Feminism, Identity and Self-Worth of Women
So far in this blog, I looked at the huge difference between the identity of instinct driven procreators and rationally determined childfree people more in general than by considering the differences between the genders.
Because I am convinced, that high rationality and low instinctivity women and men have more of a common identity than have high instinctivity and low rationality persons of each gender with their low instinctivity and high rationality counterparts.
High rationality and low instinctivity women and men share the same identity as predominantly individuals. The instinctive urges for procreation causes high instinctivity low rationality women and men to very different adaptive behaviors, with very different identities and values as a consequence.
Feminism is a good example. This word has been used diffusely for a long time. But in reality, there are two completely different varieties of feminism. One is based on the rational individuals, it it based on the egalitarian principles, that the haphazard of having been born as one of two genders does not justify any of those inequalities, that at any time in history and at any place on this globe has been forced upon women. This individualistic feminism declares, that women are entitled to equal rights, equal votes, equal pay, equal political influence, equal access to all professions.
There is also the procreative feminism, that is based on the diversity of roles as the best way of enabling the survival of their genes. This feminism demands that all chores, activities and occupations, that are a necessary consequence of child raising, should be valued more and as much as the economically oriented occupation of the men in the traditional role of bread winner.
As much as one hour in the lifetime of a scientist and a housewife has the same value and is the same sacrifice if given to an unpleasant chore, nobody can rationally compare the rewarding quality of changing stinking napkins and washing dishes with the satisfaction of for example doing research work. It is absurd to demand to give value to unpleasant chores so that they are more easily ascribed as a valuable domain of women.
The individualistic feminism only makes sense on the background of a deficit in equal rights to the disadvantage of women, else it should be considered as an incomplete expression of egalitarianism, that means equal rights for all individuals.
Both kind of feminism are based on a perceived injustice and imbalance of chances, influence, resources in disadvantage for women. But this perception is mostly a development of the last few centuries. The amount of acquiescence, that women seem to have shown to situations, that I would define as outrageous, like polygyny, this is beyond my personal imagination.
There is only one explanation, and that is that even the awareness for the question, the thought, the feeling of outrage and injustice of having or lacking self-esteem, self-worth, self-respect as a woman are abstract concepts, that are based on a minimum of intelligence and rationality that has evolved much later than the instincts.
I described the polygynous situation in entry 23. Interdependence of Instincts as a reason, why men evolved to ruthlessly fight for dominance over other men and also over women.
Then I found another very interesting article by Kanazawa:
http://personal.lse.ac.uk/Kanazawa/pdfs/JOP2009.pdf
Until reading it, I considered tribal war against outgroups as a valve for aggression and as a method to acquire food and other resources for survival.
Kanazawa plausibly has a much more drastic theory: Women were more urged to procreate than to have the exclusivity of a man's love to themselves, they even choose sharing a rich man over the exclusivity of a poor man, and the poor men then went on raids to rob women from outgroups.
The force of the genes to survive is ruthless towards the individuals. As long as human evolution had not lead to a minimum level of rationality, high instinctivity made men brutal predators perceiving themselves as doing nothing wrong, while it made women to perceive and experience themselves just as wombs with not own rights as individual persons. Therefore they did not only allow themselves to be considered and treated as baby-pots with the same functionality as flower-pots, they even complied with it.
Therefore while I agree 100% with the concept of Kanazawa and others in evolutionary psychology, that the innate instincts are still the adaptation to the environment of 10.000 or 100.000 years ago, I differ by thinking, that the evolution of rationality and intelligence has continued and even accelerated under the changed environment. During most of this evolution, it continued to serve procreation, by changing the methods of acquiring the goal. The man with high instinctivity and low rationality might as a caveman have robbed a woman from her husband in another tribe, killed her children, forced her to raise his instead. The man with high instinctivity and medium rationality 1000 years ago might instead have bought her from her father after using his rationality to acquire the wealth.
But to become aware of the outrage of this, to become a feminist, rationality had to evolve even further, until it was at least nearly as strong as the instinctivity. To become childfree and to be aware of the damage of procreation upon the individual, rationality had to evolve so far, that it got stronger than instinctivity in the most evolved individuals.
Women, who were sold, robbed, abducted and raped with brute force had no chance to resist physically. But if they in those times would have perceived the coercion as an outrage, they could have resisted in many other ways. The could have killed their abductors, they could have run away, they could have killed the unwanted children. But they did not, because they had not yet evolved enough rationality to develop any self-esteem first.
____
And by the way I have read several articles of Kanazawa in scientific journals and perceived them all as serious science.
When I found this attack on feminism:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/node/31586
it seemed just too absurd to have been written by the same person. I am not even bothered to comment on it. Others have done that.
But it seems to me, that he also is prone to fall back into caveman's behavior. I suspect that he had a date with a feminist woman, who rejected him, he got drunk and wrote the article. The caveman would have attacked the woman by beating her up. He attacked all feminists by beating them with words instead.
