Talk:Male expendability

Women and Men by Ernestine Friedl

My library was able to find this book for me and I'm almost all the way through it. I see that Friedl does describe male expendability on page 59, but she does not call it by any name:

"War: Men are the principal fighters and defenders in horticultural societies as in all others; it is mostly the energy of the male members of the society which is expended in the preparation for war and in actual fighting; it is the men who account for the majority of deaths in warfare. That this is so can probably be accounted for by many of the factors by which we explained the male monopoly of hunting: the need for unpredictable absences from the homestead which is incompatible with the nurture and transportation of children, and so forth. But there may be an additional adaptive factor at work here, related to the maintenance of the population. The number of children that a woman can bear is severely limited, particularly where the average spacing is frequently one child in every three years. Under these circumstances a woman can scarecely have more than a dozen children between menarche and menopause. One man, on the contrary, is capable during his sexual maturity of impregnating an extremely large number of women. Therefore, for the maintenance of a population, men's lives are decidedly more expendable than women's. [New paragraph] These factors have not, however, prevented some horticultural societies from using women in warfare to a limited extent..." She continues by giving examples of women in warfare.

• Friedl is talking about "horticultural societies" specifically: Cultures that are neither hunter-gatherers nor practitioners of farming that involves plowing.
• Friedl is talking about extant, living cultures (as of 1975) and not about a hypothesized long prehistoric period common to all/most humans.
• Friedl does not cite any evidence or proof; she merely presents a well-reasoned, plausible explanation for an observable phenomenon.
• Friedl is not a biologist and did not study the biology of human reproduction, nor was she at the time of this book privy to any discoveries made after 1975.
• Friedl makes no assertion whatsoever that male expendability is in play in industrial societies such as our own, and she does make similar comparisons elsewhere in the book (i.e. she compares Eskimo wives to middle-class American wives in their near-total social and economic dependence on their husbands).

So far, this is the only time that male expendability appears in this book in any way. I'm nine pages from the end. Darkfrog24 (talk) 18:22, 16 April 2023 (UTC)

I finished it. It was the only mention. Darkfrog24 (talk) 14:13, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

GQ source doesn't actually literally support cannon fodder quote in author's voice

I'm reading the GQ source, and its tone isn't literal. The article is cited to support the text "poor and working class men are cannon fodder abroad and expendable labor at home, trapped beneath a glass floor in jobs nobody really wants—farm workers, roofers, garbage men—and injured at far higher rates than women." Here are Jeff Sharlet's exact words:

"They have evidence. Men, particularly poor and working-class men, are cannon fodder abroad and expendable labor at home, trapped beneath a glass floor in jobs nobody really wantsfarm workers, roofers, garbagemenand injured at far higher rates than women."(3)

This is an example of how the author writes:

• "and Paul said, 'Bitch, go get me a sandwich.'" ' He’s joking, more satire, because right now his brotherly love extends to ladies with a sense of humor. He would never ask a bitch to make him a sandwich."

• Everyone smiles. We are high in the manosphere now, the great phallic oversoul, the red pills are working, the rape jokes no longer land like bombshells, they’re like the weather, ordinary as rain. We’ve made it: the dream world of Elam, where men are men, no matter how broken.

• "[Sage] warns her not to send mixed messages. For instance, she shouldn’t put her hand on a man’s knee if she doesn’t want to have sex with him. Sage puts his hand on Blair’s knee. This is not a mixed message, he wants her to understand."

It looks like the author isn't saying "She shouldn't put her hand on a man's knee unless she wants sex"; he's saying "Sage thinks she shouldn't put her hands on a man's knee unless she wants sex." There are several cases of this elsewhere in the article: Then there's footnote (3), which reads like this:

"(3) Of course, these are largely economic conditions, but conference speaker Helen Smith, Ph.D., in her book _Men on Strike_a door prize throughout the weekenddescribes the problem as "female privilege": schools drugging the boyishness out of boys and workplaces promoting underqualified women, leaving men dumb, doped, and too broke to afford what one of Smith’s sourcesechoing Elliot Rodgerdescribes as "an expensive bitch." To men "on strike," those who refuse to marry or to work to avoid alimony"going Galt," in the movement’s Ayn Randian parlancewomen are the economic condition, singular."

