You can tell they’re happier, because these drawings are smiling. Case closed.
Anti-feminist blathers vs. science and facts today on Pandagon! I hate to keep hammering at this stuff, but the articles about how women are naturally simple-minded, inferior, and not cut out for being untied from the stove just keep on coming. If you perceive an uptick, as you should, I’m going to hypothesize that the point of bashing women non-stop in mainstream and conservative journals is aimed square at making people think that Hillary Clinton is crazy or incompetent, of which neither is true. Attack a candidate’s strengths—it’s an old war and campaign tactic, and Clinton’s strengths are her stability, her experience, her intelligence, and yes, the fact that she’s got a shot at being the first female President.
But not only are these articles hateful bullshit that hurts all women, not just Clinton, they’re also bullshit in the sense of not adhering to facts or truth. To start with, for your reading pleasure, I offer Media Matters’ shining takedown of the now-infamous Charlotte Allen piece about how women are so dumb. She offers baseless assertions and allusions to silly TV shows, but they offer you the facts.
Next, I want to link to this post at Broadsheet wherein the blogger Carol Lloyd rolls her eyes at this article explaining that single women (the assumed myth is that there’s gazillions of ring-hungry careerist types out there, which will get to in a second) have only their irritating independence to blame if they’re single. It’s interesting, because a bit of her advice is to be a more dependent, “traditional” woman, but the how on this appears to be a common case of finding the wrong cause for an effect.
“We are so successful today, women. We’re fabulous. We work hard. We make good money. We parent. Sometimes what happens when we spend a lot of time alone, we forget to let them open the damn pickle jar,” Patti says.
I will actually say that letting someone do favors for you is actually not a bad strategy in making yourself more likeable, but it’s not because women who are weak are automatically more appealing. In fact, earlier in this piece, Patti contradicts this advice by telling women not to act clinging and desperate, which is advice that is actually pretty sound. But then she hits us with this stupid pickle jar stuff, implying that it’s appeal is precisely that it makes a woman seem more vulnerable, or desperate or clinging. Choose your poison.
But if you’ve ever read a cognitive psychology 101 book of any sort, you probably know that one of the interesting “tricks” of it is the idea that if someone does you a favor, they like you more. That’s because people are rationalizing creatures. Once we’ve done something, our brains kick into gear convincing us that it was the right thing to do. We vote for Clinton or Obama, and we immediately start irrationally denouncing the other candidate to quell any doubts. We’re rude to someone, we immediately start telling ourselves he was an asshole and had it coming. But the flip side is that if we’re nice to someone and do them a favor, we start to tell ourselves that they were deserving of it, and end up liking them more. So yes, if you want to win over a potential love interest, asking them for little favors is a great strategy, but it goes both ways and doesn’t have to conform to traditional gender roles. (Exchanging books to read or CDs to listen to falls into this pattern. Giving gifts in general.)
Now for the wowzer of evil, Dennis Prager, accusing feminism of creating depression for women by making us so damn hard to marry. He has one fact correct, which is that women have higher rates of depression than men. But with that one fact, and a careful avoidance of further research, he decides it’s because no one will have our careerist selves.
I wish all Americans could hear the women who call my radio show who tell of how they were raised to believe this feminist promise, and therefore pursued often successful careers while delaying marriage. And now at 35, 40, 45 years of age, they wonder why that career is so unfulfilling and now yearn for a man and family they put off having.
For most women — of course, not all — careers are not nearly as fulfilling as are a good marriage and family. The astronaut who destroyed her career — perhaps the most prestigious career in America for either a man or a woman — out of romantic jealousy is an extreme but instructive example.
Unless one believes that women and men are the same and therefore the same things bring them happiness, the feminist emphasis on career has been an obstacle to many women’s happiness. As a rule, women derive most of their happiness from relationships, not from work. Men need both to be happy far more than women do.
Assertion #1: Women need marriage more than men, and it’s their marriages, not their jobs, that help save them from depression.
