Is There Anything Good About Men? Quotes

“Culture is partly made out of information. There are at least two main types of this information. One is a set of shared beliefs and values. The other is shared knowledge of how to do things. Culture consists of both.”
― Roy F. Baumeister, Is There Anything Good About Men?: How Cultures Flourish by Exploiting Men

“One irony we have seen is that culture values men’s activities more than women’s but treats individual men as more expendable than women. Culture was created by men, and for good reason. It depends on men’s strivings and social networks men create. Yet it also progresses by using men in a heartless manner that sometimes extends to sacrificing them. Being expendable is part of what makes men useful to culture.”
― Roy F. Baumeister, Is There Anything Good About Men?: How Cultures Flourish by Exploiting Men

“We are descended from the men who fought their way to the top. They had to outdo other men. The desire for sex was part of what drove them to do that.”
― Roy F. Baumeister, Is There Anything Good About Men?: How Cultures Flourish by Exploiting Men

“The difference in sex drive stems partly from the hormone testosterone. Men have about ten times as much of this as women. Higher testosterone predicts higher sex drive within either gender.”
― Roy F. Baumeister, Is There Anything Good About Men?: How Cultures Flourish by Exploiting Men

“There is no known culture in which the women are the ones eager for sex at every opportunity, while the men resist and refuse. If there ever were, it would be a most unusual one.”
― Roy F. Baumeister, Is There Anything Good About Men?: How Cultures Flourish by Exploiting Men

“A few lucky or worthy men (kings, movie stars, top athletes) reach positions that enable them to have whatever sort of sex lives they want. It is revealing to see what they choose. In general, they do pick a favorite partner, such as a wife. But they also generally have plenty of others on the side: mistresses, groupies, concubines. Today most such men feel pressure (despite their high status, and even because of it) to settle down with one wife and be faithful to her. Even so, they often find ways to enjoy others. If their choices were truly up to them, we would see more of the harems and other such systems of rotating bedmates.”
― Roy F. Baumeister, Is There Anything Good About Men?: How Cultures Flourish by Exploiting Men

“A man in love may feel sexual desire for a specific, particular woman, but most men also have plenty of free-floating sexual interest in other women, all women, any woman, at least in the broad set of “reasonably attractive” ones (e.g., the top 90% of women in their twenties, etc.). Part of him can’t help wanting her, wanting to look at her, to see a glimpse of her flesh. He always wants it, and he knows he will hardly ever get it. Having one partner for sex only slightly reduces the desire for every other possible one. This is normal.”
― Roy F. Baumeister, Is There Anything Good About Men?: How Cultures Flourish by Exploiting Men

“There is a substantial difference, and men have a much stronger sex drive than women. To be sure, there are some women who have frequent, intense desires for sex, and there are some men who don’t, but on average the men want it more. Every marker we could think of pointed to the same conclusion. Men think about sex more often than women do. Men have more sexual fantasies, and these encompass more different acts and more different partners.”
― Roy F. Baumeister, Is There Anything Good About Men?: How Cultures Flourish by Exploiting Men

“Women, perhaps especially thoughtful women, simply cannot fathom the strength of the male sex drive—and the ache of sexual frustration that pervades so many hours of a man’s life.”
― Roy F. Baumeister, Is There Anything Good About Men?: How Cultures Flourish by Exploiting Men

“For many men, success and sex are intertwined. Young men spend much of their time wishing and trying to have more sex than they can get. One reason they buy into the system of work and achievement and playing the game is the implicit promise that if they do become successful, they will finally be able to have the women and the sex they want.”
― Roy F. Baumeister, Is There Anything Good About Men?: How Cultures Flourish by Exploiting Men

“The hankering to rise to the top is probably quite deeply rooted in the male psyche, thanks to evolutionary selection.”
― Roy F. Baumeister, Is There Anything Good About Men?: How Cultures Flourish by Exploiting Men

“Manhood must be earned. Every adult female human being is a woman, but not every adult male is a man. Most likely the recent softening and sensitizing of discourse to avoid offending anyone has muted this distinction, which means it was probably even starker in the past. Boys had to prove something in order to become men.”
― Roy F. Baumeister, Is There Anything Good About Men?: How Cultures Flourish by Exploiting Men

“It’s going to be rough for young men in the future. The organizations favor women, based on the fake belief that these are needed to counteract male conspiracies, backlashes, and the like. Women are looked after and are given support networks. Men are on their own, just as they always were, except now they are at a systematic disadvantage against women too. The only thing men still have going for them is their own resources: the agentic self and the male ego. Plus the strong, almost desperate drive of the hardworking guy who knows he is expendable and will be dumped unless he produces.”
― Roy F. Baumeister, Is There Anything Good About Men?: How Cultures Flourish by Exploiting Men

“Men favor larger social groups. Unlike small groups and intimate relationships, these large groups make individual members expendable.”
― Roy F. Baumeister, Is There Anything Good About Men?: How Cultures Flourish by Exploiting Men

