This is a series consisting of three posts (be warned: a bit longer read than usual here)
The sight of a beautiful landscape fills us with joy. And if you think about such a landscape, you are probably imagining a lush green forest, a calm and clean-blue river and a bright and warm sun.
Why is it exactly these things we associate most with beauty? The explanation can be found in the evolution of the mind. This kind of landscape is promising us a future. It provides the required substrate to found a family and pass on our genes, culture and knowledge to future generations. These preferences are programmed into our minds already at birth: the color green calms us down while the color red (blood!) makes us nervous.
I’m not a young man anymore, but I still enjoy the sight of a revealing décolletage belonging to a nicely dressed woman. Although enjoying this kind of thing is considered rather incorrect today, I’m quite sure most men (and probably many women too) will secretly agree with me.
And, even if there is a slight difference to the forest mentioned above (in the form of an additional slightly tickling „call to action“ feeling: „shall I invite her for a coffee?“), the reason for the joy is fundamentally the same: a woman’s body too represents an opportunity to create live. But - of course - in a much more condensed form!
A forest has to be first converted into female bodies in an extremely time consuming process before it can yield offspring. The female body instead promises the same after only 9 months.
The female body (so far I’m talking only about the physical aspect of women! So please don’t get upset from the choice of words in the following) therefore represents the most valuable object on earth: it is by far the most readily available form of reproductive potential which exists.
Every other „material object“ (like a sports car, a gold bar, nice clothes, a luxury watch etc.) has only value because it can - in one way or another - be converted into female bodies. Or support the life of a female body further into the future (like a house or money).
And now we come to the fundamental difference to the male body: the latter has almost no value! Sure, it can be expended with dangerous activities like hunting or wars (or used to carry shopping bags). But it simply cannot create babies!
Therefore (and contrary to popular belief) it is not the female sex which has „something missing“ (an opinion made popular by Freud: the „penis envy“). It is very clearly rather the males which are missing an essential feature!
The difference can be also observed in the behaviour: men are much more willing to engage in risky activities compared to women. But taking risk is the typical strategy of someone who has nothing to lose.
Therefore, as women carry the „baby factory“ in their bodies, we can expect them to have a huge power advantage compared to men. It gives them the possibility to control access to the precious „factory“ everybody desires so much. Furthermore they are also much more dominantly controlling the upbringing and education of children. This gives them the additional power to control two other aspects which define the identity of a human being (male and female alike): culture and knowledge. Therefore women are (or should be) in control of humankind’s future.
This view is obviously in strong contrast to the reality of patriarchal societies in most countries. But if we think a bit longer about it, we realize that it does not create a contradiction. Let‘s look at an example. In many asian countries the custom of dowry is practiced. One might assume, that the dowry must be paid by the brides family because because they can bring only a girl into the marriage. This follows the cultural narrative in many of these countries, that girls have less value than men.
But this would not make much sense, because it would be deeply unjust (double punishment of the brides family) and therefore introduce friction into society. An unplausible explanation because it would destabilize society.
Let‘s look at the mothers of both bride and groom. While the mother of the bride received a „gold coin“ (metaphorically speaking) when her girl was born, the mother of the groom received only an empty little „jute bag“ which can be filled with a gold coin.
Almost all women manage to produce offspring while the same is not at all guaranteed for men. The family of a boy has to invest huge amounts of money into their education and make huge efforts to build family status to allow him to be successful in the mating game.
This creates the wrong impression that men are considered more valuable than women: the men‘s value comes from the enormous efforts we put into them while the value of women is simply given by birth.
Dowry is therefore a compensation mechanism to account for this extreme injustice. The bride‘s family shares part of their luck with the family of the groom which helps to stabilize society.
In the next blog post we will look at these questions in much more detail.
Image on top: Shutterstock
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