The Evolution and Convolution of Morality

Thoughts about the past, present and future of male and female morality

We live in the age of the Great Gender Divergence. The social and political discourse has become extremely polarized, with subcultures like radical feminists and incels, pouring hatred into the online discussion.

I noticed that there is a mode common for many intersexual conflicts, both on personal/relationship and social/political level: one party criticizes or accuses the other party of something, and the other party doesn’t deny or try to excuse themselves - they just don’t understand why the other side thinks they did something wrong.

“Why are you making such a fuss?"

“What’s the big deal?”

I realized that these types of conflicts are caused by a simple fact: male morality is different from female morality. I also found that mental model very helpful in understanding and describing much of our recent history, culture and politics.

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Male and female morality

The male morality is centered about being a productive member of the society and a loyal member of the in-group. Truth, honor, courage, skill, trust, loyalty - all of these are male moral virtues.

As far as I understand it (I’m male), female morality is mostly about the vibes. The feelings and emotions. Making sure that everyone’s OK and no one feels threatened, abused or disrespected. “Whatever feels right (for me and everyone else) IS right”.

Of course, it doesn’t mean that all men are autistic robots, and all women are helpless people pleasers.

Autism, described as “extremely male brain” is the condition of total lack of female morality. And the “extreme female brain” syndrome has been proposed to describe a pathological state of increased cognitive empathy, presumably with no male morality. Except for the unlucky few who reside at these extreme ends of the morality spectrum, everyone else has varying levels of male and female morality.

I consider the gender of morality as a one-dimensional spectrum¹, much like height, weight, waist-to-hip ratio, aggression, interest in racecars or makeup products and most other characteristics of gender (except for the biological sex features, which are mostly binary). With all of the above, men are more male on average and women are more female on average, and there are lots of interesting exceptions and subgroups to analyze and report on, but neither of them are statistically significant for the overall conclusion.

As an armchair evolutionary psychologist, I can’t help but wonder whether the emergence of male and male morality is a matter of nature or nurture.

I believe it’s both. For most of our history, male and female morality were the core parts of the gendered cultural curriculum. But they also defined the respective male and female intrasexual status hierarchies. People low in their respective intrasexual status hierarchy are typically the ones other people don’t want to protect, support or mate with. And if male/female morality affected the chances of survival and reproduction, possibly for hundreds of thousands of years, it must have become at least a small part of male and female nature.

The effect of different types of morality on mating can be even seen today, in the notion of how “women date/have sex with jerks” (and its implementation, the pickup artist technique of negging). A “jerk” is someone who does not care about other people’s feelings - he has no female morality, which implies that he has very strong male morality instead. We can also see it in the most popular male sexual fantasies (from the conservative tradwife to the liberal pornstar), based on the idea of a woman fully committing herself to make her man feel better in some way.

This mating pattern can be attributed to status hierarchies, but I think it’s also related to the practical wisdom that building and maintaining a long term relationship and raising children together is a daunting task, that is best solved by a Dynamic Duo of a Problem Solver and a Caretaker. This allows the couple to solve both practical and emotional problems that happen along the way.

The difference between male and female morality also corresponds to the differences between male and female intrasexual competition. Male competition is typically associated with direct aggression, but also different kinds of contests where participants display various dimensions of value and productivity, from physical capability (strength, speed, agility), combat skills and intelligence to elaborate modern status games such as making money, creating art, founding startups and building rocketships. All male contests require participants to abide by some set of rules - doing so displays loyalty and trustworthiness, breaking them results in losing or being removed from the game. Conversely, the moves in female competition are often covert and indirect, which allows plausible denial and containing the emotional fallout. There are no holds barred, since following the rules or codes of honor is simply not a part of female morality.

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At the edge

The basic definition of morality is a function that processes inputs such as decisions, intentions and actions, and outputs whether they’re right or wrong.

In many, if not most circumstances, male and female morality provide similar outputs - being a loyal and productive member of the society typically results in making other people happy (or less unhappy), and vice versa. But there are interesting edge cases where the mismatch can be seen.

The output of our moral judgement is typically not binary, but a spectrum - a position relative to our personal Overton Window. But the window is a key part of Overton’s model for a reason: sometimes, we need to make our moral judgements binary (it’s either in the Window or out) if we need them to motivate a binary decision such as whether to take action or not. And that’s where the difference between male and female morality are often seen.

Per

Walt Bismarck

’s essay about female language (emphasis mine):

Women are worse than men at debate and transactional dealmaking despite a greater verbal intelligence because they’re constantly dedicating mental energy to keeping the peace, managing egos, aligning goals, enforcing unspoken norms, and so on.

