We all know of the stereotype of the “Soy Boy;” the effeminate male with the most progressive possible views who smiles with his mouth open. An internet meme, the Soy Boy embodies so much about the stereotypical liberal male. He is physically weak, he allows himself to dominated by females, he is ultra-Woke; he is low in testosterone. But is this really the case? Most stereotypes contain at least a grain of truth, and a growing body of research indicates that this one contains very much more than that.

As I have discussed in my book The Past is a Future Country: The Coming Conservative Demographic Revolution, a great deal of Wokeness involves being extremely socially conformist. Left-wing people are high in anxiety (as are females compared to males) [Mental Illness and the Left, By E. Kirkegaard, Mankind Quarterly, 2020], which means they fear a fair fight, so they attain status covertly via virtue-signalling. In a leftist society, this means competitively signalling their adherence to liberal values; concern with “Equality” and “Harm Avoidance.”

In fact, more general research has found that in religious societies “extrinsic religiousness” (outward religious conformity) is associated with anxiety [Primary personality trait correlates of religious practice and orientation, By P. Hills et al., Personality and Individual Differences, 2004]. With its Pride Month, emotional public displays, dogmas, martyrs (such as George Floyd) and dominance of all institutions, it can reasonably be argued that Wokeness is a kind of replacement religion.

We would, therefore, expect the Woke to be low in testosterone. Testosterone makes you confident and assertive. High levels of anxiety, unsurprisingly, are associated with low levels of testosterone according to recent cutting edge research [Interplay between hippocampal TACR3 and systemic testosterone in regulating anxiety-associated synaptic plasticity, By M. Wojtas et al., Molecular Psychiatry, 2024]. And what do we find high levels of social conformity are associated with? You guessed it. Low levels of testosterone.

A study in the journal Social Psychologi cal and Personality Science argues that minority positions — that is, standing-up against the opinion of the majority — are perceived as risky options and so, in that testosterone is positively associated with status seeking and risk-taking, it would be likely that people who were high in testosterone would be more likely to be brave enough to adopt minority positions. In two studies, a total of 250 participants were read messages that:

. . . were supported by either a numerical majority or minority. As hypothesized, individuals’ levels of basal testosterone were positively related to susceptibility to minority influence. In contrast, susceptibility to majority influence was unaffected by basal testosterone. Given the importance of minorities for innovation and change within societies, our results suggest that individuals with high levels of testosterone may play an important role as catalysts of social change.

Testosterone also militates against conformity at the group-level. My research group has found that when you control for a nation’s average IQ — and no matter what the critics say, national IQs strongly correlate with other national level indicators of intelligence — then the big predictor of per capita science Nobel Prizes — major, boat-rocking, vested-interests-shattering innovations — is national-level testosterone [National-Level indicators of androgens are related to the global distribution of number of scientific publications and science Nobel prizes, By D. van der Linden et al., Journal of Creative Behavior, 2020]. This is discerned by a number of markers including prevalence of specific forms of a gene, number of sex partners, regularity of sexual intercourse, prostate cancer prevalence, the masculine shape of the hands (2D:4D ratio), hairiness and, in a separate study, the testosterone markers of autism and left-handedness [Why do high IQ societies differ in intellectual achievement? The role of schizophrenia and left-handedness in per capita scientific publications and Nobel prizes, By E. Dutton et al., Journal of Creative Behavior, 2020].

Low testosterone, then, means high conformity, as reflected in Woke males; who are evidently hyper-conformists in a Woke culture. In fact, a different study found that the mere administration of testosterone is sufficient to make people more right-wing in our current leftist society.

A study of males found that when weakly-affiliated Democrats were administered testosterone their support for the Democrats fell; in other words a “Red Shift” was induced, with their feelings of warmth towards the Republicans increasing by 45%. They also reported markedly improved mood, which would make sense because their levels of anxiety would likely have decreased. Before the testosterone administration occurred, the strongly-affiliated Democrats had lower testosterone levels than the weakly-affiliated Democrats, as we might predict.

It’s unclear why testosterone administration did not induce a significant Red Shift in the strong Democrats. Possibilities may include that their leftism is motivated by different aspects of the personality trait Neuroticism (negative feelings). They are not left-wing because they are anxious but, rather, because they are angry and resentful of those whom they see as having power over them. Testosterone, in making them more aggressive, is only going to strengthen these feelings. Leftism is associated not just with anxiety but also with low Agreeableness and poor impulse control; that is psychopathic traits or traits related to psychopathy [Corrigendum to ‘The nature of the relationship between personality traits and political attitudes’ [Personal. Individ. Differ. 49 (2010): 306–316], By B. Verhulst et al., Personality and Individual Differences, 2016].

