"So many high-status men are honest about wanting to have several sexual partners. On the other side, many women are honest that they only want a partner who can truly meet their needs."
I don't think it is that lopsided as about 20% of married men cheat, compared to 13% of married women, and 57% of men and 54% of women admit to committing infidelity at some point in their lives.
I do agree with the point: "From the reasoning above, it looks like the system of yesterday was better. More men and women could be together and people tend to become happier together."
But here is the missing point based on my experience and understanding, and that science. Human behavior that derives from human nature is malleable within a lifetime.
I believe this is a biological thing... that you can train yourself to a different standard for how you think, feel and behave... really no different than you can change the physical appearance of your body. But, it takes work... you have to practice.
And this gets me to my concluding explanation for what is hurting general relationship happiness... we have grown lazy, entitled and selfish. And we have lost the ability to understand delayed gratification. We push a button on our phone and dinner arrives in 30 minutes. We push another button and clothing, appliances, tools and furniture arrive in a day or two. So we have had our minds trained to expect almost immediate fulfilment of our needs and wants without having to expend much effort. Many of the same young people involved in protests over female and gender ideology are also committed to a low-work or no-work agenda. The 4B movement in South Korea is against the misogynist cultural behavior of men in that county, but it is also against the work standards of more than 40 hours per week.
I have been married for 45 years to a girl I met when she was 17 and was 19. She claims love at first sight. Mine bloomed over the first year we dated.
I have never cheated, although I have flirted quite a bit during my corporate career. I have spent time in strip clubs and attended parties where party girls made the rounds. These were always related to my job. I always told my wife about these events, and even the flirting at the office where a female coworker was coming on strong. The only time I went to a strip club with my wife was a male strip club with her and some girl friends for her birthday where I was the designated driver.
It takes work to power through jealousy and insecurity. It takes work to practice putting your own needs and wants to the side while you give to your partner. It takes work to practice the behavior of happiness and contentment so that you become more happy and content. It takes work to understand your internal feelings and to be able to communicate them well with your partner. It takes work to tamp down your highly charged emotional reactions to things... and to become a calm and steady person that provides a foundation for the times that your partner will need help doing the same. It takes work to stop believing that there is always something better to be had when what you already have is good enough and maybe great. It takes work to partner rather than just do it yourself.
But when you do all the work it all becomes second-nature.
The reason our marriage and relationship trends were better in the past is because we all worked harder. I think it is simple as that.
Indeed people worked harder on their relationships when that was the norm. But there was no time when everybody was as relationship-conscientious as you and your wife. I think your example illustrates the point that some people are better created for good relationships than others.
I am starting to think that the entire civilizational structure of modernity is built on monogamy and marriage, as well as free markets. If men who are just ordinary schmucks' best hope for a reasonably satisfying sexual relationship is lifetime commitment, they can devote their energy to bettering their own well-being and that of their wives and children. Men who do their jobs and appear to do their duty to family have some degree of status. Warrior polygyny seems like a more consistent evolutionary solution, but it seems kinda unlikely to support an industrial society. Any thoughts?
"Both sides are right, for a simple reason: For humans, being together is really, really hard."
Especially when one partner accuses the other partner of oppressing her.
It shouldn't need saying that being a feminist (AKA accusing men of oppressing women) and being in an intimate relationship with men are not compatible. It makes no sense that any feminist would even WANT to be in a relationship with her oppressor.... assuming she is being sincere and not just using patriarchy theory as a way to morally dominate men and manipulate men by shaming them.
"Men and women are natural enemies. "
There you go! Such an attitude makes healthy relationships impossible. This is why high quality men avoid feminists like the plague.
"What is clear is that no system for human relationships has yet allowed the vast majority of people to be happy together. "
Relationships are bound to be miserable if viewed through the lens of entitlement. But when viewed through the lens of practical reality relationships suddenly become a lot more appealing and rewarding. The problem is that there are now three people in a relationship: a man, a woman and the state (a man with a gun). This is what feminists demanded and the men with guns used feminism to justify the massive expansion of the state into every facet of our lives.
Now women can extract resources from men by force via the state which means:
a) she is not going to appreciate her husband as much if she marries
b) she is going to have more incentive to remain 'single' which is now a euphemism for marrying the state (men with guns) and having the state force all men to support her via taxes (ie a harem for women, paid for by ordinary working men).
Imagine we got rid of the state tomorrow. Now suddenly men become much more valued, because they can provide resources and support a stable family home - allowing a woman to self actualise her womanhood with full support from him.
Now let's try flipping the genders.... imagine how much less men would appreciate their wives if 'menininsm' had created a state, but instead of taxing men's labour and giving it to women, the state provided men with free sex and female companionship with attractive women who did not try to shame or bully them all the time, and who wanted to bear their children and raise them at home. Imagine how unsatisfied men would become with their wives, or with the prospect of marriage, or with modern women in general!
