WOMEN'S PLACE IN SOCIETY

Some conservatives seem to have problems talking about women. Over the past 50 or so years, conservatives bunch this social issue with the standard economic issues in the context of the Republican Party; thus, the attitude toward women has become a political problem. There is a distinct difference between conservatives and liberals. These dynamics are consistent with my contention that our political beliefs are genetic.

Mike Huckabee recent raise eyebrows with some carefully prepared remarks about women’s attitude toward sex. Other Republicans have done the same thing in the past; legitimate rape, etc. To use an old trope, these remarks are just the tip of the iceberg. George Lakoff, a cognitive linguist, explained the basis for this in his book, Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think. He chose to couch his discussion in terms of moral values but it really referenced the evolutionary psychology basis of our politics. Moral values of any kind result from humankind’s reasoned interpretations of the fundamental basis of right verses wrong in a sense of survival of the fittest. We are what we are both physically and behaviorally because it is the way we evolved.

Part of Darwinian adaptive selection or “natural selection” relates to social structure, which arise out of individual selection. Herds, flocks, families, or kin groups have structure related to hierarchy dominance. This gives rise to our individual as well as group competitiveness. We have political parties; Democrats and Republicans, which obvious means there is something different between the two groups. As Lakoff used the term ‘moral order’ to explain, society has evolved a sense of order that seems right or correct. Hierarchy dominance historically is based on physical strength that has evolved over a few million years into a combination of intellectual and physical strengths. In the bestial family, the “moral order” was the father, the mother and the children. It was “morally” correct that the wife is obedient and submissive to the husband and the parents punished disobedient children until they comply with the wishes of the culture. It was “morally wrong” not to punish a disobedient wife or child. Failing to do so would result in a hierarchy of punishments in the form of expulsion of the child from the family to expulsion of the family from society. It was all nice, neat, and orderly until intelligence entered the picture.

I understand the term ‘conservative’ to mean unwillingness to change, but there should be some kind of limit before we get to the cave men.

Apparently, we are in the process of changing from the primitive bestial physical driven society to an intellectually driven or at least a combination of intellectual and physical driven society; we call it the progressive or liberal movement. I listen to the Republican rhetoric about family life and the “place” of women in society and see exactly what Dr. Lakoff was saying. Liberal describe these things by using pejorative terms to describe this behavior as treating women “like second class citizens”, and denying “them” choice in reproductive health, and a “woman’s place” is at home taking care of the children. When Christians look at the way Muslim men treat women, we in America with distaste and frequently refer to the cruelty of their system. However, if we care to look, we can find some of that same behavior in American churches embraced by the Republican Party; Mike Huckabee is an ordained Southern Baptist minister and according to the Huffington Post, constitutionally mandated “separation of church and state” makes Rick Santorum want to throw up.  Todd Akin, the originator of the famous rape remark, earned a Masters Degree of Divinity from the Covenant Theology.

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