Why are men and women both biased in favor of women?

Studies show that men are biased in favor of women (Goodwin 2004). Some people will suggest that this is genetic, that men evolved to put women first since they’re the ones who have babies and take care of them. But the truth is, there are multiple cultural things happening, cultural perceptions that are, of course, related to biology (culture and genes work together to influence our behavior).

Sex: Are boys biased in favor of girls before the boys hit puberty? I remember life as a child very well, and I’d have to say no. Boys are just as much biased toward their own group as grown women are biased toward themselves. It is only around puberty, when our female peers start developing into women, that this bias starts to break down among guys. Men go from “I hate girls, they’re gross” to “I gotta get laid, I gotta get laid. If I do this, maybe I’ll get laid. If I do that, maybe I’ll get laid.” I’ve certainly seen men danseling women in hopes that they might get laid, and I know women are aware that men will do it for that reason. Men reach their sexual peak at 17, which might influence their change of behavior in being biased toward women, but this cultural norm remains long after men pass their sexual peak, leaving men unaware that they don’t really need pussy all that bad. Blogger typhonblue has argued something similar to this, in her video “power of a limb dick”, where she basically says that men have diluted themselves into thinking that they desire women for their vaginas, but in actually, men, belonging to a social species, desire intimacy with a human being. Nonetheless, as far as I’m concerned, the sexual desires of young men turning women into trophies is a biological phenomenon that creates a cultural phenomenon, where even gay men who are contemptuous of straight men might treat women as trophies to be won.

Neoteny: This is a concept that youtuber girlwriteswhat discusses. Women retain childlike features in adulthood (big eyes, small chin, small bodies, high pitched voices) which makes people want to protect and care for them the way people do for actual children. This would be a strong indication of a biological component, that our genes trigger our brains to protect and care for people with neotenous features, and are therefore biologically predisposed to care for and protect women. The problem with that idea is the assumption that caring for children is biological. And yet, there have been plenty of cultures that care very little for children. Think of the book of Joshua in the Bible, where God orders the Hebrews not to spare any women or children when they invade Canaan. This bothers people in the modern world because we have different CULTURAL attitudes about children and women than the authors of the bible did. So Neoteny might explain the biological connection between women and children, but it doesn’t provide a biological explanation for the BIAS men have toward women, since the desire to spare women and children in war seems to be a cultural phenomenon. In today’s society, people care for children because of a conscious understanding that children are the future. This may lead to empathy toward anyone, not just children, who display neotenous features, which includes women and animals.

Women’s empathy: Another youtuber named pwnyslaystation01 mentioned a study (Viren Swami 2012) that found that people were less likely to identify troubled men as having a mental health disorder than they were a troubled woman. But the real interesting part of this study showed that women were more likely than men to identify the troubled man as having mental health problems, which suggests that women might have more empathy for men than men themselves do. This is in spite of the fact that men are less neotenous than women are. What effect does this have on men? It may cause men to be more guarded when around other men, but more open about their own feelings when they are around women. Norah Vincent, who disguised herself as a man, found out that men became more open around her after she revealed that she was really a woman. This may also lead to a self-perpetuating cycle of hostility between men. If you’re a man, and you see a woman and another man standing in front of you, and the woman has more empathy for you than the man does, you’ll be biased in her favor. But here’s the kicker, the other man will sense your hostility toward him, and he’ll sense the empathy in the girl, and  he’ll also be biased in her favor. Do you see how this works? This also explains CreepyBitterGirl, a female feminist activist discussed by youtuber MykeruMedia. CreepyBitterGirl put together an army of male feminist mooks and had them vandalize men’s rights flyers in Vancouver BC. If my empathy theory is correct, it essentially means that feminist men who hate their own gender are responsible for all the things they hate about their own gender, because it’s their self-hatred that makes men hostile in the first place.