Facts, from the American Psychological Association:
Married women have higher rates of depression than unmarried women, but the reverse is true for men. Marriage seems to confer a greater protective advantage on men than on women. In unhappy marriages, women are three times as likely as men to be depressed. Women’s risk of depressive symptoms and demoralization is higher among mothers of young children and increases with the number of children in the house (McGrath et al., 1990).
Assertion #2: Women’s depression is the result of equality.
Facts:
High levels of depressive symptoms are particularly common among individuals with economic problems and those of lower socioeconomic status. Individuals who are less educated and unemployed are at higher risk for depression. These risk factors are overrepresented among women (McGrath et al., 1990).
Women of color are more likely than Caucasian women to share a number of socioeconomic risk factors for depression, including racial/ethnic discrimination, lower educational and income levels, segregation into low status and high-stress jobs, unemployment, poor health, larger family sizes, marital dissolution, and single parenthood (McGrath et al., 1990).
Women confronting the impact of immigration and acculturation reported a higher level of depression than those women without such conflicts. For example, the National Center for Health Statistics (1994) indicated that Asian American women over the age of 65 have the highest female suicide rate among all ethnic and racial groups. In addition, Asian American adolescent girls have the highest rates of depressive symptoms of all racial groups and have the highest suicide rate among all women between 15 and 24 years of age.
The rate of sexual and physical abuse is much higher than previously suspected and is a major factor in women’s depression. Depressive symptoms may be long-standing effects of post-traumatic stress disorder for many women (McGrath et al., 1990).
The evidence points to the opposite conclusion of Prager’s thesis. Women need more, not less feminism. Women’s lower status, especially if they are women of color or victims of sexual assault, is the reason that women are more depressed. Women’s marriages often bring more, not less stress, into their lives, because for a lot of women, marriage means marriage to mean, sexist assholes like Dennis Prager.
Assertion #3: Higher status is career and education makes it harder for women to get married.
Facts:
In fact, educated women nationwide now have a better chance of marrying, especially at an older age, than other women. In a historic reversal of past trends - one that is good news for young girls who like to use big words - college graduates and high-earning women are now more likely to marry than women with less education and lower earnings, although they are older when they do so. Even women with PhDs no longer face a “success penalty” in their nuptial prospects. It might feel that way in their 20s, when women with advanced degrees marry at a lower rate than other women the same age. But by their 30s, women with advanced degrees catch up, marrying at a higher rate than their same-aged counterparts with less education.
The same holds for high-earning women. Economist Heather Boushey of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C., found that women between the ages of 28 and 35 who work full time and earn more than $55,000 a year or who have a graduate or professional degree are just as likely to be married as other working women of the same age. And among women aged 30 to 44 who earn more than $100,000 a year, 88 percent are married, compared with 82 percent of other women in the same age range.
I’d read the whole article, because it turns out that career and education are also predictors of happier marriages, probably because they mitigate the downsides of marriage for women. If you can leave him easily, you have leverage against traditional male privileges that are very stressful on wives. Even better, a lot of those men have absorbed the idea of equality, so the traditional tensions there are disappearing for a lot of people, and marriages where women have full-time employment are more stable than those where women don’t have that.
Assertion #4: Climbing the education and career ladder makes women unhappy.
For this to be true, we should see higher rates of depression amongst women on the ladder than not. Let me repeat a quote from the APA on that:
High levels of depressive symptoms are particularly common among individuals with economic problems and those of lower socioeconomic status. Individuals who are less educated and unemployed are at higher risk for depression. These risk factors are overrepresented among women (McGrath et al., 1990).
Which also neatly disproves his other assertion, which is that men and women are dramatically different when it comes to these issues, that men and men alone find identity and stability through work. According to the APA, men and women aren’t so different after all. We’re both huge risk factors for depression if we have crappy, underpaid, unappreciated work. We’re both more stable if we have some independently attained stability.
