The "disposability" of men

hyperrreal · 2014-08-21T22:17:52+00:00

Historically I think it was an issue of simple reproductive economics. The Red Queen explains the issue pretty well. For decades scientists were unable to build a working model for why so many animals had evolved to reproduce sexually as opposed to asexually. No matter what advantages they conferred to the sexual animals, they were always outbred by the asexual organisms and went extinct.

The existence of men is problematic on a very basic level, because they cannot produce children. The reproductive power of species with men is so limited compared to asexual species. Eventually we did figure out the advantage the sex gives us (greater resistance to bacteria and other pathogens), but that doesn't change that reality that in a competitive ecosystem, every female organism is essential.

As a result, the groups and eventually societies and civilizations that survived were the ones that protected women, and used men to do dangerous, violent, or risky jobs.

MagicGainbow · 2014-08-22T07:58:35+00:00

ThorLives · 2014-08-21T21:44:30+00:00

Here's a few examples:

The draft is male-only. (Admittedly, women are generally not seen as fit for combat, so maybe it's just a matter of picking out the human-beings in a society that are "fit for combat".)

News reports will say X dead, including Y women and children. (Because women and children are seen as more precious and innocent, so their deaths are seen as especially tragic.)

News reports can often get obsessed with missing white women. Some people rightly point out the racial dimension to this, but I'm surprised how often people overlook the "women" part of that phrase. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_white_woman_syndrome

On the Titanic, women and children were saved at much higher rates than men. 75% of the women survived, but only 19% of the men. This is mostly because you'd be dead in minutes if you got into the cold Atlantic Ocean, so only people in the life boats survived. Admittedly, only one side of the ship was following the "women and children first" rule. Apparently, the other side of the ship was "whoever got there". I've read that studies of other boat sinkings often had large numbers of women among the dead, but I don't know the exact details (because they didn't provide them). Obviously, if a ship sank quickly, there would be no opportunity to follow the "women and children first" rule because everything was happening too quickly (thus, having a large number of women among the dead is not an indication that "women and children first" was ignored). Titanic statistics here: http://www.icyousee.org/titanic.html

Often times, these kinds of things are intentionally ignored. For example, a while back, someone had posted an article about how first-class passengers (who were wealthy) were saved at higher rates (62%) than third-class passengers (who were poor) (25%). They used this to talk about "privilege" with regard to class, but the effects of class on survival rates was actually smaller than the gender-based survival rates (75% vs 19%), yet they completely ignored that part of the story. I found it annoying.

Whenever there is a large number of people killed, women's killings generally get more press than men's killings. For example, there have been some mass killings and kidnappings of males, but the Nigerian kidnapping of schoolgirls gets massively more media coverage. For example, in Bosnia, there was a targeting mass killing of males: "The events in Srebrenica in 1995 included the killing of more than 8,000 Bosniak or Bosnian Muslim men and boys, as well as the mass expulsion of another 25,000–30,000 Bosniak civilians, in and around the town of Srebrenica in Bosnia and Herzegovina" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosnian_Genocide While people knew about the Bosnian genocide, not very many people know it was aimed at males in particular. There are other stories like this that just don't get the same media coverage. The Rwandan genocide also disproportionately targeted males - "Rwanda has become a country of women. It is currently estimated that 70 percent of the population is female" - http://www.hrw.org/reports/1996/Rwanda.htm Some other examples: http://malemattersusa.wordpress.com/2012/01/25/the-greater-outrage-for-female-victims-of-governments-brutality-perpetuates-risk-to-both-sexes/

Hillary Clinton had the audacity to say that women were the victims because their husbands, sons, and fathers were killed. (As if the actual murder victims were somehow lesser victims than their female relatives.) "Women have always been the primary victims of war. Women lose their husbands, their fathers, their sons in combat. Women often have to flee from the only homes they have ever known. Women are often the refugees from conflict and sometimes, more frequently in today’s warfare, victims. Women are often left with the responsibility, alone, of raising the children.” (Imagine how bizarre that would sound if the genders were reversed: "Males have always been the primary victims of war. Men lose their wives, their mothers, and their daughters in combat." I'm sure it would make a lot of women angry because it would sound like you were saying "a woman's only value in life is what value she provides to a male".)

SirNemesis · 2014-08-21T21:31:16+00:00

Can you explain in what way has the society treated men as more "disposable" than women, especially those who are no longer fertile?

That's an important qualifier. Women's value comes from their fertility. Once they're past reproductive age, they become almost as disposable as men. Although they aren't sent off to war as often as men, you won't see missing white-woman syndrome affecting older women.

