because you won't admit to any control
Yes, that is what I said very clearly my original post that I linked to. There is no control group.
and life back then was worse on every metric I can think of.
1950s America was massively less feminist than any white or east asian country today, and was a pretty nice place to live, a better place by many metrics. And to the extent things are better in 2023, it is mostly because of technological development, but the pace of technological development was greater in the 1950s, the nice things we have in 2023 are built on the groundwork of things discovered in earlier times, I do not think you can give feminism any credit for the nicer technological things we have in 2023 than we had in 1950.
This is like marxists who insist the reason USSR/China/Cuba/etc. failed to create a communist utopia is because they just didn't do communism hard enough. Maybe.
AFACIT, Putin did not substantially change policy at all. Did he enact something like the Hayes code for all TV and movies in Russia? Did he restrict women from going to college? Did he ban no fault divorce? Did he restrict single women from living alone? Did he add "honor and obey" to all legal marriage vows? How much money did he actually allocate toward pro-traditional Christian values media? Did he make being a member of a church in good standing a prerequisite for elite positions? Did he ban abortion? Did he ban birth control? These are things that were the norm in America 70-120 years ago, such policy changes are what it would actually mean to roll-back feminism.
gorge
9mo ago
I'm sort of in the same boat. I live downtown in a big American city, and I know I should probably get out before it is too late ...
gorge
10mo ago
I'd like to see you try to pass an Intellectual Turing Test for arguing why the Civil Rights movement was bad.
I don’t think it’s accurate to call Hispanic immigration a product of Boomer anti racism, either. More a corporate/laissez faire policy.
Por que no los dos? Almost all policies have a Bootleggers and Baptists aspect to them -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bootleggers_and_Baptists
gorge
6mo ago
What do you mean by "fully sovereign" in this context? In what sense are the current generation of men "sovereign?"
Most modern men are slaves by historical standards. A "sovereign man" or perhaps more accurately a "free man" is able to both obtain the means of sustenance by building and trading and interacting with society, and physically can protect what he has from predation. Remember, the idea that police are the frontline protection against predation is very new. In older times, a free man was much more responsible for physically protecting his own liberty and property.
What to you mean by "owned" in this context? Do you have any anectotes about this?
A book could be written on this. The term "owned" isn't quite right, the husband-wife relationship is sui genersis so inherently it needs its own word. But for one example -- women will boundary test (like children) (also known in PUA as shit test or fitness test), all women will boundary test, and they like it if you pass the test and are deeply uncomfortable if they fail. An wife ultimately wants to rely on you as her rock, and as part of that is having enough of a sense of command to do what is good for her, not always what she says she wants at the time.
returning half the human species to the status of property to restore?
It is my observation and studied opinion that:
- Women have enormous natural power because they have the power to make men immortal.
- Men inherently do not like to see the women they live like unhappy. It is my experience, my observation, and I don't have it on hand, but I remember seeing some study that a husband's happiness was very correlated with his wife's happiness, but not vice-versa. Or going back to the patriarchal age or Biblical proverbs: "It is better to live in a corner of the housetop, than in a house shared with a contentious woman."
- Women, like children, do not have the capability, physical or psychological, to be fully sovereign over themselves.
- Women, like children, actually like to be owned by a father/husband.
Feminists say that feminism "is the radical idea that women are human." Well it's more like feminism is the radical idea that women are men, that is, they thrive in having the same social and legal situation as men do (1). And that is not true -- it is fantasy-based argument that does tremendous harm to men and women alike. Women are their own thing, not men, not children.
So even if women, have little legal power, they retain tremendous power to bend men to their will, and to extract the means of a happy and fulfilling life.
And since women can never be self-sovereign, they are either wards of their fathers, wards of their family, wards of their husband, wards of the state bureacracy, or temporary wards of a rotating array of characters (their boss, their boyfriend). eg. I believe that only fathers and husbands have the knowledge and alignment of interest to actually take care of women in the best possible way.
(1) Actually, feminism is more like calvinball where women alternatively get treated as men, sometimes indeed as super-men, or sometimes as agency-free, angelic, children (eg, when they argue women shouldn't be made to publicly testify in college sexual assault cases, they should just be believed)
gorge
6mo ago
I definitely wouldn't argue that it was a breach of fiduciary duty - under the circumstances in the Fedex story that argument would be a loser in both England and Delaware that would definitely lose in court because of the business judgement rule.
I assume, though, that the gambling was done under his own name? If he lost the money in gambling, he might have a tough time proving to a jury that he intended to give the winnings back to the company. He would have to prove that he really was gambling on behalf of the company, rather than embezzling the money to himself and gambling it on behalf of himself, that might be tough to do.
gorge
6mo ago
Whether they're extremely feminist by historical standards doesn't matter. If feminism (or social liberalism in general) is what causes worse social outcomes, then more feminist/liberal countries should do worse than less feminist/liberal countries now.
