Summary

In this section, Solnit critiques theories of “Man the Hunter,” showing how they assume false and pernicious view about women, are ignorant of history, and support discrimination against women. As Solnit recounts, especially in the late 1950s to the early 1960s in the United States, many writers and evolutionary biologists produced theories about how prehistoric humans lived, in which the men hunted animals to feed their individual families and the women stayed at home to take care of their children. In a word, the men were active and the providers of the family, while the women were passive and dependent upon their mates. Solnit points out that it is no coincidence that these theories became so popular during a time in which the idea of the nuclear family, with a married couple of one man and one woman taking care...