I think this is Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love, and double divorcƩ. She is not a scientist or statistician. IMO the clip is propaganda.
I did some research on the claim about women and happiness anyway and her claims seem unsupported by most data. Generally people in good long term relationships seem to be the happiest (big surprise there).
She might be right about relationships being a bigger deal for men instead of women. (Makes sense from evolutionary point of view and seems reasonable to me)
And Iāll say this somewhat sarcastically: that it matters more for men is just another way men are oppressed by their biology that women arenāt. While I donāt think we should play oppression games like that, it does pose a problem IMO for contemporary leftist worldviews that seem incapable of acknowledging that men* could be oppressed at all. BFITF does a lot better than the average lefty worldview in that respect.
*edit: straight white nondisabled men
Iāll comment more later. But to start with:
Why? And what evolutionary argument do you have in mind?
I donāt know what this means but maybe answering the above will also clarify it.
Half-baked post:
I think itās right that men that marry women are happier than single men. How much and how many tho? Idk the numbers. It makes sense to me tho cuz I think women are more successful than men in certain ways. I think women are more sociable than men(dont have the numbers btw), and that lets them be more successful. It lets them be more successful cuz theyāre more familiar with the USās social heiarchy and can climb it more easily. Im not that knowledgable about our social heirarchy but i think itās there and being successful in it requires social skills and i guess good social qualities.
It makes sense to me(in a way) that men are better off being married cuz they gain access to their wifeās social circles and idk wat else. Maybe their good routines and money. The married men can live off that. What I donāt get is how much better off men are cuz i always hear that men are divorced often and that theyāre in unhappy marriages.
Stronger selection pressure on men due to lower lifetime rates of reproducing at least once (40% for men, 80% for women). I understand this is a long-term (millennia) historical average. it makes sense that there could be some asymmetric selection pressure here that makes things like being in a relationship matter more for men (wrt happiness, life satisfaction, depression, etc) ā on the whole at least.
If relationships matter more for men than women regarding happiness etc then men are more dependent (in this aspect) on external cooperation for their well-being which Iām interpreting as āoppressionā. I was a bit triggered by the clip so I said it partially as an emotional reaction to the lefty bits.
Iām not convinced by this reasoning because there is discrimination against women in the social hierarchy.
Also, there are different types and ways of being social. If women (on average) are better than men at befriending the neighbors, for example, that wouldnāt necessarily translate to an advantage at social climbing. Iām also unsure how much social climbing leads to happiness (sometimes it helps but sometimes it makes people unhappy; it depends).
I think youāre saying historically men had to go out of their way more to have a child. A woman who was passive regarding relationships/mating was more likely to have a child anyway than a passive man. That sounds plausible.
But women are more likely to be physically harmed by their partner, making relationships a big deal evolutionarily for them. Iād guess thereās more evolutionary selection value for women than men in picking a good mate (or influencing the outcome in other ways in scenarios where direct choice isnāt available). I think this is plausible too.
So overall I wouldnāt draw evolutionary conclusions about this. I see the influence of evolution as unclear and Iām doubtful it should be a major consideration in this discussion.
Ah, I didnāt know it was a public figure. Thatās a bad sign. I donāt think her lack of expertise is important though. I thought I was watching a non-expert lay person.
Big picture:
Personal anecdotes from low-prestige people are one of the more reliable forms of evidence on social media. But you have to be wary of generalizing from them.
Studies are more doubtful in general. Studies are already generalized, so itās harder for them to be right than claims that arenāt generalized yet.
If you compare studies to your own generalizations of anecdotes, they may be similarly reliable, or more, or less. It depends on many things including how much risk you take when generalizing.
If you hear about a study on social media and give it similar default importance in your mind to one or two anecdotes, maybe thatās fine. If you count it like fifty anecdotes, then thatās a problem and youād fall for a lot of propaganda.
I suspect I trust studies less than the average person. I didnāt intend for people to put a lot of trust in studies that I share.
I do think sharing of studies gets into propaganda territory more than a lot of highly real/plausible sounding personal anecdotes. There are also other anecdotes that seem less trustworthy and could more easily be propaganda. Itās hard to specify in clear, explicit terms how to tell the difference.
double divorcƩ
A lot of ultra high status men have divorces too. Not sure this is very relevant.
IMO the clip is propaganda.
OK so I didnāt look up the study yet. Letās take a look now. Gemini claims her sources are:
Revisiting the Relationships among Gender, Marital Status, and Mental Health
Happy Ever After (book)
The Relationship Between Sex Roles, Marital Status, and Mental Illness
Are you already familiar with any of these?
Do you think thatās a potential sign of exposure to and belief in contradictory propaganda? Or an indicator of tribalism?
Iām guessing you didnāt research the studies before being triggered (since you didnāt talk about them), which sounds like a bad sign to me, though let me know if you did!
Where are you getting those numbers from?
I think what you mean here is that if men benefit more from marriage than women do, that is a way that men are oppressed that women arenāt.
You do clarify some on that later (I havenāt read everything yet though, so may have missed something else):
Ok, so I think thatās basically what I was saying.
Another way to look at that would be that men benefit more than women because women are putting more labour into relationships, specifically into things that benefit their partner. So that would not be the oppression of men, but could be the systemic oppression of women.
