This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Well, since you can't even explain what power it is that women have that you're complaining about, I suppose there is no substance here for me to argue with. You've made one vague gesture towards @2rafa's list of admirably gender-neutral constraints while simultaneously declaring it, understandably, "too hardcore."
You can't even really articulate the premise on which your misogyny rests, let alone substantiate it.
I think I explain it well enough. I can try to explain again from first principles. Power is asymmetry of control between agents. Power of women specifically is the power to tank any political project they don't like (say, one increasing men's rights) and shut down a discussion they don't favor (say, one casting women in unflattering light) with a gratuitous refusal to compromise or engage in good faith; the essence of this is captured in twitter catchphrases like «this makes me feel unsafe», or in your behavior toward me here. It is power because it reliably, irrespective of merits of each case, extracts sympathy out of women and out of men, producing a predictable asymmetry and skewing outcomes. This power is an active application of the well-known "women are wonderful" effect, which is in turn explained by evolutionary dynamics created by parental investment inequality, which you have already alluded to (but which, in modern society, doesn't necessarily hold outside of the context of gestation).
The premise of my «misogyny», or actually my argument about there being no realistic solution to undesirable societal effects of feminism, is that women (except members of retrograde religious societies), with you being an apt example, feel entitled to behave this way toward interlocutors, for good reason, namely that «the society» simultaneously encourages this self-serving mean-girl behavior and pretends it's compatible with the authority of an adult.
I will opt out of substantiating the link between feminism and adverse effects discussed (disproportionate, growing inability of young men to form relationships, high divorce rate, low TFR, etc.) because, again, I think the effortpost by @gorge, linked above, suffices as an introduction.
If I were to propose anything like a plan to «impose responsibility» on women in the intended sense, it'd be not so much about me being in control of your womb, «sex for meat» and other blatantly hostile potshots you ladies have come up with, as about nationalism and extended families, in following with the only example of a large, prosperous secular society without those issues that I know. Naturally I also know this cannot be engineered. 2rafa's plan, on top of being hardcore, is also unworkable, at least not in a democratic society.
Still a bit light on the details. Are you too afraid of my mean-girl power to explain which men's rights women are taking away, or would you be willing to elaborate?
As for "casting women in an unflattering light," well, your premise that women are too mean and irrational to be allowed to participate in politics certainly does that! And I suppose you will claim that any counterargument that I make is merely an appeal to "women are wonderful." But I think my conduct speaks for itself, to any reasonable observer. Your accusation of habitual bad-faith argumentation on my part is unfounded.
This is a topic I really, really don't want to talk about or even think about, because it's one of the abysses that gazes back and keeps me up at night and also it's radioactive. But I'm already thinking about it and I just went through the entire thread of this top-level post hoping in vain that someone had already said it, so I guess it falls to me to explain the HBD-MRA model of patriarchy and its downfall.
Assumed: HBD, or at least the points of which that men are physically stronger than women, and that women are better at social - in particular covert manipulation - than men. For the latter part, also that women care more about safety than men.
The outcome of this in prehistory and most of history is explicit patriarchy that is somewhat more equal than it looks. Explicit female domination or excessive implicit female domination doesn't work because in extremis men would defeat women physically and rape and/or murder them (and in prehistory, of course, mass abduction and rape of other tribes' women was reasonably-commonplace), but women do better than it looks like they do because of course they do, that's what happens when you're better at covert manipulation and the primary drivers of culture. This was stable.
It went from stable to metastable at some point. Obvious potential contributors include the development of firearms, the immense increase in state power relative to personal power, and democracy + women's suffrage giving women an equal explicit share in that state power. I say metastable, rather than unstable, because there was still the social pressure toward not-being-a-feminist encoded within society and enforced by women at least as much as by men. This maintained the explicit patriarchy for some time, but only against relatively-small disruptions. When a large disruption came along, in the form of the 60s/70s counterculture, the social chaos allowed the "women are better at manipulation" effect to take over society entire. Thus, we get the current system, where there is some explicit pretence of equality but implicitly and even to some degree explicitly the deck is massively stacked in women's favour. This is also stable; rapist revolution on small or large scale is impossible because of state power, and now with both women's material incentives and individual social incentives pointing toward feminism, they aren't likely to steer the culture away from it.
