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Notes -
Women as a Monolith is Wrong
I am having a lot of trouble defining this argument I want to make, because its a classic motte and bailey situation. In the bailey is some version of "women are like x, and x causes all sorts of terrible things like less attraction from men, less kids, and ruination of society". In the defensible motte there is something like "of course not all women, there are some that remain virtuous, but maybe not enough to matter on a societal level".
The Bailey
Addressing the bailey feels trite, but also necessary.
There is a very real contingent of male youths that do not have enough exposure to feminine circles and social ability to navigate it in a way that allows them to acquire life partners. Men without sisters, female cousins, young female friends, etc. Maybe only their mothers and an aunt or two. They fully do not grok women as people and cannot understand them as anything other than sexual objects or distant uncaring scolds. They live in the bailey of this argument. A sad existence. Others only visit to make a point, but they are truly here in a hellish landscape of misunderstanding.
I've seen a few people extricated from this motte. Specific tale: A 6'3 male virgin that mistrusted all women as gold diggers, despite his painful lack of income. He participated in an obscure sport I play. One female participant in the sport was getting married. Invited 6'3 man, and suggested to one of her promiscuous female friends that maybe he just needs to get laid. The 6'3 man is laid at the wedding, turns out much more chill about women afterwards. Can even start dating, if not successfully, at least without full blown conspiracy theories about women trying to steal his non-existent money.
I personally grew up having a bunch of the hallmarks that make this bailey impossible to sustain. I have a younger sister. She was prom queen, sought after constantly in high school, guys in my grade were dating her. I have a mother that was very open to me about her per-marriage dating life. I had female friends that i managed to not sexualize, mostly because they were dating my male friends, and it felt very wrong to go after them. I had one or two ex girlfriends that turned out to be lesbians/bi. They were sort of off limits after i dated them and acted as a reality check on certain male-female interactions. I had female cousins of a similar age that I knew during puberty.
All of that culminates in a vague understanding of the opposite sex. I would have probably summed it up with these not so groundbreaking insights:
I think of these as not so groundbreaking thoughts. But teenagers do have to learn these things. And I do strongly believe that some teenagers are not learning these things or similar basic lessons. It leads to online personalities that feel pretty alien to most adults. We can't fit them into a normal model of human interaction without assuming them to be incredibly anti-female.
The Motte
This is obviously way harder to address. For a reminder, the motte in this case is something like "not all women are bad, its a small number dragging down the reputation of the virtuous ones, and leading the uncertain ones astray"
Any good motte is a spectrum. At the extreme indefensible end you have "basically all women are uber sluts". At the other extreme you have something like "some women are uber sluts, and it makes it hard on the many precious angel good christian girls to find their proper good christian boys for marriage".
Many ways to go after this, not any of them obviously correct.
I've posted some extremes. You probably will want to quibble with the details. That is expected, its rare to be as extreme as the extremes. But maybe not rare around here.
Again any good motte is a spectrum. If you are somewhere on that spectrum you are in the motte.
I'm not saying that as some kind of "fuck you for being against feminism". Being stuck in the bailey is sad, and I think you have missed out on some formative life experiences. Being in the motte is defensible by definition. But I still want to argue you out of it. Call me a stubborn idiot for that desire.
Sieging the Motte
Any good strategy on a fortified position requires multiple avenues of attack. Or at least completely overwhelming force on one of them.
I will first present possible avenues of overwhelming force.
Women are Humans
For certain avenues of Humanist and Christian thought this should be an overwhelming slam dunk. There is a responsibility on them to figure this thing out. If they need help they should request it. If they are failing they should acknowledge it. If they need more from men they should ask it. If they think what humanity needs involves changing their role in society they should discuss it. Its a sort of virtue ethics writ large.
Men are Broken
One of the big answers to "whats wrong with women in society" is always "well men suck". It is not automatically incorrect, even if something is truly wrong with women.
Men could have evolved for an environment too unlike the one we inhabit today. The stresses of adapting on the cultural and evolutionary level have overwhelmed us. We are seeking the quick bust of a nut, the ephemeral pleasure of a harem over the realistic pleasure and comfort of a loving wife.
Sieging the Motte pt2
Overwhelming force might not be so overwhelming for those steeped in the culture wars. I felt very disingenuous writing that last part. I don't think it is untrue. I do genuinely believe those aspects often overwhelm the brains of most people that get involved in this issue. Its just that for any budding medieval engineers that have heavily considered the aspects of motte defense and offense, they feel juvenile and half baked. Obviously that is where you start on the male and female culture wars. You must remember that there are normies out there that have not advanced as far as the enlightened folks of themotte.
We cultured few can explore the more subtle defenses of the motte. When overwhelming offense does not take the day.
