I’ve been curious for many years as to what drives the wealthy to continue to amass money through capitalism and acquisition. It seemed to me that once a person no longer needs to struggle to have enough money to support himself or herself and provide for their family’s needs long term, the drive to grind it out for more and more would diminish and they could sit back, enjoy their lives and entertain other pursuits such as fine arts, games, travel, and all the things that people in the working classes day-dream about when buying lottery tickets.
It doesn’t seem to work that way. The money numbers must climb, and they must continue the pursuit according to their internal drives. When Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer were in charge of Microsoft, enough was never enough for them. Creating new products and high demand didn’t grow the company fast enough, so they either bought out rival companies or monopolized the market for essential products in order to keep the inflow of increasing money growing. A flood into their accounts wasn’t enough, it needed to be a torrent, wiping out Netscape, or other competitors whose names only the nerds recall.
It’s not much of a revelation to notice that wealth is a means of access to personal power. People do your bidding when you control their paycheck, or when they are trying to get a piece of your money. You can make them do things that they wouldn’t ordinarily do when you have the power of the purse over them. While it’s difficult for science to research the evolution of the power motive as a social driver, we can speculate wildly.1
Powerful individuals tend to have access to more reproductive opportunities within their population than less powerful. This is observable in many species of animals. The bighorn sheep aren’t battering each other for fun, they want to get laid and the ram who refuses to back down even though he has a thundering headache will end up getting access to the ewes who are watching and swooning over the boys who fight to fuck them.2
In human societies there are many examples of patriarchal societies, meaning nearly all, where men who have the most power will get the most sex. This can explain how, even indirectly, men who have power pass on traits to their children, both genetically and through example and teaching, a drive to amass more power. Because men can reproduce much more frequently than women, males dictate the terms of reproduction, and social mores are created both organically and deliberately to maintain this power.3 The power is used for much more than just reproduction, and men have asserted power over women for thousands of years. We benefit from limiting women’s social access to power for several reasons.
Men have grown accustomed to having many of our daily needs taken care of for us. Women’s place is traditionally in the home, and the standard duties of cooking and cleaning and maintaining the shelter have been tasked to women. It suits men, so we want to keep it this way.
Women are additional competition in our drive towards social power. Restricting women’s access to power is beneficial because it reduces barriers to achievement of the power that is the constant carrot in our striving for success. Historically, one way of keeping women out of our way was to design public buildings of commerce with only restrooms for men. Women would find that even if they were allowed inside, that eventually they would need to return home in order to relieve their bladders and rectums in privacy. A full business day with no restrooms was not possible, and women had to fight to remove that “urinary leash.” 4
Subconciously, or deliberately, men limited women from public life during menstruation. There are these “menstruation huts” that women must live in even still in some places while they are having their periods. During those days when they are “unclean” women have no access to social lives, except for plotting with other menstrual women how to get rid of the men who enforce that rule. Buck up, fellas, it’s a dumb rule and women can see through your scheming.
The threat of rape and other forms of sexual violence, catcalling, male gazing, and attempts to make women and girls uncomfortable about their bodies in the presence of men are all functions of men’s maintentance of power over women. Women who tempt fate by going out to bars, or wearing revealing clothing, or even just being in public and covered up from head to toe, are blamed for their own rapes. What do the police tell women if a serial rapist or murderer is on the loose? Stay home, Stay safe.
Men’s Rights Activism is a movement that grew out of male realization that feminism is a threat to male power or hegemony over women. I think that in order to civilize ourselves, humanity needs to break through the limitations that hold us back and one of those limitations is restricting the roles of women to gender-specific functions. It’s vital for population control, because as women have more opportunities they tend to have fewer children. It’s vital for inventive solutions to social problems. We need to have women in our power structure as a society if we want to survive as a species through the threat that is climate change. 5
The astonishing speed of social structures giving way to trans ID males tells us that males continue to drive social structures. The social stigma of being “transphobic” is more powerful than the stigma against being either sexist or homophobic. The declaration that feminism needs to focus on transwomen (ALL women) is a sign that Men’s Rights Activists have found a way to push back on many of the advances that women have made in climbing towards the power structure. Instead of being vilified for their views by most of society, they are now saluted when they come out in strong defense of “transwomen.”
If one looks at transgender ideology as a through a lens of male maintenance of power so that their own personal drive for power, whether it’s an evolutionary driver or not, this all starts to make more sense. Further, the hatred of radical feminists, and the continual attempts to silence them also takes on a new focus.
Power doesn’t rust.
Wild speculation is the source for both conspiracy theories, and valid hypothesis for testing. It’s just the start and should never be taken as evidence-based proof of anything. Science is a tool, not to be used to bludgeon thought but to develop it.
This is not a universal reproductive success strategy. Some males spend a lot of time preening themselves to make themselves prettier than the other boys and it gets the girls.
Humans are structurally dimorphic, with men holding a bimodal advantage over women in phsyical strenght. Anthropologists are sorting which came first - physical or social power. Perhaps they evolved together. Males aren’t universally bimodally stronger than females in animals, so it’s possible that social structure is a driver. More research needed.
This is an important consideration in the drive for trans ID males when they say they “just want to pee.”
Racism and sexism are ultimately destructive to a society because it limits mental resources to those already in the privileged power structure. And they haven’t done a great job so far of avoiding age-old problems such as war, disease, exploitation and poverty. I’m not saying that women would do better than men, but it’s worth opening up the floor to more people.
This about sums it up. Well done.