The evolutionary basis of status hierarchies in human society was that males who hunted the most game had more access to females because they traded meat for sex. Additionally, it is likely that humans as social animals evolved an alpha beta omega male social status system where a tribe of a few hundred was lead by alpha males. The more reproductively successful tribes were those that successfully slaughtered males of neighboring tribes and took the females. Human societies eventually grew to incorporate greater numbers of people and greater complexity. Trade and specialized labor allowed for mini hierarchies within larger scale hierarchies. A society could have a war leader, a wealthiest farmer, a best hunter, a best warrior, and all of them could be alpha males in their own right. The fundamental nature of a male hierarchy allowed a male to amass resources, often at the expense of other males, in order to secure the best and/or most females. This basic structure of social hierarchies persists till this day.
Male hierarchies that provide alpha males with a sexual advantage are a major reason for why males dominate the top of "every field." By this, I don't mean that men are better evolved to rise to the top. Rather, the top is defined as whatever men excel at. The very concept of defining a few as great and the majority as mediocre is borne out of male instinct. The reason why men say that women are never the majority of the top of any field is that fields or tasks where women are the top are invisible to men. And when an endeavor carries no importance to males, the corresponding reward system that venerates rising to the top disappears.
Fashion is an industry where the majority of participants are females, and a few are gay and straight men. The gay and straight men are a very disproportionate number of top designers. The lazy way to interpret this is that females aren't as often capable of great fashion innovations or clothing design creativity. The other way to interpret this is that males instinctively want to define whatever appeals to their aesthetic sense as superior. Males also wish for recognition and prestige, and create a structure where their work and socialization style will yield greater financial rewards. The basis for this instinct comes from the desire to amass resources so that they can be exchanged for sex. Even though gay males have no need for this instinct, it still exists within them, divorced from it's evolutionary purpose.
Here is a shoe designed by Christian Loubotin, a male fashion designer:
And here is a crocheted necklace (crocheting is a female hobby, almost exclusively):
The shoe costs $2800 for a pair. A necklace like that doesn't sell for more than $100.
Does the shoe have more artistic value than the necklace? Personally, I don't think so.
Here is a page from a scrapbook:
Scrapbooking is effectively a 100% female endeavor. One might win a prize at a scrapbooking convention for a good scrapbook, or a woman might be able to set up a small business selling scrap booking materials, but for the most part, being the best at scrapbooking has no recognized value. Women don't amass wealth for their scrap booking skills the way males amass wealth for athletic prowess even though good scrapbooks are very much admired by other women. It isn't that scrapbooks inherently lack artistic value, it's that in the absence of males, the desire to create a winner take all glory hierarchy does not exist.
One sees the same pattern with female dominated academic subjects and employment fields. The vast majority of nurses and kindergarten teachers are women. In those careers, most make lateral transitions or stay in exactly the same position throughout their work years. Their salary does not improve by much, and underlings do not do the grunt work while those at the top reap the most benefit. Contrast this to make fields like finance where entry level workers toil the hardest and longest to make not even a tenth of what those at the top make. With each level, those who can't cut it are culled until only those fit for the executive level remain.
Academic fields operate the same way. Female dominated subjects become "easier" because girls prefer a system where one can study and do assignments and control grade outcomes through study habits. Male subjects are "harder" because boys agree to a system where raw aptitude will be prized and the lack of it will cause failure. Male dominated classes can actually be unfair because boys will rarely complain. Even unfair grading is considered a reasonable obstacle in a game which separates winners and losers. Nevertheless, there is nothing inherently easier about female dominated subjects. One could design communication major courses so that they were harder than physics courses. But where the girls go, more people are allowed to succeed.
There are some cases where females manage to push males out of an employment sector. Secretarial work is an example of this as it was once a gateway job for young men. It is now largely a dead end job for women. When men leave an industry, they take the prestige and the money with them because gunning for the big reward at the top is a man's game. If women do something better then men, then men will make a new set of rules where male abilities are maximally rewarded.
