Michael’s Reviews > Female Power and Male Dominance: On the Origins of Sexual Inequality > Status Update

Foraging and not-advanced plant-based societies = more likely to have female economic and political power. Migrating, war-driven, and animal-based societies = less likely to have female economic and political power. Origin story framing kinda shoehorned in there.

Menstrual blood and blood loss—women and men become symbols for life and death, respectively. The relationship goes sour in societies with war and famine. For a sex chapter, non-procreative sex is barely mentioned. I don't think it's Western bias to believe that plays some role in male-dominated cultures.

Yeah, she straight up makes a graph from ‘relationship to the environment’ to ‘gendered origin story.’ Lots of rhetorical weight to symbols but, in reality, she’s making a more materialist claim.

The origin and symbol stuff is interesting, but I find the examples of male dominance as a response to precarity more convincing than the examples based purely on creation myths. I am pretty skeptical of Sanday's claim that "gender symbolism in origin stories provides ancient and hence reliable metaphors for sexual identities." The 'reliable' part seems not right.

Interesting part about infanticide.