A Discussion of How the Subordination of Women Has Misshaped History
In this time of a strenuous attempt by misogynists to overturn the gains that women have made over the last 60 years, understanding the deep sources of the subordination of women and how it has misshapen all of recorded history is essential.
Click on the image above or here to view an interview I did about fifteen years ago on the major points I made in my 2001 book, Eve’s Seed: Biology, the Sexes, and the Course of History.
I am currently working on the same topic, with many new insights, for my next book, working title “Diving Beneath the Wreck—and Resurfacing: A Discourse on the Origin & Consequences of Sexual Inequality.” It will utilize new understandings of the variety of social arrangements that humans tried out in Deep History presented in David Graeber and David Wengrow’s groundbreaking 2021 book, The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity as a jumping-off point in seeing how the relative positions of women and men changed over time. My new book also introduces a mental disorder that is not listed in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders—and probably never will be. Yet it is most essential to understanding the nature of Donald Trump’s madness . . . and much of the worst in human history. I call it Acute Masculine Insecurity Disorder (AMID).
The new book will also explore how the emergence of the realization that sex is not a binary division opens possibilities for revolutionizing the way we see the world, examines the ties between misogyny and authoritarianism and why banning abortion is so important for insecure males and the worldview that props them up—and many other issues.
NOTE: My times they are a-changin’. I have just retired after teaching for, they tell me (I’m thinking of demanding a recount), a half century, at Millsaps College. I’ll miss the classroom and stimulating discussions with students, but my life won’t change that much, as I have for decades spent most of my time writing and that will continue.
One thing that will change, though, is our income. Without my teaching salary, I need a new source of revenue. A patron or group of patrons establishing a fund to support my writing would be nice, but that’s not in the cards. Accordingly, I have decided to start taking paid subscriptions to my Substack essays. I don’t want to keep anyone from reading them without charge, but for those who can afford a paid subscription, I hope you will do so. There will also occasionally be a premium essay that is only available to paid subscribers.