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Warriors and Worriers: The Survival of the Sexes
The question of exactly what sex differences exist and whether they have a biological foundation has been one of our culture's favorite enduring discussions. It should. After a baby is born, a parent's first concern is for its physical health. The next concern is its sex. Only in the most modern societies does sex not virtually guarantee the type of future life a new human being will have. Even in modern societies, one's sex usually plays a large role in the path a life follows.
Scientists have published thousands of papers on the subject, with the general conclusion being that men and women are mostly the same, whatever differences exist have been socialized, and what differences exist have to do with women bearing children and men being physically stronger. In Warriors and Worriers , psychologist Joyce Benenson presents a new theory of sex differences, based on thirty years of research with young children and primates around the world. Her innovative theory focuses on how men and women stay alive. Benenson draws on a fascinating array of studies and stories that explore the ways boys and men deter their enemies, while girls and women find assistants to aid them in coping with vulnerable children and elders. This produces two social worlds for each sex which sets humans apart from most other primate species. Human males form cooperative groups that compete against out-groups, while human females exclude other females in their quest to find mates, female family
members to invest in their children, and keep their own hearts ticking. In the process, Benenson turns upside down the familiar wisdom that women are more sociable than men and that men are more competitive than women.
Scientists have published thousands of papers on the subject, with the general conclusion being that men and women are mostly the same, whatever differences exist have been socialized, and what differences exist have to do with women bearing children and men being physically stronger. In Warriors and Worriers , psychologist Joyce Benenson presents a new theory of sex differences, based on thirty years of research with young children and primates around the world. Her innovative theory focuses on how men and women stay alive. Benenson draws on a fascinating array of studies and stories that explore the ways boys and men deter their enemies, while girls and women find assistants to aid them in coping with vulnerable children and elders. This produces two social worlds for each sex which sets humans apart from most other primate species. Human males form cooperative groups that compete against out-groups, while human females exclude other females in their quest to find mates, female family
members to invest in their children, and keep their own hearts ticking. In the process, Benenson turns upside down the familiar wisdom that women are more sociable than men and that men are more competitive than women.
288 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2014
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
May 10, 2016
Although much of the book is spot-on, there are also many things which she gets fantastically wrong (e.g. sex differences pertaining to bullying and domestic violence, along with the mythical gender pay gap). I do, however, agree with the trust of the book. Nevertheless, the ideas underlying her thesis aren't as innovative as the publisher makes them out to be. Indeed, in his book, Is There Anything Good About Men, released only a year or two earlier by the same pubisher, Baumeister puts forward a very similar thesis. The fact that she gets many things very wrong, also prevents her from identifying some crucial differences between men and women (most notably the sex differences in self-deception — where women seek to maintain a view of themselves as always being innocent and giving, and as a result worthy of more protection and special privileges). This is very unfortunate as her own research, on e.g. women and their inability to recognize their own competative nature and use of dirty tactics, constitutes an excellent example and support of this important sex difference. Because, even though the evidence and the theoretical support for this is pretty overwhelming — and the alternative wouldn't even make sense from the gene-centered view of modern evolutionary theory — many nevertheless fail to recognize this; so had she explicitely pointed it out, it would have been a good and useful contribution.
February 22, 2022
I sat on this one for a while after reading it, grappling with an existential dread of my own potential implicit bias that can only be instilled by too much time at college. Joyce Benenson proved Sex War, sure, but suggests that infighting within the Better Camp more flagrantly violates the Geneva Convention than anything on Pat Benatar's actual, storied battlefield.
Her first mortal sin is pushing the idea of hardwired biological differences between men and women, that govern their cultural behavior. This is drawn from her own developmental psych work, evolutionary psych, what relevant scrapings we can extract from anthropology (few), and an exhaustive primatology lit review. Casting these wide nets, she identifies some themes that occur across cultures, where We Live In A Society can't be blamed because the Yanomami don't have tiktok, and she then compares and contrasts against chimp and bonobo behavior to see if these wacky coincidences can be ascribed a furry, feral correlation.
Here's my Weltschmerz. The section describing men was absolutely spot on by my own anecdotal experience. Benenson suggests that men are more inclined to natural sociability than women, because men are trying to construct a warband for their primary preoccupation of defeating their enemies. There's a lot of intuitive if somewhat antiquated evolutionary psychology that she calls up to support this thesis, essentially boiling down to men were physically stronger, much more inclined to risk, and had to protect the community. As a result, fellas respect skill and competence, because that's the guy you want in your warband. That could be life or death. So men bond through shared activities, such as pissing in a bucket from a distance, or from uniting to destroy enemies, such as the l*berals.
I thought it was a stretch to call it war. War is a young concept on the evolutionary timeline, and it wouldn't be baked right into us after a paltry few thousand years. I'd buy it for hunting, though. The same skills and requirements transfer over whether you're expecting to fight a bunch of other dudes, or one sabertooth tiger, or whatever mammoth you can scare off the cliff.
The women portion of the book describes the female experience as Game of Thrones, only they're all Cersei. Or at least Margaery. Benenson suggests that whereas men are motivated by doofy, arbitrary prosocialities like honor, camaraderie, and community protection, often to the point where they endanger their own lives, these impulses are not shared by women. Women are playing to fucking win. Their chief and very nearly only priority is personal safety, and safety of their children. What the hell is "honor"? What, you're Batman now? Shut up Dave, the kids need shoes. My mother was right about you.
The circle of female friendship will be small, and motivated by perceived inability to ruin everything. Saturday is not for the girls in the same way Saturday is for the boys, though both sexes may same-sex cloister on Saturdays. The average woman won't share the masculine compulsion to round up the fellas, crush some Peebers, and build a cool deck for Ralph.
Who's Ralph? Fuck Ralph! Ralph does not help us achieve our aims.
"Yeah, but he's a good guy, though."
He a good enough guy to give Aiden braces?
"We don't take charity in this house."
Boys love rules. In all of the studies she ran, when the boys were playing, they made up and argued about the rules for the entirety of the play period. But the game lasted for the entirety of the play period, every time, in whatever Calvinball incarnation it wound up with.
This was not the case with girls. The girls did not argue, the girls did not cajole, the girls gently and obliquely suggested, often for the supposed benefit of another third-party girl. If there was a dispute within the girl's games, the game fell apart. Most of the girl's games lasted a couple minutes, topping out at around 15.
The most interesting and perhaps most harrowing aspect of this evo psych wrongthink is the approach to competition. Fellas are wired for it. Within the group, competition gives you an opportunity to flex out and demonstrate your competence which, generally speaking, is regarded positively because it is useful. Obviously, it can escalate, and quickly turn into violence, but generally speaking violence is irrelevant within "male culture". A dude can punch his buddy in the mouth and an hour later, they'll be crushing Peebers and building Ralph a deck. Competition is just something guys do for the sheer fuck-all thrill of it. Think Shadow Moon and Mad Sweeney.
Women do not compete.