A woman can’t afford to care whether a proposition is true or false in the same way a man would, because its social implications are almost always more salient to her. There are a lot of situations where a woman saying something true instead of something polite would literally cause men to fight to the death.

One of the most common relationship issues boils down to the clash between male and female morality: Wife comes home from work and tells her husband about a problem she had at work. He starts throwing solutions at her, but she doesn’t appreciate that and becomes frustrated instead - she didn’t want solutions, she just wanted to vent and get emotional support.

Within all moral systems, it’s good to offer help and support to those in need. With male morality, “help and support” is about solving problems (this is what loyal and productive members of the society do), but with female morality, it’s about emotional support - making someone feel better.

The #1 thing about men that women complain about is probably how they have “low empathy” and “don’t care about what other people feel”. This is because caring about other people’s feelings is not a part of the male morality at all, but it’s at the very core of the female morality.

We could imagine men having a corresponding complain that “women don’t care about actually solving real problems” - if only complaining itself was acceptable under male morality. It is not, because it wastes time and diverts attention away from actually solving the problem. The point of complaining is for the complainer to fell slightly relieved by expressing their pain and sharing it with others - it’s a good thing under female morality.

Or, take the hypothetical question: “Would it be OK to cheat on your partner if you were 100% guaranteed that no one ever finds out?”. With male morality, cheating is a breach of contract and therefore always wrong. But with female morality, this could be a win-win(-win), provided that the cheating doesn’t derail the current relationship such that the person or their partner ends up emotionally distressed later on.

Since there’s no way to guarantee that no one will ever find out about cheating, the above question remains purely hypothetical. But it can be rephrased into a more realistic problem: “You cheated. Should you tell your partner?” With male morality, you should tell, as this reduces the number of breaches of contract from two (cheating + concealing the fact or denying/lying about it) to just one. It doesn’t matter what emotional damage will occur. But with female morality, emotional wellbeing is the priority, so the decision needs to be weighed against the risk of the partner eventually finding out otherwise and becoming even more upset in the process.

Another good example is the explanation of why women don’t apologize, from the Redpill psychologist Orion Taraban:

TL/DR: According to Orion, women don’t apologize because taking responsibility is not part of the female morality. Instead, they consider the man’s emotional distress as the main problem and try to resolve it by some sort of emotional support or offering something in return to make him feel better. But this triggers men, since responsibility is an essential part of male morality.

Another example from Orion:

TL/DR: The institution of marriage - two people committing to spend the rest of their lives together, no matter what - is another product of male morality. In the edge case of a severely unhappy marriage, the male moral thing is to stay together to try to patch things up (or even to continue being unhappy together), but the female moral thing is to part ways, as this way both parties would be better off emotionally.

Historically, divorce was not an option not because women internalized male morality more - the social norm was enforced by penalties such as low status, social rejection and difficulties in raising and providing for children as a single mother, which made the emotional cost vs benefit evaluation more favorable for staying in an unhappy relationship.

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The evolution of morality

Whether we like it or not, humans lived in purely patriarchal societies all up until the 19th century.

Almost everything we now associate with morality, including religion and moral philosophy, is the codification of male morality. From the Code of Hammurabi and the Ten Commandments, through religious scriptures and ancient philosophy, to modern law systems, almost all of it was created by men. Historically, women contributed little in terms of morality/religion/philosophy, because they had little opportunity to contribute, and with little contribution, there was no way to create opportunities for more - a Catch 22.

Even today, “morality” is practically synonymous with male morality. This makes defining female morality as an different kind of morality something on the verge of category error.

Male morality allowed men to build durable and scalable status hierarchies, armies, empires, international organizations and corporations. Societies who implemented the male morality at their core were able to conquer or outperform the other ones which did not.

Then, things started changing in the 1800s. The early 19th century romanticism focused on feelings, passion and emotion, downplayed rationalism and sparked interest in the supernatural. This paved way for the first wave of feminism, labor rights movement and Marxist communism - the first major social innovations based on female morality.

However, by the end of the 19th century, the cultural zeitgeist swung back towards male morality. Breakthrough discoveries in science and engineering innovation created the technology forming the backbone of the modern world - electricity, radio, telecommunication, cinematography, plastics, internal combustion engine, cars, airplanes, skyscrapers and more. The first half of the 20th century followed with two World Wars, the Great Economic Depression and the beginning of the Cold War. In these tough times, the matters of emotional wellbeing were sidetracked, as male morality was once again required to solve real world problems.

