Is all inequality the result of oppression? Are there alternative explanations? In this episode we take a stroll through some of the public dialogue around gender and gender inequalities, questioning if the mainstream narrative of patriarchal oppression of women is the gold standard of narrative explanations.
Is all inequality the result of oppression? Are there alternative explanations? In this episode we take a stroll through some of the public dialogue around gender and gender inequalities, questioning if the mainstream narrative of patriarchal oppression of women is the gold standard of narrative explanations.
Welcome back to the willing fool. This is episode three. I'm your host and lead fool paul tremble We're going to continue today and in the last two episodes we have talked around the current At the time i'm recording this anyway current conflict um between israel and hamas in the region of palestine and uh, I meant to i meant to mention a couple of interesting statistics as I was talking about just the differences in the The two sides culturally, uh, skimming through history, but as of some fairly recent polling, uh, 80 percent of the Arabs who lived in the regions of Israel Palestine that are mixed areas where Arabs and Jews live together thought that it was better to continue to live mixed together than to be separated, to be segregated.
And I thought that was very interesting because You have this very, very large divide in, in some areas, uh, between the two sides. But in this one, that was a very positive result. And I also saw a couple other poll results that 60 percent of Israeli Arabs, that's what's given name to the people who ethnically are Arabs, but who live in the state boundaries of Israel.
60 percent of them have a positive view of the Israeli state. Uh, so obviously that's way short of a hundred, but it isn't nothing. You know, it's a, it's a, it's a majority, uh, which might be kind of surprising given how separate, different, and opposed these two groups seem to be, um, and in some cases are for sure.
And the last one was that. Around 70 percent of Israeli Arabs, again, that's Arabs living in Israel's national boundaries, uh, they're either permanent residents or citizens, by the way, identify, uh, and, identify with and support Israel in the conflict with Hamas. That kind of blew my mind. Now, one person relaying this thought that might have been a little bit inflated by people who are trying to give a positive result during the poll, which of course is something that can happen during polls, but he said normally at polls in the 60s, things like that.
Polls like that reflect in the 60s. And so he thought maybe it was a little inflated, but not incredibly so and this is an Arab gentleman who works in Israel, but Anyway, I thought all three of those were very interesting and it makes for this great contrast as we if you've been paying attention you've probably seen as I have plenty of news clips videos of Protesters and in some cases what seemed to be Angry mobs, uh, people with emitting a lot more heat than light, not, you know, chanting slogans, uh, clearly strains of anti semitism in there, some people going so far as actually expressing it, you know, death to Jews, things like this, um, and, uh, so you, you've seen that in, you've seen that United States, you've seen that in other European countries, in the UK, and like, wow, that's a pretty big, Contradistinction there between the poll results you would have with a group that you might think would be overwhelmingly anti israel uh, and then groups on the western side who are Are actually in favor in some cases of hamas and in other cases just seem to be anti israel and uh, just very far on one side of that that conflict And I thought you know, what?
How best to think of that and explain it and understand it. And that's what this, you know, podcast is about, is trying to think flexibly and adaptably and on many different layers and angles on a topic. Uh, and as I thought about that, I thought, for sure, one of the main thing that affects how you're going to see any given topic, any given conflict or whatever, is through the available lenses that you have.
In other words, you've got Uh, narratives in your mind, you've got a worldview, you have particular lenses or paradigms that for the most part, for most of us, they're, they're pretty invisible to us. They're, we don't often think about them very reflectively because they're the lens through which we see. So we're not aware that we're seeing them or that we're seeing through them.
And so what about these people? I'm talking about the people on the Western side, not necessarily Muslims, not necessarily Islamists, not necessarily even Arabs, but just people in general in the West. Who are rallying for Hamas, uh, and at least seem sympathetic to Hamas, if not outright supportive, in some cases are outright supportive, but seeing them in a pretty positive light, uh, these are the kind of people tearing down pictures of Israeli children that have been held hostage, you know, by terrorists, which are just kind of hard to imagine that people are to that point.
