site banner
PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   24659 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 25, 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.

8
Top New Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Such a dilemma never existed. There's a reason that 'spinster' is a word used in English to describe a single woman. It's how they very often supported themselves. If we take England in 1377 as an example, a full third of adult women were single, and 10-20% never married at all. The idea that the only options were marriage or prostitution is a fantasy, formed (as far as I can tell) by people extrapolating the experience of the midcentury American housewife far off into the past and across the planet.

In 1300 AD, London had 18 brothels employing hundreds of prostitutes. These brothels were regulated, incredibly, by the Bishop of Winchester.

As the entire population of London was less 30,000 we can infer that perhaps 5-10% of the women in London at the time were prostitutes.

Prostitution was certainly a much more common career path during the Middle Ages. And life expectancy for prostitutes was very short. So I would say that, yes, many women were facing awful choices at the time. This shouldn't be surprising. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, Malthusian conditions applied more often than not. A large percentage of people, both men and women, did not get enough to eat.

Prostitution was certainly a much more common career path during the Middle Ages

...for the small minority of women who lived in London and/or other major cities. By far the most common occupation for both men and women would have been "small-scale subsistence farmer"

London was a pretty huge outlier in a lot of ways though. You probably had what, 2-3 million people in England? And there were only a handful of cities with London being the biggest by far. Nowhere else would have even close to that concentration of people who had enough money to hire a prostitute.

You probably had what, 2-3 million people in England?

Actually almost 5 million! But it would crash to under 2 million by 1450 thanks to the Black Death and its many echoes. The ones who survived the plague enjoyed much higher quality of life as Malthusian constraints were lifted.

Nowhere else would have even close to that concentration of people who had enough money to hire a prostitute.

I think you're probably right. But what a revealing statement. Things were so bad that women who might have wanted to resort to prostitution couldn't because there weren't enough clients with means to pay!

But what a revealing statement. Things were so bad that women who might have wanted to resort to prostitution couldn't because there weren't enough clients with means to pay!

It just shows that rich men were concentrated in cities, and their extra wealth was greater than the higher cost of living of the city.

What do you find revealing about this? Is the idea that there were huge wealth disparities in the past a revelation to you?

Things were so bad that women who might have wanted to resort to prostitution couldn't because there weren't enough clients with means to pay!

Isn’t this an (odd) interpretation of virtually any supply and demand curve? The only thing stopping me from stripping naked on public TV is that nobody is willing to pay me a billion dollars to do it.

The only thing stopping me from stripping naked on public TV is that nobody is willing to pay me a billion dollars to do it.

We've already established what kind of person you are @you-get-an-upvote. Now we're just haggling over the price.

What a revealing statement. Things are so bad on Earth that somebody who wants to strip naked for money can’t because there aren’t enough clients to pay!

I apologize for my snark earlier.

I don't understand the objection. An affluent person doing something for $1 billion is different than a person in abject poverty doing that same thing to survive.

No worries, sorry for the snarky reply.

Yes that's true, I was just illustrating that quantity supplied increases whenever demand increases, and this isn't considered "revealing" in most circumstances. Nobody would say "aha! It's been revealed that you-get-an-upvote wants to be a stripper" or "aha! The US wants to export bananas" if demand increases enough, so I'm not sure why you're saying it about the women in 1300s London.

More like 5-7 million.

Reliable statistics from the medieval era are pretty non-existent but 10% actually seems to be about the rate at which women became prostitutes in the 19th century. It was quite common. Significantly higher than say, uptake on OnlyFans is today. You can also swap "prostitute" for "indigent." Nobody ever accused spinsters of living comfortably.

I've said it before and I'll say it again about this particular factoid - 10% of women or 10% of urban women? We are talking about societies which were 80-90% rural, and the brothels were in the towns - and mostly in the large towns and cities. So 5-10% of women in London per jeroboam (and presumably less in smaller towns) being prostitutes equals 1% or slightly less of all women being prostitutes.

10% of all women being prostitutes in the 19th century (where? it matters!) per To_Mandalay would mean that either 30% or more were prostitutes in the big cities, which I don't think anyone has suggested, or that there was a culture of prostitution even in village-sized communities.

30% or more were prostitutes in the big cities, which I don't think anyone has suggested

Some people did actually. I was thinking not of London but of 19th century New York. According to this book estimates of the percentage of young women in NY who were prostitutes over the 19th century ranged from 1% all the way to 40%. The author says that 5 - 10% seems likely because the police tended to lowball their figures and reformist societies to overstate them. He also suggests that during economic downturns the number may have gone above 10%. Obviously the numbers are extremely uncertain because moralists had a motive to exaggerate them, and at the same time a lot of prostitution was part-time and freelance, and so slipped under the radar. What seems clear is that women being driven to prostitution out of economic desperation was many times more common than it is today.

I have no idea what prostitution looked like in village communities or to what extent it existed. In the 19th century medium-to-large towns and cities in the USA and Western Europe are pretty much the only places with anything resembling reliable statistics.

In modern times we still see that prostitutes tend to concentrate in cities and that rural men will travel to cities to use their services. So the percentage of prostitutes among the rural populace was likely far lower than in the city.

Everyone in this discussion seems to ignore the social issues with prostitutes in small communities, where people are much more aware of the behavior of people in the community than in the city.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats