Steve Moxon, Deepcar, Sheffield, UK. stevemoxon3(at)talktalk.net.
All the following peer-reviewed science review papers 2009> (& mythology essays) are in full text through the buttons above or at their journal homes
NEW: Moxon SP (2023) Dominance Hierarchy is Male-Specific: It is Not Bi-(Inter-)Sexual Nor Female. New Male Studies 12.1, 1-28. Full text at https://www.newmalestudies.com/OJS/index.php/nms/article/view/370/427 under the button above, and https://www.researchgate.net/publication/372628317_DOMINANCE_HIERARCHY_IS_MALE-SPECIFIC_IT_IS_NOT_BI-INTER-SEXUAL_OR_FEMALE
Moxon SP (2022) The Demographic Transition is Rooted in Social Stressing of Males Triggering Epigenetically Induced Infertility of Exogamous (Female) Offspring, to Compromise Out-Group Reproduction, Forestalling Natal Group Extinction. New Male Studies 11.2, 1-21. Full text at https://www.newmalestudies.com/OJS/index.php/nms/article/view/360/416 and under the button above, and https://www.researchgate.net/publication/366835931_THE_DEMOGRAPHIC_TRANSITION_IS_ROOTED_IN_SOCIAL_STRESSING_OF_MALES_TRIGGERING_EPIGENETICALLY_INDUCED_INFERTILITY_OF_EXOGAMOUS_FEMALE_OFFSPRING_TO_COMPROMISE_OUT-GROUP_REPRODUCTION_FORESTALLING_NATAL_GR
Moxon SP (2022) Sex is Not Non-Binary (or Mutable), and Neither is Sexual Identity or Orientation. New Male Studies 11.1, 21-43. Full text at https://www.newmalestudies.com/OJS/index.php/nms/article/view/352/409 under the button above, and https://www.researchgate.net/publication/361695301_SEX_IS_NOT_NON-BINARY_OR_MUTABLE_AND_NEITHER_IS_SEXUAL_IDENTITY_OR_ORIENTATION
Moxon SP (2021) Male Heterogeneity and Female Choice in Human Mating: Maximising Female Fertility by Offsetting Stress, Age and Unwanted Attention While Facilitating Extra-Pair Conception. New Male Studies 10.1, 8-29 (part 1) & 10.2 ( for part 2). Full text at https://stevemoxon.co.uk/male-heterogeneity-female-choice-in-human-mating/ under the button above, and https://www.researchgate.net/publication/351986397_Male_Heterogeneity_and_Female_Choice_in_Human_Mating_Maximising_Women’s_Fertility_in_Offsetting_Stress_Age_and_Unwanted_Attention_While_Facilitating_Extra-Pair_Conception
Response to the Hate Crime Consultation, Law Commission. The Proposal to Deem Misogyny a Hate Crime and Extend Hate Crime as Based in Identity Politics is Counter to All Evidence and Itself a Hatred. [Find under buttons above for the papers re identity politics or misogyny. https://stevemoxon.co.uk/hate-crime-consultation-response-to-the-law-commission/ ]
Moxon SP (2020) How and Why Partner Violence is Normal Female Behaviour but Aberrational Male Behaviour. New Male Studies 9(1), 1-23. [Full text at www.newmalestudies.com/OJS/index.php/nms/article/view/310/372 and under the button above. A video presentation is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtIAI48TKVQ
Moxon SP (2019) The Falsity of Identity Politics (PC): Negative Attitude is Specifically to Males and for Any Difference, in Policing Male Sexual Access by Gate-Keeping Group Membership. New Male Studies 8(2), 20-51. [Full text at https://www.newmalestudies.com/OJS/index.php/nms/article/view/302/363 & under the button above]
Moxon SP (2019) The Sexes Serve to Purge Mutations by Selection on Males, Boosting the Function of Sex to Maintain Genomic Integrity. New Male Studies 8(1), 25-51 [Full text at https://newmalestudies.com/OJS/index.php/nms/article/view/293/354 & under the button above]
Moxon SP (2018) Misogyny has No Scientific Basis of Any Kind: the Evidence is of Philogyny. New Male Studies 7(2), 26-42. [Full text at https://newmalestudies.com/OJS/index.php/nms/article/view/282/345 & under the button above]
Moxon SP (2017) Only Male Genital Modification is a Form of Control; its Female Counterpart Originated as a Female-Initiated Competitive Ploy. New Male Studies 6(2), 126-165. [Full text at https://newmalestudies.com/OJS/index.php/nms/article/view/262/326 & under the button above]
NEW BOOK. November 2016 (book) Sex Difference Explained: From DNA to Society — Purging Gene Copy Errors. This is a ‘bottom-up’ from biology cutting-edge holistic understanding of men/ women: a layman’s guide to the converging lines of evidence for profound male-female distinction serving complementarity. [For papers going back to 2009, see below the book blurb.]