And yet it's fairly common. It's something that's It's not isolated in this tiny pocket of extremists in some other part of the world. It's mixed within us here and now in a way that I think is surprising to people. Um, and so that's, that's what I'm talking about. And bizarrely enough to talk about that, I think it also makes sense to talk about other things that are hot button topics in our culture, like gender ideology, like sexual identity and expression, like the relationship, men and women and arguments around equality, those sorts of things, and even trans issues.
Uh, and the reason I think those things are important to actually bring into discussion is that they're integrally connected to our current dominant worldview and meta narrative, our lens, through which we view all of life. It's through our worldview and our lens that we look at this situation with Israel and Hamas and make judgments and take sides and draw conclusions, all that sort of thing.
It says, I think I know what I'm seeing here. This is what it is. And for many people, it's a very simple case of oppressor versus oppressed. That's the dominant thread. That's the dominant, uh, factor and issue in the whole situation. The only important one, or the most important one at least. And, uh, I know if you're thinking that, then you think, oh, I know the right answer.
It's unilateral, unconditional support for the oppressed against the oppressor. That's the moral stance. That's the superior stance. I hate the oppressor. I can't imagine how anybody Could be so stupid and evil to disagree with that and support the oppressor And and with that comes all that heat that we've been talking about and not necessarily the light if you're convinced that that's The way and really the only way to look at it And to back up a little bit talking about this worldview that's shared for the last two or three hundred years in our culture We've experienced a slow ebb of the tide Uh with what we would consider Inbuilt meaning and purpose reality.
So in our culture, if you zoom back further than that, it is predominantly, uh, Christianity, Judaism and Christianity that has provide the framework of understanding and meaning. So along with that whole bunch of thing, whether you go to church or not, there's a whole inbuilt set of symbols, meaning, uh, shared virtues that was understood and shared and even as Christianity receded explicitly into the background and fewer people believed explicitly or went to church many of the virtues still remained many of the structure much of the structure of meaning still remained but less and less over time and that's what I mean by ebb like a slow going out of the tide and what advanced in its place of course by default was sort of this very pro scientific secular atheistic materialism At bottom of which says the only reality is material reality, the laws of physics, and the building blocks of physics, everything else that we might have looked at as a shared part of meaning, morality, rules of life that go beyond just my feelings and thoughts, love, justice, meaning, all these things, these things are just contingent, they're emergent, we can debate them, they're accidental if they exist at all, It's all, it's all up for debate.
It's all up for discussion. If I don't agree with you, I can easily dismiss what you think or say about any of those things because they're not real. They're just this thing that bubbled up from the real stuff, which is the material world. Uh, and along with that, there's no inherent meaning to anything.
Um, certainly not things like sex and gender, not even moral choices. There's no inherent objective truth. So this is something that's gone on again slowly over a long period of time. And with that became this sort of general take that anybody angling for those things, trying to go grab those things again, is reaching into the past, into the primitive, into the superstitious, their retrograde, their troglodytes, whatever.
And what they're probably angling for is power. They're trying to recapture the power that came with having that shared meaning. Uh, Certainly, any moral right or wrong speech, any speech of God or judgment or religion has been viewed with suspicion in general, an attempt to gain control, gain power, and exploit people.
And, more than that, uh, it's part of this very retrogressive, paternalistic, patriarchal, colonizing imperial force that attempts to control and dominate people. All those things are just clustered to to together. And so, if you contrast and think, well, what's the opposite of that? It's, it's long live the revolution, right?
Viva la revolucion. It's always a welcome message. Uh, if you're in this stage where you feel like you've been oppressed, you are prone to seeing the people and, and, uh, structures around you as oppressive and restrictive. Uh, think about just going through teenage adolescent phase where it's a, it's a pretty normal, pretty common part of development where.
You start looking at your parents, the adults around you, the institutions around you as just a suppressive force, not necessarily smart, in fact, pretty stupid, and you have your own ideas, and your ideas are better, and you're, you're ready to try them out, right? You're ready to throw off the shackles and go do your own thing, uh, and that, that's a pretty normal part of development, and it's not a shocker to me that we could go through something like that as a culture, Where you might go through a stage where you feel like you have to throw things off and you've been, you've felt oppressed or been oppressed or whatever.
Eh, like with many teenagers, eventually, many of them might come to think, wait, maybe my parents weren't so stupid. After all, they, I, I kind of start to see why they did some of the things they did. Maybe you even miss some things about them and their traditions and you, you go back or you try to recapture some of those things.
Um, that's a normal thing. I would say that for us, culturally, That's part of the moment they were in right now. In the early 2000s, there was, uh, some, some really famous people, well spoken, great authors, uh, that were sometimes called the Four Horsemen. They were also called the New Atheists. And, uh, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, some of these guys.
Daniel Dennett, I think, was the fourth one. And they're very smart, very well spoken, in fact, you know, some, some I think I can listen to more than others. Sam Harris I think is very well respected, thinks deeply, you know, great articulator, uh, very genius person. And the rest of the guys are very smart as well.
Um, but it's, it's been noted that, that there was this crest where these guys were selling millions of books, um, and very much in the public sphere. Uh, I would say Sam Harris still is. Um, not so much though, as a, as a cadre, as a whole thing. And the, the movement itself seems to have, uh, dissipated some energy, the wave, their wave kind of seems like it's gone back out some and in its place, something very different is happening where, uh, just sort of grassroots, I would say more and more voices are pushing forward that are.
Maybe flirting with the idea that with all that advance of secular atheism and materialism we threw out quite a bit of baby with the bathwater and we lost a lot of meaning that and and rationality that and morality that maybe we need after all and that's all good that's fine but we still really have these Conclusions, the rhetoric, the assumptions and implications of the, there is no God, there is no meaning, there is no truth culture that we have built over the last few hundred years.
And I would definitely say that one huge area of that is these sprawling interconnected spheres of gender and sexuality. Um, and we are hearing and saying things that we have never heard and said before. And I, I think that quite a bit of that is simply the. Um, continued advance, just the natural domino implications of what we have said and believed for some time.
Um, and, you know, if you were around the clock, I think there's been lots of times, lots of cultures where things like gender carried a lot of, um, symbolic weight for people. Now, it doesn't mean they could articulate it, it doesn't mean that it was explicit, and it certainly doesn't mean there wasn't all kinds of Harmful stereotypes and sexism that has certainly existed, but there was also this really positive I would say, um symbolic weight and heft that that things like gender were carrying it was considered like hey This is a a major category of reality.
It it it's something that has some meaning and even things associated with womanhood or femininity Uh things like bringing life Uh, things like building a, a warm and thriving home of nurturing and nourishing of being a fertile producer and nourisher and sustainer of life. Like those are very, I would say positive resonances with womanhood, with femininity, of course, beauty, uh, things like bringing out the best in men in a way that other men can't do and won't do.
And then they themselves can't do and won't do. Uh, of helping to shape and motivate men to be their best, to call them to be their best. And, you know, along with it, there was other aspects, too, that you could perceive as negative, but not necessarily negative. Things like being the weaker of the two sexes, of having vulnerability, carrying vulnerability in a different way.
Um, and just this sense that it's not really necessarily meant for Women to be normally and naturally competing directly with men in all spheres of life. Uh, women, you know, maybe historically haven't as often been the warriors and the hunters. That's traditionally a male role. So I'm saying things like, on one hand, maybe very obvious, and on another hand, maybe perfectly offensive to somebody.
Uh, these are not things we normally can say in our culture anymore. But all I'm trying to do is paint a picture of These are things that have been associated with womanhood or femininity. And, of course, with men, you've got the traditional roles of protecting, providing, acting forcefully out in the world.
Uh, people, men have often been the hunters and the warriors. Uh, associated with, with, with speaking, with planting seed, with strength, with formidability, with taking risks, uh, boldly. And with You know, very, uh, very old competition. And so, those are things that are traditionally associated with masculinity or men.
Um, and once materialism has gotten hold and kind of advanced over the years, at this point, these are best seen like primitive, very primitive stereotypes and ideas, random and irrelevant to the modern world, and at worst, superstitious tools of oppression. weaponry of the patriarchy. Um, again, with postmodernism, there's this concept that any thought or proposal is at root, a power play and attempt to assert oneself.
And the only real values then are equality and freedom. No, we don't want to make distinctions. We don't want to, we don't want to categorize. We don't want to stereotype. We don't want to. Draw generalities. We got to be careful with all those things because they're tools, they're weapons, they're, they're, they're just meant to keep people down.