So I'd say Jeff Sharlet isn't saying "Men are cannon fodder ... higher rates than women." He's saying "The [not really evidence] evidence that they have indicates that men are cannon fodder...; I believe these are actually economic conditions." I think this source is a holdover from the article's previous version, in which authors like C. Daniels were cited for things they didn't mention at all. However, it is real journalism and does comment on the manosphere. Maybe we could use it for something else. Darkfrog24 (talk) 02:18, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

Hello again,

Are you saying that Jeff Sharlet is not actually reporting here but merely being snide and sarcastic? Then I suggest we dismiss his writing all together. Although "snide and sarcastic" would make quite a broad broom, on many fronts. AndersThorseth (talk) 08:26, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

I didn't read it as snide or sarcastic. It was something much milder, though arguably in the same category. I'd still call what he's doing journalism. It's just meant to have a more immersive style to it that occasionally requires not taking the author entirely literally. In some spots, like this one, he's tipped the reader off to this by adding footnotes where he gives his own view. Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:13, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

I would say that the level of "interpretation" needed to sift through what he writes in the way you propose is the same as labeling it a primary source. I suggest we either treat it as journalism or an opinion piece. I think the latter is more appropriate, so unless some secondary source references his work then I suggest we not use it at all. AndersThorseth (talk) 09:47, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

What did you think when you read it? Darkfrog24 (talk)

@Darkfrog24: I thought it reminded me of other hit-pieces, written to undermine a certain position, conflating extremist and moderates, writings strange sounding quotes without context etc. but I assumed the positions and facts presented were genuine, because of the journalistic style that the author was using. Now I'm not so sure anymore.AndersThorseth (talk) 08:14, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

Well, the Sharlet source is currently supporting one sentence, and it's attributed with context: One writer's experience at one convention. This is the kind of thing I think we we should do with Farrell. Darkfrog24 (talk) 12:04, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

I'm not sure I follow. Are you saying we should treat the author of a book with 800+ citations on google scholar the same as some antagonistic "journalist" fielding his opinions? I would disagree if that was the case. AndersThorseth (talk) 13:30, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

I think Farrell's opinions should be attributed to him and not presented in Wikipedia's voice, yes. In this way, treating them the same highlights their differences: "In an article for GQ, religion writer Jeff Sharlet reported... one convention..." tells the reader how much credence to give what they're about to read. I'm confident we'd agree that the facts that Sharlet is only a religion writer, only writing in GQ, and only talking about one experience are relevant. Similarly, we'd say, "Social scientist and men's right's advocate Farrell, in his 2006 book This Book..." Darkfrog24 (talk) 23:36, 5 June 2023 (UTC) Similarly, we'd say "anthropologist Ernestine Friedl in 1975": Okay, she's a professional scholar, but/and she wrote this a long time ago. We cite the credentials. Of course that takes the reader to a different place when the sources have different credentials, but that's all as it should be. Darkfrog24 (talk) 12:03, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

Are the views expressed at the convention relevant for the article, perhaps. Are Sharlets opinion on the matter important enough to be included in this article, I would say no, unless someone else references these opinions as very important. AndersThorseth (talk) 22:26, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

I'm not averse to removing the GQ source and the content it supports from the article entirely. Or keeping it; I'm fine either way. I do think removing only the fact that Sharlet thinks the beliefs he encountered are wrong would give those beliefs undue treatment. Darkfrog24 (talk) 02:49, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

Myth of Male Power by Warren Farrell

My library was able to get a copy. Let's see what Farrell said in here... Darkfrog24 (talk) 17:47, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

The first thing I notice is that it was published in 1993, so that's just as genetic analysis was coming out, before we learned a lot of what we currently know about the genetic and biological elements of gender and gender identity. It's not a contemporary work; it's a contemporary of Reviving Ophelia. It didn't come out during the Me Too movement; it came out when sexual harassment was just starting to be a concept in the American workplace.

