Ah Sandy, before I go to sleep to the sound of fireworks, let me say this:
humanity is not yet liberated, not in the way that it could be. However, chattel slavery ended, and in all industrial societies, women’s lot improved vastly over what it once was, and it has continued to improve. In low-energy societies, women’s status is highly inferior, pretty much universally.
http://www.ahealedplanet.net/upcoming.htm#women
Not all that long ago in the scheme of things, Christian theologians debated whether women had souls.
Even in nations that are just beginning to industrialize, like China and India, foot-binding and suttee are practices of the past. I am not saying that there is not still a long ways to go, but as living standards have increased, so has the awareness that people do not need to severely exploit those around them. Three centuries ago, slavery was “normal” in the West. In just my lifetime, American women have opportunities that their mothers could only dream of. It is like that throughout the West. Since energy use per capita peaked in the USA in the early 1970s, the American economy has been stagnant, and is playing its deadly imperial games to secure energy resources, but its women’s lot has continued to improve, at least relatively. That is a big subject that I do not have time for tonight.
But, in history’s richest and most powerful nation, is it still a scarcity-based society, and I am a member of history’s most privileged demographic group (white, educated American men), but we also live on the backs of humanity, which my peers do not like hearing:
http://www.ahealedplanet.net/intro.htm#progress
To invoke a baseball aphorism, American middle-class men were largely born on third base and think they hit a triple. :)
So, we have long way to go, but we have also come a long way, and rising living standards that were powered by energy surpluses made it possible.
http://www.ahealedplanet.net/lessons.htm#advanced
As my work makes clear, the relatively low status of women has many downsides:
http://www.ahealedplanet.net/medicine.htm#masculine
Some have learned lessons from the bonobo experience, to point to a better future.
http://www.ahealedplanet.net/lessons.htm#bonobo
Although I did not digest the bonobo findings until recently, not in the way that Wrangham did, one thing that I have thought for many years is that women need to step up. And not like men, but like women. I mean it, that my ideal global peacekeeping force is grandmothers, and if FE makes its appearance anytime soon, I am going to be banging the drums for it. There are extremely few women in the FE milieu, and that is part of the problem. I have never met a woman FE tinkerer, and have only heard of a few. Not that tinkering is going to solve the FE riddle, but women have been pretty passive spectators to the FE story, when they are aware of it at all. That has to change, and radically, if this FE stuff is going to have a chance.
Well, a lot more to say, but I have to get to bed.
Sleep tight – and it sounds like you will sleep well tonight.
Wade