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 -
The quality contributions roundup has a lot of discussion of fertility. I found it pretty disconcerting to read, since it all seemed to assume that the only way to get women to have kids is to enforce a top down dystopia. This is not my personal experience in my social surroundings★, but of course I live in Israel so I don't count‡.
Anyway, here is my follow-up question:
If you had the ability to set policies that will encourage increased fertility, what policies would you be implement across the board for both men and women simultaneously?
In other words, not "women can't be allowed access to higher education until they've had at least two children", but "people of child-bearing age can't be allowed access to higher education until they've had at least two children". Or "new parents of children are given twenty additional paid vacation days", or whatever. Are there any such policies you think could actually be effective?
★ if anything what I see is women regretting not being able to have more kids
‡ In Israel, fwiw, having kids is simply by default assumed to be a shared responsibility of men, women, and society. It is expected that men take (government paid) sick days to stay home with sick kids. It is not blinked at for the manager to show up to a meeting remotely with a sick kid in his lap. It is expected that men will leave work early several times a week to pick up kids from school — at least in all the places in Israel I have lived I have seen reasonably close sex splits of the parents at pickup/dropoff. I am not clear on whether or not this is equally the case in America — I don't get that impression, but as my knowledge of America is limited to TV and internet discussions, I could be wrong. But I see fathers at the park supervising their kids all the time, and the internet discourse re America is about men getting assumed to be pedophiles for being around kids... So I assume there must be some difference...
What would I do to make myself have more children? Hmm. At the age of 24, the barriers preventing me from having children with my boyfriend are;
I do not have enough money to afford diapers, much less food for another person, so I would increase the minimum wage to the proper rate it should be, which is $20 an hour. I would, in the same vein, eliminate tipping as a substitute for wages as well to eliminate the hostile tipping environment and poor wages encouraged by my state’s poor labor laws. That would include eliminating all Republicans from my state’s government, as they have opposed all measures to do what is listed above.
I am not confident that, should I approach trying to build a career in my state with a child, that I have protections from corrupt, lazy and immoral business owners who would abuse their position of authority over me to compromise my work/life balance. So, I would replace my state’s labor laws with laws similar if not exactly to California, so that I could, for example, have a lunch break and maternal leave for my post-pregnancy complications.
I cannot afford medical care for myself, much less my children. I suppose with higher wages that would be solved on it’s own, but if not, I would change whatever policies need to be changed to decrease the cost of medical care. I am not too verbose on medical care policies to know what the causes for high costs are and how to solve them.
My social network is dangerous for children, as it consists of social conservatives who will try to shame my children into gender roles and disrespect my choices as a parent, and I would not want to reach out for help from them in an emergency. If I had higher wages, I would not need to work so much and I could spend time developing friendships to replace my network. If not that, reducing the cost of interstate travel so I could move to a state with a locale more suitable to my personality would solve that problem. I am not too sure what policies need to be enacted to solve high-cost interstate travel, as I am not verbose in those policies as well.
Emotionally, me and my boyfriend are recovering from the effects of growing up in an abusive, socially conservative household, and need therapeutic services to confirm we won’t pass our issues to our children. I supposed lowering the cost of therapists falls in the same category as “decrease medical costs”.
Your 30x-great-grandparents didn't have diapers, and any cloth their child wore, the woman probably had to spin or weave herself. Food was available, but instead of being "$1/lb of lentils", had to be sown and harvested by hand (unless a bad season came, in which case, hopefully you have enough preserved). Instead of 'decent, but not ideal labor laws' - maybe you were a serf. Medical care was often counterproductive in the 1800s, to say nothing of the 1600s, and ~ half your kids would die before adulthood - vs today, where advanced medical technology built on millions of man-hours of basic research and 'big pharma' development is available to both the poor and the rich, and the gap continues to close (even things like 'obamacare' helped a little!). With within-state freedom of movement, a functioning rental market, a, by any historical standard, class-free and socially permissive society, and the internet, 'replacing a network' is easier than ever - 'moving to a new city' isn't a catastrophe. Historically, 'plane tickets' or 'moving truck rentals' weren't available to people of any class. Interstate travel is, today, incredibly cheap in any sense. Historical people lived in a society 100x more backwards and reactionary than ... even the backwards evangelicals of 2000. Instead of a therapist, a priest?
Despite all of that, said grandparents would, given the calories available, and after accounting for childhood mortality, have a TFR of 3 or higher. This is both because birth control didn't exist, because children became economically useful quickly, and because it was heavily socially valued. Every point you made is on a strong trajectory towards 'less of a burden' - yet you just don't prioritize having children over them!
You say all of this is easy...and yet if I got pregnant tomorrow, I would not be able to make enough money in nine months to pay for my child's daycare, clothing, food, and my own needs. I would have to surrender my child to the state, because I would also have medical debt on top of that for the not-free doctors I would have to see while pregnant, unless I wanted to avoid doctors and attempt to induce a miscarriage by negligence, which could be life threatening to me or hurt my fertility. You say interstate travel is incredibly cheap, but the amount of money required to move myself from a one-bedroom apartment to anywhere else is far from cheap for my wages.
So, I am not too sure where "you don't prioritize having children" comes in.
A person who very strongly valued children would dramatically cut back other expenses, whether they be 'travel', 'restaurants', 'not living in a low COL area', 'daycare' (when mom and dad were working the fields, they couldn't exactly hire childcare. maybe live near grandparents or something?). They would not choose to not have children over potential medical difficulties.
I'm not sure what your wages are, but I'm confident it's doable. If you and your bf/husband thought it was essentially necessary to have and raise children, these issues would be less!
--
Okay, that's 'extreme' to a modern ear, but - how do bottom 5% income americans have children? Or, for that matter, extremely poor urban africans or south asians? Surely every problem you have is worse for the poorest americans and 10x worse for poor africans/south asians, yet their fertility rates are higher than ours.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I haven't ever worked as a server, and there a bunch of people online talking about tipped positions raking in the cash, making $20 - $50/hr. I assume based on this it's not true where you live? Does your romantic partner have that issue as well? It's not like it makes financial sense to immediately return to a low wage, physically demanding position six weeks after giving birth anyway, and put a month old baby into childcare. Also, there are people willing to donate diapers, if that's actually a problem. They cost about $40/month.
It sounds like you've had some bad experiences with employers. Working for a bad boss can be horrible. That seems like something that has to be figured out regardless of children, though, since working another 30 years for someone who takes advantage of you and you don't respect would be terrible even without kids. Also, first point
I was surprised how easy it was to get pregnancy and infant medicaid, which covers all costs, including a choice of hospital of midwife in my state.
I've moved states a lot. There isn't a high cost to interstate travel? I'm not sure why you would think that? Like, yes, you have to wait until a lease is up or negotiate with the landlord, get rid of all your furniture, and pack everything into your car or a rental truck that you're able to drive yourself, but that's a willingness, not exactly a cost. I moved cross country with my husband and baby in a small SUV a couple of years ago. It was a bit stressful, but basically fine.
There's probably no way to confirm, ahead of time, that you won't pass your issues along to your children, seeing as how issues are just about universal among humans. That isn't to say the therapist isn't worthwhile, maybe they are, but the idea of getting one's whole emotional and financial life in order before having kids is probably not realistic. I'm a decade older and still not in perfect order, but am still glad my daughters exist, and they also seem glad they exist.
Servers making $20 - $50 an hour is so rare I have never met a server IRL who has made that money consistently and instead on a handful of holidays throughout the year. Tips, in my opinion, are compliments by customers to their servers, not gambling percentages meant to help owners from paying livable wages. It creates a hostile relationship between the customer and the server.
