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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 3, 2025

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Gentlemen of The Motte! We have often been led into discussion about What Is Wrong With Women Today? arising out of topics from directly dealing with the current crisis of male loneliness, female pickiness, and TFR decline to discussion of recent election results, leading to the happy dreams of an economic crash that will finally put women in their proper place:

Women might finally, F-I-N-A-L-L-Y be required to either suffer from economic destitution or make some concessions to men to obtain the support of a good one.

Well, you may be heartened and warmed to know that this is not a new problem, nor are the proposed solutions new either! Back in the November 1904-April 1905 issue of Popular Science Monthly, a learned gentleman (both a BA and an MD, so qualified to speak for both the arts and the sciences) diagnosed the ills of the day due to the pernicious habit of educating women, and shewed forth the path of ruin that society would continue to tread if matters were not taken in hand.

Alas, the gentleman of a bygone day was proven lamentably correct, but you can take solace from knowing you are not alone, and that women have been ever thus. I myself was introduced to this gem via a Tumblr post and I humbly link it here, while extracting some plums for the delectation of the superior sex. Though I am too agéd and raddled with the ill-effects of promoting independent mindedness in the feeble brain of a female via excess of schooling, mayhap it may save some younger woman from the travails of pride and neglecting her womanly destiny! (While the scholarly concern of the paper also touches lightly and briefly on the adverse effects of extending higher education to the common class of men as well, I am assured the audience of The Motte are of a finer fabric and thus well deserving of the benefits of this, and so at no danger of ill-effect):

HIGHER EDUCATION OF WOMEN AND RACE SUICIDE
BY A. LAPTHORN SMITH, B.A., M.D.
MONTREAL.

'You can not have too much of a good thing' they say, and the very highest possible degree of education for women is none too good or too great for them. But to those who look beyond the present and only a little way into the future a great danger is gradually arising, a danger which will go on increasing until it brings about a revolution the signs of which are already beginning to be seen and which will effectually put an end to the evil which is to form the subject of this paper. The author will limit himself principally to a discussion of the harm resulting from too high an education of women, because on that part of the subject he has had exceptional opportunities for observation and for drawing accurate conclusions; but, incidentally, he will take the liberty of questioning the advisability of affording higher education freely to the people at large, of the male, as well as of the female sex.

Brace yourselves for some hard biological facts which only a medical man can speak on with assurance: higher education renders women insane! Yes, due to the strain it puts upon the delicate female brain, the added stresses of maternity leave what reason a woman may possess overturned!

...He will endeavor to show, as he believes to be the case, that the higher education of women is surely extinguishing her race, both directly by its effects on her organization, and, indirectly, by rendering early marriage impossible for the average man.

First of all, is education being carried on at present to such a degree as to at all affect the bodily or physical health of women? This is a very important question, because the duties of wifehood, and still more of motherhood, do not require an extraordinary development of the brain, but they must absolutely have a strong development of the body. Not only does wifehood and motherhood not require an extraordinary development of the brain, but the latter is a decided barrier against the proper performance of these duties. Any family physician could give innumerable cases out of his experience of failures of marriage, directly due to too great a cultivation of the female intellect, which results in the scorning to perform those duties which are cheerfully performed, and even desired, by the uneducated wife. The duties of motherhood are direct rivals of brain work, for they both require for their performance an exclusive and plentiful supply of phosphates. These are obtained from the food in greater or less quantity, but rarely, if ever, in sufficient quantity to supply an active and highly educated intellect, and, at the same time, the wants of the growing child. The latter before birth must extract from its mother's blood all the chemical salts necessary for the formation of its bony skeleton and for other tissues; and in this rivalry between the offspring and the intellect how often has not the family physician seen the brain lose in the struggle. The mother's reason totters and falls, in some cases to such an extent as to require her removal to an insane asylum; while in others, she only regains her reason after the prolonged administration of phosphates, to make up for the loss entailed by the growth of the child. Sometimes, however, it is the child which suffers, and it is born defectively nourished or rickety, and, owing to the poor quality of the mother's milk, it obtains a precarious existence from artificial foods, which at the best are a poor substitute for nature's nourishment. The highly educated woman seems to know that she will make a poor mother, for she marries rarely and late and, when she does, the number of children its very small.

You see? It is more advantageous for women to be lightly educated to a basic level but remain somewhat ignorant and indeed be slightly dumb (but strong as ox) in order to better fulfil their wifely and motherly duties. Science has proven it! And who can gainsay what Science has said?

But read on! The dreadful custom of late marriage has both rendered women incapable of performing their natural functions, and imperilled not alone the health but the souls of men:

...But even supposing that the highly educated woman were able and willing to bear and rear her children like any other woman, she has one drawback from having a fairly large family, and that is the lateness at which she marries, the average being between twenty-six and twenty-seven years. Now, as a woman of that age should marry a man between ten and fifteen years older than herself, for a woman of twenty-seven is as old as a man of forty for the purpose of marriage, both she and her husband are too old to begin the raising of an ordinary sized family. Men and women of that age are old maids and old bachelors. They have been living their own lives during their best years; they have become set in their ways, they must have their own pleasures; in a word, they have become selfish. And, after having had one or at the most two children, the woman objects to having any more, and this is the beginning of the end of marital happiness.

...At a recent meeting of a well-known society of specialists for obstetrics and diseases of women, one of the fellows with the largest practise in the largest city on this continent stated that it was physically impossible for the majority of his patients to have a natural labor, because their power to feel pain was so great, while their muscular power was so little. On these two questions the whole profession is agreed, but I am bound to say that there is a difference of opinion as to the reason. Several of the most distinguished fellows of the above society claim that the generally prevalent breakdown of women is due to their inordinate pursuit of pleasure during the ten years which elapse between their leaving school and their marriage. This includes late hours, turning night into day, insufficient sleep, improper diet, improper clothing and want of exercise. The writer claims that most of the generally admitted poor health of women is due to over education, which first deprives them of sunlight and fresh air for the greater part of their time; second, takes every drop of blood away to the brain from the growing organs of generation; third, develops their nervous system at the expense of all their other systems, muscular, digestive, generative, etc.; fourth, leads them to live an abnormal single life until the age of twenty-six or twenty-seven instead of being married at eighteen, which is the latest that nature meant them to remain single; fifth, raises their requirements so high that they can not marry a young man in good health.

If your daughter refuses to wed straight out of high school (should you even permit her to attend such an institution), then it is her fault and none other if Roistering Ralph, a slip of a youth of thirty, engages in drinking, smoking, gambling, and patronising ladies of the evening. He, poor chap, cannot help himself; it is the duty of young ladies to lead, guide, and control the menfolk.

...We all want to be happy, and to that end we all want to be good ; and, I have already said, we want our children, especially our boys, to be good and happy. But those who know anything about virtue in the male know that the marriage of our young men under twenty-five, to a woman with a sound body about eighteen years of age, is almost, if not the only, means of preserving the virtue of the rising generation of men. People, and even mothers, speak lightly of their daughters at twenty-six or twenty-seven marrying men who have sown their wild oats; but one must reap what he sows and do they realize what an awful misfortune such a harvest has brought to the character of the man, and will almost surely bring to the health of the innocent woman? If one has any doubts on this subject they would soon be set right by the testimony of any physician who has made a specialty of attending men, or who has devoted his practise especially to women.

