From: James Rogers (jamesr@best.com)
Date: Mon Dec 23 1996 - 20:55:34 MST
>An interesting read is Michael Hutichinson's "The Anatomy of Sex and
>Power". A point made there is that the investment in offspring for women
>is much greater than that for men. A woman has to protect the children
>until they reach reproductive age. When dealing with danger and
>confrontation it is a bad strategy for a woman to actually become
>exposed directly to danger for if the woman dies, so do the children. So
>the female strategy is to have others, (men) actually confront the
>dangers, for if the men die, the children will survive along with the
>female. This script is deeply embedded in our customs and laws.
>
>Here are two examples of this:
>
>1. All services involving protection and enforcement are almost
>exclusively male. Examples are police, firemen and soldiers. This
>extends to other physically hazardous jobs, such as logging, heavy
>construction, etc.
>
>2. Every couple of years the politicans start another campaign to hunt
>down the "deadbeat dads". I have yet to hear of a campaign to do the
>same to "deadbeat moms".
>
>Musing: Since most Extropians are men, does this imply that being
>Extropian is hazardous??
>
One possible reason is that Extropians tend to be technophiles and science
enthusiasts. In industry, women are conspicuously few in "high technology"
engineering and physical science fields. Whether this be from societal or
evolutionary design is not important, but it may impact the ratio of men to
women who are attracted to extropianism.
As a generalization, I would say that a significant percentage of extropians
have a strong affinity for bleeding edge technologies. This is not
suprising seeing as how the school of thought for Extropianism includes many
bleeding edge science and technology themes. The general lack or exclusion
of women in science and technology fields may somehow be subconsciously
excluding them from extropianism as well.
Just a thought.
-James Rogers
jamesr@best.com
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