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War of the Sexes: Tribal Play?
Apr. 16th, 2008 11:46 amA while back, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cvirtue mentioned that her twins had suddenly started doing the "boys are icky!" "No, *girls* are icky!" thing, and wondered how it had gotten started. It occurred to me that there might be an EvBio answer. In discussion on her LJ, it was claimed that this is just a stage that almost all children go through.
I've long thought that tribalism was pretty firmly hard-wired into primate minds. It's a fairly complex and subtle set of behaviors and attitudes. So how do animals learn complex skills like this?
One way is through instinctive play. Young cats will 'fight' in a way which doesn't do serious harm to either party, but does teach skills that will be useful in real-world combats to come. I think that "the gender war" may serve a similar purpose with regards to tribalism. Tribalism requires identifying an "other". Someone of the opposite gender obviously qualifies, and is easily identified. Boys don't *really* want to "kill all the girls", but *pretending* they do is useful practice for later tribal conflicts (and bonding within the tribe).
Mind you, I'm not sure that tribalism, as currently evolved, is the best survival strategy in our current environment. I'm not sure it *isn't*, but there seem to be large wins available by at least greatly expanding the size of one's "tribe" (see "nationalism", "patriotism", "politics", etc.).
cvirtue mentioned that her twins had suddenly started doing the "boys are icky!" "No, *girls* are icky!" thing, and wondered how it had gotten started. It occurred to me that there might be an EvBio answer. In discussion on her LJ, it was claimed that this is just a stage that almost all children go through.I've long thought that tribalism was pretty firmly hard-wired into primate minds. It's a fairly complex and subtle set of behaviors and attitudes. So how do animals learn complex skills like this?
One way is through instinctive play. Young cats will 'fight' in a way which doesn't do serious harm to either party, but does teach skills that will be useful in real-world combats to come. I think that "the gender war" may serve a similar purpose with regards to tribalism. Tribalism requires identifying an "other". Someone of the opposite gender obviously qualifies, and is easily identified. Boys don't *really* want to "kill all the girls", but *pretending* they do is useful practice for later tribal conflicts (and bonding within the tribe).
Mind you, I'm not sure that tribalism, as currently evolved, is the best survival strategy in our current environment. I'm not sure it *isn't*, but there seem to be large wins available by at least greatly expanding the size of one's "tribe" (see "nationalism", "patriotism", "politics", etc.).