No, because of range restriction. Height matters for basketball, but if you do a correlation between NBA statistical success and height, there is no correlation. That is because everyone has already been selected based on height. Every country today is hyper-feminist, the actual differences between them in amount of feminism is small, so when comparing metrics like fertility rate or mental illness, other factors will matter more.
What are the metrics by which ROK is more feminist than the US or western Europe
Compared to the US, the UN Gender Inequality Index and ROK has actually had a woman president and the US has not. Compared to Western Europe, I suspect that ROK women, particularly single women, work far more hours in the office than American women. I suspect ROK has more of a princess culture, but I don't know how I would prove this to your satisfaction, it's not something that anyone reputable tracks and quantifies. There are many forms of feminism, "princess culture" is one form, Russian style gold-digging is another, girl-boss, strong bad-ass woman type is another. Countries are feminist in different ways.
Russia is a particularly good example since, as you note in this post, Putin's government has made a big show of retvrning to tradition, revitalizing the Orthodox Church, and opposing the degenerate west, and yet he can't keep the fertility rate from continuing to crash or the kids from becoming atheist.
He made a show but he did not actually do much of anything. Russia went full communist in 1918, and had 70 years during which it was way to the left on religious and feminist issues than the USA. It never actually recovered from that.
gorge
6mo ago
No, the unpopularity of sin/policing rhetoric isn’t due to fear of cancellation. It derives from the general loss in status of religion.
That's...the same thing.
gorge
6mo ago
It was literally the standard common book of prayer up until 1928. And "wife has a duty to obey" was the standard Christian, Hewbrew, and Roman teaching, so that is a span from 700BC to AD 1928. So which viewpoint is bizarre? OK, but we have cool modern technology now! We have indoor toilets now! Why should we take the norms of the past seriously? On the other hand ... technology was progressing from 700BC to AD 1928. Are things progressing now? At the same rate? The same second derivative?
”The world still does not know it, but everyone is invited to the supper of the wedding of the Lamb (Re 19:9). To be admitted to the feast all that is required is the wedding garment of faith which comes from the hearing of his Word (cf. Ro 10:17).”
The charitable interpretation of is that "wearing the wedding garment of faith" of course entails the things that faith in Christ and faith in the Catholic Church entails, that it entails righteous deeds, following Church discipline, purification, repentance, etc. It seems silly to require the Pope to explicitly say everything that faith entails every single time he talks of the importance of faith. Certainly Saint Paul did not so do. And yes, a bishop is required to interpret fellow Catholics charitably and only make accusations of heresy as a last recourse.
Now, in context, is this statement easy to misinterpret? Yes. Did Pope Francis purposely state things in an ambiguous way to try to nudge bishops into being less strict about denying communion? Perhaps. But as a bishop, Strickland needs to interpret the letter charitably and limit is criticism to warning about possible misinterpretations of the letter -- he should not straight accuse the Pope of teaching heresy. If you care, you can listen to a more thorough analysis of these letters from Michael Lofton.
gorge
5mo ago
Last year I did a big Shakespeare read and discovered to my surprise that many of the famous quotes, in context, mean something very different than how they are popularly used. For instance, when Mark Antony says, "I have come to bury Caesar, not to praise him" he is lying and goes on to praise him and foment a revolution. Now, when I see someone playing on that quote in a title, I never know if they are using the surface meaning or the in-context meaning.
gorge
8mo ago
If you are in a conversation with an anon here on TheMotte or in a blog comment thread, you should assume good faith, because otherwise, why are you even talking to them? Mutual recriminations of the other person acting in bad faith just make the debate unreadable for everyone else.
On the other hand, if you are trying to figure out why some public intellectual or institution or political figure or political party platform or prominent activist says what they say, you should not assume good faith by default. You should distrust by default, and only believe they are honest if they have proved it over a long time.
gorge
6mo ago
He may not have put through every trad dream policy,
He hasn't done anything close to what was required. If we were ranking societies on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being the most feminist society in history, 10 being the patriarchy of 5th century Rome, I'd put the Ango-America in the 1700s as a 9, America circa 1900 as a 6, America in the 1950s as a 4, and Russia and the U.S. in 2023 as around a 1. Whether Russia is 1.3 and America is 1.1 and Sweden is 1.0 isn't a big difference. Maybe Putin moved the needle for Russia from 1.3 to 1.4. Maybe he didn't move the needle at all, his actions did not even do enough to arrest entropy decay and the continual allure of American hegemonic culture, and so Russia still went from a 1.5 to 1.3 during is reign.
So why should anyone take seriously the thesis that feminism is responsible for X bad thing in modern society, if there's no way to test it?
For the same reason anyone takes any argument about social or historical trends convincing -- they find some combination of imperfect statistical correlations, personal life experiences, historical testimonies, circumstantial evidence, reasoned arguments, etc. etc. to be convincing.
120 years ago, in 1900, the American birthrate had already been halved since 1800. Was that also feminism's fault?
