How to run a brothel: a thought experiment in kinship, sex and economics

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMJrLSHTLNA

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Apply your brain to working out how to make a small-scale society work. In groups, you will be faced with a situation in which there is no money and the only way to obtain food is by hunting or gathering.

In this creative workshop, you will set out with no prior assumptions about morals. In the end, however, a moral order will emerge.

You will discover for yourself why women choose to live with their mother, why incestuous relationships are taboo and why you establish a kinship system where your sister’s child is equally your own.

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Camilla: Welcome to. Thank you very much for joining us on zoom tonight and we’re really hoping nobody tried to make the trip to UCL because in respect of the strike action by the UC lecturers, we thought it was the wrong thing to do to try and use the UCL seminar room. So we’re here on zoom and we’ve got something a bit special and exciting tonight. It may have scared a few people off. That’s. Provocative title. How to run a brothel? But this workshop has a certain history to it, and it’s a very interesting thought experiment. Professor Chris Knight, who is the founding. Founder of Rag is going to be guiding us through, but there are people here who are old hands who may be able to help and chip in and we’ll see just depending. We’re going to maybe do breakout room, have a couple of smaller workshops so you can have a bit of discussion on this workshop amongst yourselves. Chris, do you want to start?

Chris: OK. Yes. It is a deliberately provocative title. To run a business. But the reason for choosing that title is to kind of get out of moralising. And invite all of you who are interested in the very in the topic of early human kinship. Was it mapped to? Was it mapped to the? Did did children know who their father was from all those? All those issues about about human kinship? The the reason for choosing this title is to get you to just dispassionately think about whether prostitution is even vaguely possible without money. And the reason why that actually is an issue, you might think, well, it’s not even an issue. Just so no. People are talking about, you know, prostitution is a factory in human origins. The trouble is that in the 80s when I was writing my book, I kept discovering. That. Darwinian Theoryists mostly who call themselves Sociopiologists, and I I I completely mutually there’s nothing wrong with being, you know. Biologists and studying social life. And again, there was this when I felt was just kind of grotesque, misconstrue and let me just tell you what the misconstrued is. Hunter gatherers, a Galatian hunter gatherers or an immediate return hunter gatherers, the kind of people we were when we first became human. Without without storage. They don’t have marriage. Instead, the system, which is partly a sexual system and partly an economic system. And I’m sure many of you know this, but I’ll just repeat it. All the technical term for it is bribe service. And that means when a young man fancies a young woman, he’s going to prove himself to her mum and her relatives. To be a generous good, humoured kind, sensitive, but above all, effective hunter. And if he proves himself to be useless, or lazy, or idle or selfish, what will? Is that his relationship with his might have begun with this young woman will be ended pretty sharp ended by her mum, by her brothers, perhaps by her and by herself. Women just don’t want useless husbands or useless. The word husband isn’t even quite correct because with bride service, it’s as if you’re kind of going to get married. But the actual wedding never wedding never happens. So a man could be visiting his loved one. Usually at at first, at any rate, in her own mother’s camp. And it’s going to be it’s going to be providing meat. And the trouble is that because he provides meat and he won’t get any sex unless he does, this was interpreted as. Meat for sex or sex for. Women provide sex in order to get a material reward, namely. And I suppose given that in the West, I mean, we don’t have too many models to, you know, of kinship structure and links between economics and sex to go and we have, we have what we know of in our own culture again and again and again. I found that this what’s called what was called the sex for meat system, the sex for meat exchange. Was prostitution and quite often because the authors were thinking of it as prostitution. They were very cautious about it, didn’t want to talk about it too much, felt a bit guilty about accusing hunter gatherers of being prostitutes, and the whole the whole issue was just grotesquely kind of. Up by Western assumptions and western ideology. So the whole point of this how to run a brothel workshop is for all of you here in rag. Just kind of work out for yourselves what is actually going on because there’s no question that there is a connection between sex and. There’s no question that with hunter gatherers, the men do provide meat and there’s no question that if they if they end up not, you know, being no use. And by when I say being no use, I mean they’re going to be no use whatever, I mean. A young man doesn’t have to be himself a brilliant hunter. He can easily be part of a hunting team. But as long as he’s useful and the meat somehow gets to the to, you know, to the to the, to the woman. And, you know, and hurricane, then he’s he’s got a good chance of maintaining his relationship. The point is. Is that he’s got to carry on and carry on and carry on being useful, making himself useful and in many immediate return hunter gatherers. There’s never a time. This is the critical point. Where that young man gains conjugal rights. In his. You can’t say, right, I’ve helped you for so long that I’ve now got like, rights, marital rights, conjugal rights in you. That will never happen. At no time does a man have that because there’s no wedding. When two people get together, there’s maybe a little bit of a sort of informal celebration or something goes. I mean, certainly the girl’s mother was all about it and the young man would be given probably a bit of a drubbing if Jerome Lewis’s experiences are anything to go by, but the but the big rituals are not weddings, they’re initiation rights.

So this workshop is designed to ask a number of questions, and it’s designed to help you just work out for yourself. Kind of what’s going. What’s the most likely outcome of a system where, after all, we have to, you know, any with any mammals and we’re mammals? Clearly the female or the species does a hell of a lot more work getting the future generations up and running than the male needs to do because females get pregnant and with, you know. With mammals, of course, do the breastfeeding as well and somehow females will benefit. They don’t have to have a man around. They can do. They can, you know, do OK as a single mum. Hopefully with our own mother and sister and so on. But a woman who manages. So get additional help from a from a young hunter would probably do better in terms of being able to care for her kids. So. Is that enough to as a way of introduction?

At some point I want to read out a lovely series of passages from a wonderful book by Janet Siskow called ‘to hunt in the morning’. But maybe it would be best to leave that a little bit later and just get down to business with the with the workshop.

If you just go through these questions, you’ll be kind of impressed because what you’ll come up with is however much you try to make it into a brothel, it just will not work. What we’ve got is my own view is probably the most moral system of kinship in economics that there ever was, and actually the origin of morality is somewhere in the answer to these questions.

Camilla: What we were going to do because we’ve got nearly 30 people is do a couple of smaller workshops because we’ve got 25 people, I make about 12–13 people in each.

Camilla: So yeah, just work down the questions and see what comes to mind.

Speaker 6: Right. It’s a successful family business. I love that.

Camilla: The only rules here are Darwinism, that is you. You survive and. There’s the only principles here. So yeah, it’s a family business. And you pass it down to the next generation.

Speaker 6: So there’s no other work around. Is it not invented? Predict the moral. That wasn’t just time and fitness, OK, so.

Speaker 8: Let’s see.

Speaker 6: So what’s our capital? What do people think about capital? Because it be, I suppose we are the capital of women or the the workers could say?

Camilla: Does everybody want to unmute? So because it would be great if we can hear participation. Be great. Does anybody have those suggestions on capital leases saying, who are the workers would be? The women and any more suggestions to say everybody.

Speaker 3: Would the capsule be the fertile women?

Camilla: Well, what about that? Do. Do we actually think fertile women? Are the main assets.

Speaker 3: ‘Cause, I would think that I would think that the older women who are running the brothel per say and limiting the limiting access would be managing things. While it would actually be the fertility. And and the Jordanian sex, you know. That are that are driving that are that are your actual capital. As you know your capital is sex basically you know whether it’s for pleasure or for reproduction.

Camilla: Yeah, yeah, all the workers who are producing.

Speaker 6: Providing.

Speaker 3: Well, one would one could say that the managers are also doing something and they’re part of the system, right, because they’re managing other people. Managing the mail access in many ways. Right. But the capital is criticality.

Chris: Can I just say I wanted you to start with the idea of your running a brothel. I mean because precisely because if you don’t start with that idea, you’re kind of not going to get out of. But I want you to start and be fairly consistent about that being the assumption and then and then ask the different questions. Of course, there’s no. No money. There’s just hunting and gathering. So you got human beings, males, females, older, younger and you got food gathered food and meat, food. And then you could have somehow make it work and then. Think of the different questions. Is your capital.

Speaker 8: Is the positional environment also capital? The physical environment is the physical environment and keeping that nice to attract people and make sure.

Speaker 7: Sorry, sorry again.

Speaker 8: Also part of the capital, also skills passed on.

Camilla: All right. Well, these were interesting ideas. Those conform to ideas of embodied capital. Which which are thought about the skills that you acquire as you grow up and also maybe your nice cave, your nice warm cave might be a cave. I agree. But I think the idea that it’s women and especially fertile women is. Quite a promising 1.

Speaker 6: Right.

Camilla: But ain’t anybody other thoughts?

Speaker 9: Should we try and go down?

Speaker 3: I mean, great to some degree the capital is also social power, right? There’s a social, I mean that goes along with the. So I mean, it’s part of the capital is the social power that’s bound up with being able to offer the chance of sex.

Camilla: Right.

Unknown: OK.

Camilla: So it’s a slightly vague and abstract concept. I want to be as materialistic and.

Chris: And don’t forget the second line. A successful family. You’ve got to still be around in the future.

Camilla: As a vision.

Chris: There’s obviously going to be some babies coming into into play, because otherwise you won’t. It won’t be successful in a you. Know. Generation or? You won’t exist anymore, so that that’s another condition which you’ve got to think about. Going to be children and and some women are going to be pregnant, breastfeeding and all that stuff and men doing go through different phases of their lives. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 6: So you’d have to have some kind of child care with the. I like the idea of. The older women running. That’s that would probably that would work out.

Chris: Can I just say in Room 2, is it all right for me to talk to all of you? Almost everyone’s mute Amy’s mute Alice’s mute Kelly Thomas is mute. Jacob, mute everyone, mute, mute.

Camilla: There was something they’re not meant to be used.

Chris: That going. Work.

Speaker 8: Because we are used.

Speaker 6: Well, Camilla asked her before. To it. Yeah. I encourage them to unmute.

Speaker 3: People also mute when they’re not talking because it creates feedback and things. I mean, I don’t think people being muted is necessary.

Speaker 6: Hello. What do you want to find?

Camilla: I mean if. People don’t want to participate, but let’s just encourage as many as possible. What about this preserving and defending? Yeah. We we’re getting towards the kind of cooperative childcare idea with maybe older women and grandmothers being, you know, very important in the management. And the younger, fertile women kind of being the capital. What about preserving and defending?

Speaker 3: In that. In that case you also have the. You would have the the older with the mother is bringing up the boy children and in some ways teaching them how the system works, at least in the earlier days, right before they go off and become independent. So part.

Unknown: I.

Speaker 3: The capital once again is the social power, right? The women have in that situation. The terms in some ways. OK.

Camilla: So who exactly are these? They’re they’re males, they’re men. Younger men. Who exactly are they going to be in relationship?

Speaker 8: OK.

Camilla: To different generations of women.

Speaker 6: Well, they’re going to be sons, aren’t they? To all of the women, I suppose.