A monograph for the New Male Studies journal, it’s available on Amazon.co.uk & Amazon.com in both paperback & Kindle versions; plus it’s open-access on the NMS website. Amazon US paperback: http://tinyurl.com/h8s5ujs Kindle eBook http://tinyurl.com/gwtsdpo Amazon UK paperback: http://tinyurl.com/zh3cnux Kindle eBook http://tinyurl.com/hlxg5ko [Find also under the button above, ‘Sex Difference Explained’]
This is the first time anyone has properly attempted to put forward a truly integrated account of human sociality, utilising all the latest lines of evidence in theory re male hierarchy, female ‘personal network’, the very different in-grouping according to sex, and pair-bonding.
The core argument is that all major aspects of male-female human sociality necessarily stem from biological principles; which all arise in solving the core problem faced by all life-forms: the relentless build-up of mistakes in the repeated copying of genes.
Explanation here has to be bottom-up, not top-down, because that is the direction of causation: all else is feedback, which in inherent in any system if it is to avoid breakdown. Culture – that is, the facility to have and behave in this way – could not have evolved unless its function is to feed back to and fine-tune the very underlying biology that gave rise to it. So the more complex the organism becomes, then the better it gets at being faithful to and expressing its biology. The notion that instead somehow we go off on a novel tangent and ‘escape’ biology is the very opposite of what happens.
To deal with all the accumulated gene replication error, the ‘bad’ genes somehow have to be filtered out, and this is the function of the male: why males came into being, and why men so fiercely compete with one another to form a hierarchy.
The female contribution to this ‘genetic filter’ mechanism is carefully to choose only the most dominant/prestigious males, cross-checking that indeed they do possess the best gene sets. This ensures genetic mutations and other errors that would seriously compromise reproduction are purged from the local gene pool.
With men tied to a hierarchy, women evolved to ‘marry out’ to avoid in-breeding. In preparation for this, girls have a very different social organisation, rehearsing for when later they have to make close bonds with non-kin, stranger-females for mutual child-care. This explains why female grouping is so tight and exclusionary, whereas males group all-inclusively.
Pair-bonding serves to exclude lower-ranked, whilst allowing access by still higher-ranked males; and to provide a serial father of children, thereby in effect projecting forward in time a woman’s peak fertility, compensating for her deteriorating store of eggs, and consequent declining fertility and attractiveness. But although this is clearly all in the female interest, the male also gets something out of ‘marriage’: a more fertile partner than he would be able to acquire for ‘no-strings’ (promiscuous) sex. It’s cross-sex bargaining.
The upshot is that there’s an underlying sex dichotomy, to be sure; but it’s perfectly complementary, with the sexes of equal importance in what amounts to a symbiosis.
Further science papers. THE HUMAN SEXES & SOCIAL STRUCTURE/ DYNAMICS EXPLAINED ‘BOTTOM-UP’ FROM BIOLOGY Cross-disciplinary research centred in evolutionary biology/ psychology, biological anthropology. ‘Not sex difference but sex dichotomy: in fundamental motivation, not ability’.
