Understanding Men and Women

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So I’ve been all into studying evolutionary psychology lately and some of it’s different points of view. My mind is like a sponge soaking it all in. I’m convinced now that it really could lead to an overall better understanding of why we humans do what we do. So I’ve decided to take a stab at explaining some of it here. Understand that these ARN’T really my opinions or points of view. I’m just taking a slice of some things and showing it here in a fashion molded to this particular subject. Writing it in my own words.

Understanding men and women and their primary motives:

Girls always say guys think with their dicks. They’re not wrong. They’re only wrong in assuming that somehow that is inferior to the way that they themselves as women think. But to understand why guys think this way, you also have to understand a mans motivation. Human beings haven’t changed greatly in the last 10,000 years. Our society, our library of knowledge and our standard have evolved, but our brains haven’t changed all that much. Evolution takes a long time, so any changes are gradual and take many generations and environmental changes. What this means is that although we may understand high concepts, we don’t understand and accept them fully and completely. Our bodies (including our brains) are still programmed for life as hunters and gatherers. Which is how we existed for hundreds of thousands of years.

It’s only been in the last 10,000 years or so that we’ve really started to change. We discovered farming and reading and writing and our technology evolved. Over time our social standards and concepts about how we should live have also evolved and continue to evolve.

It’s important we understand this. Because it helps us understand our motivation and why people react certain ways to certain things. So lets take a step back in time and look at humanity 10,000+ years ago.

We used to live in a time where food was not always a certainty. Whether we ate well that day or not was dependent on whether there was food to pick or animals we could kill.

Most animals have some type of trait that allows them to survive and defend themselves. Whether that be their ability to run quickly, big teeth or big tusks to defend themselves or their size as an advantage. Humans beings aren’t the fastest, strongest, biggest or smallest. We don’t have large teeth and we don’t have incredible sight, smell or hearing. What we do have is a big brain and an opposable thumb. With these two advantages we are able to create weapons for hunting and defending ourselves. As well as everything else we have created since.

Like all animals our primary goal here on this planet seems to be to survive long enough to procreate. Honestly if you’re looking for a meaning of life, that’s pretty much it in a nutshell. The reason why, that’s it is a much larger question for another blog entry altogether. That begins to wander into the religious. But even Christians know that God’s initial directive to man was “Go forth and multiply.”

So know that we understand that our primary goal here is procreation and the goal of surviving long enough to do it, lets look at how we go about it.

A mans primary role is to provide and protect. This means going out and finding food either by picking it off of trees and bushes, fishing or hunting for prey.  Because of this the male physical body was built for hunting and gathering. Stronger, larger muscles are provided to run faster, deliver killing blows. A man also has grows more body hair because he is exposed to the elements more. His facial and body hair are used for protection.

The role of the female is to carry and care for the child(ren). As a result females are built with wider hips for birthing children. This wider hips also store extra nutrients for when food supplies are low and she is pregnant with child. As a bonus these wider hips also help her to carry the child by offloading some of the childs weight from her arms to her hip. A females breasts are used for nursing. Because of the fact that female need to provide nutrients to the child when pregnant, her body has more fat than a mans. But she counters this by having smaller muscles that require less protein, a smaller brain and usually a shorter average height.

A female is not built for hunting. Her breasts and smaller muscles make it more difficult for running and delivering killer blows to her prey. As such men and women compliment each other. As the purpose of one is the carry and raise the child and the purpose of the other is to provide and protect for the mother and child.

Men protect women for a couple of reasons. Instictually men know that women are physically less capable of hunting and defending. Especially when pregnant. A females facial features also tend to be softer to make them look more child-like so that men will care for them. They lack facial hair as a result of this, so they can appear younger and more child-like to men. But the lack of facial hair also plays a role in expressing themselves to infants. Infants react to facial features and when that face is covered in hair it is harder to see those features.

As it is the female that carries the child, it is also the female that tends to most identify with that child, having had it inside of her for 9 months. A woman knows the child is hers. It is unquestionable. However for a man, there is always a question. If his female was penetrated by another man there is a possibility that the child may not be his. The mans purpose, like the womans purpose, is to pass along his genetics by way of offspring. A man prefers to provide and protect his own offspring over that of another mans. As a result a mans jealousy toward a woman has to do with her unfaithfulness. Even in the modern day when a guy finds out his girlfriend has been hanging out with another guy his first question is “did you sleep with him?” Looking back through history you can see that this motivation is also the same reason that women have been treated as objects and were not granted the same rights in most societies that men were given. The mans primal role is to protect her from prey, that includes other men.
It’s his role to make sure her offspring are his and only his.

