Jesus General has another one of his brilliant posts, all about the current Administration’s “promotion of ‘manly virtues,’ almost all of which are related to a willingness to engage in violence and humiliation towards others.”

Funny. That had never occurred to me as a definition of manliness, but now that JG mentions it, I have to agree that’s indeed the definition oozing out of the White House.

Biologically speaking (that’s what you come to this blog for, right?) male violence has a role. Pregnancy and nursing, necessarily done entirely by females, raise the caloric and nutritional requirements of a 120 lb woman right up to that of a very active 180 lb man. If that woman also expended energy fighting and healing from wounds, there’d be no way she could survive unless she got all her meals at a nutrition-enhanced Macdonalds. For most of human history, there have been no Macdonalds.

So, having the men be first in line to deal with the world’s violence, in order to protect the group and the group’s children has enormous survival value. That’s why every human group that’s survived long enough to leave a record does it that way. From the group’s perspective, the manly virtues are protectiveness and self-sacrifice. (This isn’t to say that females don’t fight. They do when the threat is close enough. It’s just that they don’t generally put themselves first in line to take casualties.)

Protectiveness and self-sacrifice are a bit different from violence and humiliation. The opposite, in fact. And generalized male violence that includes the group has the opposite of survival value. It’s sociopathic.

I’m not sure why I’m surprised that a bunch of sociopathic chickenhawk kleptocrats would have as little understanding of manliness as they do of sex. These are, after all, cockroaches in suits. I just keep getting fooled by those humanoid outfits they wear.

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