Feelings of Importance

At http://bobstruth.blogspot.com/2006/04/has-any-female-ever-been-hurt-by-rape.html Bob states that he has never met or known any woman who was hurt by rape other than a few hurt feelings which would go away quickly, and asks whether any woman has ever really been hurt by a rape.

Even tongue in cheek, this question should not be easily dismissed. Particularly if, as is likely, the feelings Bob refers to are telling us something important about our future.

Those men who follow the reasoning of Aristotle, Ockham (aka Occam), Darwin and Dawkins but, like Bob above, have real trouble understanding women's abhorrence to rape, might find it helpful to look at the issue this way:

We, all of us, exist because of the success of our genes. These genes themselves exist only because they replicate through people who procreate successfully. To mature successfully human children need substantial maternal nurture such that mother and child need support from an external source. To be reliable over long periods of time this source needs to have a genetic interest in providing the support. Over hundreds of thousands of generations in the ancestral environment men whose genes encourage within them emotions to support their own offspring have out-reproduced other men. This fatherly support is known to scientists as 'paternal investment'. The extent to which it is directed to a man's own offspring is referred to as his 'paternal certainty'. Both of these factors manifest themselves in men through strong motivating emotions. To put it another way, the genes of men who don't feel the need to support their children don't replicate well, and the genes of men who are not instinctively careful about whether the children they support are their own genetic offspring don't replicate well either. An essential part of being an evolutionarily successful man (i.e. a man who maximises the chance of his genes replicating) is to feel these emotions strongly and to act upon them.

These straightforward facts explain the strength of many men's feelings about both their partner's sexual fidelity and their child's well-being. Fecking important issues, most men would say. They'd have no trouble agreeing with that. Not because threats to either are physically damaging to the man himself, but because such threats are so devastating to his ultimate evolutionary purpose, the replication of his genes. Should Bob have contended that, e.g., paternity deception only results in a 'few hurt feelings' and so should be ignored he would be summarily dismissed by most men, and quite rightly. After all the men who don't dismiss such ideas are unlikely to be contributing much to future generations. They exist, for sure, but they are an evolutionary dead end. They are not the future.

Now what has all this to do with how women feel about rape? Well, in all probability, the feelings that women experience about rape have similar evolutionary causes to those that men feel about being cuckolded. The ultimate purpose of both types of feelings are similar and it is likely, therefore, that the strength of the associated emotions are similar, too. To have the best chance of replicating her genes successfully a woman needs to be able to choose her mate well. She needs to be sure about his fitness; i.e. his attractiveness, his capability and his willingness to invest in her and her child. While a woman does not share a man's concerns about parental certainty - if the baby comes out of her it is hers - her equivalent concern is about its father's fitness. Rape undermines her ability to determine this as best she can, to choose her mate. It is likely that most women have as strong an emotional aversion to rape as most men do to being cuckolded.

The fitness of humans in the natural world depends on these emotions. They are much more important to our species and to our society’s longevity than 'a few hurt feelings'.

The ABC of an MRA

A: Advertising and media portrayal - no more the dumb man.
B: Boyhood genital mutilation - must be made illegal.
C: Child custody - must be equalized.
D: DNA - paternity deception must be stopped for every father and baby.
E: Employment - men must not suffer worse conditions or higher death rates.
F: False allegations - must be prosecuted.
G: Grievous bodily harm - men must not suffer more violence.
H: Homelessness - men must not suffer more.
I: Incarceration - must be equalized and men must be protected in jail from e.g. rape.
J: Judicial prejudice against men in family law and sentencing length must be stopped.
K: Killed - more men are murdered. This must stop.
L: Longevity - women live 5-7 years longer. Health spending by sex and life expectancy must be equalized.
M: Marital rights - men don’t have any while women are legally provided for.
N: Net income - even up discretionary spend on and by men, equalize retail floor space.
O: Options - life options must be equalized, not just to work but to raise a family, to care, to feel and to shop.
P: Paternity fraud - this appalling evil must be redefined as a heinous crime.
Q: Qualifications - men’s educational disadvantages must be corrected.
R: Reproductive rights - men must be given the same rights as women.
S: Suicide - men’s greater prevalence means they need more help. This must be provided.
T: Threat of conscription and front line action must be shared between men and women.
U: Undefended - men must be offered equal refuge from e.g. DV.
V: Voting influence must be equated so that politicians address men’s issues properly.
W: Women and children first - this mindset must end.
X: X-dressing - men should have the same dress freedom as women.
Y: Y - why is men’s quality of life not monitored and improved?
Z: Zzzzz - female dominated society must wake up to men’s suffering.

