<![CDATA[Where Does Sexism Come From?]]>Roger Ebert explores a point raised by last week's Hitchens / Blair debate, "Is it good for the world to consider women as an inferior form, as all religions do?" Ebert delves into the various religious examples, and offers a simple explanation:

I believe the world is patriarchal because men are bigger and stronger than women, and can beat them up. The earliest archeological evidence we have for human family development indicates patriarchies preceded written language. Indeed, if we study other primates we see that their cultures are also male-dominant, and presumably they've not arrived at this state after careful discussion.

Earlier this week, Yglesias flagged a related study:

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