Men on the other hand are fathers, and as fathers have great influence over their sons. The quality of the father is a huge factor in how the son turns out.

So I think both sexes have the power to change male behavior (and female, but we were talking about male behavior here).

Yes! My post was a train of thought with a knot of intertwined issues, but this is central. Individual mate choice is strongly determined by the forces of sexual selection, and those forces, and the power structures that result, have lots of consequences, many negative - including, variously, being the ultimate cause of many cases of rape, the ultimate cause of much inequality, and the perpetuation of an increasingly pointless, greedy and selfish society. What served us well in the last 100,000 years does not seem to be working so well today.

Now returning to my critique of feminism in the light of this: if i’m not mistaken, one of the central tenets of feminism is that men as a group are collectively responsible when any man rapes any woman, as if we had the power to change it. But I believe women themselves actively select for the very characteristics that will ensure the continued ocurrence of rape within our society. In other words its a closed loop. Further, while neither sex is ‘responsible’ for the situation, I believe women have far more power than men to break the loop, because they are the selectors - its their mate choices that determine what future society will look like.

Im aware that this is not science but conjecture, or maybe even pseudo-science, but it rings true to me. I’m prepared to be educated if others with real experience in these fields have arrived at contradictory opinions.

I think it would be interesting to know more about the motivations and thoughts of rapists. Does anyone know of any good research?

When it comes to male and female (mating) behavior I think it goes far beyond individual choice. Strong forces such as needing to survive and needing your offspring to survive has shaped the choices of women and men. So I wouldn’t say that we can blame either gender for how our systems of attraction developed.

@hausfrau: ‘One thing to remember is that even tho they claim they don’t, women *really* despise a weak/tolerant man’

I really do believe that this is true, and if we could prove the truth of it, how telling would it be for so many issues discussed on this site!

Along the these lines, I believe that many younger women (ie at the age when they are most actively looking for sexual partners) overwhelmingly go for physically powerful, dominant, arrogant, and risk-taking men - ie, the alpha males. So much so, that a some of these men come to believe that all women are available to them (which in some cases is not terribly far from the truth). I feel that this situation is at play in many rapes. Then again, men at the bottom of the dominance pile may get no partner and may rape out of frustration, or because they have become misogynist as a result. I cant say this is the only, or even the main cause of rape - I dont know- however I do believe strongly that this mechanism is at play.

Lets assume for a moment that we could prove that the above effect does exist and is an ultimate cause of many ills like rape, inequality in wages and distribution of wealth. Which would be the group who could do most about this situation by changing their behavior? Women or men?

So lets further assume we approach the women - for the good of humanity you understand - and ask them to change that behavior, to try to eliminate the worst effects of the alpha male phenomenon . How far would we get do you think? Destructive as it is for modern society, I dont think we will see that end of the alpha male anytime soon, because it’s biology, and not easily accessible to change through rational action.

It feels to me though that in many cases, feminists think that its perfectly reasonable that men change their biology, as if we could change it at will, or through legislation.

“But the point is that most people don’t think that you can do the list that I made, while feminism has taught everyone about the double standards that affect women.”

But most people don’t actually think about what feminists say (they say a lot when the day is long but only catch a flavour which eventually coalesces into a POV, the more they hear it. People rarely actively think about their opinions(and often don’t agree with themselves once you go digging deeper), even folks who have been taught about logic rarely do this. It’s amazing how many people believe in various forms that when ever they take their umbrella with them, it’ll be guaranteed to rain

So, it’s not only what you say, but also how to message is packaged.

Besides your punters are not the feminists themselves, but the women they broadcast their propaganda to. You not only have to reach those ladies, but you also have to shape your message into a form that people want to hear and like to remember, and if you make it cool/funny enough that they want to gossip about it with their friends, then you’re onto a winner.

One thing to remember is that even tho they claim they don’t, women *really* despise a weak/tolerant man.

A whingy man who shows weakness and who is on the defensive is not listened to, and often despised very much, no matter what the contents of his words is. It’s not personal, but it signals on another level that the man is a beta- male and a pushover who can’t be relied on when the chips are down, and thus not worth taking note of, and all sorts of other dominance issues kick in. This is not terribly overt, but an underlying process that just seeps enough of a flavour onto the topic as to make it unfun to engage with.

Another thing is, with that list, you’re telling the girls that they are unreasonable, and that is of course never popular!

Feminists on the other hand have a better sales pitch here — they tell the ladies ‘you’ll be the winners’ and that is far more interesting to listen to than a (justified) long list of equivalences in complaint form.

Hence, I think such a list is a mistake in general, even tho I totally agree with the contents.

And by the same token Europeans are white Christians, and South Africans are black.

But we know something about how they communicate today. They are not all gone - the hunter-gatherer economy may be gone, but the people are still around to interview. In any case it’s almost certainly a waste of time to generalize about a broad range of cultures based on one characteristic. Do all pastoral cultures, or cultures where pastoralism has been very important, have the same gender relations? Hardly. Wyoming, Ireland and Somalia could hardly be more different. So yeah, even if we did know a lot, the data would probably all conflict.

“What we do know, is that they hunted for animals.”

Whereas there was a large number of *agricultural* cultures in the Pacific that specifically did hunt humans. That’s one of the reasons that Polynesians and others in the region in general tend to be very nuanced in their criticisms of their missionaries.

Nope. What I’m doing is generalizing and that is entirely compatible with respecting all the individual expressions. The difference is whether you are taking the perspective of the collective or the individual. Then of course you can generalize for different subgroups as well…

“Men’s beauty products is one of the world’s fastest growing retail markets. People change.”

I’ll listen to you when it reaches 50 percent of that of women. I’m not holding my breath though.

By linking a certain behaviour to “the” mating game you are implying that there is only one type of behaviour. Different people will have different mating games, and sometimes women are the ones initiating that process.

Men’s beauty products is one of the world’s fastest growing retail markets. People change.

@Eivind

I think you would probably do well as a Harlequin author, or maybe a capitalist conspiracy theorist (if you can make that pay).

One thing about your scientific-ish comment re. hunters: We don’t know a lot about how men and women communicated in ancient hunter-gatherer societies. What we do know, is that they hunted for animals. So unless they were going to eat their partners, the “hunting” analogy is completely misplaced here.

I agree that every man should do a DNA test before signing paternity.