Empathy Gap, Male Disposability & Reproductive Utility

[Black Dog]

Not that many people are aware of things like the gender suicide gap.

Like generally or people in a position to make a difference? It is a well-documented phenomenon. And, as I've said in the past, it's also a bit misleading as men and women attempt suicide at roughly equal rates. The real mystery isn't "why do men kill themselves more", it's "why do men choose suicide methods that are more likely to be fatal?" (Which itself can be explained partly by asking "who owns guns?")

But regardless, you need to identify the cause, not just the existence of the problem. If you identify the cause of all these problems to be 'the patriarchy', then you are misidentifying the causes.

LOL. I'm sure swapping the patriarchy with "reproductive utility" or "feminism" is gonna solve the problem. If your theory holds true, there probably is no solution. But why let an opportunity to seize the victim mantel pass you by?

You.

Cite required. Again, you're claiming I'm "dismissing arguments put forward by gender egalitarians and MRAs". Which argument have I dismissed?

I've seen this argument a lot recently in various comments and articles on Men's Rights where people attack Men's Rights for 'not having any results'. But it's a nonsense argument since MRAs don't have any political power to do anything. It's like saying you shouldn't vote NDP federally because they haven't passed any laws federally in the past 4 years.

Strange: at one point feminists didn't have the political power to do anything and now, according to you, they run everything. How'd they do that? Is there a lesson there?

Anyway, I'm not attacking them for not having results: I'm attacking them for not even having an interest in results. As I've said before, the MRA movement is less interested in solutions (because in solving these problems, they'd have nothing to complain about) than in snatching the title of Most Put-upon Sex.

Karen Straughan recently did a video on this:

This is what I'm talking about.

So, if I get this right, the argument is men's rights organizations can't change anything so they have no choice but to rant ineffectually about feminism (in this case, an ill-defined hobgoblin that controls everything and upon whose feet all men's problems can be laid; kinda like how people used to talk about Jews, actually) from the margins in YouTube videos at people who already agree with them. Of course, the fact that the line between "attacking feminism" and "attacking particular women who identify as feminists and making ourselves look like raging psychopaths" is blurry, if not non-existent to these people, is well, meh! Cool "movement" guys!

Edited September 10, 2015 by Black Dog

[Freddy]

We don`t. That`s a myth.

We both know that's bs.

Ok

You can't win its to easy.

If men are more valuable, why would we send male army's throughout history to wage war, when there is very high chance of them being slaughtered?

Your one very stubborn Black Dog.

Woudnt it make sense to send your least valuable assets to be killed?

Edited September 10, 2015 by Freddy

[Hal 9000]

Like generally or people in a position to make a difference? It is a well-documented phenomenon. And, as I've said in the past, it's a bit misleading as men and women attempt suicide at roughly equal rates.

LOL. I'm sure swapping the patriarchy with "reproductive utility" or "feminism" is gonna solve the problem. If your theory holds true, there probably is no solution. But why let an opportunity to seize the victim mantel pass you by?

Cite required. Again, you're claiming I'm "dismissing arguments put forward by gender egalitarians and MRAs". I'm not sure where I did that. I'm dismissing the actual people making the arguments (just as you do when you whinge about "SJWs").

Strange: at one point feminists didn't have the political power to do anything and now, according to you, they run everything. How'd they do that? Is there a lesson there?

Anyway, I'm not attacking them for not having results: I'm attacking them for not even having an interest in results. As I've said before, the MRA movement is less interested in solutions (because in solving these problems, they'd have nothing to complain about) than in snatching the title of Most Put-upon Sex.

I watched five minutes of that waiting for her to get to the point and then gave up.

I knew you wouldn't watch it. That's a big part of the problem here.

[-1=e^ipi]

Like generally or people in a position to make a difference? It is a well-documented phenomenon. And, as I've said in the past, it's a bit misleading as men and women attempt suicide at roughly equal rates.

Maybe there is more stigma again men reporting that they have attempted suicide, or women are more likely to fail at suicide because they are more likely to get attention/support if they fail. So what matters is actual suicide rates.

Cite required.

This thread.

How'd they do that? Is there a lesson there?

So gender egalitarians and MRAs need to pull fire alarms or try to ban people from disagreeing with them on twitter?

Edited September 10, 2015 by -1=e^ipi

[Black Dog]

We both know that's bs.

I assume you have a study or something that disproves the one I linked to?

If men are more valuable, why would we send male army's throughout history to wage war, when there is very high chance of them being slaughtered?

Some men are more valuable than others. Also it's worth looking at the reasons women are excluded from combat roles: women are too weak, too emotional, too sexy and so forth, none of which speak to a particularly exalted view of women.

Indeed, if you're asking the question "are women valued more than women?" it's worth asking what one means by "valued." After all, a slave on a southern plantation in 1850 was "valued" by his owner. The flip side, obviously, is that men are expected to be stronger, more competent, more intelligent, more rational,more trustworthy than women, which is one of the reasons why they are put in the positions discussed.

I knew you wouldn't watch it. That's a big part of the problem here.

If it helps I read a transcript. It's mostly BS, rife with MRA misinformation about IPV. Again, it's a case of any good points being lost in a tide of bile.

