I just had a second conversation with L. "Magpie" Pinette from Small Bets, Costly Signals on substack, and Reading is a Skill on YouTube, in which we discussed some ideas about bird behavior, marriage, and gender roles.
The conversation took its natural course and covered many aspects of the subject in question, but it made me want to sit down and organize my thoughts on the subject a little more concretely. In reality, I have been writing on this topic for the last couple years, and have compiled something like 1800 pages of drafts and notes on the subject; so condensing my thoughts is probably a foolish endeavor. What I plan to do instead is poke at some of the most fundamental assumptions that undergird the surface level discussion on the topic.
Competing Narratives
The starting point that I did not quite get to fully articulate in that discussion is about the various forms of evolutionary arguments that proliferated in the years following the widespread adoption of Darwinism. The most well known narrative is the survival of the fittest, which ends up being somewhat circular, as fitness is defined by one’s availability to survive, and survival becomes proof of fitness. When taken to its logical conclusions, one must concede that the most superior creatures on the planet are something like cockroaches or tardigrades.
The other theories came to the far more reasonable and comforting conclusions; that humans are the most evolutionarily advanced species on earth, and as proof, cited those uniquely human achievements, such as speech, civilization, and even romantic love. Examples of progress include the move from a short-range scent-based chemical attraction, towards a longer distance visual attraction, and the female peacock’s preference for aesthetically pleasing plumage in her mate was viewed as something approaching romantic desire.
I think one of the reasons why these arguments lost out is because Darwinian evolution is posited to be a purely biological process, and therefore only things that are measurable in biological terms can be cited as evidence of evolution taking place. But the downstream consequence of this is that a large portion of the discourse regarding things like dating, marriage and gender roles is dominated by “scientific“ data, rooted in evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology, which insist that human bodies are still fundamentally adapted to a hunter-gatherer culture, even if our closest ancestor who lived that way died before the advent of written history.
This makes studying the competing theories from the late 19th and early 20th centuries incredibly frustrating, as they repeatedly make obvious assertions that would be incredibly beneficial for people to adopt, if only the current science would give them permission to do so.
Instead, people cite countless studies that talk about the male preference for sexual variety, higher libido, aggression, and endless discourse about the distinctions between alpha and beta males. This correspondence with other talking points about women, including a lot of discussion about hypergamy, and dual-mating strategies. At least that is what is discussed in the mostly male, and mostly conservative circles.
Much of the liberal and female discussion seems to be focused on the other subjects of that same late 19th early 20th century discourse, feminism and equal rights. Interestingly enough, this subject also had a wide range of competing views at that time, with people promoting maternal feminism, eugenic feminism, and various other forms of spiritual, historical and anthropological arguments in favor of both new rights, and old values. However, it was the political arguments that beat out the rest in this domain.
Not all of the narratives that fell away are equally compelling, and there are interesting observations to be made about the failed arguments in both domains that explain their short shelf life. Anything with the labels racial, hygienic, or eugenics became radioactive after the Second World War. Also abandoned was the conspiratorial cover-up of various lost matriarchal empires, and most of the explicitly religious arguments.
In hindsight, the most interesting observation to be made is not about what observations were right or wrong, but about which narratives won out, and the motivating factors that led to their success. My current research is based on over 150 books downloaded from Gutenberg.org, of which I have so far focused on 66 volumes that seem to be the most relevant or noteworthy. There are a few different ways that one can divide the sources. By disciplinary tradition, there are scientific, historical, and religious texts. By topic, they are all over the place; touching on economics, politics, anthropology, from high-level cultural analysis down to practical relationship advice.
Winning Arguments with Losing Definitions
One distinction that stood out to me is a difference between top-down and bottom-up approaches. For example, on the issue of matriarchy, Eliza Burt Gamble’s The God-Idea of the Ancients; Or, Sex in Religion provides a top-down theory about how men systematically destroyed our original utopian culture of matriarchy. It is conspiratorial and paints a clear picture of women as victims and men as oppressors. In contrast, C. Gasquoine Hartley’s The Position of Woman in Primitive Society: A Study of the Matriarchy, provides a bottom-up exploration of the same data to produce a much more reasonable (and defensible) argument about historical matriarchy, which essentially posits that while males were out hunting or trying to sow their wild oats, women began to cooperate together to rear children and develop agriculture. This eventually led to the creation of a kind of “home” where stable husbands replaced roving alphas as the norm.