Over-education makes women picky, fastidious, fussy, and renders them unable to appreciate a good, decent man:

...Another way in which the higher education is making people unhappy is in the cultivation of the powers of analysis and criticism. When the power of analysis is applied to one's own self it is especially unfortunate, for then it becomes introspection, a faculty which is carried so far with some women that their whole life is spent in looking into themselves, caring nothing for the trials or troubles of those about them. This produces an intense form of egotism and selfishness. These people are exceedingly unhappy, very often suffering from what is wrongly called 'nervous prostration,' but which should rather be called ' nervous prosperity.' When the wonderful power of criticizing is applied to others it takes the form of fault-finding. Such a woman must have many victims ; will she make them happy?

Even if these harpies deign to wed, they then impose impossible demands upon their husbands in order to maintain luxurious and idle lifestyles:

...There is another aspect of the question, which is not often discussed, but which has an important bearing upon it. The very essence of cultivation of intellect to its highest point consists in raising the standard of one's requirements. A contented mind makes a man happy. Does a high education make one's mind contented, or does it make it discontented with the present, and ever struggle towards a higher ideal in the future? Is the woman who is versed in art and literature contented with a simple home, or must she be surrounded with objects of art and more or less costly books; and, if so, is she satisfied with her lot when she marries an average man, who is able to provide for her all the necessaries of life, but is not possessed of sufficient wealth to provide those things which would be useless luxuries to a woman of ordinary education, but which are necessities for her? Not only must the highly educated woman have an artistic home, large enough to hold her artistic and literary collections, and roomy enough in which to entertain her artistic friends, but she must have a certain number of expensive and highly trained assistants, to keep these large collections in proper order. In plain language, she must have servants to clean them and move them about without destroying them. Can such a woman, anxious and worried over the care of several thousands or hundreds of objects of art, devote the same care to the bearing and bringing up of her family as the woman whose ordinary education has made her feel no need of possessing such objects, but who, on the contrary, is content with a home and furniture which she herself is oftentimes alone capable of taking care of?

In short, better a content, submissive, stupid woman as wife even if she is inferior to you in social class:

There is no doubt that women can do everything that men can do, and a great deal more; but the knowledge of their ability brings with it an aggressive, self-assertive, independent character, which renders it impossible to love, honor and obey the men of their social circles who are the brothers of their schoolmates, and who in the effort to become rich enough to afford the luxury of a highly educated wife have to begin young at business or in the factory, and for whom it is impossible to ever place themselves on an intellectual equality with the women whom they should marry. These men are, as a rule, refused by the brilliant college graduate, and are either shipwrecked for life and for eternity by remaining single, or are only saved by marrying a woman who is their social inferior, but who, by reason of her contented mind, in the end makes them a much better helpmate than the fault-finding intellectual woman who is looking for an impossible ideal.

Women, do your duty to avert the perils of race suicide! Men, be stalwart as fathers to guide your daughters in the way they should go!

.... It is well known that were it not for the enormous immigration pouring into America day by day and week by week, the population of this continent would have died out ere now. And it is generally admitted that the original American people have almost died out. Even the foreigners who are so quickly assimilated soon learn the practise of race-suicide, although never to the appalling extent of the native-born Americans. As far as my experience goes, the crime is most prevalent among the highly educated classes, while it is almost unknown among those with an ordinary education.

  • -26

The least convincing kind of "fighting retreat unto death" Feminian sandstones apologia is when a righteous zealot shows us an antediluvian man predicting the coming Feminist future where he gets 9 hits and a miss, but writing about the whole thing in fakey middle english so the reader hopefully think's he's a tosser anyway.

I should therefore quote Dr. Smith on the bad effects of too much education on men. Yes, it's bad for men too, it's just that it's worse for women.

Everyone on here telling me that he makes good points about the nature of women and decline of population even if it is couched in out-dated terms should be happy to find out how being educated has harmed them, right?

The Catholic church has, for many centuries, realized the importance of marriage and maternity in the upbuilding and strengthening of religious life in the community; and if the Protestant churches are not to be emptied of their male attendance, the protestant clergy must speak out in no uncertain tone against the present methods of education, which are turning out women by the thousands, with requirements so varied and so great that no young man can afford to marry them; a step, moreover, which he is deterred from taking by the discouraging report of those of his friends who have ventured to marry the women of their own class, and who have advised them, in the words of Punch : ' To those about to marry, don't.' Whether a man should marry or not is too often spoken of lightly and as a joke. But to those who believe in the immortality of the soul, and that the whole world avails nothing to a man if he loses it, the possibility of early and happy marriages becomes a question of the vastest importance and one which students of sociology, and the fathers of the nation should study with the most intense anxiety and care.

...The profession of teaching was once exclusively in the hands of the men, and it can not be denied that they have achieved some great results. But as education rendered an ever-increasing number of women unsuited for marriage, that is, unwilling to marry the available men, they invaded the schoolmaster's rank to such an extent that his salary has been cut down one half, and now he is unable to marry at all. Two well-known consequences have followed this state of affairs; first it is impossible to get men in sufficient numbers to become teachers for the boys' schools; and secondly, even big boys being taught by women, the effeminization of our men is gradually taking place. Although there are some instances of a mother alone having formed her son into a manly man, yet as a rule the boys require the example of a man's character to make them manly men. This subject has recently been dealt with in several elaborate papers by well-known educationalists, to whom it appears to be a real danger to the coming generation.

...What about the men? If the higher education prevents the women from being good wives and mothers, will it not prevent the men from being good husbands and fathers? To some extent it does, and in so far it is a misfortune, but to a much less extent than among women, for the simple reason that the man contributes so little towards the new being; while, on the other hand, high intellectual training enables him to win in the struggle for existence much better than if he were possessed of mere brute force. But nature punishes the man who has all the natural instinct cultivated out of him, just as it does the woman, namely, by the extinction of his race. For the struggle for existence among the highly educated men has become so keen, because there are so many of them, that great numbers of them are unable to earn a living even for themselves; while the supporting of a highly educated woman, with her thousand and one requirements, is simply out of the question. A president of a great company recently informed the writer that he had, in one month, applications from eighty-seven university graduates for a position equivalent to that of an office boy at fifteen dollars a month while out of one hundred millionaires, at least ninety-five of them are known not to have been highly educated; but, on the contrary, to have left school between fourteen and sixteen years of age. So there is such a thing as learning too much, without knowing how to do anything. Just as athletes may be overtrained, so men may be overeducated.

This great question has received the attention of one of the brightest men of our age — no less than the chief magistrate of the United States; while quite recently, in the British House of Lords, the Eight Reverend Dr. Boyd-Carpenter, Bishop of Ripon, from his seat in that august assemblage, has called attention to the lateness of the age for marriage and the diminishing birth-rate, foreseeing, no doubt, that these two factors would soon be followed by the emptying of the churches and the lowering of the high standard of British morals and character. The writer feels certain that, before long, this subject will receive the attention which it deserves from those who love their country and have the forming of its destiny in their hands. If he succeeds, by this or any other means, in drawing their attention to it, he will have fulfilled the object of his paper.