I'm going to do here what I did with Daniels and Freidl, go through the book page by page to confirm that it actually supports the text it's cited to support, that the author actually says what he's purported to have said. But I already find that it's giving me a sense of just how reliable the work is as a source.

• INTRODUCTION: The introduction makes predictions about the next quarter century. So I guess we can think of it as something like halfway between Friedl and the present. "School tells him not to take risks, not to roughhouse, not to use swearwords, not to refer to sex..." Well. I can confirm that one's not true. "Feminism suggested that God might be a 'She' but not that the devil might also be a 'she.'" Well no, we already had centuries of folklore and an Elizabeth Banks movie. I'm especially not impressed with his ideas about sexual harassment and date rape: "Feminism has taught women to sue men for sexual harassment or date rape when men initiate with the wrong person or with the wrong timing; no one has taught men to sue women for sexual trauma for saying 'yes,' then 'no,' then 'yes,' then 'no.'" That is some blinding false equivalence. My conclusion at the end of the introduction is that Farrell will say something very reasonable and very likely to be true in one paragraph and then something completely wrong in the next, in a way that causes me to question his judgment, or at least the judgment he had in 1993. Right now, it feels like this book is a reliable source for Farrell's own opinion and only that, but the introduction is usually where authors give their opinions and not where they provide evidence for those opinions. The rest of the book may be more solid. Darkfrog24 (talk) 17:47, 22 June 2023 (UTC)
• Ch 1, no mention of male expendability. It does mention soldiers, violent crime, firefighters, and unofficial bodyguards. Qualitatively, the statistics feel cherrypicked, and he's way too ready to invoke slavery. But this chapter is literally called "at a glance." Maybe it gets more solid later. Darkfrog24 (talk) 20:43, 28 June 2023 (UTC)
• Ch 2, no mention of male expendability. It hasn't gotten more solid. Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:44, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

  Please don't use the talk page of this article to review Farrell's book; it would be rather irrelevant. He's a reliable political and social scientist, and a published author and scholar. Your review is not. Summarize your point please. Ciridae (talk) 16:06, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

  And since you apparently didn't check the TOC, chapter 3 has "disposable male" in its title. Ciridae (talk) 02:48, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

I'm not reviewing the book in general; I'm assessing it as a source for this article. I did the same thing with Daniels' Exposing Men and Friedl's Women and Men, and both efforts improved this article significantly, in Daniels' case by the removal of incorrectly attributed text and in Friedl's by the addition of valuable content. Specifically, here are the questions I want to answer: "What does Farrell say about male expendability?" "For what is Farrell a reliable source? a) the way gender and society really work? b) what the manosphere thinks, regardless of whether it's true? c) only his own opinion? d) something else?" But you are very right to remind me to keep it the heck on topic and give my own opinion only when relevant. I think it should be obvious from the format that I'm doing one chapter at a time, in order, but just in case it wasn't, here's... Darkfrog24 (talk) 00:05, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

• ...Ch 3! As Ciridae mentions, the title is "Are 'Power,' 'Patriarchy,' 'Dominance,' and 'Sexism' Actually Code Words for Male Disposability?" However, Farrell does not discuss male expendability/disposability in this chapter, by which I mean that he does not say "society values men less than women because men are less necessary for reproduction." In fact, he says "I believe it is more accurate and compassionate to understand that both sexes were working to promote life—women risked death to create life; men risked death to protect life" p. 95, emphasis his. He also makes a number of easily disprovable claims. For example, Farrell says the words "hero" and "slave" come from the same root, and they don't. He cites the American Heritage Dictionary as one source for this, but that's not what the American Heritage Dictionary says: hero from Greek slave not from Greek. This continues the general pattern of Farrell not being reliable on anything but his own thoughts. Farrell lists ways that he thinks society pressures men (and not women) to die, mostly warriors/soldiers/protectors of women and children, but he doesn't connect this to population dynamics. We have our first mention of "disposable" on page 75, but he does not talk about male expendability. It mentions men in dangerous protector-related roles and it mentions polygyny, but it does not connect either of them to population replacement. When I started reading, I figured Farrell was an authority on the manosphere, but it's starting to look like he's better used as an example of the manosphere—and then only if he does discuss male expendability later in the book. I'm on page 100 of 371, so that's still a real possibility. Darkfrog24 (talk) 00:06, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