As I have noted elsewhere, in a Republican or strong Democrat, psychological and possibly genetic factors are so robust that testosterone is less influential. However, the psychological make-up in moderate leftists is more environmentally plastic and, thus, testosterone is more influential. Alternatively, testosterone increases risk-taking, which might cause weakly affiliated Democrats — who are similar in testosterone levels to Republicans — to “risk” a “Red Shift” for which they might normally feel guilty given prevailing societal attitudes.

But, overall, the stereotype is cautiously confirmed. Compared to conservative males, liberal males are weak and effete. They are low-testosterone Soy Boys, and this explains their anxiety and their thoroughly cowardly behaviour of virtue-signalling to attain status: The boys who were bullied in the playground are now dictating the social rules in many Western countries.

Have you ever noticed how physically unattractive Woke people tend to be? Both the males and females are relatively ugly and the males are relatively short and physically weak. Both are clearly high in mental illness. It’s almost like there’s something genetically wrong with them.

Well, your eyes don’t deceive you.  Some fascinating new evidence has come to light that left wing people are, to put it bluntly, more likely to be mutants (something which is almost always a bad thing in evolutionary terms) than right-wing people. It has been presented by a young researcher, a computer scientist called Joseph Bronski. He has provided us with compelling new evidence for a point I have been exploring for many years.

Under the harsh Darwinian conditions that were prevalent until the Industrial Revolution, there was a strong selection pressure to be genetically physically and mentally healthy. There was also strong selection pressure to be group-oriented: pro-social, mentally stable and high in impulse control. Groups that were too low in these internally cooperative traits would be destroyed by those that were higher in them. Individuals that were too low in them would be killed by the group. Consequently all of these traits became bundled together. Supporting this, Zakharin and Bates found that 66 percent of the variation in being generally group-oriented results from genetic differences [Testing heritability of moral foundations: Common pathway models support strong heritability for the five moral foundations, By M. Zakharin and T. Bates, European Journal of Personality, 2023].

Moreover, studies have shown that left-wing people value individually-oriented moral foundations such as harm avoidance and equality over the group-oriented foundations of in-group loyalty and obedience to authority that are valued by conservatives. Accordingly, the moral judgments of leftists are self-interested. Their purpose is to help less talented individuals, such as themselves, ascend the hierarchy of the group [Liberals and Conservatives Rely on Different Sets of Moral Foundations, By J. Graham, J. Haidt and B. Nosek, Personality Processes and Individual Differences, 2009]. The above-cited Zakharin and Bates (2023) found that 49 percent of the variation in individualizing morality was due to genetic variation.

So, taken together, we should not be surprised that people who are less group-oriented and more individualizing are higher in “mutational load” than right-wing people. We were selected to be highly group-oriented and they are a movement away from this. They are more likely to be the descendants of those who would have died as children under a harsher evolutionary regime, in which child mortality was as much as 50 percent, as opposed to less than 1 percent in Western countries today [Is Child Death the Crucible of Human Evolution? By T. Volk and J. Atkinson, Journal of Social, Evolutionary, and Cultural Psychology, 2008].

In my recent book Breeding the Human Herd: Eugenics, Dysgenics and the Future of the Species, I bring together the growing body of evidence that leftism is associated with elevated genetic sickness. Compared to conservatives, liberals have less attractive and less symmetrical faces, liberal males are physically shorter and liberal males are less muscular. These traits imply a poor immune system, due to high mutational load, which has prevented them from maintaining a symmetrical phenotype, reaching their maximum height or accruing muscle because, with a poor immune system, they must invest disproportionately more of their bio-energetic resources in fighting off disease.

As I also note in the book, leftists are also higher in mental illnesses (such as depression) which are strongly genetic, and they are more likely to be atheists—atheism strongly crosses over with leftism; moreover, they are more likely to be left-handed, which implies a significantly asymmetrical brain. The heritability of political viewpoint, as I have discussed in my book The Past is a Future Country: The Coming Conservative Demographic Revolution, can be relatively high, so this strongly implies that leftism is partly a function of mutational load.

