Hey Estwald, sorry that I'm such a pain in the ass to talk to but I suppose it's because I don't deal in specious narratives, but in ones based in facts. For example, patriarchy (which eventually emerged out of the Agricultural Revolution) didn't spread because it was such a better system, it spread because it was so disruptive.
"And indeed, the expansion of agriculture across the globe was punctuated by catastrophic societal collapses. Genomic research on the history of European populations points to a series of sharp declines that coincided first with the Neolithic expansion through central Europe around 7,500 years ago, then with their spread into north-western Europe about 6,000 years ago." Source
Economic models of the spread of inequality (patriarchy) done at Standford University concur.
"In other words, inequality did not spread from group to group because it is an inherently better system for survival, but because it creates demographic instability, which drives migration and conflict and leads to the cultural — or physical — extinction of egalitarian societies." Source
Mummies from ancient cultures show that the elite and the royal ate much better and had a lot less disease than the commoners. Sometimes they were noticeably taller because of this disparate access to resources. Not everything that takes place is adaptive for the entire society. Nurture is affirmatively not nature. Nature is what happens with no interference from humans. Nurture is what happens when humans make laws, rules, and mores. Whether or not that has some organic elements does not make it Nature. If nature and nurture were the same thing, all societies around the world would have pretty much the same culture. As we know, they do not - not even between Western democracies that have many things in common.
Edit: Two twins with identical biology is nature; but if one is raised by kind people in the slums and the other is raised by brutal people who are rich, their lives will be vastly different by virtue of their “nurture” being so different.
Of course, all people can ignore societal pressures, include censure and shaming. But if one is going to blame women for wanting to keep things cleaner than their partners, one ought to, in fairness, consider all the elements of the equation, including the relevant societal pressures. As someone who has bucked the system quite a bit, I still acknowledge that it isn't necessarily easy to do, and that there are quite often serious negative consequences. Humans are social animals, and for most mammals, in particular, conforming to the mores of the culture is adaptive - it's what keeps them alive, so sure, we should all work towards a world where people can be individuals and do what works for them, but we aren't there yet, and it's a cop out to judge people under those conditions for not "doing better."
Until the rise of patriarchy 6-9k years ago, human beings did largely value and live in relative autonomy. Even when they had some hierarchy, leaders or even kings, they didn't necessarily have much power. People were free to disobey authority figures without much consequence, to come and go from the society freely, and to live in social structures that had a lot of fluidity. I'm all for moving in that direction again, which is why I write about it so often, but we can't judge people by where we want to be, we have to deal with the society that we have now. I believe that this is, in large part, how we get to where we want to be — by acknowledging the failings of the present.
