More Left Ideological Delusion: ‘The Theory That Men Evolved to Hunt and Women Evolved to Gather Is Wrong’ As Proof of What, or Who, That Got it Wrong, Exactly?

A Fireside Chat With Douglas Murray, Hero of the Truth and Rita Panahi, Cackling Mocker of the What’s Left of Delusional Lefties

Sep 01, 2024

Today I take my second bold step into something completely different for me here in substack: this time I do a (short!) look beneath the right-hood to see what form of righteous rite of right I might find there.

Douglas Murray and Rita Panahi. Music: Kate and Anna McGarrigle - Love Over and Over.

Tonight was the first time I saw Douglas Murray and Rita Panahi, both well known mockers of leftist ideological idiocy — that many likely praise to something big and powerful — as a duet of mockery. [With some curiosity, join me as I lift the hood.]

Some Easy Laughs at the Science™

In Oct 2023 (with 1.7million views) they disclose just how low the scientific™ world has sunk by gleefully eviscerating this totally wacko article published in the ‘respected’ Scientific™ American magazine:

The Theory That Men Evolved to Hunt and Women Evolved to Gather Is Wrong
By Cara Ocobock & Sarah Lacy; November 1, 2023 (13 min read)

And, for some easy laughs with Murray’s super serious face, of course, let’s listen in on that cosy fireside chat with two true leftie-seers mocking remnants of the deluded left:

SkyNews Australia - Douglas Murray and Rita Panahi. “Douglas Murray Slams ‘Psychotically Evil’ Woman Praising Hamas For Terror Attacks” [Chapter 3].”

Douglas Murray and Rita Panahi. “Douglas Murray Slams ‘Psychotically Evil’ Woman Praising Hamas For Terror Attacks” [Chapter 3].”

And for the readers, a partial transcript:

[RP]: But sadly, Douglas we’ve science™ and medicine corrupted by far left ideology. The new piece by two academics we have this lunacy published. And I’ll quote here: “Inequity between male and female athletes is a result not of inherent biological differences between the sexes but of biases in how they are treated in sports.”
Douglas it’s frightening even the field of science™ is abandoning evidence based theories in favour of ideology.
[DM]: It is. It’s just amazing, isn’t it? I mean, how can anybody claim that with a straight face? But they do. And with a straight academic face. This is one of the ways we can tell an area with 100% certainty if we are being lied to. And if a publication is worth reading or not. Once this woke mind-virus has infected an organisation, infected a publication, infected the brain of an individual, we know they are effectively lost. They can be helped back, sometimes, from this extreme mental defect. But not always. And I suppose it’s our decision one-by-one whether we just write people [sic] like Scientific™ American off. Or at some point allow them to try to go and dry themselves out from this disastrous form of thinking.

Yup. Easy truth and omg(!), the world has come to an end, where’s Chicken Little when you need her? The premise, as presented by Panahi, was so crazy that I was curious what the article actually stated and so I took a look. Now the fun really begins.

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*Scientific™ American* Cover. Music: Kate and Anna McGarrigle — Sun, Son (Shining on the Water).

Now Let the Real Fun Begin: What Was Actually Written

Here is a somewhat extended quotation from near the short article’s conclusion:

Inequity between male and female athletes is a result not of inherent biological differences between the sexes but of biases in how they are treated in sports. [Okay, that doesn’t seem reasonable, especially in light of what we have seen with men competing as ‘female’ athletes. And so this is a far too broad (no pun intended) statement, which would have been wise to have been edited down to the core of the article’s main point — endurance. Let’s read on though.] As an example [perhaps one of a very limited number of examples under certain circumstances — endurance sports], some endurance-running events allow the use of professional runners called pacesetters to help competitors perform their best. Men are not permitted to act as pacesetters in many women's events because of the belief that they will make the women "artificially faster," as though women were not actually doing the running themselves. [This, actually, is more like leftist ideology in its description of endurance athletics and how it is written, than the actual article itself. I give examples below and it is this that most points to the ideological capture of Scientific™ American, not what Panahi and Murray mock at, which is rather bad too, of course.]
The modern physiological evidence, along with historical examples, exposes deep flaws in the idea that physical inferiority prevented females from partaking in hunting during our evolutionary past. The evidence from prehistory further undermines this notion.
Consider the skeletal remains of ancient people. Differences in body size between females and males of a species, a phenomenon called sexual size dimorphism, correlate with social structure. In species with pronounced size dimorphism, larger males compete with one another for access to females, and among the great apes larger males socially dominate females. Low sexual size dimorphism is characteristic of egalitarian and monogamous species. Modern humans have low sexual size dimorphism compared with the other great apes. The same goes for human ancestors spanning the past two million years, suggesting that the social structure of humans changed from that of our chimpanzee-like ancestors.
Anthropologists also look at damage on our ancestors' skeletons for clues to their behaviour. Neanderthals are the best-studied extinct members of the human family because we have a rich fossil record of their remains. Neanderthal females and males do not differ in their trauma patterns, nor do they exhibit sex differences in pathology from repetitive actions. Their skeletons show the same patterns of wear and tear. This finding suggests that they were doing the same things, from ambush-hunting large game animals to processing hides for leather. Yes, Neanderthal women were spearing woolly rhinoceroses, and Neanderthal men were making clothing.
Males living in the Upper Palaeolithic — the cultural period between roughly 45,000 and 10,000 years ago, when early modern humans entered Europe — do show higher rates of a set of injuries to the right elbow region known as thrower's elbow, which could mean they were more likely than females to throw spears. But it does not mean women were not hunting, because this period is also when people invented the bow and arrow, hunting nets and fishing hooks. These more sophisticated tools enabled humans to catch a wider variety of animals; they were also easier on hunters' bodies. Women may have favoured hunting tactics that took advantage of these new technologies.
What is more, females and males were buried in the same way in the Upper Palaeolithic. Their bodies were interred with the same kinds of artefacts, or grave goods, suggesting that the groups they lived in did not have social hierarchies based on sex [my emphasis].