Men and Women are Different
The first thing you might be wondering is "why is this not in the above section?". For most people, obviously men and women are different. There are biological differences based on hormones and genes. But I think what is different is a subtle and key distincter that makes this much less of a forceful offense, and more of a subtle one.
In my mind there is definitely a bunch of science and research that makes it obvious that women are better caretakers from ages -9 months to ~3 years. But there is also evidence that the absence of a father in the following 15 years has a negative impact on the child's earnings and general well-being.
Men and women serve different roles in society. 'hey cjet, why don't you say more obvious crap in your word vomit'. Its sometimes just necessary to state the foundational things. Because sometimes they might not be foundational to everyone.
I do remember having a debate class in high school where one of the proposed topics of "debate" was boys vs girls in sports. There was basically only one girl in the classroom willing to take on the girls side of the debate. Our teacher, a 5'3 self described 'wall flower', had to turn her down. Sometime before or after the story of her single-handedly breaking up a girls fight in the cafeteria by hulk pinning both of the girls to the wall in a stranglehold. Fucking awesome.
Its the algorithms
Its not ladies fault that they have been tricked into wanting so much D. Nor is it men's fault that they can't settle down for a lovely lady. No its the fault of the apps and the algorithms. They simple present too much available D and P. How can human brains overcome such alluring genitalia displayed in front of them and available for their easy consumption via quick hookups?
How about some self control? Crazy idea, but maybe we aren't the first generation to be presented with the concept of hookers. Maybe its called the world's oldest profession for a reason. The time to worry about this is not now, but about 10,000 years ago in ancient Sumer.
I think hookerdom is basically the price of short-term thinking. Choose the hot lady now right in front of you. Or the better match, the less crazy one, the one earning money in her career for the long term option.
If anything we have become too successful at not producing hookers, and not producing men that choose hookers. Or hookers adjacent.
Birth control is too effective
This is what the thought experiment of the last problem inevitably leads into. Ok, we have a hooker/slut culture. The obvious output of such a culture should be a bunch of babies. This doesn't happen because birth control exists. Ergo problem birth control.
We need to remember that birth control is a voluntary choice among at least one of the participants in sexual activity. To get rid of it means we want to substitute intentional choice in offspring for random chance. Which is fine if you are looking for raw numbers, but crappy if you want quality selection and upbringing.
The culture is just like messed up man
Kind of a last ditch psychological warfare against the defenses of the motte. Something is just icky and wrong with the culture. It just feels all wrong. Where is all my sweet strange puss. Why isn't my girl worshiping my hard schlong whenever it happens to get hard. Why aren't enough of my peers acknowledging how awesome and sexy I am.
You are thinking 'hey cjet, don't be an ass', but I'm just typing out thoughts I've had.
I do think there is a basic male urge to have it all. The strange puss, the loving baby maker, the children that look up to you as god, etc. I just also have an economics degree and i realize there are tradeoffs in life. Mostly I am in the "dad" spectrum of tradeoffs right now, with all that entails. Earlier in life I was in the "bachelor" spectrum of tradeoffs and that was fun for a little bit.
There is a philosophical conception of having as many of the nice aspects of tradeoffs as possible all at once. But I'd say that is generally unrealistic for most men. Figure out where you are in life, maybe figure out where you want to be, and adjust life accordingly.
Sieging the motte p3 / Sally forth from the motte
I probably didn't hide it that well. But I do think there are good defenses to the motte in this case of women.
To attack out of the motte, even past the bailey, I think it relies on the uniqueness of women. This goes back to women being human. Women are unique like men. Dumb statement, but also necessary.
Women are among the ultra religious, the ultra slutty, the ultra political, etc. We even shockingly have women that participate in themotte discussions.
I find myself always bothered by themotte discussions on dating. I have an abnormally female contingent of near relatives. One brother one sister. Cousins on my side 8 out of 15 female. Cousins on my wife's side 9 out of 16 female. 3 daughters no sons. 6 nieces, 2 nephews. As closest "grandparents" for my kids, 3 ladies, and one man. Nearest neighbors are a bunch of families with girls and no boys. Some slightly farther neighbors do have boys.
It all comes back to personal experience. I've known many different kinds of women in my life. I'm not a lothario that has dated them all. Simply having a large family has provided a wealth of experience. Any lack of experience there was made up for in the friends I've had over the years.
In general I'd suggest not viewing women as a thing to conquer/trick/subdue. There are intelligent women out there that would make a great partner in your life goals. Especially if those life goals involve family, happiness, well-being.
Adjusting to occupation
Okay the women armies have conquered you, what now? This is an abridged section. I'd like to add more, but its like super late and its been a few too many hours since I started writing.
I think there are significantly different groups of women. Lumping them all into a category is ok if you are going shotgun strategy at a bar. But it us much better if you can learn anything about them beforehand.
