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This kind of reminds me of the romantic discourse about "careers" and "finding a fulfilling career," as though most people's jobs are so status enhancing. No, most people don't live there. Most girls aren't "born sexy," and even those with favorable genetics can totally make a mess of things if they just go with whatever seems fun and exciting in the moment. "Dr Ana" isn't right, but she's more right than this rubbish about how all women are valued for gestating fetuses, as though women with a bunch of kids and various baby daddies get so much status and respect for their femininity. Because poor, fat, socially inept women get so much respect. No! I hope @HereAndGone2 appears and says something suitably caustic.
Women are, to some extent, admired for different things than men, which can include doing a good job raising children, and can include their beauty, and some of those avenues have deteriorated lately, like the women who host the church socials, but that's a different conversation.
But, sure, just telling boys they should simply adopt female role models if there aren't any good men around isn't going to work, fair enough.
Most women have at least a few years of being naturally very attractive without putting much effort in; this often disappears very early due to the efforts required for weight control in modern society, sure, but it's not a false notion inherently.
Possibly so, and it's not like it's of no value at all to the girl herself, but it's kind of a mixed value. A girl can play up her sexuality for attention from men, which is exciting but also scary, and many very young women either don't like it, or do things they regret and feel upset about later. Or she can play up her femininity in a modest way, and get protection and help from men, which can be helpful, sure, but to get any kind of lasting social credit, she does also have to act well, for whatever her local social definition of that is.
Well yeah, I didn't say the manosphere was correct about where they're trying to go with this specific point. Merely that there's not nothing to it. The average 20 year old girl is very attractive, they are correct to notice this.
In general I am not a manospherian, but when arguing against them we shouldn't shred apart the true things(which don't mean what they say they do) along with the falsities.
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I’m assuming you have mainly underclass women in mind when mentioning single mothers with a bunch of kids from various fathers (well, sires might be a more accurate description). I’d argue that yes, it’s actually true that the one activity that may accord underclass women social status and respect is them having and (supposedly) properly raising children as responsible mothers. But even if they prove to be irresponsible mothers, them remaining childless is still a worse alternative on average.
In other words, if an underclass or working-class woman decides to remain childless, no path that she chooses and no activity she engages in will get her as much social status in the eyes of her social circle as being a mother, even a single mother. Society generally has a different attitude towards higher-class women who delay or reject motherhood because we assume that they have good career options, disposable income, various potential fun hobbies they can afford, some sort of higher calling etc. I suggest this blog post from Steve Sailer from 2005 in which he quotes a social worker about this.
Clearly I described low status behavior, if you immediately assumed I meant underclass. Sure, it might still be less low status than some other ver low status behavior, like being a childless meat packing plant worker or something.
Which is work carried out intentionally and intelligently over a long period of time. Being a good mother absolutely can confer status on women, though much of that status comes into effect when the children are mostly grown, which is a pretty long deferral period even for most careers. So in the meantime women do a bunch of status signaling around not letting their kids look at screens and other such mommy wars things, which are only able to generate a small amount of status, at large inconvenience.
Personal anecdote: my status dropped a bit upon having children, because previously I had some amount of high openness adventurer and religious adherent status, whereas now I spend all my free time with my family, and I've basically dropped out of all my social organizations for the time being. My status at work went down slightly, especially it's low status to have to return quickly from maternity leave, which I had to do for financial reasons. This seems fairly common among women with young children, the gestating leads to isolation, but good mothering can raise status eventually, if it works out, but since it's dependent on other people, there's always a risk one of the kids will have serious mental health issues outside their parents' control, which will also sink status in a way that's difficult to recover from.
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Meh, Ok perhaps this was poor framing on my part. Im gonna narrow it down a bit. Many girls arent born thin (there are many that are) or born with make up (though make up really just enhances whats already there naturally). But id still maintain that the option to leverage beauty exists more often, and the emphasis of beauty is clearly slanted towards women more. And the skills necessary to maintain it arent really as complex and difficult as the skills for climbing the social ladder.
Yes you can make yourself ugly with bad decisions, but the point here is that you'd have to make the decision to begin with - you'd still be starting with a baseline of attractiveness handed to many via the lottery of genetics, and then losing it due to your own decisions. Attractiveness is not as valued in men to start with (although it matters). To put this into perspective, women are rated as more attractive than men, id argue just because they are - well, women.
I'd bet money that if you asked people whether Chris Evans was more attractive than Scarlett Johansen, Scarlett would probably win. Even thought they are "close" in attractiveness.
The loss in status here has more to do with how reproduction was facilitated. Yeah, its low status, because its blatantly irresponsible behavior. Its the same reason boxers and UFC fighters would have high status on the male side of things, as opposed to a thug and a gangster starting fights, despite both actors utilizing masculine characteristics, such as strength and toughness: context matters!
I mean, yeah, i see your point, but again, the social effects here are disproportionate. We see men who are poor and socially inept judged more harshly and given less grace - homeless men are a good example: people will see a homeless men as a lazy and a bum, unworthy of compassion or help. This leads to many in our society giving less help towards, and women being given more (there being more womens shelters and the like). It likely contributes to men being more likely to be homeless in general.
Bear in mind here, im not saying women have it "easier". Just that the 2 experiences are unique.
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