This is basically the situation feminism has created. By 'winning' the gender war, feminists have achieved a hollow victory. They can no longer appreciate, respect or truly love men.
So rich in terms of mating strategies. However the data from Titanic survivors show men in extreme, instinct-based circumstances saving 100% of 1st and 2nd class children and women while only 10% of first and second class male passengers survived.
This means a universal heroism instinct exists in men across the entire male bell curve regardless of the small overlap in todays culture that affords the leisurely time to date and mate, different from the extreme Titanic circumstances that reveal only unconscious instincts, not reason and logic that courtship includes.
This reveals that there are indeed masculine instincts not at all culturally determined by the fads of the year or decade but evolving over eons of evolutionary scales of time.
Right around the sinking of the Titanic was the high point of chivalry. You'll find men in most cultures don't care *that* much about women that aren't immediate family, whether that's modern Westerners or basically all other peoples in history compared to Victorian/Georgian era Europe. Men killing themselves to save women would not happen in a society today, I could see it for children though.
This is interesting other periods of history and also cultures I’d like to hear examples shared. Thats fascinating. Martin Seagers point (and Barry Liddon Kingerslee and others) is that the Titanic was a giant emergency disaster. Not a placid serene place where people have the leisure to debate and argue and make laws and break laws and reach compromises. It bubbles up only raw instincts. And those of males were the same as other males and those of females were the same as other females yet the male and female behavior in this tragic laboratory was not at all the same. It was definitely not just “chivalry” because the force of a cultural fad (even of a hundred years duration) pales in the face of the biological power of raw human, masculine and feminine instincts.
E g I think of chivalry as a sociological fad, meme etc. if there’s something durable biologically underneath it (and any similar sociological fads that arise in history) it’s Barry and Seagers uncovering of the first male instinct that is present in all world cultures and throughout history: the “Provider/Protector” instinct that is term the Zeus Instinct. Here’s a video describing the spirit of their work: https://youtu.be/eRCLBpHifJo?si=uKI7Nv2GPWuWDdgR
It's the first time I've seen both sides of this debate --whether the sexual revolution helped women or not-- presented as equally correct, just coming from different angles. Also the first time I see someone acknowledge in writing that women don't all think or want the same when it comes to these issues. Really appreciated the graphs too!
Jordan PeterPan of course offers a stock solution: "enforced monogamy", which is exactly what it sounds like. But if it was so natural, it wouldn't have to be "enforced", now would it?
We can argue whether it is natural or not until we are blue in the face. But there are three kinds of monogamy: strict, lifelong, and universal. Pick at most two out of three. Because that's all that Mother Nature will allow, to say nothing of the iron laws of supply and demand.
Ultimately, like just about everything else, (non)monogamy falls on a spectrum, with most people being somewhere in the middle. Shoehorning everyone into a binary is counterproductive.
Perhaps our bonobo cousins had the right idea all along? Live and let live, love and let love. That's what I say.
We already have "enforced monogamy". Bigamy, polygamy is illegal in most if not all western countries and many non-western ones. Marriage is by default monogamous in these countries. Sure, some people cheat, but they aren't legally allowed to marry the person they cheat with while still being married to their original spouse. Divorce must take place first. Hence, enforced monogamy. Enforced by law.
True, of course. But Jordan PeterPan was referring more to the kinds of (often informal) restrictions on women's (but not men's) sexuality that prevailed before the sexual revolution, though in practice even that was typically honored more in the breach than in the observance. Basically, he is euphemistically calling for a return to slut-shaming and sexual double standards.
What really has his and his ilk's undies in a bunch is not women out here "slutting it up" but women who are not playing the game at all. Bumble put up billboards begging women to give up celibacy and get back on their app and out there in dating world again. NOPE! Women are like, "We can do bad all by ourselves, thank you very much." Women value peace now. There's no going back.
"Reactionary Feminism" is an oxymoron. Yes there are tradeoffs to literally everything in life, granted. But to follow their specious nostrums would simply trap women in the same 7000+ year patriarchal quagmire they have spent the past 200 or so years trying to get out of.
To put it bluntly: Evo-psych is mostly bullshit. The vast majority of its tenets are merely a hangover from 7000 or so years of patriarchy, and/or capitalism.
Am I the only one deeply uncomfortable with the picture of evolutionary psychology and female sexual behaviour that is painted by all these perspectives? And classifications of men and women as low and high status?