The late 20th century postwar prosperity period gave way for the great comeback of female morality. The second, third and fourth waves of feminism ensued. Other marginalized minorities realized that they can also utilize female morality to support their agenda. This gave rise to the civil rights movement, affirmative action, immigration support, environmentalism, public space accessibility, fat studies, LGBT alliance and eventually, woke ideology and leftist populism. Relatedly, helicopter parenting replaced the traditional strict and authoritative model, and self-help and therapy culture became wildly popular within the middle class and above.

The 19th century first wave feminism resulted in women entering formerly male spaces and professions. In this initial foray into the male domains, women were limited in quantity, position and influence, and as such, had to adopt and abide by the rules created based on male morality.

Later, the late 20th century allowed (and to some extent, required) women to join the formerly male domains and institutions in greater quantities and level of influence, gradually rising all the way to top leadership positions. Their newfound influence made it possible to update the rules, regulations, communication style and work culture to incorporate female morality.

In corporations, this was facilitated by the rising power of the female staffed and led HR department, enforcing the female morality via Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and tone policing. I witnessed this firsthand, having spent most of the 2010s working as an engineer for a local branch of a major US aerospace company.

I quickly learned that sooner or later, every young engineer had to face one of the fearsome technical leaders and engineering managers in a classic David vs Goliath standoff during a technical review, knowing that they could either make or break his career, but also deal real emotional damage, in the style of the yelling US Army sergeant (a stereotype that is, by far, the purest incarnation of male morality, with no concern for emotional wellbeing whatsoever).

The stories of what happened in the technical reviews were told around like medieval legends of knights who dared to face the fire-breathing dragon and lived to tell the tale. Those who survived this male rite of passage wore their emotional battle scars as badges of honor - what didn’t kill them, truly made them stronger.

However, by late 2010s, the HR tone policing kicked in and the HR leadership decided to crack down on the “toxic” and “abusive” technical leaders. Some of them retired and were replaced by their more docile colleagues, others were politely asked to keep their tempers at bay, and one even appeared in an internal HR-led interview discussing his rebirth and transformation into a nice, calm person.

The difference between the work cultures driven by male and female morality is best seen in the new space race between Elon Musk’s SpaceX, known for harsh working conditions, and Boeing, known for strong commitment to DEI. In 2014, both companies were awarded fixed-price contracts to develop crewed spacecraft as part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program (Boeing received 60% more funding than SpaceX).

Fast forward 10 years: SpaceX Crew Dragon is doing regular crewed flights to the International Space Station since 2020, while Boeing’s Starliner has yet to complete a fully successful crewed mission (the first and only crewed flight test left its astronauts stranded on the ISS, waiting for their ride home on board of a Crew Dragon).

Virgin Boeing doge vs Chad SpaceX doge meme from Reddit

In the meantime, Boeing had to deal with the 737-MAX scandal and multiple other safety incidents, and is years behind schedule with their new 777X jet, while SpaceX managed to learn and master the art of landing and reusing rocket boosters with its Falcon rockets, reach an unprecedented launch cadence of 100+ launches in a year and design, build and test their next generation Starship rocket.

Making business decisions is one of the edge cases where the difference between male and female morality becomes clear. When hiring or promoting, you can either look for the best candidates, or ones that will help meet the DEI goals set for your business unit. When a business failure or safety issue occurs, you can either shrug it off and sweep it under the rug to contain the emotional fallout and protect the egos of those involved, or investigate, find whoever is responsible for this and yell and punish them to make sure nothing like this happens ever again.

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Morality affects political choice

The most pressing social and political issues affected by the Great Gender Divergence also result from the clash of male and female morality.

Killing people that do not pose a threat for the society is not acceptable under male morality. Hence, it does not allow abortion, euthanasia, but allows the death penalty - the modern implementation of self-domestication.

But the female morality is focused on the emotional distress of the mother of an unwanted child (in some cases, also a rape victim), a child burdened with severe birth defects that might cause lifelong pain and social rejection, a terminally ill patient who wants to put an end to his suffering, the family of a comatose patient with no chance for recovery and the death row prisoner. Hence, it permits abortion and euthanasia, but not death penalty (a life sentence is equivalent to death penalty in terms of protecting the emotional wellbeing of the victim’s family and local community - in both cases they will never see the killer again).

The abortion/euthanasia discussion within the male moral framework is mostly focused on determining whether and when a fetus or a braindead patient is a valid human being that deserves protection. But none of this is relevant under female morality, as human beings whose humanity itself is questionable are most likely too underdeveloped or cognitively impaired to experience emotional distress.

