Feminism and How I don't Care

[Central Slavia]

I don't understand what you mean by being excluded from a job. If you mean the fire brigade and suchlike, then it's really quite obvious.

Something about having female genitalia makes a person unable to carry out the tasks associated with firefighting? Do tell.

It's because we lack all those valuable years of experience that men get in childhood, pretending their penises are fire hoses.

I have argued with you quite often and am reluctant to say, but
THIS IS SOOO AWESOME !!

[Ryadn]

I don't understand what you mean by being excluded from a job. If you mean the fire brigade and suchlike, then it's really quite obvious.

Something about having female genitalia makes a person unable to carry out the tasks associated with firefighting? Do tell.

It's because we lack all those valuable years of experience that men get in childhood, pretending their penises are fire hoses.

I have argued with you quite often and am reluctant to say, but
THIS IS SOOO AWESOME !!

Thank you, thank you, I'll be here all---crap, time to grade papers.

[Zeppy]

I have argued with you quite often and am reluctant to say, but
THIS IS SOOO AWESOME !!

Facetious post is facetious.

[Callisdrun]

Feminism is all about keeping the Man down and not bringing him sammichs on time. It is complete and utter anarchy and madness! Repress the Women before they get silly ideas such as voting and equality!
/Adjust Top Hat and Monocle

But what if the Man wants to stay down? Specifically sitting down. On his couch or Lay-Z-Boy recliner.

[Callisdrun]

I don't understand what you mean by being excluded from a job. If you mean the fire brigade and suchlike, then it's really quite obvious.

Something about having female genitalia makes a person unable to carry out the tasks associated with firefighting? Do tell.

It's because we lack all those valuable years of experience that men get in childhood, pretending their penises are fire hoses.

Oh! It all makes sense now!

It does! All that practice writing their names in the snow, or just handling that Hose! One does wonder why they can't actually hit the center of the bowl, however.

But really, how often do you need to hit one specific spot on a burning building?

I've always pretended my penis was a laser beam cannon, actually. And I'd try to hit the bigger bubbles in the toilet. It was especially fun if a girl had taken a piss and not flushed because then I could shoot the toilet paper around and see if I could cut it in half with my piss (laser) stream.

[Bottle]

...This happens to me in videogames a lot. If a guy plays badly, everyone says "Dude, you suck." If I play badly, there will always be at least one person who says, "Dude, girls suck at videogames."

Or the reverse, "Dude! You should have seen Jenny play SoulCalibur, she was amazing!!" (i.e., Jenny managed to beat one boy.)

The longer I live, the more I realise just how much of a bubble I live in being a middle-class WASP.

Not to mention when a man fails at something, he is seen as disgrace to men. I just love the whiny feminists who say A but hold back the B

I've been playing videogames since 1984, and I have never once seen that happen, so you'll have to forgive me for not believing that it is a major problem.

[Bottle]

Totally unrelated to the discussion at hand, but I came across this today, felt like sharing, and don't think it warrants an entirely separate thread because it really does fit under Feminism And Why You Might Want To Care:

http://www.thegeenadavisinstitute.org/d ... ndings.pdf

This is a link to results from some studies on gender in media, in which it was found that (among other things):

In G-rated movies, "fewer than one out of three (28%) of the speaking characters (both real and animated) are female," and "more than four out of five (83%) of the films’ narrators are male."

In G- PG- and PG-13-rated movies, "73% of the characters are male."

In children's television programming, "male characters occur roughly at twice the rate of female characters. Sample-wide, the ratio of males to females was 1.67 to 1, including characters presented alone, in groups, or as narrators."

But I'm sure none of this has any impact on anybody.

[Czardas]

Totally unrelated to the discussion at hand, but I came across this today, felt like sharing, and don't think it warrants an entirely separate thread because it really does fit under Feminism And Why You Might Want To Care:

http://www.thegeenadavisinstitute.org/d ... ndings.pdf

This is a link to results from some studies on gender in media, in which it was found that (among other things):

In G-rated movies, "fewer than one out of three (28%) of the speaking characters (both real and animated) are female," and "more than four out of five (83%) of the films’ narrators are male."

In G- PG- and PG-13-rated movies, "73% of the characters are male."

In children's television programming, "male characters occur roughly at twice the rate of female characters. Sample-wide, the ratio of males to females was 1.67 to 1, including characters presented alone, in groups, or as narrators."

But I'm sure none of this has any impact on anybody.

