LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
No bio...
User ID: 657
I strongly agree with RandomRanger's recommendation of The Israel Lobby by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt.
But to go in a slightly different direction, part of the issue is that Israeli-Palestinian conflict doesn't neatly match on to the left-right divide in Western politics.
Israel has elements that appeals to both the right and the left. Israel is a relatively liberal democracy when compared to its neighbours, and for progressives, Israel has the most advanced LGBT rights within the Middle East. Broad elements of both the left and right sympathise the history of Jewish oppression and the horror of the Holocaust. More cynically, charges of anti-semitism have staying power on both the right and the left. The Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism that often accompanies local opposition to Israel are often opposed by both the right and left. For some of the religious right, Israel is seen as sacred. Some on both sides of the aisle might support Israel as a purely pragmatic foreign policy move to have a powerful ally in the region.
Similarly support for Palestine, or opposition to Israel (they are largely conflated), has elements that that can appeal to both the right and left, though it is generally more left-coded. Liberals support Palestinians for human rights reasons, while the hard left/socialist types see an oppressed class that need to be liberated, and oppose Israel for its association with US imperialism. The right is more complicated. The more isolationist, anti-MIC and/or libertarian right sometimes oppose Israel because it represents US interventionism, the worst excesses of US foreign policy and aid, and globalism in general. This is even more true for the right outside of the US who may oppose the US-Israel relationship for a whole host of reasons. And if we want to go there, there is also the anti-semitic far-right who oppose Israel for obvious reasons. Again, some on both sides might also support Palestine/oppose Israel for what they see as pragmatic reasons too - it antagonises many Muslim/Arab nations in the region, is a drain on US finances, and is worsening conflicts in the Middle East.
Complications will obviously arise when people try to map what is at its core a ethno-religious conflict between two groups on the other side of the world to Western politics. It doesn't really map at all! My sense is that Western support for either Israel or Palestine is far more driven by political convenience than any real principled ideological stance.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
4yr ago
Much of that isn't particularly relevant to the narrative being told in LotR. And the feminine archetype doesn't mean she's perfectly good or moral either, that's not what I was talking about. Her desire to to preserve Lothlorien is completely keeping in with her theme of purity, and definitely has aspects of the shadow.
Absolutely, in the context of the narrative of Lord of the Rings, she absolutely does represent femininity. That is not mutually exclusive with other, religious themes.
Students are barely taught how to read and write in English (as an example, one couldn't spell "America") and the state requirements are effectively optional or used as a study hall.
So they're performing about as well as the rest of New York then?
Lame jokes aside, New York has the second lowest literacy rate of any state in the US, behind California. Rough a quarter of all New York adults are (functionally illiterate), though this depends on how one defines illiteracy. Focusing on the Hasidic Jews at this point seems remarkably short sighted, when much of the rest of the education system in New York is performing just as poorly, and state education funding to public schools is similarly siphoned away to administrators and DEI enforcers and all other sorts non-educational processes.
Maybe if the public school system in New York was more functional there would be a leg to stand on. Obviously, there is a cultural ethno-religious element to the Hasidic Jewish education that is not present in the public school system needs that should be addressed (although... woke influence on the education system does have some eerie similarities). But it's hard to single them out for change while so much of the rest of the public education system is just as, if not more, dysfunctional. At least self-isolation of the Hasidic Jews means their poor educational outcomes don't have wider negative social consequences as public schools do.
What I found most frustrating about Amazon's 'girlbossifaction' of Galadriel is the undermining of what I believe to be one of the best mythological portrayals of femininity in modern literature (and cinema), something that is increasingly lacking in modern storytelling. This is actually a problem I have with even those who would criticize modern woke media, constantly pointing back to the 80s and their 'true strong female characters' like Sarah Connor and Ellen Ripley. Sarah Connor and Ellen Ripley may be female characters, but they aren't really feminine characters. They're just women inhabiting the archetypical male character. In fairness, they are good characters, but there's nothing really feminine about them other than are relatively aesthetic or superficial sense of 'motherliness' slapped on top.