Camilla: And took all of the women that some of the women.

Speaker 6: Well. To the to the fertile women. Is there going to be there’s going to be, there’s going to be brothers, right? Going to be brothers and there’s going to be, Oh my God. I mean ‘cause, there’s gonna be babies, and they’re going to be. Related to. Sorry, I’m just thinking out loud.

Chris: Well, I really was making an important point, didn’t. I mean, you have to think what? Defence against what could be get lions, but it could of course be against other humans, in which case we think which other humans might be the most.

Speaker 7: Yes, thanks again. Thanks again.

Chris: Sort of, you know. You need to defend against, in which case kind of who’s defending against who and so on. So I mean.

Speaker 6: Yeah, it’s got to be the men. Preserve.

Camilla: He definitely wants some man. Yeah. I mean the we’ve got examples in ethnography like the Elima house where, yeah, older mums and aunties are sort of the guards.

Unknown: But but but.

Camilla: So. You want to have some match.

Chris: I just asked him do you? You think this is? Because I mean, usually we do this at UCL around a table and it all kind of seems to work brilliantly. I think people have a good old time about it kind of laugh about it and get to places. What do you? I’m not sure this is working. On zoom.

Speaker 6: Or maybe in the bigger group, unless we’re all together, maybe.

Chris: Are you there?

Camilla: Well, we can. Close the breakouts and bring it back. And see what everyone has. Just close the rooms.

Speaker 7: Please.

Unknown: Go.

Speaker 6: It is fun to do. It is quite an interesting exercise.

Speaker 10: Yeah, I think.

Speaker 7: It is fun, yeah.

Camilla: But it, but there’s too many people who don’t see labeled speak, so maybe it’s better to have a bigger group.

Speaker 6: I mean, it’s OK not to know and to get it wrong, because after I don’t mainly do.

Camilla: There aren’t necessarily right answers. About thinking it out.

Speaker 6: Yeah, exactly.

Camilla: Or thinking about the different possibilities and parameters.

Speaker 6: Sure.

Camilla: Because already, you know, we’ve been thinking, well, they are these men, are they? Are they brothers or would? You know, how is this system working?

Speaker 7: Yeah.

Speaker 6: Exactly.

Camilla: So the breakout rooms are going to close in less than a minute. So we’re going to go back to the big group.

Speaker 6: OK, can.

Camilla: And you can think about the next question about if we agree that we’ve got to have some men involved in prison in defence. And we think there’s sons and brothers, at least. Well, I’m very pleased that nobody has said the girl’s husband’s, because that is. Pretty much the wrong answer. It’s not men defending their women.

Speaker 6: No, no, definitely not. OK.

Camilla: It’s not how it works. But how are we going to? So we’re just about well, we can actually leave the breakout room already and go back.

Chris: Right now, are we all together? Have we all come back?

Camilla: And they’re coming back.

Speaker 4: Yeah.

Camilla: Coming back. I’ve got 20–3 people now.

Chris: My own view is that this works very well face to face in a room with tables and people wandering around and having a chat. And as far as I can see. See, there’s far too many people. Not not wanting to be part of it.

Camilla: Well, it’s not that. It may be because they’re lines. May. Be able to speak and so on so.

Chris: All I’m saying is they’re they’re. So whether they be muted by somebody else or they muted themselves, the fact is that it can’t work with half the people muted, really.

Speaker 4: Hmm.

Chris: Of course, there’s still still half the people are muted. Even even now, I don’t quite know what to do about. You can’t really have a workshop if everyone’s muted. Any chance everyone can sort of mute?

Speaker 10: You don’t want to unmute all at once.

Speaker 3: Repeat me.

Speaker 10: Want to unmute when we talk?

Chris: Yeah.

Camilla: OK. Fair. As long as you do.

Unknown: Fine, fine, fine.

Speaker 7: That is going to. This is why we use. There is voice return so it will be a really, really bad sound if we don’t neutralize, we don’t speak.

Chris: Yeah, I see. There’ll be lots of too much noise. So Camilla.

Camilla: Yeah.

Chris: Can I suggest we just sort of go through this in a discuss?

Camilla: How far did everybody get down?

Unknown: Ion.

Camilla: Because we got through the capital and preservation and defending it.

Chris: Right, OK. What was?

Camilla: The other group.

Speaker 11: The same, yes.

Chris: One of the tell us what you what happened with that question then those two questions.

Camilla: How about Leanne? Sia do it.

Speaker 6: Sure. So so I was just reading the chat there. Margaret hasn’t got the questions. Oh, there they. They go in the chat again. Thanks Jacob. Thanks Jacob. So the next one was how to. That’s where we got, didn’t we in our group.

Camilla: Can we just recap leoncia what we thought the answer to the first two were and or what? Was.

Speaker 6: Capital were the women, the fertile women. That’s. I’ve forgotten the lady who was joining us, who was very good in our group.

Camilla: You said that, yeah.

Speaker 6: Goodnight exactly.

Unknown: Yeah.

Speaker 8: I’m opinion leader.

Camilla: Talking about the older women as management and kind of cooperative childcare thing. And the defence? Who? Doing that.

Speaker 6: It was, I think it was the there was the for child.

Camilla: How?

Speaker 6: There was the older women and also for some of the defence, the older women and then and some of the men. Then we kind of thought about who those men would be, sons. You know, brothers and then. We needed to think a bit more about how it might work after that.

Speaker 7: And I think in in Madras society, it’s usually. Well, women have training in defending themselves, but also the young ones, especially those that don’t have, let’s say, caring so much, so many caring responsibilities. They also have, let’s say, responsibilities for defending. Their community. So in in some, some some societies where women, you know are equal to men. So women are also part of of the defense. They don’t expect men. To do it.

Speaker 3: Yes, I’d agree there too, because part of that comes down to who has social. So in a matrilineal in a matriarchal society, women have a lot of social power, especially older women. So there’d be a level of it’s not necessarily defence isn’t necessarily always physical. Can also be. About you know who gets excluded from a group or excluded from resources, and all of those kinds of things. It doesn’t always have to be physical power. It can also be social power. That’s being used to defend people. And of course, there can be layers of defense as well, from the sort of interior layers. It’s Inter intergroup and then out group and then protecting against out groups as well, which would involve everyone. I would think especially the males.

Unknown: Yeah.

Chris: Can I just say I mean, these questions are deliberately appalling. I mean the word capital, the word advertising, all these to the punters, all they say the words are deliberately as far removed as you could possibly get. From a Macrolineial metro local hunter gatherer society, just in order to kind. You know, work out why those concepts kind of don’t work, but I still think we should sort of start with them and not, for example, just assume we’ve got a matriarchal society. Because that thing about no moral assumptions, just Darwinian. The critical thing is that the group have got to survive. Going to be. They’re going to continue to exist in a few generations time. I I totally agree with Lucinda. I think that you know it’s going to be women having a lot of power. No question about that. Nothing else is really going to work. Somehow we’ve got to not not make that an initial. It’s got to be one of the consequences of working at all kind of out, so for example. I mean, yes. As everyone sort of agreed that realistically this isn’t going to be an institution where you got lots of very sexy, lovely, handsome looking men and women are coming along and paying for sex. Men who are the capital, I mean every is everyone pretty sure that being. It’s more likely to be the other way. It’s going to be the women are the capital and it’s going to be the men who are going to be the if you like, the punters. I mean that’s good. I think everyone might agree to that.

Speaker 3: I think in a CAP, I think in a capitalist society that’s not necessarily true. When we’re talking about a less capitalist society, that is definitely true because.

Speaker 8: Absolutely.

Speaker 3: A.

Unknown: Absolutely.

Speaker 3: Very sex becomes very different commodity within the within those contexts.

Unknown: Yeah.

Chris: Listen to your very you’re really old Pistons firing in your brain. It’s fantastic. That’s great. So this horrible word advertising. I mean, obviously you know, so I mean what?

Camilla: Well, we hang. We didn’t quite get past the defence bit because you’ve got to think a little bit harder about is this actually just women defending women? What about if the punters we’ve got to keep this establishment fairly orderly? And we’ve got punters that are coming in and you know, taking advantage or not actually producing the goods necessarily and. Are we just going to leave it to the grandma?

Speaker 5: Defending.

Camilla: Who else is there who can do defending?

Speaker 4: Well, I thought I the sun’s obviously.

Camilla: Yeah. Sons of who? I.

Unknown: Thank you.

Speaker 3: I think I would say that any of any of the men could be defenders if it’s a situation where the men are in control of the women and the women and are actually the benefactors of it all right, in a patriarchal society, you. A situation. The men are exploiting the. Not necessarily for fertility reasons, but for many other reasons as well. Where it’s men using women as social capital with other men, and that becomes an entirely different dynamic. Then when it’s done in a in a in a matrix society, that’s why I’m bringing that up. I just those two things.

Camilla: OK, but can we? But can we imagine just an evolutionary situation without imposing either patriarchal or matriarchy? Like it’s a family business.

Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean. John family songs are quite fond of their mothers.

Speaker 3: Families are a little bit final.

Speaker 4: I mean the obvious group for mothers to employ.

Chris: Well done. Well done, John. I think that’s incontrovertible. I think mothers have got extra in just in case some of the punters throw their weight around and it’s obviously a possibility, isn’t it? Men are men and one thing that women aren’t quite as good at as as men is is violence. Are usually better at that. And so women may need occasionally to stop any violence on the part of, you know, as Camilla says, punters aren’t putting their weight, just want more sex on the cheap kind of thing. And as John says to me. It’s. That women have sons and younger brothers and their front of their mothers and older sisters for all kinds of reasons of dependence and experience, and and it’s pretty clear for the women not to draw on. Those those men as a resource. For defence, yes. And then the question comes in. Who do you employ for security and who are the punters? Not going to be the brothers.

Camilla: Well, we, we. Hang on, we didn’t do advertise.

Chris: OK.

Camilla: You can do appetite.

Chris: Very committed we.

Camilla: Sorry, what about that?

Chris: Committed quite right. Yeah, so. Thank you, John, you again, you’re.

Speaker 4: Ready.

Chris: Obviously, when you think about it. Hunter gatherers are constantly dancing and the women just love dancing and their dancing is pretty provocative and pretty pretty, you know, pretty sexy, and women have a huge sort of joy in participating in each other’s attractions during these dances. So. So, so. So when it says here, how do you advertise? I mean, it seems again we have a terrible danger of falling into sort of, you know, wretched conventions. I mean, it’s not going to be the old grannies who are who are going to be. Central sort of centre stage of the dancing. They’ll be management more likely and it won’t be very young children either, so it’ll be it’ll be the the girls who are most attractive, who will be central to the dancing. And but the critical point is with hunter gatherers. Everyone participates in that. It’s not a competitive. Everyone, all the other women take. In their sexy dancing and share it all and benefit from it all because it you need to be able to attract these men, otherwise the whole the whole system falls apart. The men are going to be precisely because there’s no money, there’s going to be some other incentive to go hunting.

