The original promise of feminism was to transcend genetic, epigenetic and cultural evolution and to provide more opportunity and happiness for everyone, maybe with some birthing pains. It was supposed to be a liberatory ideology. What has happened instead is to continue further along the tracks set after patriarchy started, of gynocentrism, pedo-centrism (i.e. "women and children first"), alpha-male-centrism, and most (beta) men's perceived disposability unless they devote all their energy to providing for women's and children's needs and keeping their place in the hierarchy (yes, I know that this seems blasphemous and absurd to most people who have been indoctrinated in mainstream feminist ideology), as well as some ugly views of women that lead to nastiness towards them (such as rape and general disrespect of their boundaries).
Part of the problem was that most feminists did not learn about cultural and genetic evolution (or else thought that culture was much easier to tweak than genes, and that Darwinian mechanisms of variation, competition and selection did not apply to it) and thought that patriarchy was some kind of a conspiracy by men to oppress women (e.g. EO Wilson, the founder of socio-biology, had ice water poured over his head by feminists, during a speech), instead of a system that gave certain alpha males an advantage in wealth and sexual opportunity, most women an advantage as far as safety and peace, and certain groups that adopted patriarchy an advantage in warfare, productivity and genetic diversity. To change a cultural system can be just as difficult as to change a genetic system. The source of variation is not just random mutation but conscious ideas about how the system works and how it would respond to change. Even if we were extremely skilled at such modeling (which we're not), living systems are an intricate web of interdependencies, and most single (or even double or triple) changes are not going to lead to an improvement. An evolutionary stable equilibrium is hard to change, whether genetically or culturally. Another issue was that many feminists thought that the oppression of women that happened in most agrarian societies (there are still a few existing) was going to carry forth into industrial and post-industrial societies, despite the fact that patriarchy gave no evolutionary fitness advantage (but was vestigial) to most individuals in, and to these societies in competition with other societies. This made their claims of being oppressed by men or patriarchy in post-industrial cultures seem non-sequitur at best, and like vicious, self-serving lies at worse.
At some point in our pre-history, when resources were plentiful, population low and competition scarce, our ancestors were non-patriarchal and non-monogamous. Most of them were hunter-gatherers, though perhaps Minoan civilization is an exception. The divine feminine was able to express itself in art and loving one's tribe. But at some point as population increased, groups that invented patriarchy were able to outcompete groups that didn't in both war and agricultural productivity. Alpha males found it helpful to repress female sexuality in the masses with the help of the church, burkas, female genital mutilation, witch burning, and general violence-induced stress, and to confine any remnant left to monogamous marriages for the masses. That way most non-alpha men would be docile, pacified, kept from too much competition with each other which would weaken the state or the fiefdom. A bit of sex with the wife would keep them from outright rebellion during their youth, when they are most likely to rebel. And a bit of respect for their natural tendencies to serve and protect women and children was a win-win for the village and for the beta men. The situation wasn't so bad for most women, as they were protected from warring nations, unsolicited sexual advances, dangerous or back-breaking work, and had much opportunity for creativity in the domestic sphere. The divine feminine was hiding, but not totally banished.
On the transition from an agrarian patriarchy/monogamy to the present, with the help of feminism: With the industrial revolution, new opportunities arose for work that did not require much upper body strength, so now women were initially prevented by tradition from partaking in this work that men had no particular advantage doing (unlike agrarian work). Most men who are not alpha got even more competitive with each other and also now with women, and also garnered less respect from everyone, because masculinity was not as valuable, and some feminists made it appear toxic. They were even more marginalized than before (in the military, dangerous or stressful jobs, family court, #metoo type witch hunts), even more disposable. They were made into debt slaves, killed, genitally mutilated, had to endure the shame of being unemployed, separated from their children, had to endure living without much empathy or love from anyone unless they fell in line with the program of dedicating all their life energy to a wife and children no matter what the cost to themselves. They had to repress their feelings and just be useful and productive, or at least pretend to be productive doing shit work, when there were jobs to be had. Men's feelings and life just do not matter unless they are alpha or fall in line. My personal situation has not been so bad as for most men, but I was till able to see through the deception of it.
Most women became more unhappy because they have more responsibilities and are put in competitive stressful careers which they thought they might like, but didn't. Also, they became more unhappy because they are not usually as turned on by men who are not confident and decisive and able to be aggressive at times. The divine feminine went into hiding and women became more masculine.
There were feminists who tried to make the point that the problem is patriarchy, not men, but that was too abstract for most people. Especially since Patriarchy etymologically means rule by fathers. Not just the 0.01% alpha fathers. And also because patriarchy in the west seemed to be declining, yet men seemed to be worse off than in countries where patriarchy was still strong.
There are a few asymmetries in the relationship between men and women under non-tribal conditions that are not usually talked about in feminist circles. First, most young men are much more needy of sex than most young women, for proximal biological reasons having to do with testosterone, and for evolutionary reasons as well having to do with the fact that men can impregnate many women at a time, whereas women can only be impregnated by one man and then there is a long waiting period before they can be impregnated again. As anyone who has studied negotiation knows, if one side needs something more from the other side, the more needy side is at a disadvantage and the less needy side has power over the more needy side. It's also something that is seen on the population level, not just individual negotiation level, as an example of supply and demand. There is not as much demand for sex (from men) by the population of (heterosexual) women, as there is demand for sex (from women) by the population of (heterosexual) men (women want provisions and protection more than sex). Since the supply of sex by men to women exceeds the demand, the "price" or value of male sex will be low as far as the population of women is concerned. Whereas since the supply of sex by women to men is far below demand, the value of female sex will be high as far as the population of men is concerned.