Galadriel is the feminine archetype, or at least one of the feminine archetypes. She is the embodiment of ethereal beauty, not just in the sense of physical attractiveness, but also in the philosophical sense. She represents purity. This is also true of all the Elves, which in some sense are archetypically feminine as a whole, and Galadriel naturally being the most powerful of them all. We even get to see a glimpse of negative aspects, or the shadow of this archetype when she is tempted by the One Ring, where her desire to rule takes on a feminine twist, best represented by the line "All shall love me and despair!", that she (and the feminine archetype) could use her ethereal beauty to ensnare the will of men to worship her. Her role in the Lord of the Rings is similarly archetypically feminine. She does not play an active, overt role in the story, which is archetypically masculine but nevertheless her role is critically important to the narrative. She is the light out of the darkest hour the Fellowship had yet faced, the death of Gandalf. She provides the characters with much needed support, both material and spiritual, the consequences of which play out fully through the entire trilology. I think this is best represented by Gimli, who despite his fierce hatred of Elves, immediately is entranced and falls in (platonic(?)) love with Galadriel upon seeing her. Gimli is 'tamed' by Galadriel and her femininity. Upon leaving Lothlorien, Gimli asks for a single strand of her hair, to which she gives Gimli three. These strands of hair would become Gimli's most prized processions, and really is the beginning of Gimli's lessening of hatred/prejudice towards the Elves. To be a bit crass about it, this represents the purest and moral form of 'simping'.
Amazon has gotten rid of this wonderous portrayal of femininity and replaced with yet another essentially masculinized female character. Perhaps this is somewhat reflected in the source material. While I am a large LotR fan, I have never really delved into the 'supplementary' material, only sticking to the 'mainline' books (and films). From what I understand, in the Unfinished Tales, Galadriel is somewhat of a more masculine, sword-swinging warrior in her youth who leads a rebellion, before ultimately maturing to the feminine archetype we know later in her life. However, the Unfinished Tales are, in fact, unfinished and a more a jumbled mess of ideas than a coherent story, so I wonder if this was ever Tolkien's intention. Regardless, maybe Amazon with their girlboss Galadriel will have a character arc for her that results in her embracing this pure feminine archetype for her in the end. But I highly doubt it. Even if I believed that the writers for Rings of Power were capable of such good writing, the idea of actually embracing the feminine archetype as positive thing is anathema. Female characters can only be written as archetypically masculine now, usually with an additional, ironic element of snark towards men. This harkens back to some recent comments I've made both here and on the subreddit just before the move, that the female role is dead or dying and all there is left is for women to act like men and compare themselves to men.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
4yr ago
Maybe, but personally I think there's a bit more pressure to write at a higher standard in theMotte than there is your average forum or subreddit.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
4yr ago
Critical theory is inherently activist. It's really quite explicit if you read the critical theorists, including Horkheimer himself. There is no distinction between theory and praxis. The whole point of critical theory is explicitly to ruthlessly criticise society for failing to live up to some hypothetical, unspecified utopia, and force people to think in this way. This will essentially raise the 'critical consciousness' of people in society (though many of the theorists don't phrase it in this specific way) which will result in a dismantling of society i.e. a revolution. Critical theory was invented specifically by Horkheimer as a tool to bring a revolution and creation a Neo-Marxist utopia, whatever the hell that's meant to look like.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
4yr ago
My advice - just write a lot.
Well, to be more specific, just put yourself in a low stakes environment where you can just churn out writing at a breakneck speed.
If you're anything like me, when I am writing anything high-stakes or important, it tends to result in paralysis, particularly when I'm starting a project. Constantly second guessing your word choices and sentence structure, constantly evaluating your argument and paragraph ordering. Because you feel you have to get this right, get it perfect.
My solution is to put yourself in a situation where you don't have to care about those things, and can just spew out words without much thought and second guessing, to build a habit just putting something, anything onto the page. Go on to sports forums, or video game forums and talk shit (in lengthy but detailed posts). In writing environments where it doesn't really matter if your sentences are unclear, or you make grammar mistakes. Try stream of consciousness writing where you just think and write at the same time and don't worry about how it ends up. It's something I'm trying to do to improve my writing, or more specifically my productivity of writing. I think it does help to form a habit that you can transfer to important writing. It doesn't matter if your writing is perfect or not after, or you develop "bad" habits. That's what drafts are for. I have found it is substantially easier (as I've improved), to just spew out a ton of paragraphs and then edit them down in to something coherent if it's something that needs to be edited, than it is trying to write as perfectly as possible the whole way through.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
4yr ago
The issue I had was the specific word choice of "anti-racist" and its ideological association. There are plenty of ways to word it without having to use the term "anti-racism", e.g. "he opposed racism," "condemned racist attitudes".