Well, obviously if people wanted more female characters in children's programming the free market would provide them. You must be some kind of freedom-hating communist if you want to force children to watch movies and television programmes with female characters in them.

... Am I the only person who's noticed how the whole "self-made man"/"pioneer" ideal expounded by free-marketers is an almost exclusively masculine attitude? You don't seem to find many women who buy into that sort of thing (apart from maybe Ayn Rand). I wonder why that is.

[Callisdrun]

Totally unrelated to the discussion at hand, but I came across this today, felt like sharing, and don't think it warrants an entirely separate thread because it really does fit under Feminism And Why You Might Want To Care:

http://www.thegeenadavisinstitute.org/d ... ndings.pdf

This is a link to results from some studies on gender in media, in which it was found that (among other things):

In G-rated movies, "fewer than one out of three (28%) of the speaking characters (both real and animated) are female," and "more than four out of five (83%) of the films’ narrators are male."

In G- PG- and PG-13-rated movies, "73% of the characters are male."

In children's television programming, "male characters occur roughly at twice the rate of female characters. Sample-wide, the ratio of males to females was 1.67 to 1, including characters presented alone, in groups, or as narrators."

But I'm sure none of this has any impact on anybody.

Well, obviously if people wanted more female characters in children's programming the free market would provide them. You must be some kind of freedom-hating communist if you want to force children to watch movies and television programmes with female characters in them.

... Am I the only person who's noticed how the whole "self-made man"/"pioneer" ideal expounded by free-marketers is an almost exclusively masculine attitude? You don't seem to find many women who buy into that sort of thing (apart from maybe Ayn Rand). I wonder why that is.

Because historically it's been blatantly obvious that a woman couldn't rise as high as she wanted in society through simple hard work due to a sexist, patriarchal culture that's regarded women as intrinsically being of lesser capability and at times worked to ensure that this attitude wasn't seriously challenged?

[Bottle]

... Am I the only person who's noticed how the whole "self-made man"/"pioneer" ideal expounded by free-marketers is an almost exclusively masculine attitude? You don't seem to find many women who buy into that sort of thing (apart from maybe Ayn Rand). I wonder why that is.

May have to do with the sexist belief that women never "make" anything, but rather are "made" by whichever man happens to be the central figure of their life (daddy, husband, whatever). But may also simply be a reflection of the attitude that "male" is the default for "human"; "self-made man" is thus supposed to resonate with everyone human, be they man or woman, while if somebody talked about "self-made woman" it clearly only refers to the female half of the population.

[Czardas]

Because historically it's been blatantly obvious that a woman couldn't rise as high as she wanted in society through simple hard work due to a sexist, patriarchal culture that's regarded women as intrinsically being of lesser capability and at times worked to ensure that this attitude wasn't seriously challenged?

Perhaps, but even nowadays with a quite vocal and extensive feminist movement most feminists seem to be on the more socialist/anarchist side of things. You'd think a right-libertarian feminist attitude might make sense... well, on the other hand, the people at the forefront of the movement grew up in times when hard work hardly worked if you were female so that could be a factor.

[Callisdrun]

That's pretty much what I'm speculating. The glass ceiling still exists to some extent, and in the times when many of today's feminist authors grew up, it was even more rigid. So to them, the idea that you can be as (financially) successful as you want if you work hard enough might seem incredibly naive.

[Bottle]

That's pretty much what I'm speculating. The glass ceiling still exists to some extent, and in the times when many of today's feminist authors grew up, it was even more rigid. So to them, the idea that you can be as (financially) successful as you want if you work hard enough might seem incredibly naive.

The flip side of that coin is that a lot of feminists take it as a given that a woman will have to be "self-made," and will have to fight twice as hard for half the credit, so they're more likely to view that as a fact of life rather than as a special trait that one should take special pride in.

[Gift-of-god]

It's because we lack all those valuable years of experience that men get in childhood, pretending their penises are fire hoses.

Good times. Good times.

As for the toilet thing, if you place a target in th eurinal for men to aim at, there will be significantly less mess, so to speak, as the men aim their fire-hoses in the proper spot.

http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/b ... urinal.htm

[Chumblywumbly]

...This happens to me in videogames a lot. If a guy plays badly, everyone says "Dude, you suck." If I play badly, there will always be at least one person who says, "Dude, girls suck at videogames."

Or the reverse, "Dude! You should have seen Jenny play SoulCalibur, she was amazing!!" (i.e., Jenny managed to beat one boy.)