We don’t need to explain why women are biased toward their own gender. Humans are naturally biased toward their own group. When they’re not, it’s because something else prevents them from doing so. For men, we see at least three things: women’s empathy, men’s young sexual peak, and women’s neoteny are biological components intimately connected to cultural components, either causing them, or caused by them. These three things might influence individual men equally, or possibly disproportionately. For example, some men might just be trying to mate with girls, and so they white knight themselves in hopes of winning the trophy. Other men just see women as helpless creatures that need their protection because they see the similarities between women and children, and they already have cultural beliefs about children needing special protection. But most importantly, men look in the mirror and they see a creature lacking both neoteny and emphathy, and so continues the cycle of self hatred.

What effect does this have on women? Do they feel drained by men desiring love, empathy, and sex from them? Does it cause them to become callused toward men, to use them as tools for their own benefit? As humans, women are complex. There are hardwired parts in their minds and there are life experiences that shape their attitudes about men. The inability of men to empathize with each other leaves them vulnerable to women. Women being exposed to this vulnerability may grow callused over time, especially since the sexual elements of a woman’s mind might feel disgusted with a man’s vulnerabilities (she desires men to be completely manly inside and out).

These are issues that men need to talk about. It’s for their own good.

Atheism Plus: lessons can be learned from their shortcomings about the nature of the God debate

Have you ever listened to the exchanges between atheists and theists debating each other? You’ll often see the atheist calling the theist out on their logical fallacies, such as moving the goal post, arguments from analogy, attacking strawmen, god of the gaps, the list goes on. The atheist might even sprinkle this with a few facts from science and history, add a little water, and ta da, you get instant whoop ass.

And you think to yourself: “Man that atheist is very disciplined in the art of logic and he really cares about the truth of things. He’s a great example for how we should all be. In fact, this is bigger than atheism. This is about skepticism and logic. If a God really did exist, the atheist would accept it while maintaining his commitment to truth and logic. And as long as we are as rationally disciplined as that atheist guy, then the correct understandings of how things are and how things should be will inevitably follow.”

But how consistent is the rationally disciplined atheist’s commitment to truth and logic? What if the conversation moves away from theology and shifts toward gender? As the Atheism Plus (a group of feminist atheists) movement has demonstrated, an atheist involved in the skeptics movement can have a pretty flimsy commitment to rationality and skepticism. Members of Atheism Plus have built a reputation for banning anybody from their forums who disagrees with them, as well as dismissing people as misogynists, rape apologists, MRA’s when they’re not, and they’ve even stalked and harassed people who criticize the A+ cult. This sounds like the behavior of deluded people.

So now let’s return to the atheist and theist debating God with each other, and let’s assume the atheist is a feminist. Why is the atheist whooping ass at this theological debate? Is it because he’s rationally disciplined, or is it because the facts just happen to be on his side? Not only is there no evidence of a god, and every unknown that gets solved turns out to have a natural explanation, but the universe that allows us to exist in it resembles exactly what a universe without a god would need to be; it’s very old, it’s very vast, and life is rare.

Now what if the earth was flat and it was the center of the universe with the sun, moon, and starts circling over it? What if that blue sky dome was an actual dome that separated the waters above from the waters below? What if this universe was filled with demonstrably true supernatural activity, with spirits, angels, demons, zombies, and the like roaming around? Would the atheist change his mind? Before the rise of Atheism Plus, I would have said yes. But the truth is, there is no way to know for sure how committed somebody is to the truth when the truth already fits their point of view. In an atheistic universe, an atheist has nothing to lose by sticking with the facts and keeping his arguments rational. It turns out, his rational discipline is NOT bigger than atheism after all. And yet, when PZ Myers debates a Muslim proselytizer, while his friend Rebecca Watson films the discussion from the sidelines, it LOOKS like PZ and Rebecca are the ones who took the red pill.

MRA’s typically do not ban people nor do they threaten and harass their critics. In fact, they desire dialog with feminists. Recently, MRA youtuber Johntheother was supposed to participate in a public debate between feminists and MRA’s on the subject “has feminism gone too far?” The feminist who tried to host this event cancelled it after her fellow feminists started sending her threats. Are feminists just naturally loony and insane while the MRA’s are stoically committed to logic and rationality? Or do we just happen to live in a world where the facts do not support the claims of feminists?