So far in this blog, I looked at the huge difference between the identity of instinct driven procreators and rationally determined childfree people more in general than by considering the differences between the genders.
Because I am convinced, that high rationality and low instinctivity women and men have more of a common identity than have high instinctivity and low rationality persons of each gender with their low instinctivity and high rationality counterparts.
High rationality and low instinctivity women and men share the same identity as predominantly individuals. The instinctive urges for procreation causes high instinctivity low rationality women and men to very different adaptive behaviors, with very different identities and values as a consequence.
Feminism is a good example. This word has been used diffusely for a long time. But in reality, there are two completely different varieties of feminism. One is based on the rational individuals, it it based on the egalitarian principles, that the haphazard of having been born as one of two genders does not justify any of those inequalities, that at any time in history and at any place on this globe has been forced upon women. This individualistic feminism declares, that women are entitled to equal rights, equal votes, equal pay, equal political influence, equal access to all professions.
There is also the procreative feminism, that is based on the diversity of roles as the best way of enabling the survival of their genes. This feminism demands that all chores, activities and occupations, that are a necessary consequence of child raising, should be valued more and as much as the economically oriented occupation of the men in the traditional role of bread winner.
As much as one hour in the lifetime of a scientist and a housewife has the same value and is the same sacrifice if given to an unpleasant chore, nobody can rationally compare the rewarding quality of changing stinking napkins and washing dishes with the satisfaction of for example doing research work. It is absurd to demand to give value to unpleasant chores so that they are more easily ascribed as a valuable domain of women.
The individualistic feminism only makes sense on the background of a deficit in equal rights to the disadvantage of women, else it should be considered as an incomplete expression of egalitarianism, that means equal rights for all individuals.
Both kind of feminism are based on a perceived injustice and imbalance of chances, influence, resources in disadvantage for women. But this perception is mostly a development of the last few centuries. The amount of acquiescence, that women seem to have shown to situations, that I would define as outrageous, like polygyny, this is beyond my personal imagination.
There is only one explanation, and that is that even the awareness for the question, the thought, the feeling of outrage and injustice of having or lacking self-esteem, self-worth, self-respect as a woman are abstract concepts, that are based on a minimum of intelligence and rationality that has evolved much later than the instincts.
I described the polygynous situation in entry 23. Interdependence of Instincts as a reason, why men evolved to ruthlessly fight for dominance over other men and also over women.
Then I found another very interesting article by Kanazawa:
http://personal.lse.ac.uk/Kanazawa/pdfs/JOP2009.pdf
Until reading it, I considered tribal war against outgroups as a valve for aggression and as a method to acquire food and other resources for survival.
Kanazawa plausibly has a much more drastic theory: Women were more urged to procreate than to have the exclusivity of a man's love to themselves, they even choose sharing a rich man over the exclusivity of a poor man, and the poor men then went on raids to rob women from outgroups.
The force of the genes to survive is ruthless towards the individuals. As long as human evolution had not lead to a minimum level of rationality, high instinctivity made men brutal predators perceiving themselves as doing nothing wrong, while it made women to perceive and experience themselves just as wombs with not own rights as individual persons. Therefore they did not only allow themselves to be considered and treated as baby-pots with the same functionality as flower-pots, they even complied with it.
Therefore while I agree 100% with the concept of Kanazawa and others in evolutionary psychology, that the innate instincts are still the adaptation to the environment of 10.000 or 100.000 years ago, I differ by thinking, that the evolution of rationality and intelligence has continued and even accelerated under the changed environment. During most of this evolution, it continued to serve procreation, by changing the methods of acquiring the goal. The man with high instinctivity and low rationality might as a caveman have robbed a woman from her husband in another tribe, killed her children, forced her to raise his instead. The man with high instinctivity and medium rationality 1000 years ago might instead have bought her from her father after using his rationality to acquire the wealth.
But to become aware of the outrage of this, to become a feminist, rationality had to evolve even further, until it was at least nearly as strong as the instinctivity. To become childfree and to be aware of the damage of procreation upon the individual, rationality had to evolve so far, that it got stronger than instinctivity in the most evolved individuals.
Women, who were sold, robbed, abducted and raped with brute force had no chance to resist physically. But if they in those times would have perceived the coercion as an outrage, they could have resisted in many other ways. The could have killed their abductors, they could have run away, they could have killed the unwanted children. But they did not, because they had not yet evolved enough rationality to develop any self-esteem first.
____
And by the way I have read several articles of Kanazawa in scientific journals and perceived them all as serious science.
When I found this attack on feminism:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/node/31586
it seemed just too absurd to have been written by the same person. I am not even bothered to comment on it. Others have done that.
But it seems to me, that he also is prone to fall back into caveman's behavior. I suspect that he had a date with a feminist woman, who rejected him, he got drunk and wrote the article. The caveman would have attacked the woman by beating her up. He attacked all feminists by beating them with words instead.
