Charles Brown wrote:

" Actually , gender essentialism has existed for 2.5 million years , and is 
pretty much the first organizing principle of human society; human 
species-being , in Marx and Feuerbach’s terminology  .  It is the “ direct and 
natural species relationship” .  It is humanity’s fundamental cultural  binary 
and dialectical opposition.  An example is the famous yin/ yang of Chinese 
culture ; or French “ viva la difference ! “"

What's the evidence for this claim?

Prior to better DNA recovery methods and analysis of bone structure 
probabilities of sex, archaeologists simply *assumed* strict gender roles and 
assigned the sex of remains simply by grave goods. Since strict gender roles 
were assumed by the bias of the archaeologists, the record showed strict gender 
roles.

But now that DNA analysis has improved and bone structures analyzed with 
non-subjective methods, many of these assumed gender roles are being called 
into question and in fact proven wrong.
Here's just the first one I googled; a viking that had been identified as male 
due to the grave goods with the body. But both bone analysis and DNA showed 
that we would today classify this viking's sex as "female" despite the sword 
and other male associated "gendered" tools.

There's no way to know exactly what the other vikings thought of this person's 
gender and gender role. But as they buried this person with tools our culture 
labels male yet has the biological markers as female, what we can say is that 
the vikings allowed exceptions to the 1 to 1 gender/sex binary. Vikings were 
NOT gender essentialists.

So, Charles, if you are a materialist, what do you make of this material 
evidence?
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ajpa.23308

Jonna in Seattle


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