In contrast because women know their child is their own, females didn’t develop jealousy in the same way. For a female in the primal world, her role was to make sure her and her children were being provided for. If she felt that another women was gaining her males attention she would become jealous as a result of fear that he would stop providing and protecting her and her offspring and instead focus his resources on the other woman. As a result females feared a males emotional unfaithfulness more then his physical unfaithfulness. Which is the reason that women ask the question “do you love her?”

For a female, she is capable to carrying one child from one man at a time. Unless of course they are twins or such. But even if this is the case, they come from the same man. Because a female takes nine to ten months grow a child inside of her, the amount of possible children she is capable of having in her lifetime is limited. This makes each and every child very special to her. As a result, females tend to be more guarded about who they select to have a child with. It is a larger investment for a females and she wants to make sure she is making the right choice. She also wants to make sure that the man she selects will stick around and help provide and protect her and her offspring. At it’s core this is the reason why females, although they higher enjoy sex, have a tendency to be more reserved about sex then males are. This is also why females don’t feel the need to be with a lot of men sexually, or multiple men at the same time or for that matter view pornography in the same way men do. Their primary sexual motivations are not the same as they can only be pregnant from one man at a time and generally prefer to be pregnant from the same man so as not to complicate things.

Men on the other hand have less at stake in the primal world. Their sperm is nearly limitless and even into their older age they are capable of  impregnating women. Because an mans sperm is nearly limitless and not as high value as a females limited eggs, men are much more liberal sexually. They have less to lose, they aren’t carrying the child for nine months themselves and as a result they take more chances. They are capable of spreading their seed to a wider variety of women and as a result can impregnate more women. So whereas a women can only be pregnant with one mans seed, one mans seed can impregnate multiple women.

The result is that men can potentially bare more children in his lifetime then a single woman can. However females are more likely to have at least one child in their lifetime, whereas many men go childless as they are seen as unsuitable to the females who tend to be pickier as they have to be.

It is because of the mans ability to spread his seed to multiple women that some men fear commitment. Their commitment to one women means that they are limiting their potential of offspring to the amount of offspring that one woman is capable of producing. This is a gamble for a man. Because if the man stay commited he is pretty much guaranteed offspring (so long as his female was not unfaithful) but should he leave her to wander out and find other females, he may find himself either unsuccessful and childless or possibly very successful.

So ladies, if you want to know why your boyfriends hem and haw about commitment or marriage, understand that their indecision is underlined by their primal thought process. If they could truly have it their way, they would have a committed and faithful wife who they are guaranteed children with, as well as the option to sleep with other women if they can find others that will. All of this inspired in their primal mind by their desire to spread their seed. Even if their modern mind is only wanting the sex.

This is also where pornography and male fantasies of a threesome with two women come into play. It’s not as important to most females as it is not part of her sexual and biological directive. However it is part of a mans.

This is also the reason that women throughout history have have made themselves look pretty by wearing nice clothes and makeup and doing their hair in most societies. This is to try and keep their men. It’s their goal to try and make sure their men stick around to provide for them and their children. This is also the reason why many women prefer a wealthy and successful man. he who can provide more will attract more women. Especially on the plains of Africa when a woman is starving and in need of protection and one man has all the food and protection she needs. She is more likely to accept him as her sexual partner knowing he can provide for her and her offspring.

Once you understand the primal motivations of men and women in this way, everything begins to fall in line. Our actions and our emotions begin to make sense. We haven’t changed much since our days on the plains of Africa hunting, gathering and trying to survive and procreate. Trying to pass our genetic material along to the next generation. Everything else in life has spawned from all of this. Be it men going to war over land and power which result in resources and women. To modern day fashion and the reason they make all the makeup and fancy clothing for females. It’s also the reason men are more likely to watch porn and women are more likely to read romance novels.

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Thanks for reading. Just so you understand these aren’t my opinions. Once again this is just a snapshot of certain evolutionary psychology studies rephrased and presented here by me. If you have any questions or anything you want me to expand upon, leave me a comment. I’m bound to write more like this in the future.    
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0 thoughts on “Understanding Men and Women”

  1. Very good. It’s the basic drives your dealing with, not the cultural or modern cultural view of relationships. That would be a much longer post I’m afraid. 

  4. @Da__Vinci – Yeah, because when you boil it all down, this is what it comes too.Culture is disposable and various cultures have dealt with these motives in different ways. But the biology and biological motives is generally the same. The confusion comes when they get masked by the modern cultural motives.

    We aren’t helping ourselves by calling guys pigs for wanting sex and calling women prudes for wanting it only after a committed marriage.

    @aznspartan94 – I don’t think there is reason for female backlash. There is nothing said here which is negative toward females. All of it is truth to the best of knowledge. If there is a backlash, it’s only because for the last 40 years or so the feminist movement has been trying to turn women into men and men into women. But that’s a big IF. Even so that might not be such a bad thing, so long as everyone realizes you can’t change directives like that in a matter of a few decades when it took hundreds of thousands of years of natural programming to make us how we are.
    Of course I have a suspicion that birth control along with mass media might be helping to push modern girls into being more like guys. I’m wondering how that’s going to play out in the long run.