Falconer’s Law:

I propose a new law, to be called Falconer's Law. It states:
"as a political discussion progresses the probability of reference to an absolute and unchanging measure of good behaviour approaches 1. When this happens the discussion must be terminated and whoever alluded to this fictional concept of absolute goodness has automatically lost whatever debate was in progress."

The law is named after the English Lord Chancellor who deployed the technique in a Channel 4 documentary (Dispatches: Stealing Freedom). In essence his message was “if you are good you have nothing to fear from the government.” How scary was that?

Chastity; an objective virtue?

21st century western mores promote sexual freedom. Lust is no longer a sin, chastity no virtue. Prudentius pointed out the contrary nature of chastity and lust over 1500 years ago in his epic poem Psychomachia.

Paternal certainty was an important motivation in the development of western civilisation and pre-marital chastity was one of women's primary contributions to this. Dr Amneus sets this out cogently at: www.mugu.com/cgi-bin/Upstream/Library/Amneus/garbage/

Chastity's virtue was and is widely recognised across cultures, e.g. "In the 1930s [a cross-generational mating study found that] men valued chastity as close to indispensable" (Buss 1994, p67). Going deeper into the anthropological reasons for this, and paraphrasing Buss: "Concealed ovulation gave ancestral men a unique paternal certainty problem... Marriage provided one solution... Fidelity was enforced by family members... A man who did not obtain a chaste mate risked becoming involved with a woman who would cuckold him... Men who were indifferent to the potential sexual contact of their partners would not have been successful at passing on their genes."

In other words there are good reasons to suppose that men instinctively value chastity because those that didn't simply didn't get to pass on their indifferent gene so reliably.

The bottom line, though, is what works. If chastity is an essential component of motivating men's commitment to developing a society - and if a society developed in this way is more successful at maintaining and growing itself than another that doesn't value chastity - then chastity is an objective virtue, whatever 20th century feminists would prefer to believe.

I happen to suspect this might be the case - despite the awkward implications to the satisfaction of my own lust.

Not a popular view, I know. But then I'm not convinced popularity is an objective virtue!

Are modern men disgusting?

Societies succeed if they continue. This means successful societies are ones that prioritise the protection and nurture of the scarce resources involved in producing and raising the next generation; eggs, wombs and breasts.

Women choose the men they reproduce with and, through what Jonathan Haidt calls The Social Intuitionist process, determine social mores and mould the next generation's attitudes and behaviours pretty effectively.

For these reasons successful societies tend to reflect women's priorities - and always have. When the environment requires a fierce fight for survival they choose tough, resourceful, resilient men because their priority is protection. When life is easier they choose more compliant, subservient men. This latter environment suits women better because it provides them with more control over their lives, so the tendency is to choose it whether or not it is appropriate. The only thing that will change this is a reversion to a tough environment. This will happen, nature's variety ensures that, but no-one knows when. Then the issue will be whether there is enough resilience left in the men for the society to survive.

One way out of this cycle is the development of cloning and ex-vitro gestation. This would free men from women's control over their (and everyone's) primary objective; reproduction. However it is unlikely that any existing society would allow this to happen as women would try to prevent such a loss of control.

Real reproductive freedom for men is still a very long way off but understanding the dynamics - understanding that it is women collectively who determine these issues and that men are largely pawns in the process - might help us men feel a little less disgusted with ourselves, even if it does nothing for our feelings of self-worth!