Women compete constantly, in all things, but pretend they don't compete because nice girls don't compete, and the most important thing is to be perceived as nice. Women consistently outperform men in school, because this performance is not head-to-head competition. You give the paper to the teacher, and the teacher decides how good you did behind closed doors; by the time you receive the results, nobody's thinking about it as a competition anymore. That's not an exciting enough contest for most guys to get all worked up over. Now if you want to practice backflips off the bench...
Back to the Machiavellian, zero-sum perspective Benenson assigns to women (or reveals them to have). A group of girls will not be friends in the same way a group of guys will be friends. With males, if you hear any noise, it's just me and the boys, and the dropoff of two or three of them because their girlfriends demand they come home (whip-KSSH whip-KSSH) will not adversely affect the group's interpersonal dynamic. With females, they are a loosely connected sequence of pair-bonds. Sally's bff with Jessie and Jessie is friends with Tamara, and Tamara's sister Tia is here, and Jessie likes Tia, but Tia cannot stand Sally because she just acts like she's better than everybody else. This will never be discussed directly between the two women, and you would not know they are hated foes if you weren't privy to the off-screen whispering.
The rationale for this othering comes back to the primary evolutionary motivation of self-protection and accruing reliable assistance to raise theoretical future children. Tamara is friends with Jessie, but not the kind of friend you'd trust your kids with. That's what sisters are for. Across all domains, across every culture, women are more inclined to socially pair-up (almost always pairing up) with family members. Sisters, cousins, mothers, aunts, all dependable friend-stock because they can be relied on to further the aims of the family's evolutionary fitness. That is to say, they're not someone I need to compete with for mates, resources, or security. This generalizes to female friends, who typically bond by discussing their failures and insecurities. This is rarely done by males, due to "toxic masculinity", and also because they're up on the catwalk, trying to spit on passing cars. Benenson suggests that this mutual self-disclosure of weak points is the social equivalent of old chieftains grasping each other by the forearm to check for knives. "You've got nothing to fear from me, I double super secret promise I won't try to steal your life from you. And even if I did, here are the nuclear codes to destroy me."
There's much more to the book, and I'm not going to keep paraphrasing because I'll wind up rewriting the damn thing. If taken with a grain of salt, I think it's very valuable and informative. What is most chilling to me is the number of women I have discussed this with since reading it, almost as a means of penance, essentially hoping one of them would be outraged by the idea that women as a species are Petyr Baelish if he was pretty and smelled good. None were. All of them hit me with the "yeah, that's about right", the same way I reacted to the first half of the book's position that men are big dumb animals who constantly kill themselves trying to do pointless stunts, and socially speaking, are just happy to be involved.
If the academics, or anyone with blue hair, ever finds out about this book, Joyce B. will never work in this town again.
Her first mortal sin is pushing the idea of hardwired biological differences between men and women, that govern their cultural behavior. This is drawn from her own developmental psych work, evolutionary psych, what relevant scrapings we can extract from anthropology (few), and an exhaustive primatology lit review. Casting these wide nets, she identifies some themes that occur across cultures, where We Live In A Society can't be blamed because the Yanomami don't have tiktok, and she then compares and contrasts against chimp and bonobo behavior to see if these wacky coincidences can be ascribed a furry, feral correlation.
Here's my Weltschmerz. The section describing men was absolutely spot on by my own anecdotal experience. Benenson suggests that men are more inclined to natural sociability than women, because men are trying to construct a warband for their primary preoccupation of defeating their enemies. There's a lot of intuitive if somewhat antiquated evolutionary psychology that she calls up to support this thesis, essentially boiling down to men were physically stronger, much more inclined to risk, and had to protect the community. As a result, fellas respect skill and competence, because that's the guy you want in your warband. That could be life or death. So men bond through shared activities, such as pissing in a bucket from a distance, or from uniting to destroy enemies, such as the l*berals.
I thought it was a stretch to call it war. War is a young concept on the evolutionary timeline, and it wouldn't be baked right into us after a paltry few thousand years. I'd buy it for hunting, though. The same skills and requirements transfer over whether you're expecting to fight a bunch of other dudes, or one sabertooth tiger, or whatever mammoth you can scare off the cliff.
The women portion of the book describes the female experience as Game of Thrones, only they're all Cersei. Or at least Margaery. Benenson suggests that whereas men are motivated by doofy, arbitrary prosocialities like honor, camaraderie, and community protection, often to the point where they endanger their own lives, these impulses are not shared by women. Women are playing to fucking win. Their chief and very nearly only priority is personal safety, and safety of their children. What the hell is "honor"? What, you're Batman now? Shut up Dave, the kids need shoes. My mother was right about you.
The circle of female friendship will be small, and motivated by perceived inability to ruin everything. Saturday is not for the girls in the same way Saturday is for the boys, though both sexes may same-sex cloister on Saturdays. The average woman won't share the masculine compulsion to round up the fellas, crush some Peebers, and build a cool deck for Ralph.
Who's Ralph? Fuck Ralph! Ralph does not help us achieve our aims.
"Yeah, but he's a good guy, though."
He a good enough guy to give Aiden braces?
"We don't take charity in this house."
Boys love rules. In all of the studies she ran, when the boys were playing, they made up and argued about the rules for the entirety of the play period. But the game lasted for the entirety of the play period, every time, in whatever Calvinball incarnation it wound up with.
This was not the case with girls. The girls did not argue, the girls did not cajole, the girls gently and obliquely suggested, often for the supposed benefit of another third-party girl. If there was a dispute within the girl's games, the game fell apart. Most of the girl's games lasted a couple minutes, topping out at around 15.
The most interesting and perhaps most harrowing aspect of this evo psych wrongthink is the approach to competition. Fellas are wired for it. Within the group, competition gives you an opportunity to flex out and demonstrate your competence which, generally speaking, is regarded positively because it is useful. Obviously, it can escalate, and quickly turn into violence, but generally speaking violence is irrelevant within "male culture". A dude can punch his buddy in the mouth and an hour later, they'll be crushing Peebers and building Ralph a deck. Competition is just something guys do for the sheer fuck-all thrill of it. Think Shadow Moon and Mad Sweeney.
Women do not compete.
Women compete constantly, in all things, but pretend they don't compete because nice girls don't compete, and the most important thing is to be perceived as nice. Women consistently outperform men in school, because this performance is not head-to-head competition. You give the paper to the teacher, and the teacher decides how good you did behind closed doors; by the time you receive the results, nobody's thinking about it as a competition anymore. That's not an exciting enough contest for most guys to get all worked up over. Now if you want to practice backflips off the bench...
Back to the Machiavellian, zero-sum perspective Benenson assigns to women (or reveals them to have). A group of girls will not be friends in the same way a group of guys will be friends. With males, if you hear any noise, it's just me and the boys, and the dropoff of two or three of them because their girlfriends demand they come home (whip-KSSH whip-KSSH) will not adversely affect the group's interpersonal dynamic. With females, they are a loosely connected sequence of pair-bonds. Sally's bff with Jessie and Jessie is friends with Tamara, and Tamara's sister Tia is here, and Jessie likes Tia, but Tia cannot stand Sally because she just acts like she's better than everybody else. This will never be discussed directly between the two women, and you would not know they are hated foes if you weren't privy to the off-screen whispering.
