To_Mandalay
2yr ago
They don’t ever since Christianity got Greek philosophy’d, but the authors of the Hebrew Bible itself seemed to have believed angels, gods, and even Yahweh himself were actual physical beings that more or less functioned like humans, but bigger and stronger.
To_Mandalay
2yr ago
The next level esoteric take in this, advocated by a number of high profile UFOlogists actually (Jacques Vallee, J. Allen Hynek, and some of the people behind this current disclosure push) is that they aren’t aliens in the sense of intergalactic visitors but rather the same entities that have been with us since the beginning, whether we have called them gods, devils, fae. They aren’t from another planet but from, for lack of a better term, ‘fairyland.’
To_Mandalay
2yr ago
Not necessarily. While there are old stories about people being involuntarily transformed into animals, the classic European werewolf (the kind they used to burn at the stake) was an evil sorcerer who made a pact with the devil for the ability to turn himself into a wolf at will, actually quite similar to a Navajo skinwalker. The cursed soul who transforms against his will at the full moon and is not in control of his actions while in lupine form is mostly a product of early twentieth century Hollywood.
To_Mandalay
2yr ago
Didn't you just say Chuck Schumer is sponsoring legislation that would force the USG to inform congress about aliens?
Yeah but that's new. As far as I know this is Schumer's first foray into the alien issue. The other representatives I mentioned have been crusading for years.
Everything else you say makes sense though.
To_Mandalay
2yr ago
I think that goes in the 'werewolf' category.
To_Mandalay
2yr ago
I've lived in the southwest and as far as I can tell the 90s - early 2000s scaremongering about how mestizos would turn the US into a gang-war ridden nightmare and possibly embark on mass murder of whites has simply failed to materialize. There are counties on the US-Mexican border where hispanics are already a huge majority and they aren't much like Brazil. Brownsville, Texas, the most hispanic city in America, has a homicide rate on par with some of the lily whitest states in New England and the midwest.
Further developments on the ayy lmao front
You may recall a few weeks ago, former intelligence officer David Grusch came out with claims that the US has several alien spacecraft in its possession, and has been studying and reverse-engineering them for decades. While claims like this have floated around for decades, including from former government employees, Grusch was different because of his undeniable credentials, and because he is going through 'proper' whistleblower channels.
This was the latest act in a drama that goes back to 2017 (well, 1947, but let's not get ahead of ourselves), when Leslie Kean and Ralph Blumenthal published a piece in the New York Times disclosing the existence of a pentagon program dedicated to studying UFOs, known as AATIP (or AAWSAP, depending on when and where) led by a man called Lue Elizondo. This sparked an apparent sea change in government, and UFOs and aliens, formerly dismissed out of hand, began to be taken more seriously.
Everyone from Obama to former CIA director John Brennan started dropping hints that hey maybe aliens might possibly could be here. Some apparently very sober Navy pilots came forward and shared their apparently inexplicable experiences on 60 minutes. Lue Elizondo did the talk-show circuit.
'UFOs' were rebranded 'UAPs' since over the past few decades, 'UFO' had become synonymous with 'flying saucer.' Congress held its first UFO hearings in over fifty years. A new office, AARO, was founded to investigate and classify UAP sightings..
Well, now the latest development. Chuck Schumer has sponsored a congressional amendment with bipartisan support mandating that, if it exists, any alien biological or technological material, or any evidence of non-human intelligence (and yes the bill uses those terms) held by any private or illegal government entity be turned over to congress.
I've been pretty skeptical about this whole thing. NY Post journalist Steven Greenstreet provides an alternative narrative, where this is the result of a small but fanatical, well-financed, and well-motivated group of UFO/paranormal fanatics that has been pushing all of this stuff for years in and outside of government, without any real proof to back any of it up. He has provided evidence that AATIP started out not as a 'UFO program' but as a pet project of senator Harry Reid, who in conjunction with Robert Bigelow, another big-time paranormal fan, wanted first and foremost to conduct a study of Skinwalker Ranch, which they believe(d) to be a hot-bed of supernatural activity, including werewolves and (as Greenstreet never tires of pointing out) "dinobeavers." While the media has focused on the apparently more grounded, sober claims of mysterious craft in the sky demonstrating apparent technological superiority to any known human craft, a lot of people don't realize just how closely aliens and UFOs are tied up with werewolves, bigfoot, demons, ghosts, remote viewing, and every other kind of woo.
That said, now that Chuck Schumer is sponsoring legislation that boils down to "show me the aliens!" it's getting harder for me to believe that this is all down to a small band of committed UFO nuts taking everybody (themselves included) for a ride. I'm still skeptical, and I still don't think this is going to end with a flying saucer being wheeled in front of congress. But it seems increasingly undeniable that something is going on here. The lazy counter is "it's a psyop" but one has to ask, "a psyop to what end?" To increase government funding for the military? I don't think the military needs to put on a dog and pony show like this to squeeze some extra dollars out of congress. To "distract us"? This stuff tends to not be front-page news, actually. I don't think a lot of people have even heard about this new amendment. To fake an alien invasion and use it as a springboard for a one-world government? I kinda doubt it. To scare Russia and China? That would be the most plausible version of the "psyop" hypothesis I think, but it still doesn't ring true for me.
Another possibility is this: it is known that the government has, for ulterior motives, psyopped people into believing in UFOs and ultimately driven them insane.. It's entirely possible that this is all 'sincere' insofar as, within the tangled web that is the US federal government, there are SAPs staffed at least in part by people who believe they're studying or have studied alien spacecraft or alien bodies, even though they aren't, because they've been lied to or misled by their colleagues and superiors.
IMO at this point, that's the most likely explanation.
Or maybe it really is aliens.
As to the culture war angle, interestingly, with the exception of Kristen Gillibrand, who is not the leftiest of dems, most of the representatives and senators who have been vocal and active in pushing for UAP transparency have been republicans like Marco Rubio, Tim Burchett, Mike Gallagher, and Anna Paulina Luna. If some government official does come out and say, "yes, okay, fine we have a flying saucer in the basement" it is interesting to think that aliens might become a new culture war battlefield, with aliens-are-real being right coded and aliens-are-fake being left coded. But seeing how in-flux political alignments were in the early months of COVID, who knows?
To_Mandalay
2yr ago
It's hyperbole. A minority probably would literally die though. Also if the stories I hear from older relatives are any indication people even in the 60s were significantly tougher than people today.
To_Mandalay
2yr ago
I'm paraphrasing, but the gist of it was "don't expect worldly glory or success from Christ." Absolutely though there are plenty of people who are attracted to such a calling, including many young men. I think it was specifically some kind of in-house snipe at the whole "be like Achilles, put cities to the sword" side of RW twitter.
To_Mandalay
2yr ago
I disagree with this, at least in the case of Christianity. I think the vast majority of Christians throughout history would agree that Christianity stands or falls on the proposition that Jesus Christ died and rose from the dead. If this is false, Christianity is false, and if it is true, Christianity is true. As Paul said, "if Christ be not raised, your faith is in vain." You can try to construct some kind of Christianity where the historical reality of whether or not the resurrection took place is besides the point (see, Shelby Spong) but such endeavors have always struck me as pointless.
To_Mandalay
2yr ago
I would guess a lot, maybe most, of the more obnoxious internet atheist warriors, such as I was in my preteen and teenage years, were probably raised Christian (and usually Christian of the more serious, fundamentalist variety). And for me at least, it started out as a quest to prove one way or the other whether or not Christianity was true, and once I decided it wasn't, morphed into a somewhat vindictive impulse to own Christians online. The 2000s, were also the height of Evangelicalism as a cultural movement in the US. Evangelicals had a much stronger cultural presence than they do now, which made it more fun to dunk on them. Bush was the evangelical president (even though, technically, he was a mainliner).
As to why New Atheism exploded in the 2000s, I think it was precisely as a reaction to the apotheosis of evangelical Christianity. Which in turn was mostly a backlash to the cultural revolution of the 60s and 70s. Which in turn...you get the idea. It died out mostly because evangelicalism receded from the public eye, and also because, yes, it became unbearably 'cringe' and uncool. I genuinely think there are a non-zero number of individuals who have more or less memed themselves into being religious just since they don't have to be associated with the fedora people.
I never read Dennett, Dawkins, or any of the 'four horsemen.' I never really got into the whole creation vs evolution thing either because I was never much of a STEM kid. I was more into arguing about the resurrection of Jesus, the historicity of the Exodus, etc. Things that remain abiding interests for me to this day, though I think I am less annoying about it now.
