5 ms·

At some point the structure of marriage and how it fits into society is a matter only for the people of that society, not a matter for outsiders. There are no

by ktizo 14y ago

At some point the structure of marriage and how it fits into society is a matter only for the people of that society, not a matter for outsiders. There are no outsiders. While you were away we found out that people from different cultures have been shagging all along and that we are all related (which should please mr incest at the bottom of the thread), and that all societies are deeply interconnected at every level. Thanks for worrying about the retirement plans of impoverished homosexuals though, without people like you making sure they behaved responsibly and bred, who knows where they might end up in later life.

einhverfr 14y ago
But there are outsiders. We all have social circles and societies of structures. My ancestors may have come over here from various places in Europe but I am still an outsider to where my ancestors may have been from. This is why I far prefer the company of anthropologists to human rights activists. I suppose though we can take this further. There are aboriginal tribes in Polynesia which engage in rituals where boys (presumably in early adolescence) become men by giving tribal elders fellatio. After all, I suppose, you are what you eat. We don't have to prove that this is harmful, since we can just claim it's child abuse.
- ktizo 14y ago
  As far as your preference of company, I don't think that human rights activism and anthropology are particularly mutually exclusive. But on your other point, it is one thing to dispassionately note the behaviours of others, however this does not preclude having an opinion or forming a personal moral judgement on those behaviours. And if you have formed a moral judgement on a behaviour then it is perfectly ok to express your opinion, even if the people you are judging are far away or long dead. Everyone judges everyone, all the time, and this is not a terrible imposition that should be stopped, but rather is the main mechanism of social evolution throughout history.
  - einhverfr 14y ago
    But on your other point, it is one thing to dispassionately note the behaviours of others, however this does not preclude having an opinion or forming a personal moral judgement on those behaviours. I think it does preclude taking a very broad line though, and studying the constructs and how a culture fits together tends to make folks a lot less prone to advocacy. This doesn't mean that criticism of another culture is out of the question--- there is a lot of great cultural criticism that comes out of this. Examples that come readily to mind include criticisms of our (in the US) trust that Obstetrics is better than Midwifery (statistically, midwifery has better outcomes on the whole, and this is optimized when midwives are the primary care providers for all lower-risk pregnancies and childbirths), criticism of how the Morroccan henna first-marriage ceremonies entrench patriarchy, and more. But these are very detail-oriented criticisms which tend to address specific cultures, and look at them in ways which are very detail-oriented. Even the anthropologists who have criticized things like female genital cutting in Sudan have tended to note carefully how it fits into culture, and tended to avoid the inflammatory activist rhetoric (and in many cases argued even more forcefully against being overly activist on the issue). You will probably never see an anthropologist endorse a global campaign like this, because the sorts of thinking are very different. So you are right, it doesn't preclude an opinion of the way a specific culture does things. But it does seem to preclude arguments based on natural rights. BTW, great book on this topic, which over and over addresses questions of criticism of other cultures and its place in anthropology: "Deeply Into the Bone: Re-Inventing Rites of Passage" by Ronald Grimes. To say it is inspired by van Gennep's classic anthropological work "The Rites of Passage" would be an understatement. Edit: To the downvoters: One of the reasons why broad lines are usually avoided is that dynamics are rarely simple. For example, in Africa, you have long-standing patterns of European meddling in local cultures, and consequently large-scale activism from the West against female genital cutting more or less frames that practice as one of nationalist resistance.
    - ktizo 14y ago
      You will probably never see an anthropologist endorse a global campaign like this, because the sorts of thinking are very different. Given that the American Anthropological Association is quite happy to weigh in on exactly this subject politically, I am not entirely sure that you are correct. the AAA Executive Board issued in 2004, the following statement in response to President Bush’s proposal for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage: The results of more than a century of anthropological research on households, kinship relationships, and families, across cultures and through time, provide no support whatsoever for the view that either civilization or viable social orders depend upon marriage as an exclusively heterosexual institution. Rather, anthropological research supports the conclusion that a vast array of family types, including families built upon same-sex partnerships, can contribute to stable and humane societies.
einhverfr 14y ago
One other point. I am not convinced by biological explanations of homosexuality. I don't think it's a choice anymore than some guy goes into a bar and sits down and decides what color of hair to prefer. The development of sexual identity is a complex thing and there are societies in the past where homosexual relationships have been a lot more common than they are at present. For example, Plutarch characterizes pederastic relationships (probably circumscribed by all sorts of taboos in order to render them non-predatory) as forming the political backbone of Spartan society--- these relationships provided young male Spartan citizens the ability, he suggests, to make the sorts of political connections they needed to be successful later in life. If the surveys of Greek vase paintings are to be believed, it is likely that most Greek citizen women also engaged in some homosexual relationships within religious contexts in ancient Greece as well. Was this bad? I don't think so. These were all channelled into very pro-social frameworks if we believe folks like Aristotle, Plutarch, and the modern scholars who have studied vase paintings and the like. Instead I think the "born that way" thesis is actually homophobic. Our society is very aggressively hetero-normal. You can find Barby and Ken playsets, but if there was an equivalent Barby and Kendra dyke playset, well... it would be seen as sexualized in a way that Barby and Ken are not. In this context, where our society says "straight is the way normal people are" in our toys, movies, bridal magazines, etc, the "born that way" thesis reduces to "well, there is a small minority that is just different and will never be like everyone else. You aren't one of them, are you?" So in many ways perhaps even the gay rights movement entrenches obstacles to normalization of same sex relationships. I am not saying this is good or bad. I am just describing it how I think it is.
- jules 14y ago
  There is clear evidence for genetic and pre-birth factors in determining sexual orientation. Not all of the variance has been accounted for, but that doesn't mean that a substantial part of the variance has been solidly explained by biological factors. What exactly do you not agree with in the numerous studies that have been done? Your last two paragraphs don't make sense. That our society is very aggressively hetero normal is not caused by gay rights movements or by homosexuality being determined at birth, on the contrary. It is however caused by people who argue that marriage is only for heterosexuals.