    @MangoWOW – I bet. Although I’m not sure I understand why. It doesn’t underestimate us as human beings. it doesn’t make us any less special. It just helps us understand ourselves better.

    If you can find the link I’d love to read it. :)

  5. @roxics – I don’t think men are pigs for wanting sex, I think they are pigs for the way they go about getting sex from women, big difference. 

    And don’t you think that modern culture is a better layer than just primal instinct? I am a huge fan of the movie Waking Life, if you’ve ever seen it. Here is an excerpt from that movie. Please forgive the length. 

    If we’re looking at the highlights of human development, you have to look at the evolution of the organism…
    and then at the development of its interaction with the environment.
    Evolution of the organism will begin with the evolution of life…
    perceived through the hominid…
    coming to the evolution of mankind.
    Neanderthal, Cro-Magnon man.
    Now, interestingly, what you’re looking at here are three strings:
    biological, anthropological–
    development of the cities, cultures–
    and cultural, which is human expression.
    Now, what you’ve seen here is the evolution of populations,
    not so much the evolution of individuals.
    And in addition, if you look at the time scales that’s involved here–
    two billion years for life,
    six million years for the hominid,
    years for mankind as we know it–
    you’re beginning to see the telescoping nature of the evolutionary paradigm.
    And then when you get to agricultural,
    when you get to scientific revolution and industrial revolution,
    you’re looking at years, years, years.
    You’re seeing a further telescoping of this evolutionary time.
    What that means is that as we go through the new evolution,
    it’s gonna telescope to the point we should be able to see it manifest itself…
    within our lifetime, within this generation.
    The new evolution stems from information,
    and it stems from two types of information: digital and analog.
    The digital is artificial intelligence.
    The analog results from molecular biology, the cloning of the organism.
    And you knit the two together with neurobiology.
    Before on the old evolutionary paradigm,
    one would die and the other would grow and dominate.
    But under the new paradigm, they would exist…
    as a mutually supportive, noncompetitive grouping.
    Okay, independent from the external.
    And what is interesting here is that evolution now becomes an individually centered process,
    emanating from the needs and the desires of the individual,
    and not an external process, a passive process…
    where the individual is just at the whim of the collective.
    So, you produce a neo-human with a new individuality and a new consciousness.
    But that’s only the beginning of the evolutionary cycle…
    because as the next cycle proceeds,
    the input is now this new intelligence.
    As intelligence piles on intelligence,
    as ability piles on ability, the speed changes.
    Until what? Until you reach a crescendo in a way…
    could be imagined as an enormous instantaneous fulfillment of human,
    human and neo-human potential.
    It could be something totally different.
    It could be the amplification of the individual,
    the multiplication of individual existences.
    Parallel existences now with the individual no longer restricted by time and space.
    And the manifestations of this neo-human-type evolution,
    manifestations could be dramatically counter-intuitive.
    That’s the interesting part. The old evolution is cold.
    It’s sterile. It’s efficient, okay?
    And its manifestations are those social adaptations.
    You’re talking about parasitism, dominance, morality, okay?
    Uh, war, predation, these would be subject to de-emphasis.
    These would be subject to de-evolution.
    The new evolutionary paradigm will give us the human traits of truth, of loyalty,
    of justice, of freedom.
    These will be the manifestations of the new evolution.
    That is what we would hope to see from this. That would be nice.

    I quote this to point out that evolution is more than just the physical. In all of human activities, must now evolve processes that work in an ever changing world dominated by human beings. 

  7. I’m too tired and too mentally worn out to read that…but I’ll try to remember to come back and read it.  I was thinking about similar things just a few days ago, actually.

  8. @Da__Vinci –

    I did see the movie in fact. At a local art theater when it first came out. Unfortunately that was also the same day my high school sweetheart, my first love of 5 years broke it off with me for good and broke my heart. So I was in no shape to be taking any of it in. In fact the only thing I even remotely remember from that movie is the scene with Ethan Hawke when he was talking about ideas floating around and multiple people picking them out of the sky and then the first one who does something with it wins. Or something like that. It’s been like 8 or 9 years. I hardly remember now.

    I’ll agree with you about our method. Like what you say about the way men go about it being piggish. This is true. Although that could also be based on ones perspective. 

    We have some grand notions. We could get rid of some of the things we currently consider primitive, unevolved and negative. But in doing so we may also be taking away the things that motivate us. Take away our pain, take away our suffering, take away our misunderstanding, our jealousy/envy, our greed and you’ll reduce the human experience. You’ll reduce all the things that have motivated us to strive.