It probably did have a major impact. America became substantially more feminist during the 1800s -- coverture was ended, the first states had already granted woman's suffrage. By 1918 Mencken was already complaining in his In Defense of Women that women had legally seized the upper-hand. Robert Dabney wrote in 1871 about northern conservatives caving on womens rights. In 1886, Henry Adams was satirizing feminism in Boston. You can play Wikipedia game and note how few children the notable 1800s feminists bore. Here is an interesting article making the argument that birth rates dropped earliest in the regions that were first hit by englightenment/feminist values, notably: France and New England.
gorge
6mo ago
Generally the Church will use the phrase "people struggling with same-sex attraction" to refer to people who have same-sex attraction but are trying their best not to actually acting on it and engage in homosexual activity. Such people are welcome in the church, welcome to take communion, and if they screw up and engage in same sex activity they just need to confess and try do better in the future, they aren't excommunicated for sinning. However, if they take "pride" in homosexuality activity, that is an open rejection of doctrine and living scandalously, so that is not welcome in the church.
In the broader culture, "homosexual" basically means "same-sex attracted and unapologetically acting on it." However there are some liberal Catholics who will equivocate/motte-and-bailey on this, saying things like, "the Church should welcome homosexuals" which to the public makes it seem like they want to the Church to change doctrine, but then when pressed on it by conservative Catholics they will fall back and say, "well homosexual just means same-sex attracted, it does not mean they are actually sinning."
gorge
7mo ago
Affirmative action is "unlawful", but what exactly is the penalty if someone discriminates on the basis of race?
Well, civil rights law suits against institutions that result in that institution paying large monetary damages have long been a thing. So presumably going forward Harvard can no longer use "targetting diversity" as a defense against such suits?
It's a little curious to me that there was no monetary judgement attached to this case. When a company like coca-cola or Tesla is judged as having acted in a discriminatory manner, they face hundreds of millions of dollars in damages. So why was there no monetary judgement in this Harvard case?
gorge
7mo ago
The visitation included questions about the governance of a diocesan high school, considerable staff turnover in the diocesan curia, the bishop’s welcome of a controversial former religious sister as a high school employee, and the bishop’s support for “Veritatis Splendor”
While above I defended the Pope in disciplining Strickland for insubordination, it seems a bit cowardly to pretend that the real issue they care about is the investigation of his governance of his diocese. (Unless his governance really is substandard compared to other dioceses, but that claim seems suspect).
gorge
7mo ago
Contrary to popular belief, Catholics don't believe the Pope to be generally infallible, only when speaking Ex Cathedra, which hasn't happened since 1950.
The Pope is only infallible when speaking Ex Cathedra. But in addition to that, a core Catholic doctrine is that the Pope is protected by from the Holy Spirit from teaching heresy, thus a Pope will not teach something that directly contradict holy scripture or established doctrines of faith. Michael Lofton has a good podcast on this issue.
Thus there is a big difference between accusing the Pope of "making imprudent statements that could be easily misinterpreted as heresy" and actually claiming the Pope taught heresy. The latter is a much worse charge for a Bishop to make, as it lays the groundwork for schism.
gorge
8mo ago
So is my trainer just a schmuck who knows nothing and should be putting me on the basic 5x5 or whatever?
The training regimen that "works" doesn't always make the most money for the trainer. If they put you on a standard 5x5 linear progression program, after the trainer teaches you the lifts, you would quickly wonder why you were paying the trainer $$$ and you would stop paying them. Also, barbell's are harder than machines and most clients don't like doing hard things so the trainer may have learned that the machines have better client retention. Overall, the trainer has a bias toward programs that have more variety and that are more fun and less hard.
gorge
8mo ago
can anyone provide me with a count of how many of the fake electors' votes were mistakenly recorded in the Senate?
I think the idea is that they were in a conspiracy to commit fraud, one is still guilty even if one fails. But more importantly, the fraud laws I have seen always require deception. In what way were these "fake" electors trying to deceive anyone?
gorge
9mo ago
FWIW, I originally had this thought after an evening looking through family photos and it seemed to me that the people in the photos were better dressed in the 70s and than in the 90s or 00s. Yeah, the clothes could be a bit cheesy, but the clothes were more colorful, worn with better fit, and everyone was generally less slovenly.
gorge
11mo ago
I think it's illuminating to see how many people on TheMotte both loathe mentally ill homeless people so much and are so authoritarian that their desired solution to the mentally ill homeless problem is to kill them all.
How many people on the TheMotte believe this? Cite me the actual comment where someone said "that their desired solution to the mentally ill homeless problem is to kill them all" and let us look at how many upvotes it got.
gorge
1yr ago
Why do you think that women have zero recourse to ill treatment from a husband under patriarchy?
I didn't say women have zero recourse from ill treatment from a husband under patriarchy.
Yes. To a girl I met in college, who was an NPR liberal, who did not vow to obey me. But, she does accept my lead and gets deeply uncomfortable if I do not lead like a traditional male, if I do not act as a rock upon which my family relies. As an infamous crimethinker once said (paraphrasing since I can't find the exact quote: "Every successful modern marriage is secretly imitating a 17th century trad marriage" He exaggerates ... slightly.
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