Too many men

[UrsulaPandress]

Need your help please. On a recent thread someone posted a fascinating insight into male violence based around a theory that men should really be competing against each other for dominance in a group and in a ‘natural’ environment would kill each other. That’s a really crap précis but I thought I’d screenshot it to discuss with a friend but I didn’t.

Can anyone enlighten me?

If you want peace prepare for war, sort of thing ?

Are there any natural environments (especially apes) where males kill each other.
Usually when there is a dominant (alpha) male, the other males are subservient and don't get to mate, but they're not killed outright.

Was it the thread about the bonobos?

i Think it was on the headteacher school shooting thread.

Ok maybe not necessarily kill each other but fight for dominance.

its called football

Yes, plenty. In fact , probably most. They may not actually kill each other, but the infections and weakness caused by the wounds they inflict on each other often kill them. And if the ‘surplus ‘ males are not killed in or as a result of the fighting, they are often quite literally starved out.

Wild cattle, horses, pigs , lions, rams, stags. Most of the apes ( the situation in zoo groups where there is enough food to go round , so the old males are fed , is not replicated in nature).

I think there's a lot of theories about how men are 'naturally' evolved to want to find their place in a pecking order.

I'm not sure it makes sense really. I never find evolutionary psychology very convincing. I do however think that masculine pecking orders exist because they benefit psychopaths, national states and some men. Women are allowed not to be directly part of the hierarchy if they stay sexually/ reproductively controlled by a man as a trophy. If they won't be controlled, they are fair game. Punitive action is taken against men who try to opt out and particularly men who subvert the order; they may be labelled as women, effeminate, third gender in a desperate attempt to eliminate the challenge they present to 'the natural way of things' and the head of the hierarchy.

Or maybe I just need to go to bed 😁

Permanent excellent points IMHO.

Well I suppose so, but it would be balanced to some extent by an awful lot of that whole "died in childbirth" thing.

Punitive action is taken against men who try to opt out and particularly men who subvert the order; they may be labelled as women, effeminate, third gender

Mmm. That's an odd set of labels - I'd have thought that men that seek to change the order would be labelled as traitors, rebels, oath-breakers and the like. It's certainly "Traitor's gate" enterance to the Tower of London not "Third Gender" gate. Maybe it was time for bed after all.

'Opting out' and 'subverting the order' are not 'changing the order'.
A traitor is someone who tried to remove the higher ranking male and usurp their place. That's not opting out of the patriarchy. Its the patriarchy version of cheating, but its only cheating because they got caught. If the traitor had been successful they'd become the king, and they'd have to watch out for traitorous assassins.

I think both sexes do it to an extent, but obviously men the most violently. I'm sure there's a fair bit of theory around 'Queen Bee' hierarchy. I vaguely remember reading something years ago.