The longer I live, the more I realise just how much of a bubble I live in being a middle-class WASP.

Not to mention when a man fails at something, he is seen as disgrace to men. I just love the whiny feminists who say A but hold back the B

I've been playing videogames since 1984, and I have never once seen that happen, so you'll have to forgive me for not believing that it is a major problem.

Bottle, are you responding to myself or Slavia?

[Bottle]

...This happens to me in videogames a lot. If a guy plays badly, everyone says "Dude, you suck." If I play badly, there will always be at least one person who says, "Dude, girls suck at videogames."

Or the reverse, "Dude! You should have seen Jenny play SoulCalibur, she was amazing!!" (i.e., Jenny managed to beat one boy.)

The longer I live, the more I realise just how much of a bubble I live in being a middle-class WASP.

Not to mention when a man fails at something, he is seen as disgrace to men. I just love the whiny feminists who say A but hold back the B

I've been playing videogames since 1984, and I have never once seen that happen, so you'll have to forgive me for not believing that it is a major problem.

Bottle, are you responding to myself or Slavia?

Slavia, sorry, realize now that it was unclear.

I've seen a guy told that he "plays like a girl" or "is a total pussy" or is otherwise FEMININE and YUCKY for failing to perform well enough at videogames, of course. But that just emphasizes the stance that FEMALES are bad at videogames. If a male person does bad at videogames then, clearly, by definition he must not be a man at all because men are good at videogames. He cannot be a disgraces to men, because he isn't a man at all.

Now, what Chumbly described is certainly something I've seen and experienced. Indeed, I was tremendously pissed off at PAX East this year, because after waiting my turn for a shot at playing the new StreetFighter Xbox game, I sat down next to my opponent only to have him let me win twice in a row. All the guys who were there were so very NICE about this, praising me for doing so WELL, when it was obvious that the other player wasn't even trying (I'd watched him play against literally ten other players before me). I guess it's not nice to hit a girl even in a videogame? (I was playing Blanka, but never mind that...) Everyone acted like it was so amazing and awesome that I was able to reach for the controller without getting tangled in my own fallopian tubes or something. That kind of "praise" is a kind I can do without.

[Dempublicents1]

I've seen a guy told that he "plays like a girl" or "is a total pussy" or is otherwise FEMININE and YUCKY for failing to perform well enough at videogames, of course. But that just emphasizes the stance that FEMALES are bad at videogames. If a male person does bad at videogames then, clearly, by definition he must not be a man at all because men are good at videogames. He cannot be a disgraces to men, because he isn't a man at all.

That sort of thing happens in sports as well. If a guy tries to play baseball and isn't very good at throwing the ball, the retort is that he "throws like a girl," not that he's some sort of disgrace to mankind or that he is just bad at it. A girl who doesn't "throw like a girl" (as in, she's actually good at it) is seen as being more masculine, and may even may be assumed to be be a "butch" lesbian.

One of the most interesting double standards to me is the fact that a girl or woman doing "masculine" things is not seen as demeaning herself, while the reverse is not true. My family always taught me that I should not see being female as a barrier to doing what I wanted. If I wanted to do "masculine" things, that was just fine. But the fact that my male counterparts weren't getting a similar message didn't really come home to me until later. A couple of incidents in my cousins' lives really kind of demonstrate the difference.

When one of my female cousins was young (maybe 4 or 5), she went through a month or two in which she decided that she was a boy, complete with a boy's name. Her parents assumed (in her case, apparently rightly so) that this was a phase and saw nothing wrong with it. She ran around with her shirt off like her brothers, wanted to be called by her chosen male name, and they were willing to kind of play along with that.

In contrast, I remember a single day in which several of us decided to hold a "pageant". We took my brother and male cousin and dressed them up for it. We put makeup on them, gave them a couple of play wigs I had sitting around, and dressed them up in some of my clothes. We feminized their names and gathered the adults up to put on our little show. My uncle, who had been all too willing to go along with his daughter declaring herself a boy for a period of a month or so, was angered by an hour or so of his son pretending to be a girl. It was ridiculous.

Now, what Chumbly described is certainly something I've seen and experienced. Indeed, I was tremendously pissed off at PAX East this year, because after waiting my turn for a shot at playing the new StreetFighter Xbox game, I sat down next to my opponent only to have him let me win twice in a row. All the guys who were there were so very NICE about this, praising me for doing so WELL, when it was obvious that the other player wasn't even trying (I'd watched him play against literally ten other players before me). I guess it's not nice to hit a girl even in a videogame? (I was playing Blanka, but never mind that...) Everyone acted like it was so amazing and awesome that I was able to reach for the controller without getting tangled in my own fallopian tubes or something. That kind of "praise" is a kind I can do without.