And so what you end up with is there's really very little virtues that you can have left after kind of stripping away distinctions and thoughtful conclusions and discernments, um, and generalities. What you have left a lot of times is just, just flatness, just equality. And freedom. Don't mess with me, don't tell me anything I should do, need to do, could be, represent, nothing.
And anything that is unequal is inherently evil and probably a function of somebody's oppression of somebody else. That's, that's in a sense what gets left when you strip away meaning, when you strip away shared structures of meaning, uh, when you strip away symbolic weight of things. There's just, you strip away, uh, intention and purpose built into the universe.
So you, nobody, nobody can say what the intention and purpose is for anybody else because there really isn't any except that which we make up and that has to be done individually. Okay, well then, you're just not left with very much that's worthy of discussion. And anybody who tries is going to be perceived as making a power play.
Uh, so, if equality and freedom are the only virtues, which is not a complete virtue profile, then The only sins are the opposite of that. The only sins are inequality and oppression of my freedom or oppression. Those are the only sins. There's only two virtues, equality and freedom. There's only two sins, inequality and oppression.
And so really, what you're left with when that gets stripped down like that is the only narrative option is that, that which you have. Uh, any conflict, the only real reason for it is oppression. And um, that along with inequality is the only, only sin. So that's all you can, it's all you really have is a tool at your disposal to layer over what you're seeing and make interpretations of it and draw conclusions from it.
Again, in this worldview, there's no inherent meaning, uh, the symbolism of anything, the resonance of with anything related or deeper. Uh, is just off, off base, and that's a very different way to live. You know, there's been times and cultures where I could think, Hey, as I act out and live out my role as a husband, as a father in my marriage, my family, I'm acting out and participating in something deeper, something connected to what undergirds all of reality.
It's connected to all of reality. And so, whatever love that I show connectedness. Self giving acts, uh, helping my family and my community to grow and to love. That's all, that's all rooted in something much deeper. Even when no one sees it, even when nobody could measure the effects or directly experiences or witnesses it.
There's something beautiful about the way I desire my wife and I see her beauty and what makes her, her. And it's, she may desire me, but it's in a different way. There's a different flavor and texture and She does these things where she makes space for me and invites me into her world and invites me into maybe something that I can do next and there's just, there's a beauty there that goes beyond just the material cut and dry, the words and actions dried of their vitality and their life.
There's something more than that. She makes things grow, she makes things flourish in ways that I don't. Maybe I help, I drive us towards new goals and environments. There's, there's, there's differences there that have connection to and resonance with our roles as male and female, masculine and feminine.
And it isn't that we have to fit them perfectly, even if she didn't fit them, which she does, but even if she didn't, that's fine. I can still see and locate those things in her. If she likewise sees the value in those. In those roles, in those distinctions, um, she doesn't have to model them perfectly. I don't have to model it perfectly for it to be a shared meaning and resonance.
And I, I do think many times people are just so scared. I think this is the way it works for us. A lot of times psychologically, we're just so scared of the potential of oppression and feeling like, well, I don't fit that, or I can't do that, that well, and I don't fit with the perfect. And I, I can totally see and respect that.
I think that's a real fear. And, uh, I can get where that comes from, but for that to be the deciding factor that therefore we've got this sort of existential angst and we can't allow there to be categories and we can't allow generalities to be made and to hold these up as generally virtues and, and great things that are life giving, then we're left with very little.
And I think as you've been hearing me describe my opinion, this way of thinking is is, is pretty barren, pretty sterile, it doesn't bring a lot of life, it's, I think it's also disconnected from reality and it's harming people. So I'm gonna take a weird tack on this and I said I think even the stuff with, you see popular support of Hamas that is surprising and interesting and it's like, what's behind that?
Uh, it's also scary and depressing, but it, it's, it's interesting as well. And I said, I think this is tied to issues of our hot button issues in our culture of sexual identity, gender expression, all those sorts of things. So I'm going to take a weird tack and I'm going to go, you know, all the way around to end here.
