Based on reading the first, maybe quarter of the article and clicking on some sources, I have to conclude that he was just trying to grind an axe rather than building a factual argument based on supporting evidence. I'll pick one of his arguments and give an example, rather than try and do the entire article, which would take days.
Primal nature of men and women:
He starts by stating that 80% of women and 40% of men managed to reproduce. This is actually quite different from what the article that he links to states: it states that today's population descended twice as many women as men. The article is using 80-40 as an example of what this ratio might actually be. And it's important to note that this does not reflect how many men or women actually reproduced; only how many have descendants alive today.
From that fact, he goes on to create a universal primitive society where multiple women chose to hook up with alpha males, rather than beta males. It seems far more likely that there's a vast range of factors involved in this. As the article that he quotes states (but which he fails to mention), societies have traditionally seen men as more expendable (because one men and 10 women can produce the same number of offspring as 10 men and 10 women). So men get jobs that shorten their lifespans and their prospects, whether its soldier, fisherman, factory worker. Honestly, I think that a lot of that would actually help that guy make his point, but instead he misrepresents the article as a simple and incorrect stat.
Next comes an unsupported claim that shows that across ape species, males are more promiscuous. This may be true, but no supporting evidence is given. Edit: I'm just remembering something from the social anthropology class I took in college. There's a great variation in promiscuity amongst apes, and generally penis size is a good indicator of promiscuity; chimpanzees, for example, have very high promiscuity rates and similarly large phalluses in comparison to their total mass. Gorillas have relatively small penis sizes and similarly low promiscuity rates. Regardless species is far more important than gender in determining promiscuity in apes.
The next article he references is for the point that men are not monogamous, but hypergamous. This article he quotes does not actually provide any evidence. It cites a study that says that men see about six partners as an ideal, and that women see one partner as an ideal, then dismisses this study without evidence. At that point, the quoted article devolves into a rant against sluts and cougars.
So, based on that useless source, the article goes on to draw the conclusion that women are the first to want into a monogamous relationship, and the first to want out. Then a statement about how men are shamed into commitment. No evidence for this is given.
The next fact he states is that 90% of divorces are initiated by women. The link he has goes to the same article as the previous link; that article has a link in the footnotes for this 90% stat, which goes to another article on a different blog about how toxic women are, which attributes this 90% stat with a link to a dead page.
Anyway, he uses all of these extremely questionable sources (or misrepresentations of decent sources) for the rest of the section of the article. He next announces that it's 'all major religions' that needed to give the beta males reason to aspire, while limiting the hypergamous instincts of women, and so institute marriage. This overlooks the fact that the institution of marriage actually predates most of today's major religions, and typically occurred in nearly every society, regardless of religion.
The idea that marriage was about providing every beta-male with a wife is certainly false; men continued long after marriage to be seen as expendable by societies compared to women, and his statement that this system, applied over an entire population, is known as 'civilization', is a grand and ridiculous oversimplification.
He also states that societies that deviated from this were quickly replaced. Which is completely false, as societies from Burma to India to the Middle East to Europe all had polygamous elements in them that thrived for centuries.
He also says that the pre-civilization era of alpha males hoarding all the women resulted in violent societies because of all the unsatisfied beta males. Right, because civilized human history was all so peaceful.
And that's the end of that section of the article, a bunch of useless references to support a completely warped and inaccurate view of human history. Though I read much more of the article, looking at any one section in detail is enough to know that the entire thing is crap.
Last edited by octothorp; 08-14-2012 at 02:19 PM.
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