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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   35083 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 28, 2022

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(b) Because the complex modern State depends for its very existence on naval and military power, diplomacy, finance, and the great mining, constructive, shipping and transport industries, in none of which can women take any practical part. Yet it is upon these matters, and the vast interests involved in them, that the work of Parliament largely turns.

(c) Because by the concession of the local government vote and the admission of women to County and Borough Councils, the nation has opened a wide sphere of public work and influence to women, which is within their powers. To make proper use of it, however, will tax all the energies that women have to spare, apart from the care of the home and the development of the individual life.

...

(g) Because, finally, the danger which might arise from the concession of woman-suffrage, in the case of a State burdened with such complex and far-reaching responsibilities as England, is out of all proportion to the risk run by those smaller communities which have adopted it. The admission to full political power of a number of voters debarred by nature and circumstances from the average political knowledge and experience open to men, would weaken the central governing forces of the State, and be fraught with peril to the country.

A few choice cuts from the English Anti-Suffragist platform.

Every time this brand of gender-relations pessimism comes up, I have the same incredulous reaction, and I think it comes down to one underlying sentiment:

It seems that we are in the perfect storm

We have seen this one before. The anti-suffragists were sure voting would tear apart a fragile equilibrium between the sexes. They asserted the existing division of manual and domestic labor was not only stable, but optimal, and any changes would be disastrous for the State. If TFR data was available in 1910, I imagine it would have been quite the talking point, but without it, they could only mutter about “taxing of energies.” Their confidence was preserved for posterity on the public record, not just in the ephemera of YouTube comments.

So when you suggest that this time, TikTok is going to do what the assembly line could not, that influencers are more reflective of a culture than yellow journalism, that our economic circumstances are more stressful than two World Wars and a Great Depression? I remain skeptical. The fabric of society isn’t as fragile as you think.

The anti-suffragists were sure voting would tear apart a fragile equilibrium between the sexes.

But they were right, though. I'd call prohibition, which was a very gendered issue and the major suffragette policy issue, a huge disruptive to the body politic.

Suffrage did though. Gender relations are permanently changed, no one can come up with a way to combine liberated women and high TFR(and even if the selection hypothesis is true, it appears to just be selecting for women who choose ‘babies’ over ‘liberation’), and the male labor force participation rate did drop and no one knows how to raise it again.

Is it possible that there’s alternative reasons? Yes, but suffrage was an inflection point.

Do you really think, though, that doing away with votes for women is going to make the pendulum swing back? The kind of rainbow hair dye septum-pierced college activist types are possibly not voting, but that doesn't stop them setting up all kinds of campaigns. Would AOC go back to the kitchen (or cocktail bar) if she couldn't be elected and couldn't even vote?

Yeah, women have to take responsibility for what happened, but so do men. The Sexual Revolution was something both sexes wanted; men wanted it for 'free love' where they wouldn't have to marry a chick just to fuck her, wouldn't have to run the risk of a kid they'd have to support (because yay contraception and later on abortion), and they'd be able to play the field, sow their wild oats, and not be held back or tied down by boring suburban domesticity with a wife and kids. Women wanted it because hey, women get horny too, they didn't want marriage and kids off the bat either, and they were being told they should aspire to have the same freedoms as men did in all aspects of their live.

Don't marry without trying out the goods first, how can you be sure you'll have a happy marriage if you find out you're not sexually compatible? Without living together, how will you know that you'll get on together? And only one sexual partner in your entire life? You'll regret this later on, you'll be resentful about missing out on all the great experiences you could have had. And men and women will understand each other better, be more friendly, once they are all frank and open about sex and there are no more taboos or restrictions.

At some stage in their lives, everyone is young and horny and wants fun without strings or complications, and they think everyone else is having all the fun, and they're reading magazines and newspaper articles and seeing movies and TV shows about all the great, fun, non-vanilla non-missionary sex everyone else is having, you could be having that too. Then they bump into reality (not everybody gets to have that) and they are resentful, because they were promised this! They were told that love and romance and sex were the greatest pleasures and the most important things in life, and they deserved it all!

How many 20 year old men really want to get married, settle down, and start a family at that age? How many women? I would wager not very many, because this is the modern world we live in now. Get an education first. Get a good job. Get that career. Make something of yourself before even thinking of permanent relationships. But also have a long-term relationship, because only losers can't get a partner. Contradictory messaging, and no recognition of the hard truth that some people will never have that, no matter how they want it, because they're too ugly or too weird or they are misfits in some way. They don't even have to be "crazy homeless on the streets" level, but some people are fat or short or plain or have odd interests or are socially inept because of personality disorders (very mild ones) and all the coaching in the world and advice about "dress better, eat healthy, lift!" is not going to get them what they want. Men and women both.

I don't think 20 year olds should be getting married, but neither do I think 12 year olds should even be thinking of boyfriends/girlfriends and dating. But we have to teach them all about it, because of course they'll be having sex, because that's our modern world and there's no such thing as "no, you're too young and I have the authority to stop you". Or at least, that's the argument from the great liberal campaign to give everyone freedoms and rights and happiness.

Don't marry without trying out the goods first, how can you be sure you'll have a happy marriage if you find out you're not sexually compatible? Without living together, how will you know that you'll get on together? And only one sexual partner in your entire life? You'll regret this later on, you'll be resentful about missing out on all the great experiences you could have had.

This makes intuitive sense but is straight up modern western bullshit and is not borne out by the facts. See this article here: https://marriagefoundation.org.uk/research/does-religion-help-couples-stay-together/

Now research shows that Muslim women are the most likely religious group to be in a long-term, happy relationship.

The report by Marriage Foundation, the think tank dedicated to promoting stable families, is the first ever in the UK to explore the links between religious associations and relationship stability using Millennium Cohort Study data collected from almost 15,000 mothers.

Muslim women were found to favour marriage more than any other religious group. Ninety-four per cent of Muslim women are married compared to only 79 per cent of Christian mothers and 59 per cent of non-religious mothers.

The report rules out the explanation that Muslim women stay with their husband because they are in some way repressed. It finds 31 per cent more Muslim mothers report high relationship happiness compared to non-Muslim mothers.

Sir Paul Coleridge, chair and founder of Marriage Foundation, commented: “These findings are truly startling. It appears at first counter intuitive that Muslim women have such successful relationships when many are in arranged marriages.

“In fact, Muslims in arranged marriages have many of the ingredients for a really successful long term marriage. They enter marriage without artificial and unreal ‘celebrity’ expectations or a belief that they merely have to bump into a perfect partner and from then on no effort will be needed.

“In time the ‘perfect partner’ inevitably disappoints. This group on the other hand have no unreal expectations and from the word go, really work hard and fashion their relationship out of the material they are given.

“Doubtless it is in part a consequence of this that they are over 30 per cent more fulfilled and happy than their western sisters.

Note that is is just comparing between UK women, so it's not like some of the women are in highly repressive societies with little legal recourse if their relationships go bad, everyone being compared here has the same level of legal protection available.

And yet the group that does best long term is one where sleeping around is one of the biggest taboos there is and people only ever cohabit after getting married. The reason behind this is that we have a totally different mindset to what marriage is supposed to be than westerners (e.g. for us it's expected and encouraged for you to change your partner to suit you better and vice versa, while westerners would consider that to be manipulation) and it turns out that our mindset is superior in the long run.

Do you really think, though, that doing away with votes for women is going to make the pendulum swing back?

Well, yes, it probably would. I think the folks who unironically want to revoke women's suffrage are entirely correct that it did, and continues to, radically alter society.

Whether this is a good thing or not is a matter of perspective. But we'd definitely be less liberal and very much less woke without the women's vote.

I didn’t claim that undoing women’s right to vote would undo all this. I merely pointed out that the anti-suffragettes were correct about what happened.

And, BTW, teach your kids not to have sex and stick to it actually works pretty well, it’s just no one is willing to do it- mainstream conservatives think it’s too hard, and mainstream liberals wrote it off without trying.

To be clear, I don’t deny that the early 20th century saw radical change in Western gender relations. Whether those were downstream of suffrage or of information technology or of massive casualties is kind of a moot point. Four generations later, though, we’re still ticking, and even enjoyed a couple years of uncontested hegemony.

What is it about TikTok that will push birth rates further than suffrage? Than women’s lib?

Birth rates are already unsustainably low.

No one knows how to fix this. I mean, sure, we could have some kind of radical theocracy. But that’s not going to happen. And considering oliganthropia has always been the Achilles heel of hegemonic civilizations and no amount of foederati or immigration amnesty has ever been able to fix it, that seems like a pretty big problem that got let out of the box, and no one has any idea how to deal with it.

Four generations later, though, we’re still ticking

Except his point is that we never actually got to some new, equilibrium as you're implying. This isn't like Christianity replacing paganism and religious life just continuing on; it's more like the collapse of religion in the 20th and 21th century. At least right now.

