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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 13, 2024

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I'll start with this:

I'm not condemning men.

It's rather grating that you insist that I'm being unfair to men when I've said nothing negative about men this entire conversation.

Please stop saying I'm blaming men for anything.

From your original post:

Low male employment, antiwork, and the rise of NEET-dom

You specifically chose to qualify this with "male", despite the fact that, as I pointed out with some actually-less-likely-to-be-manipulated (since they're of an economic nature and collected by the government, which has an incentive to know the productivity patterns of its prole cattle) statistics (which I love how you ignored), the problem with low employment and labor non-participation is actually worse among women.

Why "male"? Why not "black"? They're actually far less likely to be employed (unlike men, who as I showed actually aren't) than people of other comparable demographics. Let's say I made your OP, but instead I put "low Indian employment", and then as it turns Indians actually have a higher than average level of employment among the races (which may well be true). Would it make sense to you if I were flabbergasted that you thought I was being anti-Indian? Would it make sense for me to post "Please stop saying I'm blaming Indians for anything."?

You still haven't answered the fundamental question in all of your pointless, evasive verbiage: Why male? Why is male labor non-participation specifically the issue we're worried about here? Why not overall, or again female?

About statistics in regards to women, let me just say this:

  1. On any given day in America (weather being a factor of course), there are millions of females of all ages walking around in public with essentially (at least partially, often far more) exposed genitalia, and this is considered more or less socially acceptable (or at least not punishable or preventable) nowadays. On beaches, it is similarly considered mostly acceptable for their nudity to obscured only by a few small strips of fabric. The number of men walking around with comparable levels of exposure ever is essentially zero, statistically-speaking. Most men, in their entire lives, will never publicly expose themselves in such a fashion, whereas almost all women will do it at least once, and usually far more.

I agree there are more women actresses/subjects in pornography.

  1. You seem to have confused me for only talking about OnlyFans (which isn't a terrible statistical signal actually as it's mostly amateurs and of course women dominate it) or Bang Bros here. Let me rephrase: For a not insignificant portion of women (at least 5%, probably closer to 20% in some demographics, and obviously again going vastly up with lower age in particular and greater attractiveness), the average picture they put online of themselves is softcore pornography (if not just because it features their usual attire, which is softcore pornography attire, though of course most of them in that category choose to intentionally pose and present themselves in additional lustful ways as well). Meanwhile the percentage of men for whom this is true is well below 1.

  2. There is a whole word just for describing the phenomenon of how women are excessively catered to by men without being expected to provide essentially anything in return: "simp". (Yes it is sometimes also applied to women, but not with nearly the same frequency/earnestness/intensity.) There is, as far as I know, no similar word with reversed gender connotations in such prolific use.

Every single one of these facts, in regards to which gender is more promiscuous and has contributed more to the breakdown of sexual norms and which gender is more selfish and expects to receive more from others for less in return from them, is a far stronger statistical signal than any cherry-picked survey stat you can post. It all comes down to a variation of the same old question: "Who do you trust: your lying eyes or our 'data'?"

You claimed the statistics supported you. Now that they don't you're claiming the statistics aren't accurate. Why did you claim they supported you then?

They do support me, as again your own links show, other than again a small slice of the tip of the modern wokeist spear that you've chosen to focus on exclusively for some reason.

Why don't I just roll over like a puppy dog for a few years from some random graph you posted that apparently has the right figures? Let's take the cheating one for example. This can be blown up easily by asking some simple questions:

  1. Do the women who responded considered the massive amount of offline and online thirst-trapping many of them must do (given again how much of it exists overall) "cheating"?

  2. Do their boyfriends/husbands?

  3. Do their boyfriends/husbands even know the full extent of it (in an age of Snapchat and plenty of other ways of hiding it)? And how pressured do they feel because of modern matriarchal norms not to contest it at all even though they would really like their girlfriend/wife to put some clothes on?

This is just one issue that makes the simplistic consideration you're engaging in wholly untenable if you're trying to be intellectually honest. Like I said, you can post as many cherry-picked surveys as you want: No amount of data trumps reality.

I mean, I could respond to you in a Reddit drone fashion by going on a dive and posting my own cherry-picked link dump, but surely we're all aware enough here of Scott's writings on metascience to understand that a graph is not a substitute for using your brain and empirical faculties, right?

But yes, I trust recent statistics less and less, as social scientists have increasingly openly declared war on the truth in favor of what's ideologically compatible with their brainwashing. So also yes when I say that statistics support my position, I'm not including any given random link from 2022 or whatever.

Please stop putting words in my mouth.

If you don't want people to assume malicious implications behind your words, then please stop being so unfair and biased.

You've insisted you're some great known critic of women here, but in our entire conversation that is supposedly (from your perspective) just about a neutral examination of modern selfishness, you have yet to even entertain applying the word to any common female behavior (or any female at all in fact) once. So spare me the disinterested observer pleading please because it is obvious hogwash.

If you want to have a conversation about selfishness as a trend, then include the other half of the population. Otherwise you obviously don't want to have a real conversation.

Wow, there's certainly a lot of conversation going on that I guess I've inspired! I apologize I haven't been active as I've been busy with my personal life, so I don't always participate off of surface level comments.

@you-get-an-upvote

Is correct, I posted the OP, not him. The focus on the male side of the lack of participation in the labor force is simply because that's the current headline and more noticeable trend. Population - wide employment participation seems to rarely fully recover after any financial or social crises. Even 7-8 years after the 2008 financial crisis labor participation never recovered. The male participation is more newsworthy, since the past 25 years has seen a 10% decrease of male labor participation compared to the ~3% decrease in female according to FRED. My goal wasn't to focus solely on males, but rather point out the most noteworthy trends and the underlying reasons behind them.

Whether males or females should increase their participation in employment is another discussion entirely.

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The male participation is more newsworthy, since the past 25 years has seen a 10% decrease of male labor participation compared to the ~3% decrease in female according to FRED.

Well, hopefully I've helped provide an explanation of that. And hopefully more and more men keep dropping out faster and faster. It has nothing to do with their selfishness though. It has everything to do with the selfishness of others who just expected them to keep slavishly giving and giving all that they always have traditionally while taking away more and more of the traditional benefits for their service.

From your original post:

Low male employment, antiwork, and the rise of NEET-dom

I am not @SomethingMusic

Yeah, my bad. I didn't check properly and just assumed with you jumping in on behalf of a somewhat older original post you were the OP.