However, it is true that an element of these relationships could be environmental. Perhaps having these kinds of traits makes people feel excluded or inferior. This makes them bitter about the world, which makes them want to tear down all of its power structures and traditions, causing them to be attracted to leftism in a kind of a symbiotic relationship. What is needed is hard proof that the relationship is genetically mediated. This is exactly what Joseph Bronski appears to have demonstrated.

In a study in the journal Open Psych entitled “Evidence for a Paternal Age Effect on Leftism,” Bronski achieves something that is both important and beautifully simple. He shows that older fathers are not more likely than younger fathers to be left-wing but that the fathers of left-wing children tend to be older. The correlation between paternal age and leftism was relatively weak but it was highly significant statistically, that is, vanishingly unlikely to be a fluke. This finding is vital because as men age they produce more and more de novo mutations in their sperm, meaning that the older your father is the less genetically healthy you are likely to be, on average. The fact that older fathers are not more likely to be left-wing yet they are more likely to produce offspring who are left-wing effectively demonstrates that being left-wing is a function of mutation; a function of poor genetic fitness.

In another study, as yet unpublished and available on Bronski’s website, he argues something that even I—who tends to be sympathetic to genetic explanations—found surprising: The rise in leftism in the West over the last century can be almost entirely explained by rising mutational load; the rise, in other words, of mutants. In The Past is a Future Country: The Coming Conservative Demographic Revolution, I argue that rising mutational load is part of the explanation. It led to more and more selfish, individually-oriented people until a tipping point was reached, probably around 1963, causing society to rapidly become left-wing. I aver that a big part of this was environmental. Once the shift began to occur, the more intelligent—i.e., those better at sensing the general mood and better able to conform to it and see the benefits of so-doing—began competitively signalling leftism, causing a kind of runway individualism.

However, in his paper “On Evolutionary Pressure and General Leftism,” Bronski argues that the rise in leftism can be mainly, not just partly, explained by genetic changes in the population. In effect, he notes that there are two competing pressures: conservatives tending to have more children and a rise a mutation, which can be quantified. As Bronski summarises:

Using a narrow-sense heritability estimate of 0.6, we find a selection pressure of 0.076 SDs per generation in the conservative direction. We . . .  compute the mutational pressure as 0.22 SDs in the leftist direction. We find that the sum of these two pressures adequately explains the change in general leftism per generation over that last 70 years (0.15 SD per generation in the leftist direction), indicating that Western political change is solely due to evolutionary pressure. Per Bayesian analysis, there is a 95% chance, given this data, that 70% or more of the observed shift in leftism is due solely to evolutionary pressure, namely mutational pressure.

If this seems extreme, Bronski attempts to allay such a reaction in his Open Psych study, discussed earlier:

It is theoretically plausible that mutational pressure could produce some or all of the leftward shift of the last several generations in the US and other Western nations . . . If the mutational pressure on leftism were 1 in 20, and leftism were treated as binary, then mutational pressure would convert 5% of would-be non-leftists each generation.

If Bronski is right, and his data appears to be sound, the implication is clear: growing leftism is overwhelmingly a function the growth of genetically unfit mutants. You will not fight its growth by critiquing illogical Woke arguments.

 

The Naked Classroom: The Evolutionary Psychology of Your Time at School
Edward Dutton
Jolly Heretic Publications, 2023

As a schoolboy, Ed Dutton decided he was a “humanities person.” He felt an immediate interest in the lives of his ancestors and the people around him, and so enjoyed learning about history and literature, which spoke to him of such things. Memories of eighth-grade lessons on stamens and pistils, on the other hand, still summon up feelings of “ennui and despair.” He couldn’t wait to turn sixteen so he would never have to take another science lesson again. How did such a child morph into a dissident evolutionary psychologist?

By discovering the relevance of science to all the things he was already interested in. History, for example, can be understood as Darwinian evolution in action:

Individuals and groups compete for power and resources under harsh Darwinian conditions and those who are best adapted to their environment survive. Computer models have shown that groups highest in “positive ethnocentrism” (in-group cooperation) and “negative ethnocentrism” (out-group hostility) dominate all other groups, all else being equal. Not only that, but people can pass on their genes indirectly and tend to favour people the more genetically similar they are to themselves. [This] makes sense of soldiers dying for their country or one ethnic group persecuting another. Why didn‘t we learn about this when we learnt about World War II?

Come to think of it, I have a pretty good notion why White British schoolchildren are not taught how outgroup hostility can help them prevail in the struggle for survival. But Dutton is certainly correct that teaching such things would make science lessons a whole lot more interesting—for all concerned.