Thus far, women have a limited set of options that lead to high levels of success. A few women adopt the male resource hierarchy to reap immense rewards in fields where there is no male competition and no other power hungry females to compete with. Oprah and Martha Stewart are examples of this. Another option is to rely on an excess of masculine traits. Such women essentially operate as alpha males in female bodies (ex, Margaret Thatcher). Still, the most common path to greatness for females is possessing the greatest appeal to alpha males. All the beautiful women in the entertainment industry are in this category.
Women have difficulty overcoming the 90% of the top 10% pattern because reversing it is like trying to beat the casino. Males bias standards to favor male abilities. Men define greatness based on that which appeals most to other men.
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I like to ponder a world where men menstruated. Bleeding would be a competive activity: alphas would display their soaked pads with pride and betas with their meager menses would be belittled. Guys would take drugs to increase the monthly flow, etc.
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Sounds parallel to a whining anti-white supremacist.
creepy dude said... pretty much sums it up.
While some concepts are slippery and difficult to measure, such as critical thinking, other concepts are a lot more objective and easier to measure, such as IQ.
As far as I know, men have a wider distribution of IQ scores than women, which neatly explains why increasingly disproportionate amounts of the very highest scoring individuals are male.
You remind me of black people (actually their liberal enablers) who complain that IQ tests are biased in favor of whites because they are a product of white culture and are biased towards white ways of thinking (whatever that means). Until Asians come along and outscore whites.
Even fashion is somewhat objective in the sense that at the end of the day, you need to sell. Particularly at the middle and lower end of the market, when somebody walks into Macy's to buy a handbag or clothing, they buy what they like without worrying about the sex (or race) of the designer.
So the laws of physics (and math, chemistry, biology, etc...) favor men?
Blame God, I guess?
From the last thread.
Sabril:
Ok, to answer my question from before, a typical human is descended about 65 percent from women and 35 percent from men.
Which comes as a bit of a surprise to most but it makes sense when you think about it. Because one man can impregnate multiple women.
No. Your comments usually make sense, but this is stupid.
EVERY human being has EXACTLY 50% DNA from men, and 50% DNA from women.
Short version:
You don't get genes from your stepmothers. QED.
Long version:
You have two parents, one male and one female. You have 50% DNA from each.
They each have two parents, one male and one female. They have 50% DNA from each.
Ad infinitum.
Even if your dad also knocked up 500 other women, you still have 50% of only one of their DNA.
Duh.
--
The correct fact, by the way, is that about 65% of all ANCESTORS OF LIVING HUMANS are female. This is nowhere close to the same as what you are saying.
The other fact, of course, is that each of the 35% male ancestors has, on average, more descendants in the populace than does each of the 65% female ancestors.
"The reason why men say that women are never the majority of the top of any field is that fields or tasks where women are the top are invisible to men"
They tend to be invisible to women as well. Very few women care who won the Paducah crocheting contest.
But women do care about who are on top of male status hierarchies. "The top is defined as whatever men excel at." Yes, defined by both men and women, not just the men who prize their own abilities.
Good discussion of the insanity of male status hierarchies. I would like to hear your description of the insanity of female status hierarchies as well.
As far as I know, men have a wider distribution of IQ scores than women, which neatly explains why increasingly disproportionate amounts of the very highest scoring individuals are male.
Male IQ's have a very slightly wider distribution. It's too small a difference to explain male dominance except in a handful of highly g-loaded fields, for example the Ivy League science faculties as Larry Summers noted to his regret.
Peter
"The correct fact, by the way, is that about 65% of all ANCESTORS OF LIVING HUMANS are female. This is nowhere close to the same as what you are saying."
Whether it's the same or not, it's obviously what I meant.
"EVERY human being has EXACTLY 50% DNA from men, and 50% DNA from women."
Actually that's not true because of mitochondrial DNA. Normally I don't nitpick, but in this case you deserve a taste of your own medicine.
"So the laws of physics (and math, chemistry, biology, etc...) favor men? "
Actually I was thinking this morning that math is a good counter-example to Femx's claim.
First of all, men are significantly better than women at math and this fact is obvious just from casual observation, just like the difference in intelligence between blacks and whites.