The rationale for this othering comes back to the primary evolutionary motivation of self-protection and accruing reliable assistance to raise theoretical future children. Tamara is friends with Jessie, but not the kind of friend you'd trust your kids with. That's what sisters are for. Across all domains, across every culture, women are more inclined to socially pair-up (almost always pairing up) with family members. Sisters, cousins, mothers, aunts, all dependable friend-stock because they can be relied on to further the aims of the family's evolutionary fitness. That is to say, they're not someone I need to compete with for mates, resources, or security. This generalizes to female friends, who typically bond by discussing their failures and insecurities. This is rarely done by males, due to "toxic masculinity", and also because they're up on the catwalk, trying to spit on passing cars. Benenson suggests that this mutual self-disclosure of weak points is the social equivalent of old chieftains grasping each other by the forearm to check for knives. "You've got nothing to fear from me, I double super secret promise I won't try to steal your life from you. And even if I did, here are the nuclear codes to destroy me."
There's much more to the book, and I'm not going to keep paraphrasing because I'll wind up rewriting the damn thing. If taken with a grain of salt, I think it's very valuable and informative. What is most chilling to me is the number of women I have discussed this with since reading it, almost as a means of penance, essentially hoping one of them would be outraged by the idea that women as a species are Petyr Baelish if he was pretty and smelled good. None were. All of them hit me with the "yeah, that's about right", the same way I reacted to the first half of the book's position that men are big dumb animals who constantly kill themselves trying to do pointless stunts, and socially speaking, are just happy to be involved.
If the academics, or anyone with blue hair, ever finds out about this book, Joyce B. will never work in this town again.
September 20, 2021
تجنب الموت المبكر
الرجال والنساء يختلفون بشدة في بعض السلوكيات التي تساعدهم على تجنب الموت مبكرًا ، قبل أن يتمكنوا من نقل جيناتهم بأمان من أجسادهم إلى أجساد أطفالهم. كان العديد من هذه الجينات موجودًا منذ ملايين السنين. لا تدوم الأجساد وقتًا طويلاً بالمقارنة مع الجينات ، وهي مهمة غريزية للشخص أن يبقى على قيد الحياة لفترة كافية للتأكد من أن جيناته تجد موطنًا جديدًا في جسد جديد. لقد برمجتنا جيناتنا للقيام بذلك من أجلهم.
هناك العديد من الطرق للموت مبكرًا: الأمراض المعدية وغير المعدية ، الجوع ، الاختناق ، الحريق ، فشل الأعضاء ، حوادث السيارات ، الغرق ، الإسهال ، هجمات الحيوانات ، التجمُّد ، عدم القدرة على الاعتناء بالنفس بسبب المرض العقلي أو الإعاقة الجسدية ، الأعاصير ، والإيذاء الأسري ، والحرب ، والمخدرات ، وضربة الشمس ، والزلازل ، والانهيارات الهيكلية ، والصواعق ، والإجهاد المفرط ، على سبيل المثال لا الحصر ، في أوغندا ، يموت الكثير من الناس مبكرًا.
على الرغم من جهود العديد من الأشخاص ، يموت ما يقرب من طفل واحد من بين كل 10 أطفال قبل بلوغه عامًا واحدًا . في جميع أنحاء أفريقيا جنوب الصحراء الكبرى ، يموت 22٪ من الأطفال الصغار قبل سن 15. تموت في هذه العملية ستة من كل 1000 أم تلد أطفالًا أصحاء ، وبالنسبة لأولئك الرجال الذين يصلون إلى سن 15 ، سيموت 39٪ منهن قبل سن 60.
قديماً في مجتمعات الصيد والجمع ، مات أكثر من 25٪ من الأطفال في السنة الأولى من العمر ، وتوفي 49٪ من الأطفال قبل بلوغهم مرحلة النضج الجنسي .
ننسى أن أدمغتنا تشكلت عندما كانت وفيات الأطفال 50 ضعف ما هي عليه في المجتمعات الحديثة.
.
Joyce. F. Benenson
Warriors And Worries
ترجمة : ماهر رزوق
الرجال والنساء يختلفون بشدة في بعض السلوكيات التي تساعدهم على تجنب الموت مبكرًا ، قبل أن يتمكنوا من نقل جيناتهم بأمان من أجسادهم إلى أجساد أطفالهم. كان العديد من هذه الجينات موجودًا منذ ملايين السنين. لا تدوم الأجساد وقتًا طويلاً بالمقارنة مع الجينات ، وهي مهمة غريزية للشخص أن يبقى على قيد الحياة لفترة كافية للتأكد من أن جيناته تجد موطنًا جديدًا في جسد جديد. لقد برمجتنا جيناتنا للقيام بذلك من أجلهم.
هناك العديد من الطرق للموت مبكرًا: الأمراض المعدية وغير المعدية ، الجوع ، الاختناق ، الحريق ، فشل الأعضاء ، حوادث السيارات ، الغرق ، الإسهال ، هجمات الحيوانات ، التجمُّد ، عدم القدرة على الاعتناء بالنفس بسبب المرض العقلي أو الإعاقة الجسدية ، الأعاصير ، والإيذاء الأسري ، والحرب ، والمخدرات ، وضربة الشمس ، والزلازل ، والانهيارات الهيكلية ، والصواعق ، والإجهاد المفرط ، على سبيل المثال لا الحصر ، في أوغندا ، يموت الكثير من الناس مبكرًا.
على الرغم من جهود العديد من الأشخاص ، يموت ما يقرب من طفل واحد من بين كل 10 أطفال قبل بلوغه عامًا واحدًا . في جميع أنحاء أفريقيا جنوب الصحراء الكبرى ، يموت 22٪ من الأطفال الصغار قبل سن 15. تموت في هذه العملية ستة من كل 1000 أم تلد أطفالًا أصحاء ، وبالنسبة لأولئك الرجال الذين يصلون إلى سن 15 ، سيموت 39٪ منهن قبل سن 60.
قديماً في مجتمعات الصيد والجمع ، مات أكثر من 25٪ من الأطفال في السنة الأولى من العمر ، وتوفي 49٪ من الأطفال قبل بلوغهم مرحلة النضج الجنسي .
ننسى أن أدمغتنا تشكلت عندما كانت وفيات الأطفال 50 ضعف ما هي عليه في المجتمعات الحديثة.
.
Joyce. F. Benenson
Warriors And Worries
ترجمة : ماهر رزوق
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 9, 2023
I picked this up on someone's recommendation that I have now completely forgotten, with the pitch being "it gives an extremely accurate description of what it feels like to be each sex." My partner and I started reading it with that in mind, thinking we might gain some deep understanding into one of life's deeper mysteries. My partner couldn't hack it, and put it down after a chapter or two.
Foolishly, I persevered. In retrospect, I wish I had had the wisdom that my partner did---recognizing a lost cause when I was presented with one.
