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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   22540 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 14, 2025

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Nature itself thinks men are as valuable as women. Slightly prefers them even, at 1.05 to 1.

More are produced. This does not make them more valuable; more Honda Civics are produced than Porsche 911s, after all. Slightly later in life, it makes them far less valuable.

Both have value. I’m just pushing back against the view that most men have no value while all women have huge, elon musk level value. Usually this theory of value is backed by nothing more than an island hypothetical, with unlimited resources and no enemies.

The usual formulation is that women have value for what they are, and men have value for what they do. This does not give all women huge, Elon Musk level value.

Musk-level value was OP’s analogy, but the problem with your framing is that the being women are valued for is actually a doing, the producing of children.

Doing has obvious value, I’m not sure being has value. Valued for being could just be an echo, a reminder of someone’s past, real doing-value, like the late aristocrats who were once warriors.

I don't think the Birkenhead drill only applies if the women in question aren't barren. Of course the value bestowed upon women is ultimately an evolutionary adaptation to the reality that only women can bear children. But in practice, even barren women are still seen as Wonderful™ in a way that NEET men aren't.

The birkenhead drill is not rationally justified, is my point. I doubt it would apply today, and I certainly wouldn’t go along with it if it did. Of course some people may still worship the ground women walk on like they used to worship cows, a sacred tree, or a magical stone.

I wasn't debating whether it was rationally justified. It's simply a fact of human nature that most men feel an instinctive urge to protect female people from physical harm (an urge they do not feel when it comes to male people, or at least not nearly to the same extent), and that this urge does not discriminate on whether the woman in question is capable of bearing children or not. Indeed, I suspect the average man would think it was a far graver crime to assault an elderly (i.e. menopausal) woman than a woman in her early twenties. So your claim that women are only valued for a "doing" (i.e. the ability to bear children) doesn't really seem to describe male psychology accurately.

I think people are whitewashing their political opinions by calling them ‘facts of human nature’. You say most men feel an instinctive urge to protect female people from physical harm, but in numerous cultures it was normal to beat women. In honor cultures, even related men can kill them for a smile. Obviously rape was widespread, etc. This isn’t the feminist litany of oppression, men suffered terribly too. I just don’t think you can look at all that and see the instinctive urge to protect women. And I personally don’t feel the discriminatory urge to save a random woman over a random man.

Indeed, I suspect the average man would think it was a far graver crime to assault an elderly (i.e. menopausal) woman than a woman in her early twenties.

That's because they are less of a threat, like a child, or a cripple. Doesn't have anything to do with the inherent biological value of women.

I think people are whitewashing their political opinions by calling them ‘facts of human nature’.

Is/ought distinction. I never said it's a good thing that most men feel an instinctive protective urge towards female people (regardless of their capacity for bearing children), I only said that they do, in fact, feel this.

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