To_Mandalay
2yr ago
Now that I am a (functional) atheist, my position is that if someone thinks their life will improve by becoming Christian (or anything else), go for it. Why not? But I find the trend of people heading towards traditional Christianity because they feel it will improve their lives and communities interesting, because it is just about the exact opposite of what I was taught. Granted I grew up Protestant and not Catholic, but what I was made to understand was that you should expect Christianity to make your life worse. "You will be hated by all men for my name's sake." Now yes there was talk about finding peace and meaning in Jesus, and of course there was the fellowship of believers, but the expectation was that when it came to friends, money, love, happiness, even sometimes family, Christians will do worse than unbelievers, since the world is a hellbound, fallen place that rewards the wicked. Christianity was one big exercise in delayed gratification. Suffer now, redeem your suffering points in Heaven (or at the Rapture, if you're lucky).
I remember a tweet a few months ago, I can't find it now, but it said something like, "Jesus doesn't offer heroism, adventure, wives, or children in this life; he offers pain, service, trial, and tears." It circulated on RW twitter and occasioned a lot of blowback along the lines of calling OP a leftist, modernist, soy, etc. and "good luck attracting young men to the church with a message like this." It was sort of baffling to me because while I would have understood if it was something like "Jesus would be pro-LGBT" or "Jesus was a socialist," which I would agree are reading into the Bible things that are absolutely not there, the tweet as it stood was simply what I was told Christianity was by my very Christian and very-not liberal relatives. And of course we were taught that our job as Christians was not to make Christianity attractive to anyone, whether it was conservatives looking for patriotism and tradition or liberals looking for inclusion and egalitarianism, but simply to preach the gospel as it was, and if you didn't like it, well too bad.
To_Mandalay
2yr ago
This is a great read. I think this is exactly what I'm getting at. A lot of people have responded and said that most people were not religious fanatics, even in the most religious of times, which is true, but not really my point. My point is more that while most people may not have been zealots, most people did have a worldview in which zealotry made sense.
To_Mandalay
2yr ago
I agree that strict adherence to all the rules and regulations of any given religion has always been a minority affair, but I think the disenchantment of the world, to where there are no longer gods in the skies or spirits behind the trees, is new.
To_Mandalay
2yr ago
It seems you are presuming that the average believer in the past expected, for lack of a better term, legible magic as a routine part of life. I don't see why this should be the case. It seems pretty obvious from historical accounts that normal people did not expect miracles as a normal part of their existence; their epistemic grounding was not functionally different from ours.
I think this framing is wrong. Ordinary people may have not expected to see a resurrection or a theophany in their lifetimes, but while moderns tend to conceptualize a miracle as God suspending the ordinary operations of an otherwise mechanistic, naturalistic universe, pre-moderns tended to view the hand of the gods in everything. Sickness is from the supernatural world. The outcomes of wars are credited to the gods. Natural disasters reflect divine displeasure. Everywhere they looked, there was evidence of the spirit world at work. People believed in the immediate reality of the supernatural and acted accordingly. As late as the 19th century, French peasants left peace offerings for fairies in the woods. To an ancient Israelite, Yahweh parting the Red Sea may not be quantitatively different from Yahweh empowering Israel to defeat its enemies in battle. We would call the former a miracle because we would consider it naturalistically inexplicable, but not the latter. But for an ancient, while the the parting of a sea would be much rarer and more magnificent than a victory in battle, it might not be qualitatively different, because everything only happens because the gods make it so, even if sometimes what the gods make so is more unique and incredible than other times.
Is it possible to be genuinely religious in the modern secular west?
My dad, as far as I know, was a lifelong atheist. But my mother’s family was pretty religious. Typical American, nondenominational but pretty hardcore Protestantism. My dad worked a lot when I was small and I didn’t see him too much so I was mostly raised by my mother and her side of the family.
We believed Jesus died and rose for you (you, reading this, specifically), Catholics are idolaters who need the gospel, Harry Potter is shady at best, every time someone sneezes in Israel the End gets one day closer, and Daniel’s fourth beast is checks notes the European Union.
Growing up, all this felt very very real. God felt like someone standing right next to me - even if you can’t see him, it would be ridiculous to think he wasn’t there. When I sinned it felt like God’s eyes were burning a hole in the back of my head. Once when I was about four, there was a car wreck outside my house and I rushed to the window to see if the Tribulation had kicked off. Whether I would ever grow up was a doubtful proposition because Jesus was coming back very, very soon to judge the world.
I stopped believing in middle school, partly because my dad was around more and he made no effort to hide his contempt for all this stuff, partly because I started going online and got drafted into the Internet Religion Wars of the 2000s. Long story short, after years of online arguments and reading I’m pretty well satisfied intellectually that Christianity is false (I’m less sure about theism in general), but I still feel it deep down.
I have an instinctive reverence for Christian symbology. I get uncomfortable when I hear jokes about God and Jesus, at least the more blasphemous ones. Sometimes I still feel that presence standing next to me, and it doesn’t seem completely out of the realm of possibility that one day I will find myself the unwilling star of my very own Chick tract.
But the vast majority of my acquaintances these days are secular liberals who were raised secular liberals. Some are nominally Jewish or Catholic but as kids they maybe went to religious services once or twice a year. God was a vague idea at most, they never prayed, whatever morals and beliefs their parents raised them with were totally irreligious ones.
When I tell them yes, I have family members who really believe God literally created all life forms as they are now by speaking them into existence, literal demons rejoice when you sin, and Jesus is literally going to come back on a white horse to destroy the wicked it sounds totally insane to them. It’s like talking about Star Wars. Just totally outside their conception of reality. And sometimes I wonder, if they were somehow began, as some do, to intellectually entertain the possibility that Christianity is true, even then would they feel it? If I read some really good apologetics for Islam (maybe they exist, I’ve never really looked) and started to think, “hey, this could be true” I'm not sure I would viscerally fear the wrath of Allah.
America becomes more and more secular every year, and more and more kids grow up like my friends did, and less and less like me. And yet there seems to be a sort of religious revival going on. It’s not really large-scale, at least not yet. But it’s real. On the left-liberal side of the spectrum, this mostly takes the form of ‘alternative’ spiritualities, astrology, energies, and witchcraft. I feel like everybody my age or younger knows at least one person who calls themselves a witch or a satanist or something. There are huge subreddits and other online communities dedicated to this stuff.
But I don’t think it’s real. I know “you don’t really believe what you say you believe” is one of the most infuriating things to hear, but in some cases I think it’s true. Sorry, not only do I not believe you can cast spells or commune with the great goddess, I don’t believe you believe you can cast spells and commune with the great goddess. Maybe you’re not consciously lying, but deep down I think you know you don’t actually have any magic powers. If you did, I think you would behave differently.
The right-wing equivalent to this is the surge, at least online, of young RW (mostly men) converting to various forms of conservative Christianity, whether it be traditional Catholicism or Orthodoxy or Reformed Protestantism or whatever. And I see it as almost perfectly equivalent to the “witchy art student” case. Sorry, twenty-five-year old guy raised by lapsed Episcopalians in New York who calls himself a “Catholic monarchist” on twitter but is totally considering Orthodoxy after reading Fr. Seraphim Rose, and will be considering sedevacantism by next week, I don’t care how many epic deus vult memes you post, I don’t think you really feel it in your bones that one day you’re going to stand before the creator of the universe and be judged.
In both cases I make allowances for exceptions. Some people, I’m sure, really do believe they have some kind of occult power. Some people, I’m sure, despite totally irreligious upbringings, really do have a Road to Damascus moment and come to deeply believe in Jesus Christ.
But for the majority of people, I think this sort of thing is a fashion statement more than anything. And that makes conversion–whether it’s to Christianity, Islam, or occultism–in the modern west different from revivals of previous eras.
Someone who responded to Jonathan Edwards in the 18th century or Billy Sunday in the early twentieth might not have been a very good Christian, but they were still raised in a Christian society where the existence and power of God were taken for granted. So when they heard a guy shouting, “therefore, repent!” it felt like a real threat. They didn’t have to completely rebuild their worldviews from the ground-up, they just had to be reminded, “oh, that’s right! God is real and he does want me to behave!”
Even if you decided to be a satanist a hundred years ago, you were raised believing that Satan was a real, terrifying being with very real power, so you would be making a serious commitment to serve a mighty god, even if you were choosing the other side. Nowadays someone who calls themselves a satanist probably doesn’t even believe Satan is real, and if they do their point of reference is maybe a TV show or a comic book.
In short, I think to really believe in gods and the supernatural, you have to be raised believing in gods and the supernatural, or at least raised in a culture that takes gods and the supernatural seriously. Even, say, someone who converted to Christianity in the 1st century is in a better position than a modern westerner. He already believed the world was in the hands of the gods, which were real beings of power, and had believed this since he was born. He just had to be told, “hey, this new god, he’s even stronger than Zeus or Ba’al!”
For better or worse, has succeeded in obliterating that fundamental sense that I think people have had for most of history that, “the gods are real, and they’re watching.” I find that pretty fascinating.
