Is society really run "by men for men"?

So my idea is to simplify it by assuming that people tend to favour their own gender, if only because they as individuals are part of that group.

Do women favor their own gender? Yes, but they have such different concepts of what that means that it's really quite meaningless to say that.

Do women favor their own gender over men? No. Overwhelmingly no. I'm only familiar with a few women (and one man) in all of history that have favored women over men.

EDIT: And no, I do not rely on fiction either. I rely on what I perceive as logic, from reasons WHY something would be the case to examples of something being the case. Talking about "experience vs. fiction" is just a False Dichotomy.

Logic with no empirical observations as fuel is useless. You can get to any conclusion if you use logic like that.

You're suggesting that it's precisely because of the Victorian stereotypes that the Lysistrata Gambit works in the first place?

No, actually the exact opposite. The Victorian stereotypes make it not funny anymore.

I wouldn't doubt that. However, just because people thought X for millenia and Y for mere centuries doesn't imply that X is more likely to be true than Y. Especially when Y is more recent, in a more modern era, in which people would be more likely to have a better understanding of the world.

Not everything more modern is more correct. The Victorian view came to prominence at about the same time doctors started diagnosing hysteria in mass.

But the point was not "it's old because it's right", the point was that All Women Are Prudes is just one possible cultural stereotype among many.

And for what it's worth, I'm inclined to wonder if the All Women Are Lustful stereotype was promoted at least partly by those who deep down believed All Women Are Prudes, specifically TO deter women from using the Lysistrata Gambit on men because they feared women would not hesitate to use it otherwise.

This seems profoundly intellectually dishonest. It always seems profoundly dishonest to me to accuse people who don't agree with you to actually agree with you deep down. It'd be like me claiming that at heart you really are a feminist but you just don't know it yet.

But to address the substance of your argument, the major way they put their belief that All Women Are Lustful into practice was to put strict limits on female sexuality so it didn't get "out of hand". If they were really afraid of women pulling a sex strike on them, this makes no sense whatsoever.

That belief also went hand-in-hand with the belief that women are overly emotional (because lust is an emotion), which we still have today. To really believe that women were prudes, they would have to give up their belief that men were supremely logical, which was in turn the basis of their belief that men were superior rulers.

And again, Lysistrata would not have been funny had the Ancient Greeks not genuinely held the belief that women can't possibly withhold sex from men. (Connecting back to my previous paragraph, it's actually easy to see the connections between the stereotypes. Lysistrata herself is calm and logical, which is why she can hold out for so long with no problems. The men in the play, however, have given in to their passions by going to war, which is why they fall to the sex strike in the end. And most the women besides Lysistrata are examples of the stereotype of women being overly passionate, which creates the humor as Lysistrata has to keep them from breaking the strike line.)

EDIT 2: Here's the text of Lysistrata, if you want it.

edited 8th Jun '11 7:24:06 PM by BlackHumor

I'd have sworn that I responded to this post days ago; I guess I just forgot to click send or something. So excuse me for bumping the topic.

"Do women favor their own gender over men? No. Overwhelmingly no. I'm only familiar with a few women (and one man) in all of history that have favored women over men." - Black Humor

You refer exclusively to what people SAY. I'm referring to what their actions seem to suggest about their priorities.

"Logic with no empirical observations as fuel is useless. You can get to any conclusion if you use logic like that." - Black Humor

But if that conclusion is unreasonable, someone ELSE's logic should be able to refute it.

At the very least, it is better than personal experience, if only because the latter is often an unrepresentative sample.

"But the point was not "it's old because it's right", the point was that All Women Are Prudes is just one possible cultural stereotype among many." - Black Humor

Of course. This is why I don't focus on who believed in it and who didn't, (I'd find that ad hominem anyway) but what arguments are in favour of or against it in and of itself. See also another (since locked) thread of mine, called something along the lines of "do men desire women more or vice versa."

BTW, my version of All Women Are Prudes isn't so much that they don't enjoy sex as that they don't desire it as intensely as guys do. This is just the impression I get partly from thinking about it but partly from so much about modern society.

"It'd be like me claiming that at heart you really are a feminist but you just don't know it yet." - Black Humor

And if someone came up with an explanation of why they thought this, I would be willing to address this.

"But to address the substance of your argument, the major way they put their belief that All Women Are Lustful into practice was to put strict limits on female sexuality so it didn't get "out of hand". If they were really afraid of women pulling a sex strike on them, this makes no sense whatsoever." - Black Humor

To the contrary, I think it makes a lot of sense. Limiting female sexuality sounds (in theory) like a way to try to keep them in the dark about how they could use it as a means to other ends.

"That belief also went hand-in-hand with the belief that women are overly emotional (because lust is an emotion), which we still have today. To really believe that women were prudes, they would have to give up their belief that men were supremely logical" - Black Humor

And interestingly enough, the stereotype about women being more emotional and/or less logical is one I disagree with more.

"which was in turn the basis of their belief that men were superior rulers." - Black Humor

What about the notion of women being smarter but less benevolent leaders?

