“… the reality is… it’s a harsh thing to say. We’re disposable.” Scott Galloway, Oct. 20, 2025, Modern Wisdom podcast.
It’s nearly impossible to talk about men and women, masculinity and gender, without the context of an irrefutable biological fact — women can carry a fetus to term, literally giving birth to a new life, and men can’t.
Unfortunately, this amazing scientific truth is too frequently misused by various influencers and gender warriors to build up one tribe over the other, stir fears about dating and mating, and promote political ideologies.
For men who feel the need for a parallel male biological identity, reproductive truths can contribute to their sense of feeling secondary and ambiguous as a parent and a human — to feeling “disposable,” as Galloway told Chris Williamson during the podcast episode, The War On Men Isn’t Helping Anyone.
If we don’t deeply examine our beliefs about how male and female reproductive roles affect our views of the value of the sexes, we all may be driving a deeper emotional wedge between men and women.
Reproductive supply and demand
It’s instructive to see how Galloway found himself prompted to declare men “disposable.”
The thread leading to the comment starts about an hour into the episode, when Williamson mentions a March 2024 article in the U.K.’s Guardian newspaper “where young women are encouraged to seek out positive role models for their own good” while “young men are frequently encouraged to seek out positive role models so that they treat women better.”
Disturbed by this asymmetry, Williamson describes how this plays into how men and women deal with red flags when dating:
“I think it makes sense at least from a supply and demand perspective about why it is that women have said… ‘his red flag culture, he doesn’t meet the criteria,’ because the likelihood is that there will be a line of available men coming in after.”
In Williamson’s assessment, the abundance of male suitors for heterosexual women makes it difficult for men to openly discuss female red flag culture, because “implied” in a man’s pointing out a woman’s “icks” — his word, not mine — is the fact that he has far fewer dating options if she gets upset and ends the relationship.
“…realistically, it’s like ‘hey dude, fucking be grateful with what you’ve got, right? Like hold on to that thing, cuz there might not be another one coming.’”
Insulting a woman or calling her out on her icks, Williamson says, could result in the man finding himself alone… and without a womb to carry his child, because his reproductive odds are biologically precarious.
“And this has been true for pretty much all of time,” Williamson goes on.
“What is it? Twice as many female ancestors than male ancestors. Uh 80 percent of women reproduced. Only 40 percent of men. Yeah. So you go, ‘Okay, get fucking… whoa, whoa, whoa. You struck the lottery.’”
Mathematical biological myths, and the people who love them
The 80 percent/40 percent reference Williamson drops into his rant is a popularized simplification of a cluster of genetic and evolutionary studies on how women and men passed on their genes to children.
These studies analyzed mitochondrial DNA and Y-chromosome DNA (passed on by women and men respectively), from different human cohorts, including early modern humans (~200k years ago), out-of-Africa migrations (~60–80k years ago) and early agricultural societies.
The 80/40 ratio is not a direct finding from any single peer-reviewed study.
Much of the confusion in fact about this ratio comes from a landmark 2007 presentation and subsequent book by the noted social psychologist Roy Baumeister. He popularized the ratio to illustrate a real pattern over history of effective female population size exceeding male population size.
However, Baumeister never published a paper deriving that percentage mathematically, or provided a dataset showing those exact numbers, or presented a formal model for producing that ratio.
Further, people like Williamson applying the 80/40 simplification to men and women in the 21st century overlooks how much social conditions have evolved compared to the eras represented by the genetic data Baumeister studied.
For example, warfare takes far less lives as a percentage of the total male population today than it did even 200 years ago, leaving more men available to reproduce.
Unfortunately, the 80/40 myth has morphed more into fact due to years of blogs and social media posts, evolutionary psychology discussions and podcast conversations —like Williamson’s.
This myth persists because it’s simple and memorable, it reinforces a mating scarcity narrative that certain influencers find useful to repeat, and it supports popular beliefs about the competition between men for women and resources.
Williamson uses this myth effectively in this interview.
My concern is how his approach can trigger and justify resentment against women while simultaneously tightening the vise on damaging elements of masculine norms.
You see these effects in Chris Williamson’s reinforcing gender norms when he warned women they might regret choosing not to have children later in life, or Derek Thompson describing his “necessity” as the father of a newborn as “like a little bit secondary.”
I personally experienced how some men diminish newborn care roles when I overheard two commodities brokers talking on a Hudson River ferry in 1996, demeaning the choice of a male co-worker who resigned his demanding but lucrative career to be a more present father to his new baby.
Men who define themselves as disposable due to reproductive biology fit a number of archetypes.
Those who are professionally disciplined, successful and respected, these are “Conditional Worth Men,” typically tying their identity to income, status and performance.
Since these men feel most valued when they are producing something, when they are confronted with a woman’s unique ability to nurture a child in her womb, and at her breast, he might come to think, “My value is conditional. Hers is inherent.”
At the same time, “Role-Confused Men” like Derek Thompson, are fascinated by their partner’s ability to be a mother, but struggle with not having a clear, defined purpose like she does. A secondary character in his newborn’s life, this person might be asking himself, “If I don’t have a womb or a breast… what exactly is my role?”
Finally, The “Defensive Traditionalist” who holds strong beliefs about what it means to be a man. He’s sensitive to threats that challenge his sense that men are superior and sees modern gender discourse as hostile to men. He worries that celebrating female reproduction means, “Men are minimized, disrespected and replaceable.”
Take back your agency
The idea that men have “womb envy” traces back to a 1932 essay, The Dread of Woman, by the German psychoanalyst, Karen Horney. She speculated that men’s drive to create (e.g. inventions, economic systems, businesses) might partly be an attempt to compensate for their limited biological role in reproduction.
The complex nature of humans makes it very difficult to empirically prove Horney’s point. Because many cultures socialize men to prioritize stoicism and strength, men are unlikely to acknowledge in a survey a feeling of “inferiority” regarding biological functions.
Further, feelings like these often exist at an unconscious level. A man might feel a general sense of inadequacy without ever linking it to his partner’s womb. Finally, it may be impossible to isolate “womb envy” from other reasons men might feel inferior to women, including shifting economic roles, educational attainment, or changing social dynamics.
I can’t help but wonder why a man would see himself as secondary or disposable when talking about pregnancy and newborns — or feel compelled to tell men that biology favors women in some kind of female supply side dating marketplace.
Regardless of what any celebrity says, men still have a choice about how they show up in dating, mating and the delivery room.
You can surrender and believe biology has stacked the deck against you.
Or you can take back your agency, define manhood and fatherhood on your terms, and work towards creating the unique and indispensable value YOU aspire to offer your child and your family.
Biology be damned, in the end, the choice is still yours.
