VII. Our Earthuman Ascent: A Major Evolutionary Transition in Individuality

5. Half the UniVerse: A Woman's 2020 Wisdome

Jordan, Judith. The Relational Self: A New Perspective for Understanding Women’s Development. Strauss, J. and G. Goethals, eds. The Self: Interdisciplinary Approaches. New York: Springer, 1991. An attempt is made to advance beyond ‘a separate, autonomous, objective male self’ to ‘a relational, connected, and empathic female self’ by a natural complementary unity found in modern physics.

Jordan, Judith, et al, eds. The Complexity of Connection. New York: Guilford Press, 2004. In a response to the dominant masculine “myth of instrumental competence” whose competitive, win/lose, individualist agenda oppresses women and minorities, an alternative “relational competence” is advised. This complement is distinguished by a constructive, empathic mutuality between persons which nurtures tolerance and shared learning rather than a power trip.

Keresztes, Laszlo, et al. Identifying Super-Feminine, Super-Masculine and Sex-Defining Connections in the Human Braingraph. arXiv:1912.02291. Eotovos University, PIT Bioinformatics Group researchers continue their project to avail the latest flow of neuroimaging results, now available via open access, which further support these title gender distinctions (search Balazs Szalkai for earlier postings). As the quotes say, ever again a woman’s cognitive faculties are found to be generally superior to male capacities.

For more than a decade now, thousands of cerebral connections with diffusion magnetic resonance imaging (dMRI) techniques have been achieved and published. In the present contribution, by applying the 1200 Subjects Release of the Human Connectome Project, we identify just 102 connections out of the total number of 1950 connections in the 83-vertex graphs of 1065 subjects, without any error about the sex of the subject. We were able to identify two graph edges out of these 102, whose weights measured in fiber numbers are high, then the connectome belongs to a female subject, independent of other edges. Similarly, we have identified 3 edges from these 102, whose weights, if two of them are high and one is low, imply that the graph belongs to a male subject. We call the former state super-feminine and the other super-masculine. (Abstract excerpt)

It is known for several years that the female and the male connectomes have different properties as graphs. The work of [28] has proven – on a publicly un-available dataset – that the ratio of inter-hemispheric connections vs. the intra-hemispheric connections differs in males and females. Our group has shown on a publicly available dataset that several deep graph-theoretical properties, which are usually applied in the characterization of the quality of large computer interconnection networks [29], are better in the braingraphs of women than in men. (2)

Knox, Jean. Archetype, Attachment, Analysis: Jungian Psychology and the Emergent Mind. New York: Brunner-Routledge, 2003. An attempt to marry traditional Jungian concepts with the new complexity theories. In this view, archetypes are seen more as psychic patterns of relationship than as prior, fixed structures.

The principle of self-organizing emergent properties of the human mind is rapidly gaining ground over a more genetically deterministic model. Developmental research supports the view that new meaning is constantly being created as a central part of the process of psychological development. (52)

Konner, Melvin. Women After All: Sex, Evolution, and the End of Male Supremacy. New York: Norton, 2015. In a 400 page work filled with vignettes from mammalian and hominid societies, the Emory University anthropologist, physician, and author engages the desperate need for an epochal appreciation and attainment of gender equality. At the outset, it is strongly put that the present state of our terminal civilization is due in most part to violent male obsessions, which run rampant because of the total absense of empathic female mitigation. This late situation is an anomaly and aberration in history and evolution that must be admitted, and corrected. The resolution can only be a recognition, and recovery of a natural complementarity of feminine and masculine archetypal qualities. A companion 2015 paper Sex Equality can Explain the Unique Social Structure of Hunter-Gather Bands herein (Dyble) is just one confirmation.

A lively, richly informed argument for the natural superiority of women from the acclaimed author of The Tangled Wing. There is a human genetic fluke that is surprisingly common, due to a change in a key pair of chromosomes. In the normal condition the two look the same, but in this disorder one is malformed and shrunken beyond recognition. The result is a shortened life span, higher mortality at all ages, an inability to reproduce, premature hair loss, and brain defects variously resulting in attention deficit, hyperactivity, conduct disorder, hypersexuality, and an enormous excess of both outward and self-directed aggression. It is called maleness.

In Women After All, Melvin Konner traces the arc of evolution to explain the relationships between women and men. With patience and wit he explores the knotty question of whether men are necessary in the biological destiny of the human race. He draws on multiple, colorful examples from the natural world—such as the mating habits of the octopus, black widow, angler fish, and jacana—and argues that maleness in humans is hardly necessary to the survival of the species. Recent human history has upset this balance, as a dense world of war fostered extreme male dominance. But our species has been recovering over the past two centuries, and an unstoppable move toward equality is afoot. It will not be the end of men, but it will be the end of male supremacy and a better, wiser world for women and men alike.

“Women After All is astonishingly insightful…. It is not always males who are the problem. At issue is the utterly ruthless processes of sexual selection which in humans are magnified still further by patriarchal ideologies. Women After All provides a richly informed, up-to-the-minute and sensible exploration of a highly charged topic. It is the best available examination of how and why men and women differ and how twenty-first-century humans can use this knowledge to forge a better world.” (Sarah Blaffer Hrdy)

Lauter, Estella and Carol Schreier Rupprecht, eds. Feminist Archetypal Theory. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1985. Scholars in search of a way to frame the male dominance of society and thought enlist Jung’s view of a lifelong individuation toward a balance between feminine and masculine. But as a product of his age, Jung relegated women to a nurture role, with men still running the world.

