Thursday, February 14, 2008

Masculism, Cynicism, and Woman Hating.

This essay is out of date:: See the updated version here.


http://underlore.com/TBA/?p=1345


Many times when people read some of my work they come to the conclusion that I am cynical and that I hate women or view them in a bad light.

The purpose of this post is to answer that claim, so that I can have a full bodied response at my fingertips.

I consider myself a masculist, and here' I'll include the definition.

Well, in looking for a suitable definition, I found a lovely double standard.

According to Http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/feminism ...


Noun

feminism

  1. A social theory or political movement supporting the equality of both sexes in all aspects of public and private life; specifically, a theory or movement that argues that legal and social restrictions on females must be removed in order to bring about such equality.

According to Http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/masculism ... (until I edited it, I'm sure someone will put it back)


Noun

masculism (plural masculisms)

  1. A belief in the superiority of men or the masculine.

    • 1983, Sheila Ruth, quoted in Judith Evans (1986), Feminism and Political Theory [1], ISBN 0803997051, page 70:

    Fascism, fully revealed, is the extreme, exquisite expression of masculism, of patriarchy, and thus the natural enemy of feminism, its quintessential opposite.
    • 1997, Nalini Persram, "In my father's house are many mansions", in Black British Feminism: A Reader [2], ISBN 0415152887, page 213:

    It often takes a crisis of some sort to initiate the difficult but empowering feminist process of renegotiating the masculisms that dominate the discourses of origin, authenticity and belonging in a way that transforms margins into frontiers, lack into (ad)vantage.
    The Rocky-Rambo syndrome puts on display the raw masculism which is at the bottom of conservative socialization and ideology.

So, when one argues for equal rights from the man's perspective, they are a bigot, but when one argues for equal rights from a woman's perspective they are a civil rights figure.

Anyway, I'll define masculism correctly, and continue to answer the charge that I am a woman hater or am cynical etc.

Noun

masculism

  1. A social theory or political movement supporting the equality of both sexes in all aspects of public and private life; specifically, a theory or movement that argues that legal and social restrictions on males must be removed in order to bring about such equality.

For example, the social restriction on arguing that men are the oppressed gender in America. As if honor killings over the proper use of a burqa are common in the states.

No, I do not hate women, I just feel that they are in an undeserved socially superior position. Like the blue eye brown eye school experiment demonstrated, whenever an oppressed group is given power over their oppressors on equally flimsy grounds they will act as badly as those who oppressed them. This is a sad human fact.

Feminists in the modern American context simply want revenge. They want a period of social superiority to make up for the long period of inferiority.

Granted, the global picture of women's rights is a grim one, and feminists are indeed needed all over the world, and in those contexts I consider myself a feminist as well. But here in America, any disadvantages females encounter are consequences of their own choices.

For example, if a woman wants to complain about being a victim of violent crime then they should not subsidize violent men with mates. Time and again the smaller gentler man is disregarded in favor of the larger aggressive one. This means that what it is to be a successful man is inherently linked with violence because of the choices women make.

Rape is not a significant source of children anymore in the west on an evolutionary level, men desire sex more than women for hormonal and biological reasons, therefor women have more sexual power because more often than the man, the women becomes the gate keeper of sex, or as I like to put it, The Chooser Sex.

Women as a result generally get to choose when a family is formed. No glove no love, they can say. Thanks to legal favoritism they also choose who gets to be a father and thus THEY control what it is to be a man and father, because if a man or father does not measure up she can divorce him and take his child in the majority of cases.

Therefor it is not fair to blame men for how they are since how they are is largely under female control.

Pointing this out does not mean I hate or blame women. I consider this a social inequity perpetrated on both sexes by The Company (Corp/Gov/Church), using monogamy as its chief tool, for purposes of profit, as I have explained before.