Camilla: Are there any other thoughts about venues at which the advertising might take place or? Or who would be advertised first? OK.

Speaker 7: Well, in, in, in some societies, it is women advertising other women. It is very it. One of the. Things because I have seen this. The UK win in the circle and they are advertising other women and they’re also advertising their sons or their brothers to the women’s circle. So it seems that the advertising is taking place in women’s spaces. 1^st and then women. They try, let’s say, to transfer the information like I have a good deal for you. On both sides, so they also work in between the groups of men and women as well. It is women among themselves and then women working between the two groups. And they are doing very good work. Are very smart. Very fun.

Camilla: Of course you’ve got 2. Where did the two groups come from? Where did that happen? We’ve got a Brussels.

Speaker 12: I don’t.

Speaker 7: We. I don’t assume to groups for our hypothetical case, I I have seen the two groups because in the societies where women have power and they also do the advertising. They have separate spaces. Let’s say the the boundaries are not completely. Let’s say sound, but they are separate bases and separate times, and I’m I’m talking about, let’s say, societies in Europe for example like UK, UK. Is a good example because last years I can see.

Chris: Irene, we’re trying not to do that. We’re.

Speaker 7: A lot I couldn’t. I couldn’t have imagined.

Chris: We’re trying not to start with UK or Greek or some other place where you’ve got a brothel. Which?

Speaker 7: Well, because you asked how women will do the how the advertising is taking place well and. Thinking information from real life that women are doing the advertising. Men are not good at that anyway.

Chris: Alright.

Camilla: OK, there may be something to it, but a moment. I like John’s dancing as a really great idea because it’s kind of what it’s not graphically. What what might happen. I’m thinking the Hadza. I’m thinking the in booty, the girls of the Elima Hut in the ambuti, they’re all singing. Inside the Hut. And then they come bursting out, all painted beautifully painted. So I’m thinking, well, actually got pubescent girls all painted and for their first menstruation rituals would be a pretty good place to advertise as well. Possibly.

Chris: So who do you employ for security? I mean again, John said sons. Others, and I’d like to move really quickly from there if we all agree on that. I mean, clearly women can defend themselves, but I mean, you know, against male violence, you probably want to. Want your sons and brothers as an extra defense? But then who must always? Be refused sex now at the very beginning, it said no moral assumptions. I don’t want us to start.

Camilla: We want we want Hunter. Chris, we got. We need to talk about hunters.

Chris: Two other punters, all right. OK.

Camilla: You keep skipping a question.

Unknown: OK.

Chris: Quite. Sorry. Come on. Right. Two other punters are the brothers going to be punters. Are you?

Speaker 4: Senate. Now there’s somebody else’s brothers.

Camilla: Somebody else’s brothers.

Chris: Welcome.

Speaker 3: Well, if you if you remove morality, it can be anybody, really, right? I mean, that’s that’s the thing. Once you, once you start moving away from taboos and morality and things like that.

Camilla: It’s kinda. We’ve got to make the business work. The only principle? Doesn’t matter about morality, but the business has to work. Can the business work if the brothers?

Speaker 3: There are. There are plenty of pimps who run gangs of women who sleep with you know what I mean? That. It’s if you’re running. If you’re using violence and coercion to run a prop to run a brothel. Then get all kind and you remove morality. Then you get child. You know, I mean, this is the real world. You get child prostitutes, you get, you know, you get queerness, you get all kinds, you get all. Types. Of you know, if we’re not situating this in a temporal time or matriarchy or patriarchy so much. And if we’re talking about it as a as removed from morality and taboo.

Chris: They’re saying that.

Camilla: Then Joe, Joe wanted to speak.

Speaker 4: We.

Chris: OK, sorry.

Unknown: All the.

Speaker 12: Question really sorry, I know this is going back a little bit, but then when we said that capital, the capital was women is is the is the assumption we’re making then that the sexual preferences are heterosexual and and therefore in this family business it would only. The women who would be the capital, are we misunderstanding something here?

Speaker 5: One question.

Speaker 4: No, it’s fine.

Camilla: That’s a big and important question. Anybody want to say anything? You’re going to take that over? Or somebody else, I thought.

Chris: Just just to say. Humans come in two kinds, biologically. One, you know, 11 kind gets pregnant, the other kind. I mean, that’s a very, very, very basic thing, regardless of your sexual orientation. And the argument here. Is that women will do better with it, with childcare, with the cost of childcare if they get help and they can get help from their mum if they live with their mum and if they are living with their mum, they can get help from their sisters but getting. In. The. The cost of childcare is a is a pretty critical thing. And that is going to be fairly basic when it comes to the sexual division of labour. Males don’t have children, they don’t do breastfeeding. But you can still make. Most of them by getting them to do some hunting and bring back the meat and you can get them motivated to do that by making it pretty damn clear that if they want sex they better behave and do just that. And then you then your next move is. Supposing that some of those males throw their weight around. Now, although we’re not, although we’re not, we’re trying to be sort of we’re not Lucinda. Saying, you know, we’re. We’re not specifying a particular. We are saying this is early human kinship and we are saying these are these people are hunters and gatherers. So this if you’re going to locate all this back then before there’s even any money. Kind of work out. All right, supposing the women do need security, and they follow John’s recommendation and draw on their brothers for support. And the modern analogy would be that I don’t know some kind of strip club with bounces on the door. The bouncers can be, you can. You can. You can see that from the women’s point of view. You don’t want. You want the bouncers to be your brothers so they don’t have to have to be biologically your. But the critical point is you want them to be not part of the problem. You want them to be part of this solution to the, to the, to the. Know the potential of, you know, harassment and threat so. Group you absolutely can’t contemplate having sex with or treating as punters. Are the bouncers are the? So can you see Lucinda? You’re going to generate the ancestor Boo from that situation. Because women can’t afford. As soon as you like as soon as you start letting your brothers and sons, you know, be the punters. The problem now. And where is the solution? What are you going? Write another category.

Speaker 3: I understand that, but it’s like, but then we’re. Yeah, I understand that and that we’re dealing with a specific situation. So we are dealing with certain forms of already with a framing framework, right? Dealing with the framework. Comes with certain assumptions, right? So we can’t remove move ourselves away from all the assumptions.

Chris: All of them.

Camilla: You suck that biological.

Speaker 3: Were also. We’re also we’re also talking here. A situation where women have where women’s sex is seen as power and they’re not just subjugated. So I think those kinds of situations are going to be very dependent on environment as well, right?

Chris: Listen, if there’s if there’s too much mayoral dominance and violence that that, that you’re not going to be around the next generation. Women have to have high quality childcare. Of support. Lots of solidarity. You’re going to get to something like. Local residents matter lineal descent simply by the the assumption that the group’s going to be, as they said, a successful family. But it’s still here.

Speaker 3: Two of the two of the things I returned to when thinking around these kinds of things right where people tend to think about humanity in these very dire binary way. Is thinking about the differences between how chimps manage their culture and how bonobos manage their culture, right? So you have patriarchal and matriarchal management systems right in nature. Even though there’s a lot more. Unrecognized matriarchal power that goes on among chimps. They’re still seen as being a male dominated species, even though I would actually think that female.

Camilla: They are pretty male dominated. With a lot of risk.

Speaker 9: Equipment, but.

Camilla: Side.

Speaker 3: Yeah, yes, yes. But but also there’s all kinds of much more subversive social power, the female chimps. So it’s it’s actually exceptional, but extremely violent male chimps end up as being leaders simply because everybody else gangs up on them, right? And they get refused sex and various other. So they have to be extremely strong to be able to dominate in, in kind. Because chimps still have social organization and cooperation.

Camilla: Political alliance rather than yes.

Speaker 12: Yeah.

Speaker 3: That’s getting off. That’s getting off track, but I just want to give an idea of where.

Camilla: Amy was asking a question. Or going to contribute that she’s gone, just gone.

Chris: Bridge Amy.

Camilla: Oh, she went.

Chris: Really.

Speaker 12: He lost her.

Camilla: Oh, Amy, did you want to chip in?

Speaker 10: I’m just wondering if to both stay true to the model but be a little more expansive; if the capital could be redefined not as people’s bodies, but at the as the exchange of the experience of sexual pleasure. And the potential for reproductive sex. As opposed to the capital being the women or the women’s bodies isn’t the capital of the exchange of an experience of pleasure. Isn’t. Isn’t that what?

Camilla: Ultimately, defending when you need to defend it. When it comes down to brass tacks and you need to defend the resources and assets, what are those resources and assets?

Speaker 3: Yeah, they’re embodied. Even if we talk about it as as pleasure being part of the exchange. You’re still talking about embodied pleasure. So it still always returns to the body in some way.

Chris: Can I suggest that we move on one step? So we’ve said two other punters and they’re not your brothers, is everyone fairly clear about that? That I have.

Speaker 7: I have two questions about the entire model we’re working on today, 1 is. Do we assume that women want to have? To get pregnant and have the baby and do assume that they want to raise the children. Because someone has to explain the different decision between men and women. Let’s let’s suppose that these are the two groups. So why don’t men? Want children in their lives unless they are forced to? And why do women are assumed to want children in their lives, as if something natural to them?

Speaker 4: Well.

Chris: We were just mentioning chimpanzees and bonobos and early hominins. And the fact is that females do tend to get pregnant and males don’t.

Speaker 7: But you know, I mean the question is about the decisions because if we are talking about a brothel right now, we have creatures that make decisions about themselves. So there is one decision in either side of the groups that. Is not contested. Like the decision of women to have the children. And the decision of men not to. Them well.

Camilla: So Kat, so I really, how can the women decide not to have children unless they refuse to have sex entirely?

Speaker 7: Well, I suppose that there is knowledge and there is knowledge. We know that there is truth.

Speaker 3: And that’s and. And that is how you get free space classes.

Speaker 7: And this is This is why. I mean.

Camilla: This is an evolutionary situation of Allah, human kinship.

Speaker 8: 1.

Chris: Of the things we do particular moral system, no moral assumptions, just Darwinian fitness. Mean. If people don’t have kids, they. You know that’s there’s no fitness there at all. Don’t exist.

Camilla: I didn’t see there was anything saying men didn’t want children. We are assuming that the men who were once sex. And just Darwinism, or I mean Evolution organizes to have children by making people want to have sex.

Chris: I mean we I’m, I’m. It’s. I mean, it’s great to have a really wide, wide-ranging discussion, but we can’t have absolutely everything up for. I mean, we are darwinians in rank and we do think we’ve evolved and we can’t evolve without getting our genes into the future and which is the definition of fitness. So some things we are saying we we don’t exactly assume because. That’s kind of the way science works when it comes to human. So I’m hoping we can not, you know, not not question really very, very basic things of that sort. Mean, you know we’re. We come in two kinds, male and female. Obviously in real life today especially, we come in all kinds of different identities with nothing to do with, you know. All that, but I still want to know. Who must always be refused sex. In the model, given that according to John, I think it’s right, women will heavily rely on their sons and brothers as if you like, you know bouncers as as part of their defence system who must always be refused sex. And it I don’t know. Lucinda, do you want to come in on that one?

