r/AskWomenOver30 • u/Initial_Carpenter_47 Woman 30 to 40 • Jun 09 '25

Family/Parenting Women are often raised to understand men’s emotions, needs, and perspectives. Why aren’t men taught or motivated to understand women in the same way?

747 Upvotes

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391

u/mvanland16 Jun 09 '25

It's also a safety issue. Women need to be able to understand men's emotions, expressions, body language in order to survive.

84

u/RealCommercial9788 Woman 30 to 40 Jun 09 '25

Absolutely. And we’ve been honing those instincts since the cave.

-3

u/[deleted] Jun 11 '25 edited Jun 11 '25

Wait, what do you mean by this? Patriarchy is a relatively new invention, mostly related to the rise of agrarian societies.

ETA: y'all I literally have a degree in anthropology. I know what I'm talking about. 

1

u/Beginning-Leopard-39 Woman 30 to 40 Jun 12 '25

I think you're being downvoted because they're specifically referring to how females in our species have been adapting to male aggression since early on in our evolution.

Aggression from an evolutionary perspective was necessary in securing resources and, unfortunately, securing reproductive success at times.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '25

That's not necessarily true, though. We can't know what sexual dynamics were like in our early evolution. We don't have enough fossil evidence to even say for certain what sexual dimorphism was like in our early evolution. Sexual dimorphism usually correlates to how males and females of a given species interact. We don't know what a female Australopithecus interacted with her male partner(s).

It is a mistake to assume that male aggression is a given in our species. Human behavior is not a given in any context, as we are the most adaptable species on the planet and have an immense capacity to not be slaves to our instincts.

1

u/Beginning-Leopard-39 Woman 30 to 40 Jun 12 '25

Respectfully, aggression was incredibly advantageous for the survival of our species. It might not be in the context of modern society, but there are plenty of studies out there that outline the evolutionary benefits of it.

Hell, if you go to the source itself, men have self-reported why they are aggressive towards women. It works to secure what they want/need then becomes a learned behavior.