Thread by @Paracelsus1092

Some extracts from Edgerton's book Sick Societies concerning the status of women in certain forager and pastoralist cultures.

Edgerton's main point in this book is to question the idea that all traditions and customs are necessarily healthy or adaptive - for instance the widespread habit in many cultures of denying women, even pregnant women, equal access to high quality foods.

There are many rationalisations for making women carry the heavy stuff, but ultimately men don't want to do it.

Belittling women, telling them they have 'smooth brains', excluding them from cultic activities, threatening them with assault and even rape - examples of such antagonisms can be found all over the world.

Edgerton gives one longer, particularly troubling case study from the Kenyan Bantu people, the Kisii/Gusii. Their cultural strategy of being at war with other clans, but requiring marriage partners from the same rivals, led to bitter spousal relationships.

If you're training your daughters in the physical techniques of resisting consummation, maybe something has gone wrong somewhere?

A true atmosphere of enmity seemed to pervade all parts of Gusii life, if this ethnography can be believed.

It's hard to see how these kinds of behaviours are beneficial from an evolutionary point of view. Sometimes a culture can hit such a dead-end that men, women and even children will regularly kill themselves to escape it.