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Date: Thu, 13 Oct 2005 10:02:42 -0400
To: improvetheworld &AElig umich.edu
From: Andrew Reeves <andrew.reeves &AElig wayne.edu>
Subject: LAST WORD ON FEMINISM DEBATE
Status: O

   Well, I waited a week to make sure that I do not miss any reflections
to my piece on the Louise Story article in the NY Times, and it seems
that Michelle has begged off on Danny's "nomination" to respond, for 
which I do not blame her. I saw Lisa Hsu's and Robert Felty's comments 
and find much in them to agree with. It was Dave's answer that set me 
off to make one final point. Dave admits that gender stereotypes may  
well have had an evolutionary foundation but he argues that we as a 
species have outgrown them; he compares traditional gender roles to 
greed and violence, i.e. traits that may have been useful at one time 
but have no place in today's society.
   Most traditional gender roles are based, directly or indirectly, on 
recognition of the maternal instinct as the driving force in the life of 
the species. I protest any effort to try to denigrate that not simply in 
my capacity as a human, with some hundreds of thousands of years of 
evolutionary history behind me, but as a MAMMAL, going back to at least 
65 million years. Next thing I know someone will attack apple pie. I 
don't have to wax poetic and sing hymns about the beauty of maternal 
love, nor do I have to remind you that at least in the first year of an 
infant's life the constant personal availability of the mother is a 
biologic necessity (emergency measures exist of course to circumvent 
this necessity but those are the surrogate solutions, not vice versa). 
This biological bond produces an emotional bond as well, and at my 
present age of 81 (to the day, it happens) I still become misty-eyed if 
I think of my dear old mom which is quite different from the equally 
deepseated attachment I have for my dad. I just cannot imagine that the 
blurring of this distinction, or replacing it with no matter how 
scientifically rationalized institutional care, is a good thing for the 
emotional development of the offspring. I am surprised that to you who 
reassured me that you did read Brave New World, this has to be pointed 
out at all. 
   Dave further argues that "as a society and as individuals we need to
constantly balance between our base natures and alternate natures which 
we can rationally choose." To this, all I can say is, GOOD LUCK; it 
reminds me somewhat of the medieval church's attitude towards sex, 
another very basic human emotion which was also denied, vilified, and 
suppressed--not very successfully, as our own existence testifies--but 
nonetheless pushed below the surface and abstinence from it extolled. 
In some ways we are still struggling with the unintended secondary 
consequences of that attitude within the Roman Catholic clergy. The 
last thing the human race now needs is to open a new Pandora's Box by 
extending such a policy to maternity, under the guise of "feminism". 
At any rate, there is Horace's 2000 years old dictum: NATURAM EXPELLAS 
FURCA, TAMEN USQUE RECURRET. Not wanting to offend you again by 
underestimating your literary erudition, I had better leave this 
saying untranslated.
   DANNY'S GRANDPA ANDREW