Undeveloped thought

From The Assassination of Charlie Kirk by Aaron M. Renn.  It is a miscellany of observations.  One sparked an idea which I am parking here to come back to.  

Some while ago, it seems a few months, there was a survey on social attitudes by generation.  The questions were themselves interesting in their implications but I am deeply skeptical of this MSM generated type of research.  The polls are underpowered and the survey rarely rigorous.  It is a cheap way to generate a lot of engagement without actually moving the epistemic frontier outwards.  Most often, it simply muddies the waters.

Renn:

One of the most interesting findings to me was the difference in where Gen Z men and women ranked having children as important to them:

Gen Z men who voted for Trump rate having children as the most important thing in their personal definition of success. Gen Z women who voted for Harris ranked having children as the second-least important thing in their personal definition of success.

I think everyone’s previous view would have been that women placed a higher priority on children than men. But for Gen Z, it might be the reverse. Having children would have traditionally been seen as core to female identity, but at least a segment of Gen Z women seems to be rejecting that completely.

Its a great example of just how interesting the implications might be.  If you had any confidence in the data itself.  I don't have any such confidence and therefore am reluctant to engage.

But there is something in there I want to tease out.  Our old social structures could be constricting and we have opened up options to everyone in the past three generations.  But sometimes we have done in unknowing ways.

I need to think on it for a while but it has to do with those rank choices and competitive differentials.  We are evolved such that competitive and risk-taking dispensable males fueled by testosterone, complement cooperative and risk-averse indispensable females fueled by estrogen.

In sports we have always known that there is an order of magnitude difference between men and women.  High school amateur male teams are competitive with full-time professional or Olympic female teams. Thats why we have separate leagues.  We are now finally confronting the reality that any person with extended and material exposure to testosterone will defeat anyone without that exposure.  

Consequently all the controversies about trans in sports are related to trans women (assigned male at birth) in women's sports and there is no controversy about trans men (assigned female at birth) in men's sports.   No trans men can compete at the level of men.

Trans women have the material and prolonged exposure to testosterone that advantage them over those women without that exposure.  Trans men only have recent and less material exposure to testosterone which disadvantages them in competition against men with lifelong and materially greater exposure.  

Back to Renn's Gen Z observation.

The first and second wave of the feminist movement was essentially about removing barriers for women and opening opportunities.  The third wave, influenced by critical theory, has seemed to develop the expectation that there will be equal results.  

It is indisputable that the following two things can simultaneously be true.

Women, when barriers are removed, can compete effectively with men at the highest level of performance in all non-physical fields and some physical fields (if the advantage is on precision or experience rather than strength).  

Most fields of competitive endeavor entail some mix of physical and non-physical and risk-taking skills capabilities.  

The consequence is that on average, in most competitive fields of endeavor, women will statistically be at a disadvantage to men.  On average.  There will always be instances and opportunities where an individual woman will outcompete an individual man.

If we are generating from our schools and the zeitgeist a generational cohort where some portion of men are rating family formation (with children) highly and where some portion of women are rating family formation (with children) low, there seem a couple of outcomes that are almost inevitable, depending on the ratios (my suspicion is that these differences are overstated, maybe).  

If a large portion of the male generational cohort values family formation highly and to their life well being, it materially increases the status and competitive advantage of average women.  They are indispensable to the process of family formation.  It gives women who also value family formation a greater range of choices between and balancing career and family.  All parties are better off.

However, for the smaller portion of the female generational cohort which does not value family formation highly and instead values competitive endeavor, it likely materially decreases their life well-being and competitive status.  They wish to compete but even without barriers, they are at a competitive disadvantage owing to differences in physical strength and risk taking.  Some will succeed but most will not.  

The consequence, I suspect, might be for such women to have a permanently lowered life well-being compared to their female counterparts who embrace both competitive endeavor and family formation.  

I wonder if some of the ideological heat right now might not be a consequence of the above processes.  The ideological Woke have cultivated the imagined world where are all compete equally, despite differences in capabilities and desires, and all achieve comparable outcomes.  

For those who have been taught to believe that they compete on a playing field in which they are disadvantaged and to ignore arenas where they have competitive advantage, the outcomes are going to be disappointingly meager.  

A very hazy train of thought yet but the role of mismatch of expectations versus inherent competitive advantages seems an interesting consideration.