"Is There Anything Good About Men?" a talk/essay by Roy F. Baumeister

iptba

http://www.denisdutton.com/baumeister.htm

I thought this was a very insightful piece about men's behaviour that may at least partly explain the different percentages of men and women that can exist in some domains/positions.

A lot of the thing comes down to this:

Recent research using DNA analysis answered this question about two years ago. Today’s human population is descended from twice as many women as men.

I think this difference is the single most underappreciated fact about gender. To get that kind of difference, you had to have something like, throughout the entire history of the human race, maybe 80% of women but only 40% of men reproduced.

At just over 9000 words, unfortunately it is a bit long but I think the language is fairly accessible: it doesn't use a lot of jargon.

Roy F. Baumeister is Francis Eppes Professor of Social Psychology at Florida State University, in Tallahassee.

start wrote:

You’re probably thinking that a talk called “Is there anything good about men” will be a short talk! Recent writings have not had much good to say about men. Titles like Men Are Not Cost Effective speak for themselves. Maureen Dowd’s book was called Are Men Necessary? and although she never gave an explicit answer, anyone reading the book knows her answer was no. Louann Brizendine’s book, The Female Brain, introduces itself by saying, “Men, get ready to experience brain envy.” Imagine a book advertising itself by saying that women will soon be envying the superior male brain!

Nor are these isolated examples. Alice Eagly’s research has compiled mountains of data on the stereotypes people have about men and women, which the researchers summarized as “The WAW effect.” WAW stands for “Women Are Wonderful.” Both men and women hold much more favorable views of women than of men. Almost everybody likes women better than men. I certainly do.

My purpose in this talk is not to try to balance this out by praising men, though along the way I will have various positive things to say about both genders. The question of whether there’s anything good about men is only my point of departure. The tentative title of the book I’m writing is “How culture exploits men,” but even that for me is the lead-in to grand questions about how culture shapes action. In that context, what’s good about men means what men are good for, from the perspective of the system.

Hence this is not about the “battle of the sexes,” and in fact I think one unfortunate legacy of feminism has been the idea that men and women are basically enemies. I shall suggest, instead, that most often men and women have been partners, supporting each other rather than exploiting or manipulating each other.

Nor is this about trying to argue that men should be regarded as victims. I detest the whole idea of competing to be victims. And I’m certainly not denying that culture has exploited women. But rather than seeing culture as patriarchy, which is to say a conspiracy by men to exploit women, I think it’s more accurate to understand culture (e.g., a country, a religion) as an abstract system that competes against rival systems — and that uses both men and women, often in different ways, to advance its cause.

Also I think it’s best to avoid value judgments as much as possible. They have made discussion of gender politics very difficult and sensitive, thereby warping the play of ideas. I have no conclusions to present about what’s good or bad or how the world should change. In fact my own theory is built around tradeoffs, so that whenever there is something good it is tied to something else that is bad, and they balance out.

I don’t want to be on anybody’s side. Gender warriors please go home.

I'm not going to defend every piece of wording he uses. He could probably have said some things better.

He subsequently published a book but I haven't read that so far:

Is There Anything Good About Men?: How Cultures Flourish by Exploiting Men
https://smile.amazon.com/There-Anything-Good-About-Men/dp/019537410X

johnnyskeleton

Sounds interesting. Not sure I could invest in the whole book though!

weekday

men are good at building

iptba

johnnyskeleton wrote: »

Sounds interesting. Not sure I could invest in the whole book though!

Just to be clear: the essay can be read for free online at the first link: http://www.denisdutton.com/baumeister.htm

red ears

It strikes me as envy and jealously when i see books entitled are men necessary. The author will probably deeply envy men rather than think they are surplus to requirements.

Men have basically invented the modern comfortable world we live in, they have designed, invented, built everything we rely on in the world today. Pretty much all the scientific discoveries, all the technology, every magnificent building and every masterpiece of art. We are physically stronger, better at every sport there is, have won the vast majority of nobel prizes, are the vast majority of millionaires and billionaires. There is definitely an inferiority complex at the root of the man hatred we see today.

iptba

red ears wrote: »

It strikes me as envy and jealously when i see books entitled are men necessary. The author will probably deeply envy men rather than think they are surplus to requirements.

This author is not like that.

H3llR4iser

I've read it, and it makes some extremely interesting points, some I had never even thought about. It's well researched and exposed, also addressing the "imbalance" between genders found in certain professions (I spoke often about it in engineering / IT) in a very informed way.

However, we all know that something like that would always be rebutted with the "because...patriarchy!" old and tired mantra.

Arevaci

That DNA analysis about humans being descended from twice as many women is really interesting, and I saw some research that at one stage in human history the ratio was 17 to 1. This confirms an intuitive sense that many guys have – that some guys get all the girls and others get none.

The only way you can get a fairly even gender balance is if there is pressure in a society for everyone to engage in monogamous marriages. And that would have happened in previous centuries. Women got with or were forced to get with men who they weren’t attracted to because there was no one else available.

However, I think we’re seeing the breakdown of these cultural norms and the emergence of free market female choice. And the free market is basically the top 80% of women trying to get with the top 40% of men for relationships, and the top 80% of women trying to get with top 20% of men for hook-ups/short-term. The situation for relationships is obviously not possible unless there is polygyny (which had to have been a big feature of human history to explain the DNA analysis). The situation for hook-ups is possible as most women only want to hook-up infrequently and 20% of men could easily meet the physical needs of 80% of women.

These dynamics have a number of consequences. First, the majority of people should be single as there will be only about 1 ‘good man’ for every 2 women and some of these ‘good men’ will not want a relationship. And this is starting to happen, with more adults in America single than in a relationship. As a result, lots of women will feel frustrated and feel that there’s no suitable guys out. As for the average guy, he’ll be feeling frustrated as it's unlikely an average women will want to have a relationship with him and his short-term potentials will be far below his own attractiveness level.

In terms of the cycle, let’s say an average girl wants to get in a relationship with an above average guy. Can’t get one so engages in short-terms relationships to meet her physical needs. Finds plenty of above average guys willing to do so. She likes some of these guys and wants to be in a relationship with them. These guys do not however. She builds up a perception of men as only being interested in sex. She becomes more defensive and increases her standards. However, the more attractive the guys she hook-ups with, the less likely these guys will want a relationship – and so the cycle continues until she gets to her mid 30s and social pressures force to ‘settle’. In some ways mid 30s is like the gender inflection point where the average guy can do a lot better for himself. However, some women won’t care about kids and mortgages and will continue to have a good time hooking up with attractive guys.

In terms of the original question, I think the average man is losing value in today’s society, but it was probably a lot worse for most of human history. And as the average man loses power, the top guys gain power. Essentially, as female hypergamy strengthens and female standards continue to increase, fewer and fewer men will have the attention of more and more women.