Being a protector implies living in a failed society with high levels of violence that necessitates the existence of protectors. In a peaceful society there is no need to protect others
Society is one thing, but what of nature?
Protector is a title that intuitively, and really almost immediately, extends beyond the social realm to the basic task of keeping the monsters —the products of the inherent chaos of our environment— at bay, and navigating such disasters as inevitably come our way.
To name but a single area of concern, we still have yet to advance technology sufficiently to satisfactorily guard against disasters of naught more than weather.
We are immensely complex entities that depend on a huge array of factors to maintain balance to function properly. Our environment is one of countless other such entities that all function with a similar aim of growth and must compete to achieve it.
Being a protector implies both that competition and differences of specialization between individuals in the way that competition is carried out.
Being a provider is necessitated by another two failures of society:
1. That surviving and securing enough resources to live a decent life is exceedingly hard, so much so that it forms the core of human existence. If people didn't have to work so hard to survive they would be free to become better beings.
Survival will always be exceedingly difficult unless we can create an autonomous system capable of self-reparation against all effects of entropy.
Systems as they exist now just shift the difficulty from time spent chasing down gazelles to time spent learning the construction, operation, and maintenance of the systems used to keep us alive.
2. Women were discriminated against and prevented from providing for themselves for much of the recorded history. It is only recently, through positive changes that they are slowly moving towards opportunity equality. They are not there yet though, far from it.
But you're talking about distinctions that easily predate any significant scale of society such as could carry out that discrimination. A small tribe of hunter-gatherers has no resources to waste, no use for hindering the positive action of anyone. Practicality is the rule by default and so differences in community roles are principally determined by the sheer facts of existence.
That the sex built with the additional biological functions needed for reproduction and early child care might make sacrifices in hunting efficiency is the just the basic tradeoff cost of specialization.
But as to the modern relevance of that distinction, well, let me put it this way:
I don't get why people scream and panic hysterically in emergencies.
I might have hoped that those that not only lose their ability to function and communicate but also hinder that of others would have been eliminated by natural selection, but apparently no.
Perhaps having a relatively small portion of your population retain reasoned thought helps by removing a degree of dissent and so organizing action by motivation of terror at the lead of the remaining few sane.
In any case, it appears that the ability to effectively navigate the most unexpected scenarios is one of specialization, which, while not limited to men, certainly seems more prevalent among them, not to mention that other traits more common among men tend to push them more frequently into such scenarios.
I'm not sure what the tradeoff is making room for, — perhaps better mental health and longevity, since women tend to exceed men in both — but whatever it might be it would have to be enough to counter the disadvantages of the sacrificed crisis capability.
I think the issue Hado is reffering to is something on the lines of a general devaluation of crisis ability. The idea seems to be that our systems are becoming advanced enough that catastrophic failure is no longer a major concern, and so those who specialize in catastrophe (and so not so much other, more agreeable areas) are no longer needed to any great degree.
The evidence, however, is much to the contrary: The more complex and unified our systems are becoming, the more widespread and severe is the fallout when they fail. At the same time the increased complexity and unity offers more points of farther reaching entry and attack. Widespread panic on a national scale can be instigated by gaining remote control of an electronically integrated oil facility. With the slightest interruption of normal function, the parts of the great machine that depend on its output begin to fail, and where the expense of redundancies has been forgone on the assumption that the cases when they would be needed are too unlikely or uncommon to bother with, the systems begin to shut down, and at the level of the individual, essential functions are no longer available, and the individual is suddenly finding themselves in a state of crisis they have come to believe they had no need to fear would ever occur.
We do not have anything remotely approaching the hope of even the possibility of a perfect system, and those with most intimate knowledge of our systems know this best.
We very much need people who are capable of surviving when our frameworks fall, and who, moreover, are intimately concerned with the survival of those around them as well and not merely themselves — in short, "protectors". If this capability is more common in men, it should not be a shame to them, as those attacking the competition of men — which occurs in part to demonstrate and develop this ability — have sought to claim it is, labelling all hierarchies of dominance, such as we make use of to determine who we can rely on when catastrophe does strike, as "toxic masculinity" or some form of oppressive patriarchy.
By all means we should keep balance of view in recognizing the existence of such capability in women, but we cannot afford for that recognition to come at the cost of rejecting the value, nor denying the predominance, of that capability in men.
That the skills needed in crisis are increasingly more intellectual than physical does allow for a more level field between men and women, the psychological aspects remain unchanged, and that there are general differences in the psychology of men and women is incontrovertible.
We live in an age that is alike to all others in its certainty that it is at the pinnacle of reason and capability. The masses always believe themselves to be wise, and never are. As such, we are equally prone to mass folly as at any other time. Our sweeping social change, viewed as great progress, is conducted with as much blindness and misunderstanding as vastness and pervasiveness.
The same can of course be said of the resistance to that change, and so we have naught more than we ever did: a great number of people moving, as great numbers of people tend to do, with a nearly unstoppable force but almost no clearly intelligent purpose or direction, and more than likely looking to burn something down.
Today it is the value of men in society. Once it was witches in Salem. Always it has been with only the rhetorical illusion of reason spun from the barest thread of truth, to enable the true drive: a great deal of psycho-emotional manipulation.
And of course always the governor's house as well. We never get enough of that.