Working for a bad boss is inevitable, I agree, but I believe living in a state with strong labor laws gives you more options to respond to that than what I found here, which is "suck it up" or "quit and get no unemployment". It prevents bad managers and owners from ruining their own businesses with high turnover rates - and therefore ruining the income of multiple people - by having laws that protect employees in hostile work environments.
I'm glad you were able to find help easily. It's not the same for others in my experience.
There is generally a high cost in my opinion as someone who has lived in 4 states. The only reason my family was able to move was because my father had a high-paying career that allowed us to rent out all the necessary services to successfully move a family. I am considering in having children what my freedoms are in terms of movement. What if a state passes hostile laws that force me to relocate?
There is no way to confirm, yes, and there will always be something to get in order, but there are fundamental problems with patience, kindness and positivity that are a result of growing up with incredibly negative and angry parents who constantly fought because their social conservatism told them women were children, men were rapists, marriage counselors were quacks and divorce was admitting weakness. I definitely have checkpoints I intend to reach in emotional maturity before I deal with the emotions of another person, much less my children.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
This sounds vaguely reasonable on paper (aside from shoehorning in some unnecessary snipes at political enemies). It rationally makes sense that if you'd want to be economically secure before starting a family.
But I don't think it stands up to millennia of people in much worse economic conditions having many many children. In fact, poor people tend to have many more children than middle class people do. Even lower class people in the first world are massively wealthier than most people in the rest of the world, in the present or future. And yet they tend to have large families anyway.
Is it just having higher standards? Access to birth control? Maybe poor people having large families makes them even more poor and potentially more miserable, but they do it anyway because they're used to being poor and just tolerate the problems more children causes? Or just don't have birth control and don't really plan it on purpose? Or maybe being intelligent and vaguely upper-middle class in bearing but earning lower-middle class amounts creates a mismatch between standards and income, while traditional poor people expect to be poor so don't see a point in waiting?
Given this trend across human populations, logically it must either be the case that if you and people like you had more money you still wouldn't have children and the economic argument is an excuse, or that you are in a meaningfully different scenario than most other poor people who have many children anyway. I don't purport to actually know, but am interested in how you would explain this discrepancy.
Because kids were useful labour that'd help you be more secure during the times when agriculture sucked up most of the human capital.
Does this imply that eliminating child labor laws (and ignoring the ethical issues therein) would drastically increase fertility? Or is there not enough productive labor that children could accomplish in the first world, even on farms? But even then, reducing/eliminating minimum wage for them would allow the market to find some sort of niche. Like, if a poor family could just have a bunch of children and send them off to McDonalds for $6 an hour, 40 hours per week (after school and on weekends would allow this), that's $12,480 per year per kid. I'm sure lots of minimum wage jobs would hire children if they could pay them less than they had to pay adults, and could avoid public controversy. Have 10 children? That's 124,800 per year. Granted, you would have to feed and house and clothe all of those children which would eat most of that money, but that's kind of the point. Have as many kids as you want and the costs and you're just as economically stable as you would have been without them, if not slightly more.
I'm not at all actually advocating for this. I don't know that we want a society where poor children are forced to work 40 hour weeks at fast food restaurants, and poor people literally create children for the purpose of earning a profit. But it seems like it would solve the fertility issue in exchange.
Having children work in fast food restaurants for less than minimum wage is a lot more similar to Victorian London than to a high-fertility agricultural community. The difference is that in the latter case the work done by the children can be performed at or near home, visibly contributes to the family, and allows them to act as surrogate parents for their younger siblings at the same time. This reduces the burden on their parents and also prepares them for future parenthood, as it won't induce the same terror it might in a 25-year old college graduate who has never held a baby in their life. The former provides some financial incentive but none of the social or household management benefits.
I think some combination of work from home, homeschooling, and building more walkable communities is the most reasonable path towards increasing fertility in developed nations if natural selection is too slow for one's liking.