I'm going to talk about the WNBA. Um, and I've just, at different times, I've heard these little small flashpoints of, of discussion and argumentation and I've kind of watched the social threads. I just get really interested in things like this. And I've just, I've, I've thought about it. I've thought about the rhetoric that is said and the rhetoric that is implied in these little flashpoints.
And I'm like, man, I'm listening to this and I'm thinking no part of this rhetoric is based in any sort of reality. And I think it understands almost every relevant aspect of the topic under discussion. So the flash, the most recent one I heard was. It's an advocation for, uh, I don't know if it was equal pay or just much greater pay for the women.
The women in the WNBA are paid much less than their counterparts in the NBA. Um, that's an acknowledged fact by everybody. The question is like, is that wrong? Is there something wrong with that? Now, without going into details, and you can find this, all this out there anywhere if you're interested, but the WNBA, uh, does.
It's athletes less. Of course they make way less. I think proportionally they actually make more and the WNBA is supported and supplemented, um, heavily by the NBA. So profits are taken from the NBA and just given to the WNBA because it is not self sustaining normally. I think most people think of these.
Professional sports is a business, not, not like a branch of the government, but there's all this sort of, it feels so funny to say that, but there's a lot of rhetoric about how we quote unquote, just need to make it happen that the WNBA players or you'll hear it with soccer players as well. There was a similar conversation around tennis.
John McEnroe got himself into huge trouble by saying that he didn't think, uh, I think it was Serena Williams was one of the best. Overall tennis players in the world. He was pressed on that. It wasn't his starting point, but they said, why aren't you saying she's the best overall in the world? He said, well, she's not the best if compared to men.
She is the best in her field among the women and she's amazing. But just factually, physically, she's not in the best of the men and he got caught on the carpet by all sorts of people and, uh, went on the today show or something. And they're asking him if he want to apologize and why would he say that?
And I'm just looking at every single face across the board on the Today Show and like, I really don't think these people have thought this through at all. I don't think they've thought it through even a tiny bit, and yet here they are on national television calling him to account for his words. And you can tell he's stuck, like, he knows what is obviously and factually true.
And he also knows what the social pressure and everybody on that show on national TV wants him to say and to backtrack and he doesn't do it. But you can just feel the pressure. You can imagine yourself being that person where you're stuck between here's what I know to be a fact. And here's what all this pressure is on me to say to pretend to pretend the thing that we're pretending and people know it's not true, but nobody can say it without risking being a target.
Um, anyway, so it's very related to the WNBA conversation, and WNBA players were making their case why they needed to get paid more, um, and, and, uh, you know, here's the thing, so here's one just big, big tangent. First of all, if all this rhetoric about gender is a construct and sex isn't even a binary thing, uh, is remotely true, then of course.
Uh, you know, in most, in almost every sense, there's no justification for any women's league at all. There should be one league and everybody should compete equally, that's the obvious thing to do. Um, I, I don't know what other, I mean, I don't think that's true and I don't agree with that. I'm just saying, if that, if that ideology is true, then, then this is what follows.
Unless you were to say the WNBA exists specifically as a social remedy for past oppression of female athletes. And the WNBA exists to begin to remedy that, uh, past oppression, which I've never heard anyone say. I mean, that at least you could make an argument. It makes sense. I don't, I don't think that's people's argument.
I've never heard that. Um, and if we did that, we would just dissolve the WNBA. Of course, there'd be an equal platform, um, and equal pay for equal performance in, in every real sense. So by all means, you know, the women can join the NBA. Uh, we're not going to have this separate but equal thing anymore.
That's over. Um, the problem of course with that is that zero women would ever make the NBA.
I'd say there's zero probability that a woman would make the NBA today and probably for the indefinite future. Uh, now everyone knows you're not allowed to say something like that, but the person who's even the slightest bit informed knows that that's the truth. So here's the thing, you There's good cause in some cases to refrain from saying everything that's true.
I think in general to do that to preserve the public peace is good, it's noble, I'm good with it. That's generally my policy. Um, what, when I start to bend on that is when people start pushing and pushing and pushing and pushing their rhetoric and ideology that makes no sense and bears no relationship to reality.
And acting on it and then accusing and critiquing and criticizing and attacking other people based on their crazy detached from reality, uh, ideology. So the number of people, I think there are people who, if I said no women are going to make the NBA, some people are going to agree right off the bat.