Unsurprisingly, the very best mathematicians are essentially all men.
So by Femx's hypothesis, math should be a high-prestige pursuit. However, the reality is pretty much the opposite.
"Does the shoe have more artistic value than the necklace? Personally, I don't think so."
So why do women willing pay $2800 for those shoes?
"EVERY human being has EXACTLY 50% DNA from men, and 50% DNA from women."
This statement is false.
Normally, I don't care what people say on the internet, but the screaming caps call out for correction.
FX -- you would enjoy H. L. Mencken's book IN DEFENSE OF WOMEN: http://www.io.com/gibbonsb/mencken/defense/
Easier to read if you get a physical copy, though.
creepy dude:"I like to ponder a world where men menstruated..."
According to old lore, some men on Earth DO indeed menstruate; see - http://www.jstor.org/pss/517391
Also: "In seventeenth-century Spain, in addition to being accused of spreading the plague, Jewish males were commonly assumed to menstruate: the Jewish body supposedly leaked impure blood. Certain important Spanish doctors -- the king's own physicians -- demonstrated menstruation to be symptomatic in Jewish males. These physicians and other sources from the time typically combine the accusation of menstruation with that of hemorrhoids, classifying a blood flow from the anatomically ambiguous lower strata of the male body as a Jewish disease. While this was not a new accusation, in seventeenth-century Spain it was combined for the first time with legal language that sought to create a notion of "impure blood" as referring to one's family or caste. In the following study, I argue that medical discourse about menstruation was here uniquely combined with legal discourse in order to create a notion of racial impurity. In 1632 Doctor Juan de Quiones, an official in the court of King Philip IV, devoted an entire treatise to Jewish maladies, focusing on the allegation that Jewish males menstruated. He wrote: "every month they suffer from a blood flow as if they were women." - http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/bulletin_of_the_history_of_medicine/v073/73.3beusterien.html
Epoxy is right. The accurate statement might be that 65% of female ancestors contributed to 50% of the human DNA pool. 35% of male ancestors contributed to the other 50% of the DNA pool.
This is not a case like a series of coin tosses where the aggregate probability can be different from a single instance probability. IE, tossing heads 10 times in a row is many times less likely than tossing heads 9/10 times. But if you've tossed a coin 9 times in a row and they all landed heads and you are about to toss the coin again, the odds of landing heads are 50/50.
50% of nucleus DNA comes from a female and 50% from males for both the aggregate DNA of all humanity and for each individual human. There is no such thing as average person has 35% DNA from females. That would imply variation between people, which does not exist. 100% of our ancestors left descendants. Since the dawn of our species (and before then too), 50% of them were female.
Femx,
I always wonder why women put up with the whole fashion parade bullshit. It's so fucking degrading, it's sexist, it's misogynistic - why?
I see girls walking on the streets of my crowded city tottering around on heels. First of all they are ugly. This is supposed to be "suffering for beauty" but it's not even beautiful. And it's dangerous. They could fall into a grate. It should be the other way around, safety should be first, but I'll concede that people do crazy shit to look good. But this doesn't even look good.
If you look at history and see how women used to dress traditionally with no help from men, they used to make beautiful clothing for themselves. Modern dress for women, which is almost all men designing and making clothes for women (gay designers say they "dress women", as if women are babies), is ugly.
But women buy it.
Why?
I'm wrong here:
"The accurate statement might be that 65% of female ancestors contributed to 50% of the human DNA pool. 35% of male ancestors contributed to the other 50% of the DNA pool.
"
No, that's not the right phrasing either. Ancestors implies that they are our ancestors, not merely humans that used to live.
For those of us men who were circumcised against our will as newborns and thus have keritanized/desensitized cockheads, the woman on top sexual position is one of the best because the intense friction it creates rubs our cock the right way.
Look, it's very simple:
If you made a long list of the names of your ancestors from the past 5 or 10 thousand years, about two thirds of the people on the list would be women and about one third would be men.
