You may or may not have heard about the pro-male group “Return of Kings”. They have hit the news several times recently. I first heard about them when they kicked up a fuss about the new Star Wars film on account of the ethnic and gender diversity it contained. They called for a boycott:
Return Of Kings, “a blog for heterosexual, masculine men” upset that their movie about space wizards has a girl in it, is estimating that The Force Awakens “lost $4.2 million because of our reporting.” (Forbes disagrees with this assertion, not that it matters to the Return Of Kings faithful.) They arrived at this number by extrapolating the results of a 565-person informal poll by their site’s roughly estimated monthly users, multiplied by average ticket price. It’s unimpeachably sound science, just like the sound TIE fighters make in space….
So, to recap, a film that raked in a billion dollars worldwide in just 12 days and will most likely be the highest-grossing film of all time by the time you read this could have possibly made $1.004 billion if it hadn’t had a female lead. And while it’s unlikely Disney will make any changes to the series as a result, there’s little doubt that the MRAs will soldier on, like Stormtroopers taking shot after shot at Rey without ever hitting the mark.
Recently, they hit the news again in Australia as they are planning a meet up of suporters. The Sydney Morning Herald reports:
According to the website’s About page, the Return of Kings tenets are, “A woman’s value significantly depends on her fertility and beauty. A man’s value significantly depends on his resources, intellect, and character.”
“Elimination of traditional sex roles and the promotion of unlimited mating choice in women unleashes their promiscuity and other negative behaviours that block family formation,” it says.
Articles written by Mr Valizadeh and Return of Kings’ contributors express views that women should not be able to vote, that rape on private property should be legalised, that transgender women who sleep with heterosexual men are rapists and that women are biologically determined to follow the orders of men.
Other articles suggest that “Asian men need to transcend their race” in order to pick up women and that men who date fat women are partially responsible for increasing obesity rates.
An article published on January 26 said that child sexual abuse and rape were “traditional” in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures.
As a philosopher, I read their stuff and cringe. I am now going to show how their claims are irrational and fallacious, and they don’t have an intellectual leg to stand on.
Their About page states:
1. Men and women are genetically different, both physically and mentally. Sex roles evolved in all mammals. Humans are not exempt.
2. Men will opt out of monogamy and reproduction if there are no incentives to engage in them.
3. Past traditions and rituals that evolved alongside humanity served a net benefit to the family unit.
4. Testosterone is the biological cause for masculinity. Environmental changes that reduce the hormone’s concentration in men will cause them to be weaker and more feminine.
5. A woman’s value significantly depends on her fertility and beauty. A man’s value significantly depends on his resources, intellect, and character.
6. Elimination of traditional sex roles and the promotion of unlimited mating choice in women unleashes their promiscuity and other negative behaviors that block family formation.
7. Socialism, feminism, cultural Marxism, and social justice warriorism aim to destroy the family unit, decrease the fertility rate, and impoverish the state through large welfare entitlements.
Let’s start with the opener.
1. Men and women are genetically different, both physically and mentally. Sex roles evolved in all mammals. Humans are not exempt.
You might have spotted the potential fallacy a mile off. Although there is no moral ought in this statement, it is laying it out for the following ones. This is the naturalistic fallacy. This fallacy is one which wiki defines:
The phrase “naturalistic fallacy” can also be used to refer to the fallacious appeal to nature, a mistaken claim that something is good or right because it is natural (or bad or wrong because it is unnatural).
This is also connected to the genetic fallacy that states that because we know how something developed, it means that this is how it should be, which is of course a non sequitur.
And this is pretty much what their entire case appears to be built on. So there are two problems:
1) That because something has evolved a particular way in no way means that this is how it should be. This is the is-ought problem – there are huge issues of derived how things should be from simply how they are. Or, science gives us knowledge about the world, but doesn’t tell us how it should be (though it helps in giving us data to that end).