Women do not naturally only seek out men with high status and resources. We are not gorillas. That is an androcentric and modern worldview based on the perspective of a capitalist and patriarchal society in which women were stripped of power and resources and hence made dependent on men, resulting in women wanting (=needing) resourceful men. The male interpretation of the Alpha Male is also such a phenomenon - men of the highest status among other men, not necessarily among society as a whole and thus the most desirable to women. Evolutionarily, women were attracted, indeed, to only a smaller number of all men, probably between 10-30%. The rest would simply have no partners. But these 10-30% were not all of the highest status and resources to live with monogamously. They were from all walks of life, some were tough, some were leaders, others had great social skills, some were poets, some were just charming, and some just shared quirky traits or weltschmerz. Proof of this can be found in the fact that all those men exist today, and women drove human evolution and selected men, not vice versa. It is, again, patriarchy that has convinced us that men are picky about which women they procreate with, making women think they need to do better and be better. This is type of competition actually inherent in men, not women, projected onto women and portrayed as female behaviour when in fact it is not.
"Liberal women use sex to get a foot in the door with high status men" really gives me stomach cramps. Women use sex because they want to sleep with attractive men, and then also bond with them because they might be pregnant, there is nothing to pathologize there. Women do not have an evolutionary button to want to marry for life, most likely they are designed to bond for a few years and then move on to another man to spread their genes better. Something reactionary feminism is sadly entirely ignoring.
At least these ideas are highly debated within evolutionary biology and it's very important to communicate how WE DON'T ACTUALLY KNOW. What we do know, for sure, is that our world is androcentric for historic reasons and so androcentrism lays the foundation for most of our interpretations and our science; to the point where we barely hold data of women collected through and interpreted by non androcentric perspectives. This is something we'll be busy disentangling for the next century. We don't actually know anything about women until then, except for our gut instinct perhaps, which is what I love about reactionary feminism.
Thank you for the great article and I am so happy someone is putting these perspectives next to each other to contrast, compare, and offer a possible synthesis. I am excited too for these perspectives enriching our discourse and interpretations. What is missing still, in my view, is that evolutionary theory of female choice outlined above. I am going to start writing about it so that hopefully this can enter the discourse and enrich/complicated it further. I am a confused and saddened that reactionary feminism doesn't actually offer much in terms of female sexuality.
By the way, as a European I am really surprised by all these accounts saying people are too picky nowadays. I have never seen this in my actual life. Not in myself and not in my social circle and anywhere around. I see women in bad relationships they don't leave because they love deeply, staying with someone who has not much to offer and so no family is started, and they remain anyway. Or women simply being with any guy that destiny happened to throw at them and making their peace with it.
High-status men getting more desirable wives is a universal, whether the mechanism is desirable women choosing high-status men or high-status men choosing desirable women. Look at Kim Jong Un, a leader of a communist country and his hot wife, it's clearly not due to "capitalism", an economic system that's scarcely a few hundred years old in the West and even younger outside of it.
>>Proof of this can be found in the fact that all those men exist today, and women drove human evolution and selected men, not vice versa.
Seen from the perspective of anthropology, I think the idea that women drove evolution is highly dubious. In most human societies, women have not freely chosen their partners. There has always been some female choice. If nothing else, cheating with a willing woman is much easier. But I think it is very much of an exaggeration to claim that "Males are basically a breeding experiment run by females", as evolutionary psychologist Irven DeVore did. The opposite, women are an experiment run by men, is much more plausible.
>>"Liberal women use sex to get a foot in the door with high status men" really gives me stomach cramps.Women use sex because they want to sleep with attractive men, and then also bond with them because they might be pregnant, there is nothing to pathologize there. Women do not have an evolutionary button to want to marry for life, most likely they are designed to bond for a few years and then move on to another man to spread their genes better. Something reactionary feminism is sadly entirely ignoring.
Even if women do have sex with high status men to get a foot in the door, that is nothing pathological. And you are right that women are not optimally designed for life-long marriage. On a sexual level, they are clearly not. Women, just as men, struggle with conflicting impulses that lead to different goals. For average individuals of both sexes, lifelong marriage both brings some benefits and requires some sacrifices.
Tove, I want to say that I feel a bit uncomfortable that I jumped at you somewhat yesterday. If it came across that way, I really didn't mean to. Something in the comments made me angry and it may have been better to just think about it for longer and then blog about it myself instead of leaving a wall of text in the comments, which truly isn't the most fruitful place for intellectual exchange. Sorry about that. I absolutely adore your blog and thoughts.
The question of human female evolution is indeed a big one. Before I gave up and started blogging, I was actually writing on a book under the name Shaped by Oppression.
In other words, I share your concerns about female evolutionary history, although I came to another conclusion: That even if we human females who live now and are the result of millions of years of gender oppression, we don't need to allow that to let us down. We can face life with pride and confidence even if we happen to be the result of some less pleasant evolutionary processes.
I wrote some deeper stuff about my (maybe unfortunate) conclusions on female evolutionary history here
That sounds great, I'd love to read it, and will look into tomorrow. Thanks for your lovely reply. Indeed, many things are 'natural' yet that does not mean we need to continue doing them. I just want to say that I shared very sad and pessimistic views on our history until I read Female Choice by a German biologist Meike Stoverock last year and that really shook everything up for me. Looking forward to reading your piece, thank you for sharing.