Now you get an idea why there are so many of these shitty articles purporting that women are naturally inferior, and therefore happier if we embrace our oppression. Because they’re lies. And, as the maxim goes, repeat a lie enough, and it becomes the truth. That’s what we’re seeing anti-feminists trying to accomplish here.
59 Responses to “One stop choadery debunking”
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ha ha ha ha ha ha ha, satisfied glee, so awesome. yay thanks Amanda!
Great compilation.
It is kind of funny, that when we keep score by their rules (happiness/marriedness) we still “win” even though we question the value of both. Perhaps we educated ladeez make better choices because we don’t take things for granted and have realistic expectations?
Just a thought.
Amazing how these folks manage to be misogynist and misandrist at the same time. We men are so stupid we won’t notice when someone is giving us a fake opportunity to help them. (And of course since maturity and independence are some kind of Randian ideal that involve never needing any kind of help from anybody, the only help a man can offer a woman — or vice versa — clearly has to be unnecessary makework.)
Wonderful!
When will these morons ever learn that just because two things are true of a group or situation, there is not automatic causality?
As Harry Enfeld says “Women: Know Your Limits”.
I sure agree with the fact that having a high-powered career makes you more marriagable. I have been married three times (!! –hopefully this one is the last) to very different men. In each case, while the career was not the thing that was initially attractive, each of these men saw it as an added bonus. There is that old trope that it is just as easy to fall in love with a rich man as a poor man. I think it’s really gender-neutral.
But three or four women called Dennis Prager on his radio show to tell him that feminism has failed them. So he obviously knows more than you.
“But three or four women called Dennis Prager on his radio show to tell him that feminism has failed them.”
Calling Prager should automatically generate a referral to a therapist - or a cult de-programmer…
I know how to open any jar–just turn it over onto the lid and bang it straight down onto the counter. Repeat if necessary. You break the seal and the jar becomes easy to open. Voila! There is now no reason for women to marry at all!
Did anyone else read the comments on the Dennis Prager site? Wow.
Can they hate women more?
Typical woman, using typical feminine tricks like facts and statistics to make your point.
How sexist of you to devalue men’s intuition! Dennis Prager just *feels* this stuff is, like, totally true, so it must be.
Blue Jean — great one!
Thanks for continuing to post and debunk this stuff. I’m exactly the target demographic for this. I’m going to law school, single and hearing all this about how I will be happy when I’m married, not when I pursue a fulfilling career. I need the repetition that this is complete crap.
Thanks, Kathleen! Glad you liked it.
I don’t suffer from depression because I’m a feminist (hell, my parents didn’t even raise me to be a feminists, I just demanded equality from day 1) I suffer from depression because there is something wrong with my brain and I have a family history of depression. Trying to swallow every pill in the house when you’re 12 has absolutely NOTHING to do with unmet expectations.
I don’t suffer from depression because I’m a feminist, I suffer from depression because I have to deal with misogonystic assholes like Prager and Allen every day.
Feminism actually helps my depression because I can make fun of the unlimited stupidity of these people.
I just pry out the edge of the lid a little with a bottle opener, the curch-key kind - I have one magnetically on my fridge at all times. A screwdriver or spoon or anything you can slip under the edge of the lid will work — as with your method, the idea is just to pop the vacuum seal and then it opens easily.
I’m sure I figured this out only b/c I’m a lesbian and so had no hopes of a big strong man to do it for me.
oh but wait, I think I learned that from my mother — how did she and my dad ever manage to stick together?
oops, that should’ve been “church key” (not curch key)
No kidding. I was never really depressed until I had a serious boyfriend. They can put that in their anectode-fueled pipe and smoke it.
If it’s a jar full of something sugary, like jam, sometimes it’ll manage to glue itself shut. Best strategy then, I find, is to run the jar upside-down under hot water for a bit and then tap the lid on the counter all the way around the edge. It kinda loosens up the sugar, I think.
