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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   31482 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 10, 2023

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Our culture automatically cares more about female suffering and wellbeing than male suffering: "The ship is sinking! Save the women and children first!"

Does OP realise that he is setting himself up to be "Fuck you, six year old child, if you can't fist-fight me for this seat on the lifeboat you are shit out of luck"?

While cold logical rationality may say "I, an adult male citizen who is economically productive, am worth more than this young child and therefore my survival is more of a priority", I think the natural human instinct to protect offspring would lead us to regard a guy who let a child die in a burning building because they put getting out themselves first would consider that person not a sterling example of maleness who should reproduce his genes, but a shit head.

Or the likes of this guy, who certainly did not put "children first", right? Too many cases like that, where the mothers are also complicit in letting the new man in their lives harm their children. Those women should also be disgraced and ostracised.

This may have been how society functioned previously, but it most definitely isn't how it functions now.

As a male, why should I give up my life to save the children of someone from a different people? In the more homogenous societies of the past the moral (lol) calculus involved was a lot more simple, but in the current day those questions are far more difficult to answer. If I give my life up to save some children in a burning building, the actual identity of those children matters hugely to a degree that it didn't in the past. I would absolutely condemn and castigate a man who gave his life to save a boat full of drowning economic migrants who would then go on to make life worse (even if in some small way) for his native country.

The cold logical rationality here isn't about economic productivity, but about group interests - it isn't an accident that willingness to risk one's life to save others tracks remarkably well to how closely related you are to those others. Modern societies are diverse and multicultural enough that the selfish and easy approach is, often enough, the moral one as well. Why should I give up my life to save a group of people who are hostile to me and my posterity, when I can make things better for my tribe by simply not intervening when those hostile outsiders inadvertently decide to remove themselves from society?

This is such a confusing response. The complaint is that society views men in particular as disposable relative to all other classes in society, responding that "don't you know you're more disposable than the other classes in society" is just agreeing with him. Which sure, I was also raised in this society, these are also my values. But can't you kind of see how viewing yourself, and society at large agreeing with you, that you're particularly expendable has a kind of visceral quality? To go around implicitly knowing that if it comes to it your place is to die, and not only accept this but relish it. Some significant part of at the very least my, and I suspect most men's, daydreams involve sacrificing myself for a worthy cause. And I won't lie, this insurance policy us men offer society doesn't seem like it is having its premiums paid in full, or at all. To have it taken for granted would be one thing but it often feels like this noble side of myself is resented, that we are not even entitled to be proud of and celebrate our responsibilities because it may imply that women are in some way lesser for not having this particular burden.

I don't think OP or many of the men complaining here are really angry that things like this are asked of men. I think we would for the most part welcome responsibility, it's just those responsibilities used to comes with some carrot to go along with the stick.

Well - cold logical rationality's argument can be reduced to "my survival is a priority", really, unless my life is so shitty I'd gladly accept death over having to trudge on (with blood on my hands on top).

cold logical rationality's argument can be reduced to "my survival is a priority"

It can also be reduced to letting others survive at the expense of yourself, what is logical depends entirely on what your values and goals are.

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