"Is There Anything Good About Men?"

Despite claiming to not take anyones side on the issue, he repeatedly makes derogatory remarks about males throughout his essay in an effort to introduce humor. He also states at the onset that he likes women better then men.

I certainly do not agree with his theory and I get the sense from his essay that he knows he is one of the 11 scientists who's theory is incorrect and will not be getting the Nobel Prize. I found it particularly interesting that he in that particular analogy of the scientists competing for the Nobel prize that the one who received it would be "the lucky one", not the one who worked harder to find the correct answer.

The reason for this is he does not himself believe in the equal but different theory he claims is likely the correct answer to the question of which gender is better.

I think he knows his theory is wrong because he does not believe in equal but different and a clear overlapping flaw appears as a result throughout his whole piece.

The proof that he does not believe in the equal but different theory is in the fact that he attributes the contributions males make to the human species as being non-essential for survival of the species but rather a bonus and the contributions of female as the core essential contributions towards survival.

Essentially, despite admitting the equal but different is likely the correct answer he puts forward a theory of women are like the meal, and men are like the desert. You need the meal to live, but dessert is nice to have to if you can.

That is not congruent with the fundamental premise on which the MRA movement is based: That males contributions to the species are essential and that males are of equal value to females.

His theory that males are useful but unnecessary also is not congruent with nature as a whole. Part of his flaw appears to stem from his starting point and his field of view.

He mentions that civilization is a new occurrence in the lager picture of evolutionary history. There he is correct. Human existence is on Earth is new in the larger picture of evolutionary history.

However he focuses only on post agricultural humans as a starting point for his theory. From this he draws the conclusion that men are not necessary because women were the gatherers and men were the hunters and women provided consistent meals but men provided really good meals less consistently. This theory can only even be applied to post agricultural humans and even then it's utter nonsense. He clearly is not an anthropologist.

As for field of view, all one needs to do is look to the animal kingdom to see that males are not merely a handy bonus to have but an absolutely essential factor in the survival of ANY species is that every species on Earth competes for recourses against every other species. Nature is a much larger picture then human males and females. One needs only to observe ANY social animal (humans evolved from social ancestors) and you see that the males play not only a role in providing females with recourses but also protecting them from competing species. It is usually male lions that keep the Hyenas at bay while the females nurse the cubs. There are hundreds of other examples, but universally no matter what species one is talking about, that species was equally propagated by males and females and since there are no male or female only species on Earth, there are only gendered and a-sexual species (and a-sexual species tend to be mostly of the single cell variety - though Starfish and sponges are a-sexual and multi-celled but lacking brains. Sorry to that one poster here who thinks a-sexuality is somehow a next step for human evolution when in fact it is the opposite)

He's just another male female supremacist who's attempting to pose as a equalist.

He's really far from being a "female supremacist". It's just obvious and simple logic that men, while certainly being important, are biologically more expendable than the "womb carriers" whose number directly determines the size of the population. Unfair but true.
He takes a look at the whole issue from a higher perspective, which is what I'm often trying to do myself. And he is successful at that.

What I'm missing is remarks about how culture sometimes fights the simple biologisms he is talking about. Because of culture, we don't usually have sex in the street and we don't tell women mediocrity and a low income job are ok. There's more to us than our instincts and the biological basics.
In the same way, culture should also intervene when men are seen as expendable. Currently, it doesn't, but a part of our species' population already realizes this should change - us.

saying that women's numbers are more important to population size is only looking at the bottom of the equation.

Without the protection and resources that are provided by the mostly non-breeder men women would not survive to carry children in successful numbers. Men may not historically have been in the delivery room, but they kept the pregnant woman healthy, out of the storm, fed, and not eaten by a pack of wild dogs.

Also, in many species when the female population dips to low, the remaining females start to ovulate more often thus increasing the likelihood of getting pregnant. So the argument that females are more needed to maintain the population may not be accurate either as mother nature seems to step in and turn up the clock among the remaining females to get them reproducing more then they otherwise would. Why do you think groups of females menstrual cycles align when they spend allot of time together - females compete for mates to. When there are fewer females the role of peruser and pursued for mating purposes reverses. Females become insatiable horn dogs and a human female who starts young can have a dozen or so kids easily replacing a 50% drop in the number of females to the population.

Plus, as it stands right now, there are 120 boys born for every 100 girls worldwide because males die at higher rates and females are the majority. If that were to cease being true, nature would step in and reverse the situation and there'd be more girls born if males were the majority and females were dying faster.

Nature likes balance.

men are 100% as vital to the survival of the species as women. If MRAs are successful in getting that idea across and that men's lives have equal value to women's lives you will again see nature balance things out and the people who do not share those ideals will disappear from the species.

