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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   Edited 1yr ago   34406 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 14, 2022

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I am convinced that the Sex Divide is the greatest political engine of today, and that a big chunk of the culture war is based on the existance of this divide, and the inability of society to understand that political differences between males and females have an enormous biological basis.

After I finally understood this concept, I began to "notice", being always passionate about politics and speaking about it, that the discourses and the nature of the topic I discussed with people were and are heavily genderized.

Having a political or cultural discussion with a female is, in general, radically different from having one with a male, not only regarding the topics of interests per se (males more interested in economics or raw politics, female more interested in immigration, equality or similar topics), but also regarding "how" to approach a discussion.

I feel way more free talking with males, because I always had the impression, confirmed 95% of the times, that I can be more open and direct with what I felt without receiving a backslash, that can be personal (simply the person screaming at you or hating you) or social (person beginning to talk with other people in your social network) (NB: I am not American and I do not live in a very polarized society). Apart from the political extremists and activists that you can meet, the following things happened often:

  • Me and the other male have a disagreement, that can be harsh or about an hot topic, but that resolve itself in a shake of hand.

  • We disagree on a lot of topic, but also agree on other ones, making the discussion constructive in itself.

  • I discover that the other male have a lot of, uh, hidden opinions that he does not reveal in his network, often because of female backslash.

In general, I love to talk about politics or culture with other middle or low class males, because I always "received" something in exchange after the discussion, something that can be a new reflection on a topic, an earnest discovering of new knowledge, or simply understanding more some concepts.

Meanwhile, apart from a selected group of very close female friends and a selected other few, almost all the discussion with females ended with a disaster. In spite of me trying to move in a different manner, being more gentle and less direct, and understanding that I need to adapt to other people when I talk about something, the discussions simply does not start well and end well. What happens is:

  • We have a disagreement, and at this point the discussion or close itself ("It is useless to continue, why we should?") or degenerate in a very uncomfortable discussion where the woman put herself as an emotional victim of what we are talking about.

  • If the discussion does not degenerate but continues, it is always redirected to morality or feeling or about a generic "natural law". At this point if I try to redirect the discussion negating the opposing point (I do not agree with your morality or I do not care about this morality) it simply degenerate again in a morality context, where your worth as individual is put on a public pedestal.

The result of all of this, after years of experience... is that I do not talk about these kind of topics with women anymore, apart from a selected few. When I have this kind of conversation I always strive for earning something, that can be knowledge, human connection or shared experiences. Why doing these with women, when the things that you can earn are statistically negative?

Adding to what I said, I also need to mention that, after lowering down the kind of topics and approaches that I have with women, both my dating life and romantic life radically improved. I do not know if it is a coincidence or not.

Is it always females and males you discourse with, or do you ever talk to women and men? Or is that only for us ordinary types who don't know nuthin' 'bout no smart person stuff, Miz Scarlett?

EDIT: Apologies, it may be down to English as a second language that you use "females and males", I see that you do use "women" further down. But using "I speak to males" sounds like a bad attempt at a social science experiment, not how people generally conduct themselves in ordinary life.

  • -35

I think consistent use of either "male"/"female" or "men"/"women" is alright. The only use that really trips my red-flag-o-meter is the mixed "men"/"female" usage, which isn't here.

I am not an English Native, and in my language male-female is a normal thing to say or write.

This is a good post, but just as an aside - any female between 17 and 30 you should call a woman, and any female over 30 you should call a girl. As you say, youth is a more important thing for women than men, a lot of the time any way you bring it up will feel like a judgement, because they are so used to seeing women being judged by society along the age axis.

So for ladies under 30, calling them young makes them suspect you are patronising them, or implying incompetence, because the media tells them this is how it is used. Over 30 though, it goes the other way - the media tells them that 30 is too old, that no man will want them and that being called a woman isn't a sign of respect, it's a way to differentiate between the fuckable and not. So if you want to add more happiness to the world, call ladies under 30 women, and ladies over 30 girl. And call all men matey.

This is a totally meaningless thing to get upset about, saying females and males is fine.

While I think this seems like an overreaction, I strongly disagree that using "males" and "females" instead of "men" and "women" is "fine."

It might not be worth starting fights over, but it's a weird drift happening for no good reason

"Male" and "female" are often preferable when you don't want to imply that you are excluding certain ages, as man/woman/boy/girl does.

What language is that? Because yeah, that definitely sounds like it could bias you. I don't disagree with you that it is wrongly believed more sophisticated than it is, or that it's not particularly appealing aesthetically, but it definitely feels like those who object to 'male and female' as descriptors are way more aggravated than ugly word choice or psuedo intellectualism usually inspires.

It seemed pretty obvious to me that Armin was a) not speaking his native tongue and b) trying to reduce the emotional load of the discussion by using dry language. In English male and female are just synonyms for men and women - generally kind of clinical synonyms, but the opposite of emotionally loaded. Also we already have too few synonyms for men and women, male and female is better than outies and innies.

In English male and female are just synonyms for men and women

No, they're supersets. And the aggravation is because they're ambiguous supersets. "Male" also includes boys and "female" also includes girls (which makes them tempting words to use when you need to refer to a wide range of ages and "guys" or "gals" sounds too silly) ... but "male" and "female" also include non-humans (which means it's just about impossible to remove at least a tiny level of insulting connotation from them).

I'm not sure why the level isn't always tiny; at some point after the Scopes Monkey Trial we should have become able to occasionally notice that Homo Sapiens is a subgroup of Animalia without anybody rushing for smelling salts. But instead the popularity of "males" and "females" is going down after little popularity increase, and the old usage of the terms to talk about homologies has fallen way behind the Overton Window.

You're right, and I shouldn't have said they were the opposite of emotionally loaded - that's how it used to be in some places (that was how I was taught to use them in school in the nineties) but it isn't the case these days. It annoys me that I can't readily use terms that are accurate and widely understood because some people react (in my eyes) bizarrely to them, and I want to understand where the disconnect lies without assuming they are just over reacting.

The term "white male" appears quite a lot. This may be where some of it comes from.

This is pointlessly heated and antagonistic. Don't do this.

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