Mister Mister

I know we had this conversation in the "What is Femininity" thread, but what do you think about the evolutionary biological explanation of male-female dynamics? Because your description doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me, and doesn't really have an argument behind it.

Can you parse this out? A biologist would say "female fertility for male resources and protection". What is your experience with male-female relations, either with other women or with your parents?

http://qz.com/465915/a-sprinters-landmark-case-rules-in-favor-of-gender-fluidity-in-sports/ I just found this interesting. So let the women compete with the men "Although athletics events are divided into discrete male and female categories, sex in humans is not simply binary,” says the court in its 161 pages dissertation, one of longest the tribunal has issued. “As it was put during the hearing: ‘Nature is not neat.’ There is no single determinant of sex." ...

sorry free-b, but why the outrage and condescension? doesn't this last post of yours presume that people have choices?

There is no perfect body type. You have just proven that by expressing a particular preference for muscle. Different body types would survive better in different environments, which might explain people's preference for those genetically similar to them. But you also seem to have gotten upset and indignant when others of us in this thread have suggested that there are different preferences in women's body types among men. Why is this such an issue for you? I mean I agree that feminist "fat acceptance", a la Naomi Wolff's "The Beauty Myth", is ridiculous, relativist, man-shaming nonsense, but on the other end you have supermodels who are not a representation of real women, and Roosh V saying that men should never date women who are more than 140 lbs. It seems like a false dichotomy to me.

Government was the number one cause of NON-NATURAL death in the last century. Around 350 million,including democide in war, but I don't think that exceeds deaths by natural causes. The way I argue it is, ask a person "Has more harm been done by people breaking the law, or enforcing the law". Although sometimes I get the response that this is an unfair comparison because it leaves out all the people who would be breaking the law without the government, which kind of flabbergasts me. It's like, "yea, governments killed 350 million people, but what if they HADN'T been there to protect everyone???"

maybe you two should call into the show about this?

^This is quite brilliant, it really made me smile and think. I think you're onto something - rationality is supposed to be a male thing, while empathy/emotionality is supposed to be a female thing, but I think this is BS. We all have the capacity for both, but maybe men and women tend to express them in different ways. Can I again suggest that you call in to Stef with this question? I think it would be really enjoyable. Yes and no. By definition, those things you mentioned are what defines female as separate from male. But as Frosty and I described, evolution has also developed different brains and behaviors that males and females needed to survive and reproduce. Then on top of that, you have the cultural expectations, which makes the whole mess quite confusing, especially in today's politically charged gender-discussion. I think the big issue is that both masculinity and femininity, to many people, are just shallow characteristics which have nothing to do with , He-Man on the one side, and Barbie on the other. Then, as a reaction to this, you have the post-modernist SJW types who reject the idea that there is any difference between the sexes, and embrace a naive gender-fluidity. That's why I think we should stop talking about gender altogether and just look at sex, like you were talking about bruce, but also we need to be honest with young people as far as the real differences between the sexes and their respective reproductive strategies. See, I'm confused because you say this^ but then your "answer" to Mothra's question seems tainted by your negative experiences with women. In other words, you aren't talking about femininity as a biological phenomenon throughout history, but only about your own experiences with femininity. Or at least that's how it seems to me.

I don't understand this picture.

If someone says "you're soooo white" is that meant as a compliment or an insult in our culture?

You should call Stef with this question. I'll take a stab at it. First of all, as far as your comments about gender, I feel similarly. I really think that gender is a weird idea, not really helpful. Biologically there is something called sex, which is where we must start if we want to see these things clearly I think. But gender is such a nebulous and politically charged idea I don't really know if it should be part of philosophy. What we can say, empirically, is that all sexed animals come from two kinds of sex cells: a sperm and an egg. Sperms come from males and are made in abundance, eggs come from females, which are more rare. In mammals, females also carry the fertilized egg to term, and nurse the baby. Because of these differences in reproductive roles, males and females in general tend to have different physical qualities and behaviors. A lot of the things you mentioned, which are associated with femininity, are really just Femininity I should think, would have to do fundamentally with motherhood. As a corollary, femininity has a lot to do with sexual selection. In social experiments, where a reasonably attractive man and reasonably attractive woman ask strangers to have sex with them, women tend to get about a 50% yes, and men 100% no. There are obvious biological reasons for this; females bear the burden of pregnancy and nursing, while males do not, and do not genetically benefit from promiscuity, while males do. So you see this across the animal kingdom, and especially in birds and mammals, where most males are willing to put their dick in anything, but most females are very selective, and try only to offer themselves to the "best" males, according to certain standards. They also tend to invest more than males into childcare, especially early childcare, as the nursing process is associated with a bonding between the female and her children that often isn't there for the male. Humans are actually unique to the extent that men participate in childcare, but that's another topic. Because of this, the real power of femininity is to influence the values and standards of the society in two fundamental ways, broadcasting to the males, what qualities will "get them laid", and passing on values to the children. At the same time, their weakness is that, because they are somewhat vulnerable and incapacitated by pregnancy and nursing, they require a social network for support, which often means conformity to cultural delusions (while males major weakness is that finding someone who will fuck you is not so easy as it is for women, therefore procreation is not so certain). The bizarre and tragic thing about modern feminism is how it demeans both of these things: discernment with regards to sex is supposed to be some kind of slut-shaming rigid puritan standard imposed on them by traditional patriarchy (even though lots of guys like to fuck sluts...???) and child-rearing is slavery imposed by men so they can do all the fun stuff like run governments and businesses...and work in factories and mines and die in wars. The last thing I'll say, is that all of these things are biological aspects of femininity, not necessarily "binding" on all women; just because you have a vagina, doesn't mean this has to define you. The point isn't to divide all people into two categories and say "this is how you must act" (maybe this is what you mean by not seeing gender as black and white?), but at the same time we have to be honest that biological sex IS a binary (with the exception of ovary + testes intersex which is an extreeeeemely rare medical anomaly). Being a woman may only be part of who you are, maybe not an even very important part. Maybe you are also a thinker, a businessperson, an artist, and so on. But your femininity was developed by evolution to produce children, and there are certain things that go along with that. We don't want to be restricted by mindless traditions, but we also don't want to delude ourselves into thinking we are not restricted by reality. I hope some of that helps. Great question.

there would be a place for lawyers in a free society, but their main function would be preventing, negotiating, and/or resolving legitimate disputes between parties, rather than, as you said, helping people to navigate the jungles of modern legality. Even so, I think if this is really of interest to you, there is a lot of value you could provide to people in the system we have now. Just so long as you don't think you can change the system from within.

well if you look at paintings of attractive women in the past, they have a lot more belly and thigh than the modern super-model. again, not obese by modern standards, but not rail-thin Cindy Crawford either. http://umbandaimagens.blogspot.com/2011/07/afrodite-e-adonis.html http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/36.29 http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/49.7.16 http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/10.189

fdrpodcasts.com the really old ones never made it to youtube also I don't think they put most of the call-in shows on youtube

I loved this podcast. I think in this video Stef is stressing for us to honestly reflect on where we are in human evolution. We are barely out of the jungle, somewhere between chimpanzee and homo philosophicus. People are still responsible for violating the virtues they claim and inflict on others, but there are evolutionary reasons why people are the way they are. And it's true, like it or not, that to some extent you are economically dependent on statists. The point is, that the same conformity which we rail against, also produces a stable society which allows us to dwell in ideas rather than day-to-day survival. Evolution doesn't happen all at once. And Evolution is a combination of 99.99% conformity, and a tiny amount of Mutation, which may or may not survive. So in the same way that genes use our bodies to multiply, ideas or "memes" ride our minds into the future, and compete with one another (this is Dawkins' idea). As champions of a new and radical idea, we are one of many mutant memes, which is alien and hostile to the prevailing memes, like a little hairy rat in a world of dinosaurs. What we want to do is figure out how to propagate memes of liberty, voluntary association, free trade, self-ownership, peaceful parenting, self-knowledge, and so on, into the future. I think you're mistaking "being a revolutionist" for being a purely reasonable, peaceful human being with perfect conclusions, which doesn't exist. When you have a radical idea like ancapism, most people don't see that as any different than any other radical idea, nazism, communism, primitivism, veganism, and so on. Society has not evolved to where it is by being impressionable, by experimenting willy-nilly with every new radical idea that comes along. So our mission, should we choose to accept it will be a hard one, and this is how it should be. We are competing over generations with Statism and Marxism and Communism and Fascism and Fundamentalist Religiosity and all the other Ideologies, with what Meme will survive in the human mind in the long run.

sorry, you're changing the conversation. you made a point - what's the difference between choosing to revoke citizenship and leave a country, and choosing to quit employment with a particular job. I made a rebuttal. It's the difference between forced association and voluntary dissociation. your following post is as if I didn't respond at all But to the point you just made, Stef just did a call-in show, #3060 where he dealt with this question, on the second caller. I'd like to know what you think of it.

^well it just seems to hold up historically, that having some fat (not obese by modern standards, but portly), and being pale used to be the standard for beauty, and now it is being thin and tan.

Have you seen Stef's very popular video "The Story of your Enslavement"? He argues that the latest development in government, i.e. human ownership, i.e. tax livestock management, is to get large swaths of the population dependent on the government either through direct welfare or through public employment. That way you create an automatic army that will horizontally attack anyone who questions or resists the ever-expanding power of the state. There's no way we can somehow turn this power around for good. Trying to correct all the injustices of the past with further injustices will only ever lead to endless bloodshed, like we see in Israel. We just need to stop pointing guns at each other, rather than trying to get a hold of those guns and turn them to what we think is virtue. The other point is, that we are talking about government money, which isn't really property in a sense, as it is the government's claim on your labor, which we are forced into using as currency. It would be far more productive to promote the use of agorism, alternative currency, and play the "slow game" as far as spreading reason and peace through the culture inter-generationally.

Yes, I don't think you have to apologize SMH, you were honest about your emotional reaction to this, which probably many people share. Understand also, that when Stef says these things, it's directed at certain swaths of the population engaged in very irresponsible hyper-sexuality. I do think it would be worthwhile to talk to Stef about this, I would enjoy the conversation.

jeez, this is really sad. why do we assume it's due to peer bullying and not the bullying of the school system? also I know that in S Korea where I lived for a time as a teacher, teen suicides clustered around the time when kids got the results for their very difficult and competitive entrance exams. it's a strange part of the world. they are "peaceful" places in terms of crime, police, militarism, and even extreme forms of corporal punishment, but highly conformist cultures that are really brutal and demanding on children, from parenting to rigorous education from ages 4-18, to the typical strangulating public debts. it's why I left, I couldn't take part in the Brick in the Wall style sausage factory when I saw it for what it was.

"declaring anarchy" in a society where people believe in coercive hierarchical authority is like "declaring science and reason" in a fundamentalist religious society.

I don't know that this has been measured, I think he was speaking metaphorically. Though I have heard of a study which found that the majority of college graduates never read a book again in their life.

Sorry, I didn't really understand you at first, now I get it. There is no such thing as a voluntarily funded government, it's an oxymoron. If it is voluntary, that means you can withdraw resources from them just like you could with any other private entity, and they will not interfere with other people providing those services. I think it's funny that you said "we are straight back to vanilla ancapism". First of all true vanilla is the seedpod of a particular species of orchid which only grows in a particular tropical region in Asia, and can only be harvested at a certain time of year. It's flavor is quite unique and delectable, once you've tasted the real thing you'll be quite unimpressed with synthetic vanilla, which I believe is made from some part of a pig. Anyway it's just funny that vanilla has come to mean plain and ordinary when in reality it is quite exotic and special. And it's funny you would say "vanilla ancapism" as if it's something boring and cliche, when it is quite a revolutionary and obscure idea to most people. Yes of course I agree Anarchism can't be achieved through the state. I don't know what you mean though that the bolsheviks already tried. The bolsheviks were murderous zealots who seized control of the State in order to impose their vision of society on millions of unsuspecting peasants. What's that to do with anarchism?

I'm not sure exactly what you're getting at, but I'm SOOO tired and bored of anarchy disaster scenarios, these things have been discussed again and again, I'll find it in the FDR archives if you like. The short answer is that you are not some genius who is the first person to have ever thought of these objections, every customer, every investor, will have thought of these things, and steps will be taken to prevent them, otherwise people will not give money and weapons to a defense agency.