Maybe there is more stigma again men reporting that they have attempted suicide, or women are more likely to fail at suicide because they are more likely to get attention/support if they fail. So what matters is actual suicide rates.

Right, because to consider the actual full picture of suicide would completely sink your theory. Best just ignore those parts that are inconvenient.

This thread.

be specific.

So gender egalitarians and MRAs need to pull fire alarms or try to ban people from disagreeing with them on twitter?

They already do that and worse.

Edited September 11, 2015 by Black Dog

[G Huxley]

"But it's not like intolerance of freedom of speech is a new phenomenon at Canadian Universities."

Like the University of Lethbridge.

I agree with the theory at the beginning of the thread. In fact I have come to think of this recently independently.

[-1=e^ipi]

What happens when a women tries to be a man for a few weeks and is treated as a man by society:

"Men are suffering. They have different problems than women have, but they don't have it better."

"I like [being a women] more now because I think it's more of a privilege."

Edited September 11, 2015 by -1=e^ipi

[WIP]

So any male that doesn't care about the fact that a woman is able to do the same job is lying? Do you have proof of this claim?

To clarify the point, I don't care whether it's men just reacting on impulse and lying to themselves about underlying motivations, or whether they take the time to craft rhetorical arguments as a diversion....it's still a lie on a basic human fundamental level. Because, the same cultural dynamic that led men to band together to form hunting parties in early human history, has carried along most of the same baggage into modern times. In brief, men tend to define themselves by what they do/not who they are; and work is so important, that our identity has been largely defined by what we do for a living. Case in point would be all of the English surnames came into the English language mostly based on the man's occupation, rather than location or patrilineal heritage.

Defining ourselves by our work has certainly fallen out of favour in our money-centered modern era, where what we own and how much we earn are the defining characters of manhood...since the chain has been broken by the privileged elites who earn by making their money "work" for them, and these largely idle rich had to come up with new standards to define their manhood!

But, since I got a firsthand look at what happened in a workplace when the first female apprentices were hired, I can say for a fact that the experiences of all sorts of hostility and harassment are not figments of feminist imagination, but are accurate descriptions of the major stumbling blocks placed in front of women who enter any non-traditional jobs.

Now, what I was talking about, was I thought I was one of the cool guys because at least on a conscious deliberative level, I didn't like/nor agree with the attitudes of the mostly older guys that these women can't do these jobs and shouldn't be here. But, after a few assorted sexual harassment lawsuits landed on the company, and they decided to arrange a little quick orientation on gender issues, I noticed that deep down, I must have picked up that same threat to the value of my work on an unconscious level, when I recalled off-hand mentioning a few times to others about work that 'I had to train or work with a new guy today'...when the "new guy" was a woman. Why did I say guy, instead of girl or gal? You be the judge!

Many people question the claim that our society is patriarchal. I certainly do.

And I already mentioned that patriarchy wasn't set up to benefit ALL men! The point is that the levers of power in our world are still controlled by small bands of wealthy, powerful men, and the few women who may be part of the club act like men....like Maggie Thatcher or Hillary Clinton as you mention below, understand the game and try to appear more manly than the men on the stage:

We should put this up there with Hillary Clinton's claim that women are the primary victims of war, even though men do the majority of fighting and dying.

And, as I already said, the Hillary's and the Carly Fiorina's are men without the penises! The first thing Hillary Clinton did when she became a senator was try to get on the Senate Defense Appropriations Committee....reason being that she wanted her name associated closely with masculine virtules...and what can be more masculine than being part of the clique that decides on who to kill and how to fund the killing? The fact that this strategy backfired on Clinton because the Bush regime change operations were such a cluster****, is karma for all self-aggrandizers who choose the political sphere for personal gain.

Edited September 11, 2015 by WIP

[cybercoma]

"Men are suffering. They have different problems than women have, but they don't have it better."

Too bad your MRA idols spend more time bashing feminists than addressing problems that men have.

[WIP]

In what ways is it worse for the woman when her man gets crippled? Do you even realize just how fucked up that idea really is?

I know a lot more women who have had to spend their 'golden' years caring for ailing husbands...including those injured at work or through sicknesses acquired on the workplace. It's an example of where women are expected to be nurturing and provide 24/7 nursing care ever-after. Not many men will do the same, and if they don't sue for divorce they just stick her in a nursing home. I'm in a situation where my wife's health is trending downwards and most guys I have talked to are less than sympathetic, except for one older friend who spent 10 years of his retirement looking after his ailing wife. It would be nice if sort of gender-nonconformity received some respect in our world, but it's a burden we share with all of the married women who find themselves in similar positions when they get older

[-1=e^ipi]

I don't care whether it's men just reacting on impulse and lying to themselves about underlying motivations... our identity has been largely defined by what we do for a living... how much we earn are the defining characters of manhood...

Just because you feel threatened by women doing the same job as you and have internalized sexism doesn't mean all men do. I certainly don't care about the sex/gender of my coworkers.

since I got a firsthand look at what happened in a workplace when the first female apprentices were hired, I can say for a fact that the experiences of all sorts of hostility and harassment are not figments of feminist imagination, but are accurate descriptions of the major stumbling blocks placed in front of women who enter any non-traditional jobs.