That said, this is awesome ‘cause it just puts it all in one place. And how long do you give it before Phoebe Fay’s comment becomes the standard narrative? It’s bound to happen sooner or later, given what’s going on in gender representation in academia…
It kinda loosens up the sugar, I think.
Probably differential expansion helps, too. (The sugar thing is a novel interpretation, there’s probably something to that.)
Am I the only one here who learned from her mother to tap around the edge of the lid with the back of a knife? Despite my mom’s mad can-opening skills, my parents have been married for almost 44 years.
Feminism makes me angry and frustrated, because it means knowing all the bad stuff, but it’s never made me depressed.
“Am I the only one here who learned from her mother to tap around the edge of the lid with the back of a knife?”
I learned that from my mother. Was/is she feminist and doesn’t know it?…
Chet, I always assumed it was a combination of differential expansion and cracking of sugar crystals, and lowering the viscosity of any sugar syrup by heat, depending which is present (i.e. how dried-out the crud on the jar threads is.)
I just twist ‘em. Sometimes it hurts. Maybe I should rely on some of these new-fangled ideas.
That little rubber round dealie you use to grip a jar lid is technically known as the “rubber husband”.
Re Prager, if women want relationships and men want jobs, then clearly men and women are utterly incompatible. Marriage just means a man who would rather be at the office is trying to get away from a woman who would rather he be with her. Therefore, on PragerPlanet, women should partner up in lesbian relationships, leaving men to contentedly spend all day at work and hook up with each other at Blow Buddies at night.
Realityfighter: all my mental illness came out after I was in a relationship too. I was all independent and happy until I started worrying about maintaining relationships with men.
Also, I’d like to meet one of these mytical women who had great men available to date and were like “no thanks, I’ll marry you later, but right now I’m going to focus on my career.”
Long ago, after a friend of mine received an unwanted kiss from another woman, we composed a song (not a politically-correct song, nor is it likely to be in the Top 40 anytime soon.) And here’s the chorus:
Sheeeeeeee’s a dyke.
By dyke we mean a lesbian.
And lesbians don’t need men,
Except to open jars.
Catchy, I always thought, in the same demented way as the “I got a job” song from Sid and Nancy.
As for women and depression and being unmarried: maybe it has something to do with the fact that women are expected to be sexy, loyal, mothering, careerist, devoted, selfish, and selfless maids, designers, planners, cooks, cleaners, gardeners, drivers, lovers, workers, and supporters. I can barely manage work and home as a single guy who has his children over two nights a week. Women can’t win, and there’s something to be said for their “need” to assess their needs on their own terms. But a pundit (of any political stripe) is about the last person on earth who I’d tell someone to plan their life by.
Feminism has now taught me to open jars for myself, but I still need a man because who’ll take out the garbage and squish bugs!
/snark
Count me among the people who was taught by their mother to bang the jar lid against a hard surface to pop the thing open. Works every time for me:). I’ve even had my dad hand me a jar and say, “open this for me” what does that make him? (in his defense he was tired of fooling with it).
Is it just me, or does ‘rubber husband’ sound like something that’s potentially illegal in Texas?
Simplified translation: men need more and women need less.
Underlying assumption: if men need more (or think they do) men should get more. (BTW, you won’t find that this assumption still holds good when the roles are reversed. A man’s hunger proves his greatness, while a woman’s longings tend to be interpreted as whims.)
This is my exact problem with most forms of evo-psych and with the more rigid/extreme Mars-and-Venus adumbrations of the differences between the sexes. If man is the hunter and woman is his game, what the heck incentive do the two of them have to move in together and raise kids? It’s in a prey animal’s interests to avoid its predator at all costs, and while the predator for its own part doesn’t have that option, its tendency is to kill, eat, and leave. It doesn’t look for steady work and think about taking out a mortgage.