Speaker 3: I would say probably the people who get abused get refused sex are abusive people within the culture. If you’re abusive and you and you trespass on taboos and that would be the first. Group you know, or harmful, they won’t want.

Camilla: We haven’t got any taboos yet. Just about to get one.

Speaker 10: We did.

Camilla: We were.

Speaker 3: We’ve already entered, we’ve already, we’ve already introduced some areas around taboos though, because we’re already talking about it in just male and female terms and various other things, so.

Camilla: Why is that? The boost that taboos in anthropology would be?

Unknown: Please.

Camilla: Kind of rules that can’t.

Speaker 3: I’m not an anthropologist so.

Camilla: Yeah, but but taboos would be rules that can’t be violated. I don’t think we’ve quite got any rules in this society yet until.

Speaker 9: OK.

Speaker 3: Well, but would. A.

Unknown: We.

Speaker 3: That would be a taboo against. One would think right? I mean violence, you know.

Camilla: We’ve got muscle, we’ve got muscle, we’ve got some other brothers.

Speaker 3: I think once you start talking about organized systems. And relationships between people and your we’ve already. Oh, you don’t sleep with your brother because of various things and taboos evolved out of that, right? Or maybe vice versa? Knows I don’t. So I think it’s very hard to talk about these things from this totally blank slate kind of away because we’re not talking blank slate. We’re talking Darwinian evolution and things like that, and some of these taboos come up pretty. Abound murder and things like that. Very animal.

Speaker 8: Thanks, senator. Lucas.

Chris: And there’s just one quite simple question. If you’re relying on your brother’s as bouncers, if you like. Is it sensible for the women to allow sex with those people?

Speaker 3: I would. I would. That would really depend on a variety of things, I think, right? I mean, part of it would.

Chris: Well.

Speaker 3: I don’t. I don’t know. I will very much stay on the.

Camilla: There’s in the chat Bernadette had another suggestion. So who should be refused is people who don’t pay up.

Unknown: Yes.

Camilla: Whatever. Think of as paying up.

Speaker 10: Yeah.

Camilla: Obviously, I think we all agree with that. We definitely definitely agree with that one.

Speaker 11: Yeah.

Camilla: Should be refused but.

Chris: And that does capture exactly what happens with bride service. The guys who just want a bit of sex and are prepared to go hunting and, you know, be generous with them, with the meat they bring back, they’re going to be out. So that does absolutely. You know, it’s ethnographic reality and I think we can sort of I think it’s true to say we can generate it.

Camilla: You know that that is true.

Chris: Not. We’re not just copying what we found in the ethnographic record. We’re we’re seeing the underlying logic that gets you to that.

Camilla: So the the question. Who’s always going to be refused? Is then yeah, it’s a function.

Chris: I mean, I’m. I’m just gonna. I’m just gonna suggest I’m going to suggest that the best theory we have for the emergence of exogamy or the emergence of a of a taboo on incest is that women need their brothers to defend them and as soon as you start letting your brother have sex with. Then they’re no longer the solution to to. They are part of the problem and it makes a lot of sense. Keep 2 categories of males. They’re. One the people, they can have sex. It just makes huge lot of sense for women to do. And I, and I mean, I know there’s a huge dispute about it and I know some people think that we have the incestuous because if you have incest, you’re going to have kids with two noses or five ears or something. Those arguments don’t really work very well because chimpanzees. Male chimpanzees are constantly trying to have sex with their younger sisters and relatives, including daughters. The females resist it, but I mean, you never end up with a nice proper taboo the way human hunter gatherers have, and seems to me that this. Model kind of gets you to that to the actual the actual taboo on sex with your brothers just makes no sense for women to allow that. I’m.

Camilla: So that actually is an initial. We’ve we’ve actually generated a taboo, if you like.

Chris: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4: From.

Camilla: Having no taboo.

Chris: So who gets people pregnant? Again, it’s, I know it’s a little bit repetitive this, but it’s like saying do brothers do let brothers maybe have sex down again just to get you? And it just again, as soon as you ask that question, it seems to be. Seems to be no brainer that it’s going to be the punters that get you pregnant.

Speaker 3: To some degree, doesn’t it? It give more power to the women if the men don’t know who their children are. Well.

Chris: We’ll get to that. The next question.

Camilla: Next question.

Chris: You’re absolutely spot on, right? You’re completely correct on. There’s a huge, lovely lot of literature on.

Speaker 7: The big question.

Camilla: Are men allowed to know they’re the fathers?

Chris: So all right, so who gets people pregnant and then do you let fathers know? Lucinda, you are so so right. Makes. Lot of sense.

Camilla: What are the options here?

Unknown: Yeah. Yeah. OK.

Speaker 5: So the one who brings back the nicest zebra, get the female pregnant desani.

Camilla: But sorry, say again, Mary.

Speaker 5: The one who brings back the best food. Best hunter. Get the female pregnant, yes.

Chris: Yes. Yeah, that’s most he’s most likely to get her pregnant.

Camilla: I would, but we’re not saying. Are you saying that there’s one good hunter who gets all the women pregnant? Are you saying that?

Speaker 3: I I would. I would say, especially if we’re looking at bonomos and chimps that actually being a good friend to women in other ways and just bringing food can get you a lot of access. Success, you know, as in the real world, just being a decent person can get you a lot of access to. Know sex, right?

Camilla: But it’s not true of hunter gatherers.

Chris: Think of the mother-in-law, but think of the hunter gatherer mother-in-law.

Camilla: Who? It’s actually the boss of this management.

Speaker 3: Right. Good point, good point.

Chris: He’s not interested in her, her daughter. Sex, sex, sex with somebody who plays nice music.

Camilla: Thank you.

Chris: He’s going to be a, you know, he’s going to be a hunter.

Speaker 3: But she also, but she also might have but the but the mother might also have relationships with with other people that that soften up things and at least give a little bit more privilege. Right though. Then again, you’re starting to create power dynamics that.

Unknown: Well.

Speaker 3: Would probably want to start to get rid of if you’re trying to have an egalitarian sort of society. We.

Chris: Answered this. Do you let fathers know? Does Lucinda’s government have nice clear answer. What does everyone else sort of think it’s a good answer?

Speaker 4: John, John. Well, no, obviously not.

Camilla: Why not?

Speaker 4: Well, you want certain amount of ambiguity and keep keep keep the maintain. ING, maybe actually.

Chris: Well done.

Camilla: Ambi, you don’t want them to think they’re not dads at all.

Unknown: Unit.

Camilla: You definitely want them to feel they’re probably bad.

Unknown: It’s.

Speaker 4: Sure, sure, it’s but.

Unknown: Hello.

Chris: What you don’t want to do is to give a punter a claim on a woman. The right to say no whenever you like is absolutely critical to the whole system. Working women have got to be able to say no, fed up with you go. I want somebody else. And if you let the man know for sure he’s the dad, he will use that as his reason for sticking around. You can’t get rid of me because that you know your baby’s. You know I’m. I’m his dad.

Camilla: Maybe he’ll even think. Oh, well, why don’t we go somewhere else to be nice and private? It was something like that. He might make claims of that kind.

Chris: Yeah.

Speaker 11: So would you also would. Also include the danger of another male knowing that that’s the child of another male, and infanticide coming through that is that a human issue as well?

Camilla: Yeah, it could be.

Speaker 11: Like like among chimps, we that’s, you know, among chimps that’s that’s where the infanticide is coming through. Child defense would be making sure that another male doesn’t know that.

Speaker 4: Is it?

Speaker 11: That’s for. That that person’s son.

Chris: Quite right.

Speaker 3: Just to say, I mean you would we actually have a lot of fairy tales more about evil stepmothers? Because more women died in childbirth. But there are plenty of tales of humans trying to kill the children’s of other humans that were not their own right.

Unknown: Yeah.

Chris: Yeah, but obvious, but obviously in this model. Women have got no interests in allowing any such thing, and it’s far better if nobody really knows for sure who’s the dad. If you just confuse.

Speaker 7: But you.

Camilla: Want the males to have the feeling they’re probably the dad? Quite possibly. That? Which means they’re not going to do harm. The children.

Chris: And by the way, that is now very standard human biological theory with Sarah Hurdy with paternity confusion and all the stuff about paternity about. Paternity in South America. Paul Valentine and Steve Beckerman and. I mean, it’s really well recognized now that where women do have solidarity. In power, they keep they kind of keep the men guessing. You don’t want to. You don’t want them to think. They’re not the dad, because then they’re not going to be so keen on helping to provide. But you don’t want a man to know this kid is mine. This kid isn’t for the reasons Jacob suggested, because then that’s just going to cause, you know, it’s just going to cause problems. And yet. And yet, of course, that does go against what has been up to. Now the sort of dominant paradigm, the idea that no, no male talking about human evolution, no male’s going to be providing food for a female unless she’s given paternity certainty from decades. That was the idea, but I think it’s been pretty heavily smashed on its head now. Mostly female. Paleo anthropologists these days. Darren Hodgie, the leading the leading figure.

Camilla: Bernadette, you’re saying something about resource hoarding or not? Resource hoarding. Don’t know if you want to clarify that.

Unknown: Replay.

Camilla: That. So I mean, with egalitarian hunter gatherers. They are very.

Unknown: There are.

Speaker 9: I’ll see if I can speak for a tiny bit. Just saying that. A man basically securing just one woman for himself. Will be reserved holding. What you’re saying is trying to avoid that level of resource hoarding for all parties, so everything is shared so that that’s that’s. That was just my suggestion.

Unknown: OK.

Chris: Well, I mean the good thing about the brothel model, even calling it a brothel to start with before we sort of turn it all on its head is that it does make absolutely sure that the men aren’t the Q&A property because they’re going to keep on. It even to be even to be having their their position as a as a bridegroom even to have. You know to have any, any sexual relationship, they’ve got to keep surrendering their meat, which is the only property they’re likely to have to their in laws. So a kind of a kind of logical. Vice, I mean, actually religious sacrifice ultimately comes from that point. You have an anomaly. It. And you offer it up, and then Hunter gathered. You offer it up to your indoors your mother in. But that’s how. Why immediate? You know, return hunter gatherers are immediate. Is because there’s no chance of. Accumulating property because it keep getting taken off you by your in laws.

Camilla: Yeah, there’s a real opposition to any form of accumulation because it threatens egalitarianism. So meat gets taken off the hunter straight away. And nobody’s allowed to accumulate or store.

Chris: Right now I want to get through all this. We don’t do let feathers know and I’m really pleased that people are fairly happy about the idea that you keep things a bit confused. Who do the children belong to? Again, that really is a no brainer. It seems to me. But let’s let’s have a go at everyone. Who do the children belong to?

