Having reviewed the video again I see your point. Apparently the Mosou and Naxi peoples have moved away from matriarchy in recent times as their interaction with the outside world has developed, but still maintain a matrilinear descent.
I admit I know nothing about Mosuo society apart from what I learned from that video, so I'm not qualified to argue about it in great detail. However, when I see an apparently sane and intelligent woman, who is intimately familiar with the culture due to having been born into it, claiming that it is a society in which men hold the real power I'm not going to discount her opinion unless presented with something convincing that contradicts her.
I think those basic drives can be fulfilled by systems other than patriarchy, but that this became dominant for a variety of reasons.
I would agree with that statement, as far as it goes.
The point of the Mosuo example is that their culture is obviously not classically patriarchal (women are the heads of the houses). Men do not see themselves as superior to women in respect to making decisions affecting their families. I'm not arguing against any genetic predispositions towards certain drives or urges, not at all. What I've taken issue with is the idea that it's natural to be sexist in a social sense because sexism exists as a set of ideas encoded at a genetic level, apparently in the same way racism is.
Ok, but why are you taking issue with that? It seems to me that the only reason is that it's an uncomfortable thing to confront.
Conflating complex sets of ideas and social values with basic urges and impulses (which may well be the catalyst for the development of the former)...
This is my point. It is no use to claim that something is a result of culture unless you can also explain how and why that culture developed. Sure, humans have a tendency to build complex edifices on the basis of very little. That is, after all, the way religions operate. The underlying causes are still interesting and potentially important.
... as a way of justifying the continuation of sexism or racism (since PAT included both) seems just a tad disingenuous. I want to be clear, I'm not rejecting evolutionary psychology but what I felt was its hijacking in defense of maintaining a sexist (or racist) outlook.
Ok, that's fine, but there are two problems. First problem is whether the point being hijacked is valid, irrespective of whether it is being hijacked to support something that is ethically unsupportable.
The second problem is that what you are trying to guard against is actually the very thing I would strongly argue against. You're in a similar position to a creationist Christian who feels obliged to argue against evolution because it "leads" to social Darwinism.
My point is the exact opposite of that. I'm saying that I don't care if sexism is genetic or not. Couldn't give a rat's either way. However, from what I can see I think there is evidence that it does have a genetic component, and that in turn means it is going to be more persistent and more insidious than if it was a purely cultural problem. If this is the case it is certainly something we should try to be aware of, instead of sweeping it under the carpet because we don't want to believe it.
Topic: Women