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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   37410 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...

Louise Perry (a British 'reactionary feminist') argues that agency is distributed on a bell curve, with some people being very agentic and some people being very passive/conformist. She also acknowledges that young women are particularly conformist, and so more vulnerable to doing things that are socially promoted (Louise was talking about Only Fans) even if they are damaging to the woman in question.

It's easy to focus on young women having sex because it's titillating, but I'm happy to accept the premise that lots of people need protection from their own choices by the state/society. Whether that means banning sports betting, making it harder to get drugs/alcohol, or for parents to stop their daughters from making poor choices about who to sleep with.

The state is a blunt instrument, of course, so it's better to have it regulate concrete things like gambling than messy things like sex.

The idea of an agency bell curve is intriguing. It seems to make a lot of intuitive sense when one acknowledges that IQ is a bell curve and that people also have broadly identifiable personality traits - neuroticism, openness etc.

I do not want to see the State, however, making decisions in relation to the agency bell curve. IMHO, the State dictates the limits to the playing field - laws are, mostly, what you can't do at the outer extremes. No killing, no theft of property, you have to conform to contracts you've entered into. Other than that, let culture and subculture take precedence.

If you want to adhere to cultural norms that place no penalty on pre-marital promiscuity, this is fine. If you feel you ought to have your father's consent before you are married, that's also fine. Cultures and subcultures that do a better job of fostering pro-social systems and reinforcement loops should, naturally, win out over time.

I think one of the meta-narratives on the Motte is that when the State thumbs the scale on one side or the other of the culture war, that's always bad.

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