alt Hacker News> For women the core of their power anthropologically lies with beauty
Physical attractiveness is a social asset, and it's a more useful asset for a woman because men are affected by how women look more than the other way around - that's all fair enough ... but "the core of their power anthropologically lies with beauty" is a bizarre framing.
It's not bizarre. It's truth that's hard to accept in modern times. Also you need to look at this from the perspective of prehistoric times that made up most of human evolution. Modern culture and technology has made it so that a women on their own could in theory gain as much power and capability as a man so the dynamics are more equal now in terms of opportunities but they are still unequal in terms of biology and genetic behavior/instincts.
Think about who goes hunting? Who builds the house. Who farms the farm? The man. A women does not have the strength to be the primary driver behind all these tasks. She can assist, but, again, she is not the primary driver simply because she does not have the intrinsic strength to do these things. The further you go into the past, technology becomes less relevant and physical strength becomes more of a requirement for survival.
In prehistoric times, a women's status lies primarily in what man she is able to "control" to take care of her because her strength and capabilities render her biologically much less capable in the prehistoric world.
Of course this also begs the question of what happens to a woman when she gets old and ugly? Where does she get her power from? She gets it from her man. In prehistoric times, women needed to secure a man when young and at the prime of her power... than she sires his children and through that is able to secure life time protection from that man well into old age when she loses her beauty. That's how it worked for millions of years and that is what is baked genetically into her biological instincts.
You're right it does sound bizarre in modern times. Also very taboo to frame things this way. But it's also the underlying reality. You need to think of things from this perspective rather than the perspective of what's "taboo". It's only bizarre because society has conditioned you to look away from the cold hard truth.
The key here that you need to realize is that women in power is very recent phenomenon. You see women CEO's, women going for the presidency, and women founding startups. This is all very recent and enabled mostly by technology. Historically, this is not how female power presented itself.