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I mentioned here many times that I consider the gender (sex) divide the greatest factor in our model of understanding modern political thought and action.
Background; middle-class male, young, Catholic family, Mediterranean, living in a big, poor city. Moved to Central Europe to work in a big èlite public institution with many young people, especially females. History of belonging to Marxist organisations in the past btw.
As a passionate about history, I normally talk about it, especially in a highly-educated environment where discussions about complex topics are the norm.
What I noticed in the past year it is astounding and moulded a lot of my thought. Every time I talk with women about history, and the topics fall on some past event/political regime/ideology/whatever, there is a lot of disinterest towards it from the women's side. Not disinterest in the sense of "I do not care", because as I said it is a highly-educated environment where being uncaring about this kind of thing is uncool, but disinterest in the sense of:
"I understand that in the past things worked a certain way, but the past is always worse than now because women had it worse".
From there, after it happened dozens of times with dozens of different women, I elaborated:
Women are the true accelerationist.
I could not elaborate or argue about past political or moral issues or ideologies or sovrastructures, because, from the other side, the argument is always that every behaviour or ideology of the past is ontologically evil because it discriminated against women.
I will never forget how when I was arguing about how 19th-century European states had probably a higher state-capacity than contemporary European states, I was accused of sexism because I expressed a preference for a non-contemporary political structure. The same happened when I mentioned how I admire Charles De Gaulle (because Macron, while being bad, is better than him because he is more feminist).
The most amazing moment was when I said to a group of women (yes, a lot of weird moments this year) that the loss of Church participation alienated a lot of people and diminished the sense of belonging and social participation of the community in the public thing. They agreed with me (!) but still for them, it is better now because they prefer a more isolated society but with more feminism.
Women are true accelerationist because the consequence of feminism has been a weirdo para-futurism philosophy but without fascism. Everything that can be conducted to the past is suspected as part of a reactionary plot to be judged on moral grounds. No detached interests in History per se, but only moral condemnation of everything that is not the "current year".
For me, it was fascinating to discover how males and females consider history, especially when the topic of "in which historical epoch would you like to live?" and every woman answer "now".
The biggest consequence of this sex divide is, imho, that a feminist liberal society has a huge gap in understanding the context when society begins to decline after drifting from some past ideology or structure. It is not possible for them that something contemporary can be worse than something present in the past.
I would like to receive some input on my "theory" from the residents of the motte, expressed in the English language which is better than mine.
PS: for people who are curious, I never received any sort of cancellation or consequence for my brazen rhetorical behaviour. Europe is not as woke as the US, and I am a kinda of "high-status male" for several reason, so I noticed that women tolerate way more whatever I say.
I'd have to answer the same way as a man. If the question was, "In which historical epoch would you like to take a month long vacation?", I have a lot of options I would pick, but that question is a bit like "In which third world country would you like to live?" except worse, because I wouldn't even be able to leverage the favorable currency exchange rate I enjoy as an American, and I wouldn't have any access to modern conveniences.
I mean I think there’s a lot of bias in how people perceive history and the things that they’re valuing over other things. It’s almost always a bias in favor of more technological devices, more official freedoms and more official equality with almost everything else taking a distant second or even third even if, as a practical matter, you’d be freer, happier, healthier, and safer in earlier eras.
There’s a lot to dislike about modern life. The panopticon, street crime, the number of people who have control over your ability to live your own life, the mental and physical health crises that plague us, debts that most people owe for decades now, and the costs of health care for most Americans.
So to me there is a bit of a trade off depending on the era. Obesity and mental health reaching the crisis point in the twenty first century— I would absolutely dare argue that other than crisis care, we were much healthier a century ago when the fattest man alive was 300 something pounds and this was rare enough that he was in a circus. A century ago, millions of kids in America were not depressed, and suicide wasn’t common.
Likewise with street crime. In most cities crime used to be well controlled. I don’t think there was ever an era in which unaccompanied women could safely walk the streets at midnight, but there were eras where crime was low enough that you could walk the streets or let kids play outside without too much fear of theft or violence. There were no open street markets for drugs, no open air homeless encampments within the cities, and no need to plan to avoid human feces.
As far as freedom, we have freedom in name only a lot of times. The amount of control other people have over your life (in part enabled by the panopticon that rats you out all the time) would be mind boggling to someone living in an absolute monarchy in the 1800s. Louis XVI of France couldn’t require your boss to spy on you and fire you if you ever said anything anti-regime. Even if he could, most people in France were farmers and thus self employed. Joe Biden tried to get people fired for refusing an injection. Through liability, the government can force your boss to fire people over Facebook posts (lest not doing so is proof of a hostile work environment). Likewise the control over what can and can’t be done on your own land or with your own house is pretty high. The government can tell you whether you can raise food or animals on your land, require you to get approval to expand your house or build permanent structures, require inspections at every step of the process. I don’t think you could have done that a century ago.
But the statement "people had it better off in time and place X" doesn't mean "I will be better off in time and place X."
Even if I agree that the general social situation of some era is better off than the general social situation of the present day, the biggest issue with going to the past is the lack of family and connection there. I'll be coming in as an isolated individual without much in the way of useful resources and skills to that era, so I think the modal outcome of me showing up in most eras is going to be miserable.
Again, if the question was different, say, "What historical era would you like to live as a member of the highest class, in a tightly-knit community with strong family support?" then my answer would change. But the base question of what historical era I want to live out the rest of my life in is going to be close to "almost no where and no when."
It doesn't hurt that I feel pretty well off in the modern era. To me, one of the only advantages of living as a stranger in the past is that I would be guaranteed that an AI apocalypse/nuclear armageddon/etc. wouldn't happen within my life time.
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