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I've been asked by a mod to repost this here, so here goes!
What Is The Problem With Women?
We've often discussed, and it seems we will continue to discuss, what is going on in the Battle of the Sexes. I have to hold my hands up and admit that very often in such dispatches, I am the one defending women and criticising the behaviour and the attitudes of men.
But it is also undeniable that some women are fudging stupid. Or at the very least, so it appears. We've argued over "women prefer the Bad Boys to the Nice Guys" but there comes a point where it seems to be sheer self-destruction at work, because how could anyone stick with a guy like the one in this story?
So, to do justice to the gentlemen here with whom I have argued, here is the sorry story of a woman who apparently had not a brain in her head. Her family warned her off, her friends warned her off, even on a first date she knew this was a bad idea - and she still ended up marrying him and having two children with him while he was irresponsible, controlling, and abusive.
Why? I can't explain it to you in any way that makes sense. Even she doesn't know why, looking back. There are some hints that, in line with theories of such behaviour, she was drawn (for whatever reason) to abusive men, like a typical victim who keeps going back to the same kind of relationship after getting out of the last one. But as to what was at work here, who knows? I can't imagine any evo-psych explanation for this that makes any sense at all, not even the "women evolved to tolerate rape because women who resisted rape got murdered when the barbarian horde over-ran the village and killed all the men and took all the women" kind of thing.
An Irish divorce story.
It gets worse from there, until finally she won't put up with it anymore and leaves. Why she didn't run a mile after the first date, I have no explanation. This is a stupid (and indeed, dangerous) choice she made of her own free (so it seems) will. Nobody was urging or forcing her to take up with this guy, indeed it was the opposite. She had plenty of chances, and plenty of warning signs. She got pregnant, of her own accord again, (I strongly suspect the first pregnancy was the usual hope around 'a baby will fix this' and the second time, what, she had no access to contraception? highly unlikely) and brought two kids into an unstable situation where the father had no interest in contributing to the family. It was only when things finally became intolerable that she left.
And I genuinely, honestly can't blame men or The Patriarchy or anything else for this. The guy in question was a shithead but she knew that from the immediate start. There's nothing in her story, as told, about her family pressuring her to get married or settle down with anyone, much less this guy. She did it all herself.
I will forward an evo-psych explanation that I have found somewhat compelling, while letting you take the opportunity to remember that evo-psych arguments are far less specific or empirically validated than anyone would like:
In the ancestral environment (by which I mean from pre-history to last Tuesday), it was unfortunately common for intergroup violence to culminate in the slaughter of all the men on the losing side, and the lamentation of their women (who were often taken captive and put to reproductive toil, with modern norms of consent not a concern for anyone involved).
Picture yourself as a woman, of reproductive age. You have just been taken captive by Ugg, who has only just finished cleaning his club of the blood and brains that originated from your husband (Grug) and your father and brother (Ooga and Booga respectively). Ugg has, if he's being polite, told you that he's going to take you as his wife. If he is less polite, you have already been raped. Neolithic cavemen or victorious pillagers are not known to be polite, but I do not wish to slander them unnecessarily.
You have very few choices in the matter. Active or passive refusal or disobedience will likely only result you in being beaten +- raped. There is no one in a position to help, and you do not necessarily even think that your fate is morally incorrect or unjust (if you're the introspective type, you might remember the story of how Ooga met Mrs. Ooga, your mother. The circumstances were not that different, even if it feels awful to be on the receiving end.).
If you submit, your odds of going from a glorified concubine or sex slave to a genuine wife (with whatever degree of protection and in-group endorsement that implies) goes up. If you demonstrate enjoyment and do your best to make Ugg happy, he might genuinely grow fond of you, which he is unlikely to do if you fight back. You may end up pregnant with his child (you have little choice in the matter), and a caring husband and father is a better one than one that holds you in contempt. You close your eyes and think of the Dogger Bank (this story predates the formation of the English channel).
Your story is not unique. I have already mentioned the tale of Mrs. Ooga, your mother. This might be the fate of your daughter, and is almost certainly the fate of many of your distant female descendants.
The thing about evolutionary selection pressures is that they do not necessarily act in the direction anyone likes, or endorses on reflection. Another fact about human cognition and social roles is that it easier to feel a certain emotion than it is to consistently fake it. Less cognitively taxing, in the sense that feeling good about your buddies and expressing it naturally is a better signal than smiling at a boss you don't particularly like. The best lies are the ones you internalize, and come to believe sincerely to a degree that no longer feels like lying. It might well no longer even be a lie, it is your honest reaction and desire, even if that is for something others might consider torment.
What are we selecting for? Women, who when in a situation where they perceive that their welfare and wellbeing (and that of their offspring) hinges on staying in the good graces of a male partner: put up, shut up, and genuinely like the abuse, in a seemingly paradoxical yet very true sense. Stockholm syndrome could be adaptive, if your only options are making the best of the city's shitty weather without an opportunity to leave.
This selection pressure and the resulting trait is, of course, clearly not absolute. There are plenty of women who, at least in a modern Western context, will leave an abusive relationship, or seek help from third parties. I dare say that is most women. I think that is not incompatible with my thesis, because evolution often reaches a stable equilibrium with a variety of different traits, some of which are adaptive in certain contexts and not others, but neither of which strictly dominate.
You might just have been an exceptionally unlucky woman. Perhaps the modal woman in your reference group would stand up to an abusive partner. Perhaps they would marshal their blood-kin to step in on their behalf, perhaps they would rely on social shaming. In that situation, having a spine and protecting yourself is compatible with your genes spreading, but in some cases, you must sacrifice the spine to save your life.
Many factors and traits exhibit this phenomenon. Why are there any short men in a world where height is almost always rewarded, even in the distant past? Because height comes at the cost of health, you might starve to death because of the additional baseline metabolic requirements. Sometimes, the Short Kings win and spawn more short kings and queens. Why is every man not an "alpha" male (a term I use as a convenient shorthand, not an endorsement), despite those traits often being attractive? Well, because sometimes being a submissive, obedient man in service to a greater power was beneficial, from the perspective of your genes, perhaps your memes in the context of group selection. Our selection pressures are reduced, but not nonexistent today, so it is easy to forget the time when evolution was more aggressive about quality control (and with a very bottomline take on what constitutes quality, which rarely acknowledges customer satisfaction).
My point is, most of the people reading this take for granted a society with robust social safety nets for battered women. Cultural norms that make them expressly deserving of sympathy and care. This is true in India, but perhaps not in Afghanistan (though even such a patriarchal society might have brothers and fathers stepping in, perhaps because they see it as their patriarchal duty to do so). But there's no dedicated women's shelter around for most of recorded history. Sometimes you must learn to eat shit, say you enjoy the taste, and then, through selection pressures over long eons, end up liking the taste. Unironically. Maybe enthusiastically, albeit with shame. Despite people stopping by and asking "are you okay hun, you know you can just stop, right?" and meaning it.
This explains many things: battered women. Girls who like a domineering and assertive husband. The women who have asked me to choke them, slap them, spit on them, or leave handprints. And those who do not (not that I mind particularly, at least if it doesn't have any serious risk of bodily harm).
Your body and your instincts can be awfully out of date for the environment you find yourself in. You might know that being fired from your job or being ghosted by a date doesn't matter, in the strict sense, but you still feel awful about it. You might spiral into depression or have a breakdown. This is because these were matters of life and death (and sex) for your ancestors. Your genes do try to adapt your phenotype to the environment you find yourself in, but they are very out of their depth.
The usual arguments about superstimuli like porn or calorie dense foods has a corollary: some stimuli today are not as meaningful or compelling as they would be to your ancestors (losing a job, rejection, as I've already said), but were very very bad for you in the past, to the point that your body and mind is primed to panic.
Just to be very clear: this is not a claim about all women, probably not even most women. I do not think that they're all hiding rape fantasies, or that those who do express their fantasies are necessarily cover for a sincere desire to be abused or raped. Or that they would secretly like it, if actual rape happened to them. Explaining something is not the same as condoning it. Evo-psych arguments are notoriously susceptible to overfitting. Judge accordingly.
Not really. See the Trojan women. They're not going back to be wives, even secondary wives; they're going to be household slaves (and if young/attractive enough, bed slaves as well).
Where that did happen was with the Sabine women, because (1) the Romans had no other women back home to be legitimate wives and (2) certainly after being raped (in the sense of "carried off" and also in the sexual sense) the Sabine women had little choice but to make the best of it with their new husbands. The Sabines did attack Rome to regain their wives and daughters, but the returned women would not have had good lives back home. The unmarried girls likely couldn't ever find husbands, and the married women would have found themselves put aside.
Look at one entire sub-plot in the Mahabharata, where a princess who has been carried off in an abduction marriage and manages to convince the abductor to let her go (who was, in fact, seeking wives for his half-brothers) on the grounds that she was engaged/pre-contracted to another man and loved him.
What happens next? Boyfriend dumps her on the grounds that she's been formally taken as another man's wife. She tries to get various warriors to take up her cause but they all refuse due to fear of the original guy, and eventually she gains the boon that in her next life she will be born as a man and kill him.
That's not "lie back and think of England and you have a good chance of being Mrs. Ugg", because that's not generally how it went.
There is a very good reason why I said the odds of a more favorable outcome go up, rather than making a stronger, deterministic claim in the passage you quoted.
"Good behavior" or submission is no guarantee of good treatment, but I think it is fair to say that it helps on the margin. The typical man coming home with a looted woman does not have three more waiting at home, the maths is unlikely to work that way. The way that royalty treats their new concubines is not representative of the average. My understanding is that even for the Sabine women, the typical Roman kidnapper only got the one, but correct me if I'm wrong, I haven't specifically checked, though this is mostly because I doubt a clear-cut answer is easily available. Even when the kidnapper/victor is successful enough to have multiple female captives, I do not think it is an unjustified leap in logic to think that compliance and feigned/real affection would improve material circumstances on the margin. If your new "husband" has three docile wives already, do you think anyone is going to treat you better for being uppity?
Even within living memory in the West, it is hardly uncommon to hear of women who deplore their abusive husbands but are forced to stay by them because of the financial ruin or social opprobium they would face after separation. Situations like that even happen today, though not nearly as often when Western culture (and much of the world) has tighter welfare nets and feels the duty/need to intervene.
You can find all kinds of abuse on all scales and in every corner between people. What’s relevant is what’s typical and tends to generalize and what is the cause of it.
I lived with a female co-worker after her husband had tragically passed away, for 5 months at her invitation and it seemed like a mutually beneficial arrangement at the time I was approached about it. One of her friends helped to mediate and socially organize things between us, but we hit a rough patch before things even really took off. She was forward at first, asking if there was anything I needed, etc., and I maintained a respectful but independent stance out of the way I’d been raised, along with my own life experience. I was someone who was always trained not to accept help from other people and that your place in life should be determined through your own effort. I’m someone that needs to be worked on very hard into thinking it’s acceptable to say “yes” to somebody.
After we had moved in I was immediately met with a rude awakening from our first direct interaction. I spent the next couple weeks trying to talk to her here and there but always got short and quick answers that were never open ended. I figured she didn’t walk to talk or had other things going on, so I just kept to my side of things and worked on some stuff I already had going. Next few months we rarely saw each other and didn’t speak a single word to one another when we did see each other in at home. Again, I figured if she felt like being more open and receptive to talking to me, I’d talk to her. She never did, so I assumed she didn’t want to talk.
The vibe of things felt increasingly stiff between us and one day she tells me something came up and she needs to move out. She broke the 1-year lease we had, so I cleaned up a mattress she lent me, immediately gave it back and left before we both had to be out. I didn’t know when she was looking to leave but I didn’t want to hold the situation hostage if she needed to go quickly. So I just took things at face value.
I actually felt emotionally and physically drawn to her in several respects and took active steps to try and court her after our departure. Giving things the benefit of the doubt. I basically got attacked at every turn. She knew my sibling who was a pathological liar and tragically died of an overdose. My niece got neglected who I’d made frequent attempts to see and spend time with, but they would hang out with each other based on what I’d heard, while my niece inadvertently would up getting abandoned to fend for herself.
I bought her things. Flowers. Chocolate. Invited her out with other work friends. Tried texting her, protected her at one point and all she ever did was almost completely ignore me whenever we crossed paths or privately attack me for it to her friends. She said she didn’t want to be my friend, criticized me for having a dysfunctional relationship with my sibling, said I had a dark cloud over me (first time I'd ever heard of that in my life; unlike my drug addled sibling, strangely, who she had no problem associating with) when I’m in good standing with most everyone I know, have no enemies, never touched drugs, doesn’t drink, makes decent money, etc. I don’t understand people like this. It’s unbelievably rude and disrespectful; and all I ever did was treat her good and care about her. At some stage in her life I suspect she was either never told no by anyone, or was trained into thinking this was somehow acceptable behavior or just has an avoidant personality type. She described herself as very independent and logical at one point. As expressive ‘personality’ characteristics, those are hallmark features of an avoidant. Psych textbooks about attachment theory will tell you that explicitly.
Sounds like a similar experience to one I had a ways back.
Helped a person who was going through a seemingly difficult "failure to launch" phase. Stuck in her parents' house, going to school but having no plan beyond that, minimum wage job, hugely introverted (main social group was people she played games with online), but seemingly smart and personable, if a bit emotionally stunted.
Got her a place to stay for a bargain price, plugged her into a new job, got her involved at my gym, invited her out to hang with my friend group, basically handed her every single tool to form her own path, get out from under the parents' thumb, make things work.
And yes, I was romantically interested but also very wary of forming any actual connection if she wasn't really fully 'mature' enough to have some semblance of responsibility for her own self.
The unfortunate but not surprising thing is she didn't change her core habits in the slightest. And remained tied to her parents (mother, in particular) at the hip in terms of never EVER doing anything that might upset mom, and basically letting mom decide things for her at every stage. And she was prone to attracting some relatively unsavory types of men into her orbit... and then completely rejecting them if they tried to escalate? I'm not talking thugs or drug addicts. But like, dudes with minimum wage jobs who ride motorcyles and were physically attractive but simply did not have their life together.
She seemed to be completely unable to detect when a guy was trying to get in her pants until they were actually reaching for the zipper, at which point there'd be an intense negative reaction. Like, she really wanted to be attractive to men, and got very upset when she actually attracted them in.
The situation lasted about a year or so then with relatively little warning, in quick succession, she moved back in with her parents, started pursuing another degree (this one was at least practical), cut off all the friends I had introduced, quit the job (almost but not quite burning the bridge), and as far as I can tell has returned to being a recluse except for her classmates.
And the added insult, her parents informally banned me from their business establishment for reasons that remain opaque to me, since we'd gotten along just fine for a long time. It was quite abrupt. I wonder what she told them.
This was only like the third rudest thing anybody had ever done to me.
And thus I've reached a point in my life where I do not feel the need to assist anyone get up out of their life circumstances other than opening doors for them if they seem to need it and present the capacity to carry themselves once I help them get the leg up.
There were other things that happened in my case as well, but she burned every bridge I built for her. I found through her friend that I guess the reason she moved out was she heard from other coworkers that she lived with me and that it was my apartment she was living in. Basically the exact opposite of what the living arrangement was. I never said any such thing to anyone. It’s just people making stuff up and gossip and rumors. I actually wonder if people were going around and spreading information maliciously and that was a worry of mine at first and I didn’t exactly want everyone knowing about it. I was wary about telling other coworkers. I asked one of them I knew well about his opinion at that time but that was it. When I got word she told people we were living together I figured she was alright with having others know, so I stopped being guarded about it after that. If she was hearing things from people, the mature thing to do would’ve been to ask me about it. I’m not someone that goes around making judgment calls with only one side of the story. I’m too disciplined for that. Especially when others are going around saying random things. When it really has the ability to negatively impact someone, I always tell people you’re going to have to give me evidence of what you’re saying. Otherwise it’s just nonsense. I don’t react purely on things that get said and float around.
