Check out my review of Laura Bates’ “Men Who Hate Women” on NPR

Hi David

That’s a really great article; and all the more impressive for you working during this so awful time for you. Look after yourself, and take all the time you need.

Good review! While I’m glad to see you back, please take good care of yourself.

Thanks for sharing this, David. Hope you’re doing okay.

David, it looks as though they misspelled your website at the bottom of the NPR review (well done, btw!). Can you get them to correct this? Sending good wishes to you.

Welcome back, Jefe (or “boss” for those of us whose high school Spanish is rusty–or non-existent).

Echoing Ms. VP: please continue to take care of *you* during this time.

We’ll be here.

Great review! I am currently reading that book and while it is good I find little there that I don’t already know from your blog.

I’d like to point you at a very interesting German book that also touches on the issue. It’s called “Female Choice” and written by a feminist evolutionary biologist. She tries to wrest the biological perspective on this away from the misogynist scene (not sure that she is entirely succesfull in this but I think her contribution to the debate is well worth reading).

She points out that from an evolutionary standpoint humans would do what most animals do, leave evolution to female choice. Our culture destroyed this principle after switching from a nomad lifestyle to settling down, by having fathers select the mates for their daughters and enforcing monogamy. In most western countries this culture has been breaking up for roughly a 100 years, finally allowing women to select as they want but also leading to more men no longer finding someone who wants to have sex with them (which is similar for a lot of other species). Her theory is that this needs to be accknowledged by culture. That it should kind of prepare men for the fact that a lot of them are not going to find someone and that that doesn’t make them losers or worse people (unless they turn to hate because of it).

It’s an odd book. On one hand I find it interesting because it acknowledges biology as part of the equation but doesn’t draw the same misogynist conclusions (like Peterson and the like who basically say upholding a sort of equal outcome sex distribution via patriarchy is the only solution). She turns a lot of right wing principles against the people who perpetuate them.

I’m glad your back David, I hope your doing well.

Hey David,

My sympathy for you. I’m about to go through the same walk — my mom is on the knife’s edge of death and while she’s a fighter who’s already beaten tough odds, these odds may be insurmountable. It’s the hardest thing, I think, to lose a parent. So virtual hugs to you.

-kat

Firstly nice to see you David. My condolences for your loss and I hope you are taking care of YOU.

Secondly this book is definitely on my list and I look forward to reading it.

@Idea of person : while that might be because of being a summary, the hypothesis your book have the issue that animal mate selection is a lot more complex than that already, with few animals where female “have the evolutionary choice”. (remember rape is actually decently common in animals, for example). It look a lot like evolutionary psychology where people try to make the facts fit their worldviews, even if for once it’s not for conservative purpose.

There’s also the issue that cultural views of society and what actually happen are two very different beasts. In the Middle age, people were significantly less monoganous and families chose husbands and wife significantly less than we have come to believe. Similarly the population of black people in Europe were alway significantly higher than conservative thinks, homosexuals were much more common and somewhat more public than pop culture say, etc etc. In a lot of way, our society did much more about making “fringe” lifestyle acceptable than actually accepting them.

I admit I’m getting some kind of TERFy vibes from the description of the “Female Choice” book. TERFs are very into evo-psych and biological ideas about women and men.

@Ohlmann:

It look a lot like evolutionary psychology where people try to make the facts fit their worldviews, even if for once it’s not for conservative purpose.

Actually, from what I’ve gleaned from the comments in this thread, it still is for a conservative purpose.

The world sketched out is clearly an unequal one: women have it better than men do, from the sounds of things.

Keeping the pyramid of privilege in place is not progressive, whether you do the “status quo conservative” thing of keeping everyone in their current places on it, or you do the “revolutionary conservative” thing of knocking the guys who currently occupy the top tier down a peg or two to replace them with your own group.

This remains the case if your own group is currently a fairly oppressed group (below, say, the midway point up the pyramid, to say nothing of below the elites cavorting on its apex).

The only truly non-conservative position is to want to knock down, rather than conserve, the pyramid itself. Swapping out one group of bosses at its top for another is, in the end, just a cosmetic change. It’s the same shitty system underneath.

On the basis of the above, I would then bet dollars to doughnuts that the author of the thingy in question is a) at least middle class (well, they got a book published through traditional channels, so that one’s a gimme) and b) a TERF, or TERF-adjacent (e.g. SWERF) at the very least.

“Let’s replace those lecherous old creepy wealthy men like McConnell with wealthy women! That’ll show those misogynist pigs! And once elevated to our rightful place, we’ll show them! Oh, yes, we’ll show them! We’ll take over big pharma and Goldman Sachs and laugh all the way to the bank! Our turn to turf little old men out of their homes when they miss one bill payment! To command the tanks and the missiles! To make everyone else work to enrich us! Chelsea Clinton for President 2024!!”

Would that really be an improvement on the current state of affairs?