So gentlemen, the solution for the problem means:

(1) You should all convert to Catholicism
(2) You, too, should marry early for the salvation of your soul
(3) You should engender a large family (six to eight children)
(4) You should not let your sons be educated by female teachers as already in 1905 the rising generation of boys are all effeminate limp-wristed mama's boys
(5) You should not be over-educated, nor should you let your sons be over-educated. Avoid university if at all possible. Manual semi- and skilled work, or office work in business as future self-made millionaires, is the goal here for success in life. You know all you need to know by fourteen, now go out there and work!
(6) Marry early to young, ignorant, slightly stupid, possibly lower in social status than you, women who will be totally dependent on you for provision during wifehood, motherhood, and possibly widowhood and who will not have any views, opinions, tastes, or interests higher than maintaining her home and family. Presumably you seek out other men for stimulation of the intellect or just a conversation that is not about babies and furniture?

Everyone on here telling me that he makes good points about the nature of women and decline of population even if it is couched in out-dated terms should be happy to find out how being educated has harmed them, right?

You're right. The idea more education makes men and women miserable is poppycock, which is why South Korea was rewarded with making its young mens' entire lives revolve around entrance exams with the lowest suicide rate in the world!

What do you think you're accomplishing here? Yes the bureaucratization of everything, especially education, has hurt men. In this house we believe the industrial revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race. Is it inconceivable to you that someone might think this?

(1) You should all convert to Catholicism (2) You, too, should marry early for the salvation of your soul (3) You should engender a large family (six to eight children) (4) You should not let your sons be educated by female teachers as already in 1905 the rising generation of boys are all effeminate limp-wristed mama's boys (5) You should not be over-educated, nor should you let your sons be over-educated. Avoid university if at all possible. Manual semi- and skilled work, or office work in business as future self-made millionaires, is the goal here for success in life. You know all you need to know by fourteen, now go out there and work! (6) Marry early to young, ignorant, slightly stupid, possibly lower in social status than you, women who will be totally dependent on you for provision during wifehood, motherhood, and possibly widowhood and who will not have any views, opinions, tastes, or interests higher than maintaining her home and family. Presumably you seek out other men for stimulation of the intellect or just a conversation that is not about babies and furniture?

Co-signed for points 1, 2, 3 without seeing any need for defense or explanation. As for 4, yes, the negative psychological effects of raising boys as if they were defective girls under female direction were already showing by 1905. Girls should not be educated by men who expect them to behave as boys, either.

On point 6, of course, we are in complete agreement. I would kill myself in despair if I were not able to marry a modern Virago who was wisely taught to despise and be suspicious of me as a threat for my male-ness, to expect everything from me and give nothing, not even fidelity until death do us part, in return, and to loudly point and splutter if I suggested she or any woman were less than perfect.

But see, here's the thing. The guys here are not marrying young highschool women in order to have her be a stay-at-home mom of six kids. They too want freedom, a career, and as much fun as possible before they settle down. So sauce, gander, goose.

They too want freedom, a career, and as much fun as possible before they settle down.

In all seriousness, I think this is where you are going wrong. A lot of young men, especially here which skews conservative, were totally ready to start settling down young (or at least a year or two after university when they had an income) and raising a family. There’s a reason several people were yeschadding your post about young men being over educated, and I say this having done a PhD.

Painting with a broad brush, the problem from my perspective is that we were prepared to be lovers and providers, and the other side never turned up. Indeed, they seemed to flock in droves to the young men who openly disdained responsibility and family while those men were busy getting as broke and high and sexed as humanly possible.

I am ready to believe that this is a mutual illusion arising from young women disproportionately meeting the fuck-around men and not seeing the quiet ones who worked hard, and likewise young men nmeeting the girls who came to parties and not the quiet ones. I don’t say that it’s true, but it’s possible.

But this is how things looked on the other side of the screen.

totally ready to start settling down young (or at least a year or two after university when they had an income) and raising a family

Really? 25 year old men wanting to take on a wife and kid? Not impossible, but funnily enough in the context, I was reading a ghost story from the 1930s or so and in it the narrator describes how he doesn't want an early marriage - this is a man in his late 30s established in his career and with enough money to support a stay-at-home wife (no other sort for the middle-to-upper classes back then) and children.

So the attitude of putting off marriage was indeed prevalent among the educated classes back then, but it wasn't solely over-educated women spurning men of their own class.

Sure, that’s always been there too. There have always been lots of bachelors and playboys, especially amongst the upper classes. The working-class boys at the university were much more of the ‘get as much clunge as possible’ mindset which ironically probably put them in a better position to date and marry later on.

So many who wanted to play around. But also a good number who didn’t. For myself in my ideal life plan I wanted to meet a nice girl at university, move in together a year later, spend a couple of years getting to n ie each other and then marry and have children around say 26 years old.

Of course, if I had been popular with the ladies perhaps I would have got a big head and started fucking around. No way to say.

You couldn't be more wrong. I am struggling through post-graduate education to become qualified to be a provider for my future wife because I am aware I am repulsive to women without higher status and more money than them. My dating life has been an unbroken succession of disappointments because none of the women I've dated were comfortable with waiting for marriage to have sex - they wanted to fool around, and I did not. (Every relationship was one I went into intending to marry the girl if she was willing, BTW)

Feminism has liberated all the women around me of all expectations upon themselves, but men like me still struggle with all the pre-feminist expectations for men to be manly male providers, but taken away anything we might get in return. So what's good for the goose is only being given to the goose. This gander would love some, but isn't getting it.

My dating life has been an unbroken succession of disappointments because none of the women I've dated were comfortable with waiting for marriage to have sex - they wanted to fool around, and I did not.

Honest question: have you considered giving in on this point? If you'd potentially want to start a family with any woman you're dating, you must be reconciled to the idea of having sex with her at some point even if you genuinely lack the drive/desire. If it's a religious objection then, well, I'd have to know your religion, and you'd do better to talk to a priest; but AFAIK consummating a future marriage early doesn't tend to be looked on very harshly by mainstream Christian denominations even if it's not the ideal.

Of course, if you suspect that the women wouldn't have stuck around all the way to the altar either way, that's a different question. But taking your words at faith value, if your reluctance to have sex with potential fiancées is all that's keeping them away, I think you might be self-sabotaging your marital prospects here.

(And by the way, I'd also question your self-perception as "repulsive to women" if you can't be "a provider". Surely all the women you've dated wanting to have casual sex with you, and getting turned off when you confess you'd rather tie the knot first, clashes with the idea that no women find you physically attractive and your only hope of attracting a mate would be one who's after your bank account?)

Honest question: have you considered giving in on this point? If you'd potentially want to start a family with any woman you're dating, you must be reconciled to the idea of having sex with her at some point even if you genuinely lack the drive/desire.

Took me until I was 28, and my wife was a virgin as well, but waiting until marriage for sex is absolutely achievable. Based on his other comments in this thread I assume @Garfielf is Catholic, and I think his efforts to stay chaste (and to expect the same of his partners) is a laudable goal that shouldn't be abandoned just because it's easier.

Also it's definitely not a lack of desire for most ;)

Could you try actually, y'know, making an argument? Instead of just blasting "Here's what some guy said a century ago, agree or disagree?!?!"

