I'd love to hear more of your thoughts on this! Over the past year or so talking to other feminists online, I've discovered that it is perhaps the dominant experience that an adult woman has had no meaningful relationships with other women aside from /maybe/ her own mother. I've encountered lots of women asking how to even befriend other women which is baffling to me! But I have my thoughts on that too and my next post will hopefully be about that. (thanks for taking the time to read as always!)
But describing it is not explaining it. One of my friends, who is an evolutionary psychologist, offers an explanation: "Women simply need a lot more resources to be pregnant than men need to produce sperm. And historically, evolutionarily, that has depended on resources supplied by men which pits women against each other in a way that is not true for men, who can easily interchange women in a way women cannot. And these things are psychologically instantiated in ways that are not so easy to change. Men engage in coalitional behavior automatically and effortlessly in a way women do not. Women are not the goal; they are the ball in a competition between men over status and resources( and they see women as interchangeable resources for child bearing and care taking, with huge premiums on youth and beauty and submissiveness)."
These evolutionary tendencies are all exaggerated under exogamy, wherein a woman's life may depend on demonstrating loyalty to a man and his fraternity. In short, a man's first loyalty is to his fraternity; a woman's first loyalty is to the man she has been made dependent on for safety and provision. Sisterly ties are easily jettisoned in that evolutionary context; female solidarity is as rare as hen's teeth in human history because women have been bred to compete with one another for the protection and provisioning only men could historically provide. These tendencies persist over time, even in an age where women are not automatically dependent on men--a phenomenon Freeman describes in appropriately tragic terms.
Oh yes, I've encountered this argument before! While I don't disagree that these tendencies do exist and this might count as a logical explanation for them, I do not necessarily think that is a nail in the coffin for the future if only going from my own life experiences up until this point. I also do not think this is a reason to remove agency from the individual. We'll see how I feel about it in 30 years. But I'll certainly revisit this essay as it has been a while since I've looked at it.
I no longer believe it is within our power to do so. I am in my 60s, and once believed this, but no longer.
I'd love to hear more of your thoughts on this! Over the past year or so talking to other feminists online, I've discovered that it is perhaps the dominant experience that an adult woman has had no meaningful relationships with other women aside from /maybe/ her own mother. I've encountered lots of women asking how to even befriend other women which is baffling to me! But I have my thoughts on that too and my next post will hopefully be about that. (thanks for taking the time to read as always!)
Freeman's essay is, of course, the classic on the subject: https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/trashing.htm
But describing it is not explaining it. One of my friends, who is an evolutionary psychologist, offers an explanation: "Women simply need a lot more resources to be pregnant than men need to produce sperm. And historically, evolutionarily, that has depended on resources supplied by men which pits women against each other in a way that is not true for men, who can easily interchange women in a way women cannot. And these things are psychologically instantiated in ways that are not so easy to change. Men engage in coalitional behavior automatically and effortlessly in a way women do not. Women are not the goal; they are the ball in a competition between men over status and resources( and they see women as interchangeable resources for child bearing and care taking, with huge premiums on youth and beauty and submissiveness)."
These evolutionary tendencies are all exaggerated under exogamy, wherein a woman's life may depend on demonstrating loyalty to a man and his fraternity. In short, a man's first loyalty is to his fraternity; a woman's first loyalty is to the man she has been made dependent on for safety and provision. Sisterly ties are easily jettisoned in that evolutionary context; female solidarity is as rare as hen's teeth in human history because women have been bred to compete with one another for the protection and provisioning only men could historically provide. These tendencies persist over time, even in an age where women are not automatically dependent on men--a phenomenon Freeman describes in appropriately tragic terms.
Oh yes, I've encountered this argument before! While I don't disagree that these tendencies do exist and this might count as a logical explanation for them, I do not necessarily think that is a nail in the coffin for the future if only going from my own life experiences up until this point. I also do not think this is a reason to remove agency from the individual. We'll see how I feel about it in 30 years. But I'll certainly revisit this essay as it has been a while since I've looked at it.
I'd be interested in reading more on your experiences and why you've come to this feeling as well.