Bullets Versus Bombs - Feminism for Dummies

There's a point of view out there that women who are stay-at-home moms are somehow betraying their female gender by letting themselves be type-cast into forsaking their minds and talents for the perennial male fantasy world. This view is, in my opinion, held by women who have never really managed to enjoy the most egregious of female stereotypes, which is of course, that of the bimbo. Name three hot feminists. OK, Patricia Ireland is decent, in that Geraldine Ferraro kind of way, but you still owe me two. But that's beside the point. Since they have not frequently experienced the dance of attraction between a male and a female, many of these women have understandably concluded that there is really is no inherent difference between males and females. Au contraire ladies.

It all comes down to sex cells. Men have little ones, but millions of them, from the first hair under the arm till either death or abnormality; women have big ones, but, on average, one a month, for 30-40 years, and then nothing. Given our genes' goal of using these cells to create offspring, we're talking about the difference between bombs and bullets - each comes with its own strategy.

It may seem odd to use instruments of death as a metaphor for the means of creating life, but this is about building a bridge from what we understand to what we wish to understand. If irony ensues, perhaps it reveals even deeper levels of understanding that as yet still elude us. Anyhow, as bombs are costly to build, there are fewer of them available. They're scarce, you might say, which means the strategy is focused on economizing, hitting just the right target at just the right time. Furthermore, when a target is hit, it makes sense to take full advantage of what the bomb has wrought. Military doctrine generally advises following bombing with ground troops for precisely this reason. But when bullets are employed, a different approach is required.

Bullets are cheap to produce, which means they're highly expendible. You can fire into the darkness with reckless abandon and lose nothing significant. And, given the low odds of hitting anything in such circumstances, there's little sense in exploring the field of fire looking for casualties. You just pop in another clip and wait for the next call to action. Is the picture materializing yet?

The sheer value of a woman's egg has tuned her emotions to be highly selective in choosing a mate. She is drawn to males who demonstrate their fitness, not only as males competing with other males, but as potential fathers. She is drawn to pursue the pair bond, at least until the child is mature. The male, however, has exactly the opposite strategy. He has no reason to be selective. Since males have sex cells aplenty, they are driven for the most part to copulate in a wholesale, indiscriminate fashion. In fact, all other pastimes necessarily take a backseat to reproduction. By spreading their seeds far and wide, males increase the probability that their genes will make it into the next generation. Furthermore, the pair bond is a fool's errand in the world of male sex strategies.

If the male is going to settle down, he'll do so grudgingly and with the most fit female, mainly in terms of looks, he can find. (Looks are paramount to the male because beauty indicates youth, which indicates fertility. He brings the survival skills to the table; she just brings the eggs.) Thus, it's no surprise that the male, in choosing his long-term bomb, looks for a female who not only has a nice and shiny one, but who takes good care to keep it that way. This attractive feature of the male psyche has stark repercussions on female strategies. She has to keep herself attractive and demonstrate a solid aptitude for domestic endeavors. And in the ancestral human environment, it was the ladies that fit this description who got asked to the dance. The rest died old maids, and their genes were never heard from again.

The consequence of this, the genetic side of the gender equation, is what we see all around us. Women choosing to stay home and care for their children is nothing short of natural. They are doing as their genes instruct. Of course, we can and should be willing to discuss the merits of this in today's world. My sense (which is nothing more than common sense) is that it is right for some, and not for others. Those for whom a desire for a career outside the home leads to the exploration of, shall we say, non-traditional child-rearing options have nothing to either feel guilty or proud about. More than anything, we should all be grateful that we live in a world that is prosperous enough and so suffused with the power of free will that women have this choice. They can choose to either do as their genes like or do as they like. But to suggest that being a stay-at-home mom is nothing more than buying into some role that has been pushed upon females by males is ludicrous.

Maybe this feminist nonsense is simply an indication of what happens when a woman tries to defuse her own bomb. Boom.