The place where this model gets horrible and abyss-gazey is if you consider a patriarchal society better than a matriarchal one - most obviously to me, if you think that safetyism and its accompanying administrative bloat is strangling our ability to achieve anything, but also if you think that the matriarchal mode's oppression of men is worse than the patriarchal mode's oppression of women, or indeed if you think that matriarchy is incompatible with maintaining replacement fertility and thus with a society that isn't necessarily parasitic on others (I'm not convinced of the latter two, but obviously a bunch of people in this thread are convinced). Because then, according to the model, the only way to fix it is to undo some of the factors that made the matriarchy mode a stronger attractor than the patriarchy mode. And, well, I enumerated the options there, or at least the ones I can see, and the possible ones suck (particularly since - as even Dave Sim noted in his infamous essay - the sex differences in these things are statistical trends and not 100%-accurate stereotypes; revoking women's suffrage would very definitely be unfair).
Like I said, I try not to think about this; I would basically rather stick my head in the sand and hope for a miracle (space colonisation and genetic enhancement both seem vaguely like they might organically lead to solutions, although the latter has its own terrors). But you asked, and I ended up reading your post because of the mod-queue thing (this one wasn't there, but I always look at context), and I'd hate myself more for self-censorship than I would and do for spitting it out. So here you go.
Strongly patriarchal societies tend to lack innovation. They are too conservative for it. Think about much of the Muslim world, for example.
It seems to me that the world's most innovative societies are not strongly patriarchal or strongly matriarchal, they are somewhere in between or somewhere outside of that dimension entirely.
More options
Context Copy link
Thank you, thank you, thank you! I am so grateful for your straightforward explanation.
In arguing against the idea that women’s ability to garner sympathy is dangerous in itself, I find that I am in a similar situation to the one that Yair Rosenberg outlines here:
Similarly, if I point out the cruelty that might result from denying women a voice in the political process, someone who subscribes to the HBD-MRA viewpoint that you outline can simply respond that any traction I can get from such an argument is proof that people sympathise with women. Accordingly, women constitute a danger and need to be treated with less sympathy in order to neutralise this threat.
We need to prevent the possibility of a downward spiral in which any sign of sympathy for your opponents is proof of the danger that they pose. Basic human sympathy ought to apply to everyone. When the state has as much power as modern states almost always do, this means that the state needs to be able to have sympathy for everyone in it. This means that everyone needs to have some voice in the political process.
When women protest that they ought to have a voice in our debates over how society should be run, this is not in itself evidence that women are unreasonable and power-seeking. Nor does the fact that people sympathise with this argument constitute evidence of some kind of overwhelming persuasive power that women have. To claim either of these things is to participate, clearly, in a spiral of nonsympathy.
Thank you so much for your explanation. If your understanding of what I am trying to argue against illuminates any flaws in my response, then I welcome your insight. You can’t argue against what you don’t understand. I appreciate the opportunity you’ve given me.
But it doesn't. When was the last time you saw an argument gain traction in popular discourse that a policy should be enacted because it benefits men qua men?
Or, alternatively, the total power of the state over every facet of our lives might be trimmed a little bit around the edges. There is an argument to be made that more state control in our gynocentric society does primarily result in the preferences of women being taken care of first and foremost. This is what the somewhat cringey "longhouse" discourse on the right alludes to.
Well, I certainly support sympathy for men and policy measures designed to help men in areas where they are disproportionately struggling, and I am open to the idea of trimming back the power of the state over some facets of our lives. So although I don't believe we actually live in a "gynocentric society," we might well be able to come to an agreement on some individual changes!
I've avoided wading into this because I tend to be more sympathetic to your view (at least, your resistance against posters who think you should have few to zero rights). That said, I cannot help sympathizing with your critics on some points. I am sure that you, personally, are sincere about believing that the all-encompassing model of The Patriarchy does not mean individual men can't suffer. But -
Can you give any concrete examples of measures specifically to help men that you would not oppose? Especially if those measures might in some tiny way inconvenience or disadvantage a woman?
