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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   29308 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 2, 2023

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If there's no correlation between outcomes and degrees of feminism today on the international scale, then there's no reason anyone should take seriously the argument that feminism is responsible for worsening social conditions, because you won't admit to any control. The only control is the world 100+ years ago, and life back then was worse on every metric I can think of.

Countries are feminist in different ways.

What is your definition of feminism?

He made a show but he did not actually do much of anything.

This is like marxists who insist the reason USSR/China/Cuba/etc. failed to create a communist utopia is because they just didn't do communism hard enough. Maybe. But since there appears to be no correlation between communist policy and improved outcomes, there's no reason to believe that. Same here.

because you won't admit to any control

Yes, that is what I said very clearly my original post that I linked to. There is no control group.

and life back then was worse on every metric I can think of.

1950s America was massively less feminist than any white or east asian country today, and was a pretty nice place to live, a better place by many metrics. And to the extent things are better in 2023, it is mostly because of technological development, but the pace of technological development was greater in the 1950s, the nice things we have in 2023 are built on the groundwork of things discovered in earlier times, I do not think you can give feminism any credit for the nicer technological things we have in 2023 than we had in 1950.

This is like marxists who insist the reason USSR/China/Cuba/etc. failed to create a communist utopia is because they just didn't do communism hard enough. Maybe.

AFACIT, Putin did not substantially change policy at all. Did he enact something like the Hayes code for all TV and movies in Russia? Did he restrict women from going to college? Did he ban no fault divorce? Did he restrict single women from living alone? Did he add "honor and obey" to all legal marriage vows? How much money did he actually allocate toward pro-traditional Christian values media? Did he make being a member of a church in good standing a prerequisite for elite positions? Did he ban abortion? Did he ban birth control? These are things that were the norm in America 70-120 years ago, such policy changes are what it would actually mean to roll-back feminism.

Putin has passed laws restricting the promotion of "non-traditional family arrangements", down-graded criminal penalties for domestic abuse, and allocated money to the rebuilding and refurbishing of Orthodox churches and cathedrals. He may not have put through every trad dream policy, but he is obviously making more of an effort to restore traditional arrangements than any western leader.

Yes, that is what I said very clearly my original post that I linked to. There is no control group.

So why should anyone take seriously the thesis that feminism is responsible for X bad thing in modern society, if there's no way to test it? Even if I granted that society is worse on net today than it was in the 1950s, Feminism is far from the only thing that's changed since then.

These are things that were the norm in America 70-120 years ago, such policy changes are what it would actually mean to roll-back feminism.

120 years ago, in 1900, the American birthrate had already been halved since 1800. Was that also feminism's fault?

He may not have put through every trad dream policy,

He hasn't done anything close to what was required. If we were ranking societies on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being the most feminist society in history, 10 being the patriarchy of 5th century Rome, I'd put the Ango-America in the 1700s as a 9, America circa 1900 as a 6, America in the 1950s as a 4, and Russia and the U.S. in 2023 as around a 1. Whether Russia is 1.3 and America is 1.1 and Sweden is 1.0 isn't a big difference. Maybe Putin moved the needle for Russia from 1.3 to 1.4. Maybe he didn't move the needle at all, his actions did not even do enough to arrest entropy decay and the continual allure of American hegemonic culture, and so Russia still went from a 1.5 to 1.3 during is reign.

So why should anyone take seriously the thesis that feminism is responsible for X bad thing in modern society, if there's no way to test it?

For the same reason anyone takes any argument about social or historical trends convincing -- they find some combination of imperfect statistical correlations, personal life experiences, historical testimonies, circumstantial evidence, reasoned arguments, etc. etc. to be convincing.

120 years ago, in 1900, the American birthrate had already been halved since 1800. Was that also feminism's fault?

It probably did have a major impact. America became substantially more feminist during the 1800s -- coverture was ended, the first states had already granted woman's suffrage. By 1918 Mencken was already complaining in his In Defense of Women that women had legally seized the upper-hand. Robert Dabney wrote in 1871 about northern conservatives caving on womens rights. In 1886, Henry Adams was satirizing feminism in Boston. You can play Wikipedia game and note how few children the notable 1800s feminists bore. Here is an interesting article making the argument that birth rates dropped earliest in the regions that were first hit by englightenment/feminist values, notably: France and New England.

It probably did have a major impact. America became substantially more feminist during the 1800s -- coverture was ended, the first states had already granted woman's suffrage. By 1918 Mencken was already complaining in his In Defense of Women that women had legally seized the upper-hand. Robert Dabney wrote in 1871 about northern conservatives caving on womens rights. In 1886, Henry Adams was satirizing feminism in Boston.

All of these datapoints are from the late 19th - early 20th centuries, and falling birth rates go back to the 18th century.

Here is an interesting article making the argument that birth rates dropped earliest in the regions that were first hit by englightenment/feminist values, notably: France and New England.