Lost Opportunity

An interesting example of an opportunity lost. In their rather cheap and hugely unnecessary anti-deluded-left shot — the deluded left is shooting their feet off faster than they can put them in their own mouths so no need for self-righteous right delusion — they have attacked (accidentally?) actual real evidence and a reasonable argument to help dismantle the deluded left’s ubiquitous use of the historical myth of patriarchal male dominance tyranny. (Jordan Peterson is frequently castigating those who use that trite myth. I wonder if he might like to use this article as a bit of evidence supporting his stand?) And, to me, rather sad that someone with Douglas Murray’s stature did this without reading the article, it seems to me, for if he had it is unlikely he would have derided it as “This is one of the ways we can tell an area with 100% certainty if we are being lied to. And if a publication is worth reading or not.”

It is certainly possible — I think likely — that Scientific™ American, a journal I once read in my days of physics and mathematics studies at university, has been captured. Hints of that capture are in the misdirections, that I noted in the citation above, for example, that put this one particular aspect of female endurance physiology as more robust than males as if it applied to all aspects of sports. And the writers (editors?) bury, quietly, that the Upper Palaeolithic men had damaged their elbows because of spear throwing, whereas the women had not, without overtly stating the men’s strength suited them to be the throwers.

By all evidence most significant journals of science™ have been captured. Yet this particular article isn’t clear proof of that, even though the editorial emphasis sure smells of it. Actually it is likely proof, if it is indeed captured, that its proofreaders are so blinded by their own ideology of gender physiological equality that they didn’t see that it undermines the deluded left’s vitriol of the patriarchic tyrannical foundation of our society! Okay, now that has me really laughing! And also it asks me to go see if there are other slip-ups Scientific™ American has published of ‘real’ leftist delusion. Although it is unlikely, I’ll do that: I’ll let my intuition guide me on that.

Can It Get Any Funnier? Of Course!

And the funniest thing is to consider that, if Scientific™ American is captured by left ideology, and so had edited into the article to misdirect its focus from physiological endurance to all aspects of female physiological capabilities in sport as being equal to men’s while, at the same time, the editors failed to edit out — because their ideological blindness disabled their ability too see that they published this:

There Are Clear Signs Of No Sexual Hierarchy. Music: Sarah Neufeld — Animal Rising.

[The] bodies [of Upper Paleolithic humans of both sexes] were interred with the same kinds of artefacts, or grave goods, suggesting that the groups they lived in did not have social hierarchies based on sex. [slightly edited].

Panahi and Douglas Murray took glee mocking the article that actually states, in a simple clear sentence, that there was no sexually based hierarchy in early human history. And that it also suggests that females may have, and perhaps likely did, participate in hunting at some time because the metabolism of the female supports their superiority to male physiology in long endurance activities, such as running. The article cites some interesting evidence from today’s extreme endurance events as well as anthropological findings, referencing in particular, a Japanese study of the Ainu. The authors also point to evidence in the skeletal remains of the Neanderthal which suggest there was relative equality in their living activities that included hunting. It is, to me, a rather interesting idea and reasonably well supported by present and past evidence they cite. And by ‘chance’ some of my own personal experience adds anecdotal evidence.

Panahi and Murray missed a truly golden opportunity to really twist the wakizashi ( short seppuku sword) in the guts of the lefties. Quite frankly, they dropped the ball — er, wakizashi in order to take a relatively cheap and easy shot. Sigh.