Some muslims are ISIS. Does that mean all muslims are terrorists?

Some black people commit crime. Does that mean all black people are criminals?

Some people from Sweden like the colour orange. Does that mean all Swedish people like the colour orange?

Just because there are some men that are misogynists and harass women, doesn't mean that all men do. That's a generalization.

I thought I was one of the cool guys because at least on a conscious deliberative level, I didn't like/nor agree with the attitudes of the mostly older guys that these women can't do these jobs and shouldn't be here... I noticed that deep down, I must have picked up that same threat to the value of my work on an unconscious level.

Welcome to the psychology of white knights and male feminists. You convince yourself that 'you are one of the good ones' to give yourself self value, make yourself feel 'manly' and hide your sexism.

And I already mentioned that patriarchy wasn't set up to benefit ALL men!

See, I don't share the belief that a patriarchy was set up, let alone that a patriarchy exists. Making claims about the intent of the patriarchy is about as meaningful as discussing the diameter of the noodles of the flying spaghetti monster.

And, as I already said, the Hillary's and the Carly Fiorina's are men without the penises!

So they are transmen or men that had their genitals removed?

No, they are (as far as I know) cisgendered heterosexual women.

The first thing Hillary Clinton did when she became a senator was try to get on the Senate Defense Appropriations Committee....reason being that she wanted her name associated closely with masculine virtules...and what can be more masculine than being part of the clique that decides on who to kill and how to fund the killing?

And this has nothing to do with being 'masculine' or being transgendered. Being in a senate defense committee has nothing to do with being male, female, masculine or feminine.

[WIP]

Just because a theory or field doesn't explain 100% of observations doesn't mean you throw it out. Newtonian physics can't explain why the speed of light is constant in all inertial reference frames, yet Newtonian physics has uses.

However, evolutionary psychology and reproductive utility theory certainly has more explanatory power than feminism and patriarchy theory (which as I explained in another thread is an unfalsifiable flying spaghetti monster).

EP is more akin to Freudian Analytical Theory or most Economics these days, than it is to physics! The problem isn't only being able to partly explain phenomena; the problem is these are theories that always have answers and never run out of explanations....including explanations of why their previous explanations were wrong or led to gross errors.

There is more than just genetic evolution. There is societal evolution. Societies and cultures are able to reproduce, face selectional pressures and undergo mutations, so are also subject to evolution. Arguably, societal evolution is much stronger/faster than genetic evolution, so the conditions under which humans lived for the past 10,000 years is very relevant.

As I've seen genetics explained in more recent times, the old nature vs. nurture debates are either/or explanations without any validity. As most geneticists and scientists in related fields see the story: environmental factors affect which genes are switched on to code proteins right from the very beginning when we are still in the womb. The interweaving understanding of environment and genetics explains prior mysteries like why so many women who were pregnant during stressful times during WWII had children with mental as well as physical disabilities and behavioural problems as the children grew and on into adulthood.

Now, back to my original point: any effects of culture on the genetic programming of succeeding generations is going to be cumulative in effect/ so the cultural circumstances that have occurred during the longest period of our history will greatly outweigh any counter-trends that have occurred in the last 5000 let alone 100 years.

Also, evolution does not create nice, even transitions from one form to another. Many physiologists believe that alot of our dietary and related problems come from a fundamental problem that we are still in transition from a vegetarian-to an omnivore creature. Even if we have made physical adjustments to adding animal protein to our diets, we produce our own cholesterols and don't need more from animal products, and we still carry along that long digestive tract that puts us at risk the greater the amount of meat and dairy products that are added to the diet. If we completely go vegan...which hasn't been an option for quite a few thousand years for most people, we can suffer some negative fallout from missing some animal products. So, it's a catch 22 and we have to settle somewhere in between....but in our time we are obviously binging on the animal side!

When it comes to culture, two British epidemiologists: Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett collected the largest and most overwhelming evidence for the case that our relative wellbeing is most influenced by the equality/or lack of equality in the societies we have to live in. Any time I've brought the issue up previously, someone is going to mention ' well, we can't all grab spears and make pottery and go live in the forest!' Obviously! But, the evidence that comes from anthropology adds weight to the argument that we need to be striving for more equal societies today....not doing the exact opposite...which has been the direction we've been trending in since WWII....and the reason why the world is...or may be past the point of no return today.

The rest of your post basically ignores that I was primarily referring to societal evolution rather than genetic evolution in my original post.

Refer to above...there is no such a thing! The two cannot be separated.

Gotta love the societal double standard that whenever there is a gender gap that favours women, it's genetic/physiological, but whenever there is a gender gap that favours men, it's all due to discrimination.

Like say you have a society where men are expected to go work in coal mines for 14 hours a day and women are expected to stay at home all day tending to children and doing house work. You really think that difference in life expectancy has nothing to do with men inhaling coal dust all the time?

The same patriarchal forces that put the men in those mines, also gave them dominion over women as free housekeepers and nursemaids when they are too old and sick to work.