Gamble’s more salacious narrative won the day. When it proved historically indefensible, the entire field of matriarchal theories was discredited, relegating Hartley’s far more useful text to the dustbin of history. The same thing occurs with the use of other terms, with social hygiene and eugenics being among the most obvious examples.
This highlights an interesting pattern with cultural development. When new words like “evolution” appear in the cultural conversation, various factions vie for competing definitions. Yet the winners are rarely those who provide the most concrete or helpful definitions, or even those that match the original meaning intended by the one who coined the term. Instead, terms come to be defined by those that provide the most immediately salient, understandable, and spreadable definitions.
Once those definitions come to dominate the cultural conversation, they are very hard to budge. In my conversation with Magpie, I discussed this problematic pattern in regards to the term patriarchy, which several factions of Christians want to reclaim or rehab. This will always be an uphill battle in a culture where patriarchy is mostly defined as the problematic structure opposed by feminism, or egalitarianism.
Conflict Versus Cooperation
This current study, focusing on the particular time period of extreme change and new ideas, is part of a broader examination of historical patterns throughout the much longer timeline of human history. Any attempt to trace a historical or genealogical argument over thousands of years will inevitably become reductionist to some degree—the map is not the territory—but there are both consistent trends and recurring patterns that can be observed in every epoch.
As one begins to examine the various cultures of antiquity, the middle ages, through the renaissance, reformation, and enlightenment, through to modernity and the current era, one finds periods of greater and lesser stability. These changes tend to be analyzed through various crises and resolutions in politics, military conquest, economics, and technological development. But I suspect that there is good reason to consider all those as secondary factors that flow from more primary changes in the relationship between the sexes.
The first and greatest tension is between narratives of conflict and cooperation. Unfortunately, both of the winning narratives of the 20th century discussion, which provide the basis for the current gender wars, are rooted in the acceptance of conflict over cooperation. That conflict is itself at the heart of the problem, and remains unresolvable so long as both sides agree to the basic assumption about the historical relationship between the sexes.
Broadly speaking, we can divide the culture into two camps; a coalition of right-wing/conservative/republican/traditional/blue-collar/mostly male in opposition to the left-wing/liberal/democratic/progressive/white-collar/mostly female bloc. Both sides accept the narrative of historical male domination, with one side saying RETVRN, and the other saying never again. These factions are both supporting an excluded middle of elites and elite institutions who mostly benefit from the conflict, which serves to prove the superiority of cooperation, which they work to disguise. The focus on grievances is meant to keep people from asking cui bono?
These two factions functionally serve as discrete cultures that occupy a shared geographical space, though one could also posit that the red state/blue state and urban/rural divides are causing these two groups to become more physically isolated, while at the same time, people who occupy a shared physical space are increasingly isolated online. Neither group is completely homogenous in regard to sex, but because they are functionally discrete, they each have their own reproductive strategies.
Conflict between the sexes is obviously problematic, as it could lead to the extinction of the species. Ideological commitments on both sides are indeed pushing things in that direction, though they exist in tension with biological impulses. Nevertheless, as technological progress tends to serve ideological purposes rather than biological ones, there are large factions on both sides that are seeking to “win” at sex, which means extracting what they want from the opposition, while avoiding mutually beneficial or cooperative solutions. This means that broadly speaking, the male coded coalition is seeking sexual gratification while avoiding reproductive responsibility, while the female coalition is focused on the explicit right to not reproduce, which may include forgoing sex altogether.
The conservative side is more focused on positive reproduction, though their focus is inherently problematic, as this too is often rooted in conflict, with appeals to create large families to outbreed the competition, or secure a greater political foothold. Because the biological impulse is usually more potent on a personal level, there are scabs and defectors on both sides. Liberal women will abandon their ideologies for the right man, and plenty of men will employ performative sensitivity or espouse beliefs in feminist values if they think it will get them laid.
