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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   1129 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for May 11, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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What physiological/psychological advantages do women have over men? The only solid ones I can think of off the top of my head are a better immune system, greater flexibility, and greater conscientiousness. I've also seen some stuff about more acute color vision, more efficient use of fat stores during endurance activity, and better scores on verbal/memory IQ subtests, though I haven't investigated those as thoroughly.

The ability to produce, birth, and feed a child.

And only men can produce the sperm required to conceive said child. Primary sex characteristics are table stakes.

I don't think those two contributions are really equivalent.

If I knocked up my wife when we made love this morning, and I died in an accident this afternoon, the kid would be fine. I mean he'd probably have a thing about not having a dad and his mom being sad about it and whatever; but he'd still grow up and everything.

If I knocked up my wife this morning and she died in an accident any time in the next nine months, the kid is dead. If she died any time in the next eighteen months the kid follows a different development path right away.

Even just economically, the one is of far higher cost than the other.

When I say "advantages", I mean those things which make it better to be of one sex over the other in a particular practical circumstance. It is true that mammalian biology places the burden of gestation on the woman; my question is about what other aspects of her biology might take the sting out of her manifest physical inferiority and considerable neurotic pathologies.

Fair enough, I just think being the essential sex is such an advantage that everything else pales in comparison. If we were playing a strategy game, you'd know which was more important.

Thank you for making the thread, it's been a highly entertaining read.

Women's importance to the continuance of the species is absolutely important, I agree. My concern is that on an individual level, it seems to me like women get the short end of the stick in their potential for eudaemonia, to the point where the Athenian prayer isn't unwarranted. See here downthread for my elaboration.

(I appreciate your enjoyment, thx!)

Buried the lede there a bit.

They're significantly better at getting men to do things for them, even men who aren't getting anything in particular out of it other than "you remind me of my daughter" or some such.

what other aspects of her biology might take the sting out of her manifest physical inferiority and considerable neurotic pathologies.

Lol. Charitable. How about being able to not only live longer but also live better lives due to improved social networks. Men who lose their wives are emotionally screwed, women who lose their husbands are widows and mostly fine.

I wrote the above before I saw that it's Mother's Day, lack of tact, mea culpa, etc.

To be clear, I don't want to just dunk on women — I like the women in my life and bear no ill will towards their sex. I'm just skeptical of uncritical complementarian narratives that declare that men and women are simultaneously unequal in their dispositions and yet equally valuable in their own domains, because it seems pretty obvious to me that men get the better deal. Earth Mother and Sky Father might be of equal value in nature, but the story of civilization has been of reaching to the stars with only a minimal umbilical connecting us to our roots.

If I were dictator, I'd look into ways of (eugenically or otherwise) partly relieving women of those traits which most negatively impact their eudaemonic potential (neuroticism, conformity, lower risk tolerance, lower agency) and augmenting their traits which legitimately compliment men's (verbal IQ, social intuition, physical endurance, sensual sensitivity).

Whose definition of eudaemonia are we using here? Surely a risk-averse conformist with low agency is more likely to be happy with whatever their lot in society is than an iconoclast burning with ambition who chafes at authority? Even if what you value is a life lived in service of humanity's expansion into the cosmos, the differences between men and women derive from women's role in childbearing, which absent artificial wombs is an essential part of any society (and is not well-served by them taking on dangerous tasks and getting killed). If you were in fact able to eliminate this role through technology, then there would be no reason for women as a separate category to exist at all.

Whose definition of eudaemonia are we using here?

My own idiosyncratic definition, which rests on certain assumptions:

I take it as an axiom that eudaemonia comes from the exercise of virtues, and that virtues range on a scale from passive virtues to active virtues. Passive (feminine) virtues include chastity, temperance, mercy, and piety: they are something you avoid, or are. Active (masculine) virtues include valor, industry, courage, and nobility: they are something you do, or become.

I take it as further axiom that in general, the active virtues hold greater eudaemonic potential: they are what build monuments. Feminine virtues are absolutely important for individual and civilizational well-being, but they are the mortar and masculine virtues are the brick.

