Bombadil
3mo ago
"Women are attracted to dominance" is still a politically charged phrase that can mean a lot of different things to different people. Naming specific traits will probably get you further. "Women are attracted to fit men who know what they want from life, and are not afraid to take it" for example. Or "Being nervous around women is a turn-off for most of them".
For these kinds of discussions, phrasing associated with specific ideologies very quickly shut down any kind of critical thought. So you really want to stay neutral.
Bombadil
3mo ago
I mean, plenty of men also want a woman who is deeply in love with them, and will stay a loving and caring partner regardless of his health, abilities, or achievements. Men get incredibly disappointed when that is not the case. For example if the wife leaves because she "fell out of love", or a girl he was flirting with is suddenly no longer interested after he got in a fight and lost. Hell, a lot of the original redpillers seem to be men who experienced these things and became disillusioned about women as a result.
While I do think that the current romanticized idea of love as a magical, inexplicable thing that just happens to you and ties people together forever is part of what is wrong with current dating norms, I also don't think it is fair to blame this solely on women. Men want unconditional love just for being themselves too, and are more than capable of deluding themselves into believing they have it.
Bombadil
3mo ago
I wonder if a book written in this style, a kind of "social rules for social autists" (maybe under a different name?) would sell well. Certainly, it would be an interesting archeological artifact a few hundred years from now.
Bombadil
3mo ago
Because hope is not rational, and it is easy to believe yourself better than your peers. Even if said belief is an illusion.
Bombadil
3mo ago
If you have lower ability than your community then you will vote for more redistribution.
Not necessarily. As long as you believe there is a good chance for you to become rich, that is often enough to justify voting against it. Whether your odds are actually good is an entirely different matter. People who are poorly off don't necessarily run on cold logic, and even if they do, they may be unable to see how redistribution helps them more than it hurts.
Bombadil
3mo ago
I don't see how a critical mass of women can't just force the men to do the essential job that require muscles. Guns are the great equalizer, so if you just don't give guns to the men (or let gunmen be the only high-status job available), you can force the new underclass to do hard labor through regulation. It wouldn't have to be total slavery either. Just make it so that producing goods is the only viable path forwards.
I guess I will have to concede that very specific jobs cannot be relegated to an underclass though. Your military and emergency services would probably still require men, and those men would likely have a lot of bargaining power.
The dystopian take: We are moving dangerously close to the most radical feminist fantasies with this. Keep in mind that feminism seemingly needs to treat men as the outgroup to function, and that most women still identify as feminist. We live in a democracy. Reducing the ratio of men to women means increasing the political power of feminists. That scares me, because there seems to be no end to the slippery slope that ideology is currently on. If something is wrong in society, they blame men. If that doesn't solve it, then they blame men more. Increase their power and reduce the ability of men to organize against it, and we could see some truly dystopian shit.
Why not bar men from high-paying positions entirely? Birth just enough of them so there are people to do the hard and risky jobs, and let everything else be done by women. One man can impregnate hundreds of women after all, so even gradually reducing the male:female ratio to less than 2:10 should be more than sufficient to keep up the population. Any male politician speaking out against this trend can be efficiently cancelled by hordes of women and watch himself slowly lose influence.
You also mention that men are more common than women in STEM. But for several fields this is not true. Women outnumber men quite heavily in medicine and biology for instance, and if you look at science fields overall, women actually outnumber men overall. Also note that the link I have here is 6 years old. As far as I know, women have only moved further ahead of men in the past years. In spite of this, there is still a broad push to get even more women into higher education. I fail to see how a version of the current landscape actually dominated by women would not just result in women dominating academia completely. I can already see the argument: Men is only X% of the global population, so there should at most be X% men in any given degree. Of course if the male percentage is lower than X (or 0) this just goes to show that women are better.
Finally, I think you are misdiagnosing the incel and broader dating problems of modern societies. The culture promotes hedonism, women are taught to fear men, people spend less time in-person socializing than ever, and the way that men are encouraged to act is unattractive to women. Nothing about reducing the ratio of men to women actually fixes any of this. The addictive and convenient nature of social media and gaming means they will continue to be picked over social interaction. Men will still be brought up anxious and scared of approaching. Demonizing men will only be easier as you meet them less. Maybe women will lower their standards purely due to a lack of options, but I honestly wouldn't count on it. That seems more like a male thing to do.