Prior to the changes to the page in 2021, that section on Tolkien just had examples of things he contemned, including his anger at the Nazis and his condemnation of the treatments of blacks in South Africa.
But I guess it might be some coded language. Maybe like another commenter suggested it was done by Amazon, maybe in an attempt to get activists of their back and signal to them "hey, we're on your side! Please don't attack us!"
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
4yr ago
At 17 and even younger Niemann was playing in high-level chess tournaments. Basically all GM and even IM players started playing high-level chess tournaments from a young age. Niemann and any high level chess player at that age should know better, even if it's just online matches in chess.com (if he's willing to cheat in low stakes, why not high stakes when winning actually matters?)
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
4yr ago
The tournament was OTB (over the board, as in with a real physical chessboard). Using a chess computer to feed you moves is the most well known way to cheat. But the other speculation is that Niemann somehow got access to Carlsen's prep materials so he new what he was going to play.
Using a chess computer to play the game is obviously cheating. You're not playing the game then, the computer is. It's really not dissimilar to using an aimbot in an FPS. It's certainly against the rules of every chess tournament.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
4yr ago
The point is to normalize the term 'anti-racist', and obfuscate their ideology by hiding behind the plain language meaning of words. As I tried to point out, this term was pretty rare to use prior to the craziness of post-2016. It's part of why I found it so jarring, because I start seeing a word appearing everywhere all of a sudden, with strong association with a certain ideology that is grown in popularity, and very few people seem to notice. If they have those words used everywhere then they can smuggle their ideology into everywhere without anyone noticing.
Same with DEI, if they can get everyone to accept Diversity, Equity and Inclusion by only using the plain, agreeable meanings of the word to get everyone on board with their agenda, then it's harder for people to even realise when they actually are implementing their agenda. DIE sounds just like good old liberal colorblindness, welcome everyone! Who could disagree with that?
Control of language is extremely important to this movement. Hell, part of the problem is that that they don't have a clearly identifiable label, and being able to name your enemy is half the battle. I use the term 'Critical Social Justice' but really there's not any standardized term. 'Woke' and 'CRT' are only just starting to catch on, but they're quite limited in scope.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
4yr ago
Kendi isn't defining anti-racism as "being an activist against racism". Being an anti-racist according to Kendi (and CRT in general) essentially means you have to support their CRT ideology and enforce racial equity. If you don't believe in forcing equal racial outcomes in all aspects of society (through necessarily authoritarian if not totalitarian means), you're a racist. It is anti-liberal by nature.
Anti-fascist is worse than that, because it's not just militant opposition to fascism, but a specific ideological militant opposition to "fascism". Antifa claims lineage from the Marxist, communist anti-fascist movements prior and during WW2. The Antifa today are similarly (anarcho)Marxist in orientation, though they take more inspiration from the neo-Marxists. Antifa's hatred of liberals/centrists for being 'proto-fascists' is basically identical to that of the neo-Marxists. Being 'anti-fascist' according to Antifa means to dismantle liberal society and institute communism to stop fascism. The irony is that all of this is pretty plainly stated in books like Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook, written by Antifa sympathiser Mark Bray.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
4yr ago
I thought the point of the Chinese Robber Fallacy was more that any sufficiently large enough population will have bad actors/bad examples within it. In practical terms, it's a call to not look at things in absolute numbers, but per capita or relative numbers. China has a lot of robbers. But this is useless information because it has a lot of people. But how does that compare on a per capita basis, especially to other countries? If it is substantially higher or lower then maybe you have a point to point to robbery in China.
This is overlaps somewhat with the above given definition by different enough for me to ask for clarification.
A neologism (or a new meaning for the word?) that I have begun to see everywhere and has really started to annoy me is 'anti-racism'.
The annoyance began when I noticed the term being used in places where it was anachronistic. Two instances that I remember were the Wikipedia pages of "Pepsi" and "J.R.R Tolkien". Pepsi's article describes Pepsi's early attempts to advertise to black people as an untapped market as an "anti-racism stance". Tolkien's article states that "scholars have noted... he was anti-racist." After some digging around in the edit history of Pepsi's article, I found that the term 'anti-racist' was only added to the Pepsi article in mid-2018, and to Tolkien's article in early 2021.
"Anti-racism" is a term popular within Critical Race Theory. It was particularly popularised and entered the public consciousness in large part due to Ibram X. Kendi's 2019 book How to be an Anti-Racist. Kendi defines "anti-racism" in that book as follows:
The opposite of “racist” isn’t “not racist.” It is “anti-racist.” What’s the difference? One endorses either the idea of a racial hierarchy as a racist, or racial equality as an antiracist. One either believes problems are rooted in groups of people, as a racist, or locates the roots of problems in power and policies, as an anti-racist. One either allows racial inequities to persevere, as a racist, or confronts racial inequities, as an antiracist. There is no in-between safe space of “not racist.” The claim of “not racist” neutrality is a mask for racism.
According to Kendi, any racial inequity, or anything that results in a racial inequity is by definition racist, and in order to be an "anti-racist" you must support racial equity (i.e. forcing equal outcomes) for everything. A similar quote is from Angela Davis: "In a racist society, it is not enough to be non-racist, we must be anti-racist.”
"Anti-racism" is a classic example of linguistic laundering/doubling, or linguistic motte-and-bailey, that is rife within woke/Critical Social Justice circles. The pattern is to take a word that has a plain meaning to the layman (anti-racist simply means against racism), and create a second specific, academic and ideological meaning for it. This second meaning is then smuggled into conversations and policy when the public naturally just assume the first, plain meaning. Ultimately, this is done for political and ideological ends. Manipulate people to get on board through the plain meaning (you're not a racist are you? You want to be an anti-racist!), then implement the ideological agenda, while maintain it is nothing usual because the word is the same. Other common words doubled in this way are the trio of diversity, equity, inclusion.
Critical Social Justice is the amalgamation of Neo-Marxism/Critical Theory, and Post-modernism/Post-Structuralism. Michel Foucault is the most cited scholar in history, and many other post-modernists, and Neo-Marxists top the list of most cited humanities scholars. It's hard to overstate how influential these ideas are currently in the humanities. Both Neo-Marxism but particularly post-modernism have an extreme focus on language. Language is the medium of power, and therefore, of oppression. It should not be surprising then that Critical Social Justice deliberately engages in such language manipulation as part of their political project, including engaging in historical revisionism to legitimise themselves.
This coincides with the Western cultural understanding of men as inherently agentic and women as inherently unagentic.
Is this a 'Western cultural understanding'? I imagine this is a pretty universal phenomenon, found in virtually all other cultures too. And even modern woke feminist media, which is ostensibly trying to deconstruct/criticise Western cultural traditions ends up reproducing the same thing (without realising it?), which is half the reason woke media sucks, because more often then not the female heroine has no agency despite the story pretending like she does.
Personally I think you're really underselling how much circumstantial evidence there is against Niemann. Note I'm not saying Niemann is guilty or should be banned or blacklisted but just laying it out. I might get some things wrong, or miss somethings:
-
As you already have mentioned, Niemann already has a history of cheating. Niemann also as a reputation of being a huge shit-talker and generally unpleasant player. In my personal opinion, he's exactly the kind of guy you would expect to cheat.
-
Carlsen played 4.g3 in his opening, which as I understand it, is something that Carlsen has never played in OTB tournament chess before. The speculation is that Carlsen played such an unusual line specifically to test if Niemann was cheating. In Niemann's defence here, Carlsen played relatively poorly, perhaps as the result of his unfamiliarity with this line.
-
Despite Carlsen never playing this line in his career, Niemann claims to have just so happened to prep against that line that very morning.
-
Here I have to rely on opinions from GMs and experts, but apparently Niemann's post-match analysis of his own play was complete nonsense and suggests incompetence, getting many things completely wrong. Speculation is that Niemann was just playing engine moves, without actually understanding the position or why the engine is suggesting certain moves.
-
As you mentioned, many, many top level players have voiced their suspicions about Niemann's play, and about Niemann generally. Though other have obviously defended him.