I just subscribed to Tove's writing and look forward to reading it. Ina, I hope you will get around to putting your thoughts into essays. I'd read them as well. Thank you both for the discussion, even if it's tenser than intended.
Thank you Steve, that is very lovely to hear. It's been a while since those comments and it's interesting to read them again. It doesn't feel like I've written them, it's so fast how discourses change and evolve. Thank you so much for your encouragement.
Thanks for your reply. It terrifies me that women would believe we are an experiment run by men, to me that shows how deeply misogynist this world is and has objectified women and make them commodities for male sexuality and ownership, that this view persist. All these things happened in the last 10,000 years due to agriculture and thats when men started writing laws to exclude women from rights, and hence marriage became a necessity. In the 500.000 years before that, it was different, and what I understand from evolutionary biology is that our DNA indicates how 100% of women progressed with roughly 10-30% of men. That sounds like female choice to me.
Besides that, yes, marriage requires big sacrifices for both. I am undecided on this, I just wanted to throw in some thoughts I haven't felt represented in the debate. I honestly I have no answer either.
No. Social sexual norms were created to ensure the continuance of said society. The idea that men met in a smoky backroom to exclude women from rights while twirling their villainous mustaches is outright stupid. The modern idea of "rights" is, in iteself, an innovation, and one that likley won't last.
Women were best suited for child-rearing and domestic tasks, the men for hard labor and war. Like she was saying regarding tradeoffs, the tradeoff for women was they would gain security, but would lose some autonomy. The male would gain headship, but would have a much more violent existence.
> In the 500.000 years before that, it was different, and what I understand from evolutionary biology is that our DNA indicates how 100% of women progressed with roughly 10-30% of men. That sounds like female choice to me.
I can guarantee you the idea of "consent" did not exist for those 10-30 percent of men.
Hi Alan, I realize now the topic may be a bit too big for a comment section, and I admit I started it. I think we could come to many agreements when talking a bit more lengthy and face to face. I know I was also firm in my comments yesterday, but I do appreciate not calling each other stupid.
I am not saying there was a conspiracy. There's a theory I found to make sense that we had quite wild female choice going on for around a million years and more, and that it was agriculture that changed it. The first laws that we can find do specifically exclude women from owning land (i.e. actual patriarchy). People were paired off through marriage (one man per woman) and there's DNA evidence that suggests it was different before that time. It's a theory better explained in length. And classical roles for women are being questioned today, e.g. we are finding women did hunt large animals too etc.
Who is finding that women hunted large animals? From what I remember of my cultural anthropology class this was largely unheard of in any of what’s left of hunter gatherer societies. To be honest, I think equality is a modern novel social value people want to be true, so they look for evidence to confirm this and ignore evidence that doesn’t.
Indeed, it is terrifyingly wrong, and implies that gender relations must be a zero-sum game. "Cross-purposes" may be a better term, but even that is not the same as "natural enemies."
Yes, that is a bit too strongly expressed. Men and women are both companions that need and assist each other and enemies that use and exploit each other.
Indeed, only under patriarchy are men and women "natural" enemies, which is really not natural at all. It's like how under capitalism, capital and labor are "natural" enemies. But life doesn't have to be a zero-sum game at all.
I would argue it's kind of the other way round. Patriarchy is natural, the vast majority of the ancient societies on the anthropological record were patriarchal. But "natural" isn't the same thing as "good", and we can artificially bring adversarial incentives into alignment through social engineering (which is actually a morally neutral idea even if it's general seen as authoritarian and evil).
Patriarchy is neither natural nor timeless. It has a beginning, and it has an end. The beginning was about 7000 years ago, give or take, and the end is coming very soon, the current "pride before the fall" notwithstanding.
Before patriarchy, there was (to one degree or another) matriarchy in the Neolithic and into the early Bronze Age, and before that there was filiarchy (where neither gender dominated, but young people in general dominated) in the Paleolithic. Just ask Claudio Naranjo, for example.
But yes, you are correct that "natural" is NOT the same as "good". That is where the HIGHER ethics come in to play, as opposed to our baser instincts.
Men and women CAN be happy; they only have to CHOOSE to do what it takes to get along and then MAKE IT HAPPEN.
Happiness is a choice. Cooperation is a choice.
Choose to be married, choose to make it work. Live the choices you make.
"So many high-status men are honest about wanting to have several sexual partners. On the other side, many women are honest that they only want a partner who can truly meet their needs."
I don't think it is that lopsided as about 20% of married men cheat, compared to 13% of married women, and 57% of men and 54% of women admit to committing infidelity at some point in their lives.
I do agree with the point: "From the reasoning above, it looks like the system of yesterday was better. More men and women could be together and people tend to become happier together."
But here is the missing point based on my experience and understanding, and that science. Human behavior that derives from human nature is malleable within a lifetime.
