Do you think men are luckier than women?

Post Reply New Topic

How do you define luck?
I think that physically, men have advantages when it comes to size and strength. Generally, the majority of average/typical men don't become enmeshed/engulfed in their emotions the way most average/typical women do. This gives men an edge in problem solving and taking remedial action in daily life. Most typical/average men are also taught to think in terms of being a team-player rather and most women are not raised to be this way. The team-player attitude also gives men an advantage in life.

Women have the advantage in longevity; and women generally have a kind of social perception that most men lack.

Females protecting the territory translates into females protecting the territory, not just where the young are. Females have been observed not only actively defending the territory from invaders, but participating in "raids" into other territories.

And it's not all males protecting all females. It's alpha males protecting the entire group, including other males.



Precisely. There's no "drive" to "protect" females. Male primates only "protect" females they have a vested interest in mating with; therefore, in humans, any notion of "chivalry" is a cultural construct not reflective of anything that actually happens in nature.



The majority of species on Earth are not "social" and males have little to do with females beyond mating.

Of the social species, the majority of males only come into contact with groups of females during mating season, but they don't stick around to "protect" the female groups (elephants, deer, ect) after mating season ends. Of the males who do stick around, they only "protect" THEIR females. As for primates, alpha male primates don't just "protect" females, they also "protect" lower-status males.

Soldiers being male is cultural, not "instinct." We've already established that human women don't survive disasters at a higher rate than men.



....and their territory, and their fellow females, ect. There's no shortage of data on females participating in "border wars."



Males are bigger in order to fight other males, not to "protect" females. Males in non-social species who don't stick around are "bigger" too, but it's not to "protect" females.

Losing "most" of the females is not "automatic extermination." The entire species will not die out because of the loss of one family group.

And a lack of genetic diversity will kill a species just as quickly as a lack of "breeding females." Hence, males are not "expendable."

They're not protecting anyone. It's territory, plain and simple. Any protection that occurs is incidental - although evolution does not care if it is incidental or instinctual, as long as it occurs.



Who said there was? I never claimed anything like that. You keep putting "protect" in quotes, like it came out of my mouth originally. It didn't.

All I claimed was that males are more expendable.



On this, we agree ... and I think I see now where your misunderstanding of my position has arisen. I am not making an evolutionary argument for chivalry, but for the fact that given a choice, the loss of a male is preferable to the loss of a female (from an evolutionary standpoint).



The majority of species on Earth are microorganisms and lack gender altogether.

But if we want to talk about species with behaviours and instincts close to ours, we're talking mainly about highly social animals who form mixed-gender groups.



If it was cultural, it wouldn't be ubiquitous. Moreover - males are adapted to violence, much more than females are. At a physical level. This is clear indication of an evolutionary process, not culture. Culture can't affect physiology.



You're taking that out of context - I was speaking about a group. Familial groups are the basic unit at which evolution and selection operate. Species are only impacted indirectly, by changes taking place at the group level.



No, not as quickly. It takes much longer than a single generation for inbreeding to wipe out a species. No breeding females will wipe out a species in just 1 generation, unless there are immature females to replace them.

Both entail an equal loss of genetic diversity, but one entails a greater loss of fecundity. Neither is expendable in an absolute sense, but in a relative sense, one is more expendable than the other. Especially when losses are not usually a total loss of one gender or the other, but simply a different rate of loss. If a group must lose 1 more individual per year, evolution dictates that it is preferable if that individual is male. The diversity will be lost one way or the other so diversity simply isn't a consideration.