I think that the contemporary leftist worldview about this is actually that patriarchy hurts everyone, including men. Including straight white non disabled men. If you just search something like āpatriarchy hurts menā you can find lots of stuff about how patriarchy also hurts men, written from a feminist perspective. (Though maybe you donāt think that counts, if they arenāt specifically calling it āoppressionā.)
I agree with this but donāt really agree with the rest of what you wrote. I think women do benefit from specific ways they are socialized, and this may be relevant to why they do better single than men do. Iāll expand more below.
I donāt see why it would need to be explained via evolution and biology. It seems like there are several straightforward cultural/socialization explanations.
Lots of explanations for this exist and are easy to find. For example, married men go to the doctor more and avoid dangerous activities more often ā both commonly attributed to their wives nagging them to be heathy and safe. So that could be part of it.
The most interesting topic to me has to do with happiness and emotional support. So thatās what Iāll focus on.
I think people do better when they have robust support networks. When people care about them, support them, check up on them, hug them, listen to their problems, offer advice and assistance, etc.
These kinds of emotional support are more common in friendships between women than in friendships between men. This is noncontroversial and widely accepted outside of this sort of argument, and often a source of jokes (including jokes made by men).
For example, friendships between men are more often transactional, e.g. focused on one or more shared activities. There is a super common phenomenon where a guy says his best friend got divorced or fired or some other major life event, and the guyās wife asks what happened and the guy has no idea. He heard about his friendās life event and asked zero follow-up questions. This is standard for many men.
Men often say that this is just how they prefer it, that they are more stoic than women, less emotional, etc. And this is the reason why they donāt open up, share feelings, support each other, and do all that other feminine crap women do with their friends.
But men do often open up to their girlfriends and wives. They even open up to women they just met. Itās easy to find lots of examples of women wondering why guys keep trauma dumping on the first date. Or wondering why their boyfriends need to be babied so much.
So to recap, my position is that most people benefit from emotional support. Women commonly give emotional support to other women via friendship. Men donāt do that as much. So for many men, the only emotional support they get is from their wife.
Ergo, single women are still receiving emotional support (and generally getting/giving it in a reciprocal way with other women.) Single men get no emotional support, and married men get emotional support from their wives (often in a lopsided way).
I think that my individual points here are generally well known and not very controversial when looked at outside of this context. Put them all together and I think it could easily explain a large amount of the disparities in happiness outcomes between married men and women.
No particular source (just like general knowledge now), but itās easy to find. Hereās a reddit thread discussing it and some links. https://www.reddit.com/r/evolution/comments/18sbbbh/what_percentage_of_men_actually_reproduced/
The reddit OP uses 33% not 40% for men, and something I didnāt know about that is like way more extreme:
Once upon a time, 4,000 to 8,000 years after humanity invented agriculture, something very strange happened to human reproduction. Across the globe, for every 17 women who were reproducing, passing on genes that are still around todayāonly one man did the same.
Could you give a comparable example?
That is: a situation where X group is more dependent (than average) on external cooperation for their well-being, and then feminists characterize this as oppression?
I can think of a few possible examples but Iām curious what you had in mind when you made this analogy, or if it was more ad hoc without any specific comparison in mind.
From later in the same quote:
Another member of the research team, a biological anthropologist, hypothesizes that somehow, only a few men accumulated lots of wealth and power, leaving nothing for others. These men could then pass their wealth on to their sons, perpetuating this pattern of elitist reproductive success.
That sounds like men oppressing men. (Also men oppressing women. A few elite men oppressing everyone else.)
I donāt collect them so these are just off the top of my head; I also donāt know if avg lefty feminists would agree, and external cooperation is specific (idk if there are many for that specific reason; like menstruation fits into āoppressed by biologyā type lists but external cooperation isnāt a major factor).
- Women needing protection (in hunter-gatherer type environment)
- Trans people needing other people to approve of them. (not really oppressed by biology but does fit cooperation)
- Job market or social roles (if patriarchy always picks men and weāre in a patriarchy, then youād need specific cooperation to help you overcome some of that)
- Short people and shelves, maybe
Any overlap with what you had in mind?
Yeah, that particular part does. Iām not sure if thereās an implication that this contradicts to the oppressed by biology thing, but just in case: I donāt think this contradicts anything I said, and I think that kind of social thing can steer evolution.
One problem with that researcherās idea is that it doesnāt really work for 4000 years. It works for a few generations, but then everyone is one of the wealthy sons.
Also (and IDK if this is worth pointing out, but) ofc it sounds like men oppressing men when you have a generation of researchers brought up on that intellectual diet.
What does āvalueā mean here? Number of offspring? Iām not really sure what value would mean evolutionarily otherwise.
I generally agree with being cautious using evolutionary arguments.
(Also since a lot of discussion has been about that, Iāll mention that I mostly included it in my original reply so that I could show I agreed with Gilbert about something.)
Maybe, but I am not sure Iāve ever heard people describe loving high quality relationships like this (as laborious). Low quality ones, sure.
People commonly acknowledge that relationships take work, but theyāre talking about like working through disagreements etc that is different and symmetric.
Also I think viewing relationships in that way (as liabilities and sources of labor-debt) encourages bad conversion to some arbitrary standard.
Are you complaining about the researchers from your own source?