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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 20, 2023

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What is the woman's responsibility towards low TFR?

Low TFR is the new hot topic. I'll use this post to continue the discussion started by @ffrreerree2 (Only 1 comment, if not an alt, welcome to the Motte.) on his post. Because the last week's thread is about to die off.

Also assumes fuck rate is tied to birth rate

I'll focus on the Iranian video discussed in the previous post. I think it's a good enough approximation of a conservative call to marriage/family building. It does well to highlight the individual failure mode of not having worked towards building a family, obviously "crippling" loneliness, lack of purpose, shitty QOL, yada yada.

That video still bugs me. For one, the right side of the video was entirely redundant. Everyone knows that if you have that wonderful magical trad-wife who other than wearing a hijab at home; gets up in the morning before you without an alarm clock, cooks labor-intensive dishes for not only breakfast but also for your packed lunch, combs your hair for you, and presumably organizes a surprise birthday party for you, then fucks it's it up by spraying foam all over the cake., life is all gravy. Does the modal (regardless of Nationality) man need to be reminded of that dream? Doesn't the very next video by Taiwan hint at the notion that that very dream itself is 'problematic' because women are not only for the kitchen? I'm from the East and its an extremely common discussion trope/meme among young females that there exists no worse reality than being sentenced to the kitchen after marriage, and there are more than enough heuristics (how good-looking the guy is) to figure out if a potential suitor would be the kind to do that. Men around my parts go to extreme lengths to hide any and all desire for such a thing, some even convincing themselves that, that isn't actually a great deal for them all things considered.

Now moving on to the left side. What was particularly wrong about the guy in the video if you look past the "this dude totally sucks" aesthetics? He woke up on time, has an apartment, has a job, has a car, looks the same as his alternate reality married version (despite the pizza coke and takeout), and isn't carrying any obvious grooming defects that a visit to the barbershop can't fix. He also has a pet tortoise. I guess him being rude to the girl selling flowers sealed his fate. Or that he turns his apartment lights off, totally can't fix that by.. turning the lights on.

How does the guy on the left become the guy on the right? The video presents an alternate reality side by side, and it's presupposed that left did something wrong along the way. But he is clearly not happy, I am sure he did not turn down the magical trad wife in the past to further progress his presumble software engineering (casual clothes at the workplace) career. He knows his life kinda sucks. Is the world really suffering from a lack of mediocre-looking software engineering men turning women from marriage? Does not literally 5 minutes on the internet or speaking to a man under the age of 25 reveal to you that it's quite literally the opposite?

So let's imagine an alternative video but this time the female is the protagonist.

On the left we have; Our female protagonist waking up to an alarm. She replies to the 58 notifications on her Snapchat, TikTok, and Instagram, she eventually musters up the courage to wake up and makes her way to the shower, brushes her teeth and then proceeds to spend 30 minutes putting on makeup because society demanded so, and because it makes her feel better. Having left her house ready to take on The World, but! only after she got her corporation-made coffee, no she doesn't have the time to make coffee at home. Finally, at work, she gets in her pre-email gossip at the breakroom for 25 minutes talking to her female coworker about the latest episode of that totally amazing new Netflix show. Midway through sending the emails the 'cutest guy at the office who is not particularly attractive' asks her how her weekend was, she tells him about how she went to an escape room and was so scared like it was a horror movie! The guy eventually wipes the sweat off his eyebrows during a strategic bathroom break during the conversation and asks her to go with him to this new escape room that he's heard all about next weekend. She declines the offer despite letting him know how that would be so totally amazing and sounds like a really fun plan. The guy contemplates changing jobs and then wonders did he remember to feed his pet turtle. After a hard day of work, she rushes home and reaches for the Beauty by Earth Makeup Remover - with Organic Aloe Vera & Witch Hazel, Use with Eye Makeup Remover Wipes or Cotton Pads, Gentle Non-Greasy Makeup Remover for Dry, Oily and Sensitive Skin Types(also vegan and cruelty free) makeup remover so she can apply it and then reapply another layer of makeup for her upcoming Tinder date, because society said so. She goes on the date talks about her ex, her cat, her totally crazy coworker who is insane enough to go on 10 tinder dates a month as opposed to the usual 5. After an exciting evening out, the couple to be arrives home and engage in unprotected sex because condoms feel like shit, after some pillow talk she says her goodbyes and makes sure to not forget to take the pill because pullout game only gets you so far. She unwinds by watching that totally amazing show on Netflix with the lights off and goes to bed.

Ofcourse the story above other than being terribly written is an exaggeration. The modal young woman isn't this vapid. She maybe goes on 1 date a month, might entertain the guys offer to go for the escape room, and sometimes reads novels instead of watching Netflix, and only uses a 5$ makeup remover instead of a 23$ one. But it's just a difference in magnitude not kind. Both of them do not entertain the idea of procreating with that guy from the office. Both of them are the Pams waiting for their Jim Halperts. They just can't find a good enough guy! And until you do that for them through whatsoever means, no amount of PSA videos is going to help your cause. Start off by thinking towards aiming the video at the right audience maybe. Maybe.

Women's decisions are the big change but women's behavior is downstream of massive change to economic conditions. Gender norms that evolved in economic conditions where women were economically dependent on men, and where the opportunity cost of child raising was small aren't going to survive in a deindustrialized economy where nurses out earn factory workers.

Being the primary caretaker of children, as most wives end up doing, is a really bad career decision. You're committing to a part time job that doesn't build skills you can use in other careers, and you can't move easily between "employers"/husbands. Unlike other jobs where success increases your choice of employers, being a 10x mother probably isn't going to help you land the hot rich doctor if your husband turns out to be a wreck. Furthermore you're expected to make this long term choice at a young age with limited ability to predict the course of your partners future life.

Is signing a 20 year contract with a non-compete clause to do ~30 hours of unskilled work a week for a similarly aged peer in exchange for a share of their future earnings an advisable career choice? Only if you think their future income is much larger than yours would be if you pursued your own career.

Traditional cultures evolved in settings where men's superior strength at manual labor was really important and domestic labor was a time consuming full time job. Now it's not obvious that men always have higher earnings potential, domestic labor has been largely automated, and the nuclear family model means stay at home moms are often isolated. Travel and entertainment is cheap, healthcare education and housing are expensive. For educated people social status comes from career achievement, and available careers can be highly stimulating and meaningful rather than rote drudgery. The opportunity cost of motherhood gets larger and larger and so unsurprisingly fewer women are choosing it.

If the opportunity cost of marriage and motherhood relative to singledom keeps getting higher and higher is it unsurprising women have higher and higher standards for men? If cultural and gender norms evolved under conditions with massive disparities in economic power would we expect them to change if economic power equalized? Aren't men going to have to 'sweeten the pot' and offer a better deal in order to get women to sign that long term childcare contract?

My read on this is that economic power shapes relationships. We have millennia of human cultural evolution where men have had way more economic power and that has shaped the cultural models for relationships between men and women. Now that we have a few decades where economic power has been somewhat equalized those norms are going to start shifting slowly but surely. The question isn't why has women's behavior changed, that's obvious, it's how will men's behavior change to adapt.

The question isn't why has women's behavior changed, that's obvious, it's how will men's behavior change to adapt.

It's not a given that there is anything men can do to adapt, I know there have been some bad eggs but the deal in the past was the man spends his labor to provide everything a woman needs to have children, it is definitely possible that there is just literally nothing men can do to adapt. But I don't quite buy that it's the economic power equalization and nothing social that is convincing women to make these decisions. There is a popular and powerful subculture that has defined the traditional child bearing lifestyle as toxic and is constantly warning women away from it. It is very possible that this is bad advice and women are taking it.

The social is downstream of the economic. In the past there was little prospect of women being able to support themselves, and so they had an economic dependence on men. This economic dependence resulted in social memes that encouraged and promoted women being reliant on men by way of justification for the status quo. As women have become more economically independent social memes have proliferated that encourage that same independence. If men want to adapt they'll need to accept a more equitable division of the labor of maintaining a household and raising a child.

