The Continuum of the Sexes

I think it's important to remember that every new social trend isn't actually new. Human beings haven't changed very much over the course of millennia, and by and large, the way things have always been is the way they still are and the way they always will be. If you don't bear that in mind, some disruptive new social movement may cause you to overreact, to panic, get depressed, or think that the human race is plunging into the abyss. I'm saying this with particular attention to the topic of feminism. Men, particularly those at the online manosphere, are apoplectic about feminism.

It's cancer. It's destroying everything. It's ruining society, on and on. But women disputing with men is nothing new. Women having grievances is nothing new.

Women complaining to men about men is nothing new. History is a continuum, so you have to take a long term view. The truth is, and history is a witness to this fact, that any social movement which radically diverges from what has always been the status quo of human society for thousands of years, it turns out to be an aberration, an anomaly. It comes and goes leaving very little evidence behind that it ever took place at all. That doesn't mean that such social movements aren't sometimes significant enough to topple the social order for a period of time or even contribute to the fall of a civilization.

But the rise and fall of civilizations generally has very little lasting impact on human life on the planet. They are just structures that people build and they collapse over time and life goes on pretty much as before. Women and men have been arguing for as long as there have been women and men. These arguments don't change nature. Indeed, they're part of our nature.

The contentiousness between the genders doesn't have a resolution, and it doesn't need one. The reality is that feminism is not a new phenomenon. It's just a new word for something that has always been a part of the dynamic between the sexes. The subtext of the social order is the natural order, and the dependence of women on men is not a social construct. It's intrinsic, and no changes in the social structure can change that nature.

If women want to try to be like men or try to fulfill men's roles, they'll fail, and then men will fix it. The battle between the sexes is very low stakes because the outcome always has been and always will be the same. So for men, I would say, to think of yourself as ancient, as part of and connected to the continuum of history. That should be your vantage point. Try to think of it like the movie Groundhog Day, but on an intergenerational scale.

Believe me, five hundred years ago you had an ancestor who felt like women were getting out of control. A thousand years ago, two thousand. The modern contention between the sexes isn't a bug, it's a feature of the system.