To_Mandalay
2yr ago
Society may take antisocial behavior less 'seriously' when committed by women, but I don't think it's to such an extent that it can be said "women are loved unconditionally." Maxwell and Holmes are still going to prison. Wuornos, as you note, was executed. At best there's a weak qualification of their crimes in the public imagination, but I don't think anyone is actually out there hoping Ghislaine Maxwell walks free.
I also think you underrate how much different the experience can be for an overweight/unattractive woman compared to a very attractive one. People, especially men, really are much, much more patient, indulgent, and friendly with good-looking women (and good-looking men, but I think the effect is stronger since a much higher premium is placed on women's looks).
women tend to be loved and respected by their families, friends and romantic partners more or less unconditionally.
This I absolutely do not agree with. Men absolutely don't love their girlfriends' unconditionally, it's entirely conditional on sexual attraction (which, again, reduces to "loved for their looks"). I don't think anyone has friends that love them unconditionally, that would actually be quite weird, the whole point of friends is they're pleasant to be around, and if they stop being pleasant you're not going to want to be around them anymore. In this respect I don't think women are any different from men. Families? I'm pretty sure my mom and dad love me unconditionally, but that's probably it. Is there any evidence parents love their daughters any more than their sons?
To_Mandalay
2yr ago
Most of those memes about all the holidays medieval peasants had only take into account the time actually spent sowing and harvesting, and not all of the other work that farmers had to do constantly to keep everything in working order. Agricultural work is really, really hard. I've never done it myself, but I know people who have. And peasants always lived on the brink of famine. All it took was one bad harvest. Industrial laborers rarely starved. Pre-modern peasants might have had more "official" time off, but there's a reason they flooded the cities to become industrial workers in the first place.
To_Mandalay
2yr ago
There are millions of unemployed men in America and very few of them are homeless.
To_Mandalay
2yr ago
It applies to anyone who kills themselves, man or woman. My point isn’t that suicidal people should just be told not to kill themselves, but that it is ultimately not inflicted upon you by society like most of the other things on the list, unless you want to say that ALL of our choices are ultimately not our own. To say suicide is a choice isn’t to trivialize it. It can be an understandable, sometimes even (IMO) justifiable choice.
To_Mandalay
2yr ago
I took the list to be “reasons men’s lives are worse.” If the list is “indications men’s lives are worse,” then my criticism doesn’t apply and yes, it’s definitely a point in the ‘men have worse lives’ column.
To_Mandalay
2yr ago
This is getting a bit off topic, but my hot take, which few regardless of their political or social views on other things seem to like, is that if someone is suffering from severe depression or some other mental illness, and other treatments fail to improve their self-perceived QOL they should be allowed to kill themselves. I don't think a person should be prevented from taking their own life based on supposed mental unfitness barring extreme cases "the patient hallucinates aliens from zeta reticuli ordering him to kill himself." I can't see an argument otherwise. If someone suffering from incurable illness has the right to take their own life, doesn't someone suffering from incurable mental illness have the right to do the same?
To_Mandalay
2yr ago
He listed suicide as one of the ways in which life is worse for men, but if it's merely a reflection of the ways life is worse for men, i.e all the other things on the list, then it shouldn't be on the list itself, because that's doubling up.
To_Mandalay
2yr ago
My thoughts point by point:
Men are vastly more likely to be victims of the worst kind of violent crime: murder. In the US, 82% of total homicide victims are male, 18% are female. Women probably endure more sexual violence, but men definitely endure more violence overall given the 4:1 murder ratio.
Fair. Though if you aren't involved in criminal activity, your odds of being murdered drop dramatically.
Men do the overwhelming majority of the nasty, dangerous work, such as roofing in the summer, oil rig operation, management of sewers, garbage collection, etc.
True, but the vast majority of men in first world countries don't do work like this. I don't think it says much about the experience of the average man. A lot of very dangerous, hard work is also quite well-paying.
Men are much more likely to be homeless (70%:30%) or imprisoned (93%:7%). I think this speaks to the greater competitiveness of the male world: If a man fails in life, he's judged a complete fuckup, and ends up a homeless low-status loser. If a woman fails, she can almost always just get married.
Basically no one who isn't severely mentally ill and/or addicted to hard drugs ends up homeless long-term. It's not like the majority, or even a significant minority, of men are living on the knife's edge of homelessness.
