'Men are the secondary sex'

I see that someone from Mumsnet has joined that conversation 😀

This is not a new view at all. I think she got this from my friend who comments on a lot of feminist & Manosphere content. I often see her ideas showing up in the posts of higher profile women after she's been sharing her ideas online for a while.

Your post was not humorous, was skimpy on facts and contained personal attacks.

My response was deleted for simply matching your tone. Enjoy.

Yes well unfortunately, a lunar calendar is not accurate for determining a year. That is why most societies transitioned to a lunar-solar calendar no later than 7,000 BCE.

But hey if you want to regress to the Bronze Age, who am I to argue?

Friday the 13th is celebrated as a day of divine feminine energy, reclaiming it from superstitions to honor goddess traditions, fertility, and the 13 lunar/menstrual cycles in a year. Historically, Friday is named after the goddess Frigg/Freya, making the combination a sacred day for honoring feminine intuition, creativity, and power.

Key reasons for the celebration include:

• The Power of 13: The number 13 aligns with the 13 lunar cycles in a year and the approximate number of menstrual cycles, representing natural, feminine, and fertility-focused rhythms.
• The Goddess Day: Friday is named after the Norse goddess Frigg or Freya, associated with love, beauty, and fertility.
• Reclaiming History: Many believe the negative stigma around this day was established to diminish the power of pagan, matriarchal, and Goddess-worshipping cultures, which focused on the natural cycles of life, death, and rebirth.
• Celebration Actions: It is considered an ideal time to honor the feminine, gather in sisterhood, perform rituals, and focus on intuition and self-care.

Instead of a day of bad luck, it is embraced by many as a powerful day to celebrate the "divine feminine" and the natural, creative, and intuitive forces within all people.

I quite fancy a 13 month 28 day year.

I you had bothered to read the thread properly you would have seen I was being sarcastic and referencing points made in earlier threads.

Honestly just swooping in and selecting something just to be able to make a point a teenage "marxist" you think is stunningly orginal makes thread sort of not be threads at all.

So suggest you re-read and understand.

Not just dole out hopelessly male class analysis.

And even though my actual post was humourous, and not doubt women did the majority of the hard work, the context actually is is that women were doing the work that consistently sustained the community. Men just did the added extras. And power at that time was that women were running the communities how they wanted. And some of that was just not having the men around as they were useless.

If it had been at a later period of time, as I referenced in another post, when men realised they could claim children by being the biological father and from that the concepts of ownership took over, your point might have been a bit more valid.

Sigh.

The peaceful, nonviolence, non-agression of Bonobos has been debunked.

There have been other threads on whether at one time most societies were matriarchal, and men just did frivilous things like hunt which kept them out of the way, while women did the organising and crop, vegitable cultivation which was the main source of food.

I think you’re a bit confused, the demographic lounging around and doing frivolous stuff are the ones in power while the ones doing the grunt work are the ones not in charge. You’ve described a patriarchy.

If we were to compare this to class you might understand the concept better:
Aristocracy- out of the way doing frivolous stuff like hunting
Peasants- farming crops and all the rest

Well yes, because they're communist regimes under a patriarchal system. I didn't mean that communism = matriarchy and good for women. Just that I think matriarchy and capitalism are antithetical.

Communism too has not led to female eutopia's. All comunist societies have been dominated by male dictators and led to repressive and totalitarian societies led by men.
Women have had equality in politics only in democratic systems and they are only capitalist.

Haven't had time to re-read thread but I think only one post implied single mother households have a negative impact on children.

And others then posted that there has been a lot of research saying that isn't true, but more likely to be the outcome of poverty and as can happen these families being forced to move to areas away from family and friendship networks and children having their education disrupted. For instance children of service families who often move, are as likely to have lower education outcomes, even though they are from 2 parent households.

Carrying on from my previous post, I responded to my dear son by saying that leadership is one case where I would simply like equality. Equal numbers of men and women bringing their issues and solutions to the table - both equally valued and respected. Working together is often the best solution.

I think the idea that women should be in charge is very alluring but possibly in a 'power corrupts' kind of way.

I don't think she's saying that in our current time and society men are the secondary sex. Clearly they are not. She is saying that men being "in charge" is against the natural order of things and that we would all be much happier if men assumed (resumed?) their natural role as the secondary sex.

I also liked the article although I read it as being deliberately tongue-in-cheek. It's been making me giggle all day and I said Goodbye Drone to my husband at lunchtime 🤣

I also read parts to my academic 15yo son who looked cross and then asked 'if it's about social roles, isn't the nurturing mother role also a social construct? You'd just have women being bad instead" (love him so much)

I do think there's points worth considering. Why is the opinion of other men so important to men, when the people they're usually trying to attract sexually are women?

