Men exist with all sorts of brain chemistry and behavioral patterns with respect to how they decide to regard women. I believe these tendencies can be explained by looking at other examples in the animal kingdom. Namely, I feel the most extreme examples that relate to men are bears and elephant shrews.
The way male bears interact with female bears in mating is quite distressing. When mating season rolls around, the male bear basically “does his business” and leaves the female to birth and raise the cubs on her own. In certain species of bear, it gets worse. Male polar bears will eat polar bear cubs because of the scarcity of food in the arctic regions. The ways of the bear remind me of the father who will “do his business” with multiple women and then not take responsibility for the born children unless he is proven the father by paternity. (The Maury show comes to mind.) The ways of the bear also remind me of the working father who does not have time for his children and leaves his wife at home to raise them without his emotional support. Lastly, the ways of the bear remind me of how some fathers abandon their children and leave the single mother to handle the situation by herself.
At the other end of the spectrum is the elephant shrew. Elephant shrews mate for life. The male elephant shrew protects the habitat from other elephant shrews and from predators. The female elephant shrew is not fussy over her young and she can have multiple litters in a breeding season. (Octomom comes to mind.) The ways of the elephant shrew remind me of the father who protects his family, keeping a baseball bat in an easily accessible location at night in case an intruder should threaten the sanctity of the home. In another respect, this end of the spectrum also includes some fish species. With many fish species, the males take a more active role in parenting. Some male fish will carry around fish eggs in their mouths for an extended period of time before they hatch. Male seahorses are the pregnant species after the seahorse mating interaction. Furthermore, seahorses are monogamous with one partner per mating season. This reminds me of the man who will have a serious relationship with one woman after another in an honorable fashion. This also reminds me of the man who has had multiple wives and has children from multiple marriages.
There are so many different animal species out there with varying gender interactions. The acknowledgement of diversity in the animal kingdom and the similarities that can be seen between other animals and the human species makes me rethink existing human stereotypes. It seems like a lot of people get squeamish about non-stereotypical lifestyles, when the rest of the animal kingdom does not judge or try to change the lifestyles of other species. There is an unspoken acceptance or possibly even indifference as long as it does not affect predatory strategy.
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