I'm going to assume you disagree with the author here. Please explain why you disagree, that's about the bare minimum we ask for here. Sources and evidence are usually a nice add, but I'm hoping we could at least get the bare minimum from you so let's hold off on that for now

I'm confused. Which part of this am I supposed to disagree with? Everything written is reasonable and might even be true. It's certainly unfashionable and outdated, but neither of those things mean false.

The most clueless piece of what you quoted was at the end:

The writer feels certain that, before long, this subject will receive the attention which it deserves from those who love their country and have the forming of its destiny in their hands.

LOL. LMAO, even. The writer had too high an opinion of his fellow man, and indeed nobody loved their country enough to save it, and we've seen the results that he predicted come to pass.

Boys raised by women are feminine. Boys raised by female teachers in female-dominated public schools are feminine, not masculine. The age of optimal drop-out is probably 19 or 20, not 14 or 16, but I think the people with the most to do still are poorly rewarded for their formal education. You stay in college because you don't have the chops to found Microsoft, or Oculus.

Please do more than simply point and laugh. I'm not getting the joke.

Right just lemme take a note here.

Say you are looking forward to women being forced into destitution: a-okay to say.

Quote historical real actual content of the same kind: how dare you be sarcastic!

Interesting view of life you got there, mod.

  • -23

Yes and yes.

You can have whatever opinion you want. As usual, we’re here to moderate on tone. Sometimes that makes us the fun police.

Tone moderating is tricky, I realise. Words on screen don't come through with fine shades of "is this lightly humorous or bitterly savage?" But it's a little tedious to get "your tone is bad" and nothing else. Why is it bad? Well, it made some people uncomfortable. And if some of those people made me uncomfortable? Well, suck it up, they didn't make the rest of us uncomfortable.

To quote Amadan, the fact that I am fighting youse guys is because I respect you. There's a lot of idiot shit out there online I don't even bother engaging with because it is so dumb and so pointless and would achieve nothing even to attempt engaging with it. I have higher opinion of this joint and the denizens thereof.

If I really hated you guys, I wouldn't even spit on you. That I bring jewels of former wisdom from the grave scholars of yore to lay at your feet is simply a token of my esteem!

Say you are looking forward to women being forced into destitution: a-okay to say.

If you are making a serious point and not just sarcastically mocking women, yes. People have in fact been modded in the past when their incel-posting was basically just "bitches be crazy." On the other hand, people have been allowed to post all sorts of outside-the-Overton-window stuff without being modded if they are able to do so while following our discourse norms.

You know this. You know what the Motte is all about. You are not some naïf wandering in here and shocked to discover we have Holocaust deniers and white nationalists and yes, unironic anti-female emancipationists. Why do you pretend you don't understand how things work here?

You know I have modded people for being obnoxious and sarcastic while venting their spleen about how much contempt they hold women in. You've also seen me just today arguing with the incel-posters, as a non-mod, so your "interesting view of life" crack is petty and disingenuous. What view of life is it you are accusing me of holding, exactly? What exactly are you pleading for? A rule that people aren't allow to say hurtful things about women (but everyone else is fair game)?

Quote historical real actual content of the same kind: how dare you be sarcastic!

Look up at the top of the page. There's a rule that's been there forever:

Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

Now, if you want to argue that we don't always mod every single instance of sarcasm or mockery, and indeed that I have a sarcastic bone or two in my body, you're not wrong! But your post was just a long screed of pure unfiltered sarcasm and mockery. If you had really wanted to make that same point seriously, you could have. "Hey, look, your ideas are not new and they look pretty silly when phrased in early 20th century terms, don't they?" That would have been fine. But no, you were clearly upset at all the he-man woman-haters going on about how women and their ladybrains don't belong in the workforce, and so you worked up this (admittedly effortful, and even kind of funny) little polemic to mock them with.

And my warning was barely a slap on the wrist! A "okay, hah hah, now please don't do this." But like all the humorless scolds who think everything is funny when they do it and nothing is funny when it's done to them, here you are once more taking grave offense like I personally singled you out with my biased woman-hating agenda. You could take the rap and move on, but no, you obviously wanted more attention, so here it is. That's my explanation of why you got modded while the people posting things that outraged you did not. That's my "view of life." Happy to straighten that out for you.

here you are once more taking grave offense like I personally singled you out with my biased woman-hating agenda

You seem to be very thin-skinned about this, as if I did think you have a he-man woman-hater persona going on. Maybe you should work on that? I didn't think you had any particular dog in this fight, other than not getting the point I was making (which was 'look, your ideas seem pretty silly when phrased in early 20th century terms'), but you leaped immediately to "he-man woman-hater". You do seem to think I am going for you in particular, rather than the general attitude on here around "it's all the fault of women for not having babies the second they reach the age of sexual consent".

Hmmm. Were you being sarcastic there? Don't make me tap the sign:

Look up at the top of the page. There's a rule that's been there forever:

Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

Dr. Smith of 1905 was quoting the science of his day about the dangers of uppity women. We know better in regards to science today, so we think his views are quaint and absurd (women go crazy when pregnant if they're too smart?)

But there are plenty of guys trotting out just as quaint and absurd evo-psych twaddle about the nature of women on here. I'm not going to get into a screaming match if I can help it, but I am also not going to sit and take it like a lady. So yes, I'll mock that which is mockable because it is not worth engaging with on any other level than "this is risible".

  • -16

You do seem to think I am going for you in particular, rather than the general attitude on here around "it's all the fault of women for not having babies the second they reach the age of sexual consent".

I really do just think people here who take a generally adversarial position against the whole site don't really grok that some of us do kinda identify with this place and how irritating it is to have people talk about how "the general attitude on" here is so and so when so and so isn't even an accurate representation of the handful of people they engaged with on some tired topic let alone representative of the general commentariat. So what do I do? Pile onto the push back you're getting with "actually that isn't really what they said" and confirm to you that the rest of us are at consensus? Argue on your behalf to prove I'm one of the good ones?

I really do just think people here who take a generally adversarial position against the whole site don't really grok that some of us do kinda identify with this place and how irritating it is to have people talk about how "the general attitude on" here

My friend, try being a woman on here when there's sixty versions of "yeah the wimmens is uppity and should be confined to the home and maybe don't even teach 'em to read and write". Serious discussions of how society went to the dogs once women got the vote.

I've got 20 responses so far that I haven't even read yet, and I'm betting 19 at least of them are going to be some variation on "you are WRONG because you HATE MEN" and of course good old tone policing, a term I never imagined I would use myself.

Imagine for yourself: it's terrible enough when the prevailing cultural view is "everything is the fault of straight white men" and "toxic masculinity" and "men are to blame for everything". I can sympathise with that! I hate that view myself!

And then I come on here, where at least expressing a conservative or right-wing view won't have me immediately tarred and feathered, and I hit up against "Good, then, gentlemen, it is agreed: women are the problem".

I mean, I could go screaming mad into the void. I could rail and curse and call names. Or I could be sarcastic about how views haven't changed all that much between 1905 and 2025. I'll get in trouble for the sarcasm, but for my part I think laughing at such views better on the whole than vitriolic ill-will and hatred for those expressing them.

  • -11

My friend, try being a woman on here when there's sixty versions of "yeah the wimmens is uppity and should be confined to the home and maybe don't even teach 'em to read and write". Serious discussions of how society went to the dogs once women got the vote.

As someone devoutly religious, I misspent a great deal of my youth arguing with atheists on various internet forums. Often atheists who absolutely despised religious people and blamed us for all of history's wars and genocides and sometimes even wanted me and my kind sent to gulags or similar. It's really not that hard to deal with having a huge portion of a forum despising you, you just learn to develop a thick skin and you separate your emotions from the discussion as much as you can.

Or you crash out, as you appear to be doing.

This is basically like if a black guy came here in our days of HBD discussions and posted some 19th Century screed by a KKK Grand Wizard then proceeded to flame out saying we all wanted to put blacks back in chains. Do you think that would be a reasonable reaction?

To use the slavery analogy, some of the talk on that Motte is like if Mottizens didn't say they wanted to bring back slavery, but spent quite a bit of time talking about how much worse race relations have become ever since blacks became emancipated. They didn't really propose anything at all really. They just implied that it was better before, and didn't really put much effort into why black people might not agree that those times were better.

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It might be, were it in response to someone who had just remarked about how they looked forward to economic circumstances that would force black people back into chains.

I am slightly amused by all the emotional response to what I said; there's a lot of hurt feelings rather than cool analysis, ironically enough in the accusations that I am crashing out, emotional, etc.

So, anything to say about the Joo-posters, the racists, the tranny-haters?

If a Jew started posting like you do with mockery and derision calling people Nazis (including some posters who can actually fairly be called Nazis), would you consider that appropriate for the Motte? If a trans person served some contempt back at you when you are expressing what you think of trans women, would you be cool with that?

These are not rhetorical questions. I really want to know what you think here.

I know about the craziness of some trans activists re: cis women (see all the good wishes they express online towards TERFs).

I expect crazy shit from crazy people. I don't expect it on here precisely because it's supposed to be where we can argue out positions with no holds barred (apart from rules around civility). So I'm smiling wryly at all the "you hate men, that's why you say this!!!!" from guys who were swapping opinions about how women should be deprived of personal choice when it comes to romantic relationships, access to higher education, the vote, age of marriage, number of children, confinement to the domestic sphere and other trivial little instances of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

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My friend, try being a woman on here when there's sixty versions of "yeah the wimmens is uppity and should be confined to the home and maybe don't even teach 'em to read and write". Serious discussions of how society went to the dogs once women got the vote.

Try existing in the real world where a woman with a sharp tongue thinks that using it should cause every man around them to quail in fear and yield. Oh, wait, you do. It doesn't work here. The real-world norm that a man does not push back against that sort of shit from a woman does not exist here. You can snark, insinuate, and belittle, but nobody will be intimidated. Some can give as good as they get, held back (if they are) only by not wanting to be moderated themselves. Others can simply say "This is sound and fury signifying nothing", and continue discussing while ignoring the noise.

The real-world norm that a man does not push back against that sort of shit from a woman does not exist here.

And yet you men are as sensitive as the most hysterical Karen when it comes to push back on your shit views. Now, we could start yelling abuse at one another. Or you could mock my views by quoting idiot ultra-feminists of the past. I believe the 70s are rich and fertile ground for terrible hot takes in that area.

I won't mind it, even if Amadan feels the need to invoke the "avoid sarcasm" rule. I can take joshing!

Raillery, folks. Rediscover the lost art.

  • -14
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The real-world norm that a man does not push back against that sort of shit from a woman... You can snark, insinuate, and belittle, but nobody will be intimidated.

Interestingly, comments parallel to this one can be found in a type of internet community quite different from TheMotte for a quite different context.

In fight video-adjacent communities (I know, I know, very classy corners of the internet), sometimes a video of a female attacking a male (especially a much larger one) initiates discussions as to the extent Hollywood #GirlBoss propaganda and the general male reluctance to fight back against a female (whether it be out of chivalrous can't-hit-a-girl instincts, fear of social backlash, or fear of getting swarmed and curb-stomped by eager beaver white knights) have led to delusions of grandeur for some subset of females, overestimating their physical prowess and/or overestimating their ability to intimidate males with their physical prowess per se.

Do you even realize that the fact I am wasting time responding to your three (3!) responses to my one post is a gesture of respect that I fully realize will be both unappreciated and is largely undeserved? Yet here I am. Maybe it will be instructional to others who have similar complaints, if not you.

You seem to be very thin-skinned about this, as if I did think you have a he-man woman-hater persona going on. Maybe you should work on that? I didn't think you had any particular dog in this fight, other than not getting the point I was making (which was 'look, your ideas seem pretty silly when phrased in early 20th century terms'), but you leaped immediately to "he-man woman-hater".

I literally made the point you are claiming I did not get.

"He-man, woman hater" was, in fact, sarcasm.

I'm not going to get into a screaming match if I can help it, but I am also not going to sit and take it like a lady.

No one has ever asked you to take anything like a lady. You are being asked to follow the rules that apply to men, women, and Martians here on the Motte.

So yes, I'll mock that which is mockable because it is not worth engaging with on any other level than "this is risible".

Many people post things that are arguably not worth engaging in because they are so risible. I often feel this way, and I'm pretty sure everyone feels this way at times. And the rules remain: if you cannot engage without mockery, you should not engage. When someone posts something utterly retarded, sometimes I cannot resist the temptation to respond, and sometimes it's really, really hard not to respond with the derision I think their retardation deserves. But whether as a mod or a non-mod, I am required to stifle the derision, and you are required to do likewise.

Do I? I'm starting to wonder. Was that remark about hoping for an economic crash so women (and it wasn't specifying any particular set of women, rather all women which would include the likes of me) will be forced to choose between destitution (yes, that was the exact word) or 'making concessions to good men' - was that remark 'ha ha only joking', in which case it too should have earned the sarcasm penalty, or was it meant in all seriousness?

First of all, making a joke is not the same as sarcasm. The rule is not "You may not be funny."

And the "avoid sarcasm" rule is not even an absolute prohibition on sarcasm, it is an injunction against using sarcasm in place of plain and respectful speaking when responding to someone else. Stop trying to be a pedant just to rules-lawyer things to suit you. Those are the worst sorts of complaints to mods.

As for whether the poster was serious about wanting women to be forced to suck dick for food (that's my paraphrasing; see, that's an example of mildly sarcastic humor), I don't know, why don't you ask him? But here's my question for you: why does it offend you so much? I mean, beyond the obvious: yes, you're a woman and obviously the suggestion that you should be forced to trade sexual favors for survival is likely to offend you. Do you think you (or women as a class) are the only ones entitled to not be offended by someone's outrageous suggestions? When our Joo-posters go off about Jews, and their physical weakness and cowardice, their nefarious schemes to destroy Western civilization, their hatred of the white race, their sleaziness and bad faith dealings and genetic predisposition to start conflicts with everyone around them (this is not hyperbole, these are all things people have actually said on the Motte), do you want the mods to step in and say "Hey, you're not allowed to offend Jews like that?" I do not recall you ever objecting to those posts. When people talk about how ugly and psychopathic and perverted and delusional trans people are, do you think a trans person would be entitled to complain about being offended? When our white nationalists and just garden variety racists propose that black people need to be controlled and "husbanded" like livestock, or that we should not tolerate coexisting with them, would it be okay for a black poster to be as mocking and sarcastic as he wants to be in response? Or would you say "Hey, you need to engage with the argument even if you don't like it, you aren't allowed to just go off on someone because he offended you?" Or would you just say nothing because you don't actually care when someone who isn't you is offended?

