This article is a compilation of my commentary on and quotes from the attached Karen Straughan video (bottom of article).

Three perspectives

• From the contemporary feminist's perspective, men have it easier for many reasons, including that we all live in a system that favors men, rewarding for aggression, competition, and risk taking.
• Men's rights activists (MRAs) maintain that women have the upper hand and the trump card - sex - and when they accentuate/utilize this power, they can and do manipulate men and their environment.
• A third perspective is that we are not equal but equivalent; there being an equal number of pros and cons to being either gender that have evolved biologically and culturally over time.

The video that inspired this article seems to argue for the third perspective. I'll be interested in hearing what you think. OK. Let's dive in.

The pay gap

The pay gap is primarily because of women's choices of vocational field and their prioritization of flexibility, safety, and family over competition, earnings, and dominance. Feminists using the "pay gap" as proof of systemic oppression must lump and average all work/pay data into one number and compare it based on gender. This means no value is given to the idea that women on average choose work that is people-oriented and less risky while men on average choose work that is object-oriented and more risky.

OR

Are women being paid less for the same work and steered by systemic sexism towards certain fields/jobs and away from others? Are women actually wanting to prioritize family because they are socialized, manipulated, and forced to?

Instead of looking at any of this as women's freely made choices, it becomes "women are being steered, guided, or forced by things outside of themselves." It's as if women are portrayed as ineffectual like a leaf floating on a current. Do these feminists realize they are talking about women as if they are objects without will, desire, or volition?

Politics

As in many other industries that wield power, politics seems to be dominated by men. Are women making the choice to avoid this field or are they "not being encouraged enough or discouraged by institutional discrimination?" Again with the idea that "women do not make their own choices and need not adapt their choices, actions, or priorities to become empowered through their own actions. That society, circumstances, institutions, and men should adapt so that women can have an obstacle-free path by which they will be guided, encouraged, and steered in the proper directions..."

Agents make things happen and objects have things happen to them.

More misused statistics

"Extroversion" can be subdivided as:

• Warmth: women score much higher
• Dominance: men score much higher
  If we measured and lumped both warmth and dominance together as just "extroversion," the stats show that men and women are super close. But if broken down to show the separate measurements of "warmth" and "dominance," we see big differences between men and women.

For example, a woman who scored 7 on warmth and 3 on dominance would have the exact same "extroversion" score of 10 as a man who had scored 3 on warmth and 7 on dominance.

Do you see how this kind of statistical game-playing can paint a very different and inaccurate picture of inborn gender behaviors?

Women's best survival strategy

Because of females' innate value throughout history, everyone - especially a woman's mate - had a vested interest in her survival. It was the evolutionarily most successful survival strategy for women to utilize agency by proxy. The more she behaved like an object - within reason - the more others would act on her behalf and all the risks and costs associated with acting would be born by others.

It might be true that any person, including women, benefit more - long term - from acting, but back in the days of tribal warfare, no wi-fi, dangerous animals, and greater vulnerability to disease, the costs and risks of acting were likely prohibitive.

Whereas, men were more likely to find themselves in the opposite situation where acting meant surviving and behaving like an object meant dying; or at least not passing on their genes.

We are all descendents of men and women who followed these survival strategies.

Offspring energy investment

For women, the costs and risks of procreating are rooted in their physiology. She carries and breast feeds the child, which is dependent on her body. Therefore, the survival of the offspring - and her genetic survival - is an agenda best served by her survival as an individual. The most successful women - again, in terms of individual and genetic survival - were more careful, took fewer personal risks, and "outsourced" any external costs they could avoid paying (in terms of risk and labor) above and beyond gestating, giving birth, lactating, feeding, cleaning, and nurturing.

Because of this, the women back in the cave who selected men who best helped them avoid those costs and risks were the most successful at producing children who survived long enough to also produce children.

Men, on the other hand, bear no significant costs or risks from procreation. A man's best strategy was to secure a mate by proving he could facilitate her share of the work (offspring) by taking on as much of the external costs, risks, and investment as possible.

Because he had to compete with other men for mates, evolutionary pressures selected extremely effectively for these traits (aggression, risk-taking, competitiveness, etc.) in males.

Many of the men who won the genetic lottery won big. Way bigger than any woman ever could. Genghis Khan is said to have sired hundreds, maybe even thousands of children. He didn't do it by being a mild-mannered and cautious accountant who lamented a paper cut. He did it by acting in a big way, taking on huge risks with potentially abominable costs.

The Terminator

To further complicate things for men - even your average non-warlord type - men's individual and genetic survival are not as dependent on each other as they have historically been with women. Consider the film, The Terminator. Kyle Reese dies protecting Sarah Conner, the mother of his child, before the child is even born. While the surival of his child would have been even better served had he succeeded in protecting Sarah Conner AND surviving himself, it wasn't the priority. In fact, by de-prioritizing his own survival, he was prioritizing his genetic survival. And yes, in the case of this movie, the survival of the human species, heh.

