Many years ago William Morrow and Sons published my The Inevitability of Patriarchy. Open Court recently published a very-much updated edition under the title Why Men Rule, which provides much additional evidence, response to critics, and the like.

The central argument made in Why Men Rule (and in a summary article in my When Wish Replaces Thought ) is this:

Specifiable hereditary psychophysiological differences between males and females engender in males a more-easily-released tendency for dominance behavior. This is observed by a society’s population and is incorporated in all aspects of socialization that mediate the psychophysiological and the institutional. As a result all societies, without exception, exhibit patriarchy, male status attainment, and male dominance.

In other words, the social is a dependent variable that gets its limits and direction from the independent variable of the psychophysiological.

Demonstrating and explaining the universality of these institutions is the purpose of Why Men Rule and the summary article mentioned above.

I cannot here provide the mass of anthropological evidence of universality, nor that of the psychophysiological evidence supporting the theory presented in my book. My purpose here is merely to present an analysis of the logic infusing the theory and a compendium of the fallacies of arguments denying the role of psychophysiological differentiation in setting limits on social possibility.

It is worth mentioning that many scientists and other academic readers have posted admirable summaries of my book on Wikipedia, only to have these deleted within days. (Wikipedia’s concept of democracy seems to be that one can delete any material that he or she doesn’t like; ideologues seem to prefer deletion to debate.)

I apologize for the fact that no one could refer to reading the essay that follows as “curling up with a good read.” Responding point by point to logical fallacies does not permit this. I think that the reader will find my books much more easy-going.