Generally speaking, we are all descended from men who were aggressive and who took risks to achieve things and from women who did not. Thus, it is completely unsurprising that men achieve at higher levels (and also fail more spectacularly) compared to women.
Actually, Down syndome children, e.g., are not even 50/50 male/female in their nucleus DNA, but exactitude in blog comments is for nimrods.
The point beyond debate is that the quanity of different females that have contributed to the modern gene pool is greater than the male quantity.
65% is strictly a working consensus.
"If you made a long list of the names of your ancestors from the past 5 or 10 thousand years, about two thirds of the people on the list would be women and about one third would be men."
We can have more distinct female ancestors than distinct male ancestors, as in 65% of our distinct ancestors were female on average.
In the previous thread you said, "Ok, to answer my question from before, a typical human is descended about 65 percent from women and 35 percent from men."
I understood what you said in the previous thread only because it was preceded by the question, "what percentage of your ancestors are female." The statement becomes false when phrased even with slight ambiguity.
Actually, my last statement is also false. Though if this is my last, it was true.
" The statement becomes false when phrased even with slight ambiguity."
Thank you for interpreting my statements reasonably and assigning to them the meaning which was obviously intended.
Communication over the internet is difficult enough without people looking for ways to interpret statements so that they can be contradicted.
In any event, my basic point stands. There has clearly been a lot more genetic pressure on men over the ages to be aggressive; to take risks; and to try to achieve a lot than there has been for women.
So the observed disparities between male and female achievement are completely unsurprising.
"If you made a long list of the names of your ancestors from the past 5 or 10 thousand years, about two thirds of the people on the list would be women and about one third would be men."
That doesn't sound right to me.
"65% of all ancestors of all people who exist now were female" sounds more like it to me.
For an individual, 50% of your ancestors are female, 50% male.
I'd still love to hear from you Femx, why do women put up with the degradation of fashion? Even if you don't have an answer, I'd love to hear it. For this is a mystery to me.
"For an individual, 50% of your ancestors are female, 50% male."
That is definitely a false statement in light of empirical genetic studies, but I'm out of here.
"That is definitely a false statement in light of empirical genetic studies, but I'm out of here."
Anyway, it's just semantic quibbling. Everyone seems to understand the point I am trying to make.
By analogy, if somebody says that the sky is blue, I usually don't say "actually the sky is black at night"
Creepy dude,
http://www.haverford.edu/psych/ddavis/p109g/steinem.menstruate.html
Gloria was dead on.
"Even fashion is somewhat objective in the sense that at the end of the day, you need to sell. Particularly at the middle and lower end of the market, when somebody walks into Macy's to buy a handbag or clothing, they buy what they like without worrying about the sex (or race) of the designer.
"
This isn't really how designers achieve success. High end designing is a top down process. Designers network with the editors at fashion magazines and financiers. They hire celebrities for product placement, create some mass marketed lines which mimic their high end products for less and then women purchase the plebian versions of what they see celebrities wearing. They know celebrities are glamorous and beautiful, so if they buy what the celebrities wear, it makes them feel glamorous and beautiful. The fact that straight men are nowhere in this picture does not matter.
"So the laws of physics (and math, chemistry, biology, etc...) favor men? "
Look, I take Popper over Kuhn any day. Science is not a construct even though the experiments that distill scientific facts are human created constructs. But even though the overwhelming majority of scientific principles have been discovered by men, the level of advantage males enjoy over females in scientific reasoning is still unclear, both on average and at the top of the field.
Firstly, there is a social discrimination component, especially in non western countries. In Japan, academic labs only give credit to one professor while 10 others might toil beneath him. This combine with discrimination which prevents Japanese women from entering prestigious careers, probably keeps a number of Japanese women from becoming notable scientists.
This surely happens less in the US, but it's still not the case that scientists are purely exhalted for the caliber of their research. Personality and ability to appeal to others at the top is a component which affects liklihood of promotion.
Second, there is the issue of choice. Women choose not to pursue science from the get go. Their standardized test scores indicate lower quantitative abilities, especially at high levels, but their average test scores on learned material are equal to males for those who try to learn (like avergae AP test scores).
