Here's some light reading for Christmas:

http://www.amazon.com/Demonic-Males-Origins-Human-Violence/dp/0395877431/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1229404283&sr=8-1

I think there is an element of the duality of Christianity in the idea that without societal (or religious) intervention men are naturally coercive and violent. An example of why Christianity is so "necessary" and also an excuse for the shadow side of all that sexual control.

My biggest problem isn't even the way in which this kind of thing promotes totally unverifiable myths, but about how if these images are supposed to be funny and cute, so is domestic violence and rape. Far too many people, clearly, think that violence against women is cute.

I think it also has something to do with the idea that primitive societies (in Africa, say) are culturally similar to humanity's earliest forebears, coupled with the widespread colonialist perception of "savage" peoples as having no real affection between men and women (this line was very common; only WEstern husbands and wives really loved each other). It's a complicated story, of course, but you can find plenty of examples in early anthropological writing about Africa of both steretypes, so it's not so strange to think of how racist notions about "savage" peoples in the 1930's, say, would influence the ways we imagine "primitive" people at the fabled dawn of man.

Zungu - seeing as the whole concept of romantic love is a fairly modern invention, I wouldn't say it's preposterous to say that some cultures don't have that concept. They probably have affection, but not the same notion of "love" that is popularized in the pop culture of the last several hundred years.

There's also the problem of assuming a single "caveman" culture. Early humans would've been just as diverse in their cultures as modern humans. Quite probably there *were* some early cultures that had very heavily misogynistic practices, with rape being accepted as the norm. But just as probably there were cultures were far more egalitarian.

Honestly, from what I've seen and read about early human interaction, there was quite a lot of compassion and care involved - burial sites, healed bones, that sort of thing. To me, it isn't very far-fetched to say that early humans focused a lot on community and survival with compassion. If there was such a thing as clubbing courtship, then that would mean that humans saw women as things to be taken. But women don't just appear in the wild like gazelle - she would have belonged to another man, just like it does with recent or modern patriarchies. That would cause a lot of infighting, a massive lack of empathy and compassion, and overall, wouldn't it just all fall apart with infighting? It seems to me that there wasn't a huge imbalance in gender power back then - all you have to do is observe modern hunter/gatherer groups as a whole and extrapolate how they view who holds the community together.

Modern humans, their instincts, their cultures are all rooted from somewhere, and it's ridiculous to suggest that empathy and compassion and a sense of equality only arose in the past 100 years.

This is certainly not mythology, regardless of its truth, and I see very little to suggest that human society is "getting better" over time. One look into middle-eastern doings these days and you know that's not true...

Interestingly, I have a completely different interpretation of the caveman narrative. For me, it's not about rape or domestic violence, but a reminder of the male performance required of potential sexual partners *by most women* (socialised or however it came about) who want to "be taken" as opposed to actively take/assert their sexuality.

"Ape behavior varies tremendously anyway, even among our closest cousins. Which type do we choose? The violent and hierarchical chimp or the peace-loving Bonobos who solve all social strife with sex?"

As for this - among Bonobos it's mostly females who give sex as social glue. I actually do wonder what a human society would look like if women were freely giving sex in that way. I remember a story by a Brazilian doctor about the Musou matriarchy in China that alluded to somethine like that - men there were, in his eyes, peaceful and placated and accepting of the matriarchy, because casual sex was freely available without requiring too much intra-gender competition. His interpretation may be the perspective of someone who doesn't understand the true meaning of the cultural patterns and superimposes his own interpretation - sex as something scarce and something that women are the gatekeepers of - but it's still an interesting question.

Stronger males are almost always the dominate Sex. Civilization and education gradually changes that mindset more and more as they evolve. Societies around the world are on a "women inferiority" scale of 1-10 and range from 2-8. (IMO) Where is the US?

I think girls enjoy us boys' clubbing them with chivalry and attention before we lay our boys' clubs on them .Right,girls ?

An idea that Cavemen clubbed their wives before intercourse is totally nonsensical. If the bible told the truth about Adam and Eve ,why not ask the Africans how they lived than assuming. The Bible seems to have been written to belittle Mother Continent Africa and that won't change facts about us. How many cave women died then as a result . Africans never raped,instead as men we marry as many women as we can .