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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.
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?
"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.
"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.
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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.
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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?"
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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.
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