-
Such a reaction from Carlsen (withdrawing from a tournament) is highly unusual for him, and he generally has good sportsmanship (I know some might contest this). Carlsen has lost to lower rated players than Niemann before and has never had this reaction. Which suggests Carlsen did suspect Niemann of cheating, though Carlsen may obviously be mistaken. To be 100% clear here, Carlsen has made no accusations against Niemann. All he did was withdraw from the tournament, and the chess community has speculated from there. You say he handles losses poorly, which is kind of true, but he never takes it out on his opponents, but on himself.
-
As you mention, Niemann's rating has risen at an astronomical speed from 2500-2700 in the last year, near record-breaking as I understand it. But many top level players are suspicious of this and that cheating was involved too.
-
Not really evidence, but the idea that you couldn't find some way to bypass the security is laughable.
In all likelihood this will never get proven one way or another. If Niemann did cheat, the most plausible explanation I've heard is Carlsen's prep getting leaked somehow to Niemann (some have tried to argue this doesn't constitute cheating anyway). In my mostly-worthless-very-casual-chess-player opinion it is probably more likely than not Niemann cheated, maybe ~60% confidence. But this doesn't mean Niemann should have his career destroyed on suspicion.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
4yr ago
Incidentally, "lying liberal Fetterman" is a terrible mocking nickname
How could they ignore the obvious choice of "Fibbing Fetterman"?
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
4yr ago
As a (non-British) subject of Her Majesty, I have never had any strong feelings towards the monarchy. But I will say this seriously, just this once:
God Save the Queen.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
4yr ago
Would you say a similar dynamic about the ideology feeding the narcissism of ill-adjusted women was at play historically? How about signalling opportunities for elite men?
For the most part, yes. The suffragette movement (i.e. all pre-interwar feminism) was always an elite movement, made up exclusively of high class, wealthy women. The suffragettes weren't advocating for universal suffrage, but rather extending the right to vote from wealthy men to wealthy men and women.
It's hard to say say whether it involved signalling opportunities for elite men. The main issue with this idea is that the suffragette movement was (despite contemporary historical revisionism on the subject) largely unpopular for much of its existence, especially among women. Men were generally more in favour of women's suffrage than women were themselves. Here is a link if you want to know more about this topic. So as a purely political signal, elite men supporting women's suffrage wouldn't be that effective, at least until the early 20th century, but even then women's suffrage wasn't that popular when it actually passed either. You might argue that that the success women's suffrage was mere historical fluke caused by the mass killing of young men in the First World War which provided strong pressures for women to be involved in political affairs. The vast majority of states only passed women's suffrage after WW1, those that did it earlier were mostly limited to extremely sparsely populated basically colonial states or territories that probably had different reasons for doing so. And often when women's suffrage was passed, it was initially limited land-owning women, such as in the UK. It's also not like there was never any instance of women voting prior to the 19th/20th century either, there are numerous instances throughout history where women could and did vote.
In my opinion, what is more likely is that elite men were doing what men do best, and listening to the complaints of women and jumping to solve the issue and accommodate them. As I pointed out earlier, men are predisposed to such behaviour as protectors and providers.
how do you respond to a very common tactic among feminists, which is to say "you only disagree with me because you haven't read Y, if you read X you would understand, you need to educate yourself about what feminism actually means".
This question is basically about rhetoric and how to win a debate/online argument. I'm not sure I have the best advice here. But some general things I've picked up:
First, remember you're arguing more to convince other readers (the audience) than you are necessarily are to convince your debate opponent. There's a good chance your debate opponent is a committed ideologue and you're not going to convince them no matter what you say. But if you make convincing arguments other readers may be convinced. Generally speaking, if you have provided credible sources and quotes from figures, and your opponent responds with some variation of 'well they're not MY preferred sources', it doesn't look good for them.
Second, most feminists you meet online (and even in person for that matter) are going to be woefully underinformed about their own topic. Part of the reason they are so dead set on their one specific source is because it's probably the only thing they have read, or was assigned reading on their gender studies subject. In particular is bell hooks. Seriously, probably three-quarters of the time the only source online feminists use is bell hooks, the prominent intersectional feminist. She's the one that always gets recommended for those who "don't understand feminism." You can pre-empt them by quoting (to refute) hooks yourself. Storming the motte before they even have a chance to occupy it.
