Hi Georgina & Turil !!!
Thank you both for taking up & commenting of some of the threads in my essay - I've left replying to you literally to the last few minutes - it's already June 7 over here in Australia !!
As it will take nothing less than a full book to present the science of 'female centrality' (it's way past 'an hypothesis') I should delay no further & get on with it, but the simple facts are males are EXTREMELY problematic within the entire biosphere & there are only a few ways nature has been able to curb their disruptiveness - all of which stems from them trying - via any means fair or foul - to get as many genes into as many eggs as they can.
The most widely utilised method nature employs to deal with males is just wipe them out as soon as the mating season is over whether they have mated or not.
The next most common way is to leave them alive but have alpha males drive all of the young ones out of the FEMALE-OWNED territory, where the marginalized young males suffer extremely high rates of mortality through starvation, exposure, predation & disease...
Another way is to just have each of the sexes live in entirely different kinds of habitats for all of the off-mating season periods of the year. Many male goats & sheep live higher up the mountains during most of the year where fodder is much rougher, courser & harder to find.
Of course one of nature's most notorious methods is to just get males to kill each other off in bouts of mortal combat - & in us humans, wars. All sports are ritualised & usually non-lethal ways of intra-male combat.
One of nature's most benign ways is to 'turn' males into 'entertainers' - rather than kill them off. Nature dresses many, many of its males in very fancy costumes indeed, many of which so accoutred males also sing with the most melodious of melodies, dance with the most entrancing of steps & rhythms.
Nature also turns some males into the most extraordinary artists & architects. In addition to the human male, think here of the Australian Bower bird male who builds & paints & lavishly decorates his bower (& dances & sings & fights off rivals & steals from other males' bowers...)
No one seems to notice that 'eggs' are not just more highly provisioned (with yolks & other nutrients - water, gases, etc) strips of DNA, BUT are quite literally LIFE ITSELF. Eggs are fully living cells & are that alone which possess everything required to build a new organism. Sperms are just DNA transport packages - & they are NOT EVEN ALIVE !!!!!!! This 'eggs-r-it' factor is why nature MUST protect females - this is why egg-makers/egg-carriers MUST enjoy full centrality vis a vis all males of their species.
As I say in my essay females not only evolve all of the equipment for primary reproduction but under all evolutionarily normal circumstances, all of the necessary know-how to deploy that equipment up to its optimum potential, too.
Males never do.
There is one area or realm of being where males have 'right of way' & full use thereof, & this area/realm is very easy to delineate as it is 'anywhere or anything that females do NOT require to discharge their all-important primary reproductive/subsistence work'.
Into this 'survivally useless realm' males can sally forth & appropriate anything they want. Deserts, oceans, ice flows, moons etc, etc, etc. Which a review of our own history reveals men have done with gusto. Again it is to be recognized that this area is the survivally useless one that females do not want to use for any of their survival &/or reproductive work.
Have you ever wondered why the 'nuptil gifts' (courtship offerings & behaviours) men proffer to women are such completely everyday-survivally-useless, wholly impractica, things like gold, precious stones, exquisite jewellry, even bouquettes of glorious flowers - none of which can be eaten - or worn to keep one warm.
Now then, I hear you saying, well what about fur coats & lavish houses, chocolates & expensive meals. All survivally/subsistently very useful, you insist.
Ah ha !!! These kinds of quasi-subsistently valuable gifts are not procured from our everyday subsistence resources. They are way, way in excess thereof.
We all 'talk' - communicate with verbal sounds. Poets & musicians take this kind of communication to its wondrous-but-survivally-useless extreme.
We are all intelligent (a gift mothers gave to their young) but (some) men are way excessively more 'intelligent' than others. BUT when males insist that not only are they more intelligent than women so much so that they must be in charge & make all the decisions - PARTICULARLY AS REGARDS ANY OR ALL SUBSISTENCE RESOURCES MANAGEMENT & ALLOCATION & equally AS REGARDS ANYTHING TO DO WITH PRIMARY REPRODUCTION, at precisely those points do they regroup back away from their own 'useles (but sometimes pretty) realm of intelligent excess' & reinvade areas of 'female centrality' - on which latter nothing less than the evolutionary destiny of our entire species depends.
One reason I'm mentioning all this is to suggest - actually insist !! (pardon me) - that bearing & raising a happy, healthy, fulfilled human beings is the most difficult & most demanding - & potetnially most rewarding - job on the Planet, & there is nothing men can do to even remotely approach it.
Being 'childfree' to pursue a career in any non-central area is to not only abdicate the highest office in the land but to descend into the male arena of 'enforced uselessness' which they otherwise valiantly attempt to elevate to a level above the 'mere' subsistence/primary reproductive one, & to further reinvade the all-female realm - otherwise the most sacrosanct one of all.
Feminists have done us all the greatest of disservice in not understanding that mothering is the greatest & most rewarding job on Earth.
Biologists like-wise have done us the greatest of disservice by not alerting us to the fact that evolutionary viability as critically depends on female centrality as it does on the availability of sufficient & suitable subsistence resources.
Oops - I'm a tad strident aren't I, sorry.
We all deserve to flourish.
Actually the truth is men not only have the perfect excuse for being what they are - but a way of fully redeeming themselves - & saving the entire planet as they do so. If you'd really like to hear more of my science of female centrality email me at margrietanne@hotmail.com.
Much love,
Margriet Anne O'Regan