Tag: gender

A rant on our gender and masculinity

A few years back, I had the pleasure of reading “The Rational Male” by Rollo Tomasi. This book essentially changed my life(that’s saying a lot because I have read hundreds of books in my life). The book is essentially a user guide to female nature and is considered a bible among the red-pilled community. One point that I took to heart while reading the book was how solipsistic women were by nature. Now, many would view this to be the sexiest, downright even misogynistic, but in evolutionary terms, this made perfect sense. For a lot of people, they just can’t make peace with biological facts and political correctness. Men and Women have fundamental differences that are the result of eons of evolution. That women would, by nature, be solipsistic, thinking of only themselves, makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint. Women( as still the case today) bear the brunt of rearing children. As well as the risky situation where they go through almost a year of gestation. This would lead to women generally being more egotistical and prioritizing themselves and their children above everything else. This is perfectly fine from an evolutionary as well as a historical standpoint. But this mode of being runs into many problems in our modern times.

Men, almost universally(with exceptions, of course), have been in a position of power. And with great power comes great responsibility (as the famous comic book quote stated). So in this scenario, I believe it made sense for certain things to be deferred to women with children since they were in a vulnerable position. But in the 21st century were the support and protection that men once provided aren’t as much needed as they once were. As certain old traditions just go out of whack. The idea that men are supposed to be providers made sense when muscles were what was needed to bring protein to the table or fight off other men, but these are not as relevant, at least not in the developed world. So why should we still hold on to these ideas? That I, as a man, should be financially supporting my partner when they are as capable or are already financially better off than I am doesn’t seem to make as much sense to men anymore.

This may explain why marriage has been in decline, and why people would even consider getting married. The historical foundation of marriage, i.e, to pass down lineage, doesn’t fit well in our modern world, where patriarchy doesn’t exist as it once did, at least in the developed world. I believe, particularly for men, we need to revisit what is truly expected of us in the modern world, or just be left with our current crisis of masculine identity, especially among young men

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Why Gender is not fully a social construct(part 1)

The argument has been made that gender is fully a social construct, with no biological merit. I want to argue against this point. First, I do acknowledge the fact that there are obvious cultural artifices in constructing how the two sexes behave. Pink is often associated with girls, while blue is typically linked to boys. Ashley is a girl’s name, and John is a boy’s name. These are all examples of gender norms established by society. But there is also a certain predisposition that is fully biologically based. Point one, men and women have varying degrees of hormonal differences. Men, on average, have far higher levels of testosterone than women, and women, on average, have far higher levels of estrogen. Our emotions and behaviors are heavily influenced by the chemicals in our brains. For example, higher levels of testosterone lead to a higher instance of aggression, assertiveness, and violence. Estrogen makes individuals more empathetic. The unequal distribution of these two chemicals among the sexes leads to differences in biological dispositions and behavior.

Many point out how Gender roles are socially based. But I want to argue that gender roles are a part of human evolution. Humans are a sexually dimorphic species, meaning there is a physiological difference between the sexes. Men are on average 3 inches taller and weigh 25% more than women. Nature doesn’t just make species sexual dimorphic unless there are some sexual survival benefits from it. Case in point, a book written by Leonard Shlain “Sex, Time, and Power”(A must read) Shlain( a surgeon) theorizes that because women on general suffer from Iron deficiency(due to the fact they lose blood every month from menstrual cycles, as well as their red blood cells produce less Iron), and the fact women have to go through eight months gestation and six years weaning a newborn child. Women needed men to help them attain Iron by providing them with meat; in return, the men got copulation.

For those (particularly feminists) who are skeptical about this. Imagine 150,000 years ago, living in the Savannah of East Africa, being a pregnant mother (let’s imagine 6 months), trying to go hunting. You would put yourself and your child at great risk. Sure, you would be able to go forging, but subsisting on local vegetation alone will not be enough for you and your gestating child. Men would have to go out and hunt while the women remained in the village. This arrangement would have existed for all of humanity until the emergence of civilization around 10,000 years ago.

With the beginning of civilization, humans transitioned from relying solely on wild game and vegetation to domesticating both crops and animals. Many of the roles that women had previously held remained largely unchanged, as women still became pregnant and had to care for their young children. Men now had to participate in the field or face starvation. We see the emergence of patriarchy in this time period. Men, having a physical advantage over women, took responsibility for keeping society safe from outsiders as well as undertaking all the intense labor required for agriculture.

Feminism as we know it wouldn’t become a serious ideology in Human affairs until the Industrial Revolution, for good reason. Humanity (at least in the West) wasn’t reliant on muscle power, but on stem and steel to grow its food. Women could go out to work. This new era of technological advancement is the only reason feminism was able to emerge!

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Women role in their degradation

Many women, or so-called feminists, will argue that we currently live in a patriarchal society where women are seen not as human beings with emotions or thought but as objects. Women are being objectified as mere sexual commodities, here to serve as men’s sexual fantasies. This is correct in many ways. Women are constantly being objectified in American pop culture; in fact, women are objectified in many cultures outside of America. Have you ever watched a Japanese anime, in which the majority contain a stereotypical big-bobbed female character?

My only critique of this is that it paints a very one-sided picture of men demeaning women, where women are innocent victims of men’s insidious sexualization of them. But aren’t women partially to blame for this? When I walk the streets of New York City in the summer, what do I find? Scores of women walking through the streets seamlessly with tight jean shorts, legs exposed, and buttocks prudently out? I, as a heterosexual young man, have my attention constantly diverted to glance at these delicacies of the flesh.

Here’s the point to be made: hip hop videos are constantly galvanized for their disparaging imagery of women, but instead of criticizing the rappers or the directors, what about the women who fully participate in their so-called degradation? The women who, for a price, will perform all sorts of sexual depravity on screen. This is the pragmatism of these criticisms: they don’t hold women accountable.

I once remember watching a Tupac interview, in which he addresses the criticism to his demeaning lyrics, his response was “women say bitch the loudest, they themselves no there are bitch’s out there” to give my own interpretation of Tupac response, I believe Pac was just stating women themselves know that there are egotistical women who will resort to any means get what they want.

A justifiable response to this post is that women grow up in a society in which they are constantly bombarded with images of how they should behave, talk, and dress. This is the same for men, who are taught to be tough, lack emotions, and are encouraged to conquer as many women as possible, and are celebrated and admired for their promiscuity. In contrast, women are ridiculed (by both men and women) for replicating these same behaviors.

Now there’s a possible scientific explanation for these double standards. The theory holds that men are biologically programmed to have as much sex with as many women as possible, to better their chances of spreading their genes, and thus ensuring that a piece of them exists for the next generation (kind of poetic in a way). Women, on the other hand, are supposed to be more sexually selective with whom they mate. Women (as the theory goes) are to look for men who have the best resources to ensure their offspring’s survival (in our modern times, that means men with the most money) and those who show signs of good physical health, i.e., tall height, muscular build, and a symmetrical face.

Like any group that’s oppressed, for the oppression to be successful, there must be compliance between the oppressor and the oppressed. And, in my opinion, this is the case presented here.

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