Fundamentally, there are three things wrong with this book: it is chocked full of factual errors, it is based on lots of extremely suspicious psychology research, and its central thesis depends firmly on group selection. We'll go through these in order.
## Bad Facts
There are lots of (often unimportant) claims in this book that are simply wrong. For example:
> The highly successful Japanese Pokemon card series presents another example, with cards with names such as Enraged Muka Muka, Infernal Incinerator, Creeping Doom Mantra, Malice Doll of Demise, Indomitable Fighter Lei Lei, Cyber Archfiend, Terrorking Salmon, Tribe-Infecting Virus, Nightmare’s Steelcage, Invitation to a Dark Sleep, Mad Sword Beast, Dark Driceratops, Gross Ghost of Fled Dreams, Pitch-Black Warwolf, and Dragon Zombie.
These don't sound like any Pokemon I've ever heard of. A little googling shows that these are in fact Yu-Gi-Oh cards. Or how about this one:
> Massively multiple online role-playing computer games, such as the hugely popular World of Warcraft, allow many players armed only with a computer to cooperate from around the world to hunt down and kill one another, team against team, in completely realistic contexts.
I think it's hard to call pretending to be an Orcish Death Knight a "completely realistic context."
On the topic of things that should have been caught by an editor, we have this gem:
> If another female requires a better territory, more food, or assistance fighting a competitor or predator, a high-status female can lend a helping hand, or mouth or foot.
Lending a mouth doesn't seem like the sort of thing that would help someone else get more food.
> A study in the US Midwest found that bullying followed a predictable pattern. High-status boys bullied low-status boys. In turn, low-status boys bullied high-status girls.
As a low-status boy in school, who was friends with a lot of other low-status boys, there wasn't any bullying of high-status girls. In fact, we were the ones being bullied by high-status girls. My female friends say they never saw any of this bullying of high-status girls either. Of course, this doesn't prove anything, but it certainly doesn't pass the sniff test.
Then there's lots of weird claims like this one:
> If another man is trying to compete, he generally does it in public. He openly bests his competitor, then helps himself to his competitor’s food—or his wife.
uhhhh.... that... doesn't seem to be... how competition works in any part of the world I've ever come across...
There is lots of crap stuff like this in the book. None of them really matter, but they do not lend credence to Benenson. If I can't trust her to spot that role-playing as an elf who must drink blood to strengthen his magic might not be realistic, or that men don't actually compete with their wives as collateral, then why should I trust anything else she has to say? Gell-mann amnesia can only take you so far, and we passed that exit a long time ago.
## Very Suspicious Science
There are lots of claims in this book that I highlighted thinking WTF. I didn't open up any of the citations, but a lot of the things referenced didn't seem to be relevant to the point at hand. I don't have any examples right now, unfortunately, and I'm too lazy to pull them up. But, in reading the titles, I also read the years, and almost all of the WTF-enough citations I cared to click on were from the 90s. I'd like to point out that the replication crisis came to our attention in the early 2010s, and it seems likely that it was precipitated by lots of bad research in the 90s.
It's hard to say here whether this is representative of all the citations in the book, or merely the most WTF ones. Nevertheless, here are some quotes from the book I took umbrage with, and my commentary on why.
> The ratio of young men (15–29 years) to older men (30+ years) in a country predicts quite accurately war-related fatalities. In their study of 88 countries from all over the world, Christian Mesquida and Neil Wiener [51] showed that as this ratio of young to older men increases, the number of fatalities during conflicts increases enormously.
I hope Benenson is misquoting the study here, because if not, she's saying "a country that has more young men has more causalities in war." This is presented as a knock-down argument for why men are more violent and "warrior-oriented" than women. Alas, as stated it forgets to account for the fact that if you have more young men, you can send more of them into war. If you have more people at war, more people are going to get shot at, and there will be more casualties than if you had fewer people at war.
This book has lots of examples of misunderstanding data and of ignoring obvious confounders. Like the following:
> Boys raised [in an Israeli orphanage] were more likely to participate in the riskiest and most violent aspects of military service. A full 54% of them volunteered for units with fighting requirements, whereas only 16% of boys raised with their own families did so. Boys raised [in an Israeli orphanage] also displayed the most valor in battle. It is no accident that these were boys who were raised with other boys and away from their mothers.
The claim here is that the presence of women makes men less violent. Maybe. Or maybe it's just that people without families or normal upbringings have less to live for, and valor is the obvious thing to strive for if you don't have many ties to safety or much in the way of prospects back in the civilian world.
There is more like this.
> In business and science, high-status women invest less than high-status men in lower-status same-sex individuals [181, 182, 4]. Recently, my colleagues and I asked young women and men how much money they would share with a less powerful same-sex ally with whom they had worked on a joint project. Women gave much less than men did.
Notice the sleight of hand here. They asked how much people would share; they didn't actually observe people sharing. But the conclusion is that women give much less than men do. Again, I haven't read the study, and maybe it fares better than its presentation here, but given the rest of the red flags in this book, I have no reason to expect it to.
Occasionally, the book gifts us a gem like this one:
> Unsurprisingly, men are more likely to get divorced when they have been married longer, whereas the opposite is true for women.
Unless Benenson is making unrelated commentary on homosexual marriage in the midst of her point, this claim is not even wrong. Men and women are married together, for the same amount of time, and therefore they get divorced after the same amount of marriage.
## Weird Stereotypical Sexism
I'm hesitant to use the word "boomer" immediately under a subheading of "weird stereotypes," but I'm going to do it anyway. This book has all sorts of weird stereotypes that I've never heard anyone actually espouse, except maybe in meme format on Facebook shared by embarrassing relatives. Things like:
> Probably almost every mother who has ever lived has screamed in her home and commanded, insulted, made fun of, and otherwise acted superior to her family members at times.
My mom didn't. Either this is a knock-down refutation, or Benenson isn't actually saying anything here and has a motte and bailey where she can always retreat to "at times."
A personal favorite of mine is Benenson's weird fixation on the fact that men are forgetful, irresponsible, and love SPORTS:
> Even where fathers take care of children, many are not certain how old their child is, what day their child was born, where to find their child’s doctor, or the name of their child’s teacher [14]. None of these fathers, however, has any memory problems when it comes to recalling the names, ages, and statistics of the players on their favorite sports team.
and
> A careful inspection shows that fathers can be distractible when it comes to children. While a father may dutifully push his baby’s carriage, his attention is easily distracted by a pretty girl walking by, deliberations with fellow fathers about last night’s baseball game, or a new business deal.
and
> Boys, regardless of whether they are educated, grow up to be men, who just don’t invest as much in their families. Often, men will choose to spend their money on alcohol and tobacco or leisure activities as much as on their families.
It's comical how meme-y these ideas are.
## Bonus Taylor Swift
Presented unironically:
> Jenny wasn’t really interested in a boyfriend, but she still like hanging out with the guys. Mostly she liked to play soccer and basketball with them after school. She liked to [wear jeans and T-shirts instead of make-up and miniskirts](https://youtu.be/VuNIsY6JdUw?t=37).
