Is There Anything Good About Men? • Hacker News Board

Re: Is There Anything Good About Men?

#91

Post by geebee » Fri, Jul 15, 2011, 8:50 PM UTC

bermanoid wrote: post #78

tariqk wrote: post #55

First off, the author misrepresents the idea of patriarchy as a "conspiracy of men to subjugate women". That's not how I've heard how it's been defined. Patriarchy/kyriarchy, roughly put, is a series of assumptions and privileges provided to a segment of the population, often at the expense of everyone else. It's not, as far as I can see, a conspiracy -- i.e. a secret plan hatched by a clandestine group that goes aga…

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 author may not have gone into it, but the argument exists, b…

Female reproduction isn't as limited as it might seem at first glance, because you need to consider the reproductive success of her offspring as well. If we're going to see life as DNAs way of making more DNA, Genghis Khan's mother did just as much reproducing as his father.

I've read that female bonobos, for instance, take a great interest in the mating success of their male offspring:

"http://www.indstate.edu/news/news.php?newsid=1742

So having a high social status in the pecking order can absolutely translate in to "unlimited" reproductive potential for a female in this case.

An interesting quote:

"Scientists believe a bonobo mother's rank in the group has an impact on her son's reproductive rank because if she dies the son falls in rank and becomes unimportant."

Re: Is There Anything Good About Men?

#92

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jul 15, 2011, 8:56 PM UTC

cefarix wrote: post #77

mitcheme wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's very little actual substance there to invalidate, and I did discuss some of issues. His analysis of women's creativity is wrong, and is his talk about relative sex drives is spurious. I also think it's a huge mistake to label cultures who have persisted by making over half their population miserable (women and low-status men) as "successful". If you wanted me to take it apart line-by-line you will have to be…

One of the problems in Western cultures is that being a CEO, a President, a rockstar, an astronaut, etc is more highly valued than say, being a mother. This is why many Western women feel that being a mother with young kids and staying at home is not fulfilling their lives - because the cultural messages tell them that being a stay-at-home mom is an unglamarous job. You will find that not all cultures are like this -…

[deleted]

Re: Is There Anything Good About Men?

#93

Post by scott_s » Fri, Jul 15, 2011, 8:56 PM UTC

tariqk wrote: post #55

First off, the author misrepresents the idea of patriarchy as a "conspiracy of men to subjugate women". That's not how I've heard how it's been defined. Patriarchy/kyriarchy, roughly put, is a series of assumptions and privileges provided to a segment of the population, often at the expense of everyone else. It's not, as far as I can see, a conspiracy -- i.e. a secret plan hatched by a clandestine group that goes aga…

I didn't bother reading the rest of the article.

The rest of the article has support for the reason you object to. You're papering over a lot of reasoning by just saying he "doesn't make a convincing argument." In what way is it not convincing?

Re: Is There Anything Good About Men?

#94

Post by cefarix » Fri, Jul 15, 2011, 8:57 PM UTC

mitcheme wrote: post #86

cefarix wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the problems in Western cultures is that being a CEO, a President, a rockstar, an astronaut, etc is more highly valued than say, being a mother. This is why many Western women feel that being a mother with young kids and staying at home is not fulfilling their lives - because the cultural messages tell them that being a stay-at-home mom is an unglamarous job. You will find that not all cultures are like this -…

Why aren't we talking about the 1950's? If you're correct, that the problem is a lack of glamour, then the 50's should not have been a problem. Motherhood was the ultimate glamorous profession for a woman in those days. Sure, you can go to college, but there's no sense doing anything with it when you could get married. The ideal was a beautiful, spotless house in the suburbs, beautiful and well-behaved children, a gr…