Third, as much as this is a logical fallacy (we're talking about rhetoric here, your debate opponent is probably not acting in good faith), but just appeal to authority. Hopefully you do it in a clever and crafty way. To be slightly less fallacious, you can appeal to the relative prominence they have and therefore their outsized influence on the feminist movement as a whole, e.g. "it doesn't matter what you or some obscure minor feminist thinker no one cares about, I'm referring to the feminist who hold senior professorships at major colleges, or have written the foundational texts that are taught everywhere, or are senior members of prominent feminist organisations and advocacy groups." Essentially just name drop all the prominent, influential feminists, their importance and their positions. It's really hard for your opponent to not look silly when you're talking about Millet, Walby and hooks and they're talking about Feminist McNobody.
except maybe for Philippa Foot
Funny you should say that, because she's not a feminist academic I would say!
If you fully absorb what people like John Locke claimed about moral ontology, the idea of keeping women in a subservient disenfranchised status is unsupportable.
Except the idea that women existed in a state of subservient disenfranchisement is a both a normative and descriptive claim made by feminism. If you ask the anti-suffragettes, (who were mostly women and generally more popular than the suffragettes until at least the end of the 19th century), they certainly didn't believe that was the case (the anti-suffragette movement has been subjected to historical revisionism that strawmans their position). The more interesting question is why did this narrative about the supposed historic subjugation of women by men become the dominant one? Especially as I think the narrative is false, despite it being now being accepted as fact due to decades of feminist rhetoric and feminist 'scholarship'.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
4yr ago
I think the idea not to criticise feminism too broadly is purely necessary for optics, or strategic reasons as you put it. As might be obvious, I've spent a not-insignificant amount of time reading both feminist history and theory. I'm not convinced the level of granularity you're suggesting is justified on the actual philosophical level. To repeat myself, it's perfectly reasonable to make broad criticisms of Marxism, which includes the granularity of all its derivatives, because it's the same core philosophy/ideology. But I must concede I may be just as vulnerable to outgroup homogeneity bias as anyone else, even though I don't think it refutes my arguments here.
I will say that I do very much agree with the general point of your original comment, my criticisms is more levelled at you describing this this is only a contemporary issue. What you were describing has always existed in feminism, at least as far back as 1848.
What kind of feminism are we talking about here? Because there are a lot of very different movements and schools of thoughts this term applies to.
This is a sentiment that is often expressed, including by both by feminists themselves who want to engage no-true-scotsmanning, and by some non-feminists who want to lay the blame squarely on 'third wave feminism' (and occasionally second wave as well). I strongly disagree with this sentiment.
There's really only two movements that can be described as distinct movements or schools of thought of feminism - liberal feminism and radical feminism. They are also mutually exclusive - belief in one necessarily precludes belief in the other.
Liberal feminism is essentially just liberalism or liberal thought applied to women. For this reason, I'm hesitant to even call it 'liberal feminism', as this implies a level of philosophical kinship with radical feminism that doesn't exist. 'Liberal feminism' doesn't have a distinct philosophical tradition or prominent philosophers either, instead relying heavily on liberal philosophers from Locke to Mills to Rawls generally, with lesser scholars basically just transposing their ideas onto women and gender, with the possible exception of Wollstonecraft. However, I must point out that even Mills assumed that women were subjugated by men Liberal feminism is what the average person is thinking of when they think positively about feminism, but this is actually just reflection of a positive view of liberalism generally.
Radical feminism is the other feminism and is arguably just 'feminism'. What makes radical feminism distinct is its core focus on patriarchy or patriarchy theory. This is a Marxian theory which defines men and women in terms of oppressive power dynamics, man as oppressor and women as oppressed, and that radical reform (revolution of some kind) is needed to end this 'patriarchy' and oppression. Virtually every prominent feminist scholar has been a radical feminist, from Millet and McKinnon to bell hooks. Even supposedly liberal feminists like Gloria Steinem were actually radical feminists, and I believe were more so labelled liberal feminists for their presentability. Ideologically they still subscribed to patriarchy theory and a radical deconstruction of society ('patriarchy'). Radical feminism is arguably just as old or even older than liberal feminism, with the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention's Declaration of Sentiments essentially laying out a form of proto-radical feminism/patriarchy theory (though there are some elements of liberal feminism there too).
