This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
An elegant solution to all the male crisises, embryonic sex selection. https://mistakesweremade.substack.com/p/the-y-chromosome-is-dysgenic
Men commit far more crime than women, they are more prone to diseases and they live shorter lives.
There may be more variation in men's IQ scores and they are more common in STEM, so we would certainly need some men for new discoveries and the like but what is the need for 1:1 sex ratio?
Most people don't work on intellectual tasks in civilization which need constant innovation and incredible time spent on them with a singular focus. Most jobs are mundane and of maintaince variety. We can just have few men which work on hard research type jobs where vast majority of population is women. Maybe with lack of men female researchers would lead. Besides if super intelligence arrives we may not need men working at these jobs at all.
This would solve the incel problem since men are rarer, this would solve the problem of dangerous men preying on women.
Note I am not serious here, but talking about this hypothetical seems like fun. It does seem obviously wrong but I can't pinpoint any specific moral principle it might violate.
Surely there is something wrong with this argument but what is it? It seems fine from an purely utalitarian perspective.
Edit: i am again restating that I am not seriously considering this. It's starting prompt for philosophy and a fun writing excercise.
The dystopian take: We are moving dangerously close to the most radical feminist fantasies with this. Keep in mind that feminism seemingly needs to treat men as the outgroup to function, and that most women still identify as feminist. We live in a democracy. Reducing the ratio of men to women means increasing the political power of feminists. That scares me, because there seems to be no end to the slippery slope that ideology is currently on. If something is wrong in society, they blame men. If that doesn't solve it, then they blame men more. Increase their power and reduce the ability of men to organize against it, and we could see some truly dystopian shit.
Why not bar men from high-paying positions entirely? Birth just enough of them so there are people to do the hard and risky jobs, and let everything else be done by women. One man can impregnate hundreds of women after all, so even gradually reducing the male:female ratio to less than 2:10 should be more than sufficient to keep up the population. Any male politician speaking out against this trend can be efficiently cancelled by hordes of women and watch himself slowly lose influence.
You also mention that men are more common than women in STEM. But for several fields this is not true. Women outnumber men quite heavily in medicine and biology for instance, and if you look at science fields overall, women actually outnumber men overall. Also note that the link I have here is 6 years old. As far as I know, women have only moved further ahead of men in the past years. In spite of this, there is still a broad push to get even more women into higher education. I fail to see how a version of the current landscape actually dominated by women would not just result in women dominating academia completely. I can already see the argument: Men is only X% of the global population, so there should at most be X% men in any given degree. Of course if the male percentage is lower than X (or 0) this just goes to show that women are better.
Finally, I think you are misdiagnosing the incel and broader dating problems of modern societies. The culture promotes hedonism, women are taught to fear men, people spend less time in-person socializing than ever, and the way that men are encouraged to act is unattractive to women. Nothing about reducing the ratio of men to women actually fixes any of this. The addictive and convenient nature of social media and gaming means they will continue to be picked over social interaction. Men will still be brought up anxious and scared of approaching. Demonizing men will only be easier as you meet them less. Maybe women will lower their standards purely due to a lack of options, but I honestly wouldn't count on it. That seems more like a male thing to do.
Just in general, screwing with the ratio of men to women seems like a Chesterton's fence of monumental proportions. No one predicted that the one child policy of China and the resulting increase in the proportion of men would turn out as disastrously as it did, even though it seems obvious now. Your experiment would probably result in some very interesting insights into the human mind, whilst similarly blowing up society in spectacular and unexpected fashion.
Fun to think about though.
What? If men become scarce, then women will become desperate for men. That would increase mens' power, not decrease it.
The actual problem with the proposal is that this kind of society wouldn't actually be a feminist utopia. For one, women's hypergamous instinct is based on positional status, so making all the men tall or handsome doesn't do anything. There's nothing inherently short or ugly about Western men today. If they don't see the low-status men around, then the rest of men won't actually look high status! There's nothing to compare them to!
Indeed, even if the men are all the same (zero variance whatsoever), it seems unlikely this would make women happy. The purpose of hypergamy is to have a higher status partner than all your friends. If all the men are the same it might as well be a society without any men at all!
So the only thing that would happen is women will become desperate because men have more options. So the women will feel even worse than they do now! In addition to getting pumped and dumped, they will be getting dumped by actual losers! This will not feel like a feminist utopia at all!
It would seem women desire a male slave class.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link