In the past, the man not willing to act and take risk in the service of a woman's reproductive agenda was a man who's genetic line was doomed.

Evolved risk aversion

Now, because avoiding risks and costs has historically been the most successful individual and genetic survival strategy, women have a hyper awareness of those risks and costs. Call it an inate aversion to any sort of agency that can not be managed or contained, or which introduces risks or costs deemed too high.

"... That's the way evolution works. It doesn't have a conscience. It doesn't make [moral] judgements, it isn't nice, and it doesn't give two shits as to whether something is sexist. Evolution isn't about what's right or what's wrong or what's good and what's evil or what's politically correct and what isn't. It's about who had the most babies that survived..."

This isn't about right or wrong

A picture is emerging here for me. This picture is of both men and women behaving in ways that are complementary and natural (and maybe the best they can do), given the pressures of surviving and reproducing. As opposed to either or both genders being or acting "good," "bad," "right," "wrong," "hating," or "exploiting" the other.

Summary: Then and now

Twenty thousand years ago, women who acted when they didn't have to - that is, when others could and would act on their behalf - were less successful in passing on their genes because acting is inherently risky and costly. The more a woman could act via proxy, by demanding or allowing things to be done for her, the greater a chance she had of being reproductively successful. Evolution selected for hypoagency in women.

Credit for photo of 4th wave feminists: By Garry Knight from London, England - International Women's Day 2017 - 03, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=56949074

Because men - in order to get their shot - have to perform in ways that filled in those empty spots in women's "spreadsheet" of costs, risks, and investment, they evolved to act, even though acting is risky and costly. Men who are not willing to act were genetic dead ends, selected out of the gene pool. While many "acting" men also died, the actors who did win sired the most babies.

Hypoagency was what worked for women so the trait was passed down, as was the compulsion to manipulate male behavior to suit female ends. The hyperawareness of agency and its risks and costs when it isn't contained leads to them invading male spaces and trying to force them to women's level of comfort and put as many men into women's service as possible.

Of course, all of this can change over time. Technology and culture have created a different environment with entirely different challenges, costs, and risks than the environment we spent most of our evolution in.

Some questions I have for both contemporary feminists and men's rights activists:

• Is it more beneficial for us as individuals and collectively, if we understand and embrace the differences between male and female OR if we deny those differences, yet [contradiction?] demonize one another?
• Is growth best served through self change or coercion of others?

Path to healing and peace

Let's do a thought experiment. Just for a moment. What if it might go both ways? What if women can't fully understand what it is like to be a man? What if women have some advantages, too? For every disadvantage a woman might claim victim-hood over, what if there is an issue where men could do the same? Well that would mean either we are all victims or it's a wash; we all have advantages and disadvantages and it kind of event out.

"But how can you compare anything to RAPE?"
Sure. How about death? When have women ever been forced to go fight and kill? But let's not get into a tit-for-tat and "Who's the bigger victim?" The point here is that both "sides" of this have well articulated reasons to be upset.

How about instead of choosing to be victims, we all stop wasting energy on this game? Let's celebrate our strengths!

• Let's celebrate that women live longer than males.
• Let's celebrate that the tech and engineering industries are desperate to hire women.
• Let's celebrate that women tend to be better at understanding emotion.
• Let's celebrate that women can have multiple orgasms.
• Let's celebrate that females are far less likely to be homeless.
• Let's celebrate that women are less likely to get cancer.
• Let's celebrate for women that if a man and a woman are having a dispute in public, strangers will typically side with the woman.
• Let's celebrate that in our culture, women are to be revered and protected.
• Let's celebrate that when a ship is sinking, both literally and metaphorically, women and children are the first to be saved.
• Let's celebrate that rarely are women expected to work life-threatening jobs.
• Let's celebrate that women get the majority of college degrees.
• Let's celebrate that women can be friendly with children without garnering suspicion.
• Let's celebrate for women that courts side with females more often in cases involving divorce, custody, abuse, and crime.
• Let's celebrate boobs.
• Let's celebrate the power of female sexuality.
• Let's celebrate that females have the wonderous ability to create life!
  Note: I'm talking about American culture.

Comparisons & humility

Finally, we can't quantify the value of all the advantageous and disadvantageous traits any one person, race, or gender has and then declare they have an unfair advantage or disadvantage compared to some other person or group. In the absence of this "unlimited all-knowing," let's choose to be humble, to assume we don't know what it is like for other people, and give them the benefit of the doubt that maybe their lot in life has just as many challenges as ours. What is the reward for this? Peace and harmony.

Let's build something together

What if all the energy we put into fighting each other we were to put into building something great together? What if the energy of "You better listen to me about the pain your kind causes me and compensate me for that" were shifted to "I'm having pain. I wonder if you are, too? I'm listening with an open mind."?

What if we accepted all this pain as part of HUMAN existence? Let's celebrate the wonderful differences, recognize the similarities, and enjoy each other.

The video that inspired this article: