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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 10, 2023

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The "minimum deal" of life for men is worse than for women.

Um yes and no. As others have pointed out, the "minimum deal" offered to both sexes is that you die in infancy or end up as "a product of human conception" in a miscarriage or abortion. (Lord do I despise that that particular euphemism)

That said I do think you are gesturing towards something real, and I find it indicative of just how thoroughly left-wing post-modernist nonsense has poisoned the intellectual discourse, that this is in anyway controversial. Through both accident of biology and explicit design, society has always expected more from men than it has from women. Why? because it is a simple biological fact that adult males are expendable. A tribe/society that loses 3 quarters of it's adult male population, can readily bounce back inside a generation so long as it's women and children remain safe and fed. Meanwhile a tribe that loses 3 quarters of it's women and children in a single go will find itself significantly diminished (if not on the verge of extinction) for centuries to come. Cultures evolve accordingly.

Thus we arrive at the nagging question at the heart of every man's existence; "what value am I bringing to the table?", "what is it that makes my continued presence anything other than an unconscionable waste of protein, oxygen, and other people's attention?"

The conservative answer to the above questions is simple. What does a man do Walter? A man provides. Chris Rock frames it a bit differently but he is illustrating the same fundamental (and I would argue universal) truth. A man's life does not belong to him, it belongs to God, it belongs to his family, it belongs to his friends, and to his tribe. No man is an island. From womb to tomb we are bound to others.

This of course flies in the face of the secular liberal gospel of "I am my own" and I think this is where a lot of the confusion and observed cognitive dissonance stems from. Much like the feminists who whinge about "where have all the good men gone" we have a generation of men raised by women who are trying to invoke rights and privileges without taking up the associated responsibilities.

A tribe/society that loses 3 quarters of it's adult male population, can readily bounce back inside a generation so long as it's women and children remain safe and fed. Meanwhile a tribe that loses 3 quarters of it's women and children in a single go will find itself significantly diminished (if not on the verge of extinction) for centuries to come.

If we remove the "and children" part of this, because we're talking about the relative value of men and women, not children, this isn't true at all. The growth of tribes was limited by food far more than the number of women. Consider, as you stated, a tribe that lost 3/4 of its women. Recovering to its previous population only needs each remaining woman to give birth three times. Easily done within a few years as long as you have enough food for all of them. Compared to the time it takes for a child to grow to productive age and the resources needed in that time, the time a woman needs between births is insignificant.

If you want to grow a tribe quickly, territory and the labor needed to work it are really all that matter. Under that framing, you could conclude that men are more valuable for growth, as they have a greater labor output and can defend territory!

Back to the question of why men are considered expendable: It's simply because men, being generally stronger, are more useful in war. They're the ones you want on the battlefield (pre-modernity). Naturally, culture adapts to make this palatable by adopting an attitude of male expendability. It's not that they are expendable, it's that we need to consider them expendable because we need to be willing to expend them in war.

You're conflating maximum sustainable population with transitory growth rate, these are two very different things.

I'm arguing that the maximum sustainable population, which does not depend on preserving women, is the only relevant factor. The rate at which you can produce babies doesn't matter much because it takes so long for them to grow.

Most tribes could produce more babies than they can support within a few years, regardless of losing 3/4 of their women. Unless you think 5-year olds can contribute to the defense of territory, the slight delay in baby production caused by a loss of women doesn't matter.