I believe this is a biological thing... that you can train yourself to a different standard for how you think, feel and behave... really no different than you can change the physical appearance of your body. But, it takes work... you have to practice.
And this gets me to my concluding explanation for what is hurting general relationship happiness... we have grown lazy, entitled and selfish. And we have lost the ability to understand delayed gratification. We push a button on our phone and dinner arrives in 30 minutes. We push another button and clothing, appliances, tools and furniture arrive in a day or two. So we have had our minds trained to expect almost immediate fulfilment of our needs and wants without having to expend much effort. Many of the same young people involved in protests over female and gender ideology are also committed to a low-work or no-work agenda. The 4B movement in South Korea is against the misogynist cultural behavior of men in that county, but it is also against the work standards of more than 40 hours per week.
I have been married for 45 years to a girl I met when she was 17 and was 19. She claims love at first sight. Mine bloomed over the first year we dated.
I have never cheated, although I have flirted quite a bit during my corporate career. I have spent time in strip clubs and attended parties where party girls made the rounds. These were always related to my job. I always told my wife about these events, and even the flirting at the office where a female coworker was coming on strong. The only time I went to a strip club with my wife was a male strip club with her and some girl friends for her birthday where I was the designated driver.
It takes work to power through jealousy and insecurity. It takes work to practice putting your own needs and wants to the side while you give to your partner. It takes work to practice the behavior of happiness and contentment so that you become more happy and content. It takes work to understand your internal feelings and to be able to communicate them well with your partner. It takes work to tamp down your highly charged emotional reactions to things... and to become a calm and steady person that provides a foundation for the times that your partner will need help doing the same. It takes work to stop believing that there is always something better to be had when what you already have is good enough and maybe great. It takes work to partner rather than just do it yourself.
But when you do all the work it all becomes second-nature.
The reason our marriage and relationship trends were better in the past is because we all worked harder. I think it is simple as that.
Indeed people worked harder on their relationships when that was the norm. But there was no time when everybody was as relationship-conscientious as you and your wife. I think your example illustrates the point that some people are better created for good relationships than others.
I am starting to think that the entire civilizational structure of modernity is built on monogamy and marriage, as well as free markets. If men who are just ordinary schmucks' best hope for a reasonably satisfying sexual relationship is lifetime commitment, they can devote their energy to bettering their own well-being and that of their wives and children. Men who do their jobs and appear to do their duty to family have some degree of status. Warrior polygyny seems like a more consistent evolutionary solution, but it seems kinda unlikely to support an industrial society. Any thoughts?
Somehow we pulled it off for thousands of years up until about 100 years ago.
"Both sides are right, for a simple reason: For humans, being together is really, really hard."
Especially when one partner accuses the other partner of oppressing her.
It shouldn't need saying that being a feminist (AKA accusing men of oppressing women) and being in an intimate relationship with men are not compatible. It makes no sense that any feminist would even WANT to be in a relationship with her oppressor.... assuming she is being sincere and not just using patriarchy theory as a way to morally dominate men and manipulate men by shaming them.
"Men and women are natural enemies. "
There you go! Such an attitude makes healthy relationships impossible. This is why high quality men avoid feminists like the plague.
"What is clear is that no system for human relationships has yet allowed the vast majority of people to be happy together. "
Relationships are bound to be miserable if viewed through the lens of entitlement. But when viewed through the lens of practical reality relationships suddenly become a lot more appealing and rewarding. The problem is that there are now three people in a relationship: a man, a woman and the state (a man with a gun). This is what feminists demanded and the men with guns used feminism to justify the massive expansion of the state into every facet of our lives.
Now women can extract resources from men by force via the state which means:
a) she is not going to appreciate her husband as much if she marries
b) she is going to have more incentive to remain 'single' which is now a euphemism for marrying the state (men with guns) and having the state force all men to support her via taxes (ie a harem for women, paid for by ordinary working men).
Imagine we got rid of the state tomorrow. Now suddenly men become much more valued, because they can provide resources and support a stable family home - allowing a woman to self actualise her womanhood with full support from him.
Now let's try flipping the genders.... imagine how much less men would appreciate their wives if 'menininsm' had created a state, but instead of taxing men's labour and giving it to women, the state provided men with free sex and female companionship with attractive women who did not try to shame or bully them all the time, and who wanted to bear their children and raise them at home. Imagine how unsatisfied men would become with their wives, or with the prospect of marriage, or with modern women in general!
This is basically the situation feminism has created. By 'winning' the gender war, feminists have achieved a hollow victory. They can no longer appreciate, respect or truly love men.
Good of you to link to the more fact based article refuting your claims.
So rich in terms of mating strategies. However the data from Titanic survivors show men in extreme, instinct-based circumstances saving 100% of 1st and 2nd class children and women while only 10% of first and second class male passengers survived.