Men are much more likely to kill themselves
I'm not sure how this really relates to the concept of a "minimum deal." Unlike most of the other things on this list, suicide can't just happen to you as a result of extrapersonal factors. If you don't want to die by suicide, just don't kill yourself.
And no, I'm not persuaded that childcare is harder than conventional employment.)
'Conventional employment' is a pretty broad term. Would I rather take care of children than fight in Ukraine or mine coal? Yeah, probably. Would I rather take care of children than work in an air-conditioned office or as a cashier? No way. Childcare sucks, even if some things suck even worse.
The law heavily favors women in child custody and child support disputes, and the institution of alimony transfers far more male wealth to women than female wealth to men.
True, but ameliorated by the fact that a huge number of men don't even bother to contest custody, and that alimony payment is in fact very rare. The vast majority of divorces don't end in alimony settlements. The whole horror story where your wife divorces you and takes all your stuff so she can fuck chad is much less common than the internet would have you believe.
Men are much more likely to die in combat; in fact, during serious military conflicts, they face military slavery (“the draft”).
True, but the draft hasn't been a factor in half a century and IMO is unlikely to be one for the foreseeable future. Any American who gets killed in battle these days quite literally signed up for it.
Our culture automatically cares more about female suffering and wellbeing than male suffering: "The ship is sinking! Save the women and children first!"
Maybe (though I have posted previously on here about how I think the narrative of 'if you're a man nobody gives a shit about you, your existence is a lonely void' is quite overblown). That said, fair to point out that "women and children first" was not an old maritime law but a rather recent innovation at the time the Titanic sank. Through most of history, women and children have had much worse survival rates in sinkings because, well, the rule was 'every man for himself' and the men could swim.
The dating market is more competitive for men than for women; women are far more selective than men about sex partners. Imagine an attractive person of the opposite sex walking up to you on a college campus and saying, “Hi, I’ve been noticing you around town lately, and I fnd you very attractive. Would you have sex with me?” How would you respond? If you are like 100 percent of the women in one study, you would give an emphatic no. You might be ofended, insulted, or just plain puzzled by the request. But if you are like the men in that study, the odds are good that you would say yes— as did 75 percent of those men (Clarke & Hatfeld, 1989). As a man, you would most likely be flattered by the request.
I have great news for you: you too can have sex on demand. Simply download tinder onto your phone, set your preferences to 'men,' and start swiping. I guarantee you within a few hours tops you can have a hook-up arranged with an extremely attractive man. "But I don't want to have sex with men!" you cry. Well...
Women are more likely to be superficially treated as mere "sex objects" by men. That said, men are more likely to be superficially treated as mere "success objects" by women.
This seems like a wash even on your framing. But it does remind me of what I think is one of the sillier mansophere/PUA/redpill/whatever it's called now, slogans, which goes something like "women are loved for who they are, men are loved for what they can provide." Silly because it implies there's some kind of core essence of 'you' separate from your character and actions (what you can provide), and because what "women are loved for who they are" really means is "women are loved for their looks" which doesn't sound nearly as nice. Moreover this is usually said said in such a way to make women out to be the shallower sex, but when it really comes down to it I think loving someone because they make a lot of money or are a famous musician or something is less shallow than loving someone because they're hot (even if both are kind of shallow by the standards of storybook 'true love.') At least the former qualities are reflections of character.
Modern technology has greatly minimized the pain of childbirth, but has it equally lightened the burden on men's shoulders?
Absolutely. I think the majority of men in the first world today would probably drop dead if they had to do the work their grandfathers did, let alone those grandfathers' grandfathers. I know I would. People, especially people who romanticize pre-industrial society, really have a tendency to underestimate how brutal and treacherous life was just a little over a century ago (and much more recently in some places, and still is in less developed parts of the world).
There are ways that life is easier for men. You have already listed female advantages. For men, it's mostly the fact that people take you more seriously, and that men tend to be physically much stronger than women. Those two factors divide into a lot of different smaller sub-advantages in social and daily life. Personally I think walking around knowing that about 75% of the population is physically stronger than me and there wouldn't be much I could do about it if one of them chose to do me harm would be very psychologically distressing, and I'm glad I don't have to deal with that, and no amount of cultural messaging will fix that particular problem.
As for your "minimum deal" for women being "just get married," again, imagine that your alternative to being homeless and killing yourself (though again, you can avoid the latter by just not killing yourself) was getting married to a man (and yes, you have to have sex with him). Would that be a great deal? Would you be happy to have that option?
Sure, the cartels operate along the border. They mostly keep the murder in Mexico, though.
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