Hm. Despite the fact that I really like being married (much more than I initially thought I would), I am pretty outraged at all the assertions about education and career. Women, especially in engineering, and ESPECIALLY in a good-old-boy industry like mine (aerospace) need MORE feminism, not only to dismantle the old-boy networks that cost us $$$ from our paychecks for equal or even better work, but especially to fight the still rampant sexism that imposes a glass ceiling on our careers–no matter what our education, BTW.
I learnt to do the “whack it around the edge of a lid with a knife” thing too, but I learnt it from a fifty-odd-year-old “happy spinster” friend of mine, who probably couldn’t be more feminist if she worked at it. Hmm…
On the other hand, I rarely have to use the knife trick. Twenty years of horseback riding and my hands are strong as hell, not to mention that my hands are almost perfectly sized to handle most standard-sized jar lids. I’m better at opening jars than my extremely athletic father, go figure.
I’m personally not all that interested in doing the whole “marriage and family” trip. Any family I’m in is liable to be as dysfunctional as the one I came from (*shudder*), and I worked really hard to get a Master’s degree and then fight the misogynist occupational streaming that kept me out of my occupation for years (I had to sneak in through the back door); I really do love my career, and I worked too hard to get it to toss it over so I can do housework all day for someone who thinks I’m an appliance with a sex feature.
I’ve never had a problem with jars because in my country they make them thinner. Opening a jar is difficult for women not because they lack strenght, but because their hands are smaller and thus they can’t cover the whole lid. Give them a thin jar and, problem solved!
“A man’s hunger proves his greatness, while a woman’s longings tend to be interpreted as whims.”
Or gluttony, or selfishness….
Did it occur to that Prager Dude that maybe more women than men have depression because there’s the prejudice that depression it’s caused by weakness of character and that there’s, in turn, another prejudice that says women are weaker than men and therefore they are the only ones who could possibly get depression?
And that maybe, just maybe, by going around reinforcing this prejudices by implying that “only women get depressed” he’s doing a HUGE DISERVICE TO MEN OUT THERE WHO MIGHT BE FEELING LIKE SHIT BUT WOULD NEVER THINK IT COULD BE DUE TO DEPRESSION AND AS A RESULT AREN’T LIKELY TO BE DIAGNOSED MUCH LESS CURED?
What an utter asshole.
Mary Tracy beat me to it. I still can’t understand why it’s so widely believed that women suffer from more depression than men when the suicide rate is 4:1 (as in, 4 men commit suicide for every 1 woman who does). The rate is particularly high for white men. You’d almost think that Patriarchy Hurts Men Too or something crazy like that.
You know, I’ve opened more than a few jars for the various women in my life, and I never gave it more than a second’s thought afterward. I had no idea I was so cool and desirable!
But seriously, does it really escape the attention of Prager and his ilk that being poor and underemployed and feeling trapped with some man you can’t stand is, you know, kind of depressing? But you can’t afford to go to a therapist and get diagnosed?
I guess it does.
Oh, and I should say that I do make my husband open jars for me when I can’t manage it, but it has more to do with the carpal-tunnel-induced weakness in my hands than making him feel like a Big Manly Man. If he’s not close by, I just pry it open.
(Be cautious with the tapping of the jar on the counter — you can accidentally break the jar that way and be out a whole jar of spaghetti sauce.)
I have read the comments at Prager’s screed. Amanda needs to paste this rebuttal there.
That little rubber round dealie you use to grip a jar lid is technically known as the “rubber husband”.
I disagree. My “rubber husband” looks nothing like those things.
Ok, I have a question about Prager’s callers. Are there really that many women who put off marriage for their careers? I mean, putting off children, sure. But I don’t know anyone who delayed marriage longer than it took to get through school. I put off marriage until I met my husband. I married him while I was in grad school, like lots of grad students I knew. Are there really many 35 or 40 year old women who didn’t get married and the reason is because they were focused on their careers? Or did they just never meet the right guy and this is society’s way of telling them it’s their own fault.