In terms of fertility rate we're still "ticking" but it was never fixed. The birth rate is below replacement in most industrialized societies with serious potential consequences

This is akin to saying, of climate change, "yes, we thought it was doom and gloom when we wondered how to feed the horses but we came up with coal. We thought we would have to burn coal but we came up with more effective recycling and nuclear power". Yes, we did. Things did improve. But the underlying issue is unsolved. We're still degenerating, on a climate level.

Why isn’t it like the early Christian days? Or the Protestant reformation, or similar secular upheavals. Everything has serious potential consequences, and yet—here we are, arguing about literal First World Problems. We can and will make it through the current milquetoast social upheaval.

This isn't like Christianity replacing paganism and religious life just continuing on

Pictured, life just continuing on

I specifically put "religious life" in there to account for such a response.

I thought I was being silly with my endless qualifications that always bloat my posts.

You're right, Augustine wrote one of the most important books in Christian theology specifically to help contemporaries deal with the fall of Rome intellectually because it wasn't important and everything was going on as usual.

My response is: and a lot of the Bible was written in response to the disasters against Assyria and Babylon.

Apocalypticism is a result of the failures against the Greeks and Rome which were so bad that many basically decided that the world would have to end - and soon- in order to resolve them. Instead of simply abandoning their faith (like us, increasingly) they found a new interpretation.

Apologetic responses to geopolitical disaster are a part of religious life continuing. That's what religion does. It doesn't - inherently- mean that religion is actually at risk of not continuing.

The Babylonian Exile didn't lead to the abandoning of Judaism, it lead to its creation.

It seems like the bone of contention here is the "just" in "just continuing on" so I'll just retract it: of course there was upheaval and the word implies a more cavalier attitude than intended. What I meant was that Christianity undid the Temples and pagan life but it replaced it with a self-sustaining, alternate hegemonic religious framework (that inherited a lot too). Maybe we will settle on a similar framework ourselves but what seems to be happening is that Christianity is degenerating and we don't seem to have a new hegemonic religious system

Similarly, we haven't actually replaced the fertility regime we had with a self-sustaining one, we simply punted the problem. Thus we're closer to the "Rise of the Nones" situation today than a "Conversion of Constantine".

Surprised we got so deep in the weeds of this analogy.

Surprised we got so deep in the weeds of this analogy.

I love getting deep into the weeds from throwaway quips.

Isaiah 36:18 {General of the King of Assyria Speaking, Hezekiah being the current king in Jerusalem}

18 Beware lest Hezekiah persuade you, saying, the Lord will deliver us. Hath any of the gods of the nations delivered his land out of the hand of the king of Assyria?

19 Where are the gods of Hamath and Arphad? where are the gods of Sepharvaim? and have they delivered Samaria out of my hand?

20 Who are they among all the gods of these lands, that have delivered their land out of my hand, that the Lord should deliver Jerusalem out of my hand?

Your point about what we understand as Judaism flowing from the Babylonian captivity, and Christianity surviving the fall of Rome, are true; what you miss is that they are extraordinary. Where are the gods of Hamath and Arphad? They died, their people went into captivity and their religions died. The survival of a religion past the destruction and enslavement of its homeland is historically rare, typically conquest leads to the death of the culture and the assimilation of its people, at best the gods might survive in syncretic form.* The bane and the brothers of the late Romans, Persian Zoroastrianism would be consigned to the margins by the Muslim conquest of Persia, only remnants remain scattered abroad.

So, in a sense, you are right that religious life just kept right on, it is possible to tell the history of Christianity from a 10,000ft view without dwelling on the fall of Rome. But that skates over how extraordinary it is, the effort it took from great men, from saints and prophets and doctors of the church, to make that happen. Christianity and Judaism underwent many changes that allowed them to survive, the readings of the old texts are different and new texts and doctrines had to be invented. To say from a contemporary perspective that everything just went right along is conflating major differences.

*Ovid, Virgil and Plutarch, three of my favorite classical authors, were explicitly trying to tie the now dominant Roman culture to the now-enslaved but beautiful and profound Greek culture. In many ways, in the form of the Greek speaking Eastern empire centered on Constantinople, the Greek hybrid culture would outlive the Latin culture of Rome itself. But that was another tremendous effort by a collection of geniuses. We still have the schoolboy assignments from great Roman leaders asking whether Alexander could have conquered Rome!

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