More options
Context Copy link
Not necessarily, because there's been a long-term process of industrialization and urbanization that means we need fewer and fewer people to work agriculture and many of those families' descendants just don't live on farms where they need the labour or necessarily have the land (apartments aren't good for large families)
Now that's an interesting question. It's possible that would help. Some would argue that the US already encourages poor kids to have babies via welfare.
I would need to know more about how much current policies that pay people for kids (and are apparently middling at best at providing long-term results) offer.
I think there's reason to be somewhat skeptical; having kids is not costless and, as you say, a lot of the money would get eaten up which might put it under the "worth it" threshold.
I've also heard an argument that Social Security and nursing homes are to blame. It used to be that having kids was how people saved up for retirement. You spend 18 years paying for a child, and even if they earned you some money that just reduced the economic burden without removing it, but then they love you and are loyal to you and when you're old they take care of you and pay for you. Which, especially if you have an agrarian society where most of your wealth and income is physical goods not just cash, makes it hard to invest in a retirement account the same way we do now.
I don't think there's way to even possibly actually move the clock back on that though. Even if you ruthlessly cut social security and all financial assistance for elderly people, they could still take the money that would be spend on children (and the resulting decrease in taxes) and invest it in a retirement account.
But if you combine it with the reduced labor laws, together they might add up to being worth it.
I mean, the issue is there were a lot of families who didn't or couldn't do that, and it led to insane levels of endemic deep elderly poverty.
Social Security was a win-win. For lefties like me, it basically ended endemic deep poverty among elderly people. For more conservative people, it created a whole new class of consumers, who bought RV's, homes in Florida, et al. Plus, ya' know, actual retired people seem to like the freedom, instead of being free labor for their kids.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I can confidently say for a majority of births from people who can't afford children comes from impulsive sex without birth control due to poor judgement, improper use of birth control due to poor education, the cycle of poverty (which yes, would be traditionally poor people giving up hope of saving money to move out of their class), or the same shitty fairy that comes out of that 0.1 percentile to strike at horny lovers. If I could have as many children as I wanted and support them all and myself, what's to stop me from having 19? I could start an entire dynasty.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
You mention being 24, so I was curious if you'd ever seen The Life of Julia. It was heavily criticized at the time for taking a "nanny state will care for me cradle to grave" approach.
Now honestly... in a hypothetical world where all of these items were attained, do you honestly think you'd even want children?
Yes! I think that a world like that would be wonderful, and I would likely have many more children than I plan to have. Maybe have them forever. The life of Julia is a life that had a robust system of safeties designed to help her when she fails and when she suceeds, such as healthcare coverage until she turns 26 to help with sudden medical emergencies and programs like Head Start to protect her from the effects of abusive parents. If any of these government programs actually forced Julia to do something she didn't want to do, I would agree that The Life of Julia promotes a "nanny" state, but nowhere did I see any federal agency or legislation that forced Julia to make a life choice. I see, in fact, Julia has many more choices and freedoms given to her with the strong social safety net I believe those programs provide.
Can you think of any countries in, say, Europe, who have many or all of these policies you say would encourage you to have more children where women actually go and have more children?
I mean, I'm not sure I believe it totally, but I wouldn't totally throw out an argument that the reason why countries in Europe aren't at South Korean-levels of fertility are those programs, and if they had a less robust US-style welfare system, they'd even be lower. Obviously, impossible to prove a negative, but yeah, considering our increase religiosity as a country, etc., if the US had European-style welfare, I could see our TFR being a notch or two higher. Not high enough for natalists, but better overall.
More options
Context Copy link
I am not familiar with countries in Europe, much less their economic policies, so I cannot think of any.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
You're really getting your punches in against those wicked Republicans. Do you actually want kids or do you want to dunk on Republicans for a bunch of unrelated reasons and this was a convenient excuse? I mean, tipping culture and the general existence of elected Republicans? Those are really factors in your personal choice to not be a mother?
I'm a father and lack of taxpayer paid therapy and the existence of restraunt tipping hasn't impeded me yet.