There's going to be a sizable percentage of people who will disagree. This is my guess. It's all guessing. But I would say there's going to be people who think it's factually untrue. Uh, my opinion, those people are detached from reality utterly. That's going to be about 10 to 25 percent of the population, or US population I'm talking about.
And then there's going to be another percentage of people who, who might agree that no one would make it, but the reason that they would give is they would say, yes, that's because women have been socially discriminated against, uh, for the past however many decades. And if that wasn't true. Then we would have an even or nearly even playing field and plenty of women would be in the NBA.
That's going to be another 10 25%. So that's 20 50 percent of people who hold a position that I think is absolutely untenable, doesn't make any sense, and is utterly devoid of reality. And the same kind of thinking that they have in this field is the same kind of thinking that they carry anywhere into every field of life.
And so, I don't care at all what happens at NBA, WNBA. You could tax me and raise my taxes by some minuscule amount that I don't notice, and supplement the NBA, WNBA for the next 50 years. I don't care. Or it could be abolished tomorrow, and I also wouldn't care. Except for the people that directly affects, I'd be sad for them a little, but I don't know anyone in that sphere, so not super sad.
Uh, I'm just, so I don't care about the NBA. What I care about is crazy thinking that bears no relation to reality. Posing as, as reasonable as every other way of thinking. So, if what I'm saying is super, uh, offensive to you, let me lay out a little bit of my explanation of why. I'm gonna give it, I'm gonna hit it real fast, uh, because most people aren't into this sort of thing, but to, to do it, you have to understand something about actually math, statistics, and population differences.
I'll give you a very simple example that hopefully is not controversial, and then we'll start to bridge the gap. When it comes to height, uh, everybody will acknowledge some women are taller than men. Now, if I said men are taller than women, you might agree or disagree. If I, if I'm saying to a person, men are taller than women, that's clearly false.
If I say men are taller than women on average, that's, that is true. That's a population difference. It's something that is statistically true. Now it has outcomes. If you start to say, Okay. Well, let's look at men versus women. If I take all the people that are six foot tall and over, what happens when it comes to height is you have something that's pretty close to a statistical normal distribution.
You know, the men have a particular average and standard deviation. The women have a typical average and standard deviation and they overlap those distributions overlap. So you'll get some women that are taller than men. Some men are taller than women. Um, but if you take the 50th percentile, man, it's.
It's always going to be taller than the 50th percentile of women. If you take the 99th percentile of men, it's always going to be greater than the 99th percentile of women. The, the populations are offset from each other a bit. So if I go and scoop out all the people six foot and over, it's like a, I think it's like a, I don't know if it's 10 to one, it's either 10 to a one or a hundred to one men to women.
Let's just say 10 to one. Well, for every few inches I go higher than that, if I say I scoop out the six, three men and over. Well then it's, it's a factor of 10 more than that, the ratio, the difference. It's 100 to 1. If I go to 6'6 it's 1, 000 to 1. If I go to 6'9 it's 10, 000 to 1. If I go to 7'0 it's 1. If I go to 7'3 it's a million to 1.
It's, it's, I'm giving you rough numbers, and they're probably awful little, but you get the point. The, the principle is there. So, if I have some sort of weird height competition, and I'm gathering the best of the best to compete with each other, Um, The, the people I'm scooping out, By the way, I'm selecting and the mechanism of the selecting is going to be the tallest.
It's going to be all men It's just a fact of statistics and biology it will be all men now that's height so it should be fairly Uncontroversial these are just factual things But the truth is if I go to many other things that in the physical characteristic department things like power strength sprinting ability, leaping ability, throwing ability, um, not everything, not, not like shooting a gun, not long distance running, not, not general, not intelligence, um, not, there's other categories where this isn't true, but in quite a few areas it is true, especially those that have to do with, uh, power, strength, strength and explosiveness.
Uh, it's true. And so, uh, the effect may be more or less than with height, but it's true. It's just the same thing. And so if I have some arena where those are the things being selected for, and I'm looking for those at the extreme, those, those at the top, there's some sort of filtering mechanisms where the best of those things, those characteristics are what ended up in, in the arena.