  @Darkfrog24 And it's still not relevant, because it's your opinion, and you are not the political and social scientist. Farrell is. We have a policy of "No original research" that you seem to be forgetting. This breakdown has no place on this Talk page. Ciridae (talk) 04:24, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

WP:OR means "don't put original research in Wikipedia articles; find reliable sources instead." It doesn't mean "Don't read a reliable source and then post on the talk page about a) whether or not it says the thing for which it is cited (facts), b) whether what it says is provably true/untrue (facts), or c) what you think about it (opinion)." I'll add that item a) has happened here more than once: The Daniels source Exposing Men was cited to support article text that the author specifically disagrees with. The article said "human biology does X" with Exposing Men tagged as a reference, but what Daniels wrote was "we should question whether human biology does X." The Delap source was almost as bad. It didn't say anything about male expendability. Yes we do need to check the sources for what they actually say and don't say.

Do you want to join in? I went to my local library and asked for this book and they got it for me through an interlibrary exchange. It was slow but easy and not expensive. With two sets of eyes, we could check the source even more accurately. Let's both do it! It could be fun! Darkfrog24 (talk) 16:53, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

Just to jump in here as a 3rd opinion: what Darkfrog24 is doing here is a little more verbose than usual, but it doesn't strike me as inappropriate. Trying to reason about what sources say about a topic and for what they should be considered reliable is core to Wikipedia editing. Suriname0 (talk) 18:59, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

• Ch 4. We begin a section of the book called "The 'Glass Cellars' of the Disposable Sex," but chapter four still doesn't mention male expendability. Farrell talks about men in dangerous jobs and specifically cites the sacrifices men make to feed their and society's children. From this, I would infer that Farrel does not think men's contribution to reproduction ends in impregnating a woman. He describes men as long-term fathers with huge post-pregnancy investment. It looks like his "male disposability" might not be the same thing as this article's "male expendability." Darkfrog24 (talk) 21:35, 2 July 2023 (UTC)
• Ch 5. No mention of male expendability. Now Farrell is comparing war service to prostitution. Again, he cites things that are easily disproven, like claiming no British women served in the Falklands. He says that women make up 11.7 percent of the total military but 12 percent of the officers as if that's a statistically significant difference... The closest thing we have to a reference to male expendability is comparing it to the draft: "Registering all our 18-year-old sons for the draft in the event the country needs more soldiers is as sexist as registering all our 18-year-old daughters for child-bearing in the event the country needs more children" on page 130. The he claims women in the Navy got pregnant to avoid combat duty and then had abortions anyway on page 132. Nothing to the effect of "we devalue men because women are needed for population replacement." While trying to find out if "pregnant navy syndrome" is real, I found this link that claims to be the full text of the book. Join in if you want: [1] More later. Darkfrog24 (talk) 00:34, 6 July 2023 (UTC) Finished Ch 5. No mention of male expendability. Darkfrog24 (talk) 18:01, 6 July 2023 (UTC)
• Ch 6 & 7. No mention of male expendability. I'm appalled that he compares rape to unemployment, but he also supports some ideas that have since caught on, like teaching men to do testicular exams the way we teach women to do breast exams and focusing on the causes of male suicide. Darkfrog24 (talk) 18:02, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
• Ch 8. & 9 No mention of male expendability. Ch. 10 seems to come close on page 232 (CTRL-F "birth defects") but peters out without mentioning population replacement. Ch. 11 No mention of male expendability. Darkfrog24 (talk) 17:20, 10 July 2023 (UTC) Darkfrog24 (talk) 20:08, 12 July 2023 (UTC) Ch 12 On page 272, the "children need their mother defense" is kind of similar but Farrell still doesn't say society considers men unnecessary to raise kids, and he himself seems to believe that they are necessary. His reverence for post-conception fatherhood continues. Darkfrog24 (talk) 23:04, 12 July 2023 (UTC) Ch 13 This was the chapter on sexual harassment. Still nothing. Darkfrog24 (talk) 15:36, 13 July 2023 (UTC) Ch 14 Still no mention of male expendability. Darkfrog24 (talk) 16:32, 13 July 2023 (UTC) Ch 15 and Conclusion Still nothing. Darkfrog24 (talk) 18:49, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

