Frequently fail, apparently because they know little about anthropology. See, for example, RimRod's I am a sexist. Now, I'm not an anthropologist, either, but I did learn something from my basic college anthropology class:

That reducing the term hunter-gatherer to the idea that "men go hunt, women stay home, pick berries, and raise children" is a simplification non-anthropologist westerners use to reconcile ancient society's patterns to their own -- which of course makes using those assumptions to prove anything about modern life circular logic. Anthropologists use the term hunter-gatherer to describe what the tribe did as a whole, not gender divisions of labor. (That is, the term implies that men and women of the tribe hunted and gathered, and not specifically that men hunted, women gathered.) It is true that some modern hunter-gatherer cultures (like the !Kung San) exerience a rigid division of labor by gender, but even within that rigid framework, women still hunt and men still gather. And that's no proof that your ancient ancestors had a rigid division of labor by gender.

Given that, justifying your own modern-day sexism by citing your beliefs about ancient gender divisons of labor is a bit silly, no?

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