The anthropologist Peggy Reeves Sanday looked at data from over one hundred cultures as to the prevalence of rape, and divided them into high- or low-rape cultures. She found that high-rape cultures are highly militarized and sex segregated. There is a lot of difference in status between men and women. The care of children is devalued and delegated to subordinate females. She also found that the creation myths of high-rape cultures recognize only a male deity, rather than a female deity or a couple. When you think about it, that is rather bizarre. It would be an understandable mistake to think women make babies all by themselves, but it’s preposterous to think men do that alone. So you’ve got to have a fairly elaborate and counterintuitive mythmaking machine in order to fabricate a creation myth that recognizes only a male deity. There was another interesting finding, which is that high-rape cultures had recent experiences — meaning in the last few hundred years — of famine or migration. That is to say, they had not reached a stable adaptation to their ecological niche.
Sadly enough, when these risk factors are tallied, it’s clear this pretty much describes our culture.
~Judith Herman interviewed by Derrick Jensen in Truths Among Us: Conversations on Building a New Culture
Picture found here.
Shocking.
Shocking perhaps, but not surprising. Shorter: cultures whose organizing principles are based on what Starhawk has referred to as power-over, as contrasted with power-with and power-within, will be characterized by dominating, controlling activities on the part of those who hold the power.
I’ll have to check out Prof. Sanday’s original work. It sounds interesting, and I’d like to go beyond Jensen’s report of Prof. Herman’s synopsis.
This has some really profound theological implications, especially concerning the concept of “creation ex nihilo”, which, in my opinion, is the most extreme (and intellectually indefensible) version of the male-deity-alone creation mythology.
Very interesting. And it makes my “Makes-sense” needle register in the high marks.
but it’s preposterous to think me do that alone.
Does the “me” need an “n”?
Quercki,
Good catch. Off to fix.
This information has been available in other research for a while .When I was working in adolescent psyche in the 80′s , ( I know , I should have my head examined ) I asked why not separate the girls and boys on the locked units, rather than deal with the possible inappropriate but inevitable interactions . What I learned was, if you do that ; separate the boys and girls entirely; the incidence of violence and injury increases exponentially . Also the children do not get a chance for healthy social development; but the main reason was to avoid the increase in violence
Wow, Hecate, thanks so much for this. Illuminating, chilling, and unsurprising. The chilling part – to explain – is my sense that we may becoming more of a rape culture in the US – more militarized, less valuing of childcare…
Swanspirit, I am intrigued that I never heard about the research you mention, as I worked with adolescents in the late 70′s and have an affinity for odd reports that the media buries. Could you provide a link or a reference?
I’ll never forget when the Mental Health Patients Liberation Front was picketing the country’s largest lobotomist, in NYC around 1978, and specifically calling him out because 90% of his victims, er, patients, were women. Responding to a reporter about the charge of sexism, the doc said (quoting from memory here), “Well, men don’t do so well at the job after lobotomies, but women do just fine keeping house.” (So, nothing to see here, move along….)
I still get dizzy and faint when I recall this…. And those statistics and their meaning have been flushed down the Memory Hole by our “MSM.”