A lot of this and further argument can be cleared away with the question of whether you believe we have group or class interests or all of our interests are individual? Because my biggest objection to MRA propaganda is the same one I have against 'reverse' discrimination when the debate is about race issues. Not every white man gets much benefit out of a society that overtly (as in fascism) or covertly (as in the crap framed around individualism we have) that is based on white male supremacism. In the antebellum south, most southern whites did not, and could not afford to be slaveholders. In fact, their lives were greatly impoverished by all of the free labour at the disposal of a minority of wealthy southern white patriarchs, who ended up owning most of the good land and most of everything worth owning! And yet these southern rubes were the ones who fought and died to preserve slavery in the south!

Their main motivator was psychological, since economic factors would have led them to want to end slavery and seize the lands and the ill-gotten gains from the southern aristocracy. But they didn't, because at least when there was slavery, they didn't have much, but they were at least not in last place in the hierarchy. That was threatened by Abolition, and it was the primary reason why the low class southern whites filled the ranks of the Ku Klux Klan and demanded repressive measures be instituted to keep newly freed slaves "in their place!"

When it comes to gender issues, a lot of oxygen can be spared by getting to the issue of whether the female half of the population is an oppressed group, with most of the same problems as any oppressed minority in a class-based system or not. If women are usually in a weaker position and subject to violence, or even the threat of violence and back away in response to intimidation, then they are not truly equal in our society today...and many women, like most men, have become used to the way things are, and may not even be aware of how unfair or unequal our world actually is....although since most women are in the workforce today, they likely have a better understanding of the picture than a lot of women did two, three or more generations ago, when their roles and their lives were fixed set pieces planned in advance from early childhood.

Yet violence against men is far more prevalent in our society than violence against women.

http://www.victimsweek.gc.ca/res/r512.html

The report is talking about crime in general, not domestic violence...where the relatively greater capacity to cause physical injury places women at greater risk as the severity levels increase...many more women are killed by their spouses than the reverse as a result.

When it comes to crime, consider that....if you think back to your teenage days, you would place yourself in situations where you would be at risk much more than teenage girls would. Gang rivalries...even stupid school rivalries led to fights. Another difference is the way men and women respond to threats. If someone cuts me off while driving, my first instinct will be to hit the horn. If they respond with abuse, I might...and have in the past...escalated the situation and got out of the car. It's something I try to avoid now because I'm older and supposed to think before acting, and when you jump out of the car, you never know what you'll be facing...these days it could be someone with a gun! Point being, just tallying up the stats doesn't give us much understanding without examining the situations that lead to violence.

One thing you can't deny is that females of all ages even, are at risk of sexual attacks from guys who see an opportunity. It's not something we worry about when we go out at night!

Since I'm running out of time, I want to get to some sort of synopsis on how I see gender issues on the grand scale. After returning in recent years to my earlier interests in history and anthropology studies, I believe that the story of progress we are told has advanced us since the agricultural revolution through modern times mostly has it all backwards! Until relatively recent history (less than 5000 years ago) almost all human societies maintained a balance of power between male and female domains within the communities. This started coming unglued when men developed ways to monopolize control of food supplies....the first being raiding and plundering other groups and even enslaving them as free labour. Around the same time, some men started noticing for the first time in human history that only one man could be the father of a child. That seems obvious to us moderns, and evolutionary psychologists take our modern presumptions and impute them on to our forebears; but until about 4 to 5000 years ago, the whole motivation for men taking control over women's reproduction didn't even exist! The hunter/gatherers in recent times indicate that most men in societies with concepts of "partible" or partial paternity....or without any clear theory of paternity just felt a collective obligation to provide for the children within their extended family...exception would be boys coming into manhood who would be initiated and taken on as part of the hunting party.

Not that we can unlearn all of this, but in our time we can make a few necessary shifts, like slowing down and eliminating the business of waging wars, and give greater priority to domestic concerns like health and education for example...which are being defunded, and when these institutions fall apart, guess which gender gets stuck with most of the burden of providing free health and education services? Just sayin that any honest MRA's are going to realize that women are not their enemies, and if they are really concerned about violence and human wellbeing, they will see that we need a shift back towards an equal balance rather than increased feudal domination by big boss men!

[WIP]

Just because you feel threatened by women doing the same job as you and have internalized sexism doesn't mean all men do. I certainly don't care about the sex/gender of my coworkers.

And what about at the unconscious level? Either you've never been in this situation, or you're just making it up as you go along; because any honest reflection will show all of the cultural standards you have internalized in life.

The guys who get the most complaints of sexual harassment always respond with the same kind of excuses: 'it was just a joke', 'I was just kidding' etc.. It doesn't matter what the problem is, if someone lacks any capability for self-reflection, they will never correct the problem! Because unless our intuitive responses to....whatever the problem or situation...are called up to the frontal cortex-level of processing, we keep making the same mistakes over and over again.

[WIP]

I'm comparing clitoral hood removal with foreskin removal, not with more extreme forms of female genital mutilation.

The clitoral hood and the foreskin are equivalent and they come from the same set of cells during fetal development.

So yes, foreskin removal and clitoral hood removal are very much equivalent.

