Some would chide you for such talk

But I believe it is a concept whose time has come

Certainly testosterone has been shown to increase aggression, so there must be at least some truth to the idea that men are biologically programmed to be more aggressive.

OTOH the thing about violence is that it overwhelms other sorts of interaction: if someone is acting violently towards you there are not many choices. You can fight back, you can give in to their demands, you can run away, or you can be killed. It is an obvious fact that violence is the basis of social hierarchy and has been a determining factor in the course of human history.

So, a slightly different way to look at the situation is this:

Our cultures all place a very high value on violence because it is among the most necessary behaviors for basic survival. For most of human history violence was carried out bodily; before our modern technology women thus could not compete in combat.

What I think is really important is that even though men may be on average more aggressive, our violent cultures promote and reward violence, encouraging men (historically the best suited to carry out violence) to emphasize strength and ignore anything that could be seen as weakness.

With this in mind we see that kindness and nurturing are not primarily female characteristics, they are only seen that way because for logistical reasons women have been left to tend the home while men are off fighting, and because the repetition of that scenario has led to strong traditions we call "patriarchy" and "gender roles."

What we need then is to recognize that in the modern world we do not need half of our population to be hyper aggressive, any more than we need to keep women in the kitchen "barefoot and pregnant." Instead we need to relax or even abolish or gender stereotypes, allowing those women who wish to pursue a certain goal to behave as aggressively as men often do, and allowing men who wish to live quieter, kinder lives the same respect as their female counterparts.

In other words, this OP presumes that the gender norms we have all grown up with are natural, while I believe they are mostly socially constructed. Certainly there is plenty of room to debate that point, but I hesitate to believe that the change we need can be described as a more feminine society, because that seems to still leave little room for sensitive and thoughtful men such as myself.

Does my less aggressive personality, my tendency to cry at sad movies or tragic news stories, my desire to cooperate more than compete, make me less of a man? I don't think so, but this post seems to imply that, and so I must critique your thinking, which IMO makes a lot of unjustified assumptions.

How about we just respect everybody who is not overly aggressive? That leaves room for women and men to live as they choose, as long as they are not harming or oppressing others.

ie men stay masculine, and women stay feminine.

Why, cause he/she implies it's biological.

I just didn't want that point to get lost.

ps otherwise I pretty much can find common ground with your post.

You have still given men an advantage by stating: Certainly testosterone has been shown to increase aggression, so there must be at least some truth to the idea that men are biologically programmed to be more aggressive.
This might be why women through history have been regulated to second class. It's a problem for women and causes low self esteem and all sorts of not as good as complexes. What is it biologically that should give rise to complete equal respect for the female? If we are not the more prone to aggression ones then what are we more of then males?
Believe me when it comes to the protection of a child a female would rip your head off, just saying
I just keep thinking about a yen yang nature explanation but I am searching for the value that femininity brings that societies have undervalued through the ages?

why men and women do not share equal control and power and are not equal in numbers in every profession. I can understand why women stay with the young children since they are the food source. I think this might be where the divides began so its a good place to start in figuring out why women are second in the status pole throughout historical and present day societies.

answers the question. form the time a girl is born, on. and from the time a boys is born, and on. step by step, we individual and collectively teach genders the role they are to play and assume in society.

boys and girls? What factors caused certain roles to go to certain sexes? I still think it might be the value we place on male traits above female traits. Our capitalistic money system devalues females as commodities because they can't be as productive at all times. Since the bottom line is acquiring stuff and power in that type of money system male traits are elevated to the top. Female strengths and contributions to society are ignored because they don't support wealth and power over community. If we could teach men and women to value what each brings to the table we would have more cooperation and more just societies. We have to stop valuing each sex for their abilities to be good commodities and big producers as if that is the only thing that matters.

and today, with the changes society has gone thru over the last 4 decades i would argue that women cannot be as productive. roles are changing. women are no longer required to spend the time in care giving. it is shifting to both father, and choice to not have children, not to mention other options.

i will agree on what you are saying about our goal shifting. this has been around for a long time. it is old and tired. it is still also how we create our societies within our culture. i absolutely agree that it is in what as individuals we teach our children, the examples we give, and society as a whole. that absolutely includes our media. and what is fed in the roles we play. a very dominate voice reinforcing a womans worth in only what she provides for man in comfort and entertainment.

Women are entering law, veterinary and medical schools at greater rates than men. And just how many men do you see on the nightly local news compared with just a few years ago? Women control over 60% of the nation's wealth and are seen a lot in boardrooms, although not as much in executive suites. So far.

There are areas, like engineering and auto mechanics, were women are underrepresented, but those are changing, too.

A large part of the key has been the years necessary for child rearing, but now women have more choices in family planning.

i like it.

