The Ongoing Evolutionary Fight Between Male Sexual Aggression and Female Resistance

Beatrice Lewis' article in Uncommon Ground is a rare comment on the evolutionary topic of the tension between male reproductive success and women's resistance. https://uncommongroundmedia.com/jordan-peterson-enforced-monogamy/

Lots of food for thought here, and the author is so right in so many ways. 

Unfortunately, there are so many details, and the article has to spend so much time correcting Peterson's assumption that men as a class have a "right" to mate at the expense of women's natural right to choose their mate, that I think a lot of theoretical clarity is lost. 

I can't comment on the article as a whole because of this general feeling that the coherent theory is lost in the details. For instance; "This is but one tale among thousands, the stifling reality for girls born in a society that prioritises male pairing. There is little hope, or promise for them as anything in life – they are meant to be wives, and that’s all they can be. This is vitally necessary you see, in a society that ensures men get mates. No other social configuration would ensure that with such certainty. Things like arranged marriage, forced marriage, even child marriage – the roots of these practices and evils can always be traced back to the imperative to ensure as many men as possible had someone to bed and care for them."

This is a single paragraph. Five sentences. Sentence 1: Girls are stifled in a society that prioritises male pairing.

My comments: Yes, girls are stifled, but that's not the big point. The big point is that girls have no right to choose whether or not to reproduce. Also, this practice is global and a central, if not the central, feature of male domination. It's not "a" society, it's all societies. Third, "prioritises" is too weak a word for the coercive structures cited elsewhere in the article.

Sentence 2: Girls are limited to being wives. My comments: They are limited to being mothers, much more important and central. Generally, if they aren't mothers they are likely to be discarded as wives. Reproduction is the key here, not wifehood.

Sentence 3: Limiting girls to the wife role is vital in a society that ensures men get mates. My comment: yes, man must have his mate, but it has to be emphasized that it's not because of the social reason, that married men make better citizens; it's because men have successfully used the human capacity for culture to effectuate a biological imperative to reproduce, accomplished by subjugating women in order to remove their mate choice.

Sentence 4: Marriage is the most efficient way of ensuring women are subjugated into losing their mate choice. Correct. Marriage is a totality, one of the two great systems of patriarchy, the other being prostitution.

Sentence 5: Marriage authorizes endless abusive subsystems like child marriage to ensure men are bedded and cared for. My comment: Yes, agree these abusive subsystems ensure men are cared for, but I don't agree sexual pleasure and labor/emotional support is what is most importantly ensured. At root, what is ensured is maximum reproduction for each individual male.

After writing out these comments I see there is a general statement I can make regarding my discomfort with this article after all: like so many I've read, it reveals the author is not grounded in evolutionary theory and is trying to explain a situation without having the ultimate tool that will explain it. It's so frustrating to me to see such smart and well-educated people as the author and even Jordan Peterson seeing the situation itself so sharply, yet losing the plot as they delve deeper.

Peterson's problem is that he assumes men have a right to reproduce, and he points out that all global societies do in fact make sure that happens via marriage and other female-abusive systems. He's angry that his statements are taken to mean this SHOULD be the case; he's perfectly willing to state that it hurts women, but he falsely positions himself as a "neutral" scientist describing what is, not what should be. He thinks existing "enforced marriage" is tolerable way of accommodating the male pressure he observes, and is tolerated by women.

Both the author and Peterson can't approach each other from their flawed positions. But both do agree at a certain level; men as individual animals aggressively seek to reproduce, and with equality between the sexes as in nature, a very great number will not be able to do so, because women will not choose inferior men for mating. 

Peterson assumes it is a laudable goal to ensure the maximum possible number of individual men may reproduce in accordance with their biological imperative, but doesn't see how this premise underlies his "neutral" approach. 

The author's position is, men have no "right" to mate, and the aggression employed when they can't mate is entirely a social matter that can be fixed by liberating women from the abusive systems restricting them. 

True, the inferior males in an animal species have no right to mate. But this assumes the conflict can be fixed by social fiat.

Evolutionarily speaking, it can't. It's always going to be there, and the remedy for the abuse of women is going to be to recognize the ongoing evolutionary struggle, the ongoing male disadvantage in mating, the ongoing male pressure that is inescapable, and how to maintain a dynamic balance between animal evolutionary imperatives in both sexes, generation after generation.

All this of course is just one RF's opinion. 

Further reading:

https://psmag.com/environ.../17-to-1-reproductive-success...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parental_investment

https://beel.la.psu.edu/documents/human-sexual-selection.pdf

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2002-02/uot-bot021102.php