Deconstructing a few Manosphere Myths: Man the Hunter and Woman the Dependent Mooch

The Cuck

I can think of few things more despised by TRP than being a cuckold (which is apparently as bad to you guys as violent rape), and its not hard to see why; being a cuckold encompasses several of the top most feared things on TRP: (female) promiscuity, the failed pair bond and paternity uncertainty. These fears can be seen expressed by RPers in various ways such as the propagation of certain ideas about the nature of women and our evolutionary past.

The Fear of (Female) Promiscuity

A great deal of energy is expended by RPers on the subject of female promiscuity and how to avoid it (or take advantage of it, but that discussion is for another day). Take this common RP trope for example,

• "Men are instinctively repulsed by women with high partner counts and find it deeply unattractive."^1

The idea that men possess an evolutionary instinct to avoid committing to promiscuous women comes from an old theory about human evolution based off the male/female reproductive functions, i.e. fe(eeeee)males invest more in offspring (few eggs, pregnancy) than males who produce many sperm and have little reproductive downtime. It usually goes something like this:

• "In primordial times men went out and hunted and brought home meat to feed women and children, who sat around being dependent on them. In most versions, the story is set in nuclear units, such that men provide only for their own family, and women have no community to help with the kids. In every version, women are baggage that breeds."^2

We see this story repeated again and again not only by RPers arguing female nature, but by MRA's who say civilizations were built by men to protect women and their reproductive vulnerabilities.

• "Men are not your enemy. We build this entire society to support and protect you."

• "A woman needs to nourish the child while it comes to term, takes significant health risks in giving birth, and then has to make sure the kid has what it needs to survive. She can't stop the father from running off."^1

• "A sensible woman limits access to her vagina to strong, worthy men. Hence women being the gatekeepers of sex."^1

Woman, Man's Vulnerable Dependent.

This idea of the man-hunter being the provider and protector of the vulnerable pregnant woman comes from an incorrect view of hunter-gatherer life, that near-constantly pregnant women were quite helpless and entirely dependent on her mate for food and protection, hence the reason she had better not make a "bad choice" in choosing her mate as TRP so often likes to harp on:

• "Women are also the bottleneck in reproducing. If she makes a bad choice, she can't just quickly cancel it off and try again"^1

• "So if a man comes across a woman who spread her legs over and over, here comes the killer question: what is wrong with her? Why is she making such stupid choices? Why can't she keep anyone?"^1

• "The first and most common defense for single moms is "What if they divorced or left an abusive or bad man". Well that's simple: Single Moms are Single Moms because they're bad decision makers and let their emotions lead them into a bad situation. Bad Decision Making is the worst trait a woman could have."^3

But from what we know of hunter-gatherer life, nothing could be further from the truth.

Morris’s claim about the “extremely long periods of dependency of the young” that kept the females “almost perpetually confined to the home base” is patently untrue in the case of the San, as Thomas learned.

The whole group moved regularly, and families could also move independently of the group. The women Thomas met went out and gathered food almost daily. Children who were too large to be carried and too small to keep up were often tended by someone staying at camp while their mothers roamed. Thomas makes clear that hunting and gathering are not completely separate activities and speaks of “slow game — the tortoises, snakes, snails, and baby birds that are often found by people who are gathering.”

Not only were men not the sole providers of food, in other words, they weren’t even the sole providers of meat. Which is not to say that men didn’t bring home meat or that they weren’t important. It’s just that everyone brought home food, even kids. It was all important.^2

...

In many historical societies, she observes, women played a key part in net hunting since the technique did not call for brute strength nor did it place young mothers in physical peril. Among Australian aborigines, for example, women as well as men knotted the mesh, laboring for as much as two or three years on a fine net. Among native North American groups, they helped lay out their handiwork on poles across a valley floor. Then the entire camp joined forces as beaters. Fanning out across the valley, men, women, and children alike shouted and screamed, flushing out game and driving it in the direction of the net. Everybody and their mother could participate, says Soffer. Some people were beating, others were screaming or holding the net. And once you got the net on these animals, they were immobilized. You didn’t need brute force. You could club them, hit them any old way.^4