I don't hate women, I love women. I personally consider them my superior by default, as they are physically built better, and they are calmer and more compassionate by and large, which may be a reason they tolerate violence too much, their forgiving nature, but in any case this situation is the result of sexual selection practices they have instituted, and perpetuate.

This may seem conflicted, one might ask :”but if you consider them your superior why do you complain about their supposed superior standing in society?”

Quite simply because why they are superior in this society has nothing to do with why I consider them superior as a gender. Women in this society are superior because they posses a vagina, not because they have a gift for compromise, compassion, diplomacy, and personal strength.

Women are on top socially because they are desired sexually. This has nothing to do with their general advantage in the traits I mentioned above, which means that women who possess none of those traits are still placed on top, like Paris Hilton for example.

I think most everyone can agree that she's a vapid monster. But she does not need to be hated because she enjoys sex or money, most of us do, and that's nothing to be shamed of. She needs to be hated because she sells sex covertly and is part of a culture that encourages others to do the same, with disastrous results. She demands pampering because she fits The Company's social definition of beauty.

I wish the playing field to be equalized so that the traits I mentioned above can be accorded their due respect. And I personally believe that in an equal society primarily women would be in charge until such time as sexual selection or transhumanist pressures begin to more evenly divide those traits up among the genders.

No, I do not hate women. No, my view is not cynical, it is in fact hopeful. Sex is something sacred and it is a human right. To trade it like so much beef is a grand sacrilege. It should be shared freely circumstances permitting. Sex is the perfect drug and we are all born with it, we should not have to pay third parties for it. And we should revere those who are kind enough to give it away or sell it at fair market value, not call them sluts and whores and attack them as if they were inhuman. Nor should we attack and humiliate those who wish to buy sex, or who want sex, for being perverts or pathetic, anymore than we should attack a starving person looking for a meal.

Some will blame men for their hunger, claiming sex obsession, but this is radically unfair. Sex is a basic animal need. And testosterone is what makes men different from women, and it is also the sex drive hormone in both sexes. Again pointing this out does not make me a woman hater.

No, the fact is, its everyone else that has the dark and cynical view of love and sex. I see it as a crystal pure flowing stream. Not a dirty six pack of Dasani.

Editorial addition:

I have a problem with cultural aspects of general female behaviors and choices. But to have a problem with women simply because they are women would be equivalent to racism. I have a problem with choices, not people.

I love people.

However, yes, I have a dim view of some people as they are defined by their actions because of the choices they consistently make. No cynic thinks of himself as a cynic, they all think of themselves as realists. I personally think of myself as an optimist.

After all, look at the hope I show is speaking at all, if I was a cynic would I not take the attitude "why bother"?

10 comments:

AccountKiller said...

I can understand your defensiveness towards people concerning this subject because I'm sure they attack you regularly. It took a little bit for me to realize quite where you were coming from and to refrain from attacking you. Instead I chose to take a more intellectual route and try to get some form of understanding.

It's good to hear that you love people, haha. To be honest, I hate most of the choices that women make, but I also hate some of the choices that men make as well. I try not to see things in terms of gender, just as I try not to see things in terms of race or even sexual orientation.

That is true, you do see a solution and a light at the end of your tunnel, which is better than giving up at all. Please do understand that when I say feminist or feminism I also mean an equality between the genders. There is a negative connotation today due to radical feminists who do happen to be man-haters or who want revenge for the oppressions in the past.

But I don't go to protests, I don't burn my bras, I don't have a crew cut, and I love men. But I am interested in things such as salary equivalent for equally qualified individuals, despite gender. Even despite race, everything.

About your argument concerning sexual drives, to succumb to this primal urge and others we surely have, doesn't it sort of degenerate the society to a more barbaric level? Also, if sex is such a sacred thing, doesn't partaking in the act with anybody one feels like kind of reduce it?

Brandon said...

I am by no means saying men are innocent in all this, far from it, I'm just saying that when people with less power react to the actions of people with more power, their actions can be partially excused because with power comes responsibility.