It will be all men. They're just, that is a fact. Um, And that is really important when you're talking about things that are highly highly competitive anything like any professional sports league Because you got to think the difference in performance between the best of the best who make almost all the money And the people who are just one notch beneath that Who are very, very, very good, just not quite as good.
They're not in the 1e-05%. They're in the top 0.0, 0, 0 0 2%. Well, they make like 1000th of the money, or in many cases 0% of the money. And the people, the top, top make all the money. It's just a very highly competitive field. And the vic, the, the rewards go, uh, very disproportionately to the very top percentage.
Well, if any field like that, whether it's sports or not, you are, uh, it's, it makes no sense. It's completely out of bounds to say, well, I think that this person who's one millionth, they should be, they should be able to get a big chunk of the winnings too. We should have more equality. Well, that would be more equal.
That would be a more equal distribution, but what are you saying to guy number 101? Who makes nothing and 102 and 103 and all the way down to number 1 million You know, you're gonna skip all of them who get nothing in this sort of established field of highly competitive Whatever so that you can pay number 1 million A more equal amount it it just it's it's completely out of bounds.
It makes no sense within the scope of that context But that's that's what it would be required to try to equal things out Uh, and I, there's other things that factor in here that are very relevant, um, and if you have heard this term, uh, it probably won't throw you off, but if you haven't turned you might be like, where am I going with this?
There's even within, you're talking about biology, you're talking about differences in anatomy of male and female. There's also these things called, uh, sexual selection pressures in addition to sort of the normal evolutionary pressures that help. Shape how men and women end up and there's a lot of factors in there too that point to that prime, uh, highly competitive, uh, dynamics within the male population, probably more so than the female population.
If you think about, uh, hunters and warriors, obviously it was often a difference of. One millimeter or one millisecond that would determine literally the difference between life or death, between winning or losing a war, between going hungry, uh, or having food for your village. And so, there's a sense in which this makes sense that, that there would be this really tight, highly tense competitive environment where the difference between, you know, very fast and extremely fast is a very big difference.
And you see this actually reflected in modern day society, even in the way that, uh, females do selection of males versus males doing selection of females, talking about mate selection. And it's very asymmetrical, extremely asymmetrical. People can talk all they want in sort of a theoretical sense about gender ideology and how there's no differences and what does equality mean.
But if they don't take into account these very real biological things and social things, it, it's just, it just has no bearing on reality. So, just briefly what I'm explaining is, for women, men looking for women, mate selection, dating apps, things like that. There tends to be a very kind of even distribution of hey, all these women in this wide range are acceptable to me.
I would, I would consider dating any of them. I would consider going out with them. And that's not true at all, female to male mate selection. And I think this is something we kind of know, we pick up on it, little cues here and there. But it is extremely disproportionate. Uh, and the vast majority of the women are only Attracted to and find acceptable, a, a small percentage of the most attractive, dominant, successful, competent men.
This is just a statistical reality, a social statistical reality. Uh, and you see this sort of thing as well with, uh, the differences in, you know, what gets primacy in mate selection, just generally socially. And for most men looking at women, beauty is a major component. Something men have taken major heat for, probably rightfully so, just being superficial and narrow.
But, I mean, the other stereotype is also true, of course, you have, you have thousands of women who will throw themselves at the same person, these are groupies, NBA players for example, NFL players. Uh, or you have somebody who's very wealthy and rich, you have, you know, 29 year old women marrying 88 year old men that are, They probably don't find very physically attractive, but they're, they're dominant, they're wealthy, and that's just an, that's just an extreme example, but the same sort of thing holds, uh, there's a lot higher weight on social stature, wealth, dominance, social standing, um, that sort of thing, women to men and men to women, and, and for men, that's actually tied to this internally competitive field, this naturally competitive field.
So there's just major, major differences between the two. Again, do I care about the NBA deeply and what happens to it in our policy? Nah, not so much, you know, but this goes to our idea of our ideas of, um, gender equality, pay gap, that sort of thing. Even as it applies to tennis, soccer, the NBA, there's just major factors that we're not considering at all.