"And again, Lysistrata would not have been funny had the Ancient Greeks not genuinely held the belief that women can't possibly withhold sex from men." - Black Humor

Just to be clear here, my idea is not that average ancient Greeks didn't genuinely believe the stereotype; just that the higher-ups who promoted it might not have really believed it.

edited 14th Jun '11 9:21:46 AM by neoYTPism

S Implest answer to the OP's question: It was, and now it isn't.

My simple answer would be that it's largely run by a few rich and powerful people, mostly men, in the interests of those people. Society doesn't operate in the interests of the vast majority of men any more than in the interests of the vast majority of women, although there's a legitimate argument as to whether the average woman gets an even worse deal than the average man.

No, at least personal experience is weak evidence. Really pure logic is utterly useless.

Of course, what tends to happen in practice is that you're actually using personal experience as your evidence without realizing it.

The most important phrase in that sentence is "modern society".

One of the biggest gender roles in modern society is that women are expected to enjoy sex less than they actually do, and men are expected to enjoy sex less than they actually do. It's no surprise you'd think that women enjoy sex less; most people do. But it's entirely a cultural thing.

You really are deep in this Battle of the Sexes thing, aren't you?

If you were a man, and you wanted to set up a society so that you would never be denied sex, you would not set up the system so that women were encouraged to deny you sex!

Doesn't matter whether you agree with it; it was what the Greeks believed.

Through history, most societies have thought that women were less intelligent than men. A few, most notably modern Western culture, think they're equally intelligent, but no society has ever thought that women are more intelligent than men.

Read anything written by the ancient Greeks about women and you realize they didn't have a very bright view of women's intelligence.

Cultures for the most part do not consciously choose which beliefs will be part of the culture. There was no Greek cabal that said "all Greeks must believe this, this and this". Hell, Akenaten tried that over in Egypt and it failed spectacularly after he died.

One explanation I saw is that those rich and powerful (mostly) white (mostly) men—the guys who put the patriarch in patriarchy—use identity politics to keep the underclasses complacent and fixated on infighting in order to keep their own position secure. Poor(er) white men are manipulated to identify more with rich white men than with poor women/minorities, and trained to see the latter as their social rivals when it's the former who are actually keeping them down. If all the poor united, the rich wouldn't stand a chance, so the movers and shakers in society throw some of the poor status over others of the poor as a sop, and then pretend that status is being threatened as a distraction.

Scott Adams said in The Dilbert Future, I'm paraphrasing because I haven't read it in a while, that even if a man you're kind of screwed. Yeah men hold the top jobs, but those are OTHER men.

Honestly, I think society is, much like the Lifetime Network, both misandrist and misogynistic. It hates both genders equally.

But maybe it hates men in ways that are a little easier to live with, eh?

The problem is that large groups of people don't behave particularly rationally because human decision-making happens on the individual, rather than the collective, level. In order for "the underclass" to achieve a sufficient level of organization to overthrow the elite, they need to first have efficient, centralized leadership - but the thing is, that leadership then just tends to go on to become the new elite.

@Mark: As much as I love that book, it's a little outdated.

I haven't ever been a woman, so I couldn't say.

Oh I know it is, Erock. It's still a good read and has a few very valid points that still kind of stand up today.

"Of course, what tends to happen in practice is that you're actually using personal experience as your evidence without realizing it." - Black Humor

Not necessarily. I hear so much about people getting the wrong impression from personal experience that sometimes, in actively fighting that impression, I can overstep and end up assuming things to be MORE contrary to my personal experiences than they really are.

"One of the biggest gender roles in modern society is that women are expected to enjoy sex less than they actually do, and men are expected to enjoy sex less than they actually do. It's no surprise you'd think that women enjoy sex less; most people do. But it's entirely a cultural thing." - Black Humor

Either there is a typo toward the end of your first sentence, or there is something missing between that sentence and the second. o.o

Anyway, I don't doubt culture is a biasing factor here, but I still would not attribute the stereotype to it entirely. As I pointed out in the other thread, if you look outside human society, you often find males trying to have sex with the females against their will, and the females fighting them off. I don't see many gender inversions there.

"You really are deep in this Battle Of The Sexes thing, aren't you?" - Black Humor

When it comes to subjects on which I am inclined to think the best interests of males as a whole conflict with those of females as a whole? Yes, yes I am.

"If you were a man, and you wanted to set up a society so that you would never be denied sex, you would not set up the system so that women were encouraged to deny you sex!" - Black Humor

... unless they thought for whatever reason that deterring them from exploring sexuality would make them more submissive, or less likely to understand male sexual desire enough to use it as something to bargain with, or something like that? Again, not claiming certainty here, but I do not think you should expect others to share your assessment of which course of action follows from the goal.

And in all my years on webforums this has to be the first time I saw the exact same quote responded to twice. Couldn't the response have been in one paragraph or something?

"A few, most notably modern Western culture, think they're equally intelligent, but no society has ever thought that women are more intelligent than men." - Black Humor

Ever? What do you consider the Closer to Earth approach, then?

Also, it's Scott Adams.

edited 14th Jun '11 6:44:57 PM by LilPaladinSuzy

Actually I never really detected any misogyny in that book.