Third, there is a level of psychological construction involved with scientific subjects. Firstly, why divide subjects into biology, chem and physics? Because those are fields where other people wanted to explore and were able to have successful insight. It's possible that within those fields there are niches where some women can excel more than men. This will probably become clearer over the next 100 years.
As for math, women don't even attempt higher level math, but I think math is the most subjective of the quantitative fields because math is not rooted in empiricism. Mathematicians and theoretical physicists predict all sorts of things from paralell universes born of string theory to inflatons which can start new universes. They are awarded PhDs and accepted as correct because they can offer some kind of coherent proof, but there isn't an ounce of evidence that their proof is not merely some imagining in their head which seems coherent only to our human tastes. And how exactly do mathematicians determine which is more brilliant? One makes an elegant proof about the happenings in the 7th dimension (which might or might not exist) and another theorizes about some number sequence. One is promoted over the other why? Not that there are any women involved anyways, but it is probably the case that a number of mathematicians are considered first or second rate only because of the preferences of their predecessors.
Are men better at science? I actually don't know. They are better at taking the iniative to do experiments and then making sure they get credit for the discoveries. In effect, that's the same at having more insight anyways.
"As far as I know, men have a wider distribution of IQ scores than women, which neatly explains why increasingly disproportionate amounts of the very highest scoring individuals are male.
"
I agree with the gist of the explanation, but I think that it is oversimplified. It is probably the combination of a number of cognitive traits and the variance in that combination which gives men a potential intellectual advantage in terms of bredth of interest and extreme achievement.
Yes, it is true that women also care deeply about male hierarchies. They are evolved to feel attraction to the alpha. Hence Gisele marries Tom Brady. As a woman from Brazil, she probably barely knew anything about american football before she began dating him. She knows other men revere him and she knows he is rich and alpha. To some degree, women don't care what a man is the best at, so long as he is the best and so long as other men resepct him for being the best. Women don't seem to have a motivation for creating social hierarchies based on skills or outside goals. Female social hierarchies are based only on interpersonal relationships.
(1) I like your blog, it is very well written even when I don't agree with you. (2) You look very hot and sexy in your pictures. Now that those 2 comments are out of the way let me tell you my experiences. I am a real estate agent in a major metro city and I see inside homes all the time: women suck at decorating, gay men are vastly superior. Show me interior pictures of occupied homes and with 97% accuracy I can tell you the genders of the occupants. If you have a real estate agent friend you can verify this yourself, it is a fun game to play, just look at the photos on the listing and then compare to tax records.
I am not gay, and I don't know what it is, but gay guys are the best by far at decorating, it is not even close and any seasoned successful agent in a real estate market with a sizable gay population will tell you the same thing. Women over do it, they accessorize too much. Just my two cents.
" They know celebrities are glamorous and beautiful, so if they buy what the celebrities wear, it makes them feel glamorous and beautiful"
I'm a little confused. Are you saying that individuals' aesthetic opinions play no role at all?
"They are awarded PhDs and accepted as correct because they can offer some kind of coherent proof, but there isn't an ounce of evidence that their proof is not merely some imagining in their head which seems coherent only to our human tastes."
So Andrew Wiles' celebrated proof of Fermat's Last Theorem is unsubstantiated?
Lol, maybe a girl could have done the proof with some feminine way of thinking which is equally valid.
Anyway, your hypothesis is a good example of the use of Occam's Butterknife.
i.e., you refuse to accept the simple (but politically incorrect) explanation for observed facts and instead launch on a wild flight of fancy where you speculate about numerous ad hoc explanations. At the end of the day, you are just creating epicycles.
And even if one of your epicycles were shown to be incorrect, I doubt you would accept the simple explanation.
Instead, you would jump from epicycle to epicycle until you arrived at the last refuge of Occam's Butterknife: Stereotype threat, i.e. that females are worse at math and science because people believe it to be so.
I quite like your post, which touches on self-deception, perhaps a feature of the alpha male mind. In fact, I was thinking this morning that the Beta male is pre-eminently a male who thinks too much and is too aware of his own weaknesses, too little given to self-deception.