    I’m under the impression that the universe knows what it’s doing and that it’s not all passive and just putting pieces together and trying things out. Even on the microscopic level it seems to have it’s shit together pretty well. We may not consider it perfect, but then what do we know?

    It seems to me that nature has a pretty good system as it is right now. We live, we procreate, we die. I can’t really think of any better motivation for us to be here. Religious people say things like, it’s to worship God, or experience love or as a test or whatever. I don’t know. Maybe there are multiple reasons. Just looking at the way nature puts pieces together I can already make out that certain things serve multiple purposes, even if just by “coincidence.” So it seems to approach it’s designs from multiple directions.

  10. You post some excellent blogs Roxics. And you are equally excellent when giving advice. 

    It’s all very interesting and I have seen programs about this. But, it seems to me that the little bit that we have evolved in the past 10,000 years has also shown that we are all capable of not losing ourselves to our basic instincts. We have adapted to new situations all our lives depending on our individual circumstances. Women have demonstrated the ability to build larger muscles, work for themselves, become hunters and warriors just like men. Women now are more empowered than ever before. And a sad but real issue is that more women now are caring for their children without the aide of their ex partners/fathers of their children. Women now have several children by several fathers and this although shunned by society has become a woman’s way of saying that they too can move on to other men and continue procreation; just like men do.

  12. @roxics – This is also the reason that women throughout history have have made
    themselves look pretty by wearing nice clothes and makeup and doing
    their hair in most societies. This is to try and keep their men. It’s
    their goal to try and make sure their men stick around to provide for
    them and their children.

    That portion didn’t even make sense.

    Also. The early analysis is wrong.Men weren’t just hunters and women weren’t just gatherers.There were many overlapping roles.Western culture is when women and men started to take suchdifferent gender roles. A more divided men=hunt/protect | women=gather. Reasoning? Warfare and conquest.

  14. @ShimmerBodyCream – Can you point me to an example of this in history? In other words where are you getting this information from?

    I’m not saying you’re wrong, it’s just that this is the first I’ve heard of it.
    That said, you have to take this with a certain degree of give and take. There have obviously been exceptions to every rule. I too have heard of a few ancient societies where a females role was equal to a mans in society. But those are usually exceptions and not the rule.

    But once again I’d like to point out that this isn’t meant to be an anti-female blog post. This is meant to convey a scientific understanding of humanity greater then 10,000 year ago. Anything newer then 10,000 years ago is part of the new era where we really began to change.

    Second of all, I don’t understand why any of this should be considered negative to any female. Is it shameful that a female was design by nature to birth and raise young? Is it shameful that she would rely on a man to provide and protect? Obviously the man relied on her to birth and raise the young, so without a females contributions none of us would be here today. There is a balance to the genders. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to look and see that men were built to be physically stronger and women were built for having kids. I’m just afraid that you and possibly many other females have been too brainwashed by raging man hating feminists who want all women to believe men are useless and women don’t need them for anything. That mode of thinking is like slapping nature straight across the face.

  15. I think the way you break it down is oversimplified, but I also believe your general take is close to truth. Most of what people do socially, especially so-called “common sense” behaviors, morals and taboos, all are derived from basic animal survival behaviors. Abstract thought, language, social structures, these are what have corrupted the “Eden” of the animal life we used to live. Before I sign off with that I’d better qualify my last statement by explaining that I do not imagine that the life of the animal mind prior to the human mind was a less brutal, impersonal and difficult life, but rather it is that animal state of non-abstract thought we yearn to rejoin, to be in the “now” at all times. I’ll stop there. Good post.

  18. @roxics – I understand it wasn’t an anti-female blog post. I thought whoever gave you the information was dumb because obviously they told you the wrong information. It is way outdated. I’m not saying societies were matriarchal, nor am I saying your information is “anti-female’. It’s just inaccurate.

    For example the agta negritos tribe in the phillipines, women help hunt big game. Also the Chipewyan people in Canada the women hunt big game as well. Women also farmed, etc.

    The roles you presented are too contrasted. There were overlapping roles prehistorically. In the roman/greek times etc that all changed. When warfare was involved, that is when women started adhering to strict gender roles and being subjugated.

    Also using a stereotype “Men are afraid of commitment” is not scientific. If anything studies point towards the fact that men are happier in relationships with commitment. Women are less happy.

    Modern day appearances are irrelevant to our prehistoric times. etc etc.  I could write a dissertation but I hope that helps you and I gave you some good examples to research.

  19. @ShimmerBodyCream – Well if you ever get the time that would be kinda cool to read a correction or alternative to the subject. I certainly don’t have all the information. I’ve just begun. On top of that I’m sure there are things we’re learn that will also change as we learn more. :)  

  20. i bookmarked this just so i could sift thru it in concentration. i like your point and how you articulated it; just not the grammar/spelling. thanks for the read

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