News to me.

It's no surprise, therefore, that you think that women enjoy sex less; most people do think that.

There are no such situations, at least if you're talking non-evolutionarily. There are barely any situations where men or women as a group have a unified set of interests."Men" and "women" are not really coherent groups; they have interests about as much as "people with blue eyes" have interests.

Didn't exist in Ancient Greece (read Plato and Aristotle, along with pretty much any other Greek philosophers), but also the modern trope Closer to Earth is that women are more moral, not that they're more intelligent.

I think she's referring to the more recent incident wherein Adams mocked both feminists and men's rights activists on his blog, than retracted it, than said "c'mon guys can't you take a joke?" in a loud whiny voice.

And then defended himself with a sockpuppet on Reddit and Meta Filter. And then when he got caught, defended himself in the same annoying whiny voice.

edited 14th Jun '11 8:00:17 PM by BlackHumor

How...did you hear him?

Have you considered maybe you're letting your perceptions do the voice?

If it was a written blog, I think you mean his tone was whiny, not his voice. Presumably it would have been as bad (if less annoying) if he'd written it all in a fine and manly style anyway.

edited 15th Jun '11 11:58:46 AM by captainbrass2

A lot of people use 'voice' to describe the same thing; it's not an incorrect usage.

Not as in "in a voice", that refers to actually hearing the person.

It's something like "their voice" which can be used in a written context.

"It's no surprise, therefore, that you think that women enjoy sex less; most people do think that." - Black Humor

That's not... quite what I was referring to. I was referring to the first sentence, as in the one saying that "women are expected to enjoy sex less than they actually do, and men are expected to enjoy sex less than they actually do."

"There are no such situations, at least if you're talking non-evolutionarily." - Black Humor

So, what do you think happened to gender differences with respect to sexual desire on the way to humans?

And again, I am talking "on average." Perhaps the areas of mutual benefit is underexplored, but some subjects, as I have discussed with you before, strike me as not being particularly prone to such benefits.

"Didn't exist in Ancient Greece" - Black Humor

You said ever, not ancient society. I thought that ever included more recently.

(Also, you said ancient Greece, not the ancient world as a whole; might other societies have had something similar?)

"but also the modern trope Closer To Earth is that women are more moral, not that they're more intelligent." - Black Humor

The introductory paragraph seems more like it is focused on differences in intelligence, not morality; the moral component seems to be treated as more of a sidenote, an optional but not always thing, and is often inverted by some examples of the intelligence component. (VG Cats comes to mind.) The Unfair Sex seems to be more about morality though.

Oddly enough, I think that if I had to guess which gender was more intelligent overall, (not in every way) I would probably say females. It is probably one of the few things considered (sort of) misandrous that I (slightly) agree with. It's just that in comparison to others who would share that guess, I'm not as inclined to trust females (on average) to be benevolent in their use of that intelligence. o.o

edited 15th Jun '11 7:09:30 PM by neoYTPism

Threadhop:

Yes.

@ultrayellow, captainbrass: What Morven said.

I was considering marking that in the original post, but it made it sound so very awkward.

Ah, woops. Didn't catch that. I changed the order of that sentence when I was writing that post and apparently I didn't fix it all the way.

Anyway, I think you got that that second "less" is supposed to be "more".

What, you mean in other primates? There isn't much in the way of gender differences (at least innate gender differences) in other primates either. Our closest relatives are the chimp and the bonobo, and they organize themselves entirely differently despite being almost identical genetically.

But I wasn't talking about gender differences, I was talking about gender conflicts. And those happen pretty rarely, except again in an evolutionary sense. Modern women as a group don't have any conflicts of interest with modern men as a group, because men and women are again not coherent groups.

Okay, let's sub in some terms. How could "people who have penises" conflict with "people who have vaginas"? There's not really much room for conflict, is there? Anything that doesn't relate directly to reproduction is out of the picture immediately, because the major difference we're talking about is reproductory organs. (And most of that is covered by evolutionary stuff, which again I'm not talking about.

For any trait, if it differs at all among societies there's usually societies that have had every possible setting for the trait. So yes there were ancient societies that thought men were hornier than women, as well as societies that thought the opposite, and societies that didn't have an opinion on the matter. In fact I believe though I'm not certain that that last one is most common.

Neither gender is more intelligent. This is pretty obvious if you think of it from an evolutionary perspective: how could one gender become smarter than the other? There would have to be a benefit to only one gender and not the other from becoming that little bit smarter (since it's not immediately obvious to us it would have to be only a little bit.)

But how could that happen in primates? Most primates (and modern hunter-gatherers) have something like the chimpanzee model of social interaction: small, closely related tribe hunts food together and splits the proceeds. Both genders hunt about equally, and in fact perform most of the same functions for the tribe. So why would one gender be stupider than the other? They'd just lose out on food to tribes where both genders were as smart as the smarter gender.

If I remember correctly, men are on average smarter than women... but the difference is so small (on the order of two or three IQ points) that it might as well not matter.

It is also a case of correlation not implying causation: men aren't smarter because they're male. Intelligence is slightly correlated with height, and men tend to be taller than women.