site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 10, 2023

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.

14
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I can give you some historical data. The initial message spoke about "decades past the last French monarch actually was on throne", and yours about "quickly revert[ing] to a [monarchy] in all but name".

  1. It should be noted that before the French Revolution, some french women had a right to vote in some circumstances: those that were declared heads of a noble family, because they were widows or single, or some religious women, were called to vote in the Etat Généraux. It is irrelevant to the discussion.

  2. The last french monarchy died in 1848. It is also in 1848 that all french men got the right to vote (before that, the right to vote was limited to a few rich men).

  3. The Second Empire lasted from 1952 to 1870.

  4. After 1870, France was a Republic, except for 4 years during Second World War.

  5. Women got the right to vote in France in 1944 (so right after second world war) and voted for the first time in 1945.

  6. Some people on the left argue that France is still some kind of monarchy (a "republican monarchy") since 1958 (Fifth Republic) as the president is very powerful. However, as the president is elected for a finite amount of time, I suppose that is not what you could call "a monarchy in all but name".

So I think "decades past the last French monarch actually was on throne" meant from 1870 to 1944.

But to what degree do we know that women were actually more royalist decades after the revolution?

It is a difficult question to answer, but the question was not only that they were royalist, but that they were supposed to be more religious than men. It is difficult to know if it is true, but it is certain that it was one of the main arguments advanced by the anticlerical Parti Radical, which was a strong centrist party under the Third Republic.

OP claimed that women are (too) empathic and that this leads to a number of (suboptimal) permissive policy choices that we tend to call progressive. Stefferi countered that there were periods of time when women were regarded as much more conservative than men, even when the Zeitgeist went in a different direction. The French example was meant to illustrate this.

My position is that women are the arbiters of social orthodoxy and are much more conformist than men. When the orthodoxy is religious, they're more religious. When the orthodoxy is woke, they're more woke. After a couple decades of Republicanism, they should be more Republican if that ideology penetrated the social consciousness deeply enough.

A number of counter-examples were raised. The rise of Hitler and the support he received from women is one, the supposedly more royalist French women is another. The question is: are those good counter-examples? The former is certainly a good counter-example to the OP's proposal that women prefer more empathetic and permissive policies. I am not yet sure if it is a good counter to my claim. It could very well be that the Weimar Republic was mainly an elite project with mores that ran counter to the sensibilities of the masses. A similar thing could be true about female royalists in France.

You might be right (I don't know). The main point of my post was to give historical data.