Darwin got his ideas from. He published Origin of Species and people like Vogt and Broca took their cue and formed their racist views, Darwin took their views and incorporated it into Descent.
But one more thing Darwin also claims that women are maybe "missing links" between a child and men. He said,
"The female... in the formation of her skull, is said to be intermediate between the child and man" (579)
And he references Vogt and Ecker on page 603.
Summary
I don't think this requires summary but according to Darwin your mum, sister, wife and all female relatives of yours are proven to be inferior to you (if you're a male).
There is a new book that just came out by Fatima Barkatulla called Khadijah: Mother of History's Greatest Nation. An excellent book on how superior women are. (it's really for children)
References
1. Elaine Morgan, 1985, The Descent of Woman, Souvenir Press, page 7
2. Ibid, page 7
3. Charles Darwin, Darwin: The Descent of Man, Wordsworth Classics of World Literature
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Descent-Man-Classics-World-Literature/dp/1840226986/ref=pd_sim_14_2?ie=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=76G4FD9HY64DGT4VQHEQ
4. I am using The New Collins Concise English dictionary for all the definitions. First published in 1979 but the same definition is on Oxford dictionary https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/intuition
5. I am defining 'imitate' rather than imitation.
6. Francis Galton is the cousin of Darwin.
7. The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, volume 4, Cambridge University Press, pages 146-147
8. Carl Vogt, 1864, Lectures on Man: His place in nature and in the history of the Earth, page 192
You can access that book for free on https://archive.org/details/lecturesonmanhis00vogtuoft
It's also in Stephen Jay Gould, 2007, The Richness of life, Vintage, page 515
9. Stephen Jay Gould, 2007, The Richness of life, Vintage, page 515
Some women are not happy with the standard story of evolution. Why you ask? Because the male is the hero all the time. Think about it. When was the last time you heard of the female ape-human creature saving her husband and child? When was the last time you heard the female hunting in the open Savannah of the desert of Africa for food? It's always a he always a male. The female is the lonely ape-like creature on the trees. She's only mentioned at breast feeding the baby and mating with the heroic ape-human creature. And Elaine Morgan (1920-2013) tries to break this male-centered view in the standard evolutionary theory stories on human evolution.
 |
| Elaine Morgan |
She has wrote a whole book entitled The Descent of Woman (get it? Darwin wrote The Descent of Man). The whole book is one long speculative fairy-tale story about how ape-human women evolved. She starts with how men think of women; as a man gone wonky,
"Throughout most of the literature dealing with the differences between the sexes there runs a subtle underlying assumption that woman is a man gone wonky; that woman is a distorted version of the original blueprint; that they are the norm, and we are the deviation"[1]
She thought that "It might have been expected that when Darwin came along and wrote an entirely different account of The Descent of Man [sic], this assumption [i.e. that women are men gone wonky] would have been eradicated... But it didn't"[2]
Even though she said that at least Darwin's idea made woman and man "contemporaneous" rather than woman created a while after from man, she did forget to mention more than just that from Darwin's Descent.
In the Descent[3] Darwin argues that women are inferior to men. But why are men superior to women? Darwin explains,
"It is generally admitted that with women the power of intuition, of rapid perception, and perhaps of imitation, are more strongly marked than in man; but some, at least, of these faculties are characteristic of the lower races, and therefore of a past and lower state of civilisation."
So because women have the power of intuition, rapid perception and imitation that makes the women inferior.
Let's define the words.
Intuition: knowledge or perception not gained by reasoning and intelligence[4]
Perception: (1) the act or the effect of perceiving (2) insight or intuition gained by perceiving (3) the ability or capacity to perceive (4) the process by which an organism detects and interprets information from the external world by means of the sensory receptor
Imitation[5]: (2) to pretend to be or to impersonate [something]
What Darwin is saying is that the savages (the blacks, like the Fuegians, Australians etc and religious people) are very intuitive (i.e. gaining knowledge without reasoning or intelligence) and that the womenfolk are similar to the savages in this respect. He's also saying that the savages are good at perceiving (isn't that good?) and women are good at perceiving therefore women are inferior to men and finally savages don't make anything new (they do and Darwin himself admits to that but he's talking in the general sense) rather they need to be taught by/copy the superior beings (i.e. the male whites) and somehow women also only imitate therefore they are inferior.