This means a universal heroism instinct exists in men across the entire male bell curve regardless of the small overlap in todays culture that affords the leisurely time to date and mate, different from the extreme Titanic circumstances that reveal only unconscious instincts, not reason and logic that courtship includes.
This reveals that there are indeed masculine instincts not at all culturally determined by the fads of the year or decade but evolving over eons of evolutionary scales of time.
https://youtu.be/eRCLBpHifJo?si=uKI7Nv2GPWuWDdgR
Right around the sinking of the Titanic was the high point of chivalry. You'll find men in most cultures don't care *that* much about women that aren't immediate family, whether that's modern Westerners or basically all other peoples in history compared to Victorian/Georgian era Europe. Men killing themselves to save women would not happen in a society today, I could see it for children though.
This is interesting other periods of history and also cultures I’d like to hear examples shared. Thats fascinating. Martin Seagers point (and Barry Liddon Kingerslee and others) is that the Titanic was a giant emergency disaster. Not a placid serene place where people have the leisure to debate and argue and make laws and break laws and reach compromises. It bubbles up only raw instincts. And those of males were the same as other males and those of females were the same as other females yet the male and female behavior in this tragic laboratory was not at all the same. It was definitely not just “chivalry” because the force of a cultural fad (even of a hundred years duration) pales in the face of the biological power of raw human, masculine and feminine instincts.
E g I think of chivalry as a sociological fad, meme etc. if there’s something durable biologically underneath it (and any similar sociological fads that arise in history) it’s Barry and Seagers uncovering of the first male instinct that is present in all world cultures and throughout history: the “Provider/Protector” instinct that is term the Zeus Instinct. Here’s a video describing the spirit of their work: https://youtu.be/eRCLBpHifJo?si=uKI7Nv2GPWuWDdgR
It's the first time I've seen both sides of this debate --whether the sexual revolution helped women or not-- presented as equally correct, just coming from different angles. Also the first time I see someone acknowledge in writing that women don't all think or want the same when it comes to these issues. Really appreciated the graphs too!
Men and women are natural enemies.
Men and women having competing agendas due to sex-based asymmetries.
https://expressiveegg.substack.com/p/women-and-men
Jordan PeterPan of course offers a stock solution: "enforced monogamy", which is exactly what it sounds like. But if it was so natural, it wouldn't have to be "enforced", now would it?
We can argue whether it is natural or not until we are blue in the face. But there are three kinds of monogamy: strict, lifelong, and universal. Pick at most two out of three. Because that's all that Mother Nature will allow, to say nothing of the iron laws of supply and demand.
Ultimately, like just about everything else, (non)monogamy falls on a spectrum, with most people being somewhere in the middle. Shoehorning everyone into a binary is counterproductive.
Perhaps our bonobo cousins had the right idea all along? Live and let live, love and let love. That's what I say.
(Mic drop)
We already have "enforced monogamy". Bigamy, polygamy is illegal in most if not all western countries and many non-western ones. Marriage is by default monogamous in these countries. Sure, some people cheat, but they aren't legally allowed to marry the person they cheat with while still being married to their original spouse. Divorce must take place first. Hence, enforced monogamy. Enforced by law.
True, of course. But Jordan PeterPan was referring more to the kinds of (often informal) restrictions on women's (but not men's) sexuality that prevailed before the sexual revolution, though in practice even that was typically honored more in the breach than in the observance. Basically, he is euphemistically calling for a return to slut-shaming and sexual double standards.
What really has his and his ilk's undies in a bunch is not women out here "slutting it up" but women who are not playing the game at all. Bumble put up billboards begging women to give up celibacy and get back on their app and out there in dating world again. NOPE! Women are like, "We can do bad all by ourselves, thank you very much." Women value peace now. There's no going back.
Indeed
"Reactionary Feminism" is an oxymoron. Yes there are tradeoffs to literally everything in life, granted. But to follow their specious nostrums would simply trap women in the same 7000+ year patriarchal quagmire they have spent the past 200 or so years trying to get out of.
To put it bluntly: Evo-psych is mostly bullshit. The vast majority of its tenets are merely a hangover from 7000 or so years of patriarchy, and/or capitalism.
No, this is wishful thinking from sociology advocates, which is mostly bullshit.
Am I the only one deeply uncomfortable with the picture of evolutionary psychology and female sexual behaviour that is painted by all these perspectives? And classifications of men and women as low and high status?