Ugh.

[Bottle]

I've seen a guy told that he "plays like a girl" or "is a total pussy" or is otherwise FEMININE and YUCKY for failing to perform well enough at videogames, of course. But that just emphasizes the stance that FEMALES are bad at videogames. If a male person does bad at videogames then, clearly, by definition he must not be a man at all because men are good at videogames. He cannot be a disgraces to men, because he isn't a man at all.

That sort of thing happens in sports as well. If a guy tries to play baseball and isn't very good at throwing the ball, the retort is that he "throws like a girl," not that he's some sort of disgrace to mankind or that he is just bad at it. A girl who doesn't "throw like a girl" (as in, she's actually good at it) is seen as being more masculine, and may even may be assumed to be be a "butch" lesbian.

One of the most interesting double standards to me is the fact that a girl or woman doing "masculine" things is not seen as demeaning herself, while the reverse is not true. My family always taught me that I should not see being female as a barrier to doing what I wanted. If I wanted to do "masculine" things, that was just fine. But the fact that my male counterparts weren't getting a similar message didn't really come home to me until later. A couple of incidents in my cousins' lives really kind of demonstrate the difference.

When one of my female cousins was young (maybe 4 or 5), she went through a month or two in which she decided that she was a boy, complete with a boy's name. Her parents assumed (in her case, apparently rightly so) that this was a phase and saw nothing wrong with it. She ran around with her shirt off like her brothers, wanted to be called by her chosen male name, and they were willing to kind of play along with that.

In contrast, I remember a single day in which several of us decided to hold a "pageant". We took my brother and male cousin and dressed them up for it. We put makeup on them, gave them a couple of play wigs I had sitting around, and dressed them up in some of my clothes. We feminized their names and gathered the adults up to put on our little show. My uncle, who had been all too willing to go along with his daughter declaring herself a boy for a period of a month or so, was angered by an hour or so of his son pretending to be a girl. It was ridiculous.

Yep, there's the old "masculine is better, feminine is inferior" stuff coming into play. A girl who tries to be more like the boys is trying to move up in the world, which is fine. A girl being girly is also fine, because girls are inherently inferior so it's understandable when they like to do inferior feminine things. But a boy who tries to be anything like the girls, in any way, shape, or form?! Hell no! Mustn't have that!

Now, what Chumbly described is certainly something I've seen and experienced. Indeed, I was tremendously pissed off at PAX East this year, because after waiting my turn for a shot at playing the new StreetFighter Xbox game, I sat down next to my opponent only to have him let me win twice in a row. All the guys who were there were so very NICE about this, praising me for doing so WELL, when it was obvious that the other player wasn't even trying (I'd watched him play against literally ten other players before me). I guess it's not nice to hit a girl even in a videogame? (I was playing Blanka, but never mind that...) Everyone acted like it was so amazing and awesome that I was able to reach for the controller without getting tangled in my own fallopian tubes or something. That kind of "praise" is a kind I can do without.

Ugh.

I should also, in fairness, note that I had a very nice and long conversation with a fellow who was a rep for All Points Bulletin, and he managed to speak with me for upwards of 35 minutes without being condescending or looking at my chest. He did not express surprise at the fact that I used terms like "UI" (user interface), or that I asked questions about "instancing," or that I was capable of operating the controls despite the fact that they were not painted pink. So it's not like all gamer dudes are socially-maladjusted twits.

[Chumblywumbly]

Now, what Chumbly described is certainly something I've seen and experienced. Indeed, I was tremendously pissed off at PAX East this year, because after waiting my turn for a shot at playing the new StreetFighter Xbox game, I sat down next to my opponent only to have him let me win twice in a row. All the guys who were there were so very NICE about this, praising me for doing so WELL, when it was obvious that the other player wasn't even trying (I'd watched him play against literally ten other players before me). I guess it's not nice to hit a girl even in a videogame? (I was playing Blanka, but never mind that...) Everyone acted like it was so amazing and awesome that I was able to reach for the controller without getting tangled in my own fallopian tubes or something. That kind of "praise" is a kind I can do without.

Ugh.

