tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8154452806180550551.post3052013408827742990..comments2024-03-25T00:00:03.876-07:00Comments on South Korea Inside Out/Australia Inside Out: My Wife is in Australia, so Who is Cooking my Breakfast?Smudgerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00449129060365290678noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8154452806180550551.post-37326124290788222662014-02-15T17:35:59.188-08:002014-02-15T17:35:59.188-08:00Yeah, I agree with your criticism. It was a bit o...Yeah, I agree with your criticism. It was a bit of a side-point to the post and I don't think it affects the main point. <br /><br />However, it makes a lot of logical sense to me, and this is my opinion. Of course whether it is natural or a prejudice caused by a male-dominated society makes absolutely no difference to its rightness or wrongness. It could be perfectly natural and the evolutionary theory completely true, but that wouldn't mean the division of household chores unevenly done by women would be right or just or a good thing. As I wrote, the delegation of chores should be more evenly shared, I guess, in an ideal world. This is true regardless of whether the reasons for the cause are natural or not.Smudgerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00449129060365290678noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8154452806180550551.post-46873783859833026542014-02-15T16:11:32.636-08:002014-02-15T16:11:32.636-08:00This makes sense from an evolutionary perspective ...<b>This makes sense from an evolutionary perspective as women have always been the primary care givers of children. An unclean and cluttered home or place of habitation is unsafe for an infant, and so there is a greater instinct in women for more cleanliness and order in the household. It is not a coincidence that women are usually in charge when it comes to the home.</b><br /><br />You need to be careful with this type of speculation, particularly when it is done in order to demonstrate that a conventional societal expectation is, sociobiologically, the natural order of things. In philosophy of science it's known as a "just so story" - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-so_story - and has historically been used to "demonstrate" that just about any prejudice you can think of is somehow "natural".<br /><br />It may be correct, or it may just be that housework is crap work, and so male-dominated societies have delegated it to women and established it as a cultural expectation. I don't know the answer, and neither do you. The point is it is very easy to make this sort of sociobiological explanation for any theory you want to make. I.e.:<br /><br />"As has recently been shown, a certain amount of exposure to environmental pathogens helps build the immune system of young children. However a notable exception to this is meat, which must be eaten quickly before it spoils. In traditional society, women were responsible for raising children, while men were responsible for hunting meat. Thus it is natural that men should be more concerned with providing a pathorgen-free environment in which meat is less likely to spoil, thus demonstrating their prowess as providers, while women would tend to favour an environment with a reasonable amount of immune-system building pathogens. Thus we see that housework is and always will be the natural role of men."<br /><br />Not arguing that at all - just demonstrating the slipperiness of such unproved and probably unprovable evolutionary explanations.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com