Women do not naturally only seek out men with high status and resources. We are not gorillas. That is an androcentric and modern worldview based on the perspective of a capitalist and patriarchal society in which women were stripped of power and resources and hence made dependent on men, resulting in women wanting (=needing) resourceful men. The male interpretation of the Alpha Male is also such a phenomenon - men of the highest status among other men, not necessarily among society as a whole and thus the most desirable to women. Evolutionarily, women were attracted, indeed, to only a smaller number of all men, probably between 10-30%. The rest would simply have no partners. But these 10-30% were not all of the highest status and resources to live with monogamously. They were from all walks of life, some were tough, some were leaders, others had great social skills, some were poets, some were just charming, and some just shared quirky traits or weltschmerz. Proof of this can be found in the fact that all those men exist today, and women drove human evolution and selected men, not vice versa. It is, again, patriarchy that has convinced us that men are picky about which women they procreate with, making women think they need to do better and be better. This is type of competition actually inherent in men, not women, projected onto women and portrayed as female behaviour when in fact it is not.
"Liberal women use sex to get a foot in the door with high status men" really gives me stomach cramps. Women use sex because they want to sleep with attractive men, and then also bond with them because they might be pregnant, there is nothing to pathologize there. Women do not have an evolutionary button to want to marry for life, most likely they are designed to bond for a few years and then move on to another man to spread their genes better. Something reactionary feminism is sadly entirely ignoring.
At least these ideas are highly debated within evolutionary biology and it's very important to communicate how WE DON'T ACTUALLY KNOW. What we do know, for sure, is that our world is androcentric for historic reasons and so androcentrism lays the foundation for most of our interpretations and our science; to the point where we barely hold data of women collected through and interpreted by non androcentric perspectives. This is something we'll be busy disentangling for the next century. We don't actually know anything about women until then, except for our gut instinct perhaps, which is what I love about reactionary feminism.
Thank you for the great article and I am so happy someone is putting these perspectives next to each other to contrast, compare, and offer a possible synthesis. I am excited too for these perspectives enriching our discourse and interpretations. What is missing still, in my view, is that evolutionary theory of female choice outlined above. I am going to start writing about it so that hopefully this can enter the discourse and enrich/complicated it further. I am a confused and saddened that reactionary feminism doesn't actually offer much in terms of female sexuality.
By the way, as a European I am really surprised by all these accounts saying people are too picky nowadays. I have never seen this in my actual life. Not in myself and not in my social circle and anywhere around. I see women in bad relationships they don't leave because they love deeply, staying with someone who has not much to offer and so no family is started, and they remain anyway. Or women simply being with any guy that destiny happened to throw at them and making their peace with it.
This got way too long.
BINGO. "Evo-psych" is mostly bullshit, and really a result of capitalism and a hangover from patriarchy.
And Europeans seem have much healthier views of sexuality compared with the USA, or even Canada.
High-status men getting more desirable wives is a universal, whether the mechanism is desirable women choosing high-status men or high-status men choosing desirable women. Look at Kim Jong Un, a leader of a communist country and his hot wife, it's clearly not due to "capitalism", an economic system that's scarcely a few hundred years old in the West and even younger outside of it.
>>Proof of this can be found in the fact that all those men exist today, and women drove human evolution and selected men, not vice versa.
Seen from the perspective of anthropology, I think the idea that women drove evolution is highly dubious. In most human societies, women have not freely chosen their partners. There has always been some female choice. If nothing else, cheating with a willing woman is much easier. But I think it is very much of an exaggeration to claim that "Males are basically a breeding experiment run by females", as evolutionary psychologist Irven DeVore did. The opposite, women are an experiment run by men, is much more plausible.
>>"Liberal women use sex to get a foot in the door with high status men" really gives me stomach cramps.Women use sex because they want to sleep with attractive men, and then also bond with them because they might be pregnant, there is nothing to pathologize there. Women do not have an evolutionary button to want to marry for life, most likely they are designed to bond for a few years and then move on to another man to spread their genes better. Something reactionary feminism is sadly entirely ignoring.
Even if women do have sex with high status men to get a foot in the door, that is nothing pathological. And you are right that women are not optimally designed for life-long marriage. On a sexual level, they are clearly not. Women, just as men, struggle with conflicting impulses that lead to different goals. For average individuals of both sexes, lifelong marriage both brings some benefits and requires some sacrifices.
Tove, I want to say that I feel a bit uncomfortable that I jumped at you somewhat yesterday. If it came across that way, I really didn't mean to. Something in the comments made me angry and it may have been better to just think about it for longer and then blog about it myself instead of leaving a wall of text in the comments, which truly isn't the most fruitful place for intellectual exchange. Sorry about that. I absolutely adore your blog and thoughts.
The question of human female evolution is indeed a big one. Before I gave up and started blogging, I was actually writing on a book under the name Shaped by Oppression.
In other words, I share your concerns about female evolutionary history, although I came to another conclusion: That even if we human females who live now and are the result of millions of years of gender oppression, we don't need to allow that to let us down. We can face life with pride and confidence even if we happen to be the result of some less pleasant evolutionary processes.
