What is it biologically or psychologically about human males that resulted in most cultures across the world being male dominated?
In: Biology
They’re better at swinging big sticks at each other and they’re more prone to wanting to do that. The Patriarchy^TM is basically just the result of thousands of years of history in which who was best at hitting each other with big sticks determined who got to be in charge of stuff. It’s really interesting history though.
In the early tribal phase of human civilisation, being able to hit other tribes with big sticks was very important, because if you didn’t hit them with big sticks and take all their stuff, they’d hit you with big sticks and take all your stuff. Now, not everyone is good at hitting people with big sticks. Particularly, women, children and the elderly are generally not very good at hitting people with big sticks, and most adult men weren’t great at it either due to lacking skill, resources or both. It’s also not usually a good idea to hit *all* the people with big sticks, because then you have to do all the work involved in taking their stuff yourself. The first ruling classes were established to solve the problems of how not everyone was good at hitting people with big sticks and how the people who were good at hitting people with big sticks didn’t want to have to do a lot of hard work. In these societies, the people who were bad at hitting people with big sticks would farm and make things, and give some of the stuff they farm and make to the people who are good at hitting people with big sticks. In exchange, the people who are good at hitting people with big sticks would protect the farmers and makers from other people with big sticks who might come to hit them. In practice though, the people who are good at hitting people with big sticks get to call all the shots, because there’s not much you can do about unfair conditions when the people being unfair are better with big sticks than you are.
The people who are good at hitting people with big sticks are naturally going to structure their dominions in a way that will bring the most benefit to themselves, because that’s just how people work. They appreciate sustainability and stability, and they also appreciate things going their way. One thing that is very beneficial to men is when women are exclusive property. Back then, children died a lot because they sucked at not getting diseases. This means you need a lot of children to have a good chance of your children being as successful as you are, and it takes time for women to make children. You also really don’t want the child that gets made to be someone else’s child, because that just means more competition against your own children. This means that humans have evolved to make men quite competitive. They innately want to maximise the success rate of their own sperm. This is where the perceived value of the virgin comes from – the first person to impregnate a virgin is definitely going to get their own baby, there’s no chance of getting anyone else’s. So, these societies become structured in ways that we would consider deeply problematic today, in which women were property who existed to propagate the genes of the people who are good at hitting people with big sticks. This is also why the god in the Old Testament is a right wanker who orders his followers to commit genocides and mass rapes – because this was the most effective strategy a tribe could assume back then, and it was useful to justify these actions through a godly figure.
Another useful thing you can do when you’re organising your society to work best for the people who are good at hitting people with big sticks is codify that women are property and should be treated as such, with restrictions on what they’re allowed to do. A society in which the life of a woman comprises of waiting to get married, getting married and then having a bunch of kids is a society that optimises the propagation of genes for the people who are good at hitting people with big sticks. This is mostly designed to benefit the ruling class, but since there are people who look like they’re good at hitting people with big sticks in the peasant class too, these people also benefit from these rules, and you get peasants marrying and peasant societies deliberately advantaging men too. This becomes ingrained in the core of the culture through gender roles, and we’re still seeing remnants of this societal structure today, although it is so much better today in most countries that it’s not really comparable.
Also, a thing to bear in mind here is that the power in the modern world is not new power. The story of the self-made millionaire is largely a myth. Of course, some people do it, but the vast majority of the power in the world is power people were born into, power accumulated by hitting people with big sticks and passed down through the generations even as hitting people with big sticks stopped being important. Sometimes this is through direct and obvious benefits like large inheritances and trust funds, but it’s also through the benefits of your parents being middle class, which is the single biggest determining factor for whether you will be middle class. The powerful in the modern world are not a reflection of the society of the modern world, but are the legacy of past societies.
Latest Answers