[luckyme]

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Also I'm suprised people think that the roots of this belief/practice are particularly religous.

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Likely the root cause has something to do with which sex had to guard the eggs in the tidal waters while the other dodges sharks out in the kelp beds. Just as there are root causes of inner city violence derived from juvenile male sexual selection pressures on the savanna and prior to that in Kelp City.
The perpetuating cause is religion in these cases and just as jobs and education help the inner city cases yet don't address the root cause ( castration may ), so does modernizing a religion or secularizing a society lessen the impact of our Siwashian heritage.

luckyme