Moxon SP (2015) Stress mechanism is sex-specific: Female amelioration or escape from stress to avoid compromising reproduction contrasts with male utilisation or in effect manufacture of stress to fulfil male ‘genetic filter’ function. New Male Studies 4(3) 50-62. http://www.newmalestudies.com/OJS/index.php/nms/article/view/194/222 [Find also under the button above, ‘Stress Mechanism is Sex-Specific’]
Moxon SP (2015) Competitiveness is profoundly sex-differential, consistent with being biologically based and within-, not between-sex. New Male Studies4(2) 39-51. http://www.newmalestudies.com/OJS/index.php/nms/article/view/186 [Find also under the button above, ‘Competitiveness is a Male Domain’]
Moxon SP (2014) Partner violence as female-specific in aetiology. New Male Studies 3(3) 69-92. http://www.newmalestudies.com/OJS/index.php/nms/article/view/149 [Find also under the button above, ‘Partner Violence Female Aetiology’]
Moxon SP (2014) Intimate-partner violence is not merely non-‘gendered’ but predominantly and apparently in essence female-perpetrated: the inverse of ideological constructs now debunked, and congruent with inter-sexual dynamics and the basis of human pair-bonding, (commissioned as a book chapter in Partner Violence: Risk Factors, Therapeutic Interventions and Psychological Impact. Nova Science Publishing). https://stevemoxon.co.uk/partner-violence-mostly-by-women/ [Find also under the button above, ‘Partner Violence Mostly BY women’]
Moxon SP (2014) From DNA repair to social minds: The root of sex-dichotomous psychology and behaviour. Presentation for the conference ‘From DNA To Social Minds’, University of York, June/July 2014. https://stevemoxon.co.uk/from-dna-repair-to-social-minds/ [Find also under the button above, ‘From DNA Repair to Social Minds’]
Moxon SP (2014) Demographic transition as caused by biological effects of social dislocation: adaptive reproductive-suppression triggered by ‘crowding’ stress of males transmitted epigenetically to female offspring multi-generationally; plus out-breeding fertility depression through genetic incompatibilities. [Accepted for conference presentation, but yet to be delivered] https://stevemoxon.co.uk/adaptive-demographic-transition-biological-cause-population/ [Find also under the button above, ‘Adaptive Demographic Transition’]
Moxon SP (2013) Human pair-bonding as primarily a service to the female [in excluding other males of lower (but not higher) mate-value, and a buffer against her own age-related mate-value decline]. New Male Studies 2 (2) 24-38 http://newmalestudies.com/OJS/index.php/nms/article/view/71 [Find also under the button above, ‘Pair-Bonding Serves Women’]
Moxon SP (2012) The origin of the sexual divide in the ‘genetic filter’ function: Male disadvantage and why it is not perceived. New Male Studies 1(3) 96-124 http://newmalestudies.com/OJS/index.php/nms/article/view/47 [Find also under the button above, ‘The Sexual Divide’]
Moxon SP (2012) The Reasons Why Women Won’t Match Men in the Workplace Irrespective of Whatever Action is taken. Submission to the inquiry ‘Women in the Workplace’, for The Business, Innovation and Skills Select Committee, House of Commons. http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/cmselect/cmbis/writev/womeninworkplace/m22.html also at https://stevemoxon.co.uk/why-few-women-are-at-the-top-women-in-the-workplace/ [Find also under the button, above, ‘Why Few Women are at the Top’.]
Moxon SP (2011) Beyond staged retreat behind virtual ‘gender paradigm’ barricades: The rise and fall of the misrepresentation of partner-violence and its eclipse by an understanding of mate-guarding. Journal of Aggression, Conflict & Peace Research 3(1) 45-54 https://stevemoxon.co.uk/gender-violence-paradigm-dead-beyond-staged-retreat/ [Find also under the button above, ‘Partner Violence is Mainly FEMALE’.]
