I'm sorry if I didn't make this clear enough for you or anyone else,
but I was referring to a chapter in Richard Brodie's book "Virus of
the Mind" titled "Sex: The root of all evolution". One of the
subheadings in this book was titled "The Civilizing Effect of Women".
Brodie's definition of civilized is "the drive for security and
safety". The point I was trying to make was that women didn't have a
civilizing effect on humankind, it was just human nature. It wasn't
until men became domineering did things start to change. His
subheading would have read more appropriately as "The Un-civilizing
Effect of Men".
> Now, some evidence would be nice--in particular, that early
> gathering societies involved domination by _either_ sex--
> but first I think I need the poster to tell me what yeye means
> by "civilized."
My mistake there. There is no evidence that any sex domineered over
any other for any of the earliest societies. Fortunately, there is plenty
of
evidence on the evolution of religion which shows a matriarchal
society evolving into a patriarchal society over time. There also
was a simultaneous and parallel evolution of men domineering over
the female sex during this time period also. The evidence for this is
overwhelming and can be found anywhere from ancient historical texts
from Persia to the Torah of the Jews.