## Group Selection
Let's get down to brass tacks. While it's fun to dunk on this book, this is where the serious structural problems in the argument rear their ugly head. Paraphrasing the synopsis of the book in a few sentences:
> Men and women survive in life via different skills. These different skills are so in-grained that they are biological in nature.
>
> Women are responsible for raising children, and thus have evolved to take good care of themselves and others. This involves WORRYING A LOT.
>
> Men, on the other hand, are all about WAR and FIGHTING ENEMIES. They can impregnate lots of women with very little work, and therefore can dedicate the rest of their energy to fending off enemies for the good of the tribe.
Ignoring the fact that the conclusions don't stem from the premise (tending children is one more thing to worry about, and thus lowers your chance of survival, and fighting is necessarily bad for your health) there is a keen misunderstanding of evolution at play here.
In particular, the argument here that men are warriors because they can get someone pregnant and then lay down their lives for the good of the group is repeatedly hammered home throughout the book:
> A young man will sacrifice his life, most immediately for the other young men in his group who are standing right next to him in battle. That is what his emotions tell him [1, 17, 18]. That is what I believe allows his genes to survive. If he survives, his genes will be more likely to be passed down to his children. If he dies but his community survives, then at least some of his genes, those residing in his closest family members, will be passed down to his nieces and nephews.
and
> If you belong to a boys’ group, your allies may not remember your birthday, but they know very well if you can run fast, hit well, respect rules, and make good decisions. They may be competitors, but when things get tough, they’re also the ones who will protect you and root for you, and maybe even die for you.
Different, but along the same line:
> [Fathers] know the mother of their children will almost always be there for the children. Of course, around the world, stealing another man’s wife or girlfriend is probably the number one cause of murder within a community [192], even in hunter-gatherer societies [22]. But a man doesn’t worry as much about this, as long as his wife can care for his children.
Foolishly, I persevered. In retrospect, I wish I had had the wisdom that my partner did---recognizing a lost cause when I was presented with one.
Fundamentally, there are three things wrong with this book: it is chocked full of factual errors, it is based on lots of extremely suspicious psychology research, and its central thesis depends firmly on group selection. We'll go through these in order.
## Bad Facts
There are lots of (often unimportant) claims in this book that are simply wrong. For example:
> The highly successful Japanese Pokemon card series presents another example, with cards with names such as Enraged Muka Muka, Infernal Incinerator, Creeping Doom Mantra, Malice Doll of Demise, Indomitable Fighter Lei Lei, Cyber Archfiend, Terrorking Salmon, Tribe-Infecting Virus, Nightmare’s Steelcage, Invitation to a Dark Sleep, Mad Sword Beast, Dark Driceratops, Gross Ghost of Fled Dreams, Pitch-Black Warwolf, and Dragon Zombie.
These don't sound like any Pokemon I've ever heard of. A little googling shows that these are in fact Yu-Gi-Oh cards. Or how about this one:
> Massively multiple online role-playing computer games, such as the hugely popular World of Warcraft, allow many players armed only with a computer to cooperate from around the world to hunt down and kill one another, team against team, in completely realistic contexts.
I think it's hard to call pretending to be an Orcish Death Knight a "completely realistic context."
On the topic of things that should have been caught by an editor, we have this gem:
> If another female requires a better territory, more food, or assistance fighting a competitor or predator, a high-status female can lend a helping hand, or mouth or foot.
Lending a mouth doesn't seem like the sort of thing that would help someone else get more food.
> A study in the US Midwest found that bullying followed a predictable pattern. High-status boys bullied low-status boys. In turn, low-status boys bullied high-status girls.
As a low-status boy in school, who was friends with a lot of other low-status boys, there wasn't any bullying of high-status girls. In fact, we were the ones being bullied by high-status girls. My female friends say they never saw any of this bullying of high-status girls either. Of course, this doesn't prove anything, but it certainly doesn't pass the sniff test.
Then there's lots of weird claims like this one:
> If another man is trying to compete, he generally does it in public. He openly bests his competitor, then helps himself to his competitor’s food—or his wife.
uhhhh.... that... doesn't seem to be... how competition works in any part of the world I've ever come across...
There is lots of crap stuff like this in the book. None of them really matter, but they do not lend credence to Benenson. If I can't trust her to spot that role-playing as an elf who must drink blood to strengthen his magic might not be realistic, or that men don't actually compete with their wives as collateral, then why should I trust anything else she has to say? Gell-mann amnesia can only take you so far, and we passed that exit a long time ago.
## Very Suspicious Science
There are lots of claims in this book that I highlighted thinking WTF. I didn't open up any of the citations, but a lot of the things referenced didn't seem to be relevant to the point at hand. I don't have any examples right now, unfortunately, and I'm too lazy to pull them up. But, in reading the titles, I also read the years, and almost all of the WTF-enough citations I cared to click on were from the 90s. I'd like to point out that the replication crisis came to our attention in the early 2010s, and it seems likely that it was precipitated by lots of bad research in the 90s.
It's hard to say here whether this is representative of all the citations in the book, or merely the most WTF ones. Nevertheless, here are some quotes from the book I took umbrage with, and my commentary on why.
> The ratio of young men (15–29 years) to older men (30+ years) in a country predicts quite accurately war-related fatalities. In their study of 88 countries from all over the world, Christian Mesquida and Neil Wiener [51] showed that as this ratio of young to older men increases, the number of fatalities during conflicts increases enormously.
I hope Benenson is misquoting the study here, because if not, she's saying "a country that has more young men has more causalities in war." This is presented as a knock-down argument for why men are more violent and "warrior-oriented" than women. Alas, as stated it forgets to account for the fact that if you have more young men, you can send more of them into war. If you have more people at war, more people are going to get shot at, and there will be more casualties than if you had fewer people at war.
This book has lots of examples of misunderstanding data and of ignoring obvious confounders. Like the following:
> Boys raised [in an Israeli orphanage] were more likely to participate in the riskiest and most violent aspects of military service. A full 54% of them volunteered for units with fighting requirements, whereas only 16% of boys raised with their own families did so. Boys raised [in an Israeli orphanage] also displayed the most valor in battle. It is no accident that these were boys who were raised with other boys and away from their mothers.
The claim here is that the presence of women makes men less violent. Maybe. Or maybe it's just that people without families or normal upbringings have less to live for, and valor is the obvious thing to strive for if you don't have many ties to safety or much in the way of prospects back in the civilian world.
There is more like this.
> In business and science, high-status women invest less than high-status men in lower-status same-sex individuals [181, 182, 4]. Recently, my colleagues and I asked young women and men how much money they would share with a less powerful same-sex ally with whom they had worked on a joint project. Women gave much less than men did.
Notice the sleight of hand here. They asked how much people would share; they didn't actually observe people sharing. But the conclusion is that women give much less than men do. Again, I haven't read the study, and maybe it fares better than its presentation here, but given the rest of the red flags in this book, I have no reason to expect it to.
Occasionally, the book gifts us a gem like this one:
> Unsurprisingly, men are more likely to get divorced when they have been married longer, whereas the opposite is true for women.