I should also, in fairness, note that I had a very nice and long conversation with a fellow who was a rep for All Points Bulletin, and he managed to speak with me for upwards of 35 minutes without being condescending or looking at my chest. He did not express surprise at the fact that I used terms like "UI" (user interface), or that I asked questions about "instancing," or that I was capable of operating the controls despite the fact that they were not painted pink. So it's not like all gamer dudes are socially-maladjusted twits.

Also, you got to go to a PAX.

Me jealous.

[Dempublicents1]

Now, what Chumbly described is certainly something I've seen and experienced. Indeed, I was tremendously pissed off at PAX East this year, because after waiting my turn for a shot at playing the new StreetFighter Xbox game, I sat down next to my opponent only to have him let me win twice in a row. All the guys who were there were so very NICE about this, praising me for doing so WELL, when it was obvious that the other player wasn't even trying (I'd watched him play against literally ten other players before me). I guess it's not nice to hit a girl even in a videogame? (I was playing Blanka, but never mind that...) Everyone acted like it was so amazing and awesome that I was able to reach for the controller without getting tangled in my own fallopian tubes or something. That kind of "praise" is a kind I can do without.

Ugh.

I should also, in fairness, note that I had a very nice and long conversation with a fellow who was a rep for All Points Bulletin, and he managed to speak with me for upwards of 35 minutes without being condescending or looking at my chest. He did not express surprise at the fact that I used terms like "UI" (user interface), or that I asked questions about "instancing," or that I was capable of operating the controls despite the fact that they were not painted pink. So it's not like all gamer dudes are socially-maladjusted twits.

Also, you got to go to a PAX.

Me jealous.

Seriously! I thought I was going to get to go to PAX East, but the plans fell through. =(

[Wikkiwallana]

Because historically it's been blatantly obvious that a woman couldn't rise as high as she wanted in society through simple hard work due to a sexist, patriarchal culture that's regarded women as intrinsically being of lesser capability and at times worked to ensure that this attitude wasn't seriously challenged?

Perhaps, but even nowadays with a quite vocal and extensive feminist movement most feminists seem to be on the more socialist/anarchist side of things. You'd think a right-libertarian feminist attitude might make sense... well, on the other hand, the people at the forefront of the movement grew up in times when hard work hardly worked if you were female so that could be a factor.

Not to be rude but perhaps there is a biological component to it? Specifically, from an evolutionary standpoint, men, because of their incredibly low minimal biological commitment to producing offspring (i.e., how much metabolic reserve does our body lose with a glob of semen), can best pass on their genetic material spreading it as widely as possible, as they could have far more children that way than they could with a dedicated commitment to a single mate; if some children die, there are likely still several more that survive. A mindset for self-reliance and going it alone would certainly aid in this endeavor, as they could move from group to group while providing for themselves during the solo traveling periods. On the other hand, women take nine months, the last few of which they would be at an extreme disadvantage to survival in a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, as well as incredible amounts of nutrients and raw materials that could be going to their own health, to produce a single offspring, and more nutrients and raw materials to provide milk for it after it is born, and multiple children at once would only make the demands worse. By forming an interconnected group of mutual participation, the majority of the group can protect and provide those at risk, in return for the same consideration when they are at risk, thus greatly increasing all members chance of successfully passing on their genes. In this case a mindset predisposed to bonding and teamwork would be more genetically rewarding than a soloist one. However, the development of civilization is still incredibly new on an evolutionary time scale, plus it improves the survival rate of all members as well as increasing their likelihood of successfully mating and raising children to maturity, thus reducing the effects of natural selection. Therefore, these instinctive thought patterns would not have had enough time to be biologically adjusted to the new situation of civilization, let alone the realities of the modern post-industrial era, which provides vastly increased survival rates for pregnancy, easy access to food and shelter, a lack of predators, etc., that allow the sexes to act on an equal footing.

Granted, I'm not a biologist or anthropologist, so I could be completely off track, but for now this seems somewhat plausible to me. I'm also not trying to imply any sort of superiority of either gender, just that in the distant past, different interpersonal attitudes could have been an adaptive survival trait due to the different circumstances.

[Ryadn]

Because historically it's been blatantly obvious that a woman couldn't rise as high as she wanted in society through simple hard work due to a sexist, patriarchal culture that's regarded women as intrinsically being of lesser capability and at times worked to ensure that this attitude wasn't seriously challenged?