Yes. My state has terrible labor laws put in place by Republicans and upheld by Republicans. One of those labor laws allows businesses to substitutes tips for wages, and in the 10 jobs I have had in this state, 5 of them supplicated my wages with tips. I find that type tipping culture present in a company to be extraordinarily indicative of a corrupt and unethical business owner, and with the knowledge 50% of my jobs had corrupt and unethical business owners, it makes me nervous to lose my job and have to find a new one in a state where I have a 50/50 chance of having a boss who will try to sabotage my work/life balance with unethical and corrupt decisions.
And yes, I find the existence of the Republican party as an active threat to the safety of everyone, including my future children I very much want to have. I am, no kidding, the 57th great-great granddaughter of the first king of Norway, and it would be a shame to end the royal line.
Bro, you can't go this mask off in trolling. Come on, bro.
I'm not trolling. If you'd like to message me privately, I can send you proof of the genealogical book my grandmother wrote that traces my ancestry back to the mid 1500s starting with the owner of Sud-Bjorntuft Farm, Taraldson Bjorntuft (earlier than that and I will have to get my grandmother to send me some PDFs for you).
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I do not believe any of your complaints are relevant because they not only apply, but apply much harder, in countries with high fertility rates.
If anything, a blind adherance to the data would show that the exact opposite of your prescriptions would be useful, if increasing fertility is the only value we're optimizing for. Make people poorer, more conservative and intolerant, add corrupt and dysfunctional governments, remove welfare and social comforts, etc.
EDIT: I should clarify that your complaints may be valid for other reasons, but in terms of increasing fertility, the variables you're suggesting tweaking not only are unrelated but inversely correlated with the desired effect.
EDIT 2: Actually, to avoid being guilty of the same thing I suspect you of, I should clarify that I think you're playing dumb and are putting forth spurious arguments to passive-aggressively poke the bear here.
If you think I am playing dumb and lying, I am confused about the tone of conversation your response has. Why would you want someone who you think is playing games to respond to you?
I suppose if the true goal is numbers, your proposition would work. But I consider fertility to include "successfully raising children into adulthood so they have more children". If people are having kids, but their children are dying early due to poor health standards and abuse, is that raising the fertility?
The most extreme far right of social conservatives seem to want to return the world to about 1919. (The year before the nineteenth amendment.) In that year child mortality was about 180/thousand, compared to today's 7/thousand. (Let's assume that this is 100% the fault of economic and social institutions, rather than medical technology.) At that same year the fertility rate was 3.3 compared to today's 1.8. The math definitely works out in favor of 1919.
Of course, the "sweet spot" seems to be during the baby boom in the 1950s, when the fertility was also about 3.3 and the child mortality was 30/thousand.
Why should I be an asshole unless I'm entirely sure you're picking a fight? Even if I were sure. It costs nothing to be civil on a semi-anonymous internet forum.
Do you think telling me you think I am playing dumb and lying about my beliefs to be civil?
Yes, I believe I phrased my doubts civilly.
In other conversations, you seem not to separate the content of a belief from whether it's being argued fairly. Elsewhere, you say:
So, in your view, the opinion "Men are funnier than women" cannot be held or argued without it being an insult. I do not see it that way. I also do not see "Men are immoral" as an insult. And unless I'm grossly misunderstanding the rules, neither does The Motte. You would be closer to the bone accusing lack of charity, but you'll find I did respond to your arguments as you stated them, while leaving that I doubted your good faith as a sidenote disclosure.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
These are all, like it or not, probably the median opinion among 20-something year old liberals. There's definitely a tension in modern society where prime biological fertility corresponds to the most financially vulnerable and lowest-earning part of a typical career. Its also well known that young healthy people are overcharged for health care in order to prop up the insurance market.
Yeah, even if it's just someone trolling, it's still interesting to respond seriously to the arguments, they're pretty similar to what left-leaning people actually believe
More options
Context Copy link
Purely economically speaking, points #1 and #3 are common. But if you read past that, each of the points has an element of "conservativism is the root cause of low fertility", which seems to me like a frustrated parody of "feminism is the root cause of low fertility", something people do unironically believe. I think point #5 in particular stands out as something even the most progressive of progressive would not blame on low fertility rates. "The problem is, religious bigotry such as my parents subjected me to is supressing birth rates" is an argument that is both bizarre on the surface, and one I have never heard anyone make. Even very very anti-religious people will concede social conservatism tends to pump out the babies.
You're thinking too meta. Having a bad relationship with your parents almost certainly makes you less enthusiastic about becoming a parent yourself.
Hm... I think you're being a bit of a quokka here, but let's wait and see. She just concluded a fairly heated debate with @f3zinker in the previous thread and I get the impression she's kinda done with us. Would love to be wrong though.
Im smelling the same thing you are smelling.
More options
Context Copy link
No, I am not done with ya'll. I just don't know what you mean by "wait and see".
There's a bit of a pattern among left-leaning users who depart here that, before they leave in a huff, they'll start posting provocative inflammatory things that parody the tone and style of the people they're fighting with. @PmMeClassicMemes is a recent example, but unfortunately they deleted their profile so I can't show you.
"Wait and see" means that, if I see you continuing to debate in good faith, I'll know I was wrong and your blaming social conservatives for low fertility rates was a sincere belief rather than a dig at redpillers who blame feminists.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
This would at least insure plenty of unemployed people to take up a stay at home parent role so it might just work.
More options
Context Copy link
Sorry, but I can't help but think you're mistaken here - the statistics and science are extremely clear on this point. By encouraging your children to adopt binary gender roles and preventing them from becoming trans or non-binary, they're actually helping to protect your children, rather than making the environment more dangerous. Trans people encounter all sorts of negative outcomes when compared to their cis cohorts, and making sure that your child does not grow up trans is not just going to protect them from those deleterious outcomes, but also save them from the rampant transphobia encountered all through society. You should actually be thanking these social conservatives - the difference in life expectancy, suicide rates, etc for trans people is so stark that keeping your children cis is one of the most powerfully positive things you can do for their life outcomes.
Trans people encounter negative outcomes from social conservatives attempting to enforce a gender binary, so if I wanted to protect my trans children from transphobia, I ought to keep them away from social conservatives, not ko-tow to them. I can do nothing about my children being trans, because it is not a choice. And if my children were not trans, social conservatives would emotionally and verbally abuse them for stepping outside of the gender binary. My sons would grow up misogynistic with little success with women, emotionally closed off from himself, his friends and his family, abusive (see misogyny) and lonely like I have seen every single conservative son of conservative parents turn out as. My daughter would have poor self esteem, be victim to abusive relationships due to that, anger issues and extreme emotional immaturity, like every conservative daughter of a conservative father I have seen.
You don't know this. There is no conclusive evidence that this is true.
No, discredited or stratight up retracted brain scan studies with tiny samples when you'd need huge ones to get anything that isn't noise do not count.
The latter points about conservative education are just instantly disproven by any glance at an Islamic country and its rates of marriage and births. The criticism you're levying here isn't based in any practicality. It's 100% moralist grandstanding.
Well, when I glance at Islamic countries, I see a national social crisis because women are being arrested and beaten to death for not wearing a head scarf properly. I don't know if theocratic authoritarian Islamic countries are the epitome of any healthy civilization, much less the epitome of what marriage and parenting is like.
I do know that being trans in not a choice, because gender dysphoria is a medical condition, not a lifestyle choice.
And yet, people there are having more children than in the West, by a large margin. Calling Magians unhealthy from your standpoint is throwing stones in glass houses. And I notice again, the things you're objecting to are entirely based on your moral outlook and not practical considerations of survival.
We'll see who is still there to call who unhealthy in a century.