I was not talking about the 50s in America for two reasons: firstly because I was talking about cultures in general, and second because I was talking about long-term multi-generational survival and time periods. The 50s, a decade, is not long enough for a society to go extinct because its culture subjugated its women. I don't know everything about the 50s and probably less than you do. I was born in the late 80s and my family is from Pakistan, although I grew up mostly in Texas. However, from what I know about the 50s in America and the decades leading up to today, I can say that women were getting mixed signals. The culturally right thing to do was to be a stay-at-home mom, have a nice house in the suburbs, with well-behaved children, to cook and have everything spotless clean. And yet it was at the same time not a glamorous thing to do. Let me explain: even when people said it is glamorous to be a mom at home, people also said, it is really cool to be CEO, president, or an astronaut. And when they talked about CEOs, presidents, and astronauts, they were much more excited and much more sincere in their admiration and respect for them than when they would talk about stay-at-home moms.

Re: Is There Anything Good About Men?

#95

Post by roel_v » Fri, Jul 15, 2011, 9:04 PM UTC

scythe wrote: post #13

Obvious problem: Genghis Khan is dead. The fact that a full third of Asia and consequently a sixth of the whole world has some genetic similarity to Genghis Khan does not make him any less dead. Evolution is not teleological and genes do not "want". Genes just happen; they're chemicals. Working to ensure the continuation of your genes is not mandated or valuable -- it is likely . Your parents probably did, because yo…

"And how were the British kicked out of India? Well, by none other than some pacifist self-sacrificing guy named Mohandas Gandhi."

Eh, no - Gandhi had little to do with the actual 'end game' of Indian independence. The main drivers were unrest within the Indian army and a lack of focus and drive of the British empire to spend money and effort on keeping control of India after the very taxing second World War. It's unclear what real effects, if any, Gandhi's action in the decades before the 1940's really had.

Re: Is There Anything Good About Men?

#96

Post by run4yourlives » Fri, Jul 15, 2011, 9:05 PM UTC

sophacles wrote: post #74

run4yourlives wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>All heritable behaviors that lead to men or women not reproducing don't stay in a population very long I'm not sure about this. What I mean is that I can clearly see the logic here, but I'd love to see a discussion for instance on the continual existence of evolutionary destructive traits such as homosexuality, which by all accounts has not only been around for a great deal of human existence, but also other species…

Humans are social (group) creatures. This means anything that promotes group survival is good. So how does your favorite strawman play out here? Well assuming an extremely strong genetic component: 1. Homosexuals by not being inclined to reproduce may now contribute excess resources to the group well-being. 2. Homosexuals can pick up slack child-rearing duties, e.g. in cases of orphaned children, and do so without th…

These are all regularly espoused reasons, but compared to the article in question they seem rather weak. Some of the tone in your comment seems to suggest that I'm making a political argument. Let me be very clear here and now that I am not. Nothing I say here insinuates morality of any form. I'm simply trying to understand why.

I get the bi-sexuality aspect of this, but homosexuality is much more than simply not being selective in who you have sex with. There are significant traits and brain changes in people that identify as homosexual that shouldn't be present if all homosexuality is simply the result of permissiveness in our ancestors.

While the effects of evolution can be observed on a macro scale, they are always the result of selfish genes. In other words, I'm not sure I completely buy the idea of kin selection, especially with humans. That being said it's not something I've deeply versed in.

Re: Is There Anything Good About Men?

#97

Post by ezy » Fri, Jul 15, 2011, 9:08 PM UTC

cefarix wrote: post #77

mitcheme wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's very little actual substance there to invalidate, and I did discuss some of issues. His analysis of women's creativity is wrong, and is his talk about relative sex drives is spurious. I also think it's a huge mistake to label cultures who have persisted by making over half their population miserable (women and low-status men) as "successful". If you wanted me to take it apart line-by-line you will have to be…

One of the problems in Western cultures is that being a CEO, a President, a rockstar, an astronaut, etc is more highly valued than say, being a mother. This is why many Western women feel that being a mother with young kids and staying at home is not fulfilling their lives - because the cultural messages tell them that being a stay-at-home mom is an unglamarous job. You will find that not all cultures are like this -…

This is profoundly naive.

