We have heard a lot the last decade or so about repairing the alleged damage caused by different expectations being places on men and women, from childhood onward – but was the system ever that flawed to begin with? New theories abound each day with regards to the nature of gender and whether the distinction of roles between them is a biological or social construct. While I do love a good scientific investigation, I fear too much emphasis, to the point of fanaticism, has been placed on the latter premise.

Gender roles exist as an evolutionary advantage. The ever present dichotomy between men and women is not symptomatic of some malignant compounding repression, but of human structures that have been honed over generations to maximize productivity and minimize suffering. It has become fashionable to pronounce “patriarchal” as a pejorative, as warranting erasure. Patriarchies, however, predate humans, and evolve naturally because nature rewards survival and nothing else. It is driven in mammals by female sexual selection. Females with offspring then produce demands, males provide supplies and limits upon consumption. In this natural system, men are more disposable then women. Men are expendable, they can mate in seconds and then die where-as women need gestation time and time to mature the offspring past infantile vulnerability.



“Of course there are outliers in every system, but is it wise to focus on what are exceptions, and not on the rule? ”

Wolf packs are led by a mated pair: the Alpha male and Alpha female.

Men systemize and women empathize. Boys write stories about objects and actions, girls about people and feelings. Men want to hyper-compete and produce, women want to consume and distribute. Of course there are outliers in every system, but is it wise to focus on what are exceptions, and not on the rule?

But what does it mean to systemize or empathize? Empathizing can be understood as the drive to intuit the emotion coming from a source and subsequently respond with the proper emotion. Systemizing is the drive to understand and build a rule-based system. Systemizing is what allows for a person to devise an effective and complex military plan to defend the tribe while a person with a higher drive to empathize can better understand the needs and roles suitable for various members of said tribe. Think about the nature of graphs. Graphs are combining various data sets to produce an image, a visual illustration of a system. Studies have shown that in the sciences, men are 26% more likely to use graphs and figures in their academic writing. We can acknowledge natural male dominance in things like chess without implying overall female inferiority.

We are constantly reminded about the discrepancies between men and women in industries and pay scales, but why don’t we hear about how as gender equality and social security increase the amount of women pursuing work in male dominated fields actually decreases? As the sayings go, half-truths are more damaging then lies- but why? A half-truth is hard to see as a purposeful manipulation, while a lie can easily be exposed. What young women are often obscured from understanding is that on average their inherent strategies and strengths are very different than those of men, and identical paths and outcomes shouldn’t be expected even in the presence of equality of opportunity. I see modern culture as sowing discord and competition between the sexes, when they are meant to work in a complimentary balance. We need to understand ourselves and others in order to maximize our prosperity and that of our shared spaces. Just as would be expected, the empathetic female brain also has its sphere to dominate. Girls and women have long been noted to beat out boys and men in skills of linguistics or communication in general.

It should be widely understood that the female role and the strategies involved in executing it are not inferior to that of the male, it is simply that they are generally suited to maintaining vastly different aspects of a civilization. It is easy to see the revolutionary nature of innovations such as the birth control pill, but they can’t erase millennia of cognitive evolution and social refinement. Even if it could, why are we being sold that we want it to? It is a common tactic of collectivist governments to entice as many into the workforce as they can. Women are taught that selling their labor to corporations or the state is more beneficial and liberating than devoting it to the management of a household and family. This in turn devalues the family itself, and future generations become more dependent on the state for information and direction. We are being taught to look towards and even fight for a misguided idea of equality that actually reduces our power collectively as communities and individuals. Think of a lyric from that Halsey song: “So I told him that the music would be worth the wait, but he wants me in the kitchen with a dinner plate”. Does she really think that the music industry is going to care for her as she ages? Since when does creating art need to be tied to the process of working for external agents that have no familial ties to you and seek only to make the biggest buck from your bang. Women love to engender beauty, and corporations love to direct that drive to maximize profit alone.



“Girls, come on out to the tractors at the State Tractor Station!”

Soviet Union Propaganda circa 1920



“Women are taught that selling their labor to corporations or the state is more beneficial and liberating than devoting it to the management of a household and family. This in turn devalues the family itself, and future generations become more dependent on the state for information and direction.”

In Hegelian philosophy, the Greek character Antigone represents one of most sublime literary presentations of family piety “as principally the law of woman, and as the law of a substantiality at once subjective and on the plane of feeling, the law of the inward life, … This [divine] law is there displayed as a law opposed to public law, to the law of the land”. Antigone sought to honor her family over the state, while her ideological opposition sought the opposite. The concept of a state as an organized political entity can be defined as the possessor of a monopoly of violence over a geographic region. The apparent historical exclusion of women from external, stately life has been seen as a symptom of compounding, systemic subordination rather than a natural evolution playing a balancing and beneficial role to the stunningly complex social structures emergent in groups of the human animal. Women are perfectly adapted to nourish and direct their family units whilst their counterparts step forth to build and propel the systems of the state.



Antigone donnant la sépulture à Polynice by Sébastien Norblin (1825)





None of this is meant to imply that women are incapable of being successful in all industries; we absolutely are. We do, however, have to start changing the way we think about ourselves and reality. Are women reporting higher happiness and security in this brave new world? So many are being fed victim narratives, that limit one’s scope of perspective and reflection. You may drive out nature, even with a pitchfork, but she keeps coming back. To resist honest evaluation of the natural laws governing your environment, is to essentially commit to living as a slave. A slave to those who have evaluated your nature without the smoke and mirrors imposed onto you.

We have to at least question why the powers that be want us to be constantly at odds, why they constantly highlight supposed inequalities and then wax on through every outlet with the same narrowed perspective? We have to wonder why it is that as industrialization and social security increase, gender differentiation also seems to increase. Are gender roles actually bad, do they really damage the development of our children, or are they simply manifestations of reality that help the everyday person navigate our increasingly complex world more successfully? Inquiring minds need to know. We need to be able to talk about what actually works best insofar as building back our individual power and our communities, and not what seems fun or easy based on our cultural backdrop. To regress takes no effort, but to move forward requires an exertion of some kind. We evolved by carrying loads. Do not run from your burdens, for it is only in finding and shouldering them can you realize your true worth, potential and place in this crazy space.



The cultural shift towards hyper-individualism has obscured a lot of the value or truth inherent in social rituals and hierarchies. Don’t get hung up on the possibility that you are an exception to the rules and expectations you may not yet understand. It makes sense to have a culture that empowers and promotes lifestyles that would benefit the majority of the population, rather than convince everyone to pursue a life of fruitless debt slavery – when they may just need the structure of a traditional role to thrive and happily engage in the preservation of the species. Lastly, do not forget that you are the means of production, and that makes you the target to be seized.