Unless Benenson is making unrelated commentary on homosexual marriage in the midst of her point, this claim is not even wrong. Men and women are married together, for the same amount of time, and therefore they get divorced after the same amount of marriage.
## Weird Stereotypical Sexism
I'm hesitant to use the word "boomer" immediately under a subheading of "weird stereotypes," but I'm going to do it anyway. This book has all sorts of weird stereotypes that I've never heard anyone actually espouse, except maybe in meme format on Facebook shared by embarrassing relatives. Things like:
> Probably almost every mother who has ever lived has screamed in her home and commanded, insulted, made fun of, and otherwise acted superior to her family members at times.
My mom didn't. Either this is a knock-down refutation, or Benenson isn't actually saying anything here and has a motte and bailey where she can always retreat to "at times."
A personal favorite of mine is Benenson's weird fixation on the fact that men are forgetful, irresponsible, and love SPORTS:
> Even where fathers take care of children, many are not certain how old their child is, what day their child was born, where to find their child’s doctor, or the name of their child’s teacher [14]. None of these fathers, however, has any memory problems when it comes to recalling the names, ages, and statistics of the players on their favorite sports team.
and
> A careful inspection shows that fathers can be distractible when it comes to children. While a father may dutifully push his baby’s carriage, his attention is easily distracted by a pretty girl walking by, deliberations with fellow fathers about last night’s baseball game, or a new business deal.
and
> Boys, regardless of whether they are educated, grow up to be men, who just don’t invest as much in their families. Often, men will choose to spend their money on alcohol and tobacco or leisure activities as much as on their families.
It's comical how meme-y these ideas are.
## Bonus Taylor Swift
Presented unironically:
> Jenny wasn’t really interested in a boyfriend, but she still like hanging out with the guys. Mostly she liked to play soccer and basketball with them after school. She liked to [wear jeans and T-shirts instead of make-up and miniskirts](https://youtu.be/VuNIsY6JdUw?t=37).
## Group Selection
Let's get down to brass tacks. While it's fun to dunk on this book, this is where the serious structural problems in the argument rear their ugly head. Paraphrasing the synopsis of the book in a few sentences:
> Men and women survive in life via different skills. These different skills are so in-grained that they are biological in nature.
>
> Women are responsible for raising children, and thus have evolved to take good care of themselves and others. This involves WORRYING A LOT.
>
> Men, on the other hand, are all about WAR and FIGHTING ENEMIES. They can impregnate lots of women with very little work, and therefore can dedicate the rest of their energy to fending off enemies for the good of the tribe.
Ignoring the fact that the conclusions don't stem from the premise (tending children is one more thing to worry about, and thus lowers your chance of survival, and fighting is necessarily bad for your health) there is a keen misunderstanding of evolution at play here.
In particular, the argument here that men are warriors because they can get someone pregnant and then lay down their lives for the good of the group is repeatedly hammered home throughout the book:
> A young man will sacrifice his life, most immediately for the other young men in his group who are standing right next to him in battle. That is what his emotions tell him [1, 17, 18]. That is what I believe allows his genes to survive. If he survives, his genes will be more likely to be passed down to his children. If he dies but his community survives, then at least some of his genes, those residing in his closest family members, will be passed down to his nieces and nephews.
and
> If you belong to a boys’ group, your allies may not remember your birthday, but they know very well if you can run fast, hit well, respect rules, and make good decisions. They may be competitors, but when things get tough, they’re also the ones who will protect you and root for you, and maybe even die for you.
Different, but along the same line:
> [Fathers] know the mother of their children will almost always be there for the children. Of course, around the world, stealing another man’s wife or girlfriend is probably the number one cause of murder within a community [192], even in hunter-gatherer societies [22]. But a man doesn’t worry as much about this, as long as his wife can care for his children.
May 23, 2020
I've never read a book where the title does such a good job summarizing the book as it's painfully repetitive. Joyce also manages this odd mix of well-researched and poorly-documented where she'll include around ten pages of studies at the end of each chapter but then inserts dozens of personal anecdotes per chapter muddying the waters of what's research and what's personal experience.
On a positive note she does a great job on not just examining the western experience and instead draw's her research from the world over with societies that are primitive to advanced. Often books that focus on human behavior will primarily examine a single culture and not get a proper read of the situation, but Joyce manages to make the extremes of human behavior known. It's an illuminating and depressing read with respect to infanticide, spousal murder, etc, however it's often those statistics that bear out our true nature--what do humans do when pushed to the brink?
On a positive note she does a great job on not just examining the western experience and instead draw's her research from the world over with societies that are primitive to advanced. Often books that focus on human behavior will primarily examine a single culture and not get a proper read of the situation, but Joyce manages to make the extremes of human behavior known. It's an illuminating and depressing read with respect to infanticide, spousal murder, etc, however it's often those statistics that bear out our true nature--what do humans do when pushed to the brink?
February 11, 2016
This book turns a well-held (and widely researched) belief completely on its head. In it, Professor Benenson courageously asserts a new notion: women are more competitive than men while men are more sociable than women. While not attempting to draw new battle lines between the sexes, instead, Benenson’s theories in ‘Warriors and Worriers’ suggest how the genders could begin easing any friction between their emotional behaviours.
Historically, the accepted academic interpretation of human evolution describes males travelling out into the wilderness alone to hunt for food while females are safely ensconced together around camp fires, gathering berries from bushes, awaiting his return. However, Benenson’s observations of survival experiences in Uganda, as well as three decades spent studying children and chimpanzees, offers new insight into how males and females think, emote and behave. By forming socially cooperative in-groups males keep out-groups out (warrior enemies) while, conversely, females attempt to protect their children and parents and compete for mates by rejecting other females (worrisome competition). Suggesting that gender behaviour evolves to prevent death.
Reflecting on the connection between Benenson’s research and today’s society, there appears an all-too familiar resonance to it. Could this explain why women can often experience the emotional ‘green-eyed-monster’ and possibly how men are often found in ‘packs’ in bars, on battlefields and around balls (of the sporting kind)? Initially, this concept seems hard to grasp, however, much of Benenson’s thorough research appears to confirm the claims made and it proves insightful reading for therapists counselling challenging couples.
Historically, the accepted academic interpretation of human evolution describes males travelling out into the wilderness alone to hunt for food while females are safely ensconced together around camp fires, gathering berries from bushes, awaiting his return. However, Benenson’s observations of survival experiences in Uganda, as well as three decades spent studying children and chimpanzees, offers new insight into how males and females think, emote and behave. By forming socially cooperative in-groups males keep out-groups out (warrior enemies) while, conversely, females attempt to protect their children and parents and compete for mates by rejecting other females (worrisome competition). Suggesting that gender behaviour evolves to prevent death.
Reflecting on the connection between Benenson’s research and today’s society, there appears an all-too familiar resonance to it. Could this explain why women can often experience the emotional ‘green-eyed-monster’ and possibly how men are often found in ‘packs’ in bars, on battlefields and around balls (of the sporting kind)? Initially, this concept seems hard to grasp, however, much of Benenson’s thorough research appears to confirm the claims made and it proves insightful reading for therapists counselling challenging couples.