Consider, for a moment, that a woman may not want to be a mother, or more realistically, that's not all she wants to be.

Many Asian cultures are notoriously sexist. And, no, I wouldn't say being a mother is glamorous in those cultures... being a mother is expected and a woman is honored, briefly, when she fulfills those expectations, but it's not glamorous. Society's expectation, even Western society, is precisely that motherhood is something to be valued by women. There's nothing to fix there. However, the broken part, and the part feminism addresses, is that is should not be the only thing valued in women.

You're naive. In the real world, plenty of misery lasts. Saying a culture cannot survive with misery is something you invented. It's not like we're removing limbs here -- a woman can live with decreased expectations and limitations without killing the culture that oppresses her. Often the coping techniques include (surprise!) investing all her energy into making her children accomplish by proxy (speaking of asian cultures, sound familiar?) what she could not.

Re: Is There Anything Good About Men?

#98

Post by run4yourlives » Fri, Jul 15, 2011, 9:10 PM UTC

bermanoid wrote: post #83

run4yourlives wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>All heritable behaviors that lead to men or women not reproducing don't stay in a population very long I'm not sure about this. What I mean is that I can clearly see the logic here, but I'd love to see a discussion for instance on the continual existence of evolutionary destructive traits such as homosexuality, which by all accounts has not only been around for a great deal of human existence, but also other species…

It's possible perhaps that there are evolutionary paths that, although dead-ends, are easily mutated into and thus always present in a species... The cornucopia of debilitating mental illnesses that we tend to suffer from implies that this is almost certainly the case, and there are a lot of things that go into this. Regarding traits like homosexuality, it's likely that the genetic "cause" ends up so widespread becau…

Thanks for that very well reasoned and enlightening comment.

Re: Is There Anything Good About Men?

#99

Post by scott_s » Fri, Jul 15, 2011, 9:15 PM UTC

mitcheme wrote: post #63

nocipher wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You fail to provide a compelling defense of your argument. One of the major points of the article was in direct opposition to your first sentence. It was supported by arguing that biology forces women to be more important for reproduction and then showing how this can lead to the circumstances we have today. Your disagreement is predicated on certain traits not being linked to femininity or masculinity and economic f…

There's very little actual substance there to invalidate, and I did discuss some of issues. His analysis of women's creativity is wrong, and is his talk about relative sex drives is spurious. I also think it's a huge mistake to label cultures who have persisted by making over half their population miserable (women and low-status men) as "successful". If you wanted me to take it apart line-by-line you will have to be…

If you object to the word "successful," then just replace it with something else. His meaning is the same as in evolutionary biology: it out-competes its peers and continues to exist. He does not mean to imply that its good or that the people who comprise the culture are happy.

By analogy, I would claim that sharks are successful. By the standard above, they clearly are: they've continued to exist and out-competed peer species for millions of years. But I'm making an objective claim only, not a value judgement on whether or not this is good.

Re: Is There Anything Good About Men?

#100

Post by jordan0day » Fri, Jul 15, 2011, 9:18 PM UTC

sliverstorm wrote: post #49

Goladus wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with this essay is that is paints us as slaves to our genes. Why would you say this essay "paints us as slaves to our genes?" I didn't read it that way at all. In fact there's so much content there to discuss that I think it's really unfair to make such an unrelated generalization about the whole thing. There is much discussion about evolutionary traits, for sure, but just because it's there as an explana…

It's amusing to live in a world where instinct in animals is readily accepted as heritable, and yet whether or not humans can inherit behaviors is hotly contested. Almost seems like another round of people looking to maintain the illusion that humans are separate from animals. What was the last one we had, tool use?

I'm on the opposite side of that. I find it amusing when people try to justify certain actions with corollaries found in animals. The amazing thing about being human is that we can overcome instinct, and it doesn't even require superhuman effort. Regular old human effort will do.