When I speak of men and women I'm not referring to them as genders so much as cultures. Presence of a penis or a vagina means next to nothing compared to the roles, decisions, and power.

I also seek equality of the genders, as explained above. I never saw you as rabid or man hating. You do not come across that way at all. But as far as salary equivalence goes, as an anarcho-capitalist I believe that a business has the right to pay as little for a service as they can, the market function will balance it out.

I don't see sexual drive as a bad thing. To me its like hunger. People should be allowed to eat. The argument that freedom of sexuality will lead to over indulgence is flawed. It would be like arguing that making food available would turn the world into a giant roman vomitorium where people eat obsessively. Sex like any other need becomes less important to a person when the need is met. The argument is circular.

Lets say I starved a group of 50 people, and lets say I fed them once every 24 hours at a table and there was only enough for half of them. They would attack the table like wild animals. Is this an indication of what humans behave like when food is freely available?

And no having sex often does not reduce its meaning. Sex is sacred precisely because of its infinite and pleasurable nature. Beautiful women can with a word or a gesture bring pleasure to people costlessly. What cheapens this is selling it and withholding it out of petty jealousy or a desire for power.

Thank you for your comment, and replies. :)

AccountKiller said...

I do not mean sex in abundance reduces it, as I have had sex repeatedly [with one partner] and it never felt reduced to me.

What I do wonder is... if a person is having sex with everybody on his/her street, doesn't that kind of reduce it? If I chose to have sex with a guy who has banged everybody in my apartment building, I don't think I would feel that great about the experience.

Many girls I know who choose to engage in sexual activities with many men confess later that they were participating in a form of self-destruction and self-worthlessness.

Brandon said...

No, thats what I meant. Sex is sacred because its one of the few things we have that can be shared without cost.

“Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.” -Siddhartha Gautama

Women are trained to identify their ego and self worth with the monetary value of their sex. This is dreadfully cold, and is precisely the type of damage I am trying to undo. Sleeping with everyone in your building merely makes it impossible to sell that sex, or the hope of it, for favors or advantage. But, you've created a lot of happiness, and given the nature of the demand for sex, you could continue to create happiness.

No ethically objective view can object to that in and of itself. Women are constantly being objectified. And I wish to remove that force from society, and ironically the best way to do it is to indulge the types of activities those in power say contribute to the objectification. It is their style of insidious genius to claim that the solution is actually the cause of the problems the their solutions to which usually cost you freedom money or both.

In this case the terms 'slut' and 'whore' spring to mind. What are those terms? Slut, a woman who gives away sex, thus undermining their effort to sell it (They being the big three gov corp church.) Whore a woman who sells it directly thus cutting out the big three. Now you know why they demonize these activities. Money and power, thats it.

My goal in life is to give women back the power stolen from them so that men can be freed from the bonds of the big three.

Bapudi said...

This, like most philosophy, is purely theoretical. I'm guessing you don't have a wife/girlfriend. My advice: get one, and try putting your theories into practice. You'll probably deepen your understanding of females and learn something about what it really means to be a man in the process.

Bapudi said...

You're missing a major point in your analysis of sex -- when woman gets pregnant, she has to carry that baby for nine months inside her own body. If the man was interested only in "cost free" pleasure, she then has to raise it for 15-18 years. It's true that birth control changes this, but this dynamic held true for millions of years. It's a deeply embedded instinct. In other words, women's role as "The Chooser Sex" is a survival skill, not some vast conspiracy to keep you horny or give women power. You have it backwards -- women use their sex for money and power precisely because it is one of the few powers traditionally afforded them.

Brandon said...

This, like most philosophy, is purely theoretical. I'm guessing you don't have a wife/girlfriend. My advice: get one, and try putting your theories into practice. You'll probably deepen your understanding of females and learn something about what it really means to be a man in the process.

Get one? Like a blender or a candle? What isle are they in? Who will I have to pay?