As for the trans question, I hold it to be a religious matter. Paraphilias and dysphoria are not a choice but only in the sense that "lifestyle choice" is a nonsense concept that refers to nothing real or important borne out of pure enlightenment ideology. All these can very well be socially conditioned, as I bet you recognize in any other setting where it is politically useful, and this equivocation of medical condition and truth about the soul is not coherent.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Just to be clear, are you saying that all conservatives raised in conservative households are abusers/abuse victims based on their gender? This is such a comically uncharitable view(all members of my outgroup are mentally ill and morally repugnant) that I cannot believe you are posting here in good faith.
Based on their gender? No. But yes, I believe that the parenting style advocated by social conservatives is inherently emotionally (ex: shaming children for stepping outside of the gender binary), verbally (ex: it is suitable to tell children you want to be quiet to be "seen and not heard") and physically (ex: spanking) abusive, and therefore people raised in a conservative household are victims of abuse, and people who raise children in a conservative household are abusers, although the rate at which the abuse is a) deliberate and b) realized varies. I don't think most conservatives and therefore people *want * to abuse or be abused, but it is an unfortunate side effect of the tenets of social conservatism.
I may have been unclear with that "Based on their gender" comment - I was referring to the abuser/abuse victim distinction.
However your post does actually make the critique that I made in reply to another comment more impactful, especially considering you are still using social conservative rather than republican. Social conservatism is essentially the norm outside of WEIRD nations, so when you say that all conservatives are mentally ill abusers you're also making some incredibly racially inflammatory and culturally insensitive claims. As someone who has experience with a lot of people from different cultures, I think most of them would find the idea that they don't actually like their culture and have essentially been tricked into not being a western liberal because they're abuse victims deeply offensive. The idea that every single woman who was raised in a traditional buddhist culture has poor self-esteem, anger issues and extreme emotional immaturity is just farcical.
This is why I believed you were not posting in good faith - your argument is essentially claiming that the majority of non western and non-white cultures are just systems of perpetual abuse, and that's so intolerant that it makes Donald Trump look left-wing.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
"My outrgroup are uniformly engaged in a crime" is a position you can definitely hold and argue in good faith. I think all culture wars in history have basically been about that.
I am operating under the assumption that justawoman is a liberal (they have said as much, so I don't think this is being uncharitable) - and that does actually preclude you from making the argument that she just made in good faith. Social conservatism is essentially the norm outside of WEIRD nations, so when she says that all conservatives are mentally ill abusers she's also making some incredibly racially inflammatory and culturally insensitive claims. As someone who has experience with a lot of people from different cultures, I think most of them would find the idea that they don't actually like their culture and have essentially been tricked into not being a western liberal because they're abuse victims deeply offensive. The idea that every single woman who was raised in a traditional buddhist culture has poor self-esteem, anger issues and extreme emotional immaturity is just farcical.
That argument and conclusion absolutely do not match what I see liberals believing and arguing, which is why I expressed my doubt as to that argument being made in good faith and hence asked for clarification.
Every single woman who is raised to believe that they are lesser than others and grows up to believe they are lesser than others for no other reason than their biology has poor self esteem, that is my belief yes. That goes the same for a man. I think that all men and women are equally capable of the same range and rate of thoughts and feelings, and so to be told otherwise and lead to believe otherwise leads to natural misery.
I don't believe you're correct. I have a disability which means that a certain type of feeling is forever closed off to me - my body is imperfect, and as such I am fundamentally incapable of certain perceptions. In my case, to believe that I am not handicapped in this way would actually lead me to greater suffering as I attempted to perform tasks which I am simply congenitally unable to do. Not recognising my own limitations is actually far more dangerous, whereas appreciating and accepting them allows me to account for my limitations and live a more satisfying life within those bounds. Similarly, I think that if I tell a small filipino woman that she is just as capable of lifting heavy weights as an icelandic bodybuilder (or getting to experience what that feels like) then I am actually harming her if she tries to act on that information. There are actual physiological differences between men and women, and a lot of feelings and thoughts are downstream from that.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link