In the choice between a life where one has a 24/7/365 job (raising a child) and is entirely reliant on another person (housewife) vs an 8/5 job where one is the master of their own destiny it is no surprise many choose the latter.

The social is downstream of the economic.

The social and the economic defy such simple modeling. What is the good life is socially mediated, if that conception includes kids I can't really say the woman is getting the worse deal, if it doesn't then it is a bad deal. Seeing as women can't really directly compare the two experiences they need to rely on the stories society tells to inform them, and society does not seem to be trying very hard to sell parenthood.

If men want to adapt they'll need to accept a more equitable division of the labor of maintaining a household and raising a child.

The group that does this, or at least advertises they'd be willing to do this, is having significantly less children than the group that doesn't put any effort into advertising this. And, frankly, the meme that men aren't pulling their weight in domestic tasks doesn't ring true to me at all, it seems like just an empty grievance from centuries past that only persists because of the women are wonderful effect. Men seem to be pulling their weight and the domestic tasks besides the ones directly involved with caring for the baby take only a handful of hours a week to maintain. I would know, I personally do nearly all of them each week while working from home just during calls. If your best idea about why women aren't having babies is that men aren't washing the dishes frequently enough then you have no ideas about why women aren't having babies.

the domestic tasks besides the ones directly involved with caring for the baby take only a handful of hours a week to maintain.

No, especially with more than one child to handle.

I'm talking specifically if you're serious about being a housewife, not a part-timer who sends the kids off 6 hours a day to be handled by radical progressives.

If breastfeeding, that baby will wake you up 3-4 times a night or maybe just one after being sleep-trained.

Think special force bootcamp but do this over and over again for a decade if you're serious about having kids.

Then you're handling that baby, changing it, breastfeeding it during the day, and your other child(ren) are doing whatever they want in some other part of the home, and you end up having to clean up the same spot several times a day.

You can be very good at instructing/training kids, but you most likely won't have them tidy all the stuff they mess with before 5 yo.

Then you probably want to have your children wear clean clothes every day, that's a lot of laundry.

There is no day off in that career, and vacations can actually be more stressful (no you cannot just stuff your kids in a separate hotel room).

I don't disagree with those who say that men do less than women in the household.

Yet, I still have to deal with lack of sleep (to a lesser extent), family-related stress but I also have to remain competitive in the workplace.

I don't disagree with the assessment but I do think that it's easier for women to deal with that kind of life.

It seems to me in general that they get more out of being around little babies (or even little animals) than men do, or even organizing/arranging the house.

Their hormonal systems allow them to adapt to rapid changes in their body from pregnancy to breastfeeding back to pregnancy.

Their psychology is more prosocial, they are better at understanding and managing others' emotions, which is essential for small children.

On the other hand, the world of business discourages emotional display, as the men who created it see it as a nuisance in the way of getting things done.

If the man’s world is said to be the State, his struggle, his readiness to devote his powers to the service of the community, then it may perhaps be said that the woman’s is a smaller world. For her world is her husband, her family, her children, and her home. But what would become of the greater world if there were no one to tend and care for the smaller one? How could the greater world survive if there were no one to make the cares of the smaller world the content of their lives?

No, the greater world is built on the foundation of this smaller world. This great world cannot survive if the smaller world is not stable. Providence has entrusted to the woman the cares of that world which is her very own, and only on the basis of this smaller world can the man’s world be formed and built up. The two worlds are not antagonistic. They complement each other, they belong together just as man and woman belong together.

The issue is that the people who complain about the unfairness of the burden placed on women are also the ones that have destroyed the social systems that made that burden lighter.

If HR departments were gutted and Western corporations were more sexist like Japanese ones or Western ones 100 years ago, how many women would find that they would rather have their water cooler gossip session at home around children?

I don't think we're in all that much disagreement, I did specify the non child rearing aspects like laundry. I think a lot of the gender expectation stuff starts breaking down around the direct child care aspects which is why I'm questioning what extra exactly men are really supposed to be offering here.