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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   36635 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 20, 2025

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It seems that the vibe has definitely shifted in politics and general social spaces, as many folks last week commented on here. People are more open to using language that used to be termed offensive, right-wing political statements are more in vogue, etc.

I'm curious specifically what all of this means for feminism, and the gender war subset of the larger Culture War. I saw an interesting piece which blew up on X lately, that, in discussing the Neil Gaiman situation, argues:

Shapiro spends a lot of time thumbing the scale like this, and for good reason: without the repeated reminders that sexual abuse is so confusing and hard to recognize, to the point where some victims go their whole lives mistaking a violent act for a consensual one, most readers would look at Pavlovich's behavior (including the "it was wonderful" text message as well as her repeated and often aggressive sexual overtures toward Gaiman) and conclude that however she felt about the relationship later, her desire for him was genuine at the time — or at least, that Gaiman could be forgiven for thinking it was. To make Pavlovich a more sympathetic protagonist (and Gaiman a more persuasive villain), the article has to assert that her seemingly self-contradictory behavior is not just understandable but reasonable. Normal. Typical. If Pavlovich lied and said a violent act was consensual (and wonderful), that's just because women do be like that sometimes.

Obviously, this paradigm imposes a very weird, circular trap on men (#BelieveWomen, except the ones who say they want to sleep with you, in which case you should commence a Poirot-style interrogation until she breaks down and confesses that she actually finds you repulsive.) But I'm more interested in what happens to women when they're cast in this role of society's unreliable narrators: so vulnerable to coercion, and so socialized to please, that even the slightest hint of pressure causes the instantaneous and irretrievable loss of their agency.

The thing is, if women can’t be trusted to assert their desires or boundaries because they'll invariably lie about what they want in order to please other people, it's not just sex they can't reasonably consent to. It's medical treatments. Car loans. Nuclear non-proliferation agreements. Our entire social contract operates on the premise that adults are strong enough to choose their choices, no matter the ambient pressure from horny men or sleazy used car salesmen or power-hungry ayatollahs. If half the world's adult population are actually just smol beans — hapless, helpless, fickle, fragile, and much too tender to perform even the most basic self-advocacy — everything starts to fall apart, including the entire feminist project. You can't have genuine equality for women while also letting them duck through the trap door of but I didn't mean it, like children, when their choices have unhappy outcomes.

Now many linkers and commentators on X are basically arguing - why yes, women don't have agency, and that's why most cultures have reflected that in law and social practice. I think this sort of smugly satisfied mocking of women is in quite poor taste, and not likely to be productive, but there is a deeper point in there. Unfortunately it seems that, even after decades of propaganda, rewriting of tons of laws, giving women voting power, dismantling "oppressive" cultural structures like religion, etc. etc., we still as a society are not able to treat women as adults with agency, and consequences for their actions.

Now a progressive might come in and say - ok, fine we do still struggle with this issue, but hey, it's because of bad social programming! Just give us another 100 years and we will totally hold women responsible just like men, we promise!

That has basically been the progressive line to justify going further and further to the left with social and legal programs. Problem for them is, with the vibe shift I mentioned earlier, I think that argument is running out of steam. The average person no longer seems to be convinced that this is just a cultural problem which will go away.

So, where do we go from here? Do you think feminism will actually be rolled back in a meaningful way? I'm skeptical myself, but I'm also skeptical we will magically start holding women accountable. Not sure what happens next...

People choose to take on too much frivolous debt and destroy their lives. Is the whole lending project dead? Should the media no longer write op-eds about payday loans with a 400% ARP? The average person no longer seems to be convinced that this is just a cultural problem which will go away.

That Pavlovich bird does not a summer make. There are global differences in median male and female traits, but I see no reason to treat them differently under the laws of a free society. Globally, men are vastly more violent, more likely to abuse drugs and alcohol, get into gambling debt, fall victim to romance and finance scams. We somehow manage to treat them like adults. I've never even heard it argued that we should do otherwise which is weird.

But it's not weird. Men treating women as having less agency, and also women claiming less responsibility, has been normal throughout human history. Women have more agency and responsibility than children, but less than men. At the same time, exceptions have always been recognized (some women, and even some children, have more agency and responsibility than some men). However, not until the last few decades has anyone tried to reorganize society and culture around the exceptions rather than the norm. This is natural human social behavior. Fundamentally, a woman crying is psychologically (and even physiologically) more like a child crying than a man crying, and that matters more than any ideological principles or even the letter of the law.

My personal preference is for the classical liberal ideal of legal equality but cultural inequality. However, that does not seem to have been a very stable equilibrium. It seems humans as constituted are unable to cope in that kind of world. There is no returning to the past, but the future will not look like the present (if only because birthrates among these cultural groups are unsustainable).

Of course the sexes are unequal. This is undeniable. But I have yet to hear any argument why basic rights should differ. What is being proposed here is an anathema to classical liberalism. Sure, people are free to debate the cultural inequality of agency or roles between men an women, so long as they're treated equally under the law. If it wants to fit into classically liberalism, the individual takes precedent over group based rights.

Women demonstrate more agency than men when it comes to getting romance or finance scammed, abusing drugs and alcohol, or murdering people. Of course, it doesn't follow that we should take the vote away form men, or consider them children. Men are full adults, and are responsible for their choices. So is Pavlovich.

They don't show more agency, they don't do those "bad" things. Agency is actively making choices that don't strictly follow others. This is the same mistake as thinking someone too incapable to commit crime virtuous.

Avoiding those bad things requires agency, and women demonstrate more of it than men in those contexts. This is true around the world. In general, males show greater impulsivity in both humans and lab animals. Nobody has argued for a broad societal reconsideration of whether men are adults. People would laugh that argument out of the room.

Is there a problem with women claiming a sexual encounter was consensual, and arguing for a take-back some time later? Absolutely. Does it follow that we should seriously consider whether women are adults? No. Thats insane.

Nobody has argued for a broad societal reconsideration of whether men are adults

Everyone who has uttered the words "the brain doesn't finish development until you're 25" is making this argument.

It's not laughed out of the room.

My usual remark is along the lines of "the brain isn't finished development until you enter senescence". But most people seem to believe that nonsense.

But most people seem to believe that nonsense.

It’s just modern phrenology.

To the extent that observation constitutes an argument, its completely different. Any serious proposal to push back legal adulthood to 25 is generally laughed at as an impractical nanny state absurdity. Men demonstrate less agency in some areas, women in others. Why consider one adults, and not the other.

Why consider one adults, and not the other.

Because man bad, woman good. Young men are also more physically disorderly than young women (despite 48% of population, overwhelming majority of violent crime), so you can sell it as risk control.

Any serious proposal to push back legal adulthood to 25 is generally laughed at as an impractical nanny state absurdity

It's certainly laughed at less than any proposals to lower the age of adulthood, which suggests the average person believes it should be higher.

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