Therefore, the sex who is disinclined towards and incentivized against exercising masculine virtue will suffer lower average potential for human flourishing. Women's maximum capacity for masculine virtue is almost certainly lower that men's maximum capacity due to the consequences of gestation, but I believe that they are capable of more, should be incentivized to exercise what they have, and might hopefully be gifted with greater capacity for excellence.

tl;dr: genetically-modified tomboy supremacy

I'm just skeptical of uncritical complementarian narratives that declare that men and women are simultaneously unequal in their dispositions and yet equally valuable in their own domains, because it seems pretty obvious to me that men get the better deal.

It doesn't seem obvious that men get the better end of the deal in the current society, which is admittedly working pretty hard to make sure that they don't. They probably do have a better deal in a state of nature, but nobody who's posting on online message boards is living in a state of nature. Very obviously, whether it's more of a hinderance to be a neurotic woman or a man who can't control his temper will depend on what kind of society you're living in -- in ours it seems likely that the latter would be worse.

Why would you remove conformity? It seems useful for both the society and the individual that most people are fairly high conformity, and there are only a few highly disagreeable outliers.

Why should women take more risks? What kinds of risks should they take more of? We've probably gone a bit too far into saftyism, but high risk taking in men pays off in winning wars or having lots of sex with women they're attracted to. What does it get women?

I'm not sure what you mean about agency in this context. That they should be more assertive?

I guess the positives you listed would be nice to have more of. We can have even more aspiring novelists who run half marathons and organize aesthetically pleasing parties that they post on Instagram (though observationally this seems to be an occupation for thirty something women without children to show that they're still important, interesting, worth attending to, etc).

Why should women take more risks? What kinds of risks should they take more of? We've probably gone a bit too far into saftyism, but high risk taking in men pays off in winning wars or having lots of sex with women they're attracted to. What does it get women?

I suspect we’d all be super-rich. If you think about it, a very large part of society is structured as a giant insurance scheme, designed purely to mitigate the irrational loss aversion of people (especially women, but also men of course). Naturally, a lot of money gets lost in the pipes.

If I work in a developed european country, roughly half of my paycheck is immediately and largely unavoidably funnelled to insurance-like institutions to quiet the neurotic voice that goes ”What if you’re unemployed? What if you’re sick? What if you’re old? What if you die?”.

Well, what about it? I’d be worse off. Trying to financially compensate for the hypothetical loss is not rationally required. There is no good economic reason why one’s standard of living should never, ever sink.

All kinds of different things get thrown into the ‘risk aversion’ bucket. Driving a motorcycle drunk and naked and other young male antics are not low risk aversion, they’re high idiocy. The insurance problem strangling society should have its own term, ‘small loss aversion’. Financially, risk has been defined as volatility, which Warren Buffett and I think makes no sense.

I'm not sure what you mean about agency in this context. That they should be more assertive?

Those typically-male traits which combine to create agency (internal locus of control, risk taking, a certain amount of disagreeableness) are what have led men to dominate public affairs since the beginning of civilization. The increasing complexity of civilization over time has in turn caused the expansion of the public sphere and atrophy of the private sphere. After thousands of years of this, 99% of everything that matters for the maintenance of civilization occurs in the male realm, and the instrumental value of femininity for civilization has been pared back to its bare biological function. You yourself have touched on something like what I'm getting at here.

Given this, it seems to me that to preserve the dignified utility of woman, her sphere should be expanded to include particular sections of the public domain. You'll notice that this is the stated goal of feminism; while I agree with the early feminists about the root of the problem and the directional solution, my preferred means and ends acknowledge intrinsic sex differences and attempt to work within them when possible and subtly modify them when required.

Also, I'm proposing an increase in the mentioned masculine traits, but not to the point of complete parity with men. There's definitely some amount of contextually beneficial tradeoff to conformity and risk aversion, I just think women's present average amounts aren't adaptive.

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