In theory if all the men are coring all the women, then the men invest in all the children. Equally, at that. How Egalitarian.
In practice, yes, they do invest in all children equally - equally the very bare minimum. Womanthink: "He doesn't know it's
not his, he might as well pay in!" Realthink: "I know it's probably not mine, why would I bother?" Maybe the thots can guilt-trip them into providing food without individual sexual favours. Maybe. Provided the drug-fuelled orgies are suitably frequent. More likely he hunts more than he can eat anyway, so he may as well share before it rots. Likewise any sexual favours related to defence in tribal warfare is superfluous. Other than the bare minimum, everything a thot wants will have to be traded for, and she only has one thing a man can't do for himself, but better.
The women all know which children are theirs, and will sneakily try to advantage them. Meaning the darling son gets to watch his mother sexually persuade all his mentors to pretend to care about him. Even if a man were inclined to mentor freely, why wouldn't he withhold resources without sex up front?
To start with, we can be sure there's an upper leisure class that doesn't have to hunt. The pretty bois getting shared around by the girls. The thots boink lesser boys for the privilege of being first to give a hottie his dinner. The girls are softly hareming themselves, and not only that, competing for the biggest load of the day.
They also have to keep any particular strong or particularly charismatic* men completely satisfied at all times, or he will lead an uprising and forcibly convert the tribe to patriarchy. *(Manipulative, scheming, sneaky.)
The rest, obviously the women will only use if they absolutely have to. And they absolutely have to, because it's not like the upper class is going to do any work. Why buy a cow when you get milk for free?
Naturally, the hottest thots won't have to trade as much sex per unit of industry. Maybe some of the pretty bois even compete for her favour. I.e. get off their ass once in a while. The result of matriarchy is savagely vicious intrafemale competition.
Egalitarianism is matriarchy, matriarchy is Egalitarianism, and it's not particularly equal. Notably Fascism is fakeriarchy. Matriarchy for the lower classes, secret patriarchy at the top. Meaning even the king can't have a hot wife, lest anyone realize he's the king...
"Want some of the seashell beads? Just hook up the beadmaker like I did lol." "He likes short hair lmao." By the time the lower ranks have floozied their way into having enough beads, they don't have time to equip their pretiboi with a spear. The guy demands so much tail from lesser women he barely has time to grind. If nobody lays with the beadmaker there will be no beads at all to ""share"" so have fun with that.
Even if they really did have perfectly Egalitarian orgies regardless of how dumb, ugly, or lazy the men in question, in extremis the ugly bitches are getting left behind first. There are no atheists in foxholes and no matriarchs in a famine. If a man can simply switch his hole to a different one, he's not going to work very hard to protect any particular woman, any more than he will to protect some random kid. By making everything ""equal"" the women have made everything equally meaningless. A big undifferentiated mass. As previously, you can afford to dump some of the women; it merely means less infanticide than usual. If the biggest town thug beat some homely slag to death for fun, would anyone care? "Hit the pretty ones too if you like, just don't touch the face!" Who is going to stop him? A seriously unequal situation for lesser men, but, who cares, had sex, right?
Matriarchy, for women, is a desperate fight for survival. When the inevitable turnaround rounds about...the Revolution you might say...the smart chicks teach their daughters to treasure the patriarchy. "Darling, honey...you don't want to go back. Marriage is wonderful." It's only men, specifically the tippy toppest men, who enjoy matriarchy and agitate for feminism. Cowed patriarch'd women do what they're told. These men agitate once soyciety is rich enough that it seems it won't instantly collapse. Or so doomed it doesn't matter.
Based on how women today act, I would say, near 100%, ergaster was matriarchal. You can see the implications, yes? A woman sometimes wants to [cook] for her man, if he's hot...yeah where do you think she got the food...hmmm....
The killer app that made either erectus or sapiens was patriarchy. The women are still adapted to matriarchy, because patriarchy, the land of dowdy women, justice, and cooperation, doesn't particularly select for women's preferences. Though, as we can see, they should have. In sapiens, the ancient matriarchal habits awaken in situations of adultery, and of course prostitution.
After millions of years, homos were tired of women's shit and rocked them until they sat down and shut up. Men either immediately invented throwing to keep other men in line, or got fired up for owning things and immediately mastered fire. Selfishness wins again.
Being explicit: women get weak because they can afford to. They can pay for things with pregnancy, because they're not too cheap to meter like sperm. Thus, in a soycial species with conscious deliberation, they rapidly become only able to pay for things with sex. Of necessity, men become superior in every other way.
Note that barren women are of no value to anyone. At best, grandmothers can help their daughters choose who to bang and how much. Thus, in the modern world, with the pill, women have sex but their body gets signals indicating they're barren, and...
Let's also mention, up front, how the men who could reasonably know a child was his was least likely to have to pay for anything. If son's mom gets naggy he can bang the next girl over until she gets over it. The difference between matriachy and patriarchy: under one, women volunteer to be worthless servants, and under the other, a woman is forced to be a worthless servant so a man has a reason to care about her anyway.
I expect neanderthal was instead instructed in patriarchy by their harsh icy
environment. As a result their (ugly) women didn't have ancestral blood
memory of violent oppression. They never lived rich enough lives that
women could afford to sit around and natter between bed rest sessions;
the women had to contribute too, thus learned the value of private
property.
We've worked out why mortal women have hidden estrus. Under matriarchy, the dudes wouldn't do any work at all except when chicks were in heat. Thus, women had to be in heat ~all the time, and if that means an immense amount of infanticide, whelp. Thank the matriarchy. Hail Egalitarianism. The heavens grant us sylphium or the pill. Mammals have been all about getting mom's kids killed in job lots for 66 million years, ever since their purpose in life was to feed snakes and spiders.
Menstruation has to be hidden by taboo or the guys will work out their cycle. Perhaps even menstrual synchronization is less about synchronization but more about throwing guys off the scent by changing the cycle. Frenemy shifting as deliberately incentivizing the women to change housing/bunking arrangements to fog things up. So the men aren't quite so lazy.
But hey, the absurdly intense zero-sum competition at least makes the top thots super hot. And everyone has a shot at her.
Some sapiens tribes, especially late-stage black governments, revert to matriarchy. When the patriarchs, who get to keep the shit they take, come and take all the matriarchy's shit, they also take their highly selected women. (And the ugly hoes all bite it as usual. Probably raped to death. Thanks matriarchy!) Giant influx of superstimuli. Vicious, demonic women who let all their responsible or farsighted men fall away. Now all your daughters are latent time bombs, and the less said about grandsons, the better.
Miscegenation: just don't it.
Predictive history has some claims about how matriarchy is heavenly...kek. Lol. "Everyone can be an artist." Every 1% can be an artist, yes. The 99% runt lineages created by farming, however...
In other news, the video here. https://theanti-puritan.blogspot.com/2025/10/your-should-be-studying-female.html
Not wrong, per se, but not nearly IQ-y enough to get a full picture. Narrow vision.