Liberal feminism was a flash in the pan. Women gained legal equality extremely quickly, with the Civil Rights Act passed in 1964, before feminism had even really began in full swing. What are now regarded as seminal or foundational (radical) feminist texts, such as Kate Millet's Sexual Politics in 1970, were yet to be published. Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique, often called the book that started the so called 'second wave' of feminism, was published in 1963, only a year before the Civil Rights Act. Of course, the underlying feminist sentiment existed before that, but my point is that liberal feminism or 'women's rights' were mainstreamed incredibly quickly and pretty painlessly too. With the primary goals of liberal feminism achieved so quickly, much of the liberal activist energy behind it dissipated, leaving behind mostly (though not exclusively) radical feminist activists, who still had a bone to pick. Many liberal feminists who stayed would eventually be excluded and pushed out, such as Warren Farrell and Karen DeCrow. It would be these radical feminist activists who would go on to fulfil the majority of feminist leadership roles, professorships in 'gender studies' and social sciences generally, and advocacy/lobby groups. Radical feminism has become orthodoxy, and the only active form of feminism.
The distinction between liberal feminism and radical feminism strongly mirrors the split in the black civil rights movement, between Martin Luther King Jr's liberal approach vs the black liberationist (i.e. Marxian) approach represented by Malcolm X or the Black Panthers and similar groups. However, while most people can distinguish between movements represented by MLK Jr and Malcolm X, the same does not seems to be true for liberal feminism and radical feminism, which are often conflated with each other or seen as part of the same tradition. I'm not completely sure why this is the case, it may just be because women's rights were relatively less of a contentious issue and people, including men as per a comment of mine above, were happy to go along and not question it much. It could have also been a deliberate tactic of obfuscation on the part of the radical feminists, deliberately linking themselves to and hiding behind the positive connotations of liberal feminism for gain. They have been pretty successful if this is the case, as radical feminism has completely supplanted any liberal notions of the relationship between the sexes. Patriarchy theory has become the default position in the public cultural continuousness, even those who would (mis)label themselves as liberal feminists. The idea that maybe women weren't essentially slaves to men in the past - and instead that liberalism towards women is a natural moral development due to changing social conditions/modernity - is verboten now.
There are some different groups within radical feminism, perhaps the most obvious being the contemporary conflict between intersectional feminism and the TERFs. But I wouldn't call these movements wholly different schools of thought, they are both radical feminist ideologies at their core. A comparison I would make is to Marxism. There are a whole range of different sub-movements within Marxism, Marxist-Leninism, Stalinism, Trotskyism, Maoism etc. that all do get into conflict with each other for one reason or another. But at the core they are still all Marxist and adopted the same core ideological thought and framing. The same is true for radical feminism. You can make legitimate blanket criticisms of (radical) feminism the same way you can of Marxism and its derivatives.
Links to a couple of relevant comments of mine on the topic of feminism from the last Reddit CW thread that got buried.
I think what is lacking in this comment thread is an acknowledgement of male outgroup bias and female ingroup bias (there are quite a large number of studies that measure the core phenomenon, it's highly reproducible). Men are very strange in being perhaps the only (innate/biologically defined) social group to not have a ingroup bias. Men have a more favourable perception of women than they do of other men. While it's possible this is simply a consequence of modern gender ideology, this finding largely holds in cross-cultural studies, including in illiberal, "patriarchal" cultures. There's also circumstantial evidence from history, e.g. chivalric codes and courtly love. Men have an innate psychological need to want to protect, provide and care for women. To put it, men have a predisposition towards "simping" for women. This can manifest in different ways, such as extreme paternalism towards women, or liberalism towards women, depending on the circumstances.
The counterbalance to this effect was essentially nature. The world was a very dangerous place (and still is in many parts of the world), and the danger and the risks present in the world would naturally limit the roles and activity of women, from childbirth to hunting to political leadership. Security is preferred over liberty for women, by both men and women. As my linked comments and other commenters have already mentioned, modern technology, medicine, industrialisation and modernity generally changed this balance and there was no longer a natural counterbalance to men's innate desire to provide for women, and they began to do so in a maladaptive way. After modernity also destroyed the female role, women began feeling empty and resentful, blaming men of course, who were have always to provide for them, tend to their emotional needs and fix issues. If something is wrong, it's men's fault one way or another! Men lacking an ingroup bias means that most men were pretty content to go along with the demonisation of men too. Thus you have all the ingredients for feminism.
