If social science teaches us anything, it teaches us that social structures and mores and the values and beliefs that underlie them get established in a culture for reasons. They aren't just random occurrences that happen to come along. 

So where did patriarchy come from then? 

Women aren't as strong as men ...on average. They aren't as proficient at spatial thinking ...on average. But there are plenty of exceptions that deviate a long way from the averages. There are some women who are brilliant mathematicians and engineers and some as tough as nails. And if men, in general, will probably always have to have their own section of the Olympics and will be the majority in some fields, then let's be completely honest and say the complementary truths. Women are better coordinated ...on average ...in the small muscles of the hands and fingers. They are ...on average ...better at verbal reasoning. Why have they never been the majority of surgeons, lawyers, or politicians? They're better suited than men are for these professions. On average.  

It makes no sense for any society to waste human talent. What is going on? 

Well, I'm fairly confident that I have figured this one out. 






Raising kids is hard work. Providing for them -- food, shelter, clothing, health care, shoes, education -- all of these plus the day by day nurture of little persons to get them strong enough in a decade and a half to handle the world, all of this is very hard for a single parent today. In times up till very recently in human history, the job was almost impossible for one person to do effectively. 

But society needs new generations coming up all of the time. Every society in the history of our species has always been one generation away from dying out and vanishing into the footnotes of the history texts if it cannot accomplish this reproduction task. Have the kids, raise them well, train them to take over the responsibilities and do it all before you bow out yourself. For hunter-gatherers, early farmers, and industrial societies, the men had to help at least to supply the physical needs of the kids or the whole society was going to teeter, stumble, and crash, out of history. 

Centuries worth of men would not get into this tedium, labor, and weariness for just any kids. They put this kind of effort into the raising of kids ...on average ...only if they believed the kids to be theirs. Biologically theirs. 

"So what?" you ask, and I reply that the societies that trained their girls to be submissive, to their fathers and then their husbands, simply out-reproduced their competition. On average, well-regulated females won't stray, won't have affairs. Then the men will stay with the family. Then the society will outbreed and outrun its competition. 

Nearly all societies in the world that have risen to even a local level of dominance have been built on this patriarchal model. It is so deeply ingrained that many men suffer from what Konrad Lorenz called the "cichlid effect". Cichlids are a species of fish in which the males will only accept as mates females that act submissive. And Lorenz found lots of other species of mammals, fish, birds and so on that showed similar characteristics. The males can't even function sexually unless the females act "coy". 






So men. What are we? No smarter than fish? Can't get it up for women who won't bow down, psychologically or even physically. No erection without genuflection? 

No. We're better than that. Smarter, kinder, and more versatile, physically and psychologically.  




I see evidence of the cichlid effect at deep levels all over the world. What the hell do ISIS want more than submissive women? For me, anyway, that's what's really going on there. They long for women who will tell them they're wonderful, even when they're anything but.  






If, on the other hand, we in the West have some feisty, not-so-obedient women on our hands, in the struggle for survival of whole cultures, in today's world ...good. We don't need massive numbers of babies anymore. We need replacement numbers, of quality kids. Smart. Healthy. Confident. 

Disease, malnutrition, etc. have largely been brought under control. We don't have 60% infant mortality rates anymore. In fact, there are too many humans on this planet now. 

We need humans who are net contributors to society and not net drains on it. Women, loved and supported, become partners in the fight, making contributions to the team that are equal to the ones men make, instead of living among us as self-abnegating, docile baby machines.

And what of the good old days that, in reality, weren't so good? They're gone. Get over it. 

Let her go on top tonight. It'll be a ton of fun and she'll love you more for it. Maybe you can even bring yourself to say "thank you". You'll gain by it, not lose. You don't have a problem with that. You're a man who keeps his sense of humor and his sense of reality.   

In the shadow of the mushroom cloud, have a nice day anyway.