On Mon, 5 Feb 2001 15:54:09 -0000 "Fiona Moore" nydersdyner@yahoo.co.uk writes:

Yes, but as an anthropologist I'd like to point out that people tend to be informed by the values of the society in which they were raised. I'd like to recommend "The Handmaids Tale," which makes a good case for the rather sinister similarities between the hardcore left and the hardcore right.

Uh, oh. Can I safely admit to hating "The Handmaid's Tale"? I thought it resorted to straw man arguments and largely failed to deal with the question of how that society _should_ have dealt with danger of extermination due to radically dropping fertility rates (the scenario given was counterproductive [and it's likelyhood struck me as extremely questionable (Hey, we're in danger of dying out! Let's fix it by putting the few women able to have children under so much stress no one should expect them to be able to have any!)]).

...

fertility of the primitives is declining so a female would be a valued commodity.

Actually, that depends too. Witness female abandonment in parts of China; in a generation or two, their fertility will be seriously impaired by the excess of males, but this doesn't stop families abandoning surplus daughters in favour of sons.

Two points. Incidents of North American Indians kidnaping settlers seem to have risen in direct response to higher death rates (more from disease, at that point, than warfare). Who was taken, why, and how they were incorporated into the group varied from tribe to tribe. But, of adults, more women seem to have chosen _not_ to return than men (although, this may represent women who wound up in Quebec due to French-Indian alliances).

Second point. China has only begun to feel the crunch of its one child policy. The results aren't pretty (side issue of irritation with Bujold [one of my favorite authors] for ignoring the dark side of high percentage male populations). Women being sold (against their will) as either wives or prostitutes is on the rise.

Also, it should be noted that this is an artificially induced imbalance which gives families the choice of preserving the family (through the male line) or (as they see it) sacrificing the family's existance for the good of society (not a defense, merely context [which should also be weighed against women, who kept a first born daughter, being forced to have abortions if they try again ('abortion' sometimes meaning killing a newborn, illegal infant) and the frightening fact that female children placed in orphanges are known to be greatly loved by their parents - the fact the child wound up there alive usually represents incredible risks on the part of one or both parents]).

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Again, primitive societies do have primitive belief systems.

Which actually tend to be extremely complex,

I so agree.

and not at all like the

rather facile and fatuous one presented in Deliverance.

Well, we only see one rather limited aspect of it, but you have a point.

In Canada, for instance, the French and English didn't come charging in, gun down the natives and take their land-- they sent in a few people to get involved in the fur trade, then a few more, then a few more. That doesn't make Deliverance any less colonialist.

Uh, but there is a reason so many Indians in the U.S. opted to move to Canada having to do with better treatment and greater likelyhood of having certian basic rights respected. Whatever Avon's shortcomings as a god figure (don't get me started), he did what Meegat wanted and, genetically at least, saved her people (I only hope a good training program was included in that ship).

Ellynne

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