As far as his stated main issue, the biggest problem is that his overall theory is built on a weak foundation- -that we can somehow link what he calls the "extremes" of men together: more short and tall ones, more really stupid and really smart ones, more highly paid and low-paid ones...

Like many in the psychological professions, he sees, no, invents, links where there probably are none.

Another problem is that he is a hypocrite: he mentions that Summers was chastised for being politically incorrect, but he (the speaker) is himself a politically correct jackass..note this excerpt:

"People can point to plenty of data that the average IQ of adult men is about the same as the average for women. So to suggest that men are smarter than women is wrong. No wonder some women were offended."

Also he uses the word "losers" a couple times, to describe boys who get low grades or guys in prison. No such reference to girls or women. And of course, he maintains the fictitious notion that women earn less than men.

[By the way, what does "plenty of data" mean? I agree, there is lots of feminist -inspired or politically correct data, that indicate women are as smart as or even smarter than men. Unfortunately, most of the rigorous, unbiased scientific studies over the last few decades, have consistently show that men have a several-point higher IQ than women, even when accounting for the fact that there are more men at the "extremes"].

Unfortunately guys, this person shows the typical myopic viewpoint that psychologists have..they prefer soft evidence over hard (for example they lend too much credence to anecdotal "evidence"); they invent links and connections where there are none; and worst of all they are almost entirely individual-focused, even in the course of studying a "cultural phenomenon" like this guy claims to be doing.

[Here's an example of the problem with being individual-focused: In my college psychology course, there was a mention in the text of a study, that showed how affirmative action for minorities is justified, because it improves the opinion of the majority workers toward the minority ones ,over time, as they are observed in the workplace to be doing a competent job.

Maybe there's some truth to that, but what about the bigger issues surrounding affirmative action, like the fact that it has negative social impact since it replaces one type of discrimination with another (also making it unethical).

(Not surprising that this does not bother the psychologists, since they think no viewpoint on ethics is better than any other..or claim to think that. If that's true, why aren't there more murderer psychologists? But I digress)].

The final verdict: this guy makes some good points, but don't link him to any kind of MRA-like activity. He's too much of a politically correct, biased (he himself mentions at the beginning of the talk that he likes women better than men), air-headed douchebag from outer space.

-ax

p.s: n.j., please speak for yourself. I would not give up a place on a life-boat to a woman, by virtue of the fact that she is a "womb-carrier". Women's lives are not more important than men. Period.

very well said!

Probably the fundamental flaw of people like psychologists and therapists, is that they "resist philosophy". (that is the counterpoint to Freud's claim that the general public "resists psychoanalysis"..not meaning individual analysis, but that the average man is antagonistic to the idea).

In fact Freud started out as a "student of philosopy" of sorts, but at some point early on he bacame antagonistic toward it..thus, he "resisted philosophy". This has carried over to the modern day, for example if I attempted to discuss with a therapist, my statements on ethics as below ("if you guys think everything is relative, why don't you go out and murder someone tonight?"). Now a normal (non-therapist) person responds to this, by pondering on the issue for a while, then following with a response which in turn may lead to a philosophical discussion.

But our philosophically-impoverished therapist has a knee-jerk spasmodic reaction and says "you're being too analytical!" or "that's just a philosophical issue". Thusly, the therapist "resists philosophy". (note that I'm not saying that patients and therapists should sit there and have philosophical discussions during "treatment"; I am just pointing out what the therapist's response IS, and how the response itself shows that he resists philosophy on principle).

I also think there may be some connection with this resistance, and the fact that psychotherapy is a female- or female-like-thinking dominated profession.

-ax

I know one female former psychologist (she's retired now) in Montreal who's son would be about my age today if he had not killed himself by jumping in front of a subway train because of the torture she put him through his whole life - locking him in a cage as punishment, running him down publicly and to his friends, making him wear diapers and soil himself just to name a couple of things.

She was of course never charged in his death because it was just another teen boy committing suicide after all, happens all the time and no one has yet decided to care.

My cousin is also married to a non-practicing psychologist (she has her doctorate in psychology and a BA in sociology and is currently doing social work at a sick kids hospital) who scares the living hell out of me. I would not be surprised in the least if she kills him one day, but of course he doesn't believe me that she's severely damaged goods (both of her parents killed themselves, father first, and then mother a couple years after)

sometimes people go into professions like that to figure out their own mental issues.

Affirmative action is okay for African-Americans, because they are a minority in the true sense, i.e. in the general populace. But note how feminists have appropriated it for their own needs, by twisting around the meaning to be "minority in the workplace" (without anyone even noticing that they did this).

