Misogyny, as a result of genetic imbalance, is not misogyny. It is not possible that evolution, making one species and the genders it contains differently structured for differing advantages, could contain a will for the traits that worked out to be most useful to be lesser in one than the other since evolution has no consciousness. I’m not saying that evolution has a purpose, things just have worked out the way they have worked out, giving some animals, species, and gender a clear advantage when measured against a clear purpose to a clear task. The goal of the task, it could be argued, is the part that is misogynistic. It’s end point only reached by those that have a natural advantage, could it be possible that the only reason it exists is because it was envisaged and realised by those that possess such an advantage?
So if a society has a set of institutions that are for a purpose that involves a physical activity such as violence or speed or strength, then we might say of that task that it will be done better in an average sense by those that possess greater abilities toward violence and speed and strength. Realising this we could look for examples to deduce if is this is the case, I can think of a few…
Soldier / Fireman / Police Officer / Sports Person / Security Staff / Bailiff
Now before you go arguing with me as a simple reaction (remember I welcome a good argument, if well thought out) ask yourself if in the cases where you might think my postulate is wrong, do you actually think the point is wrong, do you think I have missed something important, do you think I am being insensitive toward feelings, or do you think maybe you would just wish it were otherwise? If you think either of the first two questions then please enlighten me, if the latter two then please consider that I am agnostic to sensitivity when it comes to ideas, because that is not useful, and your wishes, and the wishes of the offended individual, have no bearing on the truth of a premise so as to make it not solid.
I’ll grant you that there are roles within the institutions above where women are the equal of a man and maybe the superior to also, but I’m talking in a front line sense here, the soldiering part of being a soldier is the bit of soldiering that women simply cannot do in non exceptional circumstances. I have been a soldier and I have been married to a soldier, I wasn’t bad at it and she was colossally shit at it, and that’s the norm in my experience and in the experience of men who have also been soldiers and have dared to talk freely on the subject. Every female soldier I ever met could do most of the job, just not the tough parts. I once finished an assault course with a female squad member who was ten years younger than me on my shoulder, barely conscious, while my fellow corporal carried all her equipment as well as his own. The reason for this was that it was within a competition and the last person across the line gave the squad its mark. That’s just one anecdote, my own, do not consider that I have based my thoughts on it.
We’re fine, for very strange reasons, in allowing a religion to make marked difference between women and men concerning their value, and we’re fine when women go onto the lifeboats first when the ship sinks. These are not naturally occurring phenomenon, they are social constructs. Yet evolution is not a social construct, it has no nature decided on by persons, humans exist because, other dominant animals died out, and evolution has favoured us in some way, accidentally.
I climbed off the train in Royston Hertfordshire in the very early 00s to see a police car pull up at the station, out stepped a woman officer who couldn’t have weighed more than nine stone with all her equipment on. I remember thinking “who the hell could she arrest that didn’t wish to be arrested?” Now I’ll admit I was just as shocked by the fact that the car was like a normal car and the woman had no body armour or weapon, I grew up in Northern Ireland where police are armed even off duty, and on duty they drive around in bullet proof cars and have body armour, and they never appear alone. My ideas of what a policeman and a soldier should be come from my youth in the 80s in the troubled country I’m from. The people of the security forces were 6ft male monsters built strong and looked as hard as a coffin nail, they were not little women. I got no problem with women being in charge in these institutions either, what I’m talking about is the practical reality that on average the average male is up to 1.5x stronger than the average female of the same dimensions, much faster than she, much more capable of aggression when the time calls for it. That’s not to say that there are not exceptions, outliers, but it is the very fact that they are exceptional where we find the strength of the point I make. I’ve seen many female bouncers, none of which I fancied could eject me from a nightclub without calling for a male to assist, and I’m not that big and tough.
I’m not a sexist, I don’t have any ill feeling towards women, and I don’t see them as lesser. Yet if you judge a monkey by the load it can carry and a pack mule by how well it can climb a tree you have clearly made an error of evaluation. What is it that is wrong with saying that women cannot perform a role as well as a man maybe would because of the sheer reality of their physical form? What is it that is so wrong with wondering how even the most muscular female fire officer would be able to lift an unconscious average sized man out of a burning building or down a ladder on her shoulder? My partner is the same age as me, she works out and lifts weights daily, runs, walks, does cardio and eats healthily, she cannot lift me but I can easily lift her, and I have not worked out in years. These are just facts we are staring at, and it does actual harm to not realise them.
The reason I wrote this piece was not to annoy any women that might read it, nor to inflate the egos of any man that might. It is an appeal to the reason of things, a call to give a greater nod to reality than the concept of fairness. Life is unfair, that can’t be helped. I heard an ex RAF female on the radio talking about the institutional sexism of that arm of the forces, but I couldn’t get what she meant by what she was stating. To me it seemed that her inability to integrate into her expected role was being re-imagined by her to be an oppression of sorts. That she could not perform her duty was the fault of the RAF for not tailoring her duty to her capability as a woman, and not the other way round. Now I imagine in the theatre of conflict that our enemy will be quite amenable to the situation, and tailor their combat style and tactics to the least able of our fighting persons in whatever role they may occupy (Nah).
What I’m saying is, if the world had been configured by women, then it would look a lot different. The things that gave greatest reward would be things that women are naturally better at, the sports would suit women more than men, the world would be woman-centric. But since the early part of human life was tribal simplicity, and roles were demarcated based on natural ability, or potential ability, then it looks like this one. It is only through the advent and adoption of technology that we will finally blur the lines of natural ability between the sexes, but that will not likely involve sports. The exoskeleton will do the labour and it won’t matter who is piloting it, war will be fought by robots and it won’t matter who did the programming etc. The real fault is in the equality and the remuneration for roles, the world has been organised so to favour the things that men are good at, this is maybe what should change rather than trying to imagine that things are already equal but we just don’t recognise it.
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