My theories are on the nature of interaction between males and females and the related social pressures. I put my theories into practice every day. I don't need a girlfriend to understand how men and women are treated in this society.

You may be content to let someone else dictate gender roles to you but I'm not saddled with such insecurity. Or put like my earlier feminist counter parts would put it: I'm not defined by a woman. I don't need a woman to tell me who I am. I don't require external validation because I'm a psychologically healthy self actualized individual. Regardless of the culture of humiliation. IE “You don't want to join our little boy and girls club? You're crazy and pathetic.”

I have no more pride in being a man then I have in being white. I'm comfortable being a man, I'm at peace with it. It's part of who I am, but I didn't earn it, and I don't think it makes me better then anything or anyone, so I'm not proud of it. Your attitude is precisely the kind of hidden sexism I'm trying my level best to annihilate.

I'm a human. Not a man. And you or anyone else telling me what it is to be a man is as absurd as telling em what it is to be a person, which I cannot possibly fail at. I may not measure up to your social ideals, but your asocial ideas are subjective, personal, and I would guess from your comments, in my opinion, completely absurd.

You're missing a major point in your analysis of sex -- when (a) woman gets pregnant, she has to carry that baby for nine months inside her own body. If the man was interested only in "cost free" pleasure, she then has to raise it for 15-18 years.

You seem to see women as both devoid of the ability and the responsibility of and for making choices. It is not your place to tell a woman what to do with a child unless that child is yours and even then its not yours like a suit, its yours as in you have a relation.

Society decides what is done with a child, and society places various decisions regarding what is done in the hands of the parents, but not all. Society if it feels you're not up to the task will take the child from you. If you fail miserably enough it will incarcerate you, or even kill you. You have an illusion of solitary child rearing in your skull that needs to be erased if you wish to reach parity with reality. My position is that children are raised by society as a whole in any case excepting feral children, which are absurdly rare. Parenting these days is largely about who pays for things more then anything else. The Company takes care of the rest, from the message they get at church, to the shows they watch on TV, to the lies taught them at school. Of course the Company convinces you that you're in charge that way when the children utterly fail at begin human they can blame you instead of themselves, if they can't find a profitable use for that failure first.

This system of encouraging psychosis and then profiting from it was in my opinion best exemplified by the SS. The HJ selected young impressionable boys, engineered submission to the group, fostered insecurity and jealousy and then gave them a victim. All that sounds disturbingly familiar.

It's true that birth control changes this, but this dynamic held true for millions of years. It's a deeply embedded instinct.

For one the human race is only about 200,000 years old. For two is the desire to slaughter your enemies with a rock is also an instinct. Are we to subsidize that as well? I don't care how hard you find it to use your upper abstract reasoning to rule your lower primate brain, it is still required of you if you choose to be a human over a chimp. If you wish to indulge your base animal instincts and feel that their label of natural instinct justifies the resulting horror then go live in the woods, if you can.

In other words, women's role as "The Chooser Sex" is a survival skill, not some vast conspiracy to keep you horny or give women power. You have it backwards -- women use their sex for money and power precisely because it is one of the few powers traditionally afforded them.

Obviously the instinct originated in nature, I stipulate that. But The Company encourages it while suppressing others for purposes of power and profit. I think you're struggling to justify a system that has you quite literally by the balls and you've chose to attack the messenger.

We have the ability and this the responsibility to look at what we do, and make corrections for the benefit of the species. Unless you think pleasure and life are worthless.

Bapudi said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Bapudi said...

Get one? Like a blender or a candle? What isle are they in? Who will I have to pay?

No, you have to interact socially. They're not a commodity, they're people with whom you have to form relationships.

I put my theories into practice every day. I don't need a girlfriend to understand how men and women are treated in this society.

I would argue that an intimate relationship with a woman would give you a less purely intellectual understanding of that.

You may be content to let someone else dictate gender roles to you but I'm not saddled with such insecurity.