Religion was another matter that excited the young Dutton’s curiosity. Churches were all over the place, and students prayed and sang hymns at school assemblies.

“Why are people religious?” I recall wondering, aged about 11. “Why do they tell us that Father Christmas isn‘t real, yet believe in a kind of invisible Father Christmas, who created the world?” Yes, I was that kind of child. Science classes could have explained to me that, in Darwinian terms, something is an adaptation if it is partly genetic, found in all cultures, [and] associated with mental and physical health and fertility. Religion is, therefore, an adaptation, and that is why otherwise perfectly rational people will believe it and engage in it. It is, in effect, an instinct, whereby a number of other instincts — following the leader, over-detecting agency [and] causation, the feeling of being watched (which makes you more pro-social), the feeling of being looked after (which guards against anxiety and despair) — are all selected for and, so, become bundled together.

Even math has aspects that make it relevant to the practicalities of our lives today; it teaches the student

to think logically, and this is vital to understanding the world and as a force against those who value power over reason. If somebody is forced to assert as true something which they know to be wrong — if they must assert that 2 + 2 = 5, for example — then they are humiliated; they have submitted to someone else‘s power. If Algebra and Trigonometry had been taught with these factors in mind, I would have had far more time for them.

In short, “Science is badly taught because it is not taught in a ‘based’ way, [i.e.,] with reference to fascinating, controversial yet accurate knowledge of the world, the kind of knowledge certain influential figures try to suppress.”

Dutton sees these powerful antiscientific authorities as driven by four psycho-social forces which amount to a version of Francis Bacon’s Four Idols of the Mind updated for the age of social media:

• Low Decoupling Ability, or the inability to distinguish questions of fact from questions about what ought to be. A recent illustration is the furor which ensued when Richard Dawkins made the elementary point that practical objections to eugenic breeding do not mean such breeding would be ineffective.
• Motivated Social Cognition, or the adoption of beliefs because they satisfy a psychological need.
• Concept Creep, such as the expansion of the idea of what is harmful or violent (“silence is violence”). Also applies to the expansion of a concept such as “racism” to encompass the entire universe.
• Catastrophization, or the extrapolation of disastrous conclusions from limited observations: e.g., the Third Reich will be reborn if “antiracist” activists suffer the slightest setback. (For some amusing recent examples of catastrophization in American politics, see here: link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjYOddl-CCA)

It does not matter how “progressive” the political preferences of a scientist may be: he will be viciously attacked by the anti-science brigade if he reports a finding contrary to their cherished world view. A recent illustration is the attack on

left-wing behavioural geneticist Kathryn Paige Harden who, in 2021, published The Genetic Lottery (Harden, 2021), a book that denounced all the “right” people, such as Charles Murray, and insisted that there was “zero evidence” for hereditarianism. Yet merely for talking about mainstream behavioural genetics, Harden was described in the Daily Beast as legitimizing “crypto-race science.” Behavioural genetics was described as “ethically abhorrent,” with the author suggesting that publishers “should refuse to participate” and need to recognize that the field is “actively harming people.”

But back to the classroom: every schoolboy notices that most of his teachers, especially in primary school, are women (in Dutton’s native Britain the figure is 85%). Evolutionary psychology could explain to them that

boys are attracted to jobs that involve systems and the manipulation of objects, and also status, because — being higher in testosterone — they are highly competitive: car mechanic, pilot, computer programmer and scientist. Girls massively migrate towards caring professions: general practitioners, social workers, nurses and, of course, primary school teachers. Even with academic subjects, you find this divide. Male doctors will be attracted by surgery; female doctors by psychiatry and paediatrics, in other words, caring about children or helping people talk through their psychological problems. When a profession becomes dominated by females, as has occurred with teaching [like academic psychology these days], it starts to be regarded as “women’s work” and, thus, of low status. This further repels men and the profession’s wages start to fall, making it even less prestigious.

In secondary school, the imbalance in favor of women teachers diminishes somewhat (27% of secondary teachers in Britain are men), but male teachers are heavily concentrated in certain subject areas such as math and science. Here, an evolutionary psychologist could explain to curious pupils that “the essence of science is systematizing and this is more attractive to the male mind,” and that “males are higher in spatial and mathematical intelligence,” which is necessary to the successful pursuit of science. Females, presumably because they are the ones who teach their children to speak, are higher in verbal intelligence.

And, of course, science had plenty to say (where permitted) about why East Asian students do so well in math, while Black students rarely excel outside of Phys Ed.

