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Notes -
Married women are happy when they are treated as partners, not dogs on a leash.
There's some interesting research showing that Lesbian marriages are more likely to end in divorce than heterosexual ones, and male-male marriages divorce less often.
I dunno, if women are even less able to sustain a relationship if their partner is a woman, it indicates that they're not very good at being a 'partner' at all.
And its still very odd gotten less satisified with life even as they have more rights than before
I suggest you're missing some critical factor.
And no this isn't a calling for women to be reduced to chattel. My whole perspective is that the spouses differing roles are complementary, but across the board the male will tend to be the one best-equipped to make decisions for the family as a whole.
Its pointing out that your thesis isn't very explanatory of why women are LESS happy despite MORE concessions than ever, and why women who DO find men to lead them tend to be less neurotic and more happy.
This doesn't necessarily determine how EVERY marriage should be run, of course.
Three sentences earlier:
The perspective explicit in this statement, and implicit in most other trad apologia, is not "men are good at some things and women are good at other things, so they should both stick to what they're good at", but rather "women are bad at everything other than their biological prerogative, so they ought to stay in their lane while the men handle everything else of import". Through this lens, women are "complementary" to men only insofar as the servant complements his master. Although modern trads are always quick to assure us that they mean no such thing, learned men of ancient times understood this:
Edit: I haven't ever seen this point made, but classical liberalism is a statement of value-finder supremacy. This is distinct from communism and fascism, which are worker-supremacy movements (when workers are in oversupply or undersupply, respectively), and monarchism/oligarchy, which are goal-setter/manager-supremacy movements.
This is why classical liberal societies (and those inspired by them) all converged on this viewpoint.
Sure, but the excuse made to constantly assert this is that X designates servant, and further, used as an excuse to be lazy about/completely ignore that's a deadweight loss if a master X (or a servant not-X re: Peter Principle) exists.
This is why societies that are sufficiently mercantile tend to be the freest ones, since the base condition of what allows them to be so mercantile is a deficit of laborers to produce whatever it is they sell. They're more concerned about exercising and expressing natural talents because encouraging more of that makes the society more productive, rather than a dirt-poor society where that would be a net-negative due to lack of resources or market.
(Also, if you're a Christian society there tends to be an associated meme of actively checking for overlooked potential for what ultimately comes down to... better service. The US is obsessed with underdogs partially for this reason.)
to the trads: they already know that, stop rubbing it in, that's only making it worse
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This is a reality that I think any honest feminist has to deal with. Is feminism about freedom for women, or is it about a better life for women, as measured by their own personal satisfaction? It would be an incredibly convenient world if prioritizing the former led to the latter, but the evidence seems quite clear that it is not the case and, in fact, there's strong reason to believe that it leads to the opposite of the latter.
And, as a feminist, I find it very easy to square: feminism should prioritize freedom (to equalize it between the sexes) over life satisfaction, and the costs to the women whose lives are now less satisfying due to feminism (but more free) is worth it for the benefit to the women whose lives are both more satisfying and more free. I just wish more feminists would openly and honestly acknowledge and state as such, that there will be tradeoffs, because there always are, and that some people deserve to suffer not because they're morally or ethically bad or whatever, but merely because they lack the wisdom/intelligence/etc. to make choices that lead to better outcomes for themselves when given the freedom to do so, compared to the alternative where they were not given the freedom.
This, of course, applies not just to feminism but more broadly to most/all liberalizing/libertarian ideologies. And the same criticisms as above apply just as well to those.
One still has to grapple with the fact that the women who are now less satisfied with their lives, and having less children, and voting for policies that tend to disrupt productive economic activity in favor of redistribution.
So they are ultimately selecting against the continued maintenance of an advanced civilization.
And advanced civilization appears to be a prerequisite for women having anything resembling equality with men.
If that's the case, then its simply not a sustainable equilibrium, and the ultimate collapse is going to be way worse for future women's interests.
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Sure, but feminists generally square this circle by going
and note that this is the same as
and the way this is legitimized to a people who otherwise aren't just cartoon-villain evil is with varying other justifications that center around how being X is the best proxy for "lacking the wisdom/intelligence/etc. to make choices that lead to better outcomes". This usually takes the form of some scientific justification (melanin, testosterone, brain development, etc.). It generally works quite well for people of not-X, and the moral hazard for continuing that state of affairs leans in their direction.
By contrast,
is the liberal view, and liberals who still call themselves feminists are pointing at a legacy where this was at one point true for their group (or are low-information enough to believe it's still a problem especially thanks to those who work to generate the above justifications), but because they're just better than average human beings, their tendency to be sympathetic to those who claim to be on the low side of that moral hazard until they are crushed to death by a literal army of concern trolls.
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