Moxon SP (2010) Culture is biology: Why we cannot ‘transcend’ our genes — or ourselves. Politics & Society (journal). Symposium, ‘How Is Culture Biological?’ http://www.politicsandculture.org/2010/04/29/symposium-on-the-question-how-is-culture-biological-six-essays-and-discussions-essay-1-by-steve-moxon-culture-is-biology-why-we-cannot-transcend-our-genes%E2%80%94or-ourselves/ [Find also under the button above, ‘Gender Violence Paradigm is Dead’]
Moxon SP (2009) Dominance as adaptive stressing and ranking of males, serving to allocate reproduction by differential self-suppressed fertility: Towards a fully biological understanding of social systems. Medical Hypotheses 73(1) 5-14 https://stevemoxon.co.uk/dominance-as-adaptive-stressing-to-allocate-reproduction/ [Find also under the button above, ‘Dominance as Adaptive Stressing’]
Moxon SP (2008) The Woman Racket: The New Science Explaining How the Sexes Relate at Work, at Play and in Society. Imprint Academic. [Book] http://www.imprint.co.uk/books/TWR.html
Moxon SP (2012) The origin and nature of warfare is not explained but obscured by cultural-anthropological and feminist perspectives, that generate implausible notions of how warfare can be subdued [This paper was in journal peer review but was ‘spiked’ for political and personal reasons by the cultural anthropologist Douglas Fry, whose position, shared with his protogé, Judith Hand, this paper counters. It is to Hand’s political, non-scientific paper that originally this was in reply.] https://stevemoxon.co.uk/why-woman-wont-whack-war/ [Find under the button, above, ‘Why Woman Won’t Whack War’.]
Further review papers are in preparation, notably an overview of ostensible inter-sexual competition, revealing it to be intra-sexual competition and inter-sexual sexual display. A new book is also on the way: there has been so much development in the science that a major cross-disciplinary overview is needed rather than an update of The Woman Racket.
MYTHOLOGY ESSAYS
[All accessible from the buttons of their individual titles above (or subsumed under one of them in a tree)]
The analyses here of mythology — study of origins and what they really are about — are unconnected with the science review work, but this is another window on what makes people and society tick. There is analysis of the hegemonic mythology of today (‘identity politics’ and ‘political correctness’), an outline of the ideological complete misrepresentation of all aspects of the female franchise –women, the vote and the suffragettes; investigations of the two seminal ancient mythologies in Britain — Robin Hood and King Arthur — and the uncovering of the basis oif what at one tome was England’s most famous dragon legend (the Dragon of Wantley) as a quite different early-modern pastiche to the one supposed, and underpinned by unexpected ancient and medieval roots. Work is progressing on the mystery that is St George, and the curiosity that is the Snake Pass / Doctor’s Gate route in of the Peak District. The common thread to all but the non-contemporary mythology is (Scottish) Gaelic etymology, and backing this up are the Gaelic studies: research into place-names, vestiges of ancient festivals, and vernacular speech, all in the South Pennines.
* The Origin of Identity Politics & ‘Political Correctness’: Not consideration for minorities but hatred for the masses; specifically ‘the workers’ — Tracing how and why it arose and developed reveals the greatest political fraud in history. https://stevemoxon.co.uk/identity-politics-and-political-correctness-origin-pc-hatred-the-workers/
‘Identity politics’ (sometimes dubbed ‘political correctness’) is the result of a political-Left major backlash against the mass of ordinary people (in Europe and ‘the West’), beginning in the 1920s/30s, in the wake of the persistent failure of Marxist theory to be realised in European ‘revolution’ or any real change through democracy. In shifting the blame away from Marxist theory and the gullibility of those adhering to it, and on to those the theory prescribed and predicted would have been the beneficiaries, if only they had responded accordingly (‘the workers’); then the cognitive-dissonance within the political-left mindset caused by this crisis to an extent could be salved.