Man, Bringer of Meat, Gatekeeper of Commitment

The idea of men as the sole or main providers also seems to be where the notion of men as the evolutionary "gatekeepers of commitment" comes from:

• "He was in complete control of what he spent his resources on, thus men being the gatekeepers of commitment.^1

But again, from what we know of hunter-gatherer societies this is all wrong. In most cases big game was shared equally among all members of the community:

For example, hunter-gatherers everywhere have rules for distributing foods and sharing the few material goods they own...When hunters bring a large kill into the camp, it is a time of general rejoicing. The only person who cannot rejoice is the hunter who killed the animal; he must behave modestly and act as if the animal is skinny and worthless. The meat from the kill is then distributed to families and individuals in the camp in a manner that follows a game-like set of rules, though the rules differ from society to society. One rule specifies who may carve up the meat and distribute it in the first wave of distribution. Among the Ju/’hoansi, the official initial “owner” of the meat, who has the right to distribute it, is not the hunter but the person who owned the arrow that killed the animal. There is much giving and lending of arrows, among all members of the band, women as well as men, so anyone might own an arrow and lend it to a successful hunter (Thomas, 2006). Some other hunter-gatherer societies likewise attribute initial game ownership to the person who owned the implement (such as arrow, poisoned dart, or net) that was used to make the kill or capture (Wiessner, 1996). Such rules assure that even the good will that is generated by the distribution of meat does not go just to successful hunters, but is distributed throughout the band.

In apparently all hunter-gatherer groups there is no economic advantage in being the distributor of meat. That person is never allowed to take a larger share than anyone else, and often he must take a smaller share. Some societies have explicit rules for the order of distribution. Among the Yiwara, for example, the man who brings home a kill must give the first and best portions to those who are least closely related to him by blood, including his in-laws, and must leave for his immediate family and himself the least desired portion (Gould, 1969). Among the Hazda, pregnant women are given first priority (Weissner, 1996).^5

So the idea that a woman will pay dearly in reduced protection or provision by "choosing the wrong man" is based off a poor understanding of hunter-gatherer life. What can we then conclude about men and their "instinctive" disgust of promiscuous women? Well actually one of your fellow RPers already came to that conclusion:

• "Genetically, humans are still geared heavily towards hunter gatherer life, given that we spent the last million years in this state and the last 10,000 in agriculture. Women do have a biological screening process via attraction to select for healthy and sexy males. Genetic deformities and general lack of health were much more serious back in the days of hunter gatherers. After all TRP keeps telling us all we need to work out more and give a shit about our SMV anyway. The fine distinction from all this information should tell you it is much more likely the status seeking and wealth oriented focus that modern women display is a result of cultural conditioning."^6

(By the way, this post had +71 upvotes. The one on promiscuity had +261. The one on why single moms are the worst ever? +321)

This is what feminists have been saying all along. A patriarchal culture ("meaning both male domination and societies obsessed with patrilineal descent, which requires strict control over female sexuality"^2) with an emphasis on young women to choose good providers as mates made sense during a time when women had to rely on men economically, and why the first wave of feminism focused on obtaining real political power for women; from the political power came the opportunity for economic independence from men (second wave feminism) and we're still dealing with the vestiges of those old cultural mores even though women are now in a position to provide for themselves (third and fourth wave feminism). It's also the same reason why some men still wrinkle their noses in disgust at promiscuous women: traditional cultural attitudes about women and sex which emphasized female chastity in order to secure paternity certainty are still around.

TL;DR: There is no genetic/evolutionary basis for TRPs slut hate, what RPers call "gynocentrism" and "rampant hypergamy" is simply women rediscovering the freedom to fuck and have families with people they're actually attracted to rather than viewing their sexuality as a commodity to trade for survival.

Citations

1. Promiscuity and Why Men Are Repulsed by Women With High Partner Counts

2. Shooting Down Man the Hunter

3. Single Moms Are The Only Thing Worse Than Sluts

4. New Women of the Ice Age

5. Rules for Sharing in the Social Game of Life

6. The "BroScience" component of TRP

7. Hunter-Gatherer Infancy and Childhood