Seppuku with *wakizashi*. Music: Andrew Bird — Ellipses.

Instead of seppuku with a wakizashi, perhaps you would love to buy me a coffee. Just click on the coffees/matcha. With gratitude.

Personal Experience/Evidence

I remember the extreme endurance ‘90s TV-show ‘Eco-Challenge’. And I remember very clearly that the women did as well as the men, and sometimes better. Each team required at least one member of the opposite sex.

Some gender highlights:

…
Team Rubicon, a team composed of 3 female competitors; … Team Mexico, a team of rude men who eventually learned to appreciate their talented female teammate; … Team Sun Precautions, among whose members was Helen Klein, a 73-year-old ultramarathon racer.

One day at the gym I was lucky — it was closer to a nearly divine blessing, actually — with being present to witness God in action in the form of the most incredible athlete I’ve ever seen. (Btw, I’m not an athlete.) At the time, late ‘90s maybe, my stay at a gym was typically about 2.5 hours. This woman’s was far more than that and by chance our paths crossed more than once at different stations. Eventually, after having been repeatedly astounded at what she was doing with astonishing strength and endurance and exquisite grace, in a pause I approached her to thank her for her presence, for her gift of athletic prowess and the joy it gave to me.

And then I asked her what she did. ‘I’m a pacer,’ she answered. Into my mind popped the old AMC car because I had no idea what she meant, not having heard the word ‘pacer’ in that way before. ‘What do you mean?’ I asked. ‘Endurance athletes hire me to help them train. I pace them to help them stretch their endurance.’ Wow, I thought to myself. ‘You make a good living at this?’ I asked. ‘Yes. I’m very good. When people first hire me I caution them to be careful because they are very unlikely to outpace me.’ I remember her rueful smile. ‘Often the men think that they will beat me and on more than one occasion I’ve had to carry them out of a forest or off a trail. I haven’t been beaten yet.’

Oops, Was That A Right Foot in Mouth or Ass Situation?

When we are right-eously casting stones it might be wise to take care that the mote we are looking to hit that we think is in our neighbour’s eye may only be one of many. And is just the one that has caught the beam in our own and hides the others. Might this be a sign of a self-righteous deluded-left delusion syndrome, a quick judgment that hides a bigger delusion? And as noted, I think that it is far far funnier to read an example of the left having emphasised their ideological gender delusion — that which caught the beam of Murray and Panahi in this instance — when their use of that particular ideological idiocy exposed real evidence seriously undermining one of their most destructive ideological cants: that of the male patriarchal tyranny. In this case the left writers/editors actually hung that and themselves on their own petard and we were directed to laugh at just the physiological differences. And the self-right-eous grinning beams of Murray and Panahi were likely the reason that they failed to see the petard: they got suckered by what was likely an accidental incidence of an ideological legerdemain, to give us the cheap easy shot at ostensible leftist gender idiocy. Sigh.

A Bit More on Feminism and an Optimistic Sigh Despite How Ideology Sees No Impediments To Not Seeing Reality

Okay, okay. It is easy to toss this off as ’So what? So what if the Upper Palaeolithic of between roughly 45,000 and 10,000 years ago didn’t have hierarchies based on sex? They came later, you dumb ass. You know, with the city states and agriculture.’

What is means, though, is the entire feminist argument is a lie: it is not biology. And it is that that they will not see. And that may be because, even if the roots of feminism have been to regain footing legally, this is not a fight against biological inevitability, but the improper use of power. As Jordon Peterson, Candace Owens, Ben Shapiro and many others said when being questioned about the male patriarchy and glass ceilings and wage disparities, ‘What is it , today now, that women are not allowed to engage in or participate in, legally that is exclusively male?’ And they answer is nothing.

The insistence on male patriarchy is incorrect, biologically by evidence of the science; as well as by the evidence of anthropological and social dynamic histories of the distant and recent pasts; and lastly by the evidence of our experience today. So what is so-called feminism today? A shell of what it was, at best for it is no longer germane to current events. Or part of the multi-dimensional psyo-op of the really powerful to destabilise society and push into what we don’t want society to be: a tyranny. Hmmmm. Note this doesn’t mean that misogyny doesn’t exist anymore than it means that misandry or misopaedia doesn’t exist. It means that none of them are biological imperatives. And that to make anyone of them a hill to die as true is nonsense.

Yes. Sigh again. And yet I will still take this little bit of evidence as moving towards undermining the strength of the false narrative of the claimed ubiquity of tyrannical male patriarchy. And the inherent ‘obvious’ good of feminism as practiced today.

Now that really does display my growing optimism because it goes against all evidence of the last 20 years, that ideology sees nothing that will impede its truth. Especially not reality.

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