And often you in wild animal kingdom you can see the female needing to feed the youngsters, often being more aggressive when the parenting is not shared. Studies proving this only make common sense. Motives and circumstances would seem to me to be the much more influential part of the effect. Testosterone is a vastly overrated hormone

We have to remember that for the first million or so years of human and proto-human existence women were tied up being pregnant for 9 months and then spent a few more years nursing and otherwise taking care of a small child, often while pregnant with the next one. This didn't give them much opportunity to help with the hunt or defense, and they most likely evolved their own nurturing, mate selection, etc. instincts while the men evolved to be better at hunting and war.

There's only that small 5,000 years or so of recorded history of modern humans, and little in that changes until a couple of hundred years or so ago when technology and medicine made enormous changes possible. Centuries may sound like a lot, but that's not much time for complex species like ours to develop to the next step.

Seems like we've come a long way, though, and I'm curious what the future will bring.

financial freedoms and independence. hence, my reasoning that dna tells us so, suggests it is not so much biological, but social construct.

reducing the biological excuses for the social construct.

advocating a less aggressive society. We can benefit from less violence and more productive relationships. However, on one point - allowing women to behave aggressively as men have - I disagree. Allowing women to create as much mayhem and destruction as men have is a mistake. The aggressive tendencies in both genders should not be encouraged or rewarded. Men should not be honored for aggression and women should not be encouraged to reward aggressive men with selection. Some still are sold the idea that they need big, physical and aggressive Alpha man to complement them for protection. But protection from whom? Other big, physical, aggressive and violent men. By doing so they are reinforcing and propagating the same genes that oppress them in the next generation of men. This idea that aggressive men are still needed by society is the problem. To be sure, men have a great responsibility in respecting women but a lot women can help by getting over their squeamishness at selecting men less invested in the importance of their own physical dominance over their intellectual prowess.

individuals. and i do not see aggressive as always a bad thing, nor only violence. i am the most passive of people there is and i am highly aggressive. i didnt realize until a decade ago. but i had been told by a very timid woman. so timid, i worked hard to tamp down my tendency just cause i knew in how i was, it intimidated her. everyone in my family is aggressive. not every one of us are violent or physical. aggressive gets the work done. it does not have to be a negative trait.

I think it is cultural. Biologically both men and women can go either way and our culture can push us one way or the other depending on its values and priorities.

I recall us discussing aggression from opposite perspectives before and I don't expect either of us to sway. As I probably said then, there are certainly circumstances where I can appreciate and understand the use of assertiveness, especially in the face of bullies. It is not being exercised in a vacuum, after all. You wouldn't feel the necessity for aggressive assertiveness if you didn't expect to confront it from the culture around you. And that's why I tend to conclude it's cultural. Aggression tends to "get the work done", in my mind, because the current culture doesn't always offer other ways of getting it done. If we lived in a hunter-gatherer society there might be less need for aggression within the group because everyone would, more or less, be on the same page ... to not be would risk the survival of the group and its individual members..

Sorry for the late reply. Just got in from spending time with family. Hope you had a great Holiday in whatever capacity you celebrate.

effected me the same way, to warrant a reply. i think that is kinda cool

i have a blast. i had family i had not seen in a while. just lovely.

and back atcha.

thanks

all women didn't live in patriarchal societies. There have been matriarchal societies in history.

We can live as we choose, there is no hard wiring that says we have to live a certain way and assign certain things to certain sexes. History shows that we can change it.

Without the cooperation of both sexes we are left with the conclusion that males are violent conquering brutes that have drug females along behind them to build shopping malls full of home decorating accessories. We are, as a species, significantly less violent that at any time in human history. So if we want to assert that women have no power in the development of our peaceful modern culture, we have to give the credit to the men, which is equally absurd.

Men and women, courtesy of evolution and genetics, have the potential to respond to changes in their environment. Neither men or women are programmed by their DNA to do anything. Both sexes have opposable thumbs and the ability to cooperate in a variety of ways to survive and develop new and creative ways to exploit the environment for important stuff like cut pile carpeting and bass boats.

They were destroyed by competitive societies. I think Darwin did not do us favors by the survival of the fittest routine because survival is more guaranteed by cooperation. Cooperation requires compassion and if we can learn to think outside ourselves, then we can learn compassion for both ourselves and for others.

new societies we can and will create out of necessity and limited resources. More cooperation will definitely be required.

small babies are helping to teach compassion in young children. It may take the dying out of our generation for the new to come in, unless we begin learning and practicing compassion now. today. there's no time to lose.

This expression is often attributed to Charles Darwin and, although it appears in the fifth edition of his Origin of Species, 1869, it is there attributed to Herbert Spencer:

"The expression often used by Mr. Herbert Spencer of the survival of the fittest is more accurate..."

Spencer had published The principles of biology in 1864. In that he referred to 'survival of the fittest' twice:

"This survival of the fittest, implies multiplication of the fittest."
"This survival of the fittest... is that which Mr. Darwin has called 'natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life'."

By 'fittest', of course, Spencer and Darwin didn't have in mind the commonly used meaning of the word now, that is, the most highly trained and physically energetic. The 'fittest' referred to here are those animals which are the most suited to their environment, that is, those which are best fitted to survive.