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Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 28, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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I want to eventually get some grasp on feminism as a whole. While I can find pro-feminist writings and arguments easily, I find myself unable to find anti-feminist arguments of a suitable quality.

Therefore, I'm asking for recommendations on anti-feminist arguments, books, etc. Ideally, these should be as evidenced, charitable, nuanced, etc. as one would expect from the older SlateStarCodex posts. They don't have to be perfect, but I'm going to be less engaged with someone trying to tell me the feminists are all stupid or evil or some combination of the two.

I will provide you with a low-effort post, waving vaguely in some direction, as I lack the resources within myself to build a more coherent argument. First, I would start from the defense of the patriarchy, since I find feminism not well-defined, basically more a multi-layer motte and bailey construction. I think it is safe to say that the patriarchy is the Nemesis of all feminists and no feminist supports patriarchy. First I define patriarchy (following Wikipedia) as

Patriarchy is a social system in which men are the primary authority figures in the areas of political leadership, moral authority, and control of property.

Some possible arguments in favor of patriarchy:

  1. Evolutionary argument - basically all known societies, starting from the most primitive ones share the patriarchy as a founding order. Evidence for matriarchal societies is very scarce, and if there was such evidence it would be very well known. Thus, there must be something to the patriarchy so that it allowed for the proliferation of the civilization.

  2. People are emotionally skewed against men due to women-are-wonderful effect. Thus, the society in general views men as worse and women as better then they are in reality. Because of this bias, we need to be very careful when considering the feminist agenda trying to ascribe to men all the worst qualities like selfishness, violence, greed and lack of morals.

  3. Great variability of men - Feminism has a tendency to narrow the masculinity to the set of controversial traits of violence, selfishness, greed etc. (toxic masculinity). Looking at the historical records and greater men variability hypothesis one can conclude, that this set of traits was only characteristic to the very narrow group of men. Men were also: farmers, artisans, poets, saints, pacifists, socialists, martyrs, hermits, merchants, monks, singers, dancers, philosophers, dreamers and librarians. There is no single trait that men share, although there are some tendencies. There is no essence of man that makes him less valuable or more socially suspicious then woman.

  4. Great creativity of men - one can trace almost all works of art, all scientific breakthroughs, all architectural feats, all architectural miracles to men and their work. These creations benefit all of mankind and men who were freed from the pains of child-bearing and rearing by the patriarchy, have been proven by the millennia of civilization to be able to raise the standard of living for everyone.

  5. Evolutionary bottleneck - Men went through a tighter evolutionary bottleneck then women and developed some traits that make them better at cooperation. Thus, they are able to build complex organizations and engage in large-scale enterprises. Without these traits modern societies would cease to exist.

Ok, so these are five exemplary arguments, approximately from the least subjective to the most subjective, or from the most evidence-based to the least-evidence based. I also personally think that men are more loyal, generous and less cruel then women in certain circumstances, but it is extremely hard to find any papers that would paint men in better light then women. I run multiple queries in multiple search engines and had hard time finding barely anything, (I encourage to do this as a simple exercise) which shows how strong are prejudices against men (see 2.). But this is my subjective musing, so I end here.

I also personally think that men are more loyal, generous and less cruel then women in certain circumstances, but it is extremely hard to find any papers that would paint men in better light then women.

What convinced you that the issue was the papers were being suppressed instead of a lack of evidence for your belief?

Not OP, but personal experience as a scientist has thoroughly convinced me that the great majority of science is done with a consistent bias in favor of center-to-far left mainstream beliefs (depending on the field). I've been told multiple times by older scientist that if I want to write a paper with a conclusion that goes against modern progressive sensibilities(I don't even mean deliberately, just that the data turned out that way), I will need to bring better evidence and will be scrutinized much more closely than the opposite. And worse, the main difference between scientists was the emphasis - a minority sees this as a regrettable reality, a majority is neutrally pragmatic, and a second much more influential minority outright sees this as a good thing. Of course biological differences between men and women would be a bad thing and we should be careful to even insinuate the possibility!