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In my mind, things like fighting in war, working high-risk jobs, etc, all fall under protecting reproductive resources through history.

Things like suffocation, drowning, and fire are a bit harder to understand... but I believe they are derived from a high-risk mentality that men have gained as a result of this protector status.

Ignoring the radical changes that we've seen in the last 50 years, if we sent women to war, we wouldn't have any children. Any nation that did that was wiped off the face of the earth rather quickly.

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> if we sent women to war, we wouldn't have any children. Any nation that did that was wiped off the face of the earth rather quickly.

If gender rolls were reversed wouldn’t be many examples where the death toll was high enough for this to occur.

In Britain in the 1921 census there were 1,209 single women aged 25 to 29 for every 1,000 men. In 1931 50% were still single, and 35% of them did not marry while still able to bear children.

After the war there were about 40% fewer single French men for every unmarried woman, compared to before.

Devastating loses but nowhere near enough to threaten the existence of a country. Post WW2 Germany and Russia would also be grim examples. It is of note that the 20th century was the first time that deaths from actual enemy action exceeded deaths from disease during war.

https://qz.com/389781/think-a-good-man-is-hard-to-find-now-t...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surplus_women

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harem

Perhaps we can increase my "50" years to "200" years. For the vast majority of history, having less men was considered eugenic and a good thing.

In Islamic societies, men having multiple wives was quite rare, with the vast majority of marriages being monogamous.

It wasn't driven by having less men. It was driven by the upper class wanting more sex.

It also turned out to be disastrous for society, and most of the Islamic world has outlawed or severly restricted the practice as it leads to huge social problems.

The fact is that war has never been a large driver of casualties in these societies, outside of WW1 and WW2 which are the two exceptions and really don't prove your point. Wars were never fought to protect women, and most men died of disease and accidents, not war.

Polygyny was not restricted to Islamic societies though, and was a common occurence accross many societies. It was always restricted to a limited amount of men of course, as only the most successful/powerful/whatever could afford it. It does have heavy social consequences, but those might or might not be an issue for a given society, as some were quite successful (ie surviving for a long time, no moral judgement here).

I certainly agree, the analysis applies to all other societies, but the link in the post was specifically about Islamic societies.

My main point of contention was that it wasn't a widespread practice and wasn't motivated by a lack of men.

> Devastating loses but nowhere near enough to threaten the existence of a country

After WW1 the average height of a french soldier dropped by an inch or two (don't remember the exact value). This was attributed to the slaughter of the fit men. It also became fashionable to marry old men and foreigners.

I know in Germany after both wars there was the same effect on marriages, but I don't know about the height.

People do not fight for the protection of reproductive resources. The peaceful way birth rates fell around the world these days is proof of that.

People fought protecting material resources. Reproductive resources were only useful insofar as they help you produce more subordinates to generate more material resources. In feudalism this meant that reproductive resources were very important, but in slavery and capitalism it isn't really the case.

Given the realities of military engagements in Feudal Europe - and the rather small army sizes - its not true that sending women to war would cause a fatal decrease in the birth rate, at all.

I'm speaking of evolutionary biases, not conscious motives... in all species, the men go to war. Female lions do hunt, but they don't fight.

What you are saying is simply wrong. Females participate in war in many species, including humans and lions. Female lions will often defend their pride to prevent the attacking lions from killing their cubs, and similarly in humans women often fight in defensive wars.

Evolutionary biases are also essentially irrelevant in how societies are structured. The structures of societies are very intentional and based on material reality, not mere biases.

Generally, men have mostly done the fighting, especially in wars of aggression. The reasons for these are material, as men are often better at fighting. It's not to protect women. When it's useful and makes sense for women to fight, then women fight.

Interesting, do you have any examples of female warrior societies? The wikipedia article seems to start with WW1:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_the_military

And even then, they were support, not infantry.

Women have been in support and combat positions in war since antiquity. Women buried with weapons were found in Kazakhstan in antiquity, otherwise quite a few Chinese armies had women in infantry positions (most often manning defences). See : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_ancient_warfare

This generally doesn't happen unless either the society is quite rich but lacks strong men, or cases of emergency, or if there is surplus of land and food, because raising armies is very costly, and as a result it doesn't make sense not to send the strongest fighters possible as it is expensive to outfit them and to maintain production at home.

Nowadays, women are proving extremely competent as fighter pilots as their bodies are better at withstanding G-Forces, but in classical infantry where there is a large strength requirement again it doesn't make much sense.

> as their bodies are better at withstanding G-Forces

Likely coming from being shorter. The heart doesn't have to push the blood as far uphill.

Women do indeed fight, but not until it gets desperate.

That is indeed part of why women are better at withstanding g-forces. The other is lower bodymass.

It's true that women generally don't fight until it's desperate historically. I explained why in the comment you replied to.

The miniseries Spartacus (recommended!) decided to pit women gladiators against male ones. Both the men and women were obviously highly fit and ripped. Try as they might, the filmmakers simply couldn't make it look like a fair fight.

This is indeed true. That's why women in combat roles historically did not engage in such roles. Instead, women often manned defences, were light archers, and so on.

>Evolutionary biases are also essentially irrelevant in how societies are structured. The structures of societies are very intentional and based on material reality, not mere biases.

Evolutionary biases are fundamentally relevant to the way society is structured. Historically more violent behavior in males has always been very adaptive as the rewards are far greater.

Evolutionary biases simply aren't relevant structurally. While men do exhibit more violent behaviour, it's been since the invention of the state that violence became a tool and not a concern. The vast majority of violence has for a long time been organized, calculated state or political violence, not instinct-driven agression. The latter still exists, but pales in comparison.

Put another way, if you took almost any society today and made everyone women, you would not see a major decrease in violence, as the vast majority of violence done serves structural and material reasons.

While violence is not always a tool, it is an evolutionary strategy. Before the advent of the state, it was already a tool, or could be at least. It, and other adaptive behaviors still hold some sway on us, and our societies are still shaped by them. We've become more complex, and cultural evolution influences as well, but you cannot cross this a defunct relic of our history.

I agree with your second point though.

> People do not fight for the protection of reproductive resources. The peaceful way birth rates fell around the world these days is proof of that.

People have fought for a number of reasons, material resources AND reproductive resources are usually key to those. Historically, raiding for woman and resources has been a constant. A big tribe is a safe tribe, more women is key. Even in modern times, you can see the pressure in expensionist/aggressive societies for women to have more children.

Again, I certainly agree. Reproductive resources are, however, ultimately a means to an end. Material resources and power are the driving force.

Fighting for reproductive resources is, however, an outmoded concern. While some states are fighting falling birthrates, none have went to war to acquire more women in recent times. And the reason why states are pursuing population is, again, material.

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