And your right on that slippery slope on the way down False Equivalency Mountain. There is no reasonable argument for making any equivocal comparisons between circumcision and what should be called female genital mutilation!

[-1=e^ipi]

There is no reasonable argument for making any equivocal comparisons between circumcision and what should be called female genital mutilation!

I wasn't equating all forms of FGM with circumcision. Only removal of the clitoral hood.

The clitoral hood and the foreskin come from the same set of cells in the genital region during fetal development. They are equivalent, much like how the head of the penis is equivalent to the clitoris, the underside of the penis is equivalent to the labia minora, the scrotum is equivalent to the labia majora and the testes are equivalent to the ovaries.

[-1=e^ipi]

And what about at the unconscious level?

No, I am an egalitarian.

because any honest reflection will show all of the cultural standards you have internalized in life.

No, that's just you projecting onto everyone else.

[-1=e^ipi]

Now, back to my original point: any effects of culture on the genetic programming of succeeding generations is going to be cumulative in effect/ so the cultural circumstances that have occurred during the longest period of our history will greatly outweigh any counter-trends that have occurred in the last 5000 let alone 100 years.

This argument doesn't make sense. Just because cultural evolution is slower, doesn't somehow mean that societal evolution is outweighted by cultural evolution.

The speed at which humans develop certain traits (such as skin pigmentation) is much faster that the speed at which humans develop other traits (such as the ability to photosynthesize). But that doesn't somehow mean that our inability to photosynthesize 'trumps' changes in skin pigmentation over tens of thousands of years.

Societal evolution just occurs on a much faster time scale. So while genetic evolutionary traits is primarily dominated by how humans interacted in hunter-gatherer societies (obviously there are exceptions such as prevalence of lactose intolerance), societal evolutionary traits are arguably dominated by the post-glacial environment that humans have lived in for the past 10,000 years. The reason I argue that societal evolution occurs on this time scale or shorter is because if you look through history you see many cases of competing tribes, which end in one tribe completely annihilating another tribe on this timescale (look at what the Romans did to the Carthaginians). Also, look at how much societal change has occurred over the past 100 years and compare that to the amount of genetic change.

Also, evolution does not create nice, even transitions from one form to another.

Human societies culturally evolved to become more agrarian after the end of the ice age, because conditions became more favourable to cultures with agrarian traits.

Refer to above...there is no such a thing! The two cannot be separated.

Sure they can. Certain groups of humans consume more milk as adults than others. For example, people in Europe generally have a larger share of their diet as dairy than people in Southern China. Some of this is due to lactose intolerance (genetic evolution) and some of it is due to cultural evolution. One way you can test how much is due to culture and how much is due to lactose intolerance is to look at the consumption of dairy based on geographic location and lactose intolerance.

For example, you could gather data and then obtain the ordinary least squares fit to the regression equation: Diary_i = A + B*Europe_i + C*Lactose_Tolerance_i + error, where A, B and C are the regression coefficients to be estimated, Dairy is the consumption of dairy as a percentage of total food consumption, Europe is a dummy variable for if the person is in Europe, and Lactose_Tolerance is a dummy variable for if a person has lactose tolerance.

A lot of this and further argument can be cleared away with the question of whether you believe we have group or class interests or all of our interests are individual?

People should be treated as individuals. I agree with people like Martin Luther King Jr. when he says "people [should] not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character".

Because my biggest objection to MRA propaganda is the same one I have against 'reverse' discrimination when the debate is about race issues.

You mean you are a closet racist that can't accept egalitarianism, but also can't accept your racism, so you convince yourself to support inherently racist policies to show how 'not racist' you are?

Their main motivator was psychological, since economic factors would have led them to want to end slavery and seize the lands and the ill-gotten gains from the southern aristocracy. But they didn't, because at least when there was slavery, they didn't have much, but they were at least not in last place in the hierarchy. That was threatened by Abolition, and it was the primary reason why the low class southern whites filled the ranks of the Ku Klux Klan and demanded repressive measures be instituted to keep newly freed slaves "in their place!"

This behaviour can be explained by evolutionary psychology. It's called tribalism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribalism#Tribalism_and_evolution

When it comes to gender issues, a lot of oxygen can be spared by getting to the issue of whether the female half of the population is an oppressed group

Women aren't an oppressor group, men aren't an oppressor group. This is just SJWist/Marxist nonsense.

with most of the same problems as any oppressed minority in a class-based system or not.

The evolutionary origins and psychology of tribalism is very different from that of gender roles. Men and women never lived in separate tribes where there was an evolutionary advantage to favour those in your tribe over those in other tribes. This is one of the main problems with how progressives approach gender issues, they treat it the same as racial issues.

The report is talking about crime in general, not domestic violence...where the relatively greater capacity to cause physical injury places women at greater risk as the severity levels increase...many more women are killed by their spouses than the reverse as a result.

http://equalitycanada.com/cause/violenceagainstmen/

"Among men, 6.0% or about 585,000, encountered spousal violence during this period, compared with 6.4% or 601,000 women."

Men make up nearly half of victims of domestic violence, but victims are ridiculed by society and get basically zero of the support.