Avogadro beat me to it - I also understand the putting off kids thing, but is finding a partner really all that time consuming that you couldn’t possibly do it while also pursuing an education and career? I have no interest in getting married, but I’ve been with my partner for 5 years - incidentally the 2.5 it took me to do grad school and the next 2.5 “focusing on my career.” Yeah, I’m busy - but not THAT busy…
Shorter Dennis Prager:
“Feminism is teh evil because it gets women’s hopes up. Feminism has taught women to expect a loving family AND a rewarding career, which is simply too much to expect. Men have been able to have both, but that’s because men need both to be happy. Women don’t need to have a rewarding career because women are different than men. Besides, if a woman was able to get a career and a family, she’d just be miserable because her husband wouldn’t help around the house or take care of the kids anyway.”
“So lower your expectations, ladies, so you can land a husband (who won’t help around the house or take care of the kids)!”
BTW, your anti-spam measure doesn’t play well with Safari.
Most people who want to get married, do so. This includes women with careers. Unless you are a corporate lawyer or medical resident, or one of those consultants who travels nonstop, you are going to have at least SOME time for romance, if that is what you want.
Yes, there are people (male and female) who use the “I’m so busy” excuse, as well as the “But I’m a caregiver!” one but often, you scratch the surface and find that the person has issues with commitment, or would really rather remain single but is told she should “want” a committed relationship, and the work/caregiving is an excuse.
Women who are over 30 and unmarried are often so by choice. Sure, there are some of the proverbial unmarried, unhappy and desperate women out there but in my experience, they are few and far between. Consider Maureen Dowd, who laments her unmarried state but also considers Donald Trump boyfriend material. That oughta tell you something.
I have teeny-tiny childlike hands, so opening jars is next to impossible for me. But in my super-resourceful way, I figured out how to open them all by myself! My preferred method is, as mentioned above, using the bottle opener with the pointy end inserted under the lid. Pry, POP, open.
I used to rely on the rubber grip–generally a dish glove–but after pretty severely injuring myself on a jar of jam (too much twisting, had a pained hand/arm/shoulder for a couple of days), I had to come up with a different method.
As for married women being “satisfied” with their lives … I talk to a LOT of housewives every day. The older ones have figured out ways to spend their time, but the younger ones are SO BORED. Generally, the ones who don’t have kids report higher levels of boredom, but the ones with tiny tots are pretty bored too. Busy, but bored.
Bon Appetit: busy + bored = my personal hell, which would be exactly why I don’t want to be a stay-at-home-mom….
(Even though my mom was home a lot with us when we were little–she did have other community activities, but was always home when we got home from school–and I know that that’s a wonderful thing for kids to have. I also know that she was the hell depressed when my oldest brother and I were small, and I watched her totally blossom years later when she was able to get into the creative arts she had been putting off all those years because people told her it was more important for her to have a clean house or do church stuff. So, since I don’t particularly want kids at the moment anyway, I don’t feel too guilty about my utter revulsion at the idea of being trapped at home 24/7. Even though I like kids!)
ACG, I thought that was the rubber boyfriend.
I actually had a therapist tell me that the reason I was depressed is that my expectations of life were too high. The fact that I had a job in a seriously male dominated field where the “fun” for the guys was to make my life miserable, a special-needs-child, and health issues were NOT the reasons according to her.
I got a new therapist.
Hmm, I wonder if the real target audience of this kind of tripe is an unwillingly single/divorced man who knows that if women didn’t have careers he would be married (to some sufficiently desperate woman). Because that’s the only way in which the “choose marriage instead of a career” thing makes any sense; women are definitely enabled by careers not to choose unpleasant marriages. So if you’re an unpleasant guy, the idea that women are choosing careers over marriage might make some kind of sense to you. And the idea that they regret it later might make you feel good; all those bitches who rejected you will be sorry.
I prefer the “brute force” method of opening jars: If I can’t open one after 1-2 simple interventions (warm water, knocking it agains the table, etc), I go out and buy a new jar of whatever.
