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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   14048 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 30, 2026

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I've been asked by a mod to repost this here, so here goes!

What Is The Problem With Women?

We've often discussed, and it seems we will continue to discuss, what is going on in the Battle of the Sexes. I have to hold my hands up and admit that very often in such dispatches, I am the one defending women and criticising the behaviour and the attitudes of men.

But it is also undeniable that some women are fudging stupid. Or at the very least, so it appears. We've argued over "women prefer the Bad Boys to the Nice Guys" but there comes a point where it seems to be sheer self-destruction at work, because how could anyone stick with a guy like the one in this story?

So, to do justice to the gentlemen here with whom I have argued, here is the sorry story of a woman who apparently had not a brain in her head. Her family warned her off, her friends warned her off, even on a first date she knew this was a bad idea - and she still ended up marrying him and having two children with him while he was irresponsible, controlling, and abusive.

Why? I can't explain it to you in any way that makes sense. Even she doesn't know why, looking back. There are some hints that, in line with theories of such behaviour, she was drawn (for whatever reason) to abusive men, like a typical victim who keeps going back to the same kind of relationship after getting out of the last one. But as to what was at work here, who knows? I can't imagine any evo-psych explanation for this that makes any sense at all, not even the "women evolved to tolerate rape because women who resisted rape got murdered when the barbarian horde over-ran the village and killed all the men and took all the women" kind of thing.

An Irish divorce story.

In our Divorce Diaries series, we speak to people in Ireland about their experience of marriage and divorce. This week, a woman in her early 40s with two children under 10 years old tells her story

My sister knew my ex-husband slightly through a friend of a friend, and they actually warned me about him straight away, as in he’s a messer.

On the very first date, I should have walked away. He was very drunk and a mess from the very start.

I was in my late 20s, I don’t know where my head was at. I had been single for a very long time. I was kind of like, Jesus, will I ever meet anyone? I suppose I must have been desperate. That’s the only thing I can think of. And also, biological clock and all the rest.

We had a few dates and when I think back, I was always going against my gut. I had this weird feeling, but yet he was a very outgoing, funny kind of guy. You’d always have the craic on a night out. And all the girls were like: “Oh God, he’s so nice.”

And then – and this is what embarrasses me so much – he actually slapped me across the face on a night out, very early in, and I let it slide stupidly. I so regret that.

Also, my best friend told me not to go near him, that she didn’t like him. I said: “You just don’t know him.” I never really told anyone what he did to me – my parents, my sister – that he’d hit me across the face. I kind of felt silly.

It gets worse from there, until finally she won't put up with it anymore and leaves. Why she didn't run a mile after the first date, I have no explanation. This is a stupid (and indeed, dangerous) choice she made of her own free (so it seems) will. Nobody was urging or forcing her to take up with this guy, indeed it was the opposite. She had plenty of chances, and plenty of warning signs. She got pregnant, of her own accord again, (I strongly suspect the first pregnancy was the usual hope around 'a baby will fix this' and the second time, what, she had no access to contraception? highly unlikely) and brought two kids into an unstable situation where the father had no interest in contributing to the family. It was only when things finally became intolerable that she left.

And I genuinely, honestly can't blame men or The Patriarchy or anything else for this. The guy in question was a shithead but she knew that from the immediate start. There's nothing in her story, as told, about her family pressuring her to get married or settle down with anyone, much less this guy. She did it all herself.

I find it really quite interesting in that a story about a really terrible abusive man, the question posed is "what is wrong with women?" for her mistake of being with him. Should we just treat guys like they don't have any agency or something, and it's all up to the women to treat men like dangerous wild animals? And it's the women's failure when they don't treat men like apes incapable of change?

Like yes, it's obviously a dumb thing to do but if we were to blame the entire categories for the behavior of one person in them, why can't we blame men equally for his abusive behavior as you do women for her dumb behavior?

I find it really quite interesting in that a story about a really terrible abusive man, the question posed is "what is wrong with women?" for her mistake of being with him.

Generally I'm the one going to bat for women against all the "bitches be ridin' the cock carousel and friendzoning the decent guys" commentary on here, but in the interests of fairness I had to acknowledge that women too do have agency and make shitty choices.

This woman walked, with full knowledge, into that situation. She put herself in it. She got pregnant twice, and that too was by her own volition - you don't just happen to get pregnant, especially if as in the second time they were barely having sex. Her family warned her off this guy, her friend warned her off, she had bad experiences when dating him - and she still went right ahead and got married, had kids, moved abroad, supported the family with her money, until eventually she finally got to the point where her fear motivated her to end the marriage.

Nobody was tricking her, forcing her, or trying to persuade her she was mistaken about this guy. It was all her own bad choices and her own agency. That's the story. That's the question: "what was wrong with her that she deliberately closed her eyes and jumped off that cliff?"

I find it really quite interesting in that a story about a really terrible abusive man, the question posed is "what is wrong with women?" for her mistake of being with him.