Be that as it may, your comparison of the fantastic shoe and the dull crotcheted necklace is very inept, and in fact tends to weaken your argument. Surely you weren't serious?
Julian, I like the necklace quite a bit. And I think the shoe is absurd. It has little appeal to me. I don't find the shoe original either since it's just a big weird thing on a standard gladiator pump.
"So Andrew Wiles' celebrated proof of Fermat's Last Theorem is unsubstantiated?"
Wrong. The proof is valid. The celebration is subjective. Math does not think 2+2 = 4 is somehow more special or deserving of applause than Fermat's last theorem. And that is an extreme case. Most math proofs are not anticipated for centuries.
"Instead, you would jump from epicycle to epicycle until you arrived at the last refuge of Occam's Butterknife: Stereotype threat, i.e. that females are worse at math and science because people believe it to be so."
That is an incorrect application of the concept of Occam's razor. And most modern people would say that the most obvious explanation is that women were oppressed.
And your sort of thinking doesn't get you to correct results. The simplest solution is only the best if it is accurate. If 1000 years ago, the Arab Assyrians came across the Scandanavian Vikings, they'd see a group of people that had no written language, no lasting monuments, no scientific theories and had never had any such things before, whereas the Arabs had arts and sciences for thousands of years. Instead, the vikings raided, slaughtered and raped. It would have been simple to conclude that the Scandanavians were a race of mentally inferior brutes. Simplest, yes. Accurate, no.
Over the last few centuries, the Jews of Eastern Europe were continually jostled around the continent as each country drove them out from time to time. It is simplest to conclude that the Jews were impossible to live with, not that each of dozens of separate nations could turn to the same discriminatory actions because they all shared a predjudice.
"Wrong. The proof is valid. The celebration is subjective."
I'm a little confused. Earlier, you said "there isn't an ounce of evidence that their proof is not merely some imagining in their head which seems coherent only to our human tastes"
Does that apply to the proof of Fermat's Last Theorem?
Simple yes or no question.
"And most modern people would say that the most obvious explanation is that women were oppressed. "
Only people who are infected with the PC bug.
"It would have been simple to conclude that the Scandanavians were a race of mentally inferior brutes"
Not necessarily. If you see a sub-group of people in only one situation, there are a lot of simple explanations for their behavior so Occam's razor does not come into play.
A better analogy would be if there were large groups of Scandinavian peoples living in many different cultures and many different times and they behaved (or failed to behave) in pretty much the same way all the time. That's when Occam's razor kicks in.
So it is with women and mathematics. By contrast, in some cultures women have achieved a good amount of success in literature while in others they haven't. In that case, the simple explanation is that there have been cultural barriers in some times and places.
Not only that, one can see that women are worse than men at math through casual observation. Even when you look at otherwise smart women from liberal families who encourage their daughters to be educated.
This is analagous to noticing that smokers are particularly prone to cancer of the lungs and throat.
Sorry, but there is just one simple and reasonable explanation for all of this.
The whole post so utterly, elaborately and unimpressively fails Occam's razor that no further comment is either necessary or merited.
It was junk in other words.
As an aside I'll note that even I know that that rococo inordinate use of expensive snakeskin shoe by Lamboutin is hardly typical of his often very sexy work. I know from girls with shoe obsessions who have shown off some of his stuff to me. Your use of it to make your point was like the rest of this post, junk thought and junk argumentation.
There is no conflict between this idea and the fact that men have a higher-variance ability distribution. I think part of male overrepresentation at the top and bottom is due to their higher variance and preference for tournament-style (top-loaded payoff) competitions. But that doesn't rule out the additional cultural explanation proposed here, that men also set up competitions and define/perceive status based on tournaments.
"it is likely that humans as social animals evolved an alpha beta omega male social status system where a tribe of a few hundred was lead by alpha males." This is not that likely. See Sarah Hrdy's _Mothers and Others_. But I do agree with the general idea that males are more interested in making everything a pissing contest.
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