by ktizo 14y ago

einhverfr 14y ago

But there are outsiders. We all have social circles and societies of structures. My ancestors may have come over here from various places in Europe but I am still an outsider to where my ancestors may have been from. This is why I far prefer the company of anthropologists to human rights activists. I suppose though we can take this further. There are aboriginal tribes in Polynesia which engage in rituals where boys (presumably in early adolescence) become men by giving tribal elders fellatio. After all, I suppose, you are what you eat. We don't have to prove that this is harmful, since we can just claim it's child abuse.

ktizo 14y ago
As far as your preference of company, I don't think that human rights activism and anthropology are particularly mutually exclusive. But on your other point, it is one thing to dispassionately note the behaviours of others, however this does not preclude having an opinion or forming a personal moral judgement on those behaviours. And if you have formed a moral judgement on a behaviour then it is perfectly ok to express your opinion, even if the people you are judging are far away or long dead. Everyone judges everyone, all the time, and this is not a terrible imposition that should be stopped, but rather is the main mechanism of social evolution throughout history.
- einhverfr 14y ago
  But on your other point, it is one thing to dispassionately note the behaviours of others, however this does not preclude having an opinion or forming a personal moral judgement on those behaviours. I think it does preclude taking a very broad line though, and studying the constructs and how a culture fits together tends to make folks a lot less prone to advocacy. This doesn't mean that criticism of another culture is out of the question--- there is a lot of great cultural criticism that comes out of this. Examples that come readily to mind include criticisms of our (in the US) trust that Obstetrics is better than Midwifery (statistically, midwifery has better outcomes on the whole, and this is optimized when midwives are the primary care providers for all lower-risk pregnancies and childbirths), criticism of how the Morroccan henna first-marriage ceremonies entrench patriarchy, and more. But these are very detail-oriented criticisms which tend to address specific cultures, and look at them in ways which are very detail-oriented. Even the anthropologists who have criticized things like female genital cutting in Sudan have tended to note carefully how it fits into culture, and tended to avoid the inflammatory activist rhetoric (and in many cases argued even more forcefully against being overly activist on the issue). You will probably never see an anthropologist endorse a global campaign like this, because the sorts of thinking are very different. So you are right, it doesn't preclude an opinion of the way a specific culture does things. But it does seem to preclude arguments based on natural rights. BTW, great book on this topic, which over and over addresses questions of criticism of other cultures and its place in anthropology: "Deeply Into the Bone: Re-Inventing Rites of Passage" by Ronald Grimes. To say it is inspired by van Gennep's classic anthropological work "The Rites of Passage" would be an understatement. Edit: To the downvoters: One of the reasons why broad lines are usually avoided is that dynamics are rarely simple. For example, in Africa, you have long-standing patterns of European meddling in local cultures, and consequently large-scale activism from the West against female genital cutting more or less frames that practice as one of nationalist resistance.
  - ktizo 14y ago
    You will probably never see an anthropologist endorse a global campaign like this, because the sorts of thinking are very different. Given that the American Anthropological Association is quite happy to weigh in on exactly this subject politically, I am not entirely sure that you are correct. the AAA Executive Board issued in 2004, the following statement in response to President Bush’s proposal for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage: The results of more than a century of anthropological research on households, kinship relationships, and families, across cultures and through time, provide no support whatsoever for the view that either civilization or viable social orders depend upon marriage as an exclusively heterosexual institution. Rather, anthropological research supports the conclusion that a vast array of family types, including families built upon same-sex partnerships, can contribute to stable and humane societies.

einhverfr 14y ago

One other point. I am not convinced by biological explanations of homosexuality. I don't think it's a choice anymore than some guy goes into a bar and sits down and decides what color of hair to prefer. The development of sexual identity is a complex thing and there are societies in the past where homosexual relationships have been a lot more common than they are at present. For example, Plutarch characterizes pederastic relationships (probably circumscribed by all sorts of taboos in order to render them non-predatory) as forming the political backbone of Spartan society--- these relationships provided young male Spartan citizens the ability, he suggests, to make the sorts of political connections they needed to be successful later in life. If the surveys of Greek vase paintings are to be believed, it is likely that most Greek citizen women also engaged in some homosexual relationships within religious contexts in ancient Greece as well. Was this bad? I don't think so. These were all channelled into very pro-social frameworks if we believe folks like Aristotle, Plutarch, and the modern scholars who have studied vase paintings and the like. Instead I think the "born that way" thesis is actually homophobic. Our society is very aggressively hetero-normal. You can find Barby and Ken playsets, but if there was an equivalent Barby and Kendra dyke playset, well... it would be seen as sexualized in a way that Barby and Ken are not. In this context, where our society says "straight is the way normal people are" in our toys, movies, bridal magazines, etc, the "born that way" thesis reduces to "well, there is a small minority that is just different and will never be like everyone else. You aren't one of them, are you?" So in many ways perhaps even the gay rights movement entrenches obstacles to normalization of same sex relationships. I am not saying this is good or bad. I am just describing it how I think it is.

jules 14y ago
There is clear evidence for genetic and pre-birth factors in determining sexual orientation. Not all of the variance has been accounted for, but that doesn't mean that a substantial part of the variance has been solidly explained by biological factors. What exactly do you not agree with in the numerous studies that have been done? Your last two paragraphs don't make sense. That our society is very aggressively hetero normal is not caused by gay rights movements or by homosexuality being determined at birth, on the contrary. It is however caused by people who argue that marriage is only for heterosexuals.