The suggestion that pre-revolutionary France was a substantially more secular society than England is dubious at best, and the article doesn't even try to argue that. Censorship of anti-religious and free-thinking literature was far less stringent in England, and religious pluralism far more advanced.

Granting that feminism is entirely or mostly responsible for declining birthrates, and since you apparently define "feminism" as the extension of any legal or civil rights whatsoever to women, what was so great about the mid-eighteenth century that it's worth returning half the human species to the status of property to restore?

returning half the human species to the status of property to restore?

It is my observation and studied opinion that:

  1. Women have enormous natural power because they have the power to make men immortal.
  2. Men inherently do not like to see the women they live like unhappy. It is my experience, my observation, and I don't have it on hand, but I remember seeing some study that a husband's happiness was very correlated with his wife's happiness, but not vice-versa. Or going back to the patriarchal age or Biblical proverbs: "It is better to live in a corner of the housetop, than in a house shared with a contentious woman."
  3. Women, like children, do not have the capability, physical or psychological, to be fully sovereign over themselves.
  4. Women, like children, actually like to be owned by a father/husband.

Feminists say that feminism "is the radical idea that women are human." Well it's more like feminism is the radical idea that women are men, that is, they thrive in having the same social and legal situation as men do (1). And that is not true -- it is fantasy-based argument that does tremendous harm to men and women alike. Women are their own thing, not men, not children.

So even if women, have little legal power, they retain tremendous power to bend men to their will, and to extract the means of a happy and fulfilling life.

And since women can never be self-sovereign, they are either wards of their fathers, wards of their family, wards of their husband, wards of the state bureacracy, or temporary wards of a rotating array of characters (their boss, their boyfriend). eg. I believe that only fathers and husbands have the knowledge and alignment of interest to actually take care of women in the best possible way.

(1) Actually, feminism is more like calvinball where women alternatively get treated as men, sometimes indeed as super-men, or sometimes as agency-free, angelic, children (eg, when they argue women shouldn't be made to publicly testify in college sexual assault cases, they should just be believed)

Wait, what?

Women, like children, do not have the capability, physical or psychological, to be fully sovereign over themselves.

What do you mean by "fully sovereign" in this context? In what sense are the current generation of men "sovereign?"

Women, like children, actually like to be owned by a father/husband.

What to you mean by "owned" in this context? Do you have any anectotes about this?

Since you apparently have opinions on whether of not Russian traditionalists should vow to obey their husbands, I just want to put it out there that there aren't wedding vows at all in Orthodox ceremonies, so Russian Orthodox traditionalists wouldn't necessarily vow anything to their husbands. But they are both crowned, sovereign in their household, and "crowns of martyrdom," it's said.

What do you mean by "fully sovereign" in this context? In what sense are the current generation of men "sovereign?"

Most modern men are slaves by historical standards. A "sovereign man" or perhaps more accurately a "free man" is able to both obtain the means of sustenance by building and trading and interacting with society, and physically can protect what he has from predation. Remember, the idea that police are the frontline protection against predation is very new. In older times, a free man was much more responsible for physically protecting his own liberty and property.

What to you mean by "owned" in this context? Do you have any anectotes about this?

A book could be written on this. The term "owned" isn't quite right, the husband-wife relationship is sui genersis so inherently it needs its own word. But for one example -- women will boundary test (like children) (also known in PUA as shit test or fitness test), all women will boundary test, and they like it if you pass the test and are deeply uncomfortable if they fail. An wife ultimately wants to rely on you as her rock, and as part of that is having enough of a sense of command to do what is good for her, not always what she says she wants at the time.

But for one example -- women will boundary test (like children) (also known in PUA as shit test or fitness test), all women will boundary test, and they like it if you pass the test and are deeply uncomfortable if they fail. An wife ultimately wants to rely on you as her rock, and as part of that is having enough of a sense of command to do what is good for her, not always what she says she wants at the time.

This is why I was asking more for anecdotes.

Do women prefer decisive men who have a vision for their family, and are able and willing to lead them toward that vision in the face of opposition, sometimes even from their wives? And also have good judgement to actually know what's best, better than their wives? Do they prefer men who are able to provide and protect, can leave demeaning jobs and get by on their own if necessary? Sure. That's, sure enough, why all romance novel leads are like that, and also tall and strong.

However, to the extent that here in reality there are a bunch of men who are directionless and depressed, going into bullshit jobs every day where they get demeaned by their female boss while their infants are in daycare all day because it still isn't enough to afford a mortgage, what then? Rervrn to harems and multiple wives for the capable? To drafty tenements so the wives of the working class can stay home and... what? Supervise their laundry machines and dishwashers and crock pots? Homeschool their children, but then get so upset about the lack of in-house leadership they outsource is to IBLC? This has been tried.

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