In her viral essay,

Kryptogal (Kate, if you like)

described the physical and emotional toll motherhood takes on women and estimated its total monetary value at $1,000,000. While this might be exaggerated, it’s possible that the emotional damage from motherhood might be far greater than the benefits, making motherhood a bad thing under female morality. But regardless of that, motherhood is a good thing under male morality - in a moral framework that values being a productive member of the society, one of the best things to do is to actually produce new members of the society.

Relatedly, LGBT is bad under male morality (it prevents from forming a socially productive family with biological children), but is good under female morality (expressing and acting on sexual desires improves emotional wellbeing). In the edge cases of bisexual people who can choose either a gay or straight life and trans-curious people who decide whether to follow through with their transition or not, male and female morality can guide them accordingly.

Finally, taxation and social spending is bad under male morality, as it disincentivizes being a productive member of society by punishing the productive and rewarding the unproductive. But it’s good under female morality, since most taxes are common and invisible (deducted from the salary and paid by the employer or added to the purchase price and paid by the store) and therefore don’t cause feelings of loss and emotional distress, but the social services and benefits financed this way greatly improve both physical and emotional wellbeing of those in need.

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What’s next

Much of the recent social and cultural history of the Western society has been driven by adoption and incorporation of the female morality into our mainstream culture, political discourse, social norms and business environment.

But now, it seems like the zeitgeist is once again turning away from female morality. Corporations like Boeing are now dismantling their DEI departments and even mainstream media notes that wokeism is now in retreat after reaching its peak in 2021-2022. The falling support for wokeism and DEI is reflected by recent popular election successes of Trump, Javier Milei in Argentina and similar right wing populist leaders and parties in Europe.

It might be because the Western society simply overdosed on female morality. Like drugs, booze and sugar, its purpose is to make us feel better and it can improve our lives if applied in moderate amounts, but regular consumption or having too much can leave us addicted and corrupted, in worst case to the point of becoming unable to fulfill our basic needs.

Yet, I believe it’s also caused by the rising power of non-Western cultures like China, Russia, India, Iran and the Arabs, which, unlike the West, never got to embrace female morality, and are set to challenge the Western cultural, economical and military dominance.

A meme popular in the trad/right wing circles describes the cultural hysteresis of the ages:

In the context of this essay, this can be rephrased as:

Hard times create male morality
Male morality creates good times
Good times create female morality
Female morality creates hard times

Culture and society have very high inertia and as such are prone to oscillation and overcorrection. Eventually, we might be able to introduce enough damping in the system to make it converge into an optimal ratio of good/hard times and male/female morality, but apparently we are not there yet.

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A proper tool for the job

The above conclusion (and the rest of this essay) may leave an impression that male morality is something better than female morality.

But neither this, nor the opposite conclusion would be valid. Logically, in order to compare two systems of morality and see which one is “better”, we would need to apply some kind of universal meta-morality as a reference frame. I don’t think that such thing exists.

Part of the gender war discourse results from a biased assumption that one’s own morality (male or female) IS the universal meta-morality. This leads to conclusions like:

• “Men are horrible” (male morality is bad) - under female morality.

• “Women are horrible” (female morality is bad) - under male morality.

I view both male and female morality as tools that can be used for different purposes. But a common problem with tools is that “If you’re a hammer, every problem looks like a nail”.

Male morality is good for:

• Survival and reproduction (on the scale of society, this translates to safety/security and fertility)

• Building armies, empires and corporations

• Science, technology and manufacturing

• Healthcare (doctors)

And female morality is good for:

• Childcare

• Creating inclusive environments

• Art and entertainment

• Healthcare (nurses)

• Therapy

Male and female morality simply cover different levels of the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Male morality covers more basic needs, but it doesn’t mean it’s “better” in any sense.

We need male morality to survive and reproduce. But in order to have a good, fulfilling life, we need a right balance of male and female morality.

Another way to look at this is that male and female morality are different operating systems. But they are not like Windows and Linux - designed for the same machine, which results in computer nerds arguing which one is better. They are like Windows and Android - designed for two different types of devices that have different functions and meet different needs. So it’s really hard to say whether Android is better than Windows - even though both are operating systems, they are very different such that comparing them is almost pointless, on the verge of category error.

Running a system or software designed for a different type of machine is usually possible, but hard (requires emulation software) and results in lower performance compared to the same system/software running on its target platform. But sometimes, it’s just worth it, as it’s the only way to have the cake and eat it too, or get the best of two worlds.

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1. Maybe it’s also possible to consider male and female morality as separate dimensions on a two-dimensional spectrum like the Political Compass - I tried but didn’t find it useful or insightful.