I'm not, and I don't. You obviously don't know me. I'm not defined by a woman, and I don't require external validation. But one does end up plumbing some depths of human nature in a close relationship that one doesn't chatting with people online and writing theoretical treatises. The more intimate the relationship, the more you discover parts of someone that you'd never see otherwise. A different dimension is uncovered.

Being in a close relationship with a woman doesn't mean I'm subscribing to society's gender roles. My girlfriend and I actually blur many of the more superficial gender roles.

Your attitude is precisely the kind of hidden sexism I'm trying my level best to annihilate.

How exactly are you trying to do that? By arguing with people on the internet?

I don't know what "attitude" you assume that I have. My point is that you're not speaking from the deep experience of interacting with someone on a daily basis.
And I didn't call you crazy or pathetic. In fact, my tone is not nasty or insulting at all, although that may change.

You seem to see women as both devoid of the ability and the responsibility of and for making choices. It is not your place to tell a woman what to do with a child unless that child is yours

Huh? I'm not telling anyone what to do with their child. I'm pointing out that sex means a lot more than "cost free" pleasure, which your analysis seems to equate it with. It comes with huge responsibility, especially for women. In an evolutionary sense, that has an impact on human nature. Read up on evolutionary psychology to get the gist of what I'm saying.

Society decides what is done with a child, and society places various decisions regarding what is done in the hands of the parents, but not all. Society if it feels you're not up to the task will take the child

This is a non-sequiteur and does not pertain to the point I'm making. I'm not talking about how children are raised in society, I'm talking about how women's psychological relationship to sex is hugely impacted by the reality of pregnancy and child rearing. Women are, to some extent, programmed by evolution not to just give sex away. If that impulse didn't exist, the survival of the species would have been jeopardized.

Furthermore, this impulse can be observed in most animals that engage in sexual reproduction, with some notable exceptions.

For one the human race is only about 200,000 years old.

This is true of our exact species, but the genus is perhaps 2.5 millions years old (Wikipedia). The species delineation isn't a sharp line, but a continuum of change. Evolutionary instincts didn't change sharply one day 200,000 years ago.

For two is the desire to slaughter your enemies with a rock is also an instinct. Are we to subsidize that as well?

I'm not "subsidizing" anything, I'm describing to you a reality of human nature. Again, my point is that your theories are all a bit airy and intellectual, but not solidly grounded in an understanding of how people actually act.

But The Company encourages it while suppressing others for purposes of power and profit. I think you're struggling to justify a system that has you quite literally by the balls and you've chose to attack the messenger.

I'm not justifying it. I'm not making a moralistic argument -- you are. In my opinion, you're spinning a paranoid fantasy about something that essentially has a biological basis. I mean, come on, "The Company"? I'm trying to inject a more empirical basis into this discussion. Does society really suppress the instinct to kill, or does it merely channel it into certain accepted forms (war, state executions, etc)? The same is true of the sex drive.

I'm not justifying this, I'm describing it. I think your description is unsupported by anything but your own speculation.

We have the ability and this the responsibility to look at what we do, and make corrections for the benefit of the species. Unless you think pleasure and life are worthless.

I certainly don't think pleasure or life are worthless, but I'm not sure that it's possibly to totally override many of our deeper biological impulses. You may accuse me of cynicism (which would be inaccurate, but we can discuss that as a separate philosophical thread), but I am skeptical that human nature can be changed by intellectual theories or social programs. It can be channeled or controlled, moderated or accepted, or even rejoiced in.

If you want to get personal, my read is that you are justifying your inability to be intimate with women by spinning grandiose theories of gender relations, without really observing gender relations from the inside. But I don't really know you, so that may just be my prejudice.

Brandon said...

I totally forgot to respond to this.

No, you have to interact socially. They're not a commodity, they're people with whom you have to form relationships.

