"Why men rule: a theory of male dominance" by Steven Goldberg

Posted by Tanos on Tue 24 Oct 06, 12:03 AM

I thought I'd write a short review of "Why men rule", since I've just finished it. It deals with the unpopular truth in sociology: as Goldberg says "this book attempts to demonstrate and explain the universality (the presence in every society that has ever existed) of three institutions: 1. patriarchy: males occupy the overwhelming numbers of upper hierarchical positions; 2. male attainment, the association of high-status roles - whichever they happen to be in any given society - with males; and 3. male dominance, the association of dominance in male-female encounters and relationships, with the male, an association made in every society by the emotions of men and women and reflected in most societies in the formal authority system."

It's really the third - male dominance in male-female relationships - that's relevant to our purposes here, but Goldberg's two other observations are equally striking. His dissection of dominance into three separate institutions is especially useful, since they are so often lumped together even though they are clearly not the same thing (how many times does it need to be pointed out on BDSM discussion forums that being an "alpha male" socially isn't the same thing as being dominant in a relationship with a woman?), even if they are so closely correlated.

Goldberg's study also stands out for being a work of sociology which agrees with the position normally only put forward by Evolutionary Psychologists (most sociologists are still trapped in the denial of a human nature, and the denial of the prevalence of male dominance that usually goes with it.)

I found his section on masculinity, intersexuality and fetal hormone levels especially interesting, since it fits with my own belief that the relevant aspects of the masculine gender in real brains and minds are not exclusively tied to the male genetic sex (since the gender of brains and bodies are determined by hormones during development, rather than directly by genes.)

So one could speculate that some of the gender roles we see played with in BDSM could have underlying genetic or developmental factors, but his wider thesis does lead to the belief that dominance is an identifiably masculine trait, without having to claim that to be male is to be dominant.

Personally, I find this mixture of bold statements supported by evidence about the universality of male dominance in human societies, and subtle distinctions about masculinity, gender, maleness, gender and sexuality, very persuasive - far more so than the pop psychology and social Darwinism presented by Goreans (and others) that you often see presented in BDSM discussion forums.

And as the Evolutionary Psychologists are forced to do, Goldberg must begin by labouring the point that "natural" does not equate to "right", and that biological rules obeyed by society in general are not enforced on every single member of that society:

"The reader who remembers that all statements about males and females are statistical statements will avoid wasting time on criticisms that ignore this fact ... Virtually all male-female differences are statistical and it is only on the social level of institutions that, as a result of the effects and concretizations of 'the law of large numbers', we may speak of universalities ... Some women are, of course, taller than some men, but this fact is not in conflict with the statistical claim that 'men are taller than women' or that they are so for innate physiological reasons."

Edited Fri 27 Oct 06, 10:35 AM by Tanos