Even social class dynamics visible in the schoolroom can be illuminated, since there is an extent to which social classes are genetic clusters: “Experiments have found that people can correctly assess other people’s social class from facial clues to a greater degree than would be possible by chance.” The tendency for friendships to form within social classes rather than across them is an expression of inclusive fitness.

Playground bullying is a type of behavior that “can be found among non-human animals and in all human societies, and it is highly resistant to attempts to stamp it out. Accordingly, [it] may be an adaptation.” If so, “bullying must be partly heritable, it must elevate fertility and it must be associated with health.”

If bullying aided survival (and thus fertility) it would be elevated at times of want and this has been found in anthropological accounts of hunter-gatherer societies. Bullies are less likely to be picked on, less likely to be stressed and more likely to be healthy, and studies note direct evidence that bullies are healthier than those who are bullied, both physically and mentally.

Moreover, chicks dig bullies: male bullying implies status and dominance, physical prowess, social skill (not being the outcast oneself) and even intelligence (in the context of verbal bullying). For such reasons, Dutton is contemptuous of today’s anti-bullying campaigns, which are most likely to elevate the campaigners themselves into bullies over the rest of us.

Decades of pro-homosexualist propaganda seems to have had no effect on male adolescents, among whom “gay” remains the worst of insults: even math can be “gay” if a boy dislikes it enough. Might it not interest such youngsters to know why they have such strong negative feelings about homosexuality? Once again, evolutionary psychology has explanations. Here are just a few: homosexuality is maladaptive because no amount of homosexual behavior can ever have a reproductive payoff; it is an expression of developmental instability, indicating high mutational load and increased risk of mental instability; effeminate males may well be unreliable as defenders of the tribe; and homosexuals may be vectors of disease due to risky sexual practices.

Evolutionary psychology can also explain differences in male and female social behavior that are obvious even to children:

Males develop friendships in the context of a male band which fights other bands, and as a means of alliances to ascend the hierarchy of their own band. Female friendships are based around finding potential “alloparents” for their children or potential children. Such relationships must be close, as you are trusting these women with your babies; so females will cultivate a small number of intense, one-to-one friendships. The result of this system is that “new women on the scene” are not novel and interesting alliances in a large band that fights another band. They are dangerous rivals that may poach one’s carefully cultivated alloparent. As such, there is a degree to which all females that are not one of your potential alloparents are rivals and enemies, which can explain why bullying can be so nasty and spiteful among females.

While nasty, female bullying is less overt and physical than male bullying since females are both weaker and higher in anxiety. This is also why girls “play for status via covert methods. They virtue-signal, or attack the virtue of others, stressing their interest in ‘equality’ and ‘harm avoidance.’”

These are, of course, precisely the tactics of today’s “woke” left. If it has ever occurred to you that its methods are unmanly, you are onto something: the female (or effeminate male) bully avoids direct confrontation, engaging instead in “the adult equivalent of ‘telling the teacher’: complaining about a video online, calling the police, or some other act of brazen cowardice.” Dutton shares an illustrative personal anecdote:

In November 2021, I was in a bar in northern Finland [with some] members of Finland’s “Young Green League.” One was manifestly a man dressed as a woman. He hadn’t even made that much effort: he had stubble and extremely hairy arms. Nevertheless, he confidently used the women’s loo. Eventually, as he seemed quite friendly, I explained that my experience of people like them — the Greens, the Woke — was that they were unreasonable, aggressive, dogmatic, and could never brook any kind of disagreement.

“No, we’re not like that,” he chirpily replied.

“You mean you can have a calm, reasonable conversation about anything?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Okay, let’s talk about your autogynophilous transsexuality . . .”

At this, he recoiled, like a vampire presented with a crucifix, and hissed with a barely-suppressed glint of animal rage. I was then physically mobbed. They brought over their fat, tall, bearded friend to intimidate me into leaving the dance floor I was on.

“You have to go!” he declared.

No, I don’t,” I said. “This is a public bar.”

So he “told the teacher” – the landlord. I knew the landlord personally and he calmly appealed to me to please just stop talking to these people.

Of course, these are (disproportionately) the sort of people in charge of educating the rising generation in the West today, and making science class more interesting to the young Ed Duttons of the world is far down their list of priorities. If they do not adopt the program he suggests in The Naked Classroom, it is not for pedagogical reasons, but because they know they would soon have a revolution on their hands.