These are generalities, and the exceptions also prove the convoluted nature of trying to define oneself in opposition, such as the “Men going their own way” movement, or MGTOW, which is obviously male coded, and seems to consist of political conservatives. They may be trying to “force” the opposition into changing their ways, but it doesn’t seem like women are losing any sleep over their efforts. Another group that is somewhat difficult to place are women who are increasingly entering into sex work of their own volition, since their success depends on appealing to the “male” coalition, whose tacit support of their efforts (the money is coming from somewhere) stands in contrast to their explicit views against such behavior, whereas feminists will vocally support their efforts as an exercise of freedom, while decrying the male gaze. Conflict breeds contradictions.
Hierarchy and Equality
What both sides have no interest in exploring is the extent to which cooperation, both within the sexes, and between them, offers a superior path to achieving what one wants. This leads to the second tension—which is undeniably more difficult to address—between hierarchy and equality, which are linked to competing views of intrinsic and comparative value.
It is an undeniable reality that not only are men and women unequal in various regards, but that equality as such is almost non-existent within the ranks of each sex, with the notable exception of identical twins. This is an issue on which the male and female coalitions are publicly split, but human nature reveals far more agreement. Biological differences exist, as do differences in skill, opportunity, intelligence, and privilege. Some of these are changeable, others are not.
But it is once again the underlying assumption of conflict as the baseline which causes the problems reconciling these differences. One of the problems of pitting equality and hierarchy against each other, rather than limiting their applications to the specific domains, is the flattening of values. Equality of outcomes can always be achieved by lowering the bar. Universal starvation is undeniably fair, but it is also terrible. I think that there are probably fundamental differences in the way that men and women view these issues, (which is why the cooperative union of a man and woman is actually one of the most potent combinations for productive growth,) but for the sake of staying within my own areas of expertise, I will focus on the problems as they arise within the masculine domain.
One of the problematic outcomes of adopting the male-coded “survival of the fittest” narratives in regards to reproduction is that it necessarily creates conflict between men. Men are typically more jealous than women, and the arguments about certainty in regard to paternity of offspring provide an adequate explanation why. That makes competition for women a zero-sum arrangement among men, at least when reproduction is still a desirable outcome.
This is often cited to support the idea that alpha males should engage in polygyny because they can, or because they have in the past. But this ignores several of humanity’s greatest “evolutionary” achievements. One of which is cooperation, which exists in other species, but more importantly, it is the ability to exercise self-control, or delayed gratification. Just because your biological impulse tells you to do something doesn’t mean you should.
Unfortunately, this mindset is not limited to the realm of reproductive pursuits, but has pervaded almost every aspect of masculine culture. Job markets and social standing between men are increasingly viewed as zero-sum competitions. Even more troubling is the fact that the zero-sum competition keeps men locked in struggles of the same domains. The focus on our primitive biology seems to be a form of narrative competition that serves to reward men with traits that would otherwise be viewed as vestigial, such as height, strength, and being a deceptive bullshitter.
The last fact is evidenced by the number of fitness and masculinity influencers who become rich and successful by larping as rich and successful, supported by a crowd of young men larping the customs of ancient religions by offering monetary sacrifices to their digital deities, both male and female. This makes it tempting to embrace a position of equality that would lead to something like enforced monogamy. However, that would simply trade the resentment of the betas for the resentment of the alphas. Moreover, such goals can only be accomplished by further divesting the agency of sovereign individuals into the mediating apparatus of the state and technology.
It is possible to have non-zero sum competition, and when men engage in competitive cooperation, they sharpen each other’s skills, broaden their knowledge and strengthen their social support networks. It also diversifies the total set of positive traits. As men discover their own limitations in a given domain, and support the efforts of those who surpass them, they can expect to receive similar encouragement and admiration in the areas where they flourish.
This is a subject which I have elaborated on in much further detail in my books, but suffice it to say, I think the principle can and should be extended towards the relationships between men and women. The intrinsic differences between men and women are not problems to be solved, nor are they inherently hierarchical in value, even if they are different in degree.
Men should seek to become masculine in the ways that elevate their standing among their peers without requiring the diminishment of others, and women should seek to develop their unique feminine qualities in the same way. Roles and values should not be determined by broad ideological movements that define themselves in competition with other forces, but in relation to the unique individuals who are willing to live in committed cooperation for the mutual benefit of the other.
When both sexes reject reductionistic views of the other, and embrace our inherent differences as infinite sources of surprise and fascination, they can also fully recognize the joyous wonder that they can only achieve together—the creation of unique humans of both sexes, equal in value, and worthy of being loved and cherished for who they are.