Even after everything was clarified though, she’d do nothing but give me the cold shoulder. On one instance I remember walking into a room where it was just her and I calmly said to her that me and a couple other people had plans a few weeks out to go do something fun and said it’d be nice if she could come. She backed up away from me and her head started turning left to right and her eyes were darting all over the place with that whole caged animal looking for an escape look. She said she couldn’t, that she had other plans, and gave me a very angry and stern look in the face. I didn’t reply at all and just turned around and left. I always knew she was a high anxiety woman and someone on the neurotic side. She was pretty easily emotionally provoked. There was also no physical equality between her and I. She was under 5 feet all, I’m much taller than the average man. I could easily accidentally knock her out if we came around the corner at the same time and I wouldn’t even see her. But for months after that she’d do this thing where she’d leave her workspace and very aggressively hover around my area where she could be seen by me, but she’d never make eye contact or talk to me at all. Almost like she wanted to bait and keep me on the hook. That was obvious to me and I noticed it immediately when it started happening.
Then this kid who was much younger than her eventually gets hired and expresses an interest in her. She starts leaving her workspace, doing his tasks, buying him coffee, making plans to hang out, coordinating their schedules to have the same days off, etc. And I always knew when she told me she had plans that that was almost certainly a lie, because she told me when she lived together that her plans were always changing. One day I come around a certain area of work and I see her hiding behind some big equipment with him standing real close next to her. As I come around she immediately bolts, far away from his side as if she was caught doing something she didn’t want to be seen doing. I keep having to come around, second time she’s standing close to him but her eyes are pointed down and she gets very quiet, third time he is completely gone and she moves more into visibility as if she wants me to see her and to think it’s all normal. Next couple days she puts on this very professional outfit as if she wants to convince people there’s nothing going on but then stops after a couple days. Shortly thereafter she wears this alluring outfit and crosses my path and makes eye contact with me briefly as if she’s signaling something else. The basic read is simple attention whoring and validation. It’s all a costume designed to fool. Nothing genuine or virtuous about it. I was already pretty much done at that point and was already spending time with one of my cousin’s friends though we hadn’t started dating at all yet. But towards the end of one of my shifts, I caught her friend abruptly just before our shift ended. I didn’t want to tell her I wanted to talk to her about so-and-so because if I did 100% she’d find out about it and they’d probably coordinate about what to say if I ask certain things. So I made sure I caught her off guard. I asked a couple questions and her friend told me she was in a relationship with someone now and it’s unrelated to anyone worker related.
In a way though it’s actually a massive relief. A woman who would behave as she did on the work floor is not someone I would consider trustworthy. Fooling around with a young boy at work, behaving in these hot and cold suggestive ways, etc. The problem is more fundamental than thinking they’re lying to you or engaging in other behavior. Once you start giving someone reasons to doubt and distrust you, you get a reputation. And when you get a reputation, you’re not going to get the benefit of doubt in any interaction you have with them, even if they’re not doing anything wrong. The fact that you have to do ‘any’ thinking about them, at all, for even one second; that’s the problem. There’s a trail of suspicion a person like that leaves behind them, meaning there will always be a question mark above their head, no matter what else they do, because you know it isn’t beyond them to behave in questionable ways. They’ve done it before. The loss and is disappointing, but not catastrophic. The grass is always greener on the other side.
Your experience and mine definitely sound very similar. I’m sorry that happened to you.
People often wonder why decency is dead. I knew a number of very good people growing up who eventually threw their hands up and went rogue against the values they were raised with. Even they were forced to come to reality and realize it didn’t pay to be the kind of people they were. It’s disheartening when you’ve seen people who were once so honorable and full of life, succumb overtime to screwing everyone else over in pursuit of their self-satisfaction. I know how that thought process works. I’ve experienced it. I’ve learned once people have this dyed in the wool idea about who you are, nothing you can ever do will change their minds, even when their ideas have no basis in fact. I’ve come to terms with the fact that I’m pretty much fucked no matter what I say, so why spend any time trying to prove otherwise? People have their good conduct beaten out of them through cruel experience and if you want to get ahead in the world and achieve the things you desire, being good isn’t the way to do it. The one thing virtue gives me is peace of mind because an honest man has nothing to fear. I’m knowledgeable enough and have the connections where if I wanted to do some highly unethical shit I could do very well. The only problem is I have dignity and I know I’m a good person and I really wish I wasn’t; but I can’t help it. I just don’t understand why she was so rude and disrespectful to me. I only ever treated her good.
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