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Now let's get there together, sorry for the read but it's a lot.
I often see an argument online that really frustrates me: 'feminism goes against evolution.'
The idea is this:
- Feminism (equal treatment of the genders) asks for things that defy our evolutionary heritage.
- Millions of years of evolution have shaped us in a certain (sexually dimorphic) ways, and ignoring/defying that basic shape is a recipe for social disaster.
- Since feminism ignores/defies this basic shape, it is fundamentally misguided and will eventually disappear. It should be ignored as toxic in the meantime.
For simplicity, I'm going to call this view 'evolutionary fundamentalism' (if you can come up with a more precise term-of-art here I think it would be useful, please share it).
Here's why this bugs me, and sorry if this has been said many times: this view completely misunderstands how evolution and civilization work. **
The best way to show the confusion in this view is by examining the evidence for the claim. Ask for a source, and the first thing you'll get is something like this:
'Well, ten thousand years ago...'
STOP RIGHT THERE. Your opponent has made their fatal error, and they will always make this error.
Defending this view requires you to ignore 10,000 years of human civilization. The examples given will always harken to our primitive ancestors. Hunters and gatherers start turning up, women become nurturing cradles, and the world makes sense to a misogynist again.
Why don't they give examples from present day?
They'll tell you it's because 'evolution doesn't work the same way anymore'. If you're really lucky, they'll be dumb enough to say 'evolution doesn't happen for humans anymore', which is basically the same as saying 'life and death don't matter'.
The fact is, evolution is happening all the time, all around us, and feminism has a ton of skin in the game. Feminism doesn't ignore evolution, it's an agent of evolution. An incredibly powerful and important one. The most.
That's because feminism is a product of civilization, and all civilization does is constrain evolution. This is civilization's only purpose.
Name any product of civilization and I'll give you it's biological/evolutionary roots.
- Sports. We cannot eliminate the mammalian need to settle petty rivalries with force. So, we create a rule-driven, fair, and constrained combat environment to give a pro-social flavour to this otherwise harmful urge, then give regions (cities, states, countries) teams by which to do combat. Some proof of this is that the older a sport is, the more it's gonna look like war (very generally speaking).
- Jail. If you try to take something without permission (a sexual mate without consent, physical possessions without a contract, etc.) then people with guns come and puts you in a cage. They lock you up with only your own gender so you have no mating opportunities during your prime breeding years (18-35) and may cost you your shot at passing on your genes. If they lock you up until you're past the point of successful reproduction, you're out of the gene pool permanently.
- Democracy. If the strongest people are allowed to take whatever they want, they inevitably accumulate enough power to enslave the rest. Democracy sets limits on how long one individual can serve, has mechanisms to make sure that person obeys the will of their constituents, etc.
If natural selection means that only the strongest varieties can survive a harsh environment, then civilization means creating the kind of environment that allows varieties we like to thrive.
And this, right here, is why I say feminism is one of the greatest achievements of human civilization. Evolutionary Fundamentalists want to say that sex (surely sex!) is beyond the reach of civilization. They think attempts to constrain sexual behaviour with civilization are foolish. Sex is just too fundamental to tamper with.
Feminists ask: Why?
Not because feminists are confused about evolution, but because they're thinking about it in a higher-order way. If our natural-selection behaviour can be constrained, why not our sexual-selection behaviour?
We constrained natural-selection behaviour to make the world better: safer, saner, fairer, and more meritocratic. By letting people keep the things they've worked to earn (even if someone stronger and meaner comes along) we give smart, innovative people a reason to work and they make cool shit like smartphones. By insisting that all people have value that should be respected and discovered no matter what handicaps they may face, we get Stephen Hawking and Helen Keller.
Let's now examine feminism as a product of evolution:
- Insists on a woman's right to control what happens to her body and works to normalize the idea that she's in possession of these rights (including abortion).
- Makes rape a much less effective reproductive strategy (it becomes less likely that offspring resulting from rape will survive to the point that they can reproduce -- the goal of evolution).
- Also allows for families to be planned: women can control their reproductive potential until they're sure (or at least more sure than was possible historically) that their mate is fit, won't abandon them during moments of challenge, etc.
- Insists on the equal treatment of the genders. This has a massive, massive evolutionary footprint. So huge it's difficult to map completely at present, but it tends towards justice. This one insistence completely turns the rules of prehistoric evolution on their head.
- Means that women no longer rely on men for survival resources (someone needs to be making the bread while the other person is threshing wheat or we'll all be dead come winter). This makes relationships volitional instead of necessary; if you're a male who wants to reproduce their genes, you need to actually convince a woman to spend her life with you. Many men who were hoping to go the 'provide resources' route feel very betrayed by this.
I could go on, but you've been very generous with your time reading this far. I'll brutally summarize now:
This shift -- going from 'I have what it takes to attract a mate' to 'fuck you, you have to find a way to be likeable to a mate anyway' -- is the heart of the issue.
These men hate you because you're changing the rules on them. The evolution rules, the rules that make their lives a success or failure. You make it harder for them to reproduce their genes. You might as well be killing them. Of course they hate you. They hate you the way a robber baron hates a charismatic union leader who has everyone asking if this 'company scrip' stuff is really fair. You are the writing on the wall for their very genes. You have the potential to eliminate an entire kind of person by showing how undesirable they are.
You shouldn't feel bad about this for the same reason you shouldn't feel bad about throwing away the key on a convicted murderer. The world should be harder for these people. Each time you inform a woman of her rights, fill her with confidence about the things she deserves and should demand, you're making the world harder for the manipulative man, the misogynist, the Evolutionary Fundamentalist who doesn't like to think about the world as it is today.
Keep going.
** It also gives evolutionary psychology a bad name!! I see feminists write things like 'I don't believe in evolutionary psychology' which just makes me cringe... Evolutionary psychology (properly understood without using centuries-old toy examples) is a feminists' best friend! Instead, we're stuck with evo-psych douchebags doing great violence to beautiful science in a clumsy attempt to defend their biases and misapprehensions. It makes me mad sometimes.
TL;DR: Feminism applies the same flat, egalitarian rules to sexual selection that civilization has long applied to natural selection, enhancing the overall fitness of our species.
Edit: gold! Wow, thank you!!
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