June 25, 2023
I think it's fascinating to view human behaviors through an evolutionary lens, and the basic skeleton of this book is interesting, and helpful in understanding tendencies and predispositions that we see between males and females.
However, this is one lens through which to view human behavior. Benenson, throughout her book, views behavior exclusively through this lens, which is so frustrating, reductive and limiting. She describes a lot of stereotypical behavior as if it is how all humans behave, when in fact that is so much more variance, which she neglects to engage with. She also cherry-picks when she dismisses modern changes as "only very recent and non-relevant" vs "examples of her arguments with a modern flavor."
Yes, natural selection is influencing us, but so are so many other influences. For example, she discards the idea that high emotional connection between mother and child is the idea parenting because evolutionarily, there was no use for it. While it makes sense that historically it hasn't been relevant, evolution is based strictly on safety and survival. As modern society decreases mortality risks, it would make sense that other influences, like our emotional needs, might increase in their influence and importance. But she just disregards it. Then, later in the chapter, when trying to explain the stereotypical female competition for male attention, she claims that men substitute as an authority figure for women to secure, since family members don't live near each other as much in modern life. Well that reality has been around for maybe 100 years. So why keep that example but not adjust for the first one?
Again, the fundamental exploration of our behaviors viewed through an evolutionary lens is fascinating. But Benenson's explanations (which are inference at best) are declared as truths, there is zero exploration of how this evolutionary lens might engage with others, and so the read is left completely alone to draw any real connect to themselves because Benenson is off trying to force her agenda the whole book.
Wish I'd read the spark notes.
However, this is one lens through which to view human behavior. Benenson, throughout her book, views behavior exclusively through this lens, which is so frustrating, reductive and limiting. She describes a lot of stereotypical behavior as if it is how all humans behave, when in fact that is so much more variance, which she neglects to engage with. She also cherry-picks when she dismisses modern changes as "only very recent and non-relevant" vs "examples of her arguments with a modern flavor."
Yes, natural selection is influencing us, but so are so many other influences. For example, she discards the idea that high emotional connection between mother and child is the idea parenting because evolutionarily, there was no use for it. While it makes sense that historically it hasn't been relevant, evolution is based strictly on safety and survival. As modern society decreases mortality risks, it would make sense that other influences, like our emotional needs, might increase in their influence and importance. But she just disregards it. Then, later in the chapter, when trying to explain the stereotypical female competition for male attention, she claims that men substitute as an authority figure for women to secure, since family members don't live near each other as much in modern life. Well that reality has been around for maybe 100 years. So why keep that example but not adjust for the first one?
Again, the fundamental exploration of our behaviors viewed through an evolutionary lens is fascinating. But Benenson's explanations (which are inference at best) are declared as truths, there is zero exploration of how this evolutionary lens might engage with others, and so the read is left completely alone to draw any real connect to themselves because Benenson is off trying to force her agenda the whole book.
Wish I'd read the spark notes.
September 29, 2023
A must-read book packed with a multitude of experimental findings and compelling evidence that emphasize the undeniable fact that diverse gender tendencies persist, in spite of the prevailing misconception (or the denial of human nature) that they are merely products of societal pressure.
Joyce's fundamental premise suggests that masculine qualities often center around accomplishing tasks, engaging in conflict with adversaries, and safeguarding the community, while feminine traits are primarily concerned with self-preservation and nurturing children (or vulnerable individuals in general). Men tend to form large cooperative groups more swiftly; however, they exhibit less interest in others' narratives compared to women. Men also place less emphasis on the amiability of their peers, instead focusing on the abilities of their male friends. Conversely, women typically prioritize the quality of "niceness" in their female friendships. For them, friendship primarily hinges on openly sharing vulnerabilities and maintaining a sense of equality. Women tend to be more sociable than men, displaying a greater inclination to establish eye contact, excel in interpreting facial expressions, and readily express warmth by smiling and showing concern for vulnerable individuals and are more willing to share their problems with others. In contrast, men are often more focused on accomplishing tasks, dedicating more time to individual assignments than their teammates, and displaying a greater readiness to quickly resolve conflicts with male friends. They also tend to be more inclined to conceal their fears and vulnerabilities.
Lastly, I believe the results of a study in Switzerland clearly demonstrate an important psychological difference between men and women:
“Women seek help—men die.” This conclusion was drawn from a study of suicide prevention in Switzerland (Angst and Ernst, 1990): 75% of those who sought professional help in an institution for suicide prevention were female, and 75% of those who committed suicide in the same year were male. (Möller-Leimkühler, 2002, p. 3) (p. 240)
Joyce's fundamental premise suggests that masculine qualities often center around accomplishing tasks, engaging in conflict with adversaries, and safeguarding the community, while feminine traits are primarily concerned with self-preservation and nurturing children (or vulnerable individuals in general). Men tend to form large cooperative groups more swiftly; however, they exhibit less interest in others' narratives compared to women. Men also place less emphasis on the amiability of their peers, instead focusing on the abilities of their male friends. Conversely, women typically prioritize the quality of "niceness" in their female friendships. For them, friendship primarily hinges on openly sharing vulnerabilities and maintaining a sense of equality. Women tend to be more sociable than men, displaying a greater inclination to establish eye contact, excel in interpreting facial expressions, and readily express warmth by smiling and showing concern for vulnerable individuals and are more willing to share their problems with others. In contrast, men are often more focused on accomplishing tasks, dedicating more time to individual assignments than their teammates, and displaying a greater readiness to quickly resolve conflicts with male friends. They also tend to be more inclined to conceal their fears and vulnerabilities.
Lastly, I believe the results of a study in Switzerland clearly demonstrate an important psychological difference between men and women:
“Women seek help—men die.” This conclusion was drawn from a study of suicide prevention in Switzerland (Angst and Ernst, 1990): 75% of those who sought professional help in an institution for suicide prevention were female, and 75% of those who committed suicide in the same year were male. (Möller-Leimkühler, 2002, p. 3) (p. 240)
April 24, 2020
I listened to this book on Audible. I really appreciated the insights provided into part 2: Girls. Maybe this is because - as a guy- I generally found part 1: Boys (surprise, surprise?) SO spot on it was like it was reading a little out of my own story and experiences. So it’s like I didn’t learn much; just more self aware.
What fascinated me about the book was it’s ability to be general enough to apply to “everyone”, yet I’m sure specific enough to be able to still offer insight into many people’s lives. It’s not self help, though taken in the right mood and Lens, it provides morsels of goodness, and justification why people do the things they do and how to U N D E R S T A N D ourselves and eachother. Many times we do things from innate Urges and conditioning and often over and over again throughout our lives.
As an audio book, the narrator’s voice was frustratingly boring, with very little inflection. Also, there are detailed long lists where each line is read out. Totally not necessary.