Darwin carries on throwing fanciful statistics around too,
"The chief distinction in the intellectual powers of the two sexes is shewn by man attaining to a higher eminence, in whatever he takes up, than women can attain - whether requiring deep thought, reason, or imagination, or merely the use of the senses and hands.If two list were made of the most eminent men and women in poetry, painting, sculpture, music,-comprising composition and performance, history, science and philosophy, with half-a-dozen names under each subject, the two lists would not bear comparison. We may also infer, from the law of the deviation of averages, so well illustrated by Mr Galton,[6] in his work on 'Hereditary Genius,' that if men are capable of decided eminence over women in many subjects, the average standard of mental power in man must be above that of women"(585 - italics are mine)
Most of that requires no explanation but the last sentence does. What Darwin means by "average standard of mental power in man must be above that of women" is that if statistics were shown that men are always smarter, then women are inferior (as Darwin believed). But the opposite is true, if statistics show that women are smarter then, men are inferior. Which also means that there is such a thing as "inferior" and "superior" not just among races of man (which Darwin also believed in) but also between the genders!
(Hold on a minute... If women imitate... Where did they learn kindness and sweetness? Men allegedly were hunting in the desert with brutal power in order to eat and be biped over millions of years. Did the man have kindness too over the kids? If yes what did the women do then? Something sounds fishy).
Then he beautifully summarizes what he means (should be written in gold! Joking)
"Thus man has ultimately become superior to woman" (586 - bold are mine - I felt greatness after reading that - joking again).
He even says that it is fortunate or else man and women would've been the same!
"It is, indeed, fortunate that the law of equal transmission of characters to both sexes has commonly prevailed throughout the whole class of mammals; otherwise it is probable that man would have become as superior in mental endowment to women, as the peacock is in ornamental plumage to the peahen" (586)
I am not sure whether this is a sign of happiness that man is superior to woman but it does seem that Darwin did feel fortunate/happy that man is superior.
In another passage Darwin says,
"Man is more powerful in body and mind than woman..." (620)
But did you know that Darwin used to call his own wife mammy?[7] So much for inferiority.
But that's not all. Darwinist started (before Darwin even published Descent) to try to prove that women are inferior to men not just by the fact that men occupy the seat of knowledge but also by the fact that women generally have smaller heads to men. That has a meaning for the Darwinist. The idea that women have smaller heads than men meant only one thing: inferiority. Carl Vogt, an admirer of Darwin (and whom Darwin mentions in the Descent) said,
"By its rounded apex and less developed posterior lobe the Negro brain resembles that of our children, by the protuberance of the parietal lobe, that of our women... The grown-up Negro partakes, as regards his intellectual faculties, of the nature of the child, the female, and the senile white..."[8]
And Paul Broca (whom also Darwin mentions) claimed that women's brains are inferior to men.[9]
This is of course where Darwin got his ideas from. He published Origin of Species and people like Vogt and Broca took their cue and formed their racist views, Darwin took their views and incorporated it into Descent.
But one more thing Darwin also claims that women are maybe "missing links" between a child and men. He said,
"The female... in the formation of her skull, is said to be intermediate between the child and man" (579)
And he references Vogt and Ecker on page 603.
Summary
I don't think this requires summary but according to Darwin your mum, sister, wife and all female relatives of yours are proven to be inferior to you (if you're a male).
References
1. Elaine Morgan, 1985, The Descent of Woman, Souvenir Press, page 7
2. Ibid, page 7
3. Charles Darwin, Darwin: The Descent of Man, Wordsworth Classics of World Literature
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Descent-Man-Classics-World-Literature/dp/1840226986/ref=pd_sim_14_2?ie=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=76G4FD9HY64DGT4VQHEQ
4. I am using The New Collins Concise English dictionary for all the definitions. First published in 1979 but the same definition is on Oxford dictionary https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/intuition
5. I am defining 'imitate' rather than imitation.
6. Francis Galton is the cousin of Darwin.
7. The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, volume 4, Cambridge University Press, pages 146-147
8. Carl Vogt, 1864, Lectures on Man: His place in nature and in the history of the Earth, page 192
You can access that book for free on https://archive.org/details/lecturesonmanhis00vogtuoft
It's also in Stephen Jay Gould, 2007, The Richness of life, Vintage, page 515
9. Stephen Jay Gould, 2007, The Richness of life, Vintage, page 515
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