Is there anything good about men?

PickMeMrKotter · 2010-11-30T19:53:59+00:00

tl;dr; Men are naturally more extreme than women at both the top and bottom of the curve.

Studies show that in situations where there is a ceiling but no floor (or a general skew towards the top, like grades), men have averages that are artificially worse, and in situations where there is a floor but no ceiling (like wages), men have averages that are artificially better.

DeadShawn · 2010-11-30T21:15:32+00:00

The thing that always gets me about this article:

The first big, basic difference has to do with what I consider to be the most underappreciated fact about gender. Consider this question: What percent of our ancestors were women? It’s not a trick question, and it’s not 50%. True, about half the people who ever lived were women, but that’s not the question. We’re asking about all the people who ever lived who have a descendant living today. Or, put another way, yes, every baby has both a mother and a father, but some of those parents had multiple children. Recent research using DNA analysis answered this question about two years ago. Today’s human population is descended from twice as many women as men. I think this difference is the single most underappreciated fact about gender. To get that kind of difference, you had to have something like, throughout the entire history of the human race, maybe 80% of women but only 40% of men reproduced.

luckykobold · 2010-11-30T19:45:21+00:00

Conclusion

To summarize my main points:

A few lucky men are at the top of society and enjoy the culture’s best rewards. Others, less fortunate, have their lives chewed up by it. Culture uses both men and women, but most cultures use them in somewhat different ways. Most cultures see individual men as more expendable than individual women, and this difference is probably based on nature, in whose reproductive competition some men are the big losers and other men are the biggest winners. Hence it uses men for the many risky jobs it has.

Men go to extremes more than women, and this fits in well with culture using them to try out lots of different things, rewarding the winners and crushing the losers.

Culture is not about men against women. By and large, cultural progress emerged from groups of men working with and against other men. While women concentrated on the close relationships that enabled the species to survive, men created the bigger networks of shallow relationships, less necessary for survival but eventually enabling culture to flourish. The gradual creation of wealth, knowledge, and power in the men’s sphere was the source of gender inequality. Men created the big social structures that comprise society, and men still are mainly responsible for this, even though we now see that women can perform perfectly well in these large systems.

What seems to have worked best for cultures is to play off the men against each other, competing for respect and other rewards that end up distributed very unequally. Men have to prove themselves by producing things the society values. They have to prevail over rivals and enemies in cultural competitions, which is probably why they aren’t as lovable as women.

The essence of how culture uses men depends on a basic social insecurity. This insecurity is in fact social, existential, and biological. Built into the male role is the danger of not being good enough to be accepted and respected and even the danger of not being able to do well enough to create offspring.

The basic social insecurity of manhood is stressful for the men, and it is hardly surprising that so many men crack up or do evil or heroic things or die younger than women. But that insecurity is useful and productive for the culture, the system.

Again, I’m not saying it’s right, or fair, or proper. But it has worked. The cultures that have succeeded have used this formula, and that is one reason that they have succeeded instead of their rivals.

I didn't read the whole thing and neither will you.

PickMeMrKotter · 2010-11-30T19:57:51+00:00

Did you write this? If so, it's good and seems well-rounded, but I have a question for you:

the principle of equal pay for less work. Personally, I support that principle.

Why do you support equal pay for unequal work?

Thanks!

Il128 · 2010-11-30T20:13:13+00:00

Earning Manhood The phrase “Be a man” is not as common as it once was, but there is still some sense that manhood must be earned. Every adult female is a woman and is entitled to respect as such, but many cultures withhold respect from the males until and unless the lads prove themselves. This is of course tremendously useful for the culture, because it can set the terms by which males earn respect as men, and in that way it can motivate the men to do things that the culture finds productive.

Some sociological writings about the male role have emphasized that to be a man, you have to produce more than you consume. That is, men are expected, first, to provide for themselves: If somebody else provides for you, you’re less than a man. Second, the man should create some additional wealth or surplus value so that it can provide for others in addition to himself. These can be his wife and children, or others who depend on him, or his subordinates, or even perhaps just paying taxes that the government can use. Regardless, you’re not a man unless you produce at that level.

Again, I’m not saying men have it worse than women. There are plenty of problems and disadvantages that cultures put on women. My point is just that cultures find men useful in these very specific ways. Requiring the man to earn respect by producing wealth and value that can support himself and others is one of these. Women do not face this particular challenge or requirement. These demands also contribute to various male behavior patterns. The ambition, competition, and striving for greatness may well be linked to this requirement to fight for respect. All-male groups tend to be marked by putdowns and other practices that remind everybody that there is NOT enough respect to go around, because this awareness motivates each man to try harder to earn respect. This, incidentally, has probably been a major source of friction as women have moved into the workplace, and organizations have had to shift toward policies that everyone is entitled to respect. The men hadn’t originally built them to respect everybody. One of the basic, most widely accepted gender differences is agency versus communion. Male agency may be partly an adaptation to this kind of social life based on larger groups, where people aren’t necessarily valued and one has to strive for respect. To succeed in the male social sphere of large groups, you need an active, agentic self to fight for your place, because it isn’t given to you and only a few will be successful. Even the male ego, with its concern with proving oneself and competing against others, seems likely to be designed to cope with systems where there is a shortage of respect and you have to work hard to get some — or else you’ll be exposed to humiliation.

BabylonDrifter · 2010-12-01T02:18:48+00:00

This was a very good read, thanks for posting it. I hope the writer's book gets published, because it's a very even-handed and insightful thought experiment backed by decent observations and data. The fact that the writer manages to illustrate these points without setting off the classic gender-based landmines is heartening.

funkyloki · 2010-12-01T03:32:23+00:00

way to live up to your name

jumpinconclusions · 2010-12-01T03:59:47+00:00

Very nice read. I remember reading, or hearing a line that states the biggest problem between men and women is our not recognizing we're to different animals that have to live together to survive. I wish I could remember what I soaked that idea up from.

Lovekraft · 2010-12-01T01:12:14+00:00

Men are the artists, who will push the vision forward, without being beholden to others.

plagiaristic_passion · 2010-11-30T22:02:34+00:00

I find it funny that while touching on the subject of the large statistical difference between men and women who have been jailed or on death row, they don't mention the overwhelming ratio of male to female sex offenders.

2010-11-30T20:59:23+00:00

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wondergay · 2010-12-01T22:50:00+00:00

You know what would be hilarious? To see women try to survive without men. Even if women could breed together to make more women, can you imagine how fast women would die off without men around to keep them alive?

2010-12-01T03:22:05+00:00

Any woman who uses the internet owes a debt to a few men: Brian Kernighan, Dennis Ritchie, and Ken Thompson first and foremost. These three men and their colleagues at AT&T's Bell Labs invented the cornerstones of the internet: UNIX and the C programming language. The name of the titan whose shoulders these men stood upon is Alan Turing, who cracked Enigma during WWII and was murdered by the British government for the "crime" of being gay soon after the war's end.

Title	Is there anything good about men?
Author	thetrollking
Upvotes	27
Comments	43
Date	November 30, 2010 7:27 PM UTC (15 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/ee1v2/is_there_anything_good_about_men/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/is-there-anything-good-about-men.1045568 https://theredarchive.com/post/1045568

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