They aren't? Then why do models make more than doctors? Why is pornography a billion dollar industry? Why is sexual slavery a problem all over the world? Why have there been murders over women since before agriculture? What do you think marriage is/was?

If you think women are not a commodity you have your head so deep in the sand i don't even knwo where to begin. It's like you telling me there's no such thing as humans.

"Relationship" is just a metaphor for courting and attempted copulation and the various fees of both abstract and real imposed by the market and participants.

I think Dianna Ross said it best.

"She said love don't come easy It's a game of give and take."

I would argue that an intimate relationship with a woman would give you a less purely intellectual understanding of that.

No, you're overwhelmed by social conditioning and emotion and you're dimly aware of this and what it took to get you there, and you want me to join you. This argument is also employed by child abusers who want others to sympathize with there purely animal reactions.

Ever here the saying Can't see the forest for the trees? Or being too close to a problem? Any student of problem solving knows that distance and objectivity are keys to clarity.

If anything my situation allows me to see more and clearer than you're capable of. Your argument is like saying "You'd understand antisemitism if you were born into the Nazi party."

I'm not, and I don't. You obviously don't know me. I'm not defined by a woman, and I don't require external validation.

Again, you're blind to the obvious. Look at your clothing, your entertainment choices, your modes of speech, your social position. you've been defined by women ever since your mother chose your crib color. You've been defined by women just as they've been defined by men ever since we made gender a social binary category. Your ignorance of your own motivations is staggering. You need external validation to survive, to keep a job to avoid jail. What do you think the social contract is?

But one does end up plumbing some depths of human nature in a close relationship that one doesn't chatting with people online and writing theoretical treatises.

Boy that was like using a washcloth to hide an elephant. I think I like it better when people openly call me a basement loser. As above, proximity to an issue clouds it. I'll answer the claim that I have no friends In detail in the next chapter. I'll simply say you are mistaken.

The more intimate the relationship, the more you discover parts of someone that you'd never see otherwise. A different dimension is uncovered.

That's only if you've been living a lie and believing one. You confuse discovery of ignorance with discovery of deception. I'll use a crass but clear example. Whats it sound like when your girlfriend takes a shit? You find this out later because of intimate contact. You are ignorant of this at first because it is hidden. The desired impression is that women simply don't have intestines. (As opposed to it being manly to fart, in some circles.) This "dimension" you speak of I already see. Of course I can't convince you of that any more than I can convey the qualia of red. I see the root motivations of all intelligent action. I'm in parity with reality to a greater degree than you are, not less. I'll let history be the judge.

Being in a close relationship with a woman doesn't mean I'm subscribing to society's gender roles. My girlfriend and I actually blur many of the more superficial gender roles.

Yet you feel the need to specify the gender, because a close relationship with a man might make you sound less manly. Gender roles are so ingrained in your behavior you don't even notice them.

Do you have any idea how generic that claim is and how paradoxically common the attitude is? No one thinks they have a common relationship outside of cults who seek commonality. the believe that you are somehow special and different, and exception to the rules, a secret superior, is critical to the survival of The Company. If you thought what you had was bland and normal, human nature suggest that you'd seek to improve. Especially in a society based on the Horatio Alger mythology of hard work and novelty being the price of all success.

How exactly are you trying to do that? By arguing with people on the internet?

No, by writing of my opinion and submitting it for peer review in the laboratory of life. First in blog form, then in a book. The pen is mightier than the sword. but let me guess, the best way to change the world in your opinion is to have babies, right? And I guess you think you thought of that all by yourself as well.

I don't know what "attitude" you assume that I have.

I don't have to assume, you've shown it directly.

My point is that you're not speaking from the deep experience of interacting with someone on a daily basis.

No I'm not. I'm speaking from a position of distance and objectivity. But I'll say I'm far more intimate with my circle of friends than you are with your mate. Intimate does not mean sex as the TV has obviously convinced you. Intimacy is closeness, parity, real trust. a real trust that simply can't be had at the same time as trying to live up to something. Thus I'll always be closer to them then you are your girlfriend, because I don't have to worry about my friends dumping me if I don't perform up to spesification.