Saying "I support sympathy for men" is like saying "I think racism is bad." Okay, good for you. Do you want a cookie? Glad to know you don't think an entire class of people literally deserves no sympathy (and there are regular posters here who do believe that). But in what way would you be willing to "help men in areas where they are disproportionately suffering"? The answers I have almost always gotten from feminists are generally along the lines of "Yes, men can suffer, but women suffer more, so until we have corrected thousands of years of historical injustice and oppression against women, focusing specifically on men is putting our energy in the wrong place." It's very similar to the narrative of "anti-racists," that even if white people (for example) can sometimes be persecuted or disadvantaged, the overwhelming historical trend has been in the opposite direction, so until we have "ended racism," the white people who are now getting the short end of the stick just need to suck it up.
While I do not think the men, or white people, who respond with "Well, fuck you then" and turn hardcore MRA or white nationalist, are choosing the most productive way to engage with the problem, I do feel some sympathy for them and understand why there are more of them.
Hm, let me make a list of measures that I would either directly recommend or seriously consider. Not all of these will inconvenience or disadvantage women particularly, but a few of them should satisfy that also.
Repealing the "Dear Colleague" letter requiring "preponderance of evidence" standards for campus rape cases. I think there is sufficient evidence to show that this has led to unjust outcomes, and that in general allowing campuses to set their own standards based on the way they see things playing out in their local community makes more sense.
Opening up some/most domestic violence shelters to men. I know many radical feminists would prefer them to be all-female spaces, and of course J. K. Rowling famously made one that excludes trans women, just to make it feel extra safe to women who fear men particularly. Keeping a few single-sex spaces does make sense, in areas where the population density can support more than one. But men sometimes need a place to go when they have been abused, too, and when they're dealt with separately this can make it harder to build infrastructure.
Local community measures to give men places to meet and socialise with other men, such as the "Men's Shed" initiatives in Australia.
More physical activity in schools, to make the learning environment easier for high-energy children (who are often disproportionately boys).
Anti-suicide measures aimed at men.
Housing measures that pay particular care to the needs of homeless men.
There are probably more, but hopefully this provides a decent spectrum.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Well, I hear women say that a lot when pressed. But the issue is that men are often struggling in areas characterised by zero-sum conflict in which women have gained unfair advantages. Would you be in favour of abolishing implicit and explicit gender quotas; female-only scholarships, mentorship and career advancement programs as well as professorships; and DEI offices? Make family court fairer (which would mean women would get custody much less often and would be awarded less alimony)? Equalise public spending on health and social programs (which would mean that programs for women's health would receive less funding)? Make schools and universities more friendly for men (which would mean less coddling and abolishing Title IX shenanigans)? Change work place norms so that an accusation of sexual misconduct doesn't automatically result in social ostracism (which would mean that women who claim to be victims would face more scrutiny)? Etc. etc.
It all sounds great in abstract, but is usually met with fierce opposition when concrete policies are proposed.
I can agree with some of the things you ask for, here and there. For example, I agree that the top-down command to use a "preponderance of evidence" standard when evaluating campus rape cases has been shown to be a mistake, leading to unjust outcomes in some cases, perhaps particularly for men with social disadvantages of race and/or class.
There are also some places where I don't agree with your proposed remedy, but might agree with alternate ways to help men. For example, I don't agree with abolishing all female-only scholarships, but nor do I object to male-only scholarships, particularly in fields where men are underrepresented such as nursing or teaching.
Most importantly, though, I think there are some important consequences to the idea that everyone, including men, is deserving of a baseline level of sympathy. One of these is that we need to retire the idea that women don't have to work hard to understand what men are going through, because "society forces less powerful people (like women) to consider the point of view of more powerful people (like men)." That sort of statement is far too confident. Sympathy with someone who is different to you is actually quite hard. Moreover, not all men have power.
So, while I might not always agree with you on all of the issues you raise, I do agree that it's important for me to listen to your perspective as sympathetically as I can.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Created an account after lurking for a while just to add on to this comment. Another major consequence that @magic9mushroom missed in his current model is that at the end of the day society is built on men's strength. Pretty much every piece of critical infrastructure is created, installed and maintained by men. Their strength is the foundation on which society is built. The house you live in, the roads you travel on with your car, the internet cables, etc. As more and more check out of society for various reasons the more the foundation cracks and we revert back to the first model. Humanity has already exploited all the easy to reach minerals and energy in our current rise, a fall will be one that we most likely never a rise from again.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link