History of male disposability as a concept

DavidByron2 · 2014-05-25T17:12:16+00:00

Well certainly it was a concept in Warren Farrell's "The Myth of Male Power" although I don't recall if he used that phrase.

"if we cared for males like we care for whales..."

Chapter 10

http://www.warrenfarrell.org/TheBook/

As for before then I am not sure. A lot of the labor movement (men's rights movement of the 19th century and early twentieth) was about safety issues in work because the disposability was so accute.

But I think in seeking to make disposability the core "everything stems from this one thing" concept GWW might have been the first. You'd have to ask her where she got it from.

Still I am not sure I agree that everything stems from this because whereas male disposability seems to be fairly ubiquitous, another set of issues based on men being seen as the "ugly" sex, and women as the sexy beautiful one, seems culturally specific. ie it wasn't always that way inn history. Some cultures said that it was the male form, not the female form, that was considered the more beautiful, and others said that it was women, not men, who were insatiable sex hounds / perverts always chasing after their carnal desires. again in some cultures male homosexuality was celebrated as the highest form of companionship, and not condemned as the worst kind as today.

Steel_Within · 2014-05-25T17:56:57+00:00

Nature brought about the manifestation of disposable sexes or organisms, and as such the concept of it has been used for ages.

You probably actually want to look at a biologist/anthropologist, like Darwin or Briffault to point out "that's the way it is", and then the concept became transferred to humans.

Men pick mates based on fertility (both in anatomy and behavior) because humans are (evolutionarily) recently bipedal, and birth problems are common. Women pick men based on survivability (size, strength, ability to gather resources). Survivability is a much harder thing to gauge than fertility, and as a result it's difficult to know "what women want". Often they end up wanting things that can't manifest in the same person because they are mutually exclusive. Often in that situation a woman will try to get some resources from some men, and different resources from another. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXQwtTOnLvg

While the value of sperm remains low relative to ovum/uteri, the survivability and amount of resources a single man can generate varies based on many factors. So biologically, men will remain disposable relative to women, yet in certain situations men can be valued relative to women when counting all factors.

So yeah, it's tied to evolution, and is very old. It would be considered a bad thing in any culture transitioning from men having less value to having more value.

MRSPArchiver · 2014-05-25T16:20:21+00:00

Post text automatically copied here. (Why?) (Report a problem.)

Title	History of male disposability as a concept
Author	OirishM
Upvotes	12
Comments	17
Date	May 25, 2014 4:19 PM UTC (12 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/26gbfa/history_of_male_disposability_as_a_concept/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/history-of-male-disposability-as-a-concept.1000309 https://theredarchive.com/post/1000309

Comments