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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 16, 2026

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I haven’t watched the documentary yet, but IMO if you wish to increase the sum total happiness in society, it’s better to lean into “women should be ashamed of their gender” than “men should be ashamed of their gender”. This is because women are more sensitive to shame, threats of social ostracization, and other kinds of social stressors, while being more socially conformist, and while also being more “vain” in their choice of mate (hypergamy, which is just nature naturing), and more likely to instigate divorce when the status differential is changed in their favor [1, 2, 3]. Men, contrarily, are more likely to take risks and break social norms in order to secure a mate, and so any attempt at shaming them into not getting laid will be less effective. So there is a qualitative difference in the effect size of any behavior-policing social intervention: with the same amount of shame, you can modify more of the behaviors and values of more women than if you tried the same for men. We know from a study on the Lancaster Amish that women who are controlled according to traditional values have less stress, fewer symptoms of depression, higher aggregate scores of mental health, lower levels of intimate partner violence, higher levels of social support, and even report lower levels of unfair treatment owing to gender (lol, lmao even) compared to the general population. We can only imagine how happy they would be with traditional values + modern Starbucks beverages. Traditionalism also uniquely buffers against the depression-increase when women marry:

Detailed reviews of epidemiological findings suggest that marriage may have detrimental effects in females, possibly due to gender-specific demands posed by marriage and the resulting limited number of roles available to females. Similar reasons may explain why looking after small children is associated with greater risk of depression in females. Both home-making and child care reduce the likelihood of females being in paid employment or put additional responsibilities on those who are employed. Married females with no paid employment have to rely for identity and self-esteem on the role of housewife, a role that carries many frustrating elements and has been increasingly devalued in modern societies […] Indirect evidence for the strong effect exerted by social and cultural factors is provided by those studies showing no, or limited, gender differences in depression rates […] in cultural groups where high value is attached to the female role, such as in Mediterranean countries (Reference Mavreas, Beis and MouyiasMavreas et al, 1986; Reference Vázquez-Barquero, Diez-Manrique and PenaVázquez-Barquero et al, 1987), among the Old Order Amish (Reference Egeland and HostetterEgeland & Hostetter, 1983) or among orthodox Jews in the London area (Reference Loewenthal, Goldblatt and GortonLoewenthal et al, 1995).

In light of the data, I’m not sure why anyone would take manosphere / feminism discourse seriously. Neither of them have any evidence-backed plan to make men and women happier. Maybe the manosphere increases male happiness by providing a sense of cameraderie? I doubt feminism makes anyone happier as feminists always seem distraught.