RADICAL LOVIN'
valuable plowing and tending to the livestock while women made sure that their children lived long enough to join them in the fields. As agriculture and private property became more prevalent, so then did the ownership of labor and the creators of labor [women). Men did not want to provide for children that were not biologically theirs and there was a shift from collective egalitarian parenting to an early form of a monogamous unit With this also came the sexual double standard between men and women. Women were seen as property and their sexuality functioned as a tool for reproduction; whereas rnen, devoid of the possibility of pregnanry, remained free to take a wife, multiple wives, and even concubines. In other words, monogamy became a ploy to control the sexual behavior of women, while men, because of their newly-formed ballin'social status, could remain free to behave however they pleased. Thus, institutionalized monogamy [marriageJ was developed as a way to secure male lineage and even political boundaries; rather than to make a statement about the level of commitment between the two partners..
From tJre Tao Te Ching: "lVhat is well planted cannot be uprooted, What is well embraced cannot slip away. Your descendants will carry on the ancestral sacrifice for generations
without end. Cultivate Virtue in your own person, And it becomes a genuine part of you. Cultivate it in the family, And ir will abide. Cultivate it in the community, And it will live and grow. Cultivate it in the state, And it will flourish abundantly. Cultivate it in the world, And it will become universal. Hence a person must be judged as person; A family as family; A community as community; A state as state; The world as world. How do I know about the world? By what is within me."
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