Warren Farrell does not mention male expendability anywhere in Myth of Male Power. He describes many ways in which he feels society treats men as disposable but he never claims this is because men are or believed to be less necessary for population maintenance and replacement after impregnation. Instead, Warren places profound importance on the roles and rights of fathers long after their children are born and believes that society does so as well, at least as far as their financial role ("man as wallet"). It looks like his idea of male disposability and the theory of male expendability used by anthropologists are two different things with similar names. Here's what I think we should do:

1. Remove the two Myth of Male Power sources from this article because they don't support the main premise.
2. Because Myth of Male Power is unimpressive as a source for facts, we should not use it as a source for supporting details, such as "men work more dangerous jobs." If these details remain relevant, we should find other sources for them, like the U.S. Department of Labor and its counterparts.
3. Determine whether Farrell's concept of "male disposability" is notable enough to deserve its own article. It might be, but conflating it with male expendability in the absence of any source claiming or showing that they're the same thing gives male disposability undue weight.
4. Determine if any of the sources support the idea that the Manosphere uses male expendability to explain and defend ideas about society. If Farrell's book didn't really talk about male expendability, and the Delap source didn't talk about male expendability, maybe none of them did. Male expendability might not be connected to the Manosphere or men's rights movements after all.

I'm a human being and subject to error, and I won't take it personally if anyone checks my work: [2]. We include Friedl here even though she only discusses male expendability on one page. Darkfrog24 (talk) 18:49, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

The problem I see is the failure of this article to distinguish between the phenomenon of male expendability and the (proposed) theoretical root cause of male expendability. This failure is somewhat equivalent to not being able to distinguish between the fact that solid objects typically fall to the ground when unsupported and Einsteins general theory of gravity - one is a everyday observation the other is a deep and very difficult explanation of many phenomenons.

We are, as I see it dealing with two independent claims:

1. Males are generally being treated as expendable

2. An important reason for males being being treated as expendable is biological/reproductional

As long as these two claims are being unnecessarily intertwined, the same fruitless discussion will arise again and again. What makes this difficult is also the imbalance between the two claims, 1. is abundantly evident in past and present, but not generally accepted as fact, mainly due to politics, while 2. is bordering on self evident but very hard to find concrete evidence for.

So my suggestion would be to make this distinction much more clear. AndersThorseth (talk) 09:20, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

I do not believe either point 1 or 2 is evident.

I think we have enough sourcing to establish that "male expendability" as defined by anthropologists does not refer to any way in which society might treat men or boys as expendable; it's "society puts them in more dangerous jobs because they're less necessary for population replacement." If it's not about population replacement, then it's not male expendability. Warren Farrell's book does not talk about male expendability and in fact never once uses either the term or the idea.

The general idea or belief that society treats men and boys as expendable may or may not merit its own article, but it shouldn't be this one because that's not what the term means.

