Simon sent me this transcript to read and asked for my commentary. It's not by him, please be advised. He just wanted to know what I thought

Is There Anything Good About Men? by Roy F. Baumeister.

Just to give you a clue of what's in store for you should you decided to fight your way through the entire address:

That's an important first clue to how culture uses men. Culture has plenty of tradeoffs, in which it needs people to do dangerous or risky things, and so it offers big rewards to motivate people to take those risks. Most cultures have tended to use men for these high-risk, high-payoff slots much more than women. I shall propose there are important pragmatic reasons for this. The result is that some men reap big rewards while others have their lives ruined or even cut short. Most cultures shield their women from the risk and therefore also don't give them the big rewards. I'm not saying this is what cultures ought to do, morally, but cultures aren't moral beings. They do what they do for pragmatic reasons driven by competition against other systems and other groups.

Argumentation as solid as using a badminton net to hold water, I know. But the paper goes on at length and in the spirit of "know thine enemy" I read it.

I am left with a couple of impressions;

#1/ Academic writing has never made me want to cry for myself as well as the human race before - how novel.

#2/ ibid above, but replace cry with "take a cleansing shower".

#3/ I had no idea that it was my own lack of motivation that prevented me from;

- taking risks
- being creative or inventive
- exploring
- traveling to distant places in search of adventure
- making large social networks that I use instrumentally
- seeking my fortune/advancement in an economic sense.

Thank god I know now, and I can stop wondering why I sit at home plotting how I will snare a semen-giver into impregnating me so I can fulfill my cultural role of;

- creating tight intimate communal connections
- providing safe nurturing spaces for my man and my young
- enjoying the benefits of a low-risk life, protected from potential threat and injury by the legions of men who are out there fighting the good fight to keep me in clean knickers
- oh yeah, and I don't like sex as much as men do. I don't even know how that fits but it was in there.

Okay time for that shower. Oh god. So fucking depressing. HOW CAN THE SAME FUCKING ARGUMENTs GET RECYCLED EVERY SINGLE GENERATION? The difference this time it's MY OWN lack of desire that has kept me and other members of the gender I happen to inhabit from succeeding in such an "impartial, amoral" culture. It's infuriating to know this kind of thought still has weight, someone should have laughed him off the podium instead of transcribing his BS.