Because we've lived the days of "sex for meat" and that's the damn reason feminism came into being in the first place. Hoping to exploit the misery of others is not what I thought The Motte was about.

Hey, I'd like to think so too. If you haven't noticed, a lot of people here do in fact want to exploit the misery of others. I think this is bad and those people are bad people. What's your point? The mods should start forbidding meanbad opinions? You seem to want an axial shift in how moderation works here, and while that might be worth discussing, it's hard to take the proposal seriously when, again, you only seem to notice when it applies to you personally.

How about if someone cheered on the idea of AI putting all the guys on here out of work, so that they will have to bend the knee to employers and scrabble for former white collar jobs with the cheap imported labour, which drives down salaries and workplace conidiations? Suppose I reacted to someone talking about their fears for their late career with "serves you right, you had it too good all along, now you will have to agree with whatever an employer demands of you if you want any kind of job"?

People have said more or less this, in different ways. Depending on how you say it: "Hah hah, you deserved it!" is definitely going to get modded. "Well, I think is a good thing actually and too bad that you're the one suffering for it but" is in fact allowed, even if the person suffering for it usually does angrily report the post.

Hoping for bad things to happen to those you disagree with is fine and will not get me into trouble, just so long as I avoid sarcasm, see Amadan's mod decision.

You are misunderstanding the difference between "fine" in the sense of conforming to rules and "fine" in the sense of moral judgment. Do I think it's "fine" to hope for bad things to happen to those you disagree with? No. See above. I think that is a base and vile impulse (not that I haven't felt it myself) and should be discouraged, but that's between you and your conscience and/or your priest/therapist/AI waifu/whoever.

Are people allowed, here on the Motte, to express the hope that bad things will happen to other people? Well, we moderate on tone, not on substance. If you can write an effortpost sans sarcasm on the topic, yes, though you might be narrowly navigating between the Scylla and Charybdis of boo outgrouping and inflammatory claims without evidence. Many Joo-posters crash here, trying to express that Jews are vermin and we should exterminate them without actually saying "Jews are vermin and we should exterminate them." And likewise, as I told you, some of our incel-posters have gotten rapped for not being able to prevent their seething contempt for women from bleeding onto the screen.

But hey, if that's the direction you want to go, some of our more artful accelerationists and doomers mostly get away with it.

Do you even realize that the fact I am wasting time responding to your three (3!) responses to my one post is a gesture of respect that I fully realize will be both unappreciated and is largely undeserved?

I didn't read all your response because, frankly, too long. Sorry about that (and yeah, genuinely sorry).

You don't have to respond to me. I won't take it as lack of respect. Ignore it after you've had your say and imposed the punishment, if any. Don't get hung up on it, brother!

You seem to be very thin-skinned about this

Pot, meet kettle.

You know what the Motte is all about.

Do I? I'm starting to wonder. Was that remark about hoping for an economic crash so women (and it wasn't specifying any particular set of women, rather all women which would include the likes of me) will be forced to choose between destitution (yes, that was the exact word) or 'making concessions to good men' - was that remark 'ha ha only joking', in which case it too should have earned the sarcasm penalty, or was it meant in all seriousness?

Because we've lived the days of "sex for meat" and that's the damn reason feminism came into being in the first place. Hoping to exploit the misery of others is not what I thought The Motte was about. How about if someone cheered on the idea of AI putting all the guys on here out of work, so that they will have to bend the knee to employers and scrabble for former white collar jobs with the cheap imported labour, which drives down salaries and workplace conidiations? Suppose I reacted to someone talking about their fears for their late career with "serves you right, you had it too good all along, now you will have to agree with whatever an employer demands of you if you want any kind of job"?

I don't think that wishing misfortune on men would go down well here. I don't want men to suffer. But yes, if we are turning into "women are all bitches and should be literally at the foot of a man, any man, and don't dare refuse sex at all for any reason, don't dare have opinions and views of their own, don't dare be anything but the fantasy Stepford wife", then I really don't know what it is all about.

You guys surely have mothers. Are you really going to say to them "Mom, you shouldn't have gone past high school and you should be glad Dad isn't fucking a 20 year old on the side because you need to appreciate that a man is willing to lead and rule you, you useless eater"?

  • -13

You guys surely have mothers. Are you really going to say to them "Mom, you shouldn't have gone past high school and you should be glad Dad isn't fucking a 20 year old on the side because you need to appreciate that a man is willing to lead and rule you, you useless eater"?

I mean, I suspect my life might have gone a bit better had Mum not been able to divorce Dad, get full custody, and then beat me with a metal spoon, pour hot potatoes on me, and starve me without oversight*. Admittedly, Dad didn't use all the leverage he did have (on like twenty occasions she called him up saying "come and pick up [m9m], I don't want him anymore", and if he'd called her bluff my understanding is that she'd have had no recourse), and that's on him, but I don't think he understood exactly how bad things were (I, after all, didn't exactly have context for exactly how far out of line she was, and she'd mostly-convinced me I deserved it with her various misandrist rants**); had he been in the house, I think some more alarm bells would have gone off.

Now, I certainly wouldn't call Mum a "useless eater" - she met Dad through their jobs, and her job wasn't negative-sum activism - and Not All Women Are Like That, but I'm not sure she's the example you want to be using here. (More generally, you will find that bringing up the personal lives of X-ists is often going to blow up in your face; X-ists are X-ist for a reason and that reason frequently is "their personal lives legitimately behave as X-ism predicts".)

*The one time the police showed up, I was the one who got an hour-long lecture about how I was going to grow up into a wife-beater, although it's hard for me to blame them given that she wouldn't have shown a single sign of guilt - she was and is utterly convinced she was in the right - and due to how far she'd managed to twist me around I did.

**I specifically remember her teaching me that the Y chromosome was a genetic defect.

And she was wrong, and cruel, and abusive.

But there's a particularly horrible case right now in Ireland, where a stepmother murdered the four year old stepson. While the father of the child was living in the house and did, apparently, fuck-all about his partner beating and starving the kid.

I'm furious about that, because what the hell? The social services certainly failed the child, she was a murderous bitch who has properly been convicted, but what the hell was this man doing? "Oh I don't want to make a fuss because she'll just blow up at me?" or even worse "So long as I get laid regularly, I don't care". He got jailed last year but for the love of God, what was going on in that home?

In November 2024, the child’s father was sentenced to seven years in prison having pleaded guilty to endangerment, neglect and impeding the apprehension or prosecution of the stepmother, knowing or believing she had murdered his son.

Passing sentence at the time, Mr Justice McDermott described his actions as “shameful” and said he bore a high level of criminal responsibility for failing to nurture and protect his son.

Yeah. I'm not happy reading the news today.

but what the hell was this man doing? "Oh I don't want to make a fuss because she'll just blow up at me?" or even worse "So long as I get laid regularly, I don't care".

It's rare to see the spear counterpart of "he was fucking the stepdaughter for years- so long as he keeps paying my bills, she didn't care", but it clearly does happen. Stepmother vs. son is typically a murder thing, permitted by the father, since the son is [or will be] a drain on the resources that the father pays the stepmother to stick around.