Just in general, screwing with the ratio of men to women seems like a Chesterton's fence of monumental proportions. No one predicted that the one child policy of China and the resulting increase in the proportion of men would turn out as disastrously as it did, even though it seems obvious now. Your experiment would probably result in some very interesting insights into the human mind, whilst similarly blowing up society in spectacular and unexpected fashion.
Fun to think about though.
Bombadil
3mo ago
Yeah, it depends on how accurately one can predict the skill and risk of assassinations. If you are confident you are not at risk of some professional or organized effort to kill you, then you can afford to spend less on security.
I might be totally wrong here, but I imagine that a lot of security lies in gathering intel beforehand, and adapting your efforts to the information you have.
Bombadil
3mo ago
I have seen the conspiracy theory on leftwing subreddits that this was staged to bolster Trump's popularity. If looked at through the lens of it being performative, lax security kind of makes sense. They needed the "assassin" to get close enough that it felt dangerous to viewers.
It is also an argument for the ballroom. If private venues cannot be trusted with security, then you naturally have to make your own. Only for the sake of safety for your guests of course.
More seriously, the fact that the perpetrator was stopped arguably shows that security measures were perfectly adequate.
Bombadil
3mo ago
Yes and no. I think modern social media is way worse than TV's, although vegging out on the couch is also not good.
In any case, families were also shrinking before TV's became common household items. It is not that many decades since they were quite expensive luxuries.
Bombadil
3mo ago
Screen time is an entirely separate issue. Families were shrinking way before screens became commonplace.
Bombadil
3mo ago
Large families also stopped being the norm because people realised that spending the same amount of money on three kids versus nine results in a much better quality of life for the kids. They can get better clothes, healthy food, and afford a lot more free time. So it is not necessarily selfish! If you want your children's childhood to be as good as possible, it makes sense to limit the amount you have.
Bombadil
3mo ago
I think there will definitely be some kind of backlash if things keep escalating. Even young women seem disappointed by the kind of men created under the current norms. The anxiety about approaching and escalating is unattractive. The ambiguous nature of any given relationship when the man does not clarify what he wants is uncomfortable.
It is hard to see how this can last.
Bombadil
3mo ago
I am sure that a police officer probably knows much more about violent men than I (a person who has not been in a fight since middle school), and could thus give better advice. My social circle is quite respectful towards women, and the problem there is often that my friends are not forward enough. That said:
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Take some time getting to know him before having sex or committing. If you like to go clubbing, stick to places vetted by people you trust, and don't hook up with guys you just met.
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If he is violent towards other people, or you find out he has abused others in the past, then leave. Same goes if he is an addict, alcoholic, gang member, or otherwise a criminal. You can probably get quite far by observing the kinds of people he spends time around, and assuming he is similar to them. If he does not want you around his friends or is secretive about his personal life, that is a red flag in and of itself.
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Talk with him. If he makes degenerate remarks about women and you can't tell if he is joking, assume that he is serious. If a man has strong prejudices, they are likely to reveal themselves sooner rather than later. If he is needlessly disrespectful towards other women, assume that he will eventually be disrespectful of you.
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Make sure to have a good social group. Have friends with whom you can discuss your relationship and struggles so you are not on your own if you have to leave.
Not that any of this removes the risk completely (everything we do in life is risky to an extent), but I think it reduces the risk substantially. At least in my experience, most people will let their mask slip as you start getting to know them, and the kind of manipulator who keeps everyone fooled is very rare.
From the abstract:
A viable means for aiding the survival of low-fertility nations could be to provide women with the economic and social resources necessary for them to conclude that having children alone makes for a better life than remaining childless.
So the authors are suggesting that, as women seem increasingly unwilling to couple up with men, the solution is to rid ourselves of the nuclear family entirely. If you no longer need a committed relationship to have kids, and having children is economically incentivized by the state, then the problem is solved.
This is certainly a refreshing take, compared to what we usually see here. Not returning to tradition, but moving towards further individualization and reliance on government. Is that what this is really about? Increase the power of our leaders by making people completely dependent on the goodwill of the state?
Skimming through it, this article reads almost like an overall warning rather than a genuine suggestion. Is this actually a veiled way for academics to criticize feminism and individualism? Show clear evidence of all the harms caused, theorize that things will become much worse, then propose a solution that is compliant with the ideology while at the same time obviously inhuman for anyone giving it serious consideration. It is almost like they are looking at the slippery slope of current dating norms and suggesting we move to its logical conclusion as an attempt to shock us out of it.
Bombadil
3mo ago
I am saying that as far as advice to women for avoiding violence goes "Don't get into relationships with men" is worse than useless.
First, it makes all men out to be equally dangerous, as there is no attempt to distinguish between different men. Something that simply is not true. The statement is unnecessary fearmongering that necessarily includes himself, as he is a man.
Second, women want relationships with men and are going to seek them out. Women are going to fall in love and want sex and relationships regardless of what they yare told. Useful advice would be to warn women against dangerous traits so they know what to avoid. In the worst case, if you think that all men are equally dangerous you may fail to notice actual warning signs, as you assume every man would act the same way.
As a result, these kinds of statements only really serve to increase tension between the genders and cause excessive fear amongst women. It encourages them to be constantly suspicious of any man close to them, something that for most people is unwarranted and will only serve to reduce their quality of life.
I am not saying dangerous men are not out there, simply that his advice is bad for most people who will hear it. It is similar to advising men that they should avoid women entirely, to reduce risks of false accusations. Technically true, but bereft of nuance to the point of causing more harm than good.
Bombadil
3mo ago
This again seems like putting words in my mouth. I already stated I would be fine with specifying the advice into avoiding men who exhibit certain traits. Pressuring you into sex against your will could reasonably be one such. But that is not what this man did. He implicated every man as equally dangerous. This is useless and makes every man his outgroup. Retreating to your motte when criticized does not erase the bailey argument.
Bombadil
3mo ago
None of that will cause the feminists to view me as any less tainted. In Christianity, I can be forgiven for doing evil deeds, and after a long period of redemption, people will see me as good and I can eventually be accepted by the group. For feminists, the fact that I am a male makes me part of the oppressor group, and no matter what I do to distance myself, I will always be an outsider. No matter how good I am, I will never be forgiven for the sins of men.
Bombadil
3mo ago
Christianity provides a path to redemption. "men bad" rhetoric does not. Putting down other men does not make me a better person in the eyes of the feminist,as it is me being a man that is the problem.
Bombadil
3mo ago
Bombadil
3mo ago
I did suggest some other ways of phrasing it, and outlined why I think the way he said it does more harm than good. If you are correct that women will twist your words from "Avoid dangerous and violent men" to "be a good domestic housewife and serve your man that you don't really like" then I honestly don't know what to say. At that point you are literally making up words and putting them in my mouth.
What else is he supposed to say in the political environment he's in?
I think that he should either give actual advice that can help women (traits to stay away from) or at least avoid causing undue worry through his phrasing. "Call the police when you are in trouble" would have also been useless, but it would have sufficed as a politically neutral and non-inflammatory response.
Bombadil
3mo ago
But the advice he did give was "avoid relationships entirely". Surely this is worse in every way you highlight. You can go to the club, have casual sex, and dress in skimpy clothing while also avoiding relationships with men that are violent or addicts. You cannot do these things and not have relationships with men at all.
Bombadil
3mo ago
Well yes. I think the western countries in generally lack a national identity that the citizens can get behind. This only works due to a lack of identification with the group that these people are criticizing. Still, I would have expected some general immune response when a decent person is being lumped in with criminals and racist. "How dare you group me with those people!" seems much more reasonable than "You are correct, let me apologize for the actions of people I never even met."
People being willing to overlook it when attractive people do things they shouldn't is pretty human. Doesn't mean that all the behavior they overlook is attractive.
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