I'm sure you think you can "be yourself" with "your" girlfriend, but the fact is you can't. Proof? Think of ten things that would be fun that you could do to get dumped. Now lie to me and say you can't think of any. My answer is that you're either a liar or devoid of imagination.

And I didn't call you crazy or pathetic. In fact, my tone is not nasty or insulting at all, although that may change.

Yes you did. Do you think by saying it may change makes it ok? Look like the law culture has penetrated pretty deeply. "Customer was given notice our liability is satisfied."

I'm not telling anyone what to do with their child.

By telling me what do do with my mating habits you're telling me what to do with family and thus my children.

I'm pointing out that sex means a lot more than "cost free" pleasure, which your analysis seems to equate it with.

Exactly. You think it means "cost full" pleasure. You think you have to pay someone (you probably think I'm talking about your girlfriend). Again since you've demonstrated a complete lack of imagination I'll again specify abstract and real costs. And you think paying these costs gives you special privilege, that "real love" demands sacrifice. And you think this because the TV tells you so and your girlfriend parrots whats on the TV. You lifted you concept of what a relationship is, off prime time. Else how do you think they managed to get 300 million people to ALL adopt monogamy? Did you not notice what they do to polygamists? We burn them if we can't break, humiliate, or neutralize them.

Don't tell me its merely father to son tradition. If that were the case we'd still have a pillory in the town square and white's only drinking fountains. TV is the great social homogenizer. Combined with church and school, it ensures that the only differences that propagate are the differences they allow.

As I said before, Intimacy is not sex. Sex can be a route to intimacy granted but then again so can a good meal or a long conversation. And intimacy need not be limited to one person, it can be had for several, such as equal love for a dozen children. Sex is a basic animal need. To demand that all sex must be meaningful and deep is akin to demanding that all sex leads to children.

It comes with huge responsibility, especially for women. In an evolutionary sense, that has an impact on human nature. Read up on evolutionary psychology to get the gist of what I'm saying.

I suggest you read my other work. I'm well aware of the impact of evolutionary psychology and biology on the human mating dynamic. That's the whole point of this response. How you think is a function of the social pressure you feel powerless to combat. I'm well aware that sexual selection operating through the vehicle of female choice is the root of speciation. You and your kind are becoming a different species as per the demands of The Company. You're becoming morlock and eloi.

This is a non-sequiteur and does not pertain to the point I'm making. I'm not talking about how children are raised in society, I'm talking about how women's psychological relationship to sex is hugely impacted by the reality of pregnancy and child rearing.

So now you claim that there is no nurture, only nature? Where did that deeply important personal interaction impact go? How can you simultaneously argue the importance of evolution and discount the impact of child rearing? It is not a non sequitur, its just too big a problem for your mind to hold all at once. (I do not mean that as an insult, merely as a fact, like your height or race) What you're only capable of seeing as a non-relation is in fact a crucial variable.

Women are, to some extent, programmed by evolution not to just give sex away.

And men are programmed to lethally bash in the skulls of their competition. We're talking about the future and what should be.

If that impulse didn't exist, the survival of the species would have been jeopardized.

And it should be discarded for the baggage that it is. Just because it was a good idea in the jungle doesn't mean it's a good idea now. Take our lust for fat as an example. The majority of medical science could be construed as a fight against biological instinct. Not to mention all of psychology.

Furthermore, this impulse can be observed in most animals that engage in sexual reproduction, with some notable exceptions.

Exactly. I grow weary of antler bashing heavy plumage and pointless competition. I don't want to be an elk. I want to be a human, how about you?

This is true of our exact species, but the genus is perhaps 2.5 millions years old (Wikipedia). The species delineation isn't a sharp line, but a continuum of change. Evolutionary instincts didn't change sharply one day 200,000 years ago.