Lerner, Gerda. The Creation of Patriarchy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986. A classic work of historical and social research that castigates eons of oppressive male dominance. Lerner goes on to affirm a "complementarity" of female and male personal qualities and roles as a way to their imperative future resolution.

Lippa, Richard. Gender-Related Individual Differences and National Merit Test Performance. Ellis, Lee and Linda Ebertz, eds. Males, Females and Behavior. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1998. Girls who had some degree of male attributes and boys with a modicum of female aptitudes did better in scholastic test situations. This article is cited as one example among many in humankind’s learning project which make a quantified case for a balanced reciprocity.

Llorens, Anais, et al. Gender Bias in Academia. Neuron. 109/13, 2021. Into the hyper 2020s, the extent to which scientific practitioners and their institutes remain disproportionally male has become untenable and must be radically changed. Here some 90 coauthors (~10 men) from around the world including Danielle Bassett and Nancy Kopell post a comprehensive (wo)manifesto across every aspect from hiring bias, workplace behavior, funding equity, publication acceptance, et alia. A forceful effort to cite and rectify this basic aberration from which all other insults and calamities derive may be the most important mission. )A recent book chapter is Aging Boys will be the Death of Us.)

Despite increased awareness of the lack of gender equity in academia and a growing number of initiatives to address issues of diversity, change is slow, and inequalities remain. A major source of inequity is gender bias, which has a substantial negative impact on the careers, work-life balance, and mental health of underrepresented groups in science. Here, we argue that gender bias is not a single problem but manifests as a collection of distinct issues that impact researchers’ lives. We disentangle these facets and propose concrete solutions that can be adopted by individuals, academic institutions, and society. (Abstract)

Luders, Eileen, et al. Parasagittal Asymmetries of the Corpus Callosum. Cerebral Cortex. 16/3, 2006. UCLA and University of Zurich neuropsychologists, including Eric Zaidel, avail 21st century MRI imaging methods and enhanced computer analysis to gain novel insights into the role of this significant bundle of fibers connecting our complementary brain hemispheres. Among the results reported, additional proof is given for the gender tendencies of a main left side emphasis in males, while female brains tend to evenly balance left and right modes. We add that this increasingly verified finding ought to now be appreciated as a major scientific distinction and discovery. It is commonly held that men deal in dots, but miss connections. But women do not employ a right bias of sensitive, “irrational,” holistic emotions only, as long defined, rather both competitive entity and cooperative empathy are equally integrated.

In regard, a popular quip is that if Lehman Brothers were Sisters, they would not have gone bankrupt through reckless, myopic, self-serving investments. Might an obvious application be to view the United States “bicameral” two party government, “two sides of the aisle,” as similar to brain hemispheres, but that are trapped in gridlock opposition. A truly organic, intelligent democracy would join both right Republican “me” individual with left Democratic “We” community. A worldwide bilateral brain, and her/his consequent genesis universe discovery, would thus be more feminine in natural kind and in humane peacefulness.

The present study revealed distinctive and extensive asymmetries in the anterior body and additionally in a small and less significant region in the anterior third of the CC of males. In contrast, asymmetry in females was less significant in general and applied to smaller callosal regions in the anterior body, in the anterior third and additionally at the border between the isthmus and splenium. (352) Our findings are of particular interest considering previous results which indicated that right-handed males show significantly different depths of the central sulcus in the two hemispheres, whereas no interhemispheric asymmetry was found in females. Similarly, functional imaging revealed sex differences in peri-rolandic asymmetries in a tactile discrimination task, where females predominantly activated both premotor cortices but males showed an asymmetric activation. (352)

MacDonald, Kerri. High in Nepal, a Lowly Status for Women. New York Times. October 21, 2013. A National Geographic reporter describes the awful, worsening conditions for women in this remote Himalayan land, which are seen as a microcosm of the subhuman, servitude way this gender complement is viewed and (mal)treated. A major aim of this website is to identify and document a 21st century scientific, philosophical, and cultural recovery of “half the universe.” In regard, a cosmological sanction for the archetypal feminine principle could mitigate and harmonize the male individual entity with relation group empathy. And only such a global recovery of this perennial Yin and Yang litany, anima with animus, right and left at peace, can save person and planet, for the sake of the children.

A woman crouches in a doorway, hay at her sandaled feet and a cow to her left. She looks ahead, a pained stare on her face. This is where she lives, for now. “She’s not allowed to go back in the house because she’s impure,” said Marie Dorigny, a French photographer who photographed the woman in Nepal this year. Members of the Hindu community in some parts of western and central Nepal still practice Chhaupadi, a custom that forces women to live in the stable while menstruating and just after giving birth. They are forbidden to cook and eat with their families.

“I have a dream of a world, a planet where woman and men would be equal — different, but equal,” she said. “And I would love to see it at least in one country before I die. And I’m (Marie Dorigny) already 53 and I’m desperate because I don’t think I’ll see this in my lifetime.”

MacGregor, Sherilyn, ed. Routledge Handbook of Gender and Environment. London: Routledge, 2017. To wit, men have made such a mess of the world, from time immemorial only women can clean it up. A luminous collection of 33 chapters go from Rachel Carson was Right – Then, and Now by Joni Seager, The Dilemma of Dualism by Freya Mathews, and Ecofeminist Political Economy: A Green Agenda by Mary Mellor to Gender and Environmental Justice by Julie Size, Gender, Livelihoods, and Sustainability by Maria Cruz-Torres and Pamela McElwee, and Feminist Futures by Meike Schalk, et al. With her constant lucidity the Australian environmentalist Freya Mathews (search) advises leavening agental individual men with a women’s penchant for contextual integrity, so as a bigender archetypal complementarity just in time.

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