[Editor: This is a critical review of Simon Sheppard’s “All About Women” by Brother Derek (a/k/a Ram-Man). Show him some love in the comments section.]
Per our host’s suggestion, I read Simon Sheppard’s “All About Women.” Sheppard develops his central theses around (quasi-)Darwinian evolutionary theory. It has a science-explains-everything foundation with no room for Christianity’s explanations. It mistakes approximations of truth with reality[1], and is thus doomed to failure. In this it does not disappoint. It fails because he, ironically, embraces the primary ideal of feminism (and leftism): moral inversion.[See Footnote] But rather than refuting with Christianity, I’ll show how his points are self-defeating.
Sheppard associates low population density with males and high density with females. Overpopulation, the alleged fault of women, is the ultimate cause of most modern-day problems.[2] He defends this with various Darwinian arguments centered around control of sex. Yet for all the talk of evolution, he does not understand it.
Evolution claims that the fittest women will try to find the fittest mates and reproduce. For all his harping on sex, it is irrelevant; just a means to an end. Reproduction is the only Darwinian goal. To do this, men use the power to offer sex and women use the power to refuse sex. Women cannot find the fittest mate by whoring. They must find a fit mate through tightly controlled selection. Indeed this very thing he condemns through his evolutionary arguments is the very thing evolution says must occur. It’s a hopeless contradiction.
Sheppard does not understand what drives population. The increase in population has been driven by medical, economic, scientific, technological, and social innovations. By most metrics the world is the best it has ever been. Population growth is strongly correlated with mostly positive outcomes. The exception, of course, is feminism.
Modern sexual liberation is enabled by birth control and abortion, not evolutionary factors.[3] When we look at the evidence, what is the primary symptom of feminism and sexual liberation? Low birth rates, stagnant or decreasing population, and increased mutational accumulation and its corresponding risk of mutational meltdown. Many of the ills he blames on overpopulation are the result of sexual liberation and feminism. His conclusion is almost a complete inversion of reality.
Women who are not reproducing are removing themselves from the gene pool. So are the MGTOW. Both are acting genetically defective and unfit. Deselection is inevitable. The book, and perhaps much of the sphere, suffers from selection bias. For example, none of the “Female Stereotypes” (Chapter 5) even remotely describe many wives, just like it didn’t for this Amazon reviewer.
Sheppard associates the Old Reverse with feminism: reversing cause and effect.[4] Ironically, his argument suffers from this same inversion. The Dynamical Laws[5] are self-defeating: If women only have power given to them by males, then males are to blame. All men have the free option to engage in at least one of the following: Marriage (myself) and celibacy (Brother Earl), ideally in their proper Christian forms. Any other choice enables feminism.
Footnote
Sheppard correctly notes the reversal of cause and effect[4], or perhaps more generally, mistaking correlation for causation. The inevitable result of these mistakes is moral inversion: claiming that good is bad and bad is good. By making various errors of the former, his conclusions suffer from the latter. These mistakes are easy for him to make because he has only science to guide him. Just like feminism (and leftism), he lacks the objective moral grounding required to avoid these mistakes.
Selected eBook References
[1] location 371-372
[2] location 334-336
[3] location 842: Bizarrely, he blames abortion (bad?) on women failing their birth control (good?) duties.
[4] location 399
[5] location 588
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