We need to be mindful of the fact that, no matter how much we think we care about truth and rationality, we are vulnerable to delusion. Sure, we know that, and we pay lip service to that, but how often are we tested on this? How often are we confronted with facts that don’t fit what we want? If you’re both an atheist and an MRA, then probably not often.  MRA’s talk about taking the red pill, but MRA’s are men as well as women who care about men, so we have a stake in taking the red pill, which means it might not be so red after all. But our willingness to be rational and to engage in discussion with feminists suggests that, at least, the facts are on our side, even if we’re human and are just as prone to delusion as anybody else.

Incarnations of Human Masculinity

“And Eternity” is the 7th book of the Incarnations of Immortality series by Piers Anthony. In the fantasy world in which the series takes place, there are seven incarnations of day: Death (Thanatos), Time (Chronos), Fate (Clotho, Lachesis, & Atropos), War (Mars), Nature (Gaea), Evil (Satan), and Good (God). These are supernatural offices occupied by mortals. They all have distinct powers or abilities related to their office. There is also one Incarnation of Night (Nox) who also has distinct abilities. She knows the secrets and desires of every person.

In the 7th book, two girls, Jolie and Orlene, decide to pay Nox a visit. But during their trek into the chaos void to find her, Nox hurls obstacles at them, from man eating locusts, monsters, deadly weather conditions, and even an avalanche of glass shards. Their only way of escape is for Orlene to wave a magic wand that the two girls found on this journey, which allows them to escape these obstacles and was no doubt left for them by Nox. But every time Orlene invokes the wand, her body and behavior change. She slowly turns into a man. During her transformation, she becomes more eager to fight the obstacles, more determined to reach Nox, and most importantly, she becomes condescending toward Jolie, continuously making jabs at her, talking down to her, and, when the transformation is complete, decides to try and rape her before Nox shows up and finally intervenes.

In this situation, Nox was trying to teach Jolie and Orlene a lesson about men. The two girls conclude that the only reason all men do not behave the way Orlene did, when she was under Nox’s spell, is because they’ve had a lifetime to learn to control their instincts. The implication here is that men are naturally violent, rude, dangerous, sexist, and rapey. Good men are only good through enculturation…through being tamed.

But how true is this?

Testosterone is supposed to be the hormone that makes men men, what gives them their deep voices, their facial hair, their broad shoulders. And if they are naturally the way Nox thinks they are, then it makes them violent hostile rapists. But an article in Science Daily, called “Testosterone Does Not Induce Aggression, Study Shows” casts doubt on that. Previous assumptions about testosterone were based off animal testing. Mice injected with more testosterone behaved more aggressively, so it was assumed that’s what testosterone does, even to humans. This is actually false. What testosterone actually does is it makes people more intuitively aware of the prerequisites for status. It may cause men to be aggressive in certain environments, but it also causes them to be fair and cooperative in other environments where status requires those traits. This might explain why many men will be good and trustworthy toward you when no women are present, but suddenly become belligerent toward you when a woman enters the room. Another article at Science Daily “Testosterone Linked to Men’s ability to ‘Woo’ Potential Mates” confirms this, which showed that men with more testosterone are more likely to bash other men in the presence of an attractive girl.

Back to our story, the manlier Orlene became, keeping in mind that she does not have any previous life experience as a man, the more chivalrous and protective she should have become towards Jolie, more eager to prove her worth to her. Sure, she might be determined to fight the obstacles and reach Nox, but all in the hopes of impressing Jolie and maybe even Nox. Instead, her focus on the goal is done at Jolie’s expense, and eventually abandoning that goal when she finally notices her and, out of arousal, tries to rape her. In actuality, Orlene should have become a white knight or mangina.

One might ask “but what about all the rape statistics and domestic violence statistics which prove that men are aggressive and violent. Well it’s entirely possible, and I’m becoming convinced that it’s likely, that innate maleness has nothing to do with rape and domestic violence. Rapists, male or female, tend to be damaged people, and domestic violence tends to be much more complicated.

