Is There Anything Good About Men?

This is getting new-agey, but selfish promotion of our genes would logically include helping all mankind, since we share many genes (of course, we'd have more reason to help those more closely related); then, to similar species such as apes, then to mammals, then animals in general, then plants - which we'd prefer over rocks. All based on genetic similarity, of ones own genes helping other instances of itself. Which does seem to fit in which the attitudes of most people.

It's not, as far as I can see, a conspiracy -- i.e. a secret plan hatched by a clandestine group that goes against a larger society's interests. You can have a pat/kyriarchy where each member acts on their own best interests, and yet the results of that unfairly disadvantage certain groups.

A good example of the kind of decentralised, mass-action that disenfranchises a particular social group or class can be found in Michael Young's coining of the word "meritocracy", and how, through the collective action of a group of self-interested actors, a particular social group can be disenfranchised or demoralised. It doesn't require secrets, it doesn't require conspiracies, as a matter of fact it just requires everyone acting to their own best interests.

Secondly, the author doesn't make a convincing argument that the fact that the reason why men get all the risk and all the reward is because of something innate, instead of a self-perpetuating social system that actively encourages one gender to risk it all and reap the rewards, while holding back the other gender to mediocrity and risk-free existences. The possibility is raised for a few sentences, and discarded, as if it's ridiculous, and it's obvious that the reasons are inherent.

Since the arguments in the rest of the post requires me to buy the above premise without conclusively eliminating social mores and non-innate possibilities, I didn't bother reading the rest of the article.

Incidentally, as a member of a nation that was born out of British Colonialism, the statement "the British Empire did a lot more good than harm" is a disgusting, privileged statement that really doesn't elicit much more than pitying contempt from me. Since of course we wouldn't have known what our lives would have been without John Company coming down to "civilise" our barbarian asses, obviously the only feelings we should be having is gratitude, especially since we owe our broken conception of race and ethnicity, our de-facto one-party rule since we gained independence from our Magnanimous Masters, our police force, more intent in beating down dissent and enforcing "public order" that is beneficial to only the ruling class and no one else, to organisations, concepts and social structures derived from British rule.

That's right; it was this or barbarism. Yeah, I hope it helps you sleep at night too, jerk.

Your disagreement is predicated on certain traits not being linked to femininity or masculinity and economic forces. You wave your hand over the entire article and then rail against women's role in the past. The argument is a classic strawman. You failed to invalidate any of the article's points and instead talk about narrow definitions of women's social behaviors as if the entire article had said women are only good in one-on-one relationships. The article merely posits that women have more stake in maintaining a few intimate relationships than a large number of shallow relationships. This point is arguable but, rather than argue against it, you claim that the article insinuates women should /only/ focus on intimate relationships for the survival of our species, and then say this is clearly ridiculous. I agree with your logic here, but it is rather irrelevant to the topic at hand. The discourse is about why women are better/worse/different than men, not whether women should be allowed to live in the "public sphere".

The closing of your argument goes even further afield and tries to elicit empathy from men by attempting to justify women's historically subservient economic position and then forming a weak thought experiment based on outdated female stereotypes. Your penultimate statement is that "women are people" which is followed by the "The old ways were awful." None of this contributes to the discussion nor does it it reveal any interesting insight.

That is, our behaviors may be influenced more by our instinct than our reasoning. Our instincts are the result of a random exploration process where only certain strategies could win. Rational reasoning is not required.