2) If the roles that are evolving to be different in women, which ROK do not like, still succeed in procreation and reproduction, then they are even more wrong.
There are some conflicting studies into the mental differences between women and men, and I would like to see which ones they base their assertions on. I say this because a lot of things that we used to think were brain/genetically caused in sex differences in psychology can be put down to the environment. It can be difficult to isolate variables, especially given complex scenarios such as the subject’s perceived gender identity and gender expectations. Either way, wiki hosts a good synopsis.
2. Men will opt out of monogamy and reproduction if there are no incentives to engage in them.
In some senses, this is correct. Men aren’t, in evolutionary terms, good at monogamy. However, I am not sure about opting out of reproduction if there are no incentives since I think reproduction is a genetically derived urge that bypasses any rational decision involving incentives.
But Western monogamy has tradeoffs, too.
Besides, one of the tradeoffs made by polygynous societies is an increase in violence from desperate young males vying for female attention. Miller & Kanazawa (2007) note that:
“across all societies, polygyny makes men violent, increasing crimes such as murder and rape, even after controlling for such obvious factors as economic development, economic inequality, population density, the level of democracy, and political factors…”
For example, a monogamous society may seem more respectful to the feminine gender, but only if we ignore some important factors. As Steven Pinker (1997) points out, societal monogamy is not an agreement between the genders. It is an agreement between more powerful and less powerful men.
Less powerful men benefit from societal monogamy because every man has a shot at partnering with a woman. More powerful men benefit by drawing the most attractive women without having to fend off the angry hoard of lonely, horny, competitors.
As with most collusions between men, women pay the price. In this case, the cost to women is fewer options. Consider the monogamous woman who is stuck with a poor or abusive man. In a polygynous society she would have the option of joining a more powerful man’s family. This creates an incentive for polygynous men treat their women well, assuming they lack the power to imprison and opress their wives.
Even with Western sensibilities, polygamy can still win out in the form of serial monogamy. At regular intervals, a Western man can divorce his wife and remarry someone younger and more attractive. This is an expensive proposition, and so it works best for men who have power and money. The result is essentially the same as openly polygynous societies: men of means snap up the most attractive women, who ignore the less attractive men. Source
The theories involved in sex selection show how much of a cost benefit analysis it has evolved to be. That says nothing about how it should be, unless you have a hidden goal for modern society: to reproduce as much as possible. And then you woul dhave to show that these sex and mate selection behaviours were still the most effective means.
Problem is, I don’t think modern society needs to repsoduce as much as possible.
So we go on to the next point:
3. Past traditions and rituals that evolved alongside humanity served a net benefit to the family unit.
More problems. This assumes that societal pressures back then (whenever that was) are the same as today. In other words, behaviours (qua rituals and traditions) that evolved perviously in a given environment may well have been suited to that environment, but are not necessarily suited to a different (ie modern) environment.
Furthermore, this doesn’t take into account the massive plethora and range of traditions set within their own conextual, geo-historical milieu. Those evolved to their own cultures, their own environments, and are not necesssarily able to be taken out and applied to a different place, let alone time. These guys want to legalise rape on private property, and they appear to use non-comparable cultural exceptions to justify this. This would appear to be cherry picking.
Furthermore, it doesn’t take into account the whole range of behaviours and analysing which are the most effective for that particular end. Some of those evolved traditions may have been evolutionarily neutral, but remained because they were not deleterious. Have ROK looked into which ones were definitely the best (even given that that rubrik warrants being used).
4. Testosterone is the biological cause for masculinity. Environmental changes that reduce the hormone’s concentration in men will cause them to be weaker and more feminine.
So what? I mean, really, so what? Perhaps there would be fewer wars… There is some complexity when looking at data with regard to testosterone and choices for partners:
In a series of scientific studies, women found square-jawed, masculine faces to be the sexiest and the most attractive for a casual sexual encounter.
But they judged somewhat less masculine faces to be more attractive for a long-term relationship.