The AI summaries of studies posted above on single parent families are comparing single mother families with 2-parent families. Not single mother families with single father families.

They don't, therefore, give you robust information about the effect of absent fathers. Many or even all of the problems described could be related the lower and more precarious income of single- rather than dual-earner households (and on average a single mother will probably be earning less than a single father, exacerbating this effect for single-mother households). And to whatever it was that led to one parent leaving. Whether death or relationship breakup, there's often trauma and disruption involved that could be the cause of the psychiatric issues, addiction etc mentioned.

I'm not sure it's helpful to encourage the primary abusers to describe themselves as secondary. There is enough "poor menz" narrative as it is.

As explained by PP 'undifferentiated' doesn’t mean 'female'. That's the same thinking that led to boys born with malformed or underdeveloped genitalia being labelled as girls. Lack of penis =/= woman.

The instant an egg is fertilised it has a sex. Until very recently it was thought that the embryo remained undifferentiated for a significant period of time before the mullarian/wolfian pathway development started - although it was still possible to tell very early blastocysts apart genetically, hence the ability to perform sex-selective IVF. Recently they've discovered that although it is quite a few weeks before the visible differences appear, there is in fact differentiation in cell signalling and gene expression within hours of fertilisation.

This is actually a myth. Embryos start off in an undifferentiated state in the earliest stage of development.

Therefore, the claim that “all fetuses begin as female” can only be true if undifferentiated gonads and undifferentiated genitalia are equivalent to being female. But being female involves a specific path of development: the gonads differentiating into ovaries, and the Mullerian duct differentiating into the oviducts, uterus, and vagina for mammals. Female development does not mean undifferentiated. For us all to begin as female on a physical level, we would have to develop ovaries and female genitalia first. Then to make a male, ovaries would transform into testes. And the female genitalia would transform into male genitalia. But this is not what happens. Instead, our reproductive system begins in a bipotential state, and then we differentiate along either the male or female pathway.

https://theparadoxinstitute.org/videos/do-we-all-begin-female

In a related thought, is there any evidence about males and females with other people’s offspring? I know males in some species kill the offspring of other males, given the opportunity.
Are females more likely to adopt orphaned offspring? I know sheep need to be tricked into it, and I know some animals do it independently.

My gut instinct is that females are more likely to raise orphans, and men more likely to actively harm them. But my gut instinct is singularly ill informed. I know women in the UK have been found guilty of keeping house slaves for example, which undermines the argument for women’s altruism.

As a parody of certain "evolutionary psychology" used to argue for male superiority it works quite well. But it's no more scientifically robust than those views are.

AI Overview

In Sweden, "fatherless" or single-mother homes are generally not viewed or constructed as a social crisis in the same way they are in countries like the US or UK, due to a robust welfare state and cultural normalization of diverse family structures
However, research indicates that children in single-parent homes in Sweden—most of whom live with their mothers—face increased risks of psychiatric issues, addiction, and socioeconomic disadvantages compared to children with both parents present.
Taylor & Francis Online +2

It's exactly a fear of 'single mother bashing' AKA stating facts about single parent homes that prevents single mothers from receiving the services they need.

Tip: With 'friends' like you, single mothers don't need enemies.

So I remember reading one of the OECD’s child well-being studies which looked at outcomes. In countries with decent welfare states and childcare provision as part of that, children of single mothers do as well as children of couples.
Where there is not a decent welfare state and childcare provision, children with single fathers do better than children of single mothers, this is partly because men earn more at a population level and partly because men usually have a network of women doing childcare for them. Societally women are expected to be the default childcare, so often single mothers have given up work or gone part-time. Therefore there is less money. And a good third of non-resident fathers don’t pay maintenance.
It’s an economic issue. Men at a population level earn more. Plus I guess also social, men still are seen as heroic for bringing up children on their own, women are stigmatised.
So I think statements about the outcomes being bad need to be contextualised. Otherwise it’s just more tedious single mother bashing.
As to whether men are the secondary sex, no, of course they are not - look where the money and power in the world is concentrated.

[edited to add: I posted this having read the first page, and I realised the conversation has moved on to more single mother bashing. Tedious].

As I said poverty, social problems, fatherlessness etc doesn't always have negative consequences on children but the data shows the probability is effected & while I get stereotypes have consequences so does pretending that data doesn't exist to change outcomes.

Perhaps its educating people that group differences don't apply to individuals that's missing here.