TL;DR

First off, to the kid who leveraged his “sociobiological patriarchy” argument at me- I assume you base this argument on stereotypical notions of ancient hunter-gatherer societies and the assumption of patriarchal systems throughout history. This notion is being explored critically by archaeologists, and most of the time it has been found…inconsistent at best. Your appeal to evolutionary biology is also puerile, and I have even pontificated at length on this subject, if you had bothered to look. 

You make a lot of unsubstantiated claims and I admit, I am guilty of this as well. I couldn’t find something to link re: assumptions about hominin culture throughout evolutionary history that wasn’t a giant tome or behind a paywall, so thus I can’t exactly back up my claims, but I assure you I am working on that.

You assert with conviction that “the gender roles worked when we were apes”, and also claim that we notice “harems going away as marriages rise”. Funny, I thought harem behavior was strictly limited to ruling classes for most of history, and that they concurrently existed with resource based weddings. Additionally, harem behavior carries a hell of a lot of risks, and isn’t always an evolutionary stable strategy. In fact, in humans, polygyny reduces the effective population size of the Y chromosome to a level similar to high rates of male mortality.  (EDIT: this study has an interesting bit of citations that put forth the idea that polygynous marriages are less fit than monogamous ones, which also serves to undermine the idea that assigning some form of correctness or value to facets of natural history is ridiculous) Given that humans aren’t parthenogenic, I tend to think that saying the gender binary “worked” is an interesting interpretation. Sure, it “worked” in that we are all born, and that the cultural pressures kept our population’s fitness above zero, but was it ever ideal in the sense that it wasn’t full of systemic oppression? Well, I don’t have an answer for that, and more importantly, neither do you. I know this seems like a diversion, and in many ways it is….in the sense that a detour to examine how our evolutionary history shaped these gender roles nicely cuts off the discussion of how the culture itself reinforces those behaviors, and additionally the original allegory in question glosses over how rancorous those “blue” (and yes, some “red”) individuals were when this culture we built up was questioned. 

Every time, in fact, the original allegory discusses any of the waves of feminism, it happily ignores the vehement resistance that these waves encountered, and are still encountering. Well, maybe that is unfair, but the point here is that I have wasted a lot of words arguing with someone whose entire allegory has two amazing bits in it- the previously hilarious “unbiased patriarchy”, and the little bit here 

Welcome to third-wave feminism. You’re now much more inclusive, but you’re still being quiet selfish and narrow-minded. You don’t even stop to consider that members of the blue group might have wanted to see the lions. You’ve given the choice to yourself and other members of your group, but the others are still as restricted and oppressed by the system as ever. You haven’t stopped to consider that, in their eyes, you are just as privileged by the system in being able to see the lions when they cannot.

I have never seen a better strawman of a topic. For a refresher, “the blue group” is men, “seeing the lions” is expressing the female gender role, and apparently this entire argument is about how third-wave feminism is privileged and needs to move to the “fourth wave” because the women who want the male gender role ignore the men who want the female gender role, the women who want the female gender role, and how those poor men who want to be men have it so rough.

The worst part about all of this is that I agree that we need to push for equality for anyone to express any gender or sexuality they wish without cultural judgement. 

Which, I think, is the author’s initial point, he just wrapped it in a huge unnecessary allegory that infantilizes and condescends to a movement that, despite the original post, is doing exactly what he wants.

In short, when I see things like this, I literally don’t understand why they exist. 

I have pretty much run out of words on this at this point, and am essentially just rambling. I have seen evidence that the current iteration of feminism’s third wave is harmful to both men expressing the male role, or men expressing the female role, but I really feel like this criticism has been handled inexpertly, and I would refer the original author as well as anyone following up on it to read these things and use your critical thinking skills to see how the arguments present in those three articles relate to the original allegory of a birthday at the zoo. 

As an aside, I often wonder why there is a common theme among people complaining about the current iteration of feminism to label themselves as “men’s rights activists”. As a man, I am not sure what rights of mine are being taken away and that I have to be an activist for. I don’t get why males are so afraid to use the phrase “feminism”, and it makes me think of how the female gender expression occupies a lower social status in our culture than does the male.