Are Pets Replacing Kids?
I have noticed a growing trend of people talking about their pets like children, and pet owners being increasing referred to as parents, mother or fathers of their pets, and the pets as children. Often this goes as far as to referring to multiple pets being referred to as siblings, or even pets referred to siblings of actual children. For examples on social media, you can look at asinine "feel good" animal related YouTube channels like "The Dodo". I'm hardly the first to comment on the phenomenon, a quick internet search for "furbabies" turns up countless articles. However, while most media coverage on this phenomena is playful and positive, my intuition has long been that this isn't just a harmless, fun phenomenon, but rather these 'parents' are really using these pets as a substitute for children. Perhaps attempting to fulfil an unrealised, subconscious need to raise offspring in a social environment hostile to the raising of actual, real human children.
Like any good researcher, I set out to find information to support my prior assumptions. I looked at U.S. data mostly for its abundance, however the overall quality of data is pretty poor, it's particularly hard to find reliable data on the historic rates of pet ownership and data relating to the pet industry going back further than 30 years or so ago.
Based on the APPA's APPA National Pet Owners Survey, the percentage of households with a pet has increased from 56% in 1988 to 70% in 2020. In absolute numbers, the number of pet cats and dogs increased from 108 million in 1996 to 188 million in 2022. But it is not simply the number of pets that are relevant, but the relationship owners have with the pet. Perhaps the most shocking statistic I saw was the growth of the pet industry. The US pet industry has grown from $53 billion in 2012 (~$68 billion adjusted for inflation), to $124 billion in 2021, the industry doubling in size in just a decade! A near doubling also occurred in the prior decade too. The growth has been driven in large part by the increased demand for luxury pet products. The US fertility rate dropped from 1.91 to 1.66 from 2012 to 2020 during this time. By comparison, the US baby products industry was worth $29 billion in 2022. Some (unreliable) survey data says that three-quarters of US pet owners consider their pets 'furbabies'. It should be noted that Millennials slightly overrepresented in many of these pet statistics. US pet owners are also more likely to be female (60%).
Now onto my speculation on the issue. Despite a lot of hand-wringing over the economic costs being the major driver behind young adults not having kids, those same young adults seem to be willing buy a pet and spend significant sums on them, treating them as a pseudo-child. Perhaps a pet is still a cheaper alternative than a child, but in my opinion the economic argument still doesn't hold up. As I like to point out, the fertility rate of the US was higher during the Great Depression, the worst economic period in modern history, than it is today. So the social factors must be playing a greater role, something that has been discussed quite extensively on theMotte in the past so I won't go into detail here. To summarise briefly, but technology, contraception, sexual liberation, feminism, the two-income trap and modernity generally may all have played some role. But humans are still ultimately biological and social creatures, and I think there is likely some innate driver to engage in parental (maternalistic/paternalistic), childrearing behaviours, for both men and women, but particularly women. When social pressure and event stigma prevent people from having children, they have substituted in the closest available, non-stigmatised alternative, pets. What I think is troubling is what will be the long-term consequences of using pets as surrogate children, because pets are not, in fact, children. Using pets as surrogate children is possibly contributing to the fertility crisis, providing a band-aid solution to the unrealised desire of childrearing. Children, as actual thinking humans, can form meaningful relationships with their parents and others, and contribute to community in ways that pets can obviously not provide. Thus furbabies may be accelerating the atomisation of society. When parents enter their elder years, they can rely on the support of their adult children to help. Children will also ultimately provide net economic utility to society, where as pets, as much people might love them, do not.
I personally find the whole phenomenon of pets as surrogate children disgusting or fundamentally morally wrong on a deep, visceral level. It feels so unnatural and perverse to me. I do love animals, including pets I have had in the past, but I would never dream of treating them remotely as people or children. As pessimistic as this is, my instinct that the rise of furbabies is hyper-representative of the cultural, social and moral decline of the West, and is strongly associated with the fertility crisis and the demographic collapse many Western or developed states are or will experience.
More options
Context Copy link