By contrast, stepfather vs. daughter is typically a rape thing, permitted by the mother, since the mother pays the stepfather in sex to stick around.

Of course, the mother seldom goes to jail in those latter cases because sexism, but still.

Yeah, but it was a four year old kid. Dad broke up with biological mom and got charge of the child because the mother had mental health issues. Then he takes up with this bitch and seems to have passively let her beat his child to death over a prolonged period. That's what I don't understand. He saw the child black and blue with bruises. He made up excuses (or maybe just pretended to believe her excuses) about 'he ran into a door, he fell, he's clumsy'. Every day he went off to work and came back home, and the child was being hit, isolated, refused food and treats, kept apart from family visitors, and clearly the stepmother hated the kid, and he did - nothing.

For all the talk on here about men wanting their own biological children and wanting sons to carry on the name and heritage, that didn't seem to hold true here.

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While I assume it wouldn't be a favorable option from your point of view as you'd prefer to be alive, it sounds like the best case overall would be that someone like your mother was able to divorce - and ideally not married at all - before she had children. Some people are for the nunnery.

you will find that bringing up the personal lives of X-ists is often going to blow up in your face; X-ists are X-ist for a reason and that reason frequently is "their personal lives legitimately behave as X-ism predicts"

Very neatly put, I might borrow that. I’m sorry to hear your early life was so awful.

I’m sorry to hear your early life was so awful.

Honestly, for most of my childhood, she wasn't really awful; she always had a violent temper, but there were only about 3 years of my home life being truly hell (from when I hit puberty and her misandry started applying to me personally, to when I ran away from her).

I'm sure this rates as a 'hot dog' in your suffragettist tea parties, sweetheart, but you should really take a pep pill and cool off your overheating uterus. Nothing to fear, darling. Your position won't be diminished by your absence. A good-thinking man will be found to argue for your intellectual position who can voice it properly with manner and decorum and a minimum of hysteria.

I modded her for sarcasm. That doesn't give you a pass to be just as sarcastic and patronizing back.

How about if someone cheered on the idea of AI putting all the guys on here out of work, so that they will have to bend the knee to employers and scrabble for former white collar jobs with the cheap imported labour, which drives down salaries and workplace conidiations? Suppose I reacted to someone talking about their fears for their late career with "serves you right, you had it too good all along, now you will have to agree with whatever an employer demands of you if you want any kind of job"?

Paging @BurdensomeCount

I'm not going to SAY it to her.

How about if someone cheered on the idea of AI putting all the guys on here out of work, so that they will have to bend the knee to employers and scrabble for former white collar jobs with the cheap imported labour, which drives down salaries and workplace conidiations?

If someone did that, then I think that instead of getting pissed inarticulately, the people would point out that according to all trends, AI is going to replace cheap imported labor in white collar jobs before it replaces the productive white mottizen, and at any rate there's going to be blue collar work left.

You could learn from resident fedposters and just go straight to "try that with me and I'll poison you in your sleep" instead of spending 10 posts on sarcasm.

The thing is, I'm getting rapped over the knuckles for being sarcastic.

Okay, yes, sarcasm there a-plenty.

However, it was "laughing to keep from crying". I preferred to react with mockery of a similar viewpoint from the past, rather than engage in serious angry cursing of the person who wished for the misfortune of others.

Since it seems satire is out but rancour is fine, shrugging at nonsense will get a scolding but hoping for a disaster is neutral, then let me say: I don't hope, wish or dream of a disaster that will befall those I disagree with or my ideological enemies, not even those I come close to having contempt for. I can wish bad things, but I know wishing for bad things is wrong and I should not do it. It's the immediate gut reaction of reading an appalling story in the news and wishing the abominable bitch gets tortured to death. (As for the spineless fuckstick dad who apparently was fine with her beating the shit out of the kid so long as she opened her legs for him on a regular basis, tell me again about strong male-led households, please!)

Not a good state of mind for the individual, not a good state of mind for society.

So I react with ridicule of an old piece of nonsense rather than screaming anger where I detonate in a fireball not seen since the Tunguska Incident (please forgive me, it's the phosphates, you know! Medical science has proven it!)

But since, as I said, the preference is for disaster hoping, then shentlemens: may you all experience the likes of that Pap test conducted by a male consultant gynaecologist which was the second and last time I had it done. The last, since I would bloody well prefer to run the risk of cervical cancer than go through that experience again. To add insult to injury, the guy wasn't even able to collect a proper sample so no results could be obtained, as the letter I got back from the testing lab informed me.

Hoping for bad things to happen to those you disagree with is fine and will not get me into trouble, just so long as I avoid sarcasm, see Amadan's mod decision. So if I really want bad things to happen to the men on here, expressing that wish is not going to evoke any pushback. But if I indulge in hyperbolic scoffing where the target is beyond any ill-wish of mine, that is bad and results in a scolding.

Nice to have that clear.

  • -10

react with mockery of a similar viewpoint from the past, rather than engage in serious angry cursing of the person

If only a third option existed! Oh woe unto us!

On a tangent, has anyone tried a version of The Motte that aspires to remove personal feelings from the debate in a more wholesale way a la scientific journals, where the first-person is discouraged? It would obviously be a somewhat idealistic standard, but it might help further 'optimise for light rather than heat'. As HereAndGone notes, some people here do express their own satisfaction about some outgroup's misfortune pretty frequently and while it's neither sarcasm nor mockery, whether they want (let's say) women to be enslaved is not actually germane whatsoever to any debate, other than as one tiny and discouraging data point about one anonymous poster's emotional stance.

Having written a few scientific papers in my time, and read an awful lot more, I strongly disagree that this approach will yield good results. Third-person passive writing effectively acts as consensus building by default - it is designed to ape a full objective perspective that by definition cannot be achieved. "It is well-understood that rents are too high and women are over-educated" just leads to constant passive aggressive arguing about what it means to be well-understood and what citations are acceptable etc. etc. where two people have essentially a personal disagreement using sock puppets, whereas first-person "I think that..." encourages clear demarcation between one's own personal feelings and expectations, and claims made about the broader world.

I can't disagree when it comes to much academic writing and yet phrases like 'it is well understood' are just falling foul of what could be another strongly enforced rule against passive phrasing and the smuggling in of contested facts. My hypothetical version of the Motte would discourage such shady thinking just as strongly as it would discourage emoting.

That's kind of a huge point of this place. We can discuss things that are forbidden elsewhere as long as we do so with clarity. Avoiding sarcasm is literally in the rules. I may break that rule but I'm not surprised if I get modded for it.

I agree with the mod. I think the main issue is that you're not putting forth any arguments here. You are not explaining why this speaker is wrong and women being educated is correct. You are not explaining the parallels between this speaker and the modern people you disagree with. You're quoting things someone else said and then providing a mocking tl;dr after each paragraph. And it's not even about the modern people you disagree with here.

If you honestly and sincerely believed that women should not be educated and provided a detailed and good-faith argument towards that, it would be okay. If you honestly and sincerely believed that women should be educated and provided a detailed and good-faith debunking of someone relevant to today, that would be okay. If you honestly and sincerely believe that women should not be forced into destitution and want to argue that point straightforwardly, then that's okay. If you want to throw a sarcastic quip or two in the midst of your genuine argument that's probably fine though not encouraged.