Camilla: I mean the community, yeah.

Speaker 3: I would say the community.

Chris: Does a. Does a community include the punters?

Speaker 4: No, it’s the mothers.

Chris: Well done, John, you’re thinking straight.

Camilla: It’s time of the brussel, isn’t. It’s those children are the next generation of workers and security.

Chris: It’s a community in Axon. So the children belong to their mothers and of course, therefore to their mother’s brothers, so. And that gets you to the evacuate, which is a critical feature of kinship in in, in traditional societies, right across Africa and really pretty much everywhere. So children do not belong to their dad. And Dad doesn’t even know for sure. That doesn’t and is encouraged not to care too much, but brothers feel that their child is sisters child. And again, you can sort of. I hope you can see that. Just kind of. It’s in women’s interests because you never have an ex brother. A brother is for life, so the children are never going to be. Let let you know. Down by the fact that dads walked off. Brother doesn’t walk off. He’s like he’s your. And so the kids have got to almost like 2 parents who can’t be divorced because their brother and sister. It’s a very, very, very excellent system.

Speaker 10: I have.

Speaker 3: I have AI. A question. Would most. Would most men be somebody’s brother?

Chris: Yes.

Speaker 3: Would there be in groups and out groups of men, or would just all men be part of the in Group by being somebody’s brother?

Chris: And the answer would be, I think we’ll get there in a. But what is the answer?

Camilla: How many institutions do we need?

Chris: Minimum is the minimum. I won’t say no, somebody else said. The minimum number of incident.

Camilla: There’s going to be at least two who?

Chris: Thank you, Anne. Yeah, thank you, Anne.

Camilla: There might be 4, there might be 8, there might be. There’s got to be at least 2.

Chris: And when you have two, it’s known as a loyalty system. And if it’s, if it comes out of the logic we’ve been exploring here, it will be two maximum margins rather like the Cannella that create the wheel of a society in.

Speaker 4: None.

Chris: Hanover. For Brazil, you have the people of the West, the people of the east, all the women on one side have sort of kin to each other and share their children and stuff. And the men Chris got to and fro from side to side between sisters, sisters and W. And wives. But even. But even the word wife isn’t really very good because you know nobody and. Except with conjugal rights and his wife, he has to keep on providing meat. And so you get this lovely system of exchange between the two halves. So everyone’s a brother, but the brother is the brother to one side of the camp is is the is the. Like the groom to the other side, like the women in the other side. Everyone has these two opposite roles, and you Criss cross Criss cross, Criss cross alternating you sort of. You know, you kind of die as a husband, become a lavender brother. Die as a brother become alive as a husband, and all the myths and describe those experiences of to and fro alternation between. Chip roles.

Speaker 11: That would add another layer to the incest taboo, because you would need the brothers to go hunting to contribute to the other, be out group to make the system work.

Chris: That’s right.

Speaker 11: If the brothers are freeloading, then the whole system breaks down.

Chris: Exactly. Yeah, exactly right. Move on a bit. So is descent back to the OR matrilineal again? A kind of no brainer. Oh no.

Unknown: Hmm.

Chris: I missed one. Sorry. Come on. OK. Is residence patch a local or back to local?

Camilla: Residents and vendors and.

Chris: Sorry, love. Sorry. Yeah, I’ve got it wrong. Jumped ahead. 11 stage too quick, his residents back to local and Metro local. Where would it make sense for women to reside? Do you go off? To wherever the punters come from. And live with him. Or do you stay with mum?

Speaker 3: You would stay with Mom, obviously. How you maintain your power?

Chris: Course it’s course. And so in fact, you do the wonderful thing about modern science, particularly modern genetics, is that it can. Can give fairly definitive answers to these. So in Africa, where we evolved, you have farmers, cattle hunters and stuff, and they also have hunter gatherers and right across Africa where you have hunter gatherers. Women have been living with mum, living with mum, living with mum right down the generations and it’s it’s shown by the mitochondrial DNA, which clusters in little localized groups, whereas the men move around all over the place and with the cattle herders, it’s the opposite way around men. Live with dad, with dad, with. Down the generation. So it’s a nuclear DNA. Variants that are localized. We now know.

Camilla: Why? Why chromosome?

Chris: The what’s the Y chromosome? I’m sorry. More accurately. Yes, that’s right. So which is of course transmitted through males. This is. We don’t quite know how far in history that goes back, but it’s proven that women living. Is the is the original system for anatomy, modern Homo sapiens, living in Africa?

Camilla: Very light.

Chris: Mean that’s a little bit of an probably a slightly too strong claim.

Camilla: That’s a bit of an exaggeration, but there’s a strong suggestion.

Speaker 3: I realized.

Speaker 11: I.

Chris: Realise that it’s too strong a claim because the genetics can’t take you back more than a few thousand years, but a few thousand years means 810 thousand years. I think in Africa, so that’s not too bad. Living with Mum is very, very, very important for a woman, because if you’re living with your mum, you’ll be living with your sisters as well and you and those are the most reliable sources of childcare support. And when you have mum and sisters around you, you’ve now got. A coalition which can provide leverage. On the men in your life, so if the men in your life are being useless, you can rely on your mum and your sisters to, you know, put some pressure on him to to, you know, buck up his ideas or else.

Speaker 3: The. The other aspect of it. The other aspect of it that rises up to my mind anyway is that when if we’re thinking about women as capital in this scenario, and that’s the premise we’re going from, then why would you send your capital off somewhere else anyway? I mean that would be.

Camilla: Exactly. Don’t make any sense at all.

Chris: Beautiful. Beautiful.

Speaker 8: You use your bottle.

Speaker 10: If you want to keep your.

Camilla: Bottle going you you got to have them. Got to keep them.

Chris: We mustn’t forget to end up with working out about these, these these terms, Rotherham and so on, working out why they’re completely upside down. Don’t. We’ll get there. So so now we’ve done residence and it’s going to be obviously in women’s interest to to stay with mum and sisters and brothers. And now is. Descent, of course, is not quite the same as residence, but there is usually a connection with how is descent reckoned in other words, where do we know who children? Of belong to but down the generations. Where do children belong to? Do.

Camilla: What defines who belongs to the group?

Chris: Yeah, yeah. Again, it’s a kind of no brainer. Come on, somebody John, tell us.

Camilla: We kind of hear.

Speaker 4: It it has to be the. Yeah, right.

Camilla: So for example, you belong to the maternal ancestry.

Unknown: Can’t imagine.

Chris: You can’t imagine letting the punters you know have. To pass on stuff down there, don’t you father the son? It doesn’t make makes no sense in terms of everything else.

Camilla: The manifold chief in America. If the man don’t even know if they’re fathers and you can’t have patrilineal descent anyway.

Chris: Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 10: Doesn’t make any sense.

Chris: Who distributes the income and among? Now this mean we’re talking about hunting and gathering so badly. We’re talking about meat. I mean, of course, women get probably the bulk of the food we’ve hunted, gathered as Council women rather than men.

Unknown: Mm.

Chris: The meat is very much valued by both sexes, and particularly by the women. And so how is it distributed and who does the distribution?

Speaker 3: I would suspect to the grandmothers in that particular situation.

Speaker 7: Yeah.

Chris: Well, you’re right. I mean, it’s no question about it. At the end of the day, it’s grandma who makes the decisions and she supervises the distribution and and she’s in a very good position to make sure that the distribution is pretty much. Egalitarian. She’s she’s, you know, she’s kind of out of the system. Some ways she’s above it all. She’s got a lot of power and authority, maybe two or three grandmothers in a in a in a little camp. Fairly big camp, I suppose you’d have to have, but anyway, she she ultimately.

Speaker 7: I’ve had to camps.

Camilla: We’ll have two or three grandmas or aunties.

Chris: Yes. Yes, good. Thank you. Yeah.

Unknown: Bye.

Camilla: But who she? Who is that meat actually going to?

Chris: Yes, good question. Yeah.

Camilla: Really, who has rights in it? Let’s put that.

Chris: Yeah. So does the mate go back to the punters or does it get distributed quite differently? So.

Camilla: No.

Chris: Is that Anne Kelly? OK.

Camilla: No. Answer the feedback. Please see very much.

Chris: Yeah. OK. So it’s. I mean you. You might be nice to them. You might have a bit of food or something, but really he’s got rights back with his own mum. He’s got rights in children, rights in food that’s coming in obviously from, you know, husbands marrying in from outside. So when it comes to rights, a man does not have rights of any kind. Sexual rights. Religious rights, where you have some kind of regular cosmological tradition, all rights and. His rights belong with his kin, back with his mum, so he’s kind of always on suffering. I mean, obviously over time people get very fond of each other and the older men are very, very affectionate and loved by their in laws and all sorts of. Change a bit but. Technically, a man’s rights are with his blood, with his kin, and not with his wife or the other man having any rights in his mother. She is absolutely tabooed and. She is absolutely almost like God the mother. Just the one to whom? All obedience is owed. Up until. And so we have all these stories about mother-in-law, avoidance and very logical these these rules that you mustn’t even meet if you if from a young man. So many other tribes, so many other groups meet you meet your mother-in-law along. You just got to get the hell out of there. You just mustn’t be seen anywhere near, let alone look at the face of your mother. It’s like looking at the face of. I mean, it’s just don’t do that, you know.

Unknown: Now with the.

Camilla: With the Hudson, the a man, if his mother-in-law comes and approaches where the fire is, he’s just got. Just got to go out the way. And and often if if we wanted to talk to a particular young man or hunter, the the mother-in-law would have to move out of the way to allow him. As a special concession.

Unknown: And there are.

Chris: All sorts of funnel, all sorts of funny stories, particularly in Australia, about. Naughty mother-in-law. So, I mean, if you if you want something your son in law’s. You just go near him and he has to run off and then you take whatever you you just Chuck into whatever.

Camilla: Steal it.

Chris: He you just steal it because he’s just going to run. So these these privileges can be abused by rather naughty mothers in law and all kinds of jokes about about all stories and stuff.

Speaker 8: We are.

Chris: Right. OK. What’s other?

Camilla: We we’ve answered how many establishments we’ve agreed about that.

Chris: Yes, there’s now there’s after that. Many different establishments are. There’s actually slightly different and difficult question. Not quite.

Speaker 9: It was a tricky.

Camilla: Question and it’s where we get the next main rule.

Chris: Yeah. So can a punter gain access to his own daughter? Can someone explain to me why that’s even a? Because obviously we would say, well, no way it’s his daughter, but we’re not supposed to be making moral assumptions and of.

Camilla: Well, the the men aren’t supposed to know.

Chris: And the main not supposed to know anyway exactly. And so yes, exactly. Yeah.

Camilla: So how does that work? So what do we do about that?

Speaker 4: I.

Chris: Hope people can at least see that there is a problem there. Because his daughter is in the other group, she’s not his blood.

