A few days ago, I published a half-satirical Diary that posited there were too many men in the world and that excess may be a major cause of the problems facing us today. I further suggested that women could probably do a better job of running things, at least in so far as the survivability of our species is concerned.
The response (mostly male) from those few that read my diary and choose to comment on it, generally expressed high dudgeon that I would even hint at the possibility that women on a whole could do a better job at species survival than men who had after all rigged the game in their own favor for about 10,000 years.
Now I am the last person women either need or should want to defend them in any way. I can, however, try to make the case for the assertion that men have outlived their evolutionary purpose and that there are just too many of us.
For at least 10,000 years or so virtually every political system, economic system and religion has been designed by men for men. There is no natural or divine law that requires any of these structures to be designed in the way that they have been. During those same 10,000 years every justification of those structures have been developed by men to benefit men.
That rigging of the game in favor of men and their particular needs and world view has disadvantaged women throughout time and does so today.
Women are not lesser men. There is no reason to believe that they are physically and emotionally hard wired to be simply smaller men without penises whose bad luck it is to be designated that half of the population to be able to bear the future generations of the species and thus assure its survival. The fact of the matter is that because of their critical role in species survival, the game has always been rigged against them. After all, the women were too busy doing the hard work of procreation, giving birth and raising their offspring to engage in such activities and the men had a lot of time on their hands needing only to spend a few minutes to deposit their seed and otherwise hang around the entrance to the cave to intercept the occasional predator.
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Almost all institutions of significance in society have been designed by men to benefit men, much as has been done in sports, to glorify their designated evolutionary function. Governmental, financial and religious systems were developed to enhance the male role in species procreation. Had those systems been designed differently because that function was not needed, as it is not required today, would we have seen different results? An example of this possibility can be seen in some of the recent changes in our school systems
Not too long ago our elementary and secondary schools moved away from separate education by sex that was the traditional norm because it was viewed as disadvantaging women. At the same time we moved to a more co-operative less authoritarian pedagogy. As a result we saw that boys began to fall behind girls in their educational performance. This was most likely due in part to the fact that intellectual development of boys and girls occur at a different rate and to some extent boys and girls traditionally responded differently to different teaching techniques. In any event, this exacerbated the difficulties that the boys were having keeping up. Sure some boys still did well but for most the system had unwittingly been rigged against them. If this could happen so quickly to boys as a result of some minor changes to a single system, what must have happened to women over the ages?
Therefore, it is not enough that we allow women to compete (that word in itself being a male rigged concept) but it is perhaps time that we men should step aside and let them design their own institutions and rationalizations.
OK you may say we agree that we may have rigged the game in favor of our sex, so what what makes you think that they will be any better at running things than we men have been?
I found the following quote in a Huffington Post article a few weeks ago but alas, I did not record the author and could not locate the article again. So to the unknown author, I apologize for using your words here unattributed but if you or anyone reading this recognizes them please let me know and I will immediately correct the problem.
"Sociobiology: males in their profound hunting pack instinct are unable to think of social issues except in social-third person terms -- short-circuiting our best economic brains to totally ignoring the easy (never discussed therefore never discussed) sector-wide solution. We really need more (half?) females in the legislature and the social studies who are able to think of issues based in merits only-first person terms".
Some of the comments to my diary alleged that women can be as bad as men and pointed to Sarah Palin and Ann Coulter among others as examples of the evil that women can aspire to. Now in the case of Ann, there have been many comments to the effect that she may be an infiltrator from the other team so to speak, As a result, for all we know, she may just be one of us in disguise. With Sarah however, as much as she does not rank as one of my favorite persons, to compare her to such paragons of maleness as Vlad the Impaler, Hitler, Attila the Hun and so many other shining examples of our sex, really now….
The question should not be can they do better but under any conceivable scenario could they do worse than we have?
After all what is so wrong from a male standpoint with the social model of the lions of the savannah. The female lions run everything while a few males spend their days building up their muscles and beating off a few rivals. Men can in this society spend their time preening in front of a mirror to make sure they look good in a bikini.
As for whether we men have outlived our evolutionary purpose and unnecessary to exist in such great numbers as we do today, let me add to my question with which I ended my prior diary regarding what it is that men do today that woman cannot do as well or better, with the additional query, what is it that our sex actually does do other than clutter the place up?*
* One possibility, for white males at least, is suggested in this recent article in the "Atlantic Monthly" magazine. http://www.theatlantic.com/...