And we have this feeling like, oh, genders are just equal, just tabula rasa, they're just blank, they shouldn't really even matter, uh, except as a means for us to work out, you know, remitting past oppression, and whatever. Um, it's not true. That has no basis in biology or reality. Um,
These are things I think, you have to be really blinded not to see them. We are, we are blinded. We're blinded by our ideology.
Do people really want to watch ultra competitive women's basketball? Should we force people to watch it? Should we blame them if they don't want to watch it? Should we compel them to pay attention or just tax them and prop it up whether nobody watches it or not? Should we prop it up for morale or on principle?
Uh, force people to watch it, supplement it with billions of dollars? I don't know. I don't really care. Uh, but the sort of thinking that leads to these, these positions taken and these arguments, I do care about that. Because when you take that sort of blindness, that sort of one narrative lens, and then you look at what's going on in the Middle East and you think, well, I know what this is.
The only way, the only lens to look at this is oppressor versus oppressed. The oppressed by definition is the good guy. Um, that's my only functioning lens. And so I know what I need to do. I need to cheer for Hamas. I need to root for them and celebrate them. Uh, I think this kind of thinking is harming us.
Uh, not just with people the way they have a take on this conflict, but in all areas, domestically as well.
The, there's a lot of talk about the, the, the crisis around men or man crisis or whatever. And it's typically framed as a problem with men, and of course, partially it is. But let me, let me ask you this. You've heard these terms. Toxic masculinity. Manspreading, when a man takes up too much space on the bus or whatever.
Mansplaining, when a man interrupts you, uh, to say what you're saying better than you or tell you something you already know. Patriarchy, the overweening dominance of men and oppression of women. If you notice that all these terms are A, only negative and B, can only be applied to men. Now, I know I'm saying something super obvious here, duh, but when terms are formed that are only negative and can be only applied to one substratum of the population, you should be suspicious.
It's almost inevitable that that's going to be used as a cudgel as a weapon uh Is it healthy? Is it going to help anybody? Uh, and why do people feel like you would in at least at this point in time This might be untrue for the past, but at this point in time, I don't think that anybody could would or should Create and spread a term like this about women or about any minority Uh, because it's obviously unhealthy.
It's obviously weird and hurtful, but why do people feel, uh, why do people feel empowered to create and use these terms about men? Well, which, which gender symbolically has represented oppression and inequality in people's minds men. Well, if that's the only sin and the only virtues are their opposite, then.
It's all fair game. Whatever we need to do to defeat oppression, a. k. a. defeat men, we just need to do it. It's, all bets are off. Men of the original sin, men of the problem, our language around this is a dead giveaway. I don't think these terms are meaningless, not just in terms of their content, but what they represent, the mindset that they represent.
Um, I've seen this phrase, The future is female. My goodness, really? I, I, I want to say that I support that, but I just don't. I've seen it on magazines, covers, I've seen it on t shirts, I've seen it, the host of a kid's show, a female host of a kid's show, and the future is female? Really? Would I say the future is male?
Listen to that! Listen to how stupid that sounds. Listen to how Weird and arrogant, it sounds. I know people are going to say, Well, that's different because the context is different. Ah, you know, I find that unconvincing. The future is white. Oh my gosh, I can't believe I even said that. It feels gross coming out of my mouth.
The future is fe These are all just symptoms. There's so many more. Uh, maybe I'll do a podcast episode on that, just specifically. But there's so many more. It comes from this one lens, one narrative mindset. There's, there's, there's two virtues, equality and freedom, and there's two sins, inequality and oppression.
Uh, and I, I'm not saying oppression isn't real, it is real, it is a sin, it is something to look out for, and it does happen. Uh, I'm just saying to have that as your only narrative and lens is, is, is warped and ignorant, and is gonna lead to very, very bad thinking and bad conclusions. Well, I think I've run you out of time for today.
Uh, we're gonna go on from here. We're gonna, we're gonna dig even deeper. But I just wanted to provide this sort of very side view, completely different way of thinking about a topic and a controversy. And it even show how the, the male female gender equality discussion can be related, and I think is related, to things like the Middle East conflict.
It comes down to. how we think about things. And specifically, I would say, can you think about things from more than one angle? Uh, or do you only have one because that's not going to serve us very well. So thanks for tuning in this time and I'll see you next time.