I wrote some deeper stuff about my (maybe unfortunate) conclusions on female evolutionary history here
https://open.substack.com/pub/woodfromeden/p/the-origins-of-patriarchy?r=rd1ej&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
That sounds great, I'd love to read it, and will look into tomorrow. Thanks for your lovely reply. Indeed, many things are 'natural' yet that does not mean we need to continue doing them. I just want to say that I shared very sad and pessimistic views on our history until I read Female Choice by a German biologist Meike Stoverock last year and that really shook everything up for me. Looking forward to reading your piece, thank you for sharing.
I just subscribed to Tove's writing and look forward to reading it. Ina, I hope you will get around to putting your thoughts into essays. I'd read them as well. Thank you both for the discussion, even if it's tenser than intended.
Thank you Steve, that is very lovely to hear. It's been a while since those comments and it's interesting to read them again. It doesn't feel like I've written them, it's so fast how discourses change and evolve. Thank you so much for your encouragement.
Thanks for your reply. It terrifies me that women would believe we are an experiment run by men, to me that shows how deeply misogynist this world is and has objectified women and make them commodities for male sexuality and ownership, that this view persist. All these things happened in the last 10,000 years due to agriculture and thats when men started writing laws to exclude women from rights, and hence marriage became a necessity. In the 500.000 years before that, it was different, and what I understand from evolutionary biology is that our DNA indicates how 100% of women progressed with roughly 10-30% of men. That sounds like female choice to me.
Besides that, yes, marriage requires big sacrifices for both. I am undecided on this, I just wanted to throw in some thoughts I haven't felt represented in the debate. I honestly I have no answer either.
No. Social sexual norms were created to ensure the continuance of said society. The idea that men met in a smoky backroom to exclude women from rights while twirling their villainous mustaches is outright stupid. The modern idea of "rights" is, in iteself, an innovation, and one that likley won't last.
Women were best suited for child-rearing and domestic tasks, the men for hard labor and war. Like she was saying regarding tradeoffs, the tradeoff for women was they would gain security, but would lose some autonomy. The male would gain headship, but would have a much more violent existence.
> In the 500.000 years before that, it was different, and what I understand from evolutionary biology is that our DNA indicates how 100% of women progressed with roughly 10-30% of men. That sounds like female choice to me.
I can guarantee you the idea of "consent" did not exist for those 10-30 percent of men.
Hi Alan, I realize now the topic may be a bit too big for a comment section, and I admit I started it. I think we could come to many agreements when talking a bit more lengthy and face to face. I know I was also firm in my comments yesterday, but I do appreciate not calling each other stupid.
I am not saying there was a conspiracy. There's a theory I found to make sense that we had quite wild female choice going on for around a million years and more, and that it was agriculture that changed it. The first laws that we can find do specifically exclude women from owning land (i.e. actual patriarchy). People were paired off through marriage (one man per woman) and there's DNA evidence that suggests it was different before that time. It's a theory better explained in length. And classical roles for women are being questioned today, e.g. we are finding women did hunt large animals too etc.
I didn't understand the consent part.
Who is finding that women hunted large animals? From what I remember of my cultural anthropology class this was largely unheard of in any of what’s left of hunter gatherer societies. To be honest, I think equality is a modern novel social value people want to be true, so they look for evidence to confirm this and ignore evidence that doesn’t.
Some study came out in the last three years finding evidence of women hunting large animals, don't have the source handy
"Men and women are natural enemies."
_
This is terrifyingly wrong.
Indeed, it is terrifyingly wrong, and implies that gender relations must be a zero-sum game. "Cross-purposes" may be a better term, but even that is not the same as "natural enemies."
'Two facets of the same purpose', more like.
Indeed, even better.
Yes, that is a bit too strongly expressed. Men and women are both companions that need and assist each other and enemies that use and exploit each other.
Indeed, only under patriarchy are men and women "natural" enemies, which is really not natural at all. It's like how under capitalism, capital and labor are "natural" enemies. But life doesn't have to be a zero-sum game at all.
I would argue it's kind of the other way round. Patriarchy is natural, the vast majority of the ancient societies on the anthropological record were patriarchal. But "natural" isn't the same thing as "good", and we can artificially bring adversarial incentives into alignment through social engineering (which is actually a morally neutral idea even if it's general seen as authoritarian and evil).
Patriarchy is neither natural nor timeless. It has a beginning, and it has an end. The beginning was about 7000 years ago, give or take, and the end is coming very soon, the current "pride before the fall" notwithstanding.
Before patriarchy, there was (to one degree or another) matriarchy in the Neolithic and into the early Bronze Age, and before that there was filiarchy (where neither gender dominated, but young people in general dominated) in the Paleolithic. Just ask Claudio Naranjo, for example.
But yes, you are correct that "natural" is NOT the same as "good". That is where the HIGHER ethics come in to play, as opposed to our baser instincts.
I think I would agree… and I would say the goal should not be to maximize happiness but to promote social order and the creation of worthy children.
https://jmpolemic.substack.com/
"Social order" and "worthy" children, by whose standards exactly?