The Heart of the Matter Valerie M. Hudson, - MIT Press Journals

The Heart of the Matter 15
killer males, who will injure or kill not only females but also the children that
females guard. The battering that women suffer from the males they live with
is the price paid for such protection and occurs “in species where females have
few allies, or where males have bonds with each other.” 21 Indeed, among humans,
sex differences trump the blood ties associated with natural selection for
inclusive ªtness. As anthropologist Barbara Miller notes, “Human gender hierarchies
are one of the most persistent, pervasive, and pernicious forms of inequality
in the world. Gender is used as the basis for systems of discrimination
which can, even within the same household, provide that those designated
‘male’ receive more food and live longer, while those designated ‘female’ receive
less food to the point that their survival is drastically impaired.” 22 Those
with physical power also dominate political power, so that when law developed
in human societies, men created legal systems that, generally speaking,
favored male reproductive success and interests—with adultery as a crime for
women but not for men; with female infanticide, male-on-female domestic violence,
and marital rape not recognized as crimes; with polygamy legal but
polyandry proscribed; with divorce easy for men and almost impossible for
women.
The development of male dominance hierarchies may also alter female evolution,
and females apparently began to make adaptive choices that serve to
perpetuate this system. Primary among these female choices that entrench violent
patriarchy are a general preference for the most dominant men (who are
able to provide superior protection, though may also offer increased domestic
violence and control), and female-female competition for these males, which
reduces the opportunity to form countervailing female alliances to offset male
violence against women. Male dominance hierarchies also appear to change
women emotionally, and as a result, change them endocrinologically. The experience
of chronic, intimate oppression, exploitation, and violence shapes
women hormonally, molding them into creatures more easily persuaded by
coercion to yield and submit—predispositions that Kemper asserts may be inherited
by their daughters through placental transfer of speciªc ratios of hormones
in utero. 23
The entrenchment of patriarchy also leads to aggression against out-groups.
Males in dominance hierarchies quickly discover that resources may be gained
21. Ibid., p. 146.
22. Barbara Diane Miller, “The Anthropology of Sex and Gender Hierarchies,” in Miller, ed., Sex
and Gender Hierarchies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 3–31, at p. 22.
23. Kemper, Social Structure and Testosterone.