A Response to Liberty

What is not always apparent is that political correctness can serve as a double edged sword. In reading the articles regarding Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict it occurred to me some of the cultural biases were being relayed. In the opening of the Warms’ and McGee’s introduction of the two women anthropologists they seem to go out of their way in stressing on how dependent they were on Franz Boas and the other students. For instance, in their footnotes, they comment on her closeness to Boas and access to material of the Boasian students[1].

What’s more there seems to be even more stressing of the women “sexual orientation” than with other anthropologists. For that matter, there seems to be an agenda in regards to singling out Margaret Mead’s bi-sexuality and her focus on gender roles. It seems to me that there was an overemphasis on this aspect of her life. In some ways, by implication, they are implying that her sexuality was deviant and somehow colored her perspective subjectively.

In my reading of their introduction of her, they show how independently minded and outspoken she was. It made me wonder, if they were implying that, her activism was related to her “sexual orientation.” By way of example, they discourse on her “tumultuous” private, her three marriages, and her lovers and implied lovers, such as Rhoda Metraux, as maybe the reason why she focused on gender roles was because of her family life as well as her many accomplishments of being well published columnist and essayist.

They later try to rationalize their stance, by saying “….all serious students of anthropology will surely hear something of Mead’s private life, and because of this, it is important that he outline of her life be presented clearly…” [my emphasis]. I was not sure if I should be insulted or amused by their condescending tone, in whether, I should be thankful that they were providing me a service of the telling of Mead’s sexual proclivities.

As for their Mead’s and Benedict’s perspectives on culture and personality, it occurs to me that most insights are archetype from one’s own mirroring, or ethnocentrism, if you will. For instance, Apollonian and Dionysian by Benedict, could be interpreted as being a reflection of the Temperance Movement of the early 20^th century, which resulted in Prohibition. Think of it this way, when she relays that:

The Southwest Pueblos are, of course, Apollonian ….they contrast with very nearly the whole of aboriginal America. [In that] …. They posses in small area, islanded in the midst of predominantly Dionysian cultures, and ethos distinguished by sobriety, by it distrust of excess…. [2]

Was she reflecting the mood of the country at the time regarding alcoholism? The Dionysian state, emotive, and wildly chaotic, and irrational due to some chemical altering of the rational mind, was hindering; often reverted to savagery. In a sense, was she making a case via Lewis Henry Morgan, in reverse, that the Southwest Pueblos were, in a sense, better because of their sobriety?

In turn, we have Mead’s perspective on the view of gender roles, or sexual roles as being defined by the homogenous society in charge. In her introduction, she makes a strong case for cultural relativism. She says, “Each people makes this fabric[3]differently, select some clues and ignore others, emphasizes a different sector of the whole arc of human potentialities.” This is a similar argument for race. In that, sex roles, gender roles, are arbitrary, and defined and deemed by the hegemonic at hand, as what is normative and what is not.

Mead gives several examples of gender roles being interpret differently by the culture-at-hand, such as Siberian aborigines dealing with unstable individuals, New Guinea children being more gifted artistically because of umbilical cord around their neck. Or how sex roles were viewed by Samoans.

The question one may ask then was she dealing with sex and gender roles because of her “sexual orientation,” or because the critical question of the time was bubbling under the surface in American culture at the time? Remember, she maybe reflecting the mood of the country, at the time, men and women had to reverse roles for a while, in part, because so many had to go off to war. While some men could not go, because of family status, being the only male or physical status.

So, in essence, I think she was. History must always be considered, in that, when anthropology, or prominent telling of the cultural values, one must take into account what was surrounding the teller at that time.

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[1] Page 212 of Warms’ and McGee’s Anthropological Theory: An Introduction of History.

[2] See Warms’ and McGee’s p 210. In actuality the quote would be much longer, I shortened it. In the paragraph she discourses on the differences of Apollonian being rational, while the Dionysian being emotive due to altered state via some sort of drug interaction, such as alcohol.

[3] Fabric being defined as the culture set values being woven into the social norms.