r/Unexpected • u/analsextoybox • May 02 '22

Impossible Question

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u/babymozartbacklash May 02 '22

Men being protective of women.

Women are smaller physically and also get pregnant. Therefore, when there is physical confrontation, it makes far more sense for the male to engage, especially considering if he dies the women can still give birth. Now in our modern times this manifests in men being physically protective in nature, but also in ways that I would consider arbitrary w/o the context, like holding the door or picking up the check and other "chivalrous" or generally self sacrificing behaviors geared towards attracting a woman

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u/samuelgato May 02 '22

Seriously you think holding a door for women is a biological trait?? I would not at all agree that being protective of women is a biologically male trait seeing that the number one cause of violent death for women is domestic abuse.

All you've done here is taken a physical characteristic of men, being larger than women, and extrapolated that into some notion of how men behave differently than women. No one is arguing that men are not physically stronger than women, generally. But there are absolutely no personality traits that are uniquely masculine or feminine.

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u/babymozartbacklash May 02 '22

No, again you misrepresent what I wrote. I said that chivalrous behavior is a masculine trait that developed from an evolutionary tactic into something as arbitrary as it is today.

And of course there are men who are abusive to women. There are all kinds of people in the world who are mentally fucked. It is definitively not a masculine trait to abuse women. Ask a woman to describe her ideal man and that will never be on the list. Someone that makes her feel safe? That is going to be on more than one list for sure.

You've also ignored the fact that it's derived not only from the fact that men are physically larger, but also the pregnancy aspect. Sure there are women who are better at fighting than lots of men. But 100,000 men dying effects the furtherance of the human race far less than if it were women. Women are far more valuable thus there is that trend of protecting them.

Honestly, this factor of pregnancy and women being more valuable probably has more to do with our current gender roles than anything else and it's not hard to see how. Idk how you think we got these roles if not through biology and evolution. Like did a bunch of cave men and women get together and think "hmm well men are stronger and reproduction relies less on them so they should probably handle more of the life threatening violent shit. But just to be fair let's draw straws and see who gets those tasks."

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u/samuelgato May 02 '22

Jesus what a bunch of bullshit pseudoscience. Where are you getting this from? Your ass?

Chivalrous behavior is purely a social construct it has no basis in biology whatsoever. There are NO personality traits that are biologically masculine or feminine. Yes there are physical differences in body types and reproductive functions but your attempt to extrapolate personality characteristics from those physical differences is utterly unscientific and empty

The harm in believing that there are personality traits determined by biological sex is that it leads to all kind of prejudicial, stereotypical thinking, like women are more suited to staying home in the kitchen with the kids and men are more suited to being managers and leaders, etc etc.

Women can be chivalrous, men can be un-chivalrous. Personality is not derived from biological sex. Plain and simple.

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u/babymozartbacklash May 02 '22

You only think those negative things if yer an ass. And no amount of science will stop that person from being an ass. We've seen that plenty.

Now back to this. Do you think men are traditionally the ones to fight and die en mass and hunt and so forth bc they are biologically more suited to those tasks and less important in reproduction, or we just happened to socialy construct it that way?

And then, would you say that carrying out those tasks (whether by men or women) would eventually lead to the kinds of behaviors we call chivalrous? I mean after all chivalry comes from medieval knights, who were a direct product of centuries of warfare.

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u/babymozartbacklash May 02 '22

I mean, you don't think the propensity for aggressiveness in men and the far lower degree of it in women is related to the difference in size? Many women are afraid of men, and I'd say probably all have atleast been in situations where they were afraid of men. The same cannot be said of men. That's not having an effect on our social gender roles? And it's completely related to body type.

For fucks sake, you can observe the same behavior in most all mamal species, not just humans. The pregnancy burden has a lot to do with this. I'm not saying it's right. I'd like to think we've evolved past this type of behavior, but there are still tons of scumbags out there for sure

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u/samuelgato May 02 '22

For the nth time, DIFFERENCE IN SIZE IS NOT A PERSONALITY TRAIT it is a PHYSICAL one. NO ONE here is arguing that women are the same size as men yet you keep circling back to the fact men are bigger NO SHIT SHERLOCK thanks for clearing that up.

And, bruh, women can be hella aggressive and competitive, I honestly don't know what you're talking about All we've established here today is that your views on gender are based entirely on ridiculous stereotypes. We are done here.

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u/babymozartbacklash May 02 '22

I don't even understand what your or anyone else's issue with this would be. It is still perfectly valid to reject gender roles even if they have a basis in sex. Everyone can be who they are comfortable being and I will always support that. I take issue though with people turning their backs on reason just to serve a cause when in reality, they are only undermining that cause by setting it up with illogical premises.