The intellectual rationalisation of this was first by invoking Freud’s discredited notion of ‘repression’ to attempt to explain a supposed impact on ‘the workers’ of ‘capitalism’ acting within the context of the family. With most workers being male, and the principal ‘agents of social change’ in a ‘revolution’ being envisaged as likewise, then the theoreticians had in mind the male as ‘head’ of the family. It was a simple extension in political-Left imagination for ‘the worker’ to change from being the putative conduit of the impact of ‘capitalism’ to its embodiment, leaving women to become the replacement supposed ‘oppressed’ and ‘disadvantaged’. This implausible and unfalsifiable non-scientific nonsense mainly festered within academia until the co-option after 1968 by the political-Left of the seeming revolutionary US ‘civil rights’ movement. This added to the ‘new oppressed’ the category ‘non-white’, which like that of women could be envisaged as an inversion of a retrospective stereotype of ‘the worker’. In the wake of the similarly seeming revolutionary Stonewall riots of 1969, the ‘gay rights’ lobby was also co-opted to further add to the abstract demonised aspects of ‘the worker’, now retrospectively stereotyped as male plus ‘white’ plus heterosexual.
The strands of the ‘new oppressed’ combined in a new (neo-Marxist) conceptualisation to account for these political shifts after the fact, and came to be termed ‘identity politics’ (or more pejoratively but accurately, ‘cultural Marxism’, and latterly dubbed ‘modernising’ [sic] in political parties). The deemed ‘groups’ replacing ‘the workers’ – subsequently expanded to embrace the disabled, the elderly, trans-sexuals and the obese – are abstractions rather than groups per se, and in any case far too heterogeneous to be in reality ‘oppressed’ or ‘disadvantaged’; providing a window on the sophistry and origin of this politics as other than it purports.
The pretence to egalitarianism is perfect cover for what ‘identity politics’ actually is: the very perennial and ubiquitous elitist-separatism the political-Left ethos attacks and denies; rendered a quasi-religion, being an ideology in the wake of the Christian notion of ‘the promised land’ in the utopia/dystopia of equality-of-outcome. This represents a continuation of the process of a shift in religiosity from envisaging a ‘god’ as being in man’s image, through the humanist deification of mankind, to worship of a supposed dynamic of teleological social change (originally understood in Marxism as a form of explicit cognition known as ‘the dialectic’). ‘Identity politics’, in being both not what it pretends to be and now so widespread and entrenched across the whole and every facet of the establishment in Anglophone nations and ‘the West’ generally, can properly be regarded as the greatest political fraud in history.
* All we’re told about Women Getting the Vote and the Role of the Suffragettes is False [The text here (modified to be standalone) was first published as a chapter from the book, The Woman Racket, Imprint Academic 2008] https://stevemoxon.co.uk/all-were-told-about-women-getting-the-vote-and-the-role-of-the-suffragettes-is-false/
What passes for social history regarding the vote is almost complete misrepresentation of the reality of what was or wasn’t fair to women vis-a-vis men. As regards having any say on decisions of interest to one sex or the other, it was not women but men who had been sold well short, because it was not voting at the national but at the local level that addressed women’s concerns. Whereas only a minority of men even at the start of 1918 could vote in parliamentary elections, women had always had the vote at parish level on exactly the same basis as men, and continued to do so.
* The Origin of Robin Hood Mythology: The Etymology of the ‘Robin Hood’ Name https://stevemoxon.co.uk/robin_hood_name_origin_myth_etymology/
The first-ever etymological investigation into the origin of Robin Hood mythology — RH obviously not being a real personage. The conclusion is that it is clearly ancient and not medieval: ‘Celtic’; specifically (Scottish) Gaelic rodaidh, diminutive of ruadhrí, ‘red king’ (the mythic figure who sacrifices himself because his regal blood is required to be shed on to the land to ensure its fertility); this meaning and etymology entwined with that denoting the deity to whom the sacrifice is made: rìbhinn (rìgh-beann), ‘king-wife’, meaning ‘maiden-queen’ — the Celtic deity Bríd (Bríg, Brighid). This was later qualified by hood from Welsh hud, ‘magic’, ‘fairy’, in the sense of ‘devil’, referring to ‘the old religion’.
