Today I [33M] went on a date with a visiting lecturer of history [33F] that happened to focus on male and female roles in the early to mid 20th century.

I was really interested in history and wanted to know how people saw things differently, and started asking about life before WW2. The word patriarchy was used alot but never defined or elaborated on and male behaviour was her focus. So much so it was her anchor point (the metric used to judge every other behaviour by, like if left handed people only ever defined and measured themselves by right handed peoples behaviour).

I incidentally have a MSc in Behavioural Evolution (from 2017 so a bit dated) and ironically could weigh in to all of her arguments about sex based relationships with good knowledge of humans and the exact animals she brought up.

Short version is she wanted to find an argument to the age old issue of 'it takes two to tango' and was trying to find any way to disagree, however her points there were also my points.

Some discussions that made her frustrated. 1.) Monogamy is a behavioural strategy to keep males around by helping to ensure their offspring is there's. It persists if the offspring find it difficult to survive without two parents.

2.) You can make marriage extremely gynocentric and still have males partake in it (to an extent). You could have a system where they loose more than half there money, get none from the women, pay alimony forever, never get the kids or see them and go to prison if they can't pay an excessive amount of child support so long as it ensures offspring. I used red back spiders to argue this as they willingly get themselves killed to have a second chance to reproduce as they can push up vital organs to survive the bite from the female after mating, then go back for seconds and then get eaten as evolutionary, those that would do so get a better chance at having children. The females are under material selection and need to stay alive to give birth to the offspring and rather than just care about the next generation, care about their grandchildren (as they have the reproductive leverage to do so). As such pick not what males she likes but what males she thinks other females will like to better ensure her sons are better lottery tickets.

3.) [Highly Insulting Theory Warning] Mallard ducks can choose who gets them pregnant by shifting their bodys (using contracting vaginas and fake vaginal canals) but rather than eliminating rapist behaviour with this method, have choosen to prefer the sometimes rapey behaviour of favoured males as it likely could cause sons who can better breed with other females down the line.

4.) All of her goals could be attained by granting equality for everyone indivially and not based on equality for two categories of people. If you were the emperor of an island and saw 80% of men working 45 hours per week and 20% working 40 hours, and 80% of women working 40 hours per week and 20% working 45 hours per week and you ensures the sexes were equally paid. You would screw over every hardworking person and motivates everyone else to do less. As such it needs to be based on indivial circumstances for each person.

5.) If the roles were reversed you would have way more feminists. If women worked and men stayed home with any kids thorughout much of history, spending only the women's money, if women were drafted, if they went to prison easier and for longer periods of time for the same crime, if men lived off women to the extent they got alot of alimony, if the retirement age was higher for them than men, if prison rape was joked about for them, etc. She couldn't disagree on that one.

6.) In terms of the gender wage gap, if the whole western culture was more equal there would not be as much of a gap. If maternity time was the same, as the women could use all the help, retirement age was the same in every country, to prevent men bring in higher positions for longer, if there was an equal change for men to get the kids, go to prison, get off homelessness, etc.

6.) Nature's matriarchies are crueler than she thinks but can work well in large open space environments like with elephants, orca whales and such. Patriarchies in nature are never actually regnogised by evolutionary biologists worth their salt as almost all male behaviour (except seahorses and such) are either facilitated or selected for by the females like dogs have been made from wolves.

7.) Odd one to say at the time but if both genders had programmable robots that could earn a wage, we would make them do useful activities (building, hunting, protecting) work longer hours than us (we aim up with what we want) get positions of power to enable us to have that power and have us spend all their income. If you wanted it to pleasure you aswell, we would have it care about our satisfaction above its own. Women can have that and to be fair if men could get that they probably would aswell.

In the end she wanted to find anything to disagree with but couldn't and unfortunately she works with a coworker of mine and now i might get a bad reputation in the office [insert Seinfeld soundtrack].