But why would anyone want to be married to someone who believes that you only stay married to them because you can’t open your own jars anyway? Seems like living alone would be preferable. Then again, I’m an introvert.
I prefer the “brute force” method of opening jars
Where I come from, “brute force” doesn’t mean giving up, it means busting out the fucking hammer and licking the contents of the jar off the counter.
Hmm, I wonder if the real target audience of this kind of tripe is an unwillingly single/divorced man who knows that if women didn’t have careers he would be married (to some sufficiently desperate woman).
Works for me. It seems a lot of men are happy or at least content living a fantasy about how miserable women must be without them rather than living real lives with other people. I wonder how much booze it takes to keep a person like that from slitting their wrists.
I’m one of the few people I know of who was lucky enough to have had two dream careers. My first dream career was when I worked in movies, TV, film, and stage. I was a gaffer (lighting), a prosthetic makeup artist, and a scenic artist. I was getting divorced at the time, but I already knew my current husband. Now, I’m in my second dream career as a sex, erotica, and erotic romance writer, and we’re very happily married. So, yes, women can have a great career and a happy marriage at the same time.
One thing that might interest people here - The Count and I have talked about taking on a role reversal when I make enough money so that he can quit his job. He wants to be my wife, and I’d love it. I’ve always wanted a wife.
I use the hot water method of opening jars as well as the “tap on the lid with a knife” method. I do need the husband, but not for that kind of thing.
I know an awful lot of corporate lawyers, and I’ve never had one say they don’t have time for romance. They DO complain that the only potential partners they tend to meet are other corporate lawyers, but that’s not exactly the “you gave up love for your career!” think Prager is jizzing about.
None, unless the hunter controls all the food (bear with me here) and withholds it unless he gets a relationship. You know, men trading resources for sex. Oh…wait….
See, this is what’s always confused me about the “men are the hunter, women are the prey” idea. For one thing, where do the females get food? After they’ve been fucked, and the caveman has gone roaming for the next target, do they starve? Do the resultant offspring starve? Because obviously the cavegirl doesn’t have any predatory instincts herself - it’s only a male trait. Also, doesn’t a prey drive within the primitive male mind get confused over food and sex, if it’s the same stalk-hunt mentality? Seems like bad evolutionary strategy to eat the thing you’ve just fucked - no offspring, no continuation of the caveman’s DNA. It would make more sense if the female was the one who innately saw the male as prey - after coitus, there wouldn’t really be any need for the male anymore. Don’t some spiders and insects do this?
So the ultimate evo-psych theory that I can piece together from the newspaper pop psychology interpretations of evo-psych research is: male stalks and captures prey. Prey is a twelve year old girl, who’s just began menses, since that’s the most desirable prey. She’s probably a blonde, since that denotes youth. She fights a bit, since females have no innate sex drive, but doesn’t fight too hard, because females are passive and nonaggressive, then gets fucked. Male either eats her or doesn’t, I guess depending on how strong his predatory instinct is, and how hungry he is, and if she’s left alive, she passively sits around eating whatever nuts and berries she can find at hand, and if she actually becomes pregnant (less likely than with older, less sought after prey, because fertility isn’t at its peak immediately upon puberty) she gives birth, and if her underdeveloped body survives childbirth, this fistula-damaged prey and her baby sit around eating nuts and berries until the baby, if female, is old enough to be prey, or, if male, goes out and hunts for a female to impregnate. And thus we have evolved as the only species I can think of where the males are predators, and the females are prey.
Or maybe it’s just that the “man=hunter, woman-prey” idea is complete bullshit, and is just a lame excuse for things like male violence and why a guy wants to have control of the tv remote (and I’ve actually heard this one.)
kmach, you are my hero.
Ding, ding, ding! We have a winner! Kali nails it. The intended audience for this kind of tripe is only secondarily women. It’s primarily a way of making the men (the same men who are “Giving up on American Women” I would imagine), feel better about how all the bitchez will be sorry for not marrying when they could.