And that's just self-reported crime rates. There are social pressures for men not to report when they experience violence. There are also sexist 'primary aggressor laws' which add to the incentive of men not to report domestic violence because they know there is a good chance the police will arrest the man on the basis that he is a man.

But it's interesting how as long as there is one category of crime that is more prevalent for females than males, all male violence or crime related issues get dismissed by people like you. Why not address both sets of issues?

if you think back to your teenage days, you would place yourself in situations where you would be at risk much more than teenage girls would.

No, not really.

Gang rivalries...

Didn't have that.

even stupid school rivalries led to fights.

Didn't have that either.

Things were different than in ancient times when you were a teenager.

But that's one of the main issues when trying to bring up men's issues. Older people simply can't accept that things are different than ancient times when they were young.

One thing you can't deny is that females of all ages even, are at risk of sexual attacks from guys who see an opportunity.

I don't think that very old women, obese women and infant girls are at great risk of sexual attacks. But if you want to go down that route then all males of all ages are at risk of sexual attacks by others.

It's not something we worry about when we go out at night!

Speak for yourself. I'm certainly worried about going out at night, especially since I was violently assaulted and suffered brain damage.

Also, the fact that women are more concerned about their safety compared to men is partially a result of reproductive utility/male disposability. Since society values women more than men, we care about the safety of women more than men, so women are told to be more concerned about their safety and take precautions to avoid violence, where as men are not told to care about their safety and instead to 'man up' and stop being afraid.

The result of this gendered social conditioning is that men are more likely to be victims of crime.

http://www.victimsweek.gc.ca/res/r512.html

This started coming unglued when men developed ways to monopolize control of food supplies...

Way to completely ignore female agency.

the whole motivation for men taking control over women's reproduction didn't even exist!

What? You mean marriage and the move towards more monogamous societies? That is arguably due to the fact that monogamous relationships generally result in more resources being used to raise children and takes advantage of the biological incentive to make sure one's offspring are successful. Over millions of years, humans have developed larger brains, delayed puberty and longer childhoods, which means that they benefit greatly from having parents support them for years. This is why humans are more monogamous than chimpanzees.

Just sayin that any honest MRA's are going to realize that women are not their enemies

I don't think you should generalize MRAs like this. There are obviously traditionalist and misogynist MRAs, but not all are like this (and I don't think the majority are like this).

Edited September 11, 2015 by -1=e^ipi

[Freddy]

The flip side, obviously, is that men are expected to be stronger, more competent, more intelligent, more rational,more trustworthy than women, which is one of the reasons why they are put in the positions discussed.

I was linking the obvious fact that men perform better in Olympic because of of this constant disposability. It means that only the very strongest male genes usually make it to reproduction.

As opposed to the female counterpart genes who rarely don't make it to reproduction. There is less stress on being extremely performing, on all levels.

For me it all fits in very logically.

Edited September 11, 2015 by Freddy

[-1=e^ipi]

I was linking the obvious fact that men perform better in Olympic because of of this constant disposability. It means that only the very strongest male genes usually make it to reproduction.

Yes. Arguably the very fact that men are on average physically stronger than women (and maybe even the observed cognitive differences) is due to male disposability. There is much stronger selectional pressure on men than on women. Genetic studies suggest that the Y chromosome has a mucher higher rate of genetic change than other human chromosomes.

Edit: Obviously some species the female is larger than the male. However, this occurs pretty much entirely in egg-laying species. For pretty much all mammals (exceptions exist such as spotted hyena and blue whale), males are on average larger than females.

Edited September 11, 2015 by -1=e^ipi

[Freddy]

Yes. Arguably the very fact that men are on average physically stronger than women (and maybe even the observed cognitive differences) is due to male disposability. There is much stronger selectional pressure on men than on women. Genetic studies suggest that the Y chromosome has a mucher higher rate of genetic change than other human chromosomes.

Edit: Obviously some species the female is larger than the male. However, this occurs pretty much entirely in egg-laying species. For pretty much all mammals (exceptions exist such as spotted hyena and blue whale), males are on average larger than females.

Women ultimately could decide how the majority of humans evolve, as they are the primary chooser of who they reproduce with & what they find sexually attractive, If they wanted very weak none violent smaller then they are males. Then men would gradually evolve into that.

But a bad boy seems to be more popular.

Edited September 12, 2015 by Freddy

[cybercoma]

.

A lot of this and further argument can be cleared away with the question of whether you believe we have group or class interests or all of our interests are individual? Because my biggest objection to MRA propaganda is the same one I have against 'reverse' discrimination when the debate is about race issues. Not every white man gets much benefit out of a society that overtly (as in fascism) or covertly (as in the crap framed around individualism we have) that is based on white male supremacism. In the antebellum south, most southern whites did not, and could not afford to be slaveholders. In fact, their lives were greatly impoverished by all of the free labour at the disposal of a minority of wealthy southern white patriarchs, who ended up owning most of the good land and most of everything worth owning! And yet these southern rubes were the ones who fought and died to preserve slavery in the south!

