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.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Yes. It's harder to think of an example of a decision that "only a man can make," for reasons of biology, but one that comes to mind is getting a vasectomy. A man can absolutely get a vasectomy without his partner's approval or knowledge, but a lot of women would consider doing so without consulting her (especially if she wants children) to be a deal-breaker. And it would be a dick (heh) move to do that without talking to your partner.
More generally, making any kind of huge financial or life decision ("I am going to quit my job," "I just bought a new Cybertruck," etc.) is the sort of thing you can legally do but most people would agree is a shitty thing to do unilaterally. And those sorts of decisions are mostly made by men.
Most people probably understood that a wife was probably going to have some influence on her husband, but it was also understood that a husband could and would vote however he wanted without consulting his wife.
I'd love to see a source for this. A quick Google isn't bringing up anything reliable either way for me ... though some of the questionable sources are amusing:
It seems that in married households both genders believe, in supermajority poll results, that they had the most influence over car purchase decisions.
A lot of feminist sources are happy to report that women make a supermajority or an overwhelming majority of car purchase decisions, not because equality means we must fight the matriarchy now, but because this implies we need to hire way more women as auto executives.
More options
Context Copy link
I think this is a good description of the story the modern blue tribe tells about itself, and if it were true to form I'd probably have less of a bone to pick with that side of the isle's treatment of my sex. But like many autobiographies, it gives itself too much credit.
I think you'll find that in practice, very little scorn is offered to wives who decide for themselves that having another baby is "right for her", and very little lenience to husbands who aren't prepared to quickly get with that program.
From what I have seen, most normal people believe all such decisions should be mutual, while very tribalized people always tell a narrative that emphasizes the most selfish and abusive individual stories from the other side while claiming that the selfish and abusive cases on their side are exaggerated. Thus conservatives emphasize selfish women making childbirth choices without giving their partner any say, and claiming that men actually being controlling and abusive is just a story women tell themselves. While leftists emphasize women in controlling and abusive situations and imply women lack agency or responsibility for anything, while excusing truly selfish and irresponsible behavior by women.
"This should be a joint decision, but the person whose body is at issue has the final vote if they can't reach an agreement" is where we are at.
I understand what is supposed to happen. My concern is what happens when something goes wrong.
Blue tribe is happy to hand wave away men's vulnerability to women's overwhelming reproductive power as "biological" in origin. I am unsure how biology writes our laws in any sense other than the most reductive and worthless—but on the other hand, I am not opposed to the implementation of cultural protections in lieu of legal ones where the latter may be too unwieldy. Blues would insist that any legal protection for men is impossible to practically implement. I may mostly disagree, but I can see how it might be hard to implement within a marriage context. Cultural protections may be appropriate here.
The problem is that this form of protection isn't offered to men by blue tribe in nearly enough volume to justify the power differential. Blue tribe culture may be willing to condemn reproductive coercion of men by women as being kinda mean, and wag a finger at women who do it, but that isn't nearly enough, and proves that blues don't really care about this abuse of power.
If we're taking this seriously, reproductive coercion of men by women really ought to be considered at a similar level of transgression as infidelity. This is a good example of a love crime that we do actually take quite seriously, and offer serious cultural protection against in lieu of legal protection. If we were to apply this kind of protection as a safeguard against women's reproductive power, things would look very, very different. It would look like blue tribe looking at a sobbing woman whose husband left her because she tried forcing another baby on him dead in the face, and, shedding no pity whatsoever, assuring her that all this ruin is only what she wrought upon herself. It would look like, in the other timeline, blue tribe lionizing a husband as downright saintly for finding it in himself to forgive this kind of transgression, given to an individual wholly undeserving of mercy, even if the true intended beneficiaries are the children.
But in the current blue milieu, unexpected babies in marriage are something that just kinda happen. Like, it's a little bad if the woman is being deceptive, but comon dude, shit happens. You need to move on and focus on making room for the new kid. I don't even want to know how much of the asshole he would be if he up and left due to this betrayal. Sticking around is simply being a decent human being and awards no cookies.
Again, I'd have less of a bone to pick with Blue Culture if the protections it claims to offer to men were real, but as it stands right now calling it a fig leaf would be offering too much credit.
I don't think people do actually have much sympathy for a woman whose partner leaves her because she wants a(nother) child and he doesn't. It's just an unfortunate irreconcilable difference.
(I also don't think husbands leaving their wives because they don't want any more children is very common.)
He's still financially responsible for any children he produces, though. That's an ever-present potential consequence of having sex that both parties have to live with.
Let's keep things in scope and specify that this is happening within an otherwise stable marriage and there's an unexpected pregnancy. If you're still willing to assert this, I'm open to reviewing evidence, but as it stands I'm believing my own eyes.
I'd like to point out that men don't produce children, but I realize that the definition of "producing" always shuffles around based on who and whom. When it's calculating who bears the most bodily cost and therefore who ought to have the say, she's doing the producing. When it comes to who pays, well it bears his genes so it's 50-50. (Even if he said no to the sex, because why not.)
It's a risk for one party, but a choice for the other. I will continue to point this out until I am blue in the face, shouting into the abyss, probably until the day I die.
I can't say I have seen your scenario often enough to say who's right about frequency of reactions, but my opinion if an otherwise stable marriage ended because she suddenly decided she wants a child and he doesn't would be "I'm sorry, that sucks" to both parties.
As for risk and choice, it's obviously a risk for both parties.
(And if "he said no to the sex" - are you talking about a man being raped by a woman and having to pay child support? I guess that has happened a time or two. About as often as a woman having a rapist's baby and having to share custody, perhaps.)
I'm willing to agree to disagree on this point. Your reaction provides a good enough working example.
Right, and I'm saying that's not good enough and proves you're unserious about protecting men from women's disproportionate reproductive power. Your reaction to this abuse of power needs to not be "oopsies, oh well shit happens", but rather, "you suck, fuck you".
No, it is a choice for women. A baby does not fall out of a woman's uterus immediately after sex. It is the finished product of a long and in this day and age deliberate process, that only one party has any official control over. This reality simply cannot be rhetorically smoothed over and ignored.
Sure, and notice how that the cavalry arrived for one of these people and not the other. This is a cultural problem.
By "abuse of power" are you talking about a woman who baby-traps an