I think there are three general axis in modern society for women, and probably for men too. They are also human. But I know more about trying to date women.
Religious/Structured vs anti-religious unstructured
Spiritual/Neurotic vs atheist/rational
Left/Right
Different things will work for you. Different tradeoffs for each. I can think of relationships where one or sometimes two of these are fundamentally at odds but still works. Three off is definitely gonna fail, but probably produce some interesting kids. Speaking of kids, no guarantee they share any of these fundamental axis with you. Good luck raising them, relationship tolerances still apply.
Maybe I was supposed to be positive at some point. Suggest that the war of the sexes will be resolved. or that peace will eventually take over. Nah. That is up to you. There is definitely a trad wife out there for you. I believe that sincerely. You may need to compromise on how trad you want to go (amish anyone?), or how trad she needs to go (maybe she can have a job).
I have helped a few friends find love. I do have a knack for searching and accepting. If you are willing to take help in those directions I am willing to assist. Don't count out your lady friends. Or don't count out your dude bro lovers. I hope for a continuation of humanity via the mingling of genders and the traditional usefulness of penis in vagina cumming.
Feels like an odd thing to end on. But yeah, go humanity.
I will use this quote of yours as I think that "not all men/women" defense discounts it. To give an olive branch, men and women have the same ontological value as humans. I would even go as far as to say that from my view they should all have the same virtues: both men and women should be for instance patient, kind, diligent etc.
However I think this really discounts the huge differences on average between men and women, which really make the difference. I like how I think Andrew Wilson put it: while men and women should aspire to the same virtues, there are different consequences and these virtues have different hierarchies. If for instance if an alien changed all women who would stopped to be chaste tomorrow and fucked around, we would end up with bunchload of unwanted pregnancies with everything that follows. If the same goes with men (and they would not become violent), then we would probably end up with more tissues spend jerking off and some sluts having exceptional revenue that day. The same goes for instance if all men suddenly got lazy and nobody would show up at work: the society would stop working, stores would not get supplied, electricity would fail and so on. If all women stayed at home the situation would be bad, but not as much.
There are real differences in primary duties between men and women - and again not ALL men and ALL women, but on average there is meaningful difference and if it is ignored, it can have far reaching consequences and saying otherwise is standard Lewontin's Fallacy
There are studies showing that women are more interested in things and men are more interesting in people. Men are more effective in physical strenght and violence than women. Men are more suitable to adverse situation ranging from stress (being less anxious) to physical stuff (e.g. being able to be a roofer in Arizona summer, where women would literally die from heat stroke). Women are more interested in socialism and flattening the hierarchies, men are more comfortable with competition and following orders. The quintessential male organization is the army, the quintessential female organization is the sewing circle/quilting bee. And you see it in real life from voting patterns, different mating strategies and everything else.
I think it is not healthy to view the relationship between men and women as adversarial by necessity, but in modern world it was forced to be. Women compete with men on all levels from individual relationships via individualism to corporate sphere to politics. Men and women are not interchangeable, they have different duties and they steer institutions such as marriage or motherhood, organizations such as Army or corporations and even whole societies toward different goals. Helen Andrews has great speech about that here
I have the opposite conclusion: I think the modern world allows men and women to cooperate and be more equal than before. If all woman became sluts today, we would not necessarily have many unwanted pregnancies, thanks to birth control. In fighting and general life, strength matters less than preparation and intelligence, which may soon matter less due to AI. We can work less, and physical jobs are doable by women even without robotics, just power tools.
This is exactly the opposite of my conclusion. Women being "equal" means men and women compete everywhere ranging from fights who stays at home with kids to competition with women for your job position to politics and societal arrangements. Equal rights eventually means erasure of duties and related social norms.
For instance if it is a new arrangement that women have "right to be sluts", this flattens all social expectations, no slutshaming etc. Moreover this also wildly rearranges societal expectations - women no longer have duty to be chaste, which means more fights at home if husband expects such a behavior as it is oppressive and goes against "rights". Just one more thing to argue and fight inside relationship.
Or take another change - equal pay for men and women. If men and women have equal pay, this then means that in increasing number of cases women will outearn men. This should then come with corresponding change in norm of women as primary breadwinners and their duty to take care of their husbands. But at the same time women also have right to be hypergamous and expect men to outearn them. These rights and expectations are going against each other, which means clash and strife.
If men and women can be whatever they want to be, then there is nothing wrong with somebody being incel jerking off at home. He has his first amendment right to watch porn, it is no longer expected that men should marry or take care of family as it is their right not to chose so - so there is nothing wrong with somebody living in small apartment and playing videogames. To then turn and be horrified by incels choosing this lifestyle is then illogical. You are adopting traditional norms and duties while at the same time saying that abolishing these norms and duties s fantastic progress toward equality. It is crazy position.
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