Talk:Male expendability/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

Women and Men by Ernestine Friedl

My library was able to find this book for me and I'm almost all the way through it. I see that Friedl does describe male expendability on page 59, but she does not call it by any name:

"War: Men are the principal fighters and defenders in horticultural societies as in all others; it is mostly the energy of the male members of the society which is expended in the preparation for war and in actual fighting; it is the men who account for the majority of deaths in warfare. That this is so can probably be accounted for by many of the factors by which we explained the male monopoly of hunting: the need for unpredictable absences from the homestead which is incompatible with the nurture and transportation of children, and so forth. But there may be an additional adaptive factor at work here, related to the maintenance of the population. The number of children that a woman can bear is severely limited, particularly where the average spacing is frequently one child in every three years. Under these circumstances a woman can scarecely have more than a dozen children between menarche and menopause. One man, on the contrary, is capable during his sexual maturity of impregnating an extremely large number of women. Therefore, for the maintenance of a population, men's lives are decidedly more expendable than women's. [New paragraph] These factors have not, however, prevented some horticultural societies from using women in warfare to a limited extent..." She continues by giving examples of women in warfare.

• Friedl is talking about "horticultural societies" specifically: Cultures that are neither hunter-gatherers nor practitioners of farming that involves plowing.
• Friedl is talking about extant, living cultures (as of 1975) and not about a hypothesized long prehistoric period common to all/most humans.
• Friedl does not cite any evidence or proof; she merely presents a well-reasoned, plausible explanation for an observable phenomenon.
• Friedl is not a biologist and did not study the biology of human reproduction, nor was she at the time of this book privy to any discoveries made after 1975.
• Friedl makes no assertion whatsoever that male expendability is in play in industrial societies such as our own, and she does make similar comparisons elsewhere in the book (i.e. she compares Eskimo wives to middle-class American wives in their near-total social and economic dependence on their husbands).

So far, this is the only time that male expendability appears in this book in any way. I'm nine pages from the end. Darkfrog24 (talk) 18:22, 16 April 2023 (UTC)

I finished it. It was the only mention. Darkfrog24 (talk) 14:13, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

GQ source doesn't actually literally support cannon fodder quote in author's voice

I'm reading the GQ source, and its tone isn't literal. The article is cited to support the text "poor and working class men are cannon fodder abroad and expendable labor at home, trapped beneath a glass floor in jobs nobody really wants—farm workers, roofers, garbage men—and injured at far higher rates than women." Here are Jeff Sharlet's exact words:

"They have evidence. Men, particularly poor and working-class men, are cannon fodder abroad and expendable labor at home, trapped beneath a glass floor in jobs nobody really wantsfarm workers, roofers, garbagemenand injured at far higher rates than women."(3)

This is an example of how the author writes:

• "and Paul said, 'Bitch, go get me a sandwich.'" ' He’s joking, more satire, because right now his brotherly love extends to ladies with a sense of humor. He would never ask a bitch to make him a sandwich."

• Everyone smiles. We are high in the manosphere now, the great phallic oversoul, the red pills are working, the rape jokes no longer land like bombshells, they’re like the weather, ordinary as rain. We’ve made it: the dream world of Elam, where men are men, no matter how broken.

• "[Sage] warns her not to send mixed messages. For instance, she shouldn’t put her hand on a man’s knee if she doesn’t want to have sex with him. Sage puts his hand on Blair’s knee. This is not a mixed message, he wants her to understand."

It looks like the author isn't saying "She shouldn't put her hand on a man's knee unless she wants sex"; he's saying "Sage thinks she shouldn't put her hands on a man's knee unless she wants sex." There are several cases of this elsewhere in the article: Then there's footnote (3), which reads like this:

"(3) Of course, these are largely economic conditions, but conference speaker Helen Smith, Ph.D., in her book _Men on Strike_a door prize throughout the weekenddescribes the problem as "female privilege": schools drugging the boyishness out of boys and workplaces promoting underqualified women, leaving men dumb, doped, and too broke to afford what one of Smith’s sourcesechoing Elliot Rodgerdescribes as "an expensive bitch." To men "on strike," those who refuse to marry or to work to avoid alimony"going Galt," in the movement’s Ayn Randian parlancewomen are the economic condition, singular."

So I'd say Jeff Sharlet isn't saying "Men are cannon fodder ... higher rates than women." He's saying "The [not really evidence] evidence that they have indicates that men are cannon fodder...; I believe these are actually economic conditions." I think this source is a holdover from the article's previous version, in which authors like C. Daniels were cited for things they didn't mention at all. However, it is real journalism and does comment on the manosphere. Maybe we could use it for something else. Darkfrog24 (talk) 02:18, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

Hello again,

Are you saying that Jeff Sharlet is not actually reporting here but merely being snide and sarcastic? Then I suggest we dismiss his writing all together. Although "snide and sarcastic" would make quite a broad broom, on many fronts. AndersThorseth (talk) 08:26, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

I didn't read it as snide or sarcastic. It was something much milder, though arguably in the same category. I'd still call what he's doing journalism. It's just meant to have a more immersive style to it that occasionally requires not taking the author entirely literally. In some spots, like this one, he's tipped the reader off to this by adding footnotes where he gives his own view. Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:13, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

I would say that the level of "interpretation" needed to sift through what he writes in the way you propose is the same as labeling it a primary source. I suggest we either treat it as journalism or an opinion piece. I think the latter is more appropriate, so unless some secondary source references his work then I suggest we not use it at all. AndersThorseth (talk) 09:47, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

What did you think when you read it? Darkfrog24 (talk)

@Darkfrog24: I thought it reminded me of other hit-pieces, written to undermine a certain position, conflating extremist and moderates, writings strange sounding quotes without context etc. but I assumed the positions and facts presented were genuine, because of the journalistic style that the author was using. Now I'm not so sure anymore.AndersThorseth (talk) 08:14, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

Well, the Sharlet source is currently supporting one sentence, and it's attributed with context: One writer's experience at one convention. This is the kind of thing I think we we should do with Farrell. Darkfrog24 (talk) 12:04, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

I'm not sure I follow. Are you saying we should treat the author of a book with 800+ citations on google scholar the same as some antagonistic "journalist" fielding his opinions? I would disagree if that was the case. AndersThorseth (talk) 13:30, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

I think Farrell's opinions should be attributed to him and not presented in Wikipedia's voice, yes. In this way, treating them the same highlights their differences: "In an article for GQ, religion writer Jeff Sharlet reported... one convention..." tells the reader how much credence to give what they're about to read. I'm confident we'd agree that the facts that Sharlet is only a religion writer, only writing in GQ, and only talking about one experience are relevant. Similarly, we'd say, "Social scientist and men's right's advocate Farrell, in his 2006 book This Book..." Darkfrog24 (talk) 23:36, 5 June 2023 (UTC) Similarly, we'd say "anthropologist Ernestine Friedl in 1975": Okay, she's a professional scholar, but/and she wrote this a long time ago. We cite the credentials. Of course that takes the reader to a different place when the sources have different credentials, but that's all as it should be. Darkfrog24 (talk) 12:03, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

Are the views expressed at the convention relevant for the article, perhaps. Are Sharlets opinion on the matter important enough to be included in this article, I would say no, unless someone else references these opinions as very important. AndersThorseth (talk) 22:26, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

I'm not averse to removing the GQ source and the content it supports from the article entirely. Or keeping it; I'm fine either way. I do think removing only the fact that Sharlet thinks the beliefs he encountered are wrong would give those beliefs undue treatment. Darkfrog24 (talk) 02:49, 14 June 2023 (UTC)