Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id PAA17542 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Mon, 17 Jul 2000 15:09:18 +0100 Date: Mon, 17 Jul 2000 07:08:05 -0700 From: Bill Spight <bspight@pacbell.net> Subject: Re: Memes and sexuality To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Message-id: <39731345.59B96767@pacbell.net> Organization: Saybrook Graduate School X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.61 [en]C-PBI-NC404 (Win95; I) Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit X-Accept-Language: ja,en References: <Pine.OSF.4.21.0007110839110.2376-100000@koko.umd.edu> <4.3.1.0.20000713091550.020beb10@popmail.mcs.net> Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Dear Aaron,
> It seems to me that one of the key events in the development of sexual
> repression may have been the discovery some time in the past 100,000 years
> that sex causes pregnancy and childbirth.
Timothy Taylor, in "The Prehistory of Sex" (Bantam, 1996), sees a link with
animal husbandry. "The essence of keeping a meat or dairy herd is not just
in the patterns of slaughter, but in controlling the ratios of the sexes
and their mating patterns. . . . The control of animal sexuality by men may
have had its analogue in control of the sexuality of human females" (p.
175). He also sees a link to homophobia.
Taylor's general thesis in the book is the coevolution of human biology and
culture, via sexual selection. For example, clothing and hairlessness
developed together, he thinks. He does not express this in terms of genes
and memes, however. Like most archaeologists, he does not see any
theoretical value in positing memes or culturegens.
Best,
Bill
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