“It is a sad irony that today we look upon men as being collectively guilty for their roles in creating culture, because it is not sufficiently welcoming to women. Yet women failed to create culture themselves, needing instead access to what was built by the men, and in some cases ending up resenting them for it.”
― Roy F. Baumeister, Is There Anything Good About Men?: How Cultures Flourish by Exploiting Men

“The reason culture is biased against women is not that men conspired to make culture as a way of oppressing women. It’s because women didn’t make culture or its big institutions. The men built these. Eventually the women showed up and asked, or demanded, to be allowed to participate.”
― Roy F. Baumeister, Is There Anything Good About Men?: How Cultures Flourish by Exploiting Men

“Indeed, the main thing women have done in large groups is to protest and complain about the men and the men’s activities. On this, women have been useful and successful in collective work.”
― Roy F. Baumeister, Is There Anything Good About Men?: How Cultures Flourish by Exploiting Men

“The fact that culture emerged from the men’s sphere is the key reason for the increase in gender inequality.”
― Roy F. Baumeister, Is There Anything Good About Men?: How Cultures Flourish by Exploiting Men

“The upshot is that human culture emerged mostly from the men’s sphere. The pattern of relationships in the women’s sphere is profoundly important for health, welfare, and the continuation of the species across generations. For nurturance and social support, that style of relationship was and still is superior to most of what was found in the men’s sphere. But the men’s sphere was better suited for creating culture.”
― Roy F. Baumeister, Is There Anything Good About Men?: How Cultures Flourish by Exploiting Men

“Culture is thus the key to human nature. It starts with being capable of language (hearing, speaking, understanding, storing the meanings of words, plus combining words via grammar so as to express complex ideas). It includes recognizing that other people have minds like our own. It includes something that people call free will, namely a more complicated way of making decisions and controlling behavior, especially for following rules. It includes self-control and self-awareness and a variety of other things.”
― Roy F. Baumeister, Is There Anything Good About Men?: How Cultures Flourish by Exploiting Men

“One reason our human species has dominated the planet instead of the Neanderthals (who were here before us and were doing quite well) is that our culture was better than theirs. The Neanderthals actually had bigger brains and bigger bodies than we did, so in one-to-one combat they would likely have prevailed. But we were better at culture, and so when our ancestors moved into areas where Neanderthals lived, the Neanderthals lost out. We had a better system than they did for survival and reproduction. We took their lands and ate their lunch. Today they are extinct while we own the planet.”
― Roy F. Baumeister, Is There Anything Good About Men?: How Cultures Flourish by Exploiting Men

“And in the end death wins. Nature hasn’t found a way to enable any animal to live forever. Nature wants the species to survive more or less forever, and it can’t achieve that by making individuals who survive forever. So the next best thing is reproduction. Before a living creature grows old, it tries to make new copies or new versions of itself—new, young versions that can live into the future and, in turn, reproduce themselves before they get old and die. Nature has programmed living things to do that.”
― Roy F. Baumeister, Is There Anything Good About Men?: How Cultures Flourish by Exploiting Men

“Indeed, genuine equality is probably a cultural invention. Hierarchy is natural. But hierarchy is more effective for large groups that need to accomplish things. Equality appeals because it feels better and probably makes for healthier close relationships.”
― Roy F. Baumeister, Is There Anything Good About Men?: How Cultures Flourish by Exploiting Men

“Status hierarchies are not entirely the product of human culture and in fact are found in nature. Pecking orders, alphas, and other terms refer to the dominance hierarchy that typically evolves in many animal groups. But as a general rule, these are more common and more pronounced among males.”
― Roy F. Baumeister, Is There Anything Good About Men?: How Cultures Flourish by Exploiting Men

“Thus, the men favor equity, which works best in large groups. Women favor equality, which is ideal for one-to-one intimate relationships.”
― Roy F. Baumeister, Is There Anything Good About Men?: How Cultures Flourish by Exploiting Men

“Women also commit more child abuse than men, although this is hard to untangle from the fact that they spend much more time with children than men do. But in terms of violence toward all relationship partners, women initiate slightly more aggression than men do.”
― Roy F. Baumeister, Is There Anything Good About Men?: How Cultures Flourish by Exploiting Men

“Often men competed for women, thus regarding women as the prize for victory, an attitude that probably goes back quite far through our evolutionary history, into other species where the alpha male (who got to the top by besting other males) was the only one that was allowed to have sex. But seeing women as the prize is quite different from seeing them as the enemy. I don’t think men see women as the enemy.”
― Roy F. Baumeister, Is There Anything Good About Men?: How Cultures Flourish by Exploiting Men

“I think men compete mainly against other men. That has been the basic fact and driving force in the historical progress of human culture.”
― Roy F. Baumeister, Is There Anything Good About Men?: How Cultures Flourish by Exploiting Men

“On average, most people (both men and women) like women better than men.”
― Roy F. Baumeister, Is There Anything Good About Men?: How Cultures Flourish by Exploiting Men

“For a woman, the game is about finding the best quality mate, someone with good genetic quality and who will stick around to support her and the children.”
― Roy F. Baumeister, Is There Anything Good About Men?: How Cultures Flourish by Exploiting Men