Women’s sexual desires for testosterone-fuelled facial cues of masculinity were especially strong during the fertile window of their cycle.
The most plausible interpretation of these results is that women are attracted to men who are likely to be ‘good dads’ when choosing long-term mates, but are attracted to the signals of robust health that more masculine faces provide when they are most likely to become impregnated.
Why do more masculine faces signify health? High testosterone production actually compromises the body’s immune functioning, leaving men less able to fight off diseases and parasites in adolescence.
Only men who are above average in healthiness during adolescence can ‘afford’ to produce the high levels of testosterone that masculinise the face.
Less healthy adolescents can’t afford to compromise their already precarious immune systems, and so produce lower levels of testosterone at precisely the time when facial bones take their adult form.
So, a masculine-looking face signals a man’s health, his ability to succeed in competing with other men and his ability to protect.
This interpretation, however, raises a puzzle: Why wouldn’t women be attracted to highly masculine males for all mating relationships, from dangerous liaisons through to life-long love?
The answer lies in the fact that the more masculine men, with more testosterone, tend to be less sexually faithful.
They are more likely to be the risk-taking, womanising bad boys among the male population.
Consequently, most women face a trade- off: if they choose the less masculine-looking man, they are likely to get a better father and sexually loyal mate, but they lose out in the currency of genes for good health.
If they choose the more masculine man, they can endow their children with good genes for health, but must suffer the costs of a man who channels some of his sexual energy toward other women. It’s a tricky choice.
So, by “weaker and more feminine”, do ROK mean “better fathers”?
5. A woman’s value significantly depends on her fertility and beauty. A man’s value significantly depends on his resources, intellect, and character.
Whoah there. What this should state is “a woman’s value in terms of sex selection throughout history with regard to evolutionary pressures”. It is at best incredibly simplistic, at worse just a mess.
Value is subjective, and they are using it objectively here. This is a mixture of aforementioned fallacies, to some degree, and assuming all men value women in correlation (and caused by?) sex selection pressures.
What they miss out is why resources are important. Resources are important because he would invest time and resources in to being a good father (and husband, to some degree). And women actually choose less masculine faces in line with this end. Resources, intellect and character are not intrinsically valuable, but are instrumental for a further end. ROK do not seem to get this.
But there are many other ways to value humans, other than to align them with evolutionary pressures.
6. Elimination of traditional sex roles and the promotion of unlimited mating choice in women unleashes their promiscuity and other negative behaviors that block family formation.
It looks like ROK is promoting promiscuity in men, but not women, deferring here to traditional sex roles. Oh my goodness, their promiscuity is unleashed! Heaven forfend! Given that there are 7 billion people on Earth and the population is growing to problematic levels, I really wouldn’t spend time worrying about family formation. Judging by their desire for testosterone fuelled relationships the sorts of families they are supporting are ones that wouldn’t be very good anyway. Some contradiction there.
In fact, testosterone levels drop in new dads, and one would think that this is to promote more caring parental support. Are these guys campaigning for bad, less caring parents? It appears so.
Lastly, my lab has shown that high levels of testosterone change the brain’s cost-benefit calculation toward the current and self, rather than taking a long-term view that includes others’ needs. Testosterone has a potent effect on libido, too. High testosterone males cheat more, divorce more, spend less time with their children, but are also highly focused and driven. Testosterone is sensitive to a man’s social position–testosterone rises in men that attain high status. Source
And then this.
7. Socialism, feminism, cultural Marxism, and social justice warriorism aim to destroy the family unit, decrease the fertility rate, and impoverish the state through large welfare entitlements.
Well, none of these things aims to do this. If ROK were to find any universal manifesto of any of this ideas, they would be hard-pressed to see these as the aims. This really doesn’t warrant writing any more about.
Essentially, this ROK movement reminds me of some pubescent kids at a boys’ school, thinking up their idealised version of reality.
Grow up.