I agree that it's an interesting question. And I think the answer is pretty straightforward: We are CONSTANTLY hearing that that there is something wrong with men; that men need to be taught to be more respectful to women; that policies need to be put in place to keep men in line; and so on. Obviously I agree with some of these efforts, although to a large extent society has gone overboard. At the same time, comparatively little attention is paid to the female side of the equation.

Here's an analogy: Pretty much everyone agrees that scammers are bad news and society and policymakers should take steps to cut down on the number of scams. One aspect of this, of course, is prosecuting scammers. Another aspect of this is educating people to look for the warning signs of scams; to hang up on suspicious callers; and so on.

Ok, now suppose Grandma Jane keeps almost falling for scams. It's gotten to the point where she walks into her bank and the branch manager steps out to tell her not to wire any money to India. Under those circumstances, it's reasonable to ask "what's wrong with Grandma Jane?" Doing so does not mean scammers "don't have agency." Rather, it's reasonable to look at both sides of the equation, so to speak.

Yeah. That's what I'm getting at here. And to address the follow-up comment, no it's not victim-blaming. Dousing yourself in barbecue sauce and jumping into a pool full of piranha is not an action where, if someone says "why the hell did you do something this stupid?", it is blaming the victim.

Rather, it's reasonable to look at both sides of the equation, so to speak.

Yes, that's called "victim blaming", and here's your obligatory apoplexy about how this means little girls will now get raped because they clearly wanted it.

The right way to deal with that is just to ignore it. Men are slowly learning to do that, but it's not an instinctual thing for them to do, so it's going to take another few decades for them to evolve far enough to have a healthy response to this.

The right way to deal with that is just to ignore it. Men are slowly learning to do that, but it's not an instinctual thing for them to do, so it's going to take another few decades for them to evolve far enough to have a healthy response to this.

Turns out that the feminist cliche about men not being sufficiently evolved for modern civilization was true, after all!

Impossible to change 80 IQ loutish drunks, possible to change 105 IQ neurotic liberal woman. Latter only requires slight social engineering, former requires dystopian levels of authoritarianism to correct.

just because she left the man does not signal that her IQ is average. maybe she's 85 IQ.

"Teach rapists not to rape."

No one is defending or excusing this man's behaviour. I think the point of OP's framing is that his behaviour doesn't require much explanation: everyone understands that some people are abusive, controlling and drink too much. What is surprising, and hence which does require explanation, is why someone would get into a relationship with someone like that of their own volition, and why she would stay with him long past the point it was obvious he had no intention or desire to change his behaviour.

Which actually is rather strange. After all, if "everyone understands" that some people are just abusive, controlling drunks, then why doesn't "everyone understand" that some people are just insanely attracted/attached to dangerous men? The latter is just as much psychological trait as the former.

Well, it's a sort of first-order/second-order problem. Why do people drink too much? Addiction pathways in the brain. Why are people violent and abusive? Testosterone + a strategic understanding that this can be an effective way of getting what you want, in certain contexts. Why are some people controlling? See previous point + evo-psych explanations for jealousy and mate-guarding behaviour.

These explanations are straightforward and uncomplicated. But a statement like "some women are attracted to men they know to be abusive and controlling" is counterintuitive – it contradicts a basic understanding of human instinct rooted in self-preservation. It's so counterintuitive that feminists spent decades flat out denying it ("of course women don't go for assholes – if they did, you'd have a girlfriend" etc.). We notice we are confused, and attempt to explain this surprising observation about human nature.

"Teach rapists not to rape" should apply equally here to women who make dumb or awful decisions, that you're not gonna be able to improve their dumb decisions, unless we take the claim that women in general are expected to have more agency as true and thus improving stupid women's ability to stay away from abusers is more effective than improving abusive men.

As the gal in the story tells it, he has fallen prey to vice and she to folly.

I think there's a pretty strong argument to be made that it is easier to address folly than vice. But even if it isn't, it would be unsurprising if the two had very different explanations. And, for many vices, the temptation is obvious even to us who disapprove.

That said, there are two possibilities that could make them parallel in an interesting way. One is that her folly is motivated by vice; this is very plausible, and it would be easy to explain why the narrator left it out. The other is that her motive for folly is obvious to some distaff Mottizens in ways it isn't to other Mottizens of either sex; in that case it would be helpful to spell it out for us.

I don't think much of the modern gender wars rhetoric is aimed at such a goal. The modern manosphere types going on the Whatever podcast to talk at young women and call them stupid It's not about fixing women but telling men to recognize women as being the equivalent of a 'rapist'.

And if we're being honest, there's not much to argue against that from any self aware feminist perspective. 'Teach men not to rape' was never intended to teach men not to rape. It was just a hostile gender based expression directed at men by the most sheltered and privileged women on earth.