GridReXX · 2014-08-21T22:40:24+00:00

Eggs are precious, sperm is plentiful?

On top of that there's always a guy willing to have sex.

If you want society to progress, save the eggs first.

squirrellywhirly · 2014-08-23T21:32:00+00:00

The "disposable" man trope is actually men's own doing. When you purposely exclude women from doing high risk jobs, from participating in the military, or from being able to hold a job that supports themselves and their family (not the case anymore, but the effects of this still linger, today), you set yourself up to shoulder the burden of everything else, because well, women just aren't strong enough, competent enough or whatever other reasoning.

This is exactly what feminism has fought so hard to reverse. It is bullshit that men have had to shoulder these burdens, so why fight the attempts to abolish these constructs?

[deleted] · 2014-08-25T19:30:29+00:00

[permanently deleted]

adrixshadow · 2014-08-21T21:27:07+00:00

It means when a conquering nation comes and kills all the husbands the women become much more flexible towards the conquerors.

And life goes on.

especially those who are no longer fertile?

I'm not sure what you mean by this, a man is always fertile as long as he is still alive.

Phokus · 2014-08-21T23:53:55+00:00

Along with the economic/evolutionary explanations: men are attracted to a much wider range of women than women are to men. Thus men naturally value women while women do not have to value men as much.

[deleted] · 2014-08-22T17:25:07+00:00

Men do the vast majority of dangerous jobs, suffer the vast majority of on-the-job injuries and deaths, always suffer the worst casualties in war, are logically the last to get off a sinking ship, rarely get primary custody of their children regardless of individual circumstance, have lower life expectancy (sometimes dramatically lower), have weaker support networks, higher suicide rates, and are shut out of the sexual marketplace if they're unable to make a decent living. Nature and society uses men in the meat grinder, and punishes the weak.

JP_Whoregan · 2014-08-23T17:32:09+00:00

It's quite simple, really. One man is capable of impregnating hundreds, if not theoretically thousands of women during his lifetime. However, a woman can only have, perhaps at most, 10 or 15 babies during her fertile years. A tribe with 100 men and one woman would have a tragically low birth replacement rate, generation to generation. However, a tribe with 1 man and 100 women could expand exponentially, as the single man could "sire" babies with, theoretically all 100 women in the tribe. A man can father children from puberty until death; a woman only has, realistically 20 to 25 years of viable (i.e, low birth defect) fertility, from around puberty to 35 or maybe 40 years old.

This is why men are viewed as disposable; women carry the babies, men don't.

ms_kittyfantastico · 2014-08-21T21:36:12+00:00

Are you referring to war and putting women and children first?

masterrod · 2014-08-25T14:45:28+00:00

Men attain more value in society through feats of strength, tending towards death, and securing life. (Money, war, political power, etc.)

However, women gain the most value by cultivating and raising a family.

NegativeNancy1 · 2014-08-29T14:14:42+00:00

yes it's true, men are more disposable than women. the reason is logical, cold and simple, and I don't understand why so many people don't get it: nature ( or rather, her design).

if you have a village of 50 men and 50 women, and 40 men get killed in a war, the remaining 10 men can all impregnate the 50 suriving women, thus ensure that their tribe doesn't die out. if all those 50 women are impregnated by 10 men and carry to term, you have 50 new specimen in order to continue your tribe.

if, on the other hand, 40 women die, the remaining 10 women CAN be f****ed by the 50 men, of course....but they will only carry 10 or 20 new babies (if they all became pregnant with twins in a very best case scenario) into this world (over the same course of time as the tribe scenario above). Hence, the tribe would be at a disadvantage, and at risk for going extinct

(a phenomenon which, by the way, we are sadly experiencing with white nations on a large scale right now).

Unicornrows · 2014-08-22T08:20:23+00:00

A lot of this thread seems to be straw-man arguments against feminism, but when I saw your OP, I immediately thought of this essay: http://denisdutton.com/baumeister.htm

Tyrien · 2014-08-22T12:58:26+00:00

You're asking TRP why society thinks of men as more "disposable" than women? Doesn't TRP have some theory about spinning plates, and 'cum and dump'?

Title	The "disposability" of men
Author	fizolof
Upvotes	7
Comments	266
Date	August 21, 2014 9:20 PM UTC (11 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/PurplePillDebate
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/PurplePillDebate/comments/2e7uxd/the_disposability_of_men/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/PurplePillDebate/the-disposability-of-men.285045 https://theredarchive.com/post/285045

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