The second asymmetry is that though women can get most of their emotional needs met from other women, pets, and children, the same is not true for men in non-tribal conditions. In non-tribal cultures most men are not very good in being nurturing and kind, especially towards other men or pets. As I've mentioned in another post, monogamy thus forces them into an emotional prison with one sole emotional connection to their partner.
The third asymmetry is that on the average, and also for evolutionary reasons, women value safety more than men and are less willing to take risks than men, and especially during childbearing years are less interested in taking on themselves the risks and competition for resources that it takes to obtain food and possibly shelter, and defending against marauders (all these things now represented by ability to make money). Combine this with lower upper body strength and spatio-temporal reasoning (which were more needed in defense and farming in agrarian cultures) and its not hard to see how the ugly trade of sex/emotional intimacy for material resources evolved. The same supply and demand reasoning that leads women to have more power in sexual negotiations gave men more power in money negotiations. And of course men and women have tried to compensate for these imbalances by making prostitution or more subtle modern equivalents such as some forms of marriage possible and lucrative for both sexes. But in industrial and post-industrial cultures, men no longer have this bargaining power, except where it is vestigial. Safety is not much of an issue (except when a feminized culture over-reacts to various threats, from pandemics to terrorists to white supremacists, to communists, welfare mothers, child molesters, etc), upper body strength mostly isn't in high demand, and spatio-temporal reasoning might only be needed in a few STEM fields and trades (where men outcompete women, despite the fact that everyone in these fields wants more women to join them, and misguided beliefs about discrimination). Thus this asymmetry is already addressed in post-industrial culture.
In tribal cultures, the first asymmetry is mitigated by sex being more available for men from many women. Women do not pin all their economic hopes on one man, but on the tribe as a whole, and feel much safer (when there is no inter-tribal warfare at least) and do not need to guard their sexuality as an economic bargaining chip in exchange for safety and provisions. Sex can even become a way to ease tensions and increase group cohesion, as in bonobos. Also in tribal conditions, there is more connection to the sensual natural world and to other ego-transcending rituals besides sex, which mitigates the need for sex as the only mechanism of ego-transcendence. Last, in non-patriarchal tribal cultures there is much emotional bonding among all tribe members, also mitigating the need for sex, which is partially an emotional need, not just a physical need. This addresses the second asymmetry above. The asymmetries are still there (and are even celebrated), but they don't lead to the same prostitutional ugliness in tribal cultures (at least before they come into competition with other more violent tribes, or modernity) as they do in agrarian, industrial or post-industrial cultures.
The fact that we live in a post-industrial culture, not a tribal one is the first obstacle to transcending our evolution. The second obstacle is that trauma from the past is still determining to a large extent our present behavior, feelings and outlook. There is the past trauma of genocides, broken treaties, mass die-offs during epidemics, wars, forced relocations, kidnappings, slavery, witch burnings, normalized rape, beta male disposability in everyday life. Until that is addressed and integrated there is little hope for transcendence. We already mentioned the third obstacle to transcending evolution: the immense interdependence of parts of a culture.
The problem for MRAs is that they acknowledge the evolutionary pressures for women to get certain privileges and for most men to be disposable but they still think it's unfair and they won't admit that they are traumatized by the past. Most of them have no trouble with women having equal opportunities as men. I doubt most of them would want to live in a Handmaid's Tale kind of world. I think most MRAs share the original feminist desire to be treated as if they matter, not as being disposable or only valued for their use to women and alpha males. Their hatred of feminism is of the injustice that has only increased as a result of certain kinds of feminism, the hijacking of the original liberatory ideology by power hungry women and alpha men. But also that they don't want to recognize the female trauma of the past, during real patriarchal times, or of the present in cultures that still are patriarchal.
We need another wave. A wave of love for all people, letting them find what their gifts are, and helping them match them to the needs of their community, regardless of their biology, but not in spite of it. We need to rebuild communities, relocalize economies, and revalue the positive aspects of masculinity and femininity, instead of being immersed in the toxic aspects of both. But it won't happen without grief and trauma work and the recognition of the other genders' or culture's trauma, which might be different than our own. And it won't happen without recognizing something sacred in life, that goes beyond evolutionary motives and economic transactions. It also won't happen without an understanding of social, psychological and biological evolution and the deeply ingrained cognitive habits of our culture which has proximally served the evolutionary trajectory it has taken. It may not be necessary for most people to have this understanding, but it would help if at least the leaders and pioneers of the 5th wave developed such an understanding.
Pioneers can be women like Cassie Jaye, Karen Straughan, Christina Sommers-Hoff and Janice Fiamengo, if they can team up with the more spiritual feminists like Starhawk, Lynx Vilden, Sue Monk Kidd and Pema Chodron.