Don't be pedantic. Your statement was made in the context of humanity. You even mentioned birth control in the same sentence. I don't see a lot of fish wearing condoms. If you want to drag life prior to humanity into the mix I'm all for it. There are billions of examples of my correct appraisal of the situation to be found in the fish and insect kingdoms. Monogamy is an evolutionary dead end. Even the birds are abandoning it.

Humanity barring intervention will be sterile in around 150K years as a result of our mating system. We simply adapt too slowly now. Even an x-men style mutation would take thousands of generations to propagate sufficiently to save humanity. Much less the slow accumulation of traits typical of the evolutionary process. Watch Idiocracy and ignore the jokes. Or go read Adam's Curse.

I'm not "subsidizing" anything, I'm describing to you a reality of human nature.

You're subsidizing jealously with your defense of monogamy. Monogamy is an element of the social contract designed specifically to cater to jealousy. Rather than combat it like other elements of the social contract combat violence.

Again, my point is that your theories are all a bit airy and intellectual, but not solidly grounded in an understanding of how people actually act.

I humbly disagree. A simple look at divorce rates and other monogamy related statistics show that humans are serial monogamists at best and are actually closet polygamists by design both mentally and physically. Why do you think men make millions of sperm? 1 in 200 males alive today are directly descended from a single man. Why was Temüjin as a human male capable of this? Whence comes the desire for harems?

I don't think its me that needs to do more reading.

I'm not justifying it. I'm not making a moralistic argument...

That is laughable. You seem to have already forgotten your own words.

-- you are.

Indeed I am. Though I would prefer the term ethical over moral, but that's a quibble.

In my opinion, you're spinning a paranoid fantasy about something that essentially has a biological basis.

Ignoring the pejorative "paranoid", yes I realize it has a biological basis. See below.

I mean, come on, "The Company"? I'm trying to inject a more empirical basis into this discussion.

Yes, "The Company." A mocking tone is not a counter argument. How that's for empirical?

Does society really suppress the instinct to kill, or does it merely channel it into certain accepted forms (war, state executions, etc)? The same is true of the sex drive.

I am not allowed to kill my fellow citizens, which is acting on hatred. I am allowed to be monogamous with them which is acting on jealousy. War and executions are specifically carried our dispassionately (in the ideal.) That's why we don't hand murderers to their victim's families or openly torture them.

I'm not justifying this, I'm describing it.

Badly.

I think your description is unsupported by anything but your own speculation.

And you'd be wrong.

I certainly don't think pleasure or life are worthless, but I'm not sure that it's possibly to totally override many of our deeper biological impulses.

I am. See below.

You may accuse me of cynicism (which would be inaccurate, but we can discuss that as a separate philosophical thread), but I am skeptical that human nature can be changed by intellectual theories or social programs. It can be channeled or controlled, moderated or accepted, or even rejoiced in.

You need to explore paradise engineering and transhumanism. I agree that no mental discipline or policy will solve the problem, instantly. But, policy (political) pressure shapes a society, and so does removing it. If we legalized polygamy (I reject the term polyamory) we'd be better off in the long run.

If you want to get personal, my read is that you are justifying your inability to be intimate with women by spinning grandiose theories of gender relations, without really observing gender relations from the inside. But I don't really know you, so that may just be my prejudice.

*smirk* And I thought you weren't taking a moral stance. By this logic in order to understand pedophilia I'd have to sleep with children. Or in order to understand serial killers I'd have to have a few bodies in ym crawl space. Only in the realm of mating is crap like that tolerated. Because they want us to go "Oh yeah? Well I'll just go get married do my job and have kids, that'll show them!" I won't fall for such transparent (to me) manipulations.

As above intimacy is not where I can put my dick. and that's basically what we're talking about. For example I'm quite intimate with my mother, and with my friends, and yes some of them have vaginae (shock and surprise.)

My apologies for the vast delay.