[eightpersimmons]

The fact that people act out larger, structural systems of misogyny doesn't exonerate them. A person still has agency, and to say that they are acting out something that is part of a larger discourse doesn't mean that they are helpless puppets. Another thing to realize when talking about misogyny and structural injustice is that it isn't blaming any given individual - that's what makes it structural. It isn't a cabal of evil men with a maniacal plan forcing women down or a statement that all men are bad and oppressive, it's a deeply rooted system of oppression that lots of people propagate, knowingly or not, through stereotypes, legal injustice, inactivity, social policing, et cetera.

And I think you are too quick to write off people's actions as evolutionarily programmed - it's a somewhat ironic response, given your first complaint. Whether or not there is a biological instinct to compete sexually, the expression of that instinct is a product of social norms. Arguments for evolutionary psychology have a troublesome and pretty untenable tendency to ascribe a complex, culturally-specific, and socially enforced behavior to some magical mystery determinism gene. It's kind of a pet peeve of mine.

[philwelch]

Does it always bother you when people give uselessly reductive, empirically unsubstantiated pat explanations for incredibly complicated social behaviors, or only when they conflict with your own?