Nox might know all our secrets, but our secrets come from our minds, a safe haven from reality, and it is clear that reality is outside the jurisdiction of Nox. Perhaps the Incarnation of Night should have consulted the Incarnation of Nature before she began this little prank on her two lab rats.

We must turn Thunderf00t into a pariah!

The folks at freethoughtblogs, who identify themselves as Atheism Plus, or A+, a name to distinguish themselves from what they call Atheism Less, have created a manifesto for their group,. The purpose of this manifesto, it seems, is to stomp out sexists, racists, homophones, transphobes, and anything else I’ve forgotten to mention. The reasoning goes like this: such people are irrational and antihumanist, so they should be marginalized and turned into pariahs.

Here is what I find disturbing about this: People who are labeled sexist, racist, homophobic, by one group, might not see themselves that way. If you want to make a manifesto that is clear and concise, identify types of people with descriptions that are universally agreed upon; people who think women belong in the kitchen, people who approve of physically assaulting and verbally ridiculing people for their sexual orientation or for their transsexuality, white nationalism, you name it.

Now let’s look at their reasons for why these subjectively named groups should be marginalized: the group who is being told they are irrational by the other group might think that it’s the other group that’s actually being irrational. What this means is the following fact: people who are irrational are not necessarily aware that they are irrational. And people who are wrong about the facts are not necessarily aware that they are wrong about the facts. And they never will be corrected if they are marginalized, nor will the ones who are doing the marginalizing either.

When Christians want to marginalize me, ridicule me, or take away my rights because I’m an atheist, I, and many other atheists, will find ourselves standing together to defend us and our rights. This means I may find myself standing next to a man hating feminist who believes I am a potential rapist and should therefore be castrated, if that’s what it takes to defend other atheists who are bullied by the religious. When men are harmed, harassed, and treated unfairly, the tables turn, and I may find myself standing next to a Christian in unity who fantasizes about me burning in hell for eternity.

It should be very noticeable at this point just how destructive this behavior is. When you marginalize someone, you are also marginalizing yourself, and a marginalized person cannot defend themselves from any group.

What is Atheism Less? From what I can tell, they are supposedly fanboys who cling to Richard Dawkins and thunderf00t, both of whom are personifications of the evil white male that will become yesterdays atheism, replaced by the new superior Atheism +, led by PZ Myers and the other bloggers over at Freethoughtblogs. So already, there’s a problem with this new “movement”, the pejorative use of “white male”, despite the fact that one has no choice in carrying those traits. But does this perception accurately describe the target of FTB’s marginalization?

I am neither a fanboy of Dawkins nor of Thunderf00t. I have always been big fans of Richard Carrier and Matt Dillahunty, both of whom are actually from the atheism + camp. I’ve followed Richard Carrier for years, fascinated by his insights in both ancient history and Bayes Theorem, the latter of which, he proposes, is what all valid reasoning is reducible to. Matt Dillahunty articulated something that I have always felt, that one should prioritize truth over belief, that one should not argue if they don’t care whether their beliefs are true or not. And that people can be smart about some things and dumb about others.

So why am I not on their side?

To understand who Atheism Less is, let’s look at the cause of the split in the atheist community; it’s feminism, and Elevatorgate served as its catalyst, with the pro-feminist atheists becoming atheism +. I won’t go into details about Elevatorgate here. Plenty of others have already done that. Instead, as someone who is not a feminist, and is therefore grouped with atheism less, I’ll explain who we are.

We are men and women who actually care about men. We are probably mostly men, but to my surprise, I’ve been finding lots of women too. We either don’t trust feminism, or we don’t trust the kind of feminism practiced by Freethoughtblogs. There are many reasons why I don’t trust feminism. I won’t go into detail about that in this post, I’ll just state that the problems I have with Freethoughtblogs and atheism + that I’ve already mentioned in this post come right from feminism.