Camilla: Ting, the brothel where his daughter is.

Chris: That’s right.

Camilla: What do you do about that?

Chris: I mean, you could argue, well, let’s not bother about it. But who is going to be most worried about it, and who’s likely to be most bothered about the guy? Having a relationship with. Adding to its relationship. Extension of that sexual relationship to your daughter.

Speaker 4: It would be the mother who would know.

Chris: That’s it. That’s. Can you see that from a? Point of view, she’s having sex with a man, OK. He’s he’s having to earn his keep. Having to, you know, provide. Is it in her interest that woman to allow him, in addition to having sex with her? To add her daughter to, I mean you can immediately see she’s going to put her foot down. I mean, no way, because it’s completely undermining the mum. So the mum and her sisters and her generation of women, of course. We’ll have every interest in preventing any such extension of the relationship, despite the sort of logic of the kind of kinship categories to which people belong which wouldn’t, which might, and by the way, when. Find. Those who spend their lives stunning matilinear, metalocal societies they’ve always said. There’s strange. I mean, Father most definitely are not allowed sex with their daughter. But it’s it’s a different name. Is used for that kind of that abuse, that crime from having sex with somebody within your own blood. That’s a more sort of cosmically prohibited form of incest than. That’s what it’s doing.

Speaker 7: Oh.

Camilla: He talked about it with the Trobrien Islanders, where the Trobrium matrilineal. It was perfectly entirely possible that a father and a daughter could have sex, but there was a sort of name it was thought of as something quite crazy and mad and weird. But it was different from incest inside the clan, so he made that very clear.

Chris: Insert.

Camilla: And also why? Why does what? Is it that the mother? I mean, the mother’s, obviously. Bothered about, but what does she want? Does she want for her daughter? What is?

Speaker 9: What’s?

Camilla: Who’s she expecting her daughter to link up with? Just from a purely economic point of view.

Speaker 6: David hunter.

Camilla: And what sort of more than a yes, a good provider, but can we describe this?

Speaker 6: Loyal. A loyal ideal. You what? A hunter.

Camilla: Loyal, but anything about in relation? The daughter, does she want a good hunter provider who’s like the same age she the mother is.

Speaker 6: Oh, so it needs a similar age to her to the.

Speaker 7: What for, mother? I’ll clarify.

Speaker 6: So the daughter would have a kind of younger.

Camilla: She wants new fresh blood from a younger generation, young generation of hunters. So. So the next rule that should be developed will be something about. Men and younger women of different ages. Shouldn’t be having. Sex. So there’d be some sort of age set. On it, yeah.

Chris: Well, just to say when we were when we were developing, I mean just to say to everybody, we started developing this model in about two about the year 2000, about the turn of the of the century because one of our students, Anna Lopez. Wanted to know what? Did someone somehow some kind of? She loved the whole theory of the sex track and all that, and wanted to know how to sort of put it into practice. And she ended up forming. The International Union of Sex Workers, with our support and we were very pleased because we actually for the first time managed to get the the general Municipal and Boilermakers Union and in our case it was the London entertainment branch that I I was a member of and so. Camilla for the first time. When? When? A pole dance. You know worker or some other sex worker, usually it wasn’t. Certainly St. prostitutes, they were very different, organised than all kinds of other sex workers were for the first time, admitted it into TC affiliated union, the general municipal employer Makers Union and previously when a when somebody working in a gentleman’s club. Had got fed up with management and wanted to join a union. The Union would just say go. You shouldn’t be doing this work. So we were very pleased with that and we and we and the Union is sort of rather knows well. Firstly it’s it’s kind of spread. We linked up, Camilla was very involved in it, linked up with the breeds thread and various other. Unions in New Zealand around the world, and so sexual workers these days, at least technically, do have a right to join a union. And then and then the second sort of influence on all this, this, this model was was Wendy James, Professor Wendy James of Oxford University when we had a workshop in Wales on early human kinship. And she suddenly realised that everything we were talking about in this experiment, this. Experiment. Was pretty damn close to the to the to the group that she’d spent decades studying in central Africa where.

Camilla: Done. It will do it. Udo in Sudan.

Chris: In Sudan.

Camilla: In Sudan.

Chris: Yeah, in Sudan. And and they had an age grade system of just the kind commander was mentioning there. Don’t know if you want to say a bit more Commander about that.

Camilla: Well, she she just. Yeah. So the duck has strong matrilineal matrolocal links with a lot of ideology of the of the moon as well. Just going to come to the calendar bit.

Speaker 10: But.

Camilla: There were there, typically East African systems, with these quite marked age grades, so that whole generations of men who might be initiated, or women who might be initiated. If you are the generation above and a cohort below, you don’t have. You. It is a matter. Huge abuse for an older man to try to have sex with a daughter who’s in the daughter generation. Whereas grandparents can skip the generations, they are often known as joking relatives. But because a man would be so much older than the young girl, it’s it’s kind of a joke. It’s it’s. Reality. So the age grade system really prevents that, that that sort of abuse.

Chris: The age grade system is constructed by having initiation rights, quite long intervals between them, so that everyone in everyone initiated in that in that sorry decade and then a decade later or so, perhaps even more. I can’t remember the exact date, but it’s long intervals between initiations, mass. Of mass initiations. Which constructs these age sets?

Camilla: It’s it’s most prevalent among pastoralists really that that sort of big long age set, John.

Speaker 4: I’m looking at the problem of the 18 year lunar cycle and whether that do you think that was used as generation? It could have been divided into two. You could have had a nine year cycle and then another nine years cycle that might be a way.

Speaker 7: Well, it would be very.

Camilla: Interesting to look at pastoralist calendars because there might be something to it. But I doubt that gatherer ones would be.

Speaker 4: Yeah. No, sure this is postureless. This is but, but I was wondering with a similar pattern could be read in to a pastorally society. These are these are definitely farmers. These are people.

Speaker 9: With with.

Speaker 4: Yeah, you know goats and goats and whole thing. The whole range.

Unknown: OK.

Camilla: Well, Wendy, thanks people.

Speaker 4: Captive animal.

Chris: Yeah, Don, it it’s sort. Yeah, I I have not studied. It’s not part of any written about or published or published, but I have a quite a it’s it strikes a chord when he mentioned that that kind of period is about right. Some kind of period about 1818.6 years or? Half of that.

Speaker 4: The half a nine year. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chris: That does sound about right for some of these. It it it wonderful to start checking it out and find out more about it. It strikes me as very plausible.

Speaker 4: Yes, Sir.

Unknown: Yeah.

Chris: Right, we’re nearly finished. Predict the clock or. When do you close for business? Do you open? What happens during your time off? So. So I don’t. We have to. We have now have to think that humans do come in two kinds, only one of which gets pregnant. But also there’s a periodicity to that the human female has a cycle, which we call a menstrual cycle. Chimpanzees sort of have a menstrual cycle, but it’s 36 days, nothing like lunar. Bonores have a cycle as well, but it’s 40 days.

Camilla: We haven’t clarified yet what what happens to women who are pregnant, what happens for. You know who’s who’s doing the sex work exactly.

Chris: Yeah. Sorry, committee, that’s a silly thing that in the in the questions, it’s not in there.

Unknown: And.

Camilla: I don’t know quite why it’s usually it comes up in the discussion, but maybe we can work it. With this.

Chris: It’s absolutely critical. Sorry. It’s absolutely critical that of course, you know what happens in a modern brothel. Don’t know you know. Amsterdam or somewhere? Of course, you better not.

Speaker 7: Why have you done, Chris?

Camilla: Tell us.

Chris: Sorry you don’t. Well, I’ve been to Amsterdam.

Camilla: Tell us.

Speaker 4: But.

Chris: What what happens is, of course, when you when you get pregnant, you’re sort of, you know, you’re out of work for a bit. And so our our institution that we’re talking about isn’t going to work because they’re nobody going to get into the future. None of your TE. Going into the future. If if that if we just get discriminated against because you’ve got a kid because you’re either. Pregnant or breastfeeding. That’s not going to work at all. So. Clearly, even though they use the Amsterdam metaphor, the people in the window are going to be not pregnant. It’s going to be a. So the different women have got obviously the women in different reproductive states are going to be supporting each. So you know, OK, you know, now I’m on the job and I’ll help you. But then when you know our relationship will soon be reversed when I get pregnant and I hope you can me kind of thing. That’s that’s going to.

Camilla: So we could get a new rule also like a postpartum taboo, as a protection for the workers like workers condition. That after a year or two years after birth they they’re not having to work something like that.

Chris: Yeah, that’s that’s that’s very important. That’s. And of course you do get those quite strict rules with hunter gatherers that men can’t just expect sex any old time. Mean it’s quite strict rules about about the reproductive. Fertility status of the woman.

Speaker 4: Hmm.

Chris: Yeah. Do we want to get into menstruation and stuff from Camilla?

Camilla: Well. How? How does it affect the situation here with these questions? What? Anyone think? We close the business when? Wendy, open. What do you do during time off?

Speaker 5: That is, seeing if it’s a browser. Yeah, does. Not kind of destroy the the theory by because it would make sense not to have all the woman having demonstration at the same time. So you can keep the browser open at all time.

Chris: That’s true. If you had, well, it’s sorry, it’s true.

Speaker 8: Hi, Peter.

Unknown: What do you think?

Camilla: What do you think the brothel workers would think of that?

Chris: I mean, they would simply say that.

Speaker 5: Beyond a rotation, no Sundays.

Speaker 10: They would. They would be on a rotation, so they might be OK with it because they’re not working all the time. But the brothel the stained all the time.

Speaker 5: Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 10: It could be sustained.

Unknown: Hmm.

Chris: I’m cheating a little bit, but I’m going to just add the fact that in Africa there are creatures called lions. And the lions are the reason why we are species are so. In other words, Robin Dunbar was able to prove that living in a living in large groups is actually all kinds of benefits, of course, but all kinds of costs in terms of harass. Ment competition for food and you know. Etcetera. So. Why in the end do did evolving humans choose to live in pretty damn pretty large groups? The. He comes up with is predation pressure, particularly big cats in Africa. And just so I’m cheating a little bit because it’s not purely logical. Is sort of empirical stuff. We we now know a lot about lions and their preferences when they like to eat people and eat other animals and when they’re not so keen and basically because they’ve got superb night vision and they are rather lazy animals, they don’t. They actually just come up. Behind you and just eat you because you didn’t see them and they can do that around Dark Moon or the night after full moon, when there’s an hour of darkness and their blinds. Hungry because previously there’s been a full moon.

Speaker 12: So why is this relevant, Chris?

Camilla: Because it would affect the. The punters are the ones that are walking around.

Chris: Well, it’s just.

Speaker 5: It would mean that the browsers are not doing their job properly as well.

Chris: Well, it’s it’s it’s relevant.

Speaker 8: Well.

Camilla: The problem?

