Ask Men

When I was young, I didn't want to get pidgeon-holed into any given role just because of my gender, but as I got older, I found that I sort of naturally gravitated towards that role anyway.

I'm stronger, I'm less neurotic, I'm more emotionally stable, I don't end up incapable of leaving the couch once a month, and frankly I'm less necessary on an hour to hour basis raising an infant or even a toddler. I'm more interested in things which works well for my line of work. Meanwhile, my wife is weaker, more neurotic, has a much more chaotic emotional world, gets periods, is a great mother and caregiver, and she's more interested in people so she helps build the local community in a way I simply wouldn't.

We are a society that has fought like hell to unlearn millions of years of evolution because we're arrogant and stupid. What we keep on learning is that just because they existed before us doesn't make them wrong about things, and it doesn't make us right.

I see people going "Oh, evolution doesn't really apply to humans" who apparently don't realize we're facing a mass depopulation event where a good chunk of the human race will not procreate. For many people, it's already too late, they will never have a chance to raise a family. In South Korea, they're on track to have less than 10 great grandchildren for every 100 Koreans alive today, but they're just one example.

Instead of fighting who we naturally are to prove how smart we are, we should embrace authenticity and that does mean accepting that we've been evolving for about 250,000 years to exist in a certain way that includes a man supporting the mother of his children and his children as a major investment into the future. Prior to 250,000 years ago homonids had small enough brains that the men could just knock up as many woman as they could and those kids would likely survive helping his genetics to be passed on. After that, the overwhelming cost of childbirth meant that a high value male (in an evolutionary sense) would stick around and help the mother and child in the ways he could such as getting food or protecting against predators. Even later, work was often dangerous, so it made more sense for the men to be doing that sort of dangerous out of the home work, and women would engage more in maintaining the home and helping the family (though that's oversimplifying somewhat), but most importantly helping to maintain a community. With so many women in the workforce, people everywhere are feeling a lack of community and they don't understand why. Part of it may be the atomization of postmodern civilization, but I bet if we were more like our ancestors of 250,000 years ago we'd quickly discover we find ways to make communities just like they began to do 250,000 years ago.

That doesn't mean you become inauthentic chasing someone else's dream of masculinity -- one of the easiest ways to get manipulated is to chase a definition of masculinity that isn't innate to you -- rather, it means you just are what you are, and it ought to mostly come naturally.