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I think the decline in fertility below 2.1 (replacement rate) can be directly linked to modern day feminism and women's rights. However, what I have noticed is that rich female friendly nations do far better in terms of birth rate than rich conservative strict gender role societies.
For example - France has a fertility rate around 1.8. 1.7 for the US. Germany 1.4.
In the east with more strict gender norms the rich societies however have far more abysmal fertility rates - Japan 1.3, South Korea 0.8, Taiwan 1.1, Singapore 1.2.
Now one may argue that the decline in fertility rate is not due to feminism and women's emancipation but rather due to improvements in wealth of society. However, a counterpoint to this is that faster modernizing societies; in terms of becoming more feminist, tend to have declining fertility rates even when not wealthy nations.
Example- Nepal - 1.8, India - 2.0-2.1.
Based on the above data I would posit that feminist societies result in fertility rates declining to below replacement rates, but once a country is wealthy it is far worse for the population to remain conservative than for it to be a feminist nation due to the fact that conservative rich nations do far worse on population growth than feminist nations.
Conclusion - modern feminism doomed/ saved human civilization to constant steady population decline and that's the best case scenario for population demographics from all the options currently available.
Thoughts?
I see an obvious problem with your analysis: perhaps, regardless of feminism or wealth, the east and the west have different sexual norms and fertility baselines.
Let me add on where I am coming from to enhance understanding.
I do not see a problem with population decline itself.
The problem is that a population decline above a certain rate would always result in a socio-economic collapse.
Add on to this the fact that after a certain point a country ends up being too small in numbers to be able to compete well with it's competitors if those other countries maintain long term higher numbers.
Now, as you said different countries have different sexual norms and fertility baselines. However, far as I can tell, any country that starts to align its laws with western women's rights ideals tends to see it's fertility rate drop faster than countries that have no to little contact with such ideologies.
This itself is again not the problem, the issue is that by the end of the day fertility decline beyond a certain threshold results in national instability and decay risks increasing.
Plus on a more personal note, I have never been a fan of death cults, not even those that actively speak of freedoms and liberty.
Adding on to this the fact that modern day feminism appears to me as one of the rare ideologies which place motherhood on the back burner as a worthwhile or celebratory value. Going as far as to not only deny it's value but to actively celebrate single independent livelihoods as the sole aspiration.
I could be wrong in my interpretation however and would like to hear your thoughts on that.
My thoughts are that feminism began as a misguided quest to treat women like men, then was adopted by bitter harridans and predatory men who realized the sexual revolution and increasing destruction of traditional mindsets would secure them steady supplies of consequence-free young pussy (a boon for the latter) at the expense of the stability and health of our previous culture (a boon for the former).
The goal of feminism is to let women be the type of men they've always hated. It's no surprise this suffocates fertility.
Disagree unless you mean be given the same basic rights as men. Then the same financial and social freedoms as men. Acting like men was a very 2010's thing.
Disagree. 1960's feminism had a whimsical quality to it which would have genuinely attracted many followers who wanted to see the world be a nicer place.
There weren't enough harridans in that time period. Most incels actually came to be in recent decades only.
That appears to have been the trend of only the newest wave of feminism.
I believe you are making the mistake of taking current day attitudes and extending them through previous historical time periods to come to conclusions as to what they were about.
No, the old waves I mentioned as the misguided quest.
If feminism misguided then why South Korea collapsing first?
I haven't thought about OP's argument enough to have an actual opinion on it, but feminism in South Korea is heavily influenced by Megalia and WOMAD, which are basically 4chan-level cesspools with all sorts of insanity.
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