-ax

Lots to comment on here, but I want to pick up on one important snippet: the matter of whether there is any evidence that men are more intelligent than women. Actually, there is, if you place any value on IQ tests.

There has been a series of "test the nation" TV quizzes going the rounds since 2002, across several countries. Here in the UK, they are a regular feature on the BBC.

Now so far as I am aware (although it seems to be very difficult to find the details), men have consistently scored higher than women across the board. This is the case in the UK quizzes:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/testthenation/planet/results/results.shtml

and in Canada:

http://www.cbc.ca/testthenation/episodes/iq/results/groups.html

You can easily tell that men have come out on top by one simple fact: you have to dig deep into these sites to find the results. As soon as I saw the home page of the Canadian site, for example, I knew men had scored better than women, despite the fact that there was no mention of it on that page. How come? Because if the women had won, it would have been screaming at me from the home page headlines.

I would be grateful to hear from anyone who has found any such test where the women have come out on top.

OK, I know you can find all the flaws you want - the participators are self-selected, it was a man who set the questions, IQ tests don't actually test intelligence etc. etc. But these tests have a huge response and as far as I know are probably the best indicators we have of relative mental ability on a massive scale. And you can bet your life that if they showed women on top, they would suddenly become the most perfect engines ever devised to measure intelligence.

Now here is something else to ponder. If the evidence points to men being more intelligent than women - not by a huge margin, but a decisive edge; and if the evidence points to women being more violent than men (Fiebert, anyone?) - not by a huge margin, but by a decisive edge; does that not immediately suggest we all need to re-evaluate the relative merits of the sexes? And should we not explore more areas of life where assumptions about female superiority might be found to be wide of the truth? Or are we too scared of what we might find?

To suggest that females are superior to males at anything other than things that are innately female is utter nonsense. Males make inferior females, and females make inferior males, period!

The article is correct about its assertions on IQ. Also, the IQ test is the best measure of intelligence that is currently available.

I agree with some points and others I disagree. However, what I would like to point out is the title of the article. It is geared towards attracting feminist readers, and therefore it kisses their piggish asses. This “ladyboy” is so afraid of not being politically correct that his analysis loses its merit.

Hoist the jib!

(From the beginning of the essay) - "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."

(The last paragraph) - "Again, I’m not saying it’s right, or fair, or proper. But it has worked. The cultures that have succeeded have used this formula, and that is one reason that they have succeeded instead of their rivals."

The critical term here is "worked."

The author has demonstrated absolutely no evidence that "culture" is working for contemporary men -- and nowhere does he define what that might mean for men who are no longer living in caves and hunting for sustenance.

Worse, the entire piece ignores the cultural impacts and social effects of feminism. The author writes as if he was living in 1886.

It should be of interest and concern to MRA's that such a well written and scholarly paper based in evolutionary psychology could omit any even marginal discussion of feminism as an ideology and social phenomenon.

To gloss over the very real power conflicts between genders as a kind of evolutionary
"partnership" is disingenuous, shoddy scholarship, and simply naive.

His basic premise is that cultures survive, prosper, and "work" by defining men as disposable.

Duh?

...theory. He picks a random starting point in evolutionary history - post-agriculture. In Pre-agricultural history, no one supplied food on a consistent basis. Food was obtained entirely through a combination of good fortune - fair weather meant lots of berries on the trees to eat, and lots of berries meant lots of little animals born that spring - and hunting skill.

Post-agricultural history is the only time when humans began to gather any control at all over their food supply, and even then, agriculture was a male invention and men worked the crops, women just picked them, and men still did all the hunting because humans can't live without protein not matter what some vegan nut job wants to think.

He also completely downplays female violence outside of intimate relationships with his knife fight at the mall example. Well, maybe but I can honestly say I have seen females beat the hell out of each other outside the girls rest room at my local mall, and I've seen just as many females engage in violence at bars as I have males - and most of the time I've seen males go at it at the bar, it was one or more females that instigated the violence.

He seems to rely on men in prisons as the example that men are more aggressive. Yet he fails to mention our complete failure to bring females to justice or imprison them for ANYTHING. Prison populations are a completely false measure of gender aggression or social deviance.

Also, this more men at the bottom of the intellectual scale theory seems rooted in education. The problem with using education as a measure for such things is simple. You will NEVER get an accurate count of low IQ and mentally retarded females. Why is this you ask? Simple, families know when they have a brain dead daughter and instead of wasting time sending her off to school or to be tested for mental retardation, they care for her till she's old enough to dump on some guy to marry. As long as she can get pregnant, her intelligence is meaningless and the family will be able to find her a husband.

So measuring grade school, high school, university test scores will always fail to uncover the depths of female retardation.