Their main motivator was psychological, since economic factors would have led them to want to end slavery and seize the lands and the ill-gotten gains from the southern aristocracy. But they didn't, because at least when there was slavery, they didn't have much, but they were at least not in last place in the hierarchy. That was threatened by Abolition, and it was the primary reason why the low class southern whites filled the ranks of the Ku Klux Klan and demanded repressive measures be instituted to keep newly freed slaves "in their place!"

When it comes to gender issues, a lot of oxygen can be spared by getting to the issue of whether the female half of the population is an oppressed group, with most of the same problems as any oppressed minority in a class-based system or not. If women are usually in a weaker position and subject to violence, or even the threat of violence and back away in response to intimidation, then they are not truly equal in our society today...and many women, like most men, have become used to the way things are, and may not even be aware of how unfair or unequal our world actually is....although since most women are in the workforce today, they likely have a better understanding of the picture than a lot of women did two, three or more generations ago, when their roles and their lives were fixed set pieces planned in advance from early childhood.

what you're dancing around here is intersectionality.

[WIP]

This argument doesn't make sense. Just because cultural evolution is slower, doesn't somehow mean that societal evolution is outweighted by cultural evolution.

Are you talking about some bullcrap like memetics when you refer to "cultural evolution?" I'm referring to behaviours that are innately human and can't be created nor destroyed by culture! We may have cultures in modern society that are highly hierarchal and materialistic....but that doesn't mean that we have physically and mentally adapted to the new way of living. Like I said before, the researchers who connect the dots between a whole range of ills with rising inequality, have tapped into a fundamental dilemma that's not going to be easy to fix: we are not well equipped to deal with structural hierarchies/ but we don't know how to build complex societies that are egalitarian. The best solution would seem to be to strive for equality, rather than doing the exact opposite as we are today with globalized capitalism.

Human societies culturally evolved to become more agrarian after the end of the ice age, because conditions became more favourable to cultures with agrarian traits.

Recent anthropological studies regarding the Eastern Woodland natives over an approx. 1000 year period, showed that most tribes cycled back and forth several times between hunter/gatherer and horticultural (non-animal agriculture) living. The only correlating factor seems to be population densities, with the switch back away from settled farming occurring after recovery from likely population dieoffs caused by abrupt climate changes like droughts or periods of extreme cold weather. If the modern myth of progress had any connection, and people considered farming a step up from hunting and gathering, these indian tribes would have kept on farming straight through, instead of resorting to agriculture only when conditions were too crowded and made it necessary.

The real story of the rise of agriculture in Asia Minor and the Levant, indicates that hunter/gatherers began gathering and planting seeds of favourite plants during the Pleistocene, and likely unintentional creating the hybrid non-shattering grains that became the staple of agriculture later on, since some research botanists believe that the first domesticated rye grains could be as old as 18,000 years....long before the so called age of agriculture.

Unlike the Eastern Woodlands natives of North America, population levels remained too high to go back to the old ways of living in the forest...and likely inspired our Garden of Eden - type myths thereafter. So the condition favourable to cultures with agrarian traits was essentially having no other choice but to work the soil and scratch out a living as a farmer. Worth noting that it's been long realized now that the age of agriculture was a big step backwards for human health and vitality....as can be measured by the decline in stature and tooth decay when agriculture and relying on grains became the norm.

People should be treated as individuals. I agree with people like Martin Luther King Jr. when he says "people [should] not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character".

And MLK also knew that he didn't live in a colorblind nation, and there was no path to such colorblindness without the state stepping in to address the extreme poverty and deprivation in black communities that had been kept down in the decades after formal slavery ended. Right wing Americans won't tell you that part of MLK's message.....just as they won't mention his last speech before he was assassinated: Beyond Vietnam.

You mean you are a closet racist that can't accept egalitarianism, but also can't accept your racism, so you convince yourself to support inherently racist policies to show how 'not racist' you are?

Racist is denying that some people are discriminated against because of their race and/or ethnicity. The race/ethnic group which has power, doesn't get to cry racism when they don't get everything they want!~

This behaviour can be explained by evolutionary psychology. It's called tribalism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribalism#Tribalism_and_evolution

The evolutionary origins and psychology of tribalism is very different from that of gender roles. Men and women never lived in separate tribes where there was an evolutionary advantage to favour those in your tribe over those in other tribes. This is one of the main problems with how progressives approach gender issues, they treat it the same as racial issues.

Tribes are not an organizational structure found among immediate-return hunter/gatherer groups....likely because the need to be ready to pick up and move to a new location on short notice would make the creation of complex tribal organizing near impossible. Tribal life comes in later societies that spend more time settled or within limited ranges....EP fails again.

http://equalitycanada.com/cause/violenceagainstmen/

"Among men, 6.0% or about 585,000, encountered spousal violence during this period, compared with 6.4% or 601,000 women."

Men make up nearly half of victims of domestic violence, but victims are ridiculed by society and get basically zero of the support.

I wish there was a better copy to access, but regardless, the leaked Status of Women Report that the Harper Gov. was trying to keep a lid on....or flush down the toilet...who knows, but among its dismal findings for Canadian women are that 68% of police-reported domestic violence victims of all ages are women....so much for whatever bullshit your MRA sources pull up:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/status-of-women-internal-report-1.3214751

It shouldn't be rocket science! Men are on average larger and have greater upperbody mass than women. Add that to higher testosterone levels, and it shouldn't come as much of a surprise that women are going to be at much greater risk of violence than men are in these domestic violence cases.

