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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/30522
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/30522
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

I will recommend you begin with a book, non-fiction popularized science, _"Is There Anything Good About Men? [How cultures flourish by exploiting men]"_ by Roy F. Baumeister, the Eppes Eminent Professor of Psychology at Florida State University (at the time of writing he was).

I am speaking from memory of Baumeister's illuminating ideas. The premise is simple, that due to the biology of mating, men are **_expendable,_** disposable, and this disposability (whether the men themselves think so or not) is reflected in their psychology and our cultural norms.

He begins with an interesting observation found from studying genetics: How many of your ancestors were male, and how many female? Your first thought that it must be 50/50 is wrong. 2/3 of your ancestors were female, only 1/3 were male! Until recently modern times, only about 50% of men reproduced, while over 90% of females reproduced, because very strong or rich men had many wives and children. A single man can father a hundred children in a year, a single women can be the ancestor of, at best, triplets, and on average, ONE.

This makes men expendable. Suppose I have a village of 500 men and 500 women, 1000 people, and we go to war and lose 400 people in battle. Now I speak in generalities ignoring caveats like religion and personal choice. That said, if I lose 400 men, the remaining 100 men can easily father the next generations, and the village can have 500 children and thrive. If I lose 400 women, I have 500 men that have to compete for the 100 remaining women, and I will have 100 pregnancies: The village does not thrive, it shrinks.

The future of the village is best served by making all _intentional_ sacrifices of life, male lives. That dynamic exists throughout the animal kingdom: For horses, most males do not reproduce, and they fight to the death for the right of it. All females reproduce, however.

In human society, Baumeister notes, we have literally hundreds of legends in dozens of languages and cultures about a group of men banding together and going to seek their fortune; building a ship, fighting battles, so they can come home with riches and get themselves wives. Virtually ZERO such legends about a group of women doing the same to attract husbands.

**_They don't need to do that,_** the vast majority of women can reproduce with **_some_** male if they want to; their instinctive competition is not to get a male interested in them because they (the woman) has power or wealth, their instinctive competition is for the **_better_** males, the ones with power, wealth, and the ability to both protect and provide for the woman and her children.

Male psychology, including the involuntary parts, springs from this dynamic.

It is why they are quick to fight, why they (IRL) commit most murders, why they see women as sexual objects: Historically the male involvement in a pregnancy could be just five minutes of intercourse and end of story: child produced! The rest of his involvement could be just in authorizing the expenditure of his resources to provide for his wife and children. Like a salmon, he could literally die in battle the next day and still end up with a child.

It is why they don't care much about their looks and can be seen as sexually attractive to women even when aged or distinctly unpretty: The power and resources of a King do not require an athletic body or pretty face. For women, however, appearances matter, because youth, health and symmetry are key indicators, for a male, of the **reproductive** potential they subconsciously seek, and are usually wired to become aroused by.

It is why women have long been considered the property of males: THEY are the precious resource, not males. For a father, it is his daughters that other men seek and will pay much for, not his sons. If he wants his sons to reproduce he has to give them land and wealth. For his daughters he will **receive** land and wealth, because a girl of reproductive age is a valuable asset in her own right, in much demand by men; in fact they will risk their lives to earn the price. It is why virginity is prized in women, but not men: Virginity in the marriage bed ensures the offspring of that mating is the progeny of the man, and there is always the fear of a man that a child is not his. No such fear exists for women, obviously, their kid is unquestionably theirs, and if she knows she has mated with only one man, she is certain of the father, too: His virginity or not just doesn't really matter. [with caveats for modern medicine, of course.]

I do suggest reading the book; it explains much and lets you see both male and female POV with greater clarity, and get into their subconscious psychology with greater ease.

I am not saying the modern woman (or even medieval woman) sees herself as a reproductive commodity. But their sexual and social attitudes differ greatly from males. The vast majority of 21 year old females, on any night of the week and with no fame or wealth, can walk into a bar and walk out with a willing sexual partner within the hour. Note that the 'vast majority' also means there is no necessity for extraordinary beauty or physical shape.

Yet only an extreme minority of 21 year old men could do that (repeat: with no fame or wealth or extraordinary looks or physical shape).

That difference, and many more such psychological differences, originates in this observation that men are disposable, reproductively, and women are not.

Original score: 5