Chris: It’s relevant because if you’ve got two institutions, the Panthers are going to move to and fro. Mean they’ve got you going to move from? Your mum and brothers and children are to the place where you’re going to get your sex and if it’s back to local residence, which you’ve already think it’s likely. And so moving around is will be will be safest for the months and much less safe.

Camilla: John’s got a suggestion.

Speaker 4: Is it if this is a night business, then we did it at the full moon because that saves on lighting.

Unknown: Saves the lighting.

Camilla: Saves on being eaten by lions.

Speaker 11: And it’s happening between two groups minimum two groups, then those two groups have to synchronize with each other. There needs to be some type of clock.

Camilla: There’s got to be a big clock for this, hasn’t there?

Speaker 11: That is. That both groups can see and they can’t, so it can’t be a rotation.

Camilla: Yeah.

Speaker 3: Well, I would. I would suggest that the moon becomes very obvious thing if you’ve ever actually been under the moon or in the night sky outside of city lights or in a dark sky park or something, you become very aware of actually how light it is it. Night and how well you can see in a full moon and how you can’t see it all when it’s a when it’s a waxed moon, right? So a full moon gives you this opportunity to move around. You can see everywhere except in the shadows. That’s obviously why a lot of rituals are based around the full moon for this very reason, because it’s a time that humans can be. Dark would be like.

Camilla: But there’s also a lot of rituals based at Dark Moon, because humans want to gather.

Speaker 4: Nothing, yeah.

Camilla: From the lions?

Speaker 3: Well, I was thinking things more like hunting rituals and things like that. Being out in the world ritual.

Camilla: The major rituals of darkness for hunting.

Speaker 7: They are.

Camilla: They are for the moon that’s coming up because during the moonlight the hunters want that light to be able to hunt. So that the rituals happening with the darkness. And that, and what else will be happening with the darkness? If we’re going to synchronize all this.

Speaker 3: Well, I would assume the sex. I mean, darkness would be darkness would be the time you draw together for protection, but also for dancing. And you know you and I need to entertain.

Camilla: There are many good things differently from from that.

Unknown: Replay.

Speaker 11: We have menstruation, a dark mode.

Camilla: We.

Speaker 11: Umm.

Camilla: We think it’s menstruation, yeah.

Speaker 11: Yeah, but then we’d also have the possibility for infertile sex, which gives us a whole diversity of sexual expression that is natural to human beings.

Camilla: I can.

Unknown: Thank God.

Chris: Thank God we’ve got there, Jacob. Well done.

Camilla: Yeah, but that also raises a whole can of worms there, but yes.

Chris: It does raise a whole.

Camilla: Let’s let’s keep the simple model to start off with. What do we think is happening when you’re on your time off? We think that we think which phase of the moon is time of.

Chris: Don’t.

Speaker 4: Daytime darkroom daytime day, daytime and dark Moon time you can see to do things.

Speaker 7: It was.

Speaker 4: And.

Chris: That’s right.

Speaker 4: There isn’t any party pressure.

Camilla: Right, OK, so Dark Moon basically time off. I mean. You may be busy doing preparation and various whatever normal life, but.

Chris: You’d you’d imagine it has a maximum. The maximum sort of goings on around full moon, because that’s what it says. And.

Camilla: Parking with parking, with the punters, part like that’s for the punters.

Chris: So you’d expect lots of heterosexual sex around full moon, and then a dark moon. You just all be very boring together or do nothing at all. Do you do as I think Jacob suggests?

Camilla: So. So which is the time of ritual?

Speaker 4: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Nice, nice.

Chris: I. I don’t I. I don’t want to completely.

Speaker 4: Yes, Dark moon, Sean.

Chris: Lucinda was saying we have Rich Asians forming and if you want to. Sort of lovings honeymoons with those. Those would certainly happen at full.

Camilla: They’re different types.

Chris: We know that not just from the observation of what happens with 100 gallons that we recorded today, but from all the world’s. You know, boys and girls come out to play. The moon does shine its brightest day. Mean Malinowski has written about it also. Full name will be the time for for a. The Brussels still using that terminology would be pretty active. Dark Moon is when everyone huddles together with their kin with their. Safety in numbers, singing together in much the way they had to do each dark moon in the ritual called Epemy where although. People like may not all be really keen. Adopt roles with one. Nobody is sort of formally in a sexual relationship. Everyone’s acting in a for that period. As as if they were kin. As if. And so the idea would then be that menstruation, menstruation would coincide with Dark Moon. But it doesn’t mean that people would not be having some kind of ****** pleasure. Because. You know. Just be boring. I mean, we call it a sex strike, but sex means a strike against heterosexual sex. Doesn’t mean you don’t do all sorts of other things, and in the West were. Success with this one thing which we call sex, not realising as of course Jacob is rather nicely put it, there’s all kinds of other things you can do when you’re on sex rat, which are very sexy.

Speaker 4: Thank you.

Speaker 10: We call it reproductive sex and non reproductive sex.

Chris: I think that’s exactly right, yeah.

Camilla: I’ve been right, which goes back to Joe’s question that we’re not just talking about heterosexual sex necessarily at all. Potentially.

Chris: Yes, right. That’s it.

Camilla: We can follow some of our Bonobo ancestry there.

Chris: Yeah. I mean The thing is that primates, male primates, fight each other for fertile. So the thing which is kind of going to be a source of competition would be fertile sex. Of course, with humans means. You know, around ovulation, which we think would be around formal. The other kind of sex is going to be probably less a source of conflict and competition, although obviously people still get jealous and stuff when the real attachments are formed. Certainly in our society.

Unknown: But yeah.

Speaker 3: If we, if we look at bonobos, bonobos use sex to actually defuse those kinds of conflicts, right? So sex can actually be a source of defusing conflict as well as creating.

Chris: I agree with you absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, it’s far too little attention being paid to the Bonobo matriarchal. Cousins of ours and far too much attention to the wretched comment. Disease, which so many patriarchs like Richard ranging.

Unknown: Well.

Speaker 3: It’s very hard for us to get away from Social Darwinism, isn’t it? Giving up patriarchy entirely.

Unknown: Yes.

Chris: Right. It is difficult and of course people, in my view, people like Richard Brans. On Darwinians, I don’t want to accuse them of too many crimes, but varying in that direction, there’s no doubt about it. Yeah, yeah.

Camilla: What’s our overall? Oh, we just got Dasha. Only just wrote. What’s that overall conclusion about calling this a brothel? Have we got to?

Chris: Thank you for.

Camilla: What have we produced in terms of a moral system? What are we actually describing here?

Speaker 3: Well, I wouldn’t call it a brothel.

Speaker 8: Personally.

Camilla: And why not and?

Speaker 3: Because I think there are way too many other social things around it and they determine too many other social things just to be this kind of thing. Would be part of. My thinking around that. Secondly, it’s very hard for me to disassociate the idea of brothel from Patriot. I I know people who work as prostitutes, right? I understand something about prostitution in the modern world. So it’s very hard to sort of just take away the term brothel has particular connotations that really have to do with patriarchy, right? So it once you’re starting to change the power dynamics, even if you have a Madam in a brothel and it’s a little bit more run by women, it’s still very patriarchal power structure.

Camilla: No.

Speaker 3: So I think that you sort of the connotations of power structures in broth are written. The term brothel are not appropriate for this kind of context. And it’s not specialized, and everybody’s included, right?

Camilla: Everyone’s included all generations, yeah.

Chris: And that’s that.

Camilla: When Adet has a very good point in the chat, I don’t know if you can say, but adept. She mentions the strong connection between women at the core of the model. So the usual depiction of brothels is not. Of female solidarity.

Chris: Can we just can I just say in my book, congratulations. I go into all this quite a lot because as I said when I was writing it, the view was that bride service, which is the fundamental economic institution of hunter gatherers. Because they describe it as sex to meet, it was described as prostitution. And then and then of course I thought about, well, what exactly is it about actual prostitution today? Gets women who regard themselves as very far, far removed from prostitution because they’re married. What is it which annoys married women about having? Say Brussels setting up down the bottom of the road and it’s just quite clear. The. I mean, it’s the women who demanded a lot from their guy. Real commitment maybe 5–10 years of commitment, you know, huge part of his income. To let him sort of pop down the road and have sex for you know, whatever it is, 20 quid, £50 or so is going to undercut her and devalue her. So it’s so the. So the definition of prostitution is that not everyone is involved in it. As Karl Marx pointed out. You can’t really have prostitution without the other side of the coin in in monogamous marriage. And. Marks argued is that prostitution is actually the general principle of capitalism, he said. Sexual prostitution is just a particular expression of the general prostitution of the worker. Because who under capitalism? Does their productive work for? You don’t do it for love. You do it for money. So in a way, I think Marx was saying don’t pick on sex workers as somehow immoral because they, you know, they don’t only do. Creative, productive social work for money. I mean that the whole point of capitalism is that in a sense, we’re all in some sense or another, prostitutes. But it’s it’s as actually listening. You were saying is that is that division. So if everyone’s involved in the same system. No one’s undercutting anyone else, which we’ve already got to in our model. That the idea that it’s anything to do with prostitution is just completely absurd. And as I’ve argued before, it’s actually the original route and source of all sexual. And actually, it’s a more profoundly moral system in the sense that it actually benefits children benefits, childcare benefits, women benefits, both sexes, actually. Then, more than any other system known, this maternal maternal moon govern system that we evolved with. It’s the origin of morality.

Speaker 3: And it.

Speaker 11: Thank you.

Speaker 3: Protects other men from other men. Especially because if you if, especially if you have men hunting in groups, then it becomes not about raising up one man.

Unknown: Absolutely.

Speaker 3: Above all the others, but about men remain on a more egalitarian level too.

Chris: That’s that’s it. The point about when women have got the power of the strike, when they can say no collectively. Then men aren’t put in a position where in order to get sex, they’re going to fight each other. It’s like women are saying no point fighting each other. Go out, take your weapons, go and you know, you know, find a zebra, kill the zebra and bring back the meat. And then we’ll think about it. Like, but fighting each other for sex and ain’t going to work because we decide these things. So women’s ability to say no and then through their solidarity is actually what generates an egalitarian ethos between men who might otherwise be quite violent towards each other. The way common chimpanzees are.

Speaker 7: I comment about. I think that in terms of, let’s say, economic resources or labor.

Speaker 9: Labor offered on the part of.

Speaker 7: Women. The undercutting is not done by sex workers. They work much less in all aspects and than than the married women, especially those that are married, you know, in in a situation that’s very patriarchal. They work much. But let’s say the projection in patriarchy is against sex workers, that they are undercutting the value of women because they are doing this work. Although in terms of the economy it is. It is the other way around.

Unknown: Around.

Speaker 7: So I don’t. I don’t think so. If we are going to talk about on the chatting or we have to think, who is undercutting whom and in what way? Like really counting labour hours and types of labour. That are offered by each group of women.