* Unmasking King Arthur: Etymology reveals the basis of Arthurian legend https://stevemoxon.co.uk/king-arthur-name-origin-etymology-myth-arthurian/
Following the etymological investigation into the Robin Hood name, the same approach to tackle the riddle of the origin of Arthurian legend reveals likewise no historical personage and effectively the same meaning of ‘serpent’, in the same language (Gaelic), (n)athair; and which surely again alludes to the pan-‘Celtic’ deity Bridhe.
* St George Deciphered https://stevemoxon.co.uk/st-george-deciphered/
Just as is the case with Robin (Hood) and (King) Arthur, the name itself of (St) George turns out to be the key to the origin of what yet agin is a mythological and not an historical figure. The assumed Greek mundane etymology is mistaken, instead appearing to be two closely related (almost antonymic) Gaelic words: giorghal, ‘brave, fearless, strong’, and giorac, ‘cause of fear, dread, panic’, which respectively would be apposite re a soldier and his ‘monster’ adversary. Giorghal also has the meaning ‘feat of arms’, which would indicate the conflict and that it is an important test. With the deep etymology also Gaelic, the mythology is apparently a re-import of what was already in Britain in pre-Christian guise. Once again — as with Robin Hood and King Arthur — it’s regeneration lore: the usurping of the ‘old king’ by the ‘new king’, in a sympathetic magic ritual of spilling the blood of the earthly manifestation of the deity on to the land to make it fertile.
* The Dragon of Wantley: The Mystery of the Famous English Legend Now Solved https://stevemoxon.co.uk/dragon-of-wantley-reappraisal-legend-myth/
This overturns the longstanding theory of the origin of what was England’s most famous dragon legend. The early-modern ballad was not to do with the Wortley Lords but the Counter-Reformation, involving a law suit initiated and conducted solely by George More of Sheffield against George Talbot, sixth Earl of Shrewsbury. Furthermore, there are localised ancient mythological roots in ‘Celtic’ serpent and, it seems, ‘water-monster’ place-namings, with a medieval ‘dragon v knight’ overlay through the local presence of the Knights Hospitallers of St John of Jerusalem.
* Gaelic Vestiges in England https://stevemoxon.co.uk/gaelic-vestiges-in-england/ This is the parent of a tree:
* Etymology to Reveal the Basis of Mythologies of Britain is Prompted by the Surprising Predominance of (Scottish) Gaelic Place-Name Derivation Across the ‘Dark Peak’, as Illustrated Here by Sheffield Core-Central Street Names https://stevemoxon.co.uk/dark-peak-place-names-are-gaelic/ * Etymology to Reveal the Basis of Mythologies of Britain is Prompted by the Surprising Predominance of (Scottish) Gaelic Place-Name Derivation Across the ‘Dark Peak’, as Illustrated Here by Stocksbridge area Place Names https://stevemoxon.co.uk/dark-peak-gaelic-place-naming-2-stocksbridge-area/ * Gaelic Festival Vestiges in England: Whit, Galas, Feasts, Wakes, Kakin and Dannikins in the South Pennines https://stevemoxon.co.uk/gaelic-festival-vestiges/ * Gaelic in Vernacular English: The Gaelic Basis of Dark Peak (More Widely South Pennine) Vernacular Speech https://stevemoxon.co.uk/gaelic-in-vernacular-english/ * Extreme Vulgar Words are All Gaelic (words that are used in swearing, abuse or for rudeness effect that are charged through being, or supposedly being sexual — all are Gaelic in etymology) https://stevemoxon.co.uk/extreme-vulgar-words-are-all-gaelic/
Several pages are studies in the wake of the findings of Gaelic etymology of the names of key British mythological figures: research into place-names, vestiges of ancient festivals, and vernacular speech, all in the South Pennines. All reveal a Gaelic basis, reinforcing the findings re Robin Hood and Arthurian mythologies. Most of these have been published in shorter form in Stirrings magazine over the past few years: the account of Sheffield core-central street names, all of which are (Scottish) Gaelic in origin (the autumn 2016 edition); also the investigation of vernacular speech, and the articles on Cakin Night and Dannikins.