Perhaps, but even nowadays with a quite vocal and extensive feminist movement most feminists seem to be on the more socialist/anarchist side of things. You'd think a right-libertarian feminist attitude might make sense... well, on the other hand, the people at the forefront of the movement grew up in times when hard work hardly worked if you were female so that could be a factor.

Not to be rude but perhaps there is a biological component to it? Specifically, from an evolutionary standpoint, men, because of their incredibly low minimal biological commitment to producing offspring (i.e., how much metabolic reserve does our body lose with a glob of semen), can best pass on their genetic material spreading it as widely as possible, as they could have far more children that way than they could with a dedicated commitment to a single mate; if some children die, there are likely still several more that survive. A mindset for self-reliance and going it alone would certainly aid in this endeavor, as they could move from group to group while providing for themselves during the solo traveling periods. On the other hand, women take nine months, the last few of which they would be at an extreme disadvantage to survival in a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, as well as incredible amounts of nutrients and raw materials that could be going to their own health, to produce a single offspring, and more nutrients and raw materials to provide milk for it after it is born, and multiple children at once would only make the demands worse. By forming an interconnected group of mutual participation, the majority of the group can protect and provide those at risk, in return for the same consideration when they are at risk, thus greatly increasing all members chance of successfully passing on their genes. In this case a mindset predisposed to bonding and teamwork would be more genetically rewarding than a soloist one. However, the development of civilization is still incredibly new on an evolutionary time scale, plus it improves the survival rate of all members as well as increasing their likelihood of successfully mating and raising children to maturity, thus reducing the effects of natural selection. Therefore, these instinctive thought patterns would not have had enough time to be biologically adjusted to the new situation of civilization, let alone the realities of the modern post-industrial era, which provides vastly increased survival rates for pregnancy, easy access to food and shelter, a lack of predators, etc., that allow the sexes to act on an equal footing.

Granted, I'm not a biologist or anthropologist, so I could be completely off track, but for now this seems somewhat plausible to me. I'm also not trying to imply any sort of superiority of either gender, just that in the distant past, different interpersonal attitudes could have been an adaptive survival trait due to the different circumstances.

Humans and their ancestors have been pair-bonding for quite a long time. It's one of the developments that allowed us to survive on the open plain, and there are theories that men actually began to trend toward monogamy before women.

[Bottle]

Humans and their ancestors have been pair-bonding for quite a long time. It's one of the developments that allowed us to survive on the open plain, and there are theories that men actually began to trend toward monogamy before women.

Very strong evidence, in particular, due to the concealed reproductive cycle of human women.

Many other species, including many primates, have conspicuous periods of reproductive "heat" during which time the females are fertile and the males can tell through specific cues. Human women do not show such conspicuous cues, which means that human males can't tell if a woman is at a fertile point in her cycle just by looking at her.

Concealed reproduction helps (biologically) with a reproductive strategy that is great for females; maximize the number of males who believe themselves to be the biological father of your offspring, because then you 1) increase the number of males who may help with caring for and protecting the young, 2) increase the number of males who may help accumulate resources for the young, 3) reduce the number of males who will try to kill the young, because they think it's their baby and won't try to kill it due to it being biological competition.

[Maurepas]

I don't understand what you mean by being excluded from a job. If you mean the fire brigade and suchlike, then it's really quite obvious.

Something about having female genitalia makes a person unable to carry out the tasks associated with firefighting? Do tell.

It's because we lack all those valuable years of experience that men get in childhood, pretending their penises are fire hoses.

Are you implying my penis isn't a fire hose?

[Wikkiwallana]

Humans and their ancestors have been pair-bonding for quite a long time. It's one of the developments that allowed us to survive on the open plain, and there are theories that men actually began to trend toward monogamy before women.

Very strong evidence, in particular, due to the concealed reproductive cycle of human women.

Many other species, including many primates, have conspicuous periods of reproductive "heat" during which time the females are fertile and the males can tell through specific cues. Human women do not show such conspicuous cues, which means that human males can't tell if a woman is at a fertile point in her cycle just by looking at her.

Concealed reproduction helps (biologically) with a reproductive strategy that is great for females; maximize the number of males who believe themselves to be the biological father of your offspring, because then you 1) increase the number of males who may help with caring for and protecting the young, 2) increase the number of males who may help accumulate resources for the young, 3) reduce the number of males who will try to kill the young, because they think it's their baby and won't try to kill it due to it being biological competition.

Well, I would like to thank both of you for setting me straight. I was just spitballing based on what I knew, but I certainly haven't been keeping up with the research, so I appreciate the update.