Relations Between the Sexes

A rather bleak look at the nature and history of intergender relationships through the prism of modern science (and my own careful observation)

This might not be the most pleasant or edifying piece I have written on this site, but the truth deserves to be told, even if it is sometimes a bit unsightly. In this case I am talking about the conclusions that the modern scientific paradigm — which is based on Darwinian natural selection and a vast body of genetic, behavioral, physiological, and paleontological research — allows us to make about the history of relations between the sexes. I have done a lot of reading on these topics over the years, but I haven't taken the time here to hunt down references for the studies I mention (I would make proper citations, of course, if I were publishing this in a journal).

Introduction

Gender differences and intergender relationship dynamics trace back to around 4 billion years ago with the advent of sexual differentiation. Today, a binary male-female gender division exists across most of the animal world (with a few exceptions).

No matter what the species, mating involves an exchange of DNA between two organisms with the subsequent development of new offspring within the body of one of them. This means that one set of organisms takes on the role of impregnator and the other takes on the role of bearer of offspring. Due to the nature of their roles, impregnators invest much fewer resources in producing offspring than their mates who bear offspring. In addition, it is possible for male impregnators to impregnate multiple females in a short period of time, while females are removed from the mating game during their term of gestation and subsequent recovery. This is true for all animal species and dictates certain commonalities between males and females of all species.

One of these commonalities is greater female conservatism compared to males. Females bodies must be equipped to provide biological resources for their offspring over the gestation period (and often much longer), and their behavior must keep the risk of harm to their offspring as low as possible. Males, on the other hand, only have to make a seconds-long effort to impregnate a female in order to pass on their genes successfully. Depending on the species, males may or may not take on other duties in raising offspring, but the pattern always remains the same: the survival of offspring always depends more on the female's health and behavior than the male's.

All across the animal world, it is "dispensible" males who have to compete for the right to reproduce with "scarce" females.

It matters less what their behavior and body is like the rest of the time.

Males' bodies and behavior put them at greater risk of injury and death, because to pass on their genes they only need to impregnate

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