Lastly, there was fantastic amounts of repetition. The author kept referring to the same 2-5 main actors in guy’s or girl’s priority areas, and gosh it got predictable and dull to have a point repeated over and over. “Men prioritise groups, sexual partners and passing on DNA whereas women prioritise men with resources, 1:1 relationships with non-threatening other women who will not steal or compete, protecting their children and their single, monogamous relationship with a man”. We get it!!!
I do think it’s worth the read though, and is the kind of book I found myself thinking about later...”I wish I’d read this sooner”...🤔
What fascinated me about the book was it’s ability to be general enough to apply to “everyone”, yet I’m sure specific enough to be able to still offer insight into many people’s lives. It’s not self help, though taken in the right mood and Lens, it provides morsels of goodness, and justification why people do the things they do and how to U N D E R S T A N D ourselves and eachother. Many times we do things from innate Urges and conditioning and often over and over again throughout our lives.
As an audio book, the narrator’s voice was frustratingly boring, with very little inflection. Also, there are detailed long lists where each line is read out. Totally not necessary.
Lastly, there was fantastic amounts of repetition. The author kept referring to the same 2-5 main actors in guy’s or girl’s priority areas, and gosh it got predictable and dull to have a point repeated over and over. “Men prioritise groups, sexual partners and passing on DNA whereas women prioritise men with resources, 1:1 relationships with non-threatening other women who will not steal or compete, protecting their children and their single, monogamous relationship with a man”. We get it!!!
I do think it’s worth the read though, and is the kind of book I found myself thinking about later...”I wish I’d read this sooner”...🤔
March 24, 2023
After reading this book and finding in it answers on why I have been treated the way I've been treated by other females, this shows me that what I’ve been experiencing with women is universal and not about me. In this case the real threat is the forced erasure and denial of sex differences since the industrial revolution and even stronger denial of the sex differences nowadays because of feminism and “woke”-agenda.
Women's mental health and career suffer a lot because of female teachers, female bosses and female authority figures. All the suffering because of the ignorance of the crucial biology of females that is mentioned in this book, which is being ignored and denied mostly by western-oriented societies.
This book also explains why feminism is based on illusion. The way the female brain works on following rules and decision making, it's most likely not a good idea for females to be allowed to vote.
I totally disagree on the reasoning why men view homosexuality negatively: Men and people generally dislike homosexuality because according to human nature it's abnormal the way and the place of the body homosexual “sex” performed on. This is why psychiatrists who still not buy into politically driven normalization of homosexuality state that homosexuality is a “sexual targeting error”. “Homosexuality and pedophilia are both “sexual targeting errors”: from an evolutionary point of view, our genes get passed down through couplings with sexually mature opposite-sex partners, and our instincts probably evolved to promote this.”
Women's mental health and career suffer a lot because of female teachers, female bosses and female authority figures. All the suffering because of the ignorance of the crucial biology of females that is mentioned in this book, which is being ignored and denied mostly by western-oriented societies.
This book also explains why feminism is based on illusion. The way the female brain works on following rules and decision making, it's most likely not a good idea for females to be allowed to vote.
I totally disagree on the reasoning why men view homosexuality negatively: Men and people generally dislike homosexuality because according to human nature it's abnormal the way and the place of the body homosexual “sex” performed on. This is why psychiatrists who still not buy into politically driven normalization of homosexuality state that homosexuality is a “sexual targeting error”. “Homosexuality and pedophilia are both “sexual targeting errors”: from an evolutionary point of view, our genes get passed down through couplings with sexually mature opposite-sex partners, and our instincts probably evolved to promote this.”
August 15, 2020
I couldn't stop reading this book. This model of explanation for the genders is extremely useful for understanding male & female behaviour. I experienced myself being mindblown often while reading this book. If you are interested in understanding the two genders in all stages of life, then read this book! I made an account here only to write a review :)
As an engineer, I always wondered about why men & women do what they do - so I have read a lot about personality psychology, biology, neurology and endocrinology. To some degree, these fields explain human nature - however, they do not properly serve well as a model for understanding the genders. To me, this book served as an excellent compliment to these fields - most of the content makes a lot of sense and successfully explain why many life occurences in my life, my girlfriend's, my father's, my brother's, my mother's and my sister's life played out and their cause. It's not a bible however, but combined with knowledge in other areas, it is mindblowing. I felt like an additional 30% of content was added to the book by my memories and general life experiences.
The only downside to this book is that it is a bit repetitive. Perhaps more parallells could be drawn or more examples could have been provided instead of repeating certain parts.
Lastly, I made at least 150 notes from this book as I found I want to elaborate those parts for myself and my understanding.
As an engineer, I always wondered about why men & women do what they do - so I have read a lot about personality psychology, biology, neurology and endocrinology. To some degree, these fields explain human nature - however, they do not properly serve well as a model for understanding the genders. To me, this book served as an excellent compliment to these fields - most of the content makes a lot of sense and successfully explain why many life occurences in my life, my girlfriend's, my father's, my brother's, my mother's and my sister's life played out and their cause. It's not a bible however, but combined with knowledge in other areas, it is mindblowing. I felt like an additional 30% of content was added to the book by my memories and general life experiences.
The only downside to this book is that it is a bit repetitive. Perhaps more parallells could be drawn or more examples could have been provided instead of repeating certain parts.
Lastly, I made at least 150 notes from this book as I found I want to elaborate those parts for myself and my understanding.
February 13, 2023
I came across this book after listening to the author speak about sex differences on a Podcast. After reading the book, I find the author’s work to be very interesting, although I do share some concerns about at least one of the things she mentioned, specifically that of the pay gap, the overwhelming majority of the book provides information, insights, and facts that at the very least can make you understand that there are differences between the sexes.
This is an important topic, yet much ignored, that can only help us understand each other. Not only we can learn how to make classrooms better, but understand that, from a man’s perspective, the suffering of a female is not an issue not be solved as a car may need fixing, but to be, at the very least, understood. Why women are on average more anxious, and how and why it impacts their lives.
This may not be a mandatory read, but it is nevertheless a good read.
This is an important topic, yet much ignored, that can only help us understand each other. Not only we can learn how to make classrooms better, but understand that, from a man’s perspective, the suffering of a female is not an issue not be solved as a car may need fixing, but to be, at the very least, understood. Why women are on average more anxious, and how and why it impacts their lives.
This may not be a mandatory read, but it is nevertheless a good read.
January 19, 2023
This was a fascinating read about the genetic differences in male and female social development. Rich in evidence and elegantly organized, this book that challenged my assumptions about how I responded to my social environment growing up. It also helped me understand the differing motivations of men and women.
April 9, 2023
Perhaps more notable in 2014, the book reiterates much of Pinker's viewpoints and gives reasonable explanations of incentive structures. Does not attempt to make any predictions or offer any modern cultural commentary, but the author is clear with her anecdotes and evidence. Most interesting sections were on female-female interaction, which the author provided solid explanations about.
November 8, 2021
This was on my wish list for a long, long time and I finally got it a couple of months ago. I quite enjoyed it. I didn't read anything I didn't know already in this one, but it was still good to do a recap.
January 3, 2017
Extremely interesting, I I'd expect very controversial also.
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