He also claims there is more variation in males height wise. Perhaps on the tall end of the spectrum, but there are more female dwarfs then male dwarfs due in part to a genetic condition called tuners syndrome that only affects females and dwarfism is a common aspect of the condition. While there may be more extremely tall males alive, there are more extremely short females.

That guy can't even reconcile his own theory in his essay, he's not some one who's opinion I'd put much faith in.

First of all, I guess his definition of "works" mean man is still on the face of the earth. Never mind the gender conflict, not to mention all the other ills of modern society.

Secondly, it was due to war (from World War II through the Cold War), and by connection the acceptance of male disposability, that humans did almost blow themselves off the face of the earth (nuclear destruction).

Thirdly, this guy really, REALLY, needs to read Farrell's "The Myth of Male Power". Farrell points out that that sex roles that have been functional since the dawn of industrial civilization, have become outmoded in an evolutionary instant.

-ax

(From the paper) -- "That means that if we want to achieve our ideal of equal salaries for men and women, we may need to legislate the principle of equal pay for less work. Personally, I support that principle. But I recognize it’s a hard sell."

I cannot tell where this guy stands. He is either a libertarian or a Marxist. (That's often a fine line, I know....)

I would like to suggest one initiative through which equal pay for less work could be achieved.

I would like to be paid a guaranteed yearly income of $35,000 for donating my sperm to women who have a guaranteed annual income of $34,900 for accepting my "lesser" work.

Why the $100 difference?

The Evil Patriarchy, stupid!

To funny!

But yeah, that scared me a little when he said he's for the equal pay for less work notion because it is 100% Marxist.

I guess he just think psychologist should get the same pay as top neuro-surgeons because in his defective line of thinking they both fix problems of the mind.

First of all, men are important for protection etc. as you say, but they're still not as important as the ones doing the breeding, at least in the short run (from one generation to the next). About starting young - pretty much all women did this until not so long ago. There wasn't as much room for variation as there is now.

Also, I said there's more to us than simple biological principles. But our instincts may still be still geared towards them. This is where culture steps in as a corrective element.

There is complex interaction between reason, feelings and instincts in all of us, and I don't think anyone belonging to our species can really see the whole picture. All I know is that currently, we try not to consider ANY life expendable, which is probably part of the progress of the human race. But it doesn't work well enough yet.

I would not give up a place on a life-boat either, for the reason that no human life is more important than another seen from the level of understanding we have achieved today. But our instincts may tell us something else. I do think there is a natural tendency to protect women, whether that's still appropriate or not.

Although I used it in a slightly different context below. Farrell would totally agree (as do I) that instincts tell men to protect women..I think he thinks most or all of that is due to the "socialization" as some people say. No doubt there are others that think there is also a "gene" of some sort.

But the big picture is still, that at this stage in modern societies the "male as protector of female" is no longer functional. If women are to have true equality, one thing they must learn to do is protect themselves (I don't mean they should have to learn karate - males protect women far more than just physically, for example socially, emotionally and financially. That is mainly what Farrell means by "protection").

But as far as physical protection, it will always be a matter of personal opinion as far as someone believing their life is not as important as another's. And I suspect that if I was walking with a woman in a forest at night, and someone jumped from behind the trees, I would "instinctively" step forward and comfront him whereas the woman would most likely step backwards. On the other hand, I as a man would have much more respect for a woman in that situation who, though afraid, also confronted the guy (like say, standing her ground, and saying something that might remove his aggression).

By the way, didn't it turn out that Jessica Lynch was actually unarmed and was "hiding" behind two guys? I seem to remember reading that somewhere.

-ax

(n.j.) -- "I do think there is a natural tendency to protect women, whether that's still appropriate or not."

Nothing personal n.j. (and thanks for bringing up this important issue) ---

But this is where I get onto the feminist's ideological bus about the "social construction" of genders.

THERE IS NOTHING REMOTELY "NATURAL" ABOUT
C-H-I-V-A-L-R-Y.

It is a cultural fiction, a sexist power-play, a means of domination...

over MEN!

We (men) have read all the fairy tales incorrectly.

Snow White, Cinderella, The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, etc etc etc ....

In every instance, men lose!

What exactly about feminisms' zero-sum equation do men fail to appreciate?

"Natural" is a very dirty, slutty, deceptive word.

Refuse it.

(ax) - "By the way, didn't it turn out that Jessica Lynch was actually unarmed and was "hiding" behind two guys?"

Excellent analysis.

Though of course, the problem is that every women has the benefit of "hiding between two guys..."

The first is her current partner or husband, and the second is the one she is planning to screw next.

Both No. 1 and No. 2, in this sophisticated feminist scenario called Chivalry... are destined to be equally screwed.

Every man gets sloppy seconds in FemAmerica!