The Savage Male – Marvin Harris
Summary: This essay presents a study of the lifestyle of Yanomamo to point out the connection between chauvinism and warfare. Yanomamo is the American Indian tribesmen who sleep in the Brazil-Venezuela border. they need to be studied by the ethnographers like Napoleon Chagnon of Pennsylvania State University, and Judith Shapiro of the University of Chicago. Chagnon has labeled the Yanomamo because of the “fierce people.” And actually, all observers who have ever been in touch with them agree that the Yanomamo is one among the foremost aggressive, warlike, and male-oriented societies within the planet.
Yanomamo holds women in great contempt, but they also quarrel on account of real or imagined cases of adultery and broken promises to supply wives. Yanomamo women’s body is additionally covered with scars and bruises as a result of their violent encounters with seducers, rapists, and husbands. All Yanomamo husbands physically abuse their wives. The fierce husbands even wound and kill their wives. The husbands bully their wives by yanking on the sticks of cane that ladies wear through their pierced ear lobes. An irritated husband sometimes pulls the stick hard enough to tear open the ear lobes. If a husband suspects his wife of committing adultery, or if the wife doesn't answer the husband’s requests promptly enough, he may attack the wife anyway he likes. He may chop a hunk of flesh from his wife’s arm, put a glowing stick of wood against her arm, or shoot an arrow into her calf or buttock. Sometimes the arrow misses its aim and even kills the lady. there's also tons of completely unprovoked violence against women. Yanomamo males beat their wives publicly to convince one another that they're capable of the deadly assault. Women also are used as scapegoats and attacked when the husbands want to vent their anger against others.
Women who run far away from their husbands cannot generally get protection from their male kinsmen,
either. Most marriages are contracted between men who comply with exchange sisters. A man’s brother-in-law tends to be his closest and most vital relative. So, if a sister involves her brother to complain against her husband, the brother may attack his own sister for disturbing the comradely relationship he's enjoying together with her husband. Yanomamo males exercise a monopoly over the utilization of medicine, which enables them to urge supernatural visions. These visions allow them to become shamans, travel with demons, and manage malevolent forces. the utilization of medicine also helps them to ignore extremes of pain and to beat their fear during duels and raids.
The Yanomamo justify chauvinism also by resorting to their origin myth. they assert that there have been only fierce men at the start of the planet. Among these early men, Kanaborama was one, from whose pregnant legs were born the ladies and therefore the feminine male. The Yanomamo think menorrhea is evil and dangerous and forces a woman to stay alone within the shadow of a bamboo cage. Yanomamo women are victimized from childhood on. A sister gets punished if she hits her brother. However, little boys are never punished for hitting anybody. The passive role of Yanomamo women is emphasized by Judith Shapiro, who says that men are exchangers and ladies the exchanged as far as marriage cares. Shapiro reports that girls already begin to serve their husbands at eight or nine years aged. All Yanomamo women expect to be manhandled by their husbands. They find it difficult to imagine a world during which husbands would be less brutal.
The Yanomamo sexist syndrome (set of symptoms) is best expressed in their duels, during which two men attempt to hurt one another to the limit of their endurance. The duels they become involved in are chest-pounding, side-slapping, machete duels, club fight, and spear fight. In each of those duels, the adversaries alternate to strike one another. More often than not, the duels cause the escalation of further violence, particularly, once they see their friend prostrate on the bottom with copious amounts of blood. Even close relatives frequently resort to combat to settle disputes. War is that the last word expression of the Yanomamo lifestyle. The Yanomamo seem to possess no because of establishing any quite secure truce. They enter into a series of alliances with neighboring villages, but intergroup relations are marred by unending mistrust, malicious rumors, and acts of treachery. Ambushes, treacherous feasts, and stealthy raids at dawn are the characteristic modes of Yanomamo warfare. And once they recover from the boasting and dueling phase, they struggle to kill as many enemy men and capture as many enemy women as possible.
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