It's not that her decision is more dumb or more awful, or that she's expected to have more agency, it's that it's dumb and awful in a more self-destructive way, so we'd hope to be able to skip the step where we figure out what incentive is supposed to prompt the use of that agency. The man here is obviously in vastly greater need of improvement, but "Wouldn't you like to not get to abuse anybody, not get to control anybody, and not get to be a drunk?" seems like a harder sell, at least for the type of person for whom it's applicable, than "Wouldn't you like to not get abused, not get controlled, and not get stuck with a drunk?"

Are you not even a little bit curious as to why women voluntarily get into relationships with men they know to be abusive and untrustworthy?

Why some women do? Sure, but bit of a motte and bailey to go from gender war "why are women so dumb" discourse (without acknowledging the same logic used on men would imply they're all brutes) to "this is just about understanding why some abuse victims fall into the abuse"

Fine, why some women. I've never even suggested this is true of all women so please don't put words in my mouth.

I don't see any indication that anyone is excusing this abusive man's behavior. The question is, why did this woman decide to stay with him despite all the obvious red flags and the red marks that followed? That's an entirely separate question from, was this man being a bad person in his decision to physically abuse this woman? Which isn't really asked nor answered in that comment and is, actually, pretty much irrelevant to the particular topic the comment raises.

It is a women's failure when they do not exhibit agency in situations such as this. I don't find "but what about how terrible the man is" a valuable contribution to the conversation here. It has been made clear enough that he's terrible; the question currently discussed is not how to reform such men, but how to reform such women.

For such men, we have the justice system, which unfortunately has to require someone to report wrongdoings and the wrongdoings to be provable (usually) before a punishment is issued.

It has been made clear enough that he's terrible; the question currently discussed is not how to reform such men, but how to reform such women.

But if the men can't be reformed why should we expect that the women can unless we're saying women have higher agency?

The men are being reformed; we have plenty of coercive systems in place to punish men who behave like the man in the story. The men who keep doing it are the ones who decided that the benefits of being abusive outweigh the costs or are simply lucky enough not to get caught. If someone's benefiting from their current status, they're not going to be amenable to reformation, and that's an entirely reasonable position to take for such people (as such, we use coercion and deadly force, but, again, there always will inevitably be people who avoid detection or capture). These men have agency; they're rationally using that agency to escape our reformation attempts.

The asymmetry here is that the woman in this story clearly was, by her own judgment, not getting benefits commensurate to the costs. It'd be reasonable for someone like that to be amenable to reformation such that she doesn't choose to stay in such a situation, and an agentic woman who has unwillingness to do so would be a peculiar thing that, at least on its surface, seems unreasonable, which raises questions.

That's a bit of a sleight of hand.

What do you mean by "the men"? 99% of men have already been reformed (usually preemptively), because 99% of men are not crazy, evil manipulators. (Same goes for women)

There will always be a tiny minority of men (and women) who are evil manipulators. I guess you can always point at the male portion of that cohort and go, "why aren't we reforming these people? Is it because men are low agency? (troll face)" -- if you choose to ignore that you're sampling the worst of one gender, because the better people have already been reformed.

... meanwhile, what's the percentage of women who experience some version of the OP, where they make self-damaging choices? 50%, maybe? I don't know, but it's definitely an order of magnitude greater than the percentage of men or women who are crazy, evil manipulators.

It's perfectly reasonable for us to go "hey, why are large numbers of women having this bad experience?" without having to go "men are the problem". But yeah, raising the slightest spectre of women possibly not being perfect is never going to go down well.

It's perfectly reasonable for us to go "hey, why are large numbers of women having this bad experience?" without having to go "men are the problem".

Agreed.

By analogy, if the local police distribute a flyer advising people how to secure their homes from burglaries, (generally) nobody says "hey, wait a second, why are we focusing on the victims here?"

If Grandma Jane keeps falling for tech support scammers in India, it's reasonable to ask what's wrong and how can we educate her to make her more resistant to scammers.

But yeah, raising the slightest spectre of women possibly not being perfect is never going to go down well.

Yeah, I think that's the problem. It's more or less taboo to say something unflattering about women as a group. You can sometimes get away with it if you throw in some criticism of men as a group.

I would say 80% of men, not 99%

And I feel like if such a thing as consequence free existed, 50%

What are your equivalent percentages for women?

Also: the idea that 50% of men would be crazy manipulators in the absence of social consequences invites one of two replies, depending on your gender:

  • If you're female: the sample of men you interact with is not randomly chosen, and is not representative of the statistically average man.
  • If you're male: would you be a crazy manipulator if it were consequence free?

If legal and social consequences to some actions disappeared today I would still have my own habits and conscience. If I was brought up in an environment where legal and social consequences to some actions did not exist, then I would have likely had different habits.

Note that manipulators very frequently don't recognize their own behavior as manipulative, so the absence of social consequences is also an absence of social feedback.

Two assumptions:

  • there are more victim-type women than abuser-type men, and not all of them are unsalvageable
  • it is in the women's interest to avoid abusers, while it is not in the abusers' interest to be nice (absent punishment)

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