Chris: Well said. I really you. You put exactly the position in which the international Unionist text workers put.

Camilla: And wages for housework, yeah.

Speaker 9: The other way.

Chris: Is to ask Rick and it’s it’s kind of the it’s a little bit like the idea of the kind of Harry sand when. When Richard Lee said which, you know who’s the head man around here? The head man and they. One of the elders. Oh, you’re going to find everyone round here. Well, each one of us is head man over himself. It’s like when everyone’s. No one’s headman when everyone’s No one’s creeping when everyone’s prostitute is not, is absolutely isn’t. It completely cancelled itself out and so you could very strongly argue, and Marx actually did argue. That marriage actually, in other words, a man owning conjugal rights in a woman, is much more the problem than prostitution. But of course, in a way, they’re. Problematic because they’re both head and tail of the same coin.

Unknown: OK.

Camilla: Arrived. Can we sum up what we’ve arrived at? If it’s not a brothel, what is it? What’s our moral system? We’ve got an incest to be we’ve got an age grade to be. We’ve got postpartum taboos defining kind of workers conditions. What we got?

Speaker 3: A culture.

Camilla: But it can be a bit more specific in terms of the social structure.

Speaker 3: I know.

Camilla: Female coalition.

Speaker 6: Parity. You’ve got equality.

Camilla: Female coalition is at the root. What is?

Speaker 4: And it’s fairly egalitarian, isn’t?

Unknown: The. It, yeah.

Speaker 7: What?

Speaker 4: It’s pretty egalitarian.

Camilla: Yep. Can we actually describe the? Ah, let me say attention.

Speaker 3: A medical system. I mean it. It does mean it does echo a lot of things that anarchy lays out as assists, as a political system.

Chris: Yeah it does.

Speaker 9: Does that look?

Chris: Are you looking for a word? Terminology.

Camilla: Yeah, terminology. What have we actually described? We described a descent system. All these brothers, who are they? I. Has every woman got a brother? How does this work? What if a woman doesn’t have a brother? Her mother didn’t have a son. Does she have any brothers to defend her?

Speaker 6: Yes, she still does.

Camilla: It’s a how.

Speaker 3: That’s a. I mean, I I’m coming from a queer coming from a queer context, I’d say it’s almost a chosen family system combined with a with a with a descendant 1.

Camilla: Right.

Speaker 3: But I don’t know what the technical term for it is.

Camilla: We’re. So how does that work in anthropology?

Speaker 3: I’m. I’m not an anthropologist.

Camilla: Well, we’re here to validate, to give out anthropology.

Speaker 3: I’m in the knees of an anthropologist.

Camilla: Leon. You know samanthaology. Is it?

Speaker 6: I know, but I’m trying to think what culture? It’s monogamy. It’s not monogamy. It’s.

Camilla: It’s not monogamy, but how do you have? How do you have brothers if you don’t actually have a real brother? Is your brother.

Speaker 6: Well, it’s kinship. It’s a blood ideological blood kinship system, I suppose.

Speaker 7: What is his?

Chris: The technical term is a technical term. It’s called classificatory kinship.

Unknown: Where?

Speaker 6: Oh God, yeah.

Camilla: You’ve forgotten all your answers.

Speaker 6: Oh God, come. It’s a long time ago, God.

Chris: Classification. Kinship means. You step into your sister’s shoes to step into your brother’s shoes. If you’re a man, so.

Unknown: Yeah.

Chris: Hermann, your brother’s wife is kind of your wife. Your if you’re a woman, your sister child is your child. You are your. It’s called the equivalence of siblings. So nobody can not have a child because you know your child is your sister’s child.

Camilla: Maybe you can have a brother or sister.

Unknown: And if.

Chris: And nobody cannot have a brother because his sister and a brother just stretches all over the place through this simple principle.

Camilla: And what is that entity in which it stretches is an entity that. Gives it form.

Speaker 6: Classic.

Camilla: What’s the word?

Speaker 4: Can share.

Chris: It’s a clan.

Speaker 7: Usually.

Camilla: Terminology again. It’s a clan which is. Understood as like an imagined ancestor, or the descendants of that imagined ancestor. And in this case the ancestor would be matrilineal 1.

Chris: So the clan is a mediated creature. It’s actually the root of the idea of the. It’s a many headed creature, which is kind of many headed kind of mum who’s a little bit gender ambivalent but but I think the another word which is useful which Camille has been promoting a lot recently is is ruled by the moon. Because it really. It’s kind of got. It’s got the light and the dark. Gay and you’re. You haven’t got to make all these sort of fixed. Choices. You’re kind of probably encouraged to be a.

Unknown: Slowly.

Chris: Straight round full moon. But everyone can be. Everyone can switch their gender and and identity at dark. It just gives you that all the different choices available to us as a species instead of making us pick one of those richer choices and stick with it. In the kind of prison prison. So it’s lunar freedom. And therefore its anarchy, as Lucinda said. Yeah, but it’s kind of organized anarchy.

Camilla: It’s very organised, Danica. It’s very it’s organised by the main no one rules but the main.

Speaker 3: Anarchy is a political system is organized, though people think of anarchy as chaos, but anarchy is not chaos. Just having no leaders and.

Speaker 8: And.

Speaker 3: Affiliation by choice and and your freedom comes from responsibility, not from. I’m sorry.

Unknown: Yeah.

Chris: I listen to your one of us. Talking to.

Camilla: Yeah. Thank you, Lucas. And it sounds great. I mean that is what I mean. Gatherers are the living embodiment of.

Speaker 11: Yeah.

Camilla: Annika systems. They they are consistent.

Speaker 4: I mean, honestly.

Chris: If you hang around a bit with us, I mean and that come along again because we’re we’re very much at the same wavelets. I’m a I’m a libertarian communist, anarchic, communist, communist, anarchist, whatever. Whatever you want to call it. Yeah, and and we’re all. We’re very much and I know you are as. We’re very much aware of the extraordinary centrality of not just the sun and consolation to stars, but also of the moon in the whole course of actually evolution of life on Earth. But particularly human origins and evolution. Moon is. Absurdly blotted out of history by patriarchy.

Speaker 3: Well, I’m being blunt and being blotted out of the sky to some degree. I really think that people are losing a sense of who we are because we can’t see the night sky. It. It sounds a little bit fantasmic Oracle to say. But having had that experience, my brother lives in a right next to a dark sky park in Australia. And having had that experience of being out in nature in the wild. In. In that kind of darkness, in that kind of real darkness, which I don’t even remember from seeing as a kid. Really emphasized for me how intricate when you could feel like you can reach up and stir the stars with your hands. You have a very different sense of where your place is on the planet and in the universe, I think. And I think we’ve lost that.

Chris: It’s probably too late, isn’t it for me to read out this thing about the show now?

Speaker 12: I don’t know how long.

Unknown: Yeah, it is, yeah.

Camilla: Would it take like 5 or 10 minutes?

Chris: Takes 6, takes 6. Do people want me to?

Camilla: It’s it’s a real lesson, though, of sex for me.

Unknown: A. And it’s amazing.

Chris: Yeah. So this is, this is the.

Speaker 7: For your mic move. It by moves.

Chris: All right, this is the show now. Of of Carey. They have two basic patterns of hunting. In the first, each band decides for himself whether or not to go hunting. He usually hunts alone and brings the game back to his own household at times. However, when there’s been no meat in the village for three or four days, the women. Decide to send the men on a special hunt. They talk together and complain that there’s no meat and the men are being lazy. Contrast to the first pattern during a special hunt, the young men go hunting as a group. The special Hunt is started by the women. Early in the evening, all the young women go from house to house, singing to every. Each woman chooses a man to hunt for her, a man who’s not her husband, nor of her king group. So he may be a cross cousin, her husband’s brother, or a stranger. The men leave the following day and are met on their return by a lineup of all the women of the village, painted and beating and wearing their best dresses. Even the older men will not face this line without gain. If unsuccessful, they beat their canoes and slink to their households by a back trail. Choice of partners is usually a choice of lovers, and many partnerships are maintained for years. I mean, I could carry on reading a bit longer. This is just a gorgeous example of the theory that. I developed all those years ago, but it’s actually initially pretty much entirely on this wonderful. For example. In this book, called A Hunt in the morning, which is of course a phrase from Karl Marx. How communism will be a place where you hunt in the morning. You guard in the evening and you do you do critical criticism of the evening. In other words, we’re free to do all kinds of different things. It’s a beautiful book. But the critical point is that the women, by going on strike. Forming a kind of picket line but but being sexy, they dress up in their finest dresses. The finest costumes. When the men come back and they haven’t caught anything, they just don’t know where to put themselves. And actually what happens is that the women starts muttering and muttering and muttering when the baby starts saying where is no meat. The women say, oh, let’s. You know there’s no meter and we eat some peanuts in.

Camilla: They’re doing it while they paint their faces. Let’s paint our faces there. Let’s eat penises. Painting the place. And eating the pain is the same thing.

Chris: So it’s a huge pressure on the men as a collective to go hunting. And can you see what’s happening? Got. It completely catches across monogamy. You mustn’t have as your as your lover your husband. You must choose somebody else. Keep the men on their toes. Them out, you know. Keep so anyway.

Camilla: We are asserting the classification principles in that special hunt. They don’t have the. Fund it’s her husband’s brother or one of.

Chris: Yeah, yeah.

Camilla: Classmates with Ken.

Chris: So there you are. That’s the. The system in real life. And. And it’s when.

Speaker 12: We’re living out of.

Chris: When Janet Siskan went there, she she thought I’ve been to the future and it worked. It works. Oh, somehow it’s some dialectical way, not the John Zerzan way, I don’t think.

Speaker 8: Thank you.

Chris: Going back to Bosnia’s but in some other. If there is a future for the humanity, these hunter gatherers are living there and we need to join them. Anyway, I I think that’s it. That. Actually, this turned out to be a bit of a disaster to start. Didn’t work at all with the breakout rooms. Everyone was refusing to put their microphones on.

Camilla: Yeah, it’s a good discussion, I hope.

Chris: Think thanks to this you know, half a dozen of you who really participated have been really, actually brilliant. Really brilliant discussion. So thank you. You a lot.

Camilla: Thanks. And just to mention. Next week, Chris is going to do another session and again it’s working with a myth. American myth of Tucano people. The hunter, mom Andki, and his wives. And this is again.

Speaker 10: A real.

Camilla: Discussion of kinship and its impact on. So it’s a it’s a myth about kinship and marriage. We’ll try and do it as a group again, trying to kind of decode its structure. Chris. Story so. So it has a relationship with today’s discussion, but it takes it to a a real genuine, you know, Amazonian story.

Chris: It’s one of the key myths of Claude Livingston’s full volume, massive life’s work called mythology. It’s a study of 1000 North and South American myths and the Hunter Marine and his wives is one of the myths that Lewiston’s analysis. OK. See you next week everybody.