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Comments

• [1] Lisa Jones from Stockton, CA October 11, 2008 - 07:34PM

  Your shows give me supreme joy and this episode is one of my favorites. However, I wish you would be more thoughtful about your choice of words. To suggest that Genghis Khan was so effective at dominating the gene pool, because he killed men and "slept" with women is a grotesque way to make light about what surely must have entailed the rape of most of these women, not a seduction. (I am sure some of these women's submitted willingly with the hopes of power, but not this dramatic a number).

  You didn't mean to do this--it says something about our culture that we find it so easy to pretend that we are not talking about rape or coercion, when we tell stories that involve women's bodies. I don't ask you to get into a big story about rape in the context of such a story, just to use thoughtful and accurate language.

  Keep doing the great work that you are doing!

  Lisa Jones, Ph.D.

  
  
• [2] Genghis Khan January 25, 2009 - 05:43PM

  "Ten winners had DNA testing done in Oxford to find out if they were ancestors of Genghis Khan."

  Ancestors? Not likely ...

  
  
• [3] Gary Myers from Richardson, Texas August 30, 2009 - 12:29AM

  I think Miss Jones misses the point entirely by placing 20th century thinking over 12th century behavior. When an army rolled over an area and killed all the men, "taking" the women was pretty standard. Whether or not the women wanted it to be so, they were, after the battles, dependant upon the new men of the area; the victors. Their thoughts on the matter were immaterial. I also think modern women would be extremely surprised to find that practicality and survival dominated the thoughts of women of that time. They were not skilled trades people or educated or enlightened thinkers at that point in human history. They were property or live stock, traded for anything. It wasn’t a secret to anybody including the women. Their opinions were not asked and their approvals were not required. Rape is a distinction that would have been lost on the men and the women of that time. Surely there was consensual sex between pairs, but the consent was not universal and certainly not required. There are still, in fact, places on this planet where a man has the legal right to harm and even kill a wife that refuses sex. They are not living in the 21st century as most of us are and for them the distinction between rape and consensual sex is also lost.

  But what we’re talking about here is historical reportage. Candy coating history dilutes it. If it is repugnant by today’s standards then so be it. But to truly understand the concepts and actions of a time it may be necessary to put aside the enlightened frame of reference of “now” and view it from a context of “then”.

  So, for Ms. Jones to hope for more thoughtful words to describe this historically normal and apparently extremely successful genetic behavior is like trying to paint a turd orange and call it a butterfly. It's silly, misses the point and does a damn poor job of describing reality.