But you don't actually have an argument here. More than half the post is quotes and not even your own words, which is also discouraged. You're just mocking people from a hundred years ago and assuming the audience already agrees with you that they are bad and also that the modern people are just as bad.

I think the argument @HereAndGone is making is similar to another argument that I've heard in the past; namely, that of how new technology is ruining attention spans and leading to a less informed populace. The argument against it (as exemplified by the XKCD I linked to) is something like:

  1. There are a lot of people claiming (new technology) is ruining the youth.
  2. They specifically point to shortened attention spans and lack of appreciation for the (old technology).
  3. They claim it is a modern problem, and new because of (new technology).
  4. However, this same complaint applied to (old technology), which means it is unlikely that (new technology) is actually that ruinous, and more likely that nostalgia is talking.

The statement that I believe @HereAndGone to be making is something like the following:

  1. There are a lot of people claiming that women being educated has ruined them as partners.
  2. They specifically point to feminist theory and women preferring to be "pumped and dumped" over long term relationships as a result.
  3. They claim this is a modern problem, and that going back to 1960s standards would solve it.
  4. However, these same complaints were being made in 1905, which means its unlikely that it's feminist theory that is that ruinous, and more likely that nostalgia is talking.

For what it's worth, I do not necessarily agree with @HereAndGone, but it is a perfectly acceptable argument. If I was making an argument against it, I'd state something like the following:

  1. Young women, like young men, are kind of stupid; especially around romance and dating, it is way too easy to think with your...hormones...instead of your head.
  2. Women tend to be more attracted to men who have a strong sense of direction towards what they want, versus the physical appearance men prioritize; this leads to them choosing partners who are more confident.
  3. However, because of #1, they often end up attracted to people who will not provide them with what they are looking for; for example, someone who is extremely successful will have many women attracted to them, so will not feel the need to commit. Someone who is less successful, but extremely confident, will often end up in conflict with them (whether physical or via not meeting their needs) by putting themselves first, and treating the woman's affection as "owed" to them.
  4. As a result, women end up in circumstances where their relationships reflect extremely negatively on men, as the selection effect of the men they go for shows them only extremely negative traits (this is where claims of "All men are like that" come from).
  5. Men who observe 4, but struggle to obtain a partner themselves, treat it as a symptom of feminism - whereas it's actually the other way around, feminism is a symptom of the above.
  6. And the reason that this has become more of an issue recently is not that women were educated; the reason is that as a society, we removed a lot of the guardrails around relationships for both men and women. In the past, women would often be safeguarded by male family members, who (in an ideal circumstance) would prevent men who are looking to exploit the woman from furthering the relationship, and (in the worst case scenario) would trade the woman off as a pawn for connections or friendship or wealth or whatever.

(Before anyone accuses me, a man, as being too on the side of men - I'll claim that there is an equivalent for men who choose partners just based on looks, and end up hating them once those looks start to fade).

It isn't unreasonable to look for solutions; however, going back to 1960 or whatever won't actually solve the problems. I'm also not a huge proponent of giving other people control over my life, so I kind of don't want to go back to #6 either. It's a tricky problem, and one we're not going to solve in a Motte comment (but it's fun to try!).

That is roughly the argument that I assumed they were imagining in their head. I actually remembered that xkcd when I saw their comment.

They could have made this argument. I partially agree with this argument. But they didn't actually argue this. They vaguely implied it in an overly sarcastic way with no supporting arguments or evidence or discussion of the actual parallels. You can figure out what they believe, but not in a way that allows rebuttal or reasoned response because they didn't actually make any specific arguments that you can pin down and respond to. This sarcastic sniping with vague allusions to real arguments that only convince people who already believe them is how the culture war is typically waged everywhere else across the internet, and is precisely what this place is designed to avoid.

Interesting view of life you got there, mod.

I agree with the mod

Why is everyone calling me a mod? I'm not a moderator of this website nor a member of a midcentury British youth subculture!

Some people strive for modship. Others have it thrust upon them, and find to their surprise that they wear it well.

Oh huh, it looks like your post is right below the mod's post, and /u/HereAndGone accidentally clicked reply to yours instead of the mod's without noticing (I didn't notice either, since it seems like he's meant to reply to the mod from his comment).

Dear sir, if you genuinely believe women end up in lunatic asylums after getting pregnant because their over-developed brains have leeched the phosphates from their systems, I look forward to your opinions on reducing the superfluity of yellow bile in the choleric.

  • -20

I don't genuinely believe that. Which is why I didn't make an argument in favor of it. I think you're missing the point here. The problem is not that we disagree with you on the object level about women's rights, the issue is that we disagree with your style of argument (or lack thereof).

The literally biochemical explanation may not be technically true but the general idea seems accurate and is backed up by plenty of Science™️

Well science has adduced that women do experience basic emotions more strongly than men do. My own observation here is that some vocal individuals evidently have a lot of hangups with women even if I think they’re right on some things. But the most misogynistic people I’ve ever met in my entire life have been other women. Especially when you get them arguing on behalf of the men close to them; especially their sons. But women get shit on all the time for things they’re not allowed to say but men will happily say on their own behalf. Hypocritical if you ask me.

Have you considered the health benefits of being leeched? I can assure you that Breaker’s House of Leeches sells only the finest leeches to temper your humours.

Buy one, get one, no returns.

My blood was tested recently and there was no problem, but I always keep the benefit of leeches in mind. Cutting for the stone may be the next port of call, can you recommend a good barber-surgeon?

People always use this as a smackdown of antiquated and barbaric views on medicine but.....leeches did sometimes help. There are medical problems with some people having too high blood iron, which bloodletting does legitimately treat. Modern doctors will draw blood using needles and fancy modern equipment that didn't used to exist, and they actually know the underlying causes and how to properly diagnose these conditions rather than guessing. But ancient doctors had to guess and notice patterns to cure anything at all.

Some conditions get better if you lose blood -> put a leech on people whose symptoms seem similar to those ones and hope it works

is not the most profound logical chain, but it's not the kind of insane quackery that people treat it as whenever they talk about doctors and leeches.

No argument there, the ancients always impress me.

notice patterns

I don’t think I’ve ever really brought it up here, but one of the things about past humans up until maybe the 1930s or so, is that they had nothing but time with which to notice patterns.

Most entertainment activities and almost all of the work ones involved interacting with other humans on a constant basis. Most of them required you to go outside to do them, and mingle amongst other humans. Even if they don’t require it, like spinning, spinning by yourself is extremely boring and it’s more fun to go outside and talk to other people. They had a lot of time to notice patterns and behavioral trends in their fellow humans.

And once we got around to the Greeks, they started writing down their notes for us.

The fact that they had so much time just spent hanging around each other inclines me to trust their observations of human nature very highly.

I would caveat that by noting that people are prone to biases, and prior to the scientific method this was especially rampant. So a lot of this is overgeneralized. Going back to the leech example: while some cases of leech use were appropriate, a lot were just applied pointlessly to unrelated conditions. If you define man as a "featherless biped", logically a cripple who's lost a leg is no longer a man, while a plucked chicken is.

I would generally trust ancient wisdom that includes caveats like "most" or "usually", I would not trust them if they try to say "all" or "always".

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