I would like to get a subject expert on anthropology to take a look at this article. How do you feel about asking together? Darkfrog24 (talk) 23:20, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

What you or I think is evident is completely irreverent, I was merely making the point that the questions are very different. The actual question is what the general literature says about those two separate questions. So for instance Dennen http://rint.rechten.rug.nl/rth/dennen/warrior.htm discusses males in wars and writes this:

I will not give too much attention to the voluminous body of literature which has pretended to find the answer in the propositions that

(a) Males are (biologically) expendable...

So he might disagree with (2) but he has noted that a "voluminous body of literature" does not hold the same view.

If it is a anthropologist term with a strict meaning then put that meaning in the lead section and not a weasel formulations like "the idea comes from...". If it does not have strict definition then please stop with the gatekeeping and "then it's not male expendability"-type of arguments. I have no problem with a anthropologist weighing in on this debate. I personally dont know any I could ask. AndersThorseth (talk) 11:46, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

You shouldn't call what I'm doing gatekeeping, but I agree on your other point: We have a few sources that indicate this is a specific term in anthropology but I'd sure like to see more. I asked at WikiProject Anthropology.

However, if we do find that the strict definition is not standard among anthropologists, it would not necessarily follow that Farrell's ideas would be. Darkfrog24 (talk)

Feminist kickback

Why is there no mention of the feminist kickback again this seeing it portrays them as baby makers and nothing more? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A00:23C7:6388:4F01:F584:8674:49B1:226F (talk) 19:44, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

Because no Wikieditor has added it yet. If you know of a reliable source showing that 1) such kickback has taken place and 2) such kickback is notable enough for inclusion, then by all means, go ahead. Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:46, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

I think the fact that the theory sees men as disposable is far worse, so I'm not sure why they would complain. Especially as this is a known and observed thing. Tiggy The Terrible (talk) 11:36, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

What happened to the animals sections?

There was a section discussing the phenomena of male expendability in animals such as dung beetles. What happened? Tiggy The Terrible (talk) 15:46, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

You added the dung beetle information in January 2022.[3] Darkfrog24 reverted you in March 2023 with a very weak edit summary: "Per talk page: Online version of Ong's book looks like it doesn't contain the word "expendability." Can anyone who has seen the book on paper confirm?" As if the word "expendability" is absolutely required in discussing the topic. Darkfrog24 initiated a discussion about this issue at Talk:Male expendability#Fighting for Life by Walter Ong, and then started another discussion the next day at Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_399#Walter_Ong_on_non-human_biology. Several people expressed the idea that human male expendability was the core concept, and other animals were less important to the topic. Even so, I think the animal ideas should remain in the article. They demonstrate the basic biological concept, and are definitely part of the topic. Binksternet (talk) 19:31, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

It was a while ago, but I believe we removed the animal section piece by piece because every source that I found about male expendability referred to it in exclusively human terms and not even one of them said it applied to other male animals. I didn't even see one that mentioned other primates. There's a similar concept, Bateman's principle, which does apply to nonhuman animals, and this article links to it. So at least a few of the ideas in that section may be Wiki-worthy, but it looks like they belong in that article and not this one. Darkfrog24 (talk) 20:56, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

If I recall, all the sources used mention expendability directly and in context. Though I don't think specific use of that phrase should be a deal-breaker as there are other terms related to it. For example: Male Disposability. Tiggy The Terrible (talk) 15:29, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

We're agreed there. It's about the concept and not the name. Ernestine Friedl is credited with originating the concept of male expendability, but she doesn't call it that (or anything) in the work in which she does so. Warren Farrell, however, names a concept of "male disposability" and "the disposable male," but upon close reading, he's talking about a different thing. Darkfrog24 (talk) 17:28, 10 May 2024 (UTC)

@Darkfrog24 Wasn't Warren Farrell on the page last time, too? It seems odd if he isn't. I'm pretty sure he mentions animals too. Tiggy The Terrible (talk) 14:33, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

I don't remember if Farrell mentioned animals, but it turns out Myth of Male Power doesn't mention male expendability even once! By that, I mean he doesn't say "male expendability" and he doesn't describe the concept while using a different name/no name like Friedl did. I got the book out of the library last year and read it page by page. The short version is that he doesn't think society treats men expendably because of population replacement issues. Instead, he describes a "man-as-wallet" model. I was pretty surprised. Darkfrog24 (talk) 18:00, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

@Darkfrog24 Really? That is a shock. I would have bet money on that. In any case, it is mentioned in humans by the Centre for Male Psychology, and a few others, so I may be adding those soon if there are no objections. Tiggy The Terrible (talk) 08:06, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

I see that this part of the Centre for Male Psychology self-identifies as a blog, so the relevant guideline would be WP:SELFPUBLISH. The bloggers disclose their professional credentials, as required, but I'm concerned about the level of bias I see in their claims of gynocentrism. I think "use with caution" applies here. I haven't seen the specific article you're talking about yet, but I'd feel better if the material on animals does not go back in if CMP is the main source rather than providing support for other sources.

This may not be the most Wiki-relevant issue, but it stood out to me: The page you link has the line, "When humans make their Sophie’s Choice, they save their daughters," but in the movie Sophie's Choice, the title character did choose the son over the daughter. This writer did not think things through.

What else can I find... This review of a course from CMP says "the authors ignored or even denied the existence of patriarchy, which continues to define the lives of many women and girls around the planet. I wish they had simply acknowledged this reality, as doing so in no way negates the challenges that disproportionately affect boys and men," though she liked the course overall. Darkfrog24 (talk) 22:38, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

Elliott's picture of the orcas has drama and color, but this is an op-ed, not a study. He might just be trying to paint a picture, not make a scientific statement. Under WP:NEWSBLOG, we see "If a news organization publishes an opinion piece in a blog, attribute the statement to the writer, e.g. 'Jane Smith wrote ...'" Even then, we'd need other sources to first establish that the transfer to non-humans is both verifiable and notable. Darkfrog24 (talk) 22:52, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

@Darkfrog24 Most gender studies academics self describe as activists for women, so I wouldn't worry too much about the centre of male studies having a bias. In regards to "Sophie's Choice", they aren't talking about the movie. Which is clear if you read onward. Patriarchy is a theory that is contested, I don't see that as a problem. However I will grant you it is possibly an op ed. Tiggy The Terrible (talk) 18:56, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

The expression "Sophie's Choice" comes from the story Sophie's Choice. It's not a figure of speech that the movie later used for a title. The title character literally has to choose between her daughter or her son being murdered by the Nazis.

Yes, it's listed as an opinion article. So the author is showing bias because this is the type of article in which he's almost supposed to. Doesn't mean the CMP doesn't have any RS in it. Darkfrog24 (talk) 21:56, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

@Darkfrog24 I'm sure you're aware the expression "Sophie's Choice" is a common idiom, meaning to be forced to choose between two extremely bad options. I'm sure you are also aware that quibbles over idioms are usually intended as distractions from the core point as to if something is admissible or not. Tiggy The Terrible (talk) 18:55, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Favre study

I found a full-text PDF of the Favre study: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1203.6231 That's "Strong gender differences in reproductive success variance, and the times to the most recent common ancestors."

I removed the source and the text attributed to it from the article because this study does not seem to say anything about male expendability. As always, I'm human and I might have missed it, so please do check my work. But it looks like Favre et al. think higher death rates among pre-modern men are from increased competition and risk-taking, not from being less valued by modern society. I'd say this is a good source overall, but it's not a good source for this article because it does not connect its content to the subject of this article. It would work well in an article about the Neolithic bottleneck itself, though. Darkfrog24 (talk) 22:18, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

I put it back. I thought about it, and I kept thinking "This is OR unless we have a specific expert linking these findings to male expendability." Then I reread the rest of the passage and that does seem to be what Roy Baumeister does in the cited sources. I think we have to limit it to what Baumeister actually said and phrase the connection as his professional opinion, but I think we might be okay. Darkfrog24 (talk) 02:03, 27 August 2024 (UTC)