I didn't know your piece was full of things that I disagreed with until I read it. And I didn't say it was stupid so much as I said that you have made grave lapses in both methodology and conceptualization. For example, what does "less manly" even mean? Masculinity is not a static thing but something that changes from culture to culture and from time period to time period. For example, it was quite common in Europe in the 18th and 19th c for male friends to share a bed and to write what were essentially platonic love letters to each other. Who is less "manly" - those men or the men of the 1950s or the men of today? It's a meaningless term unless you define exactly what you are measuring and how.
The concept of the man as a “provider” is really only from about the time of the Industrial Revolution. Before that time, it was recognized both in culture and in law, that women contributed equally to the economic wellbeing of the family.
Women were not necessarily impoverished by divorce in the medieval world. Because no one in the Middle Ages ever claimed that the man was the main breadwinner, a divorced wife was entitled to a percentage of the household estate in line with the labor she had contributed to it.
Coontz, Stephanie. Marriage, a History (p. 105). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
The three types of men you describe have perhaps, possibly, maybe existed (you've again painted with a very broad brush and no evidence beyond your say so) for the past 6-9 thousand years when patriarchy as a social system first arose - and not "since the beginning of time." Our Paleolithic ancestors relied on enforced egalitarianism as a primary survival strategy. Modern anthropology and paleontology believes that humans survived and thrive through intensive cooperation - which included both things like food sharing and cooperative breeding. They did not tolerate anyone trying to form a hierarchy or believing they were better than anyone else. The concept of alpha and beta males is a social construct of patriarchal dominance-based hierarchies.
And how exactly are you going to have "patriarchs" without the coercive control of women that only arose around the time of the agricultural revolution a few thousand years ago. If you’re out gathering food away from the camp, who is going to know who you are mating with? And more importantly, who is going to care because the social structure was one of intensive sharing and cooperation — for everyone in the tribe including all of the children. Our closest primate cousins, chimps and bonobos, are both multi-maters and there's every reason to believe that humans are as well. One reason to surmise that is that the coronal ridge of the human penis is shaped the way it is in order to act like a shovel to remove semen left there from other men. Men go flaccid after ejaculation in large part to prevent them from excavating their own genetic material. But, that’s only one indication of many. So no, no nuclear families and no patriarchs until really the past 4% of human history.
Although you've said a few things that are objectively true, such as the rise of the internet makes it easier to compare ourselves to a wider array of people, in general, you've just made a bunch of assumptions that you feel to be true, without any actual scholarship or evidence that they are. In fact, actual scholarship indicates that most of what you've said is counterfactual.
So, yes, thanks for apologizing for all the men who have disappointed me by writing this sort of sloppy "I'm sure this is how things are" drivel. There have been too many to count.
I could link you about 20 more stories to correct some of your erroneous suppositions, but I don’t want to waste my time in that way.
Gotta run - I want to spend some time with my husband the lawyer, and wish my other partner, the cop, a happy birthday. But don't worry, I won't bother reading anything of yours in the future. 👋