[WIP]

what you're dancing around here is intersectionality.

Yes, but some of the culture theorists in the US are trying to turn intersectionality into some sort of scientific formula. It works as a general rule, that someone who's part of several oppressed groups...say a black lesbian woman is going to have to deal with discrimination and abuse on many fronts. But, the intersection police do not generally include economic class in the intersection...and it needs to be there....because someone like Oprah Winfrey is not an oppressed minority considering all the money she has to throw around.

[-1=e^ipi]

Are you talking about some bullcrap like memetics when you refer to "cultural evolution?"

Yes.

but that doesn't mean that we have physically and mentally adapted to the new way of living.

Obviously not, there hasn't been sufficient time for to adapt given the rate of technological change.

If the modern myth of progress had any connection, and people considered farming a step up from hunting and gathering, these indian tribes would have kept on farming straight through, instead of resorting to agriculture only when conditions were too crowded and made it necessary.

Who is arguing for this 'myth of progress' in this thread? No one.

The real story of the rise of agriculture in Asia Minor and the Levant, indicates that hunter/gatherers began gathering and planting seeds of favourite plants during the Pleistocene, and likely unintentional creating the hybrid non-shattering grains that became the staple of agriculture later on, since some research botanists believe that the first domesticated rye grains could be as old as 18,000 years....long before the so called age of agriculture.

The fact that humans started attempting agriculture before the end of the last ice age doesn't demerit the fact that agriculture didn't take off until the end of the last ice age.

and likely inspired our Garden of Eden - type myths thereafter.

I hope I'm not included in your 'our'.

So the condition favourable to cultures with agrarian traits was essentially having no other choice but to work the soil and scratch out a living as a farmer.

Your model of reality treats population density as exogenous.

Why was population density high in the first place? Because of agriculture. Agriculture caused higher population density, not the other way around.

Racist is denying that some people are discriminated against because of their race and/or ethnicity.

Who in this thread is denying this?

The race/ethnic group which has power

And here I thought that people are individuals, and it is individuals that have power.

But I guess according to progressive SJW logic, Steven Harper is a white male with power, therefore I have power... somehow.

Tribes are not an organizational structure found among immediate-return hunter/gatherer groups

Could you please define immediate-return hunter/gatherer groups?

Tribal life comes in later societies that spend more time settled or within limited ranges....EP fails again.

So the fact that the frequency of conflicts increases as population density increases somehow causes evolutionary psychology to fail?

among its dismal findings for Canadian women are that 68% of police-reported domestic violence victims of all ages are women

1. This doesn't refute the statistics by CAFE, it just compliments it.

2. Men are less likely to report domestic violence than women due to social stigma.

3. All groups like CAFE want to do is point out that there is violence against men and women and both issues need to be addressed. But there is basically zero support for male victims despite them making up a significant share of total victims.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/status-of-women-internal-report-1.3214751

I read/skimmed the 'report' a while ago. It doesn't have thorough statistical analysis or original research or try to test hypotheses. Rather it is just takes dogmatic approach where it seeks a certain conclusion and then looks for whatever random statistics support the conclusion. It reeks of confirmation bias.

[Black Dog]

http://equalitycanada.com/cause/violenceagainstmen/

"Among men, 6.0% or about 585,000, encountered spousal violence during this period, compared with 6.4% or 601,000 women."

Men make up nearly half of victims of domestic violence, but victims are ridiculed by society and get basically zero of the support.

And that's just self-reported crime rates. There are social pressures for men not to report when they experience violence. There are also sexist 'primary aggressor laws' which add to the incentive of men not to report domestic violence because they know there is a good chance the police will arrest the man on the basis that he is a man.

As usual, the issue of IPV gets complicated by simplistic readings of statistics like this. From the same statscan report:

As in previous surveys, women reported more serious forms of spousal violence than men.

For example, 34% of females who reported spousal violence on the survey said they had been sexually assaulted, beaten, choked or threatened with a gun or a knife by their partner or ex-partner in the previous five years. This was three times the proportion for men (10%).

As in 2004, 3 in 10 spousal violence victims said they had been injured during the commission of the offence. Women were more than twice as likely as males to state they had been injured.

So claims about men and women being equally violent ring false when they ignore the severity of the violence and the context in which it occurs (eg self-defence). A shove is not a punch, a slap is not a choke.

I don't think you should generalize MRAs like this. There are obviously traditionalist and misogynist MRAs, but not all are like this (and I don't think the majority are like this).

Nope, just the most prominent and vocal parts of the movement.

Just because there are some men that are misogynists and harass women, doesn't mean that all men do. That's a generalization.

Oooh I'm, so close to MRA Bingo!

Welcome to the psychology of white knights and male feminists. You convince yourself that 'you are one of the good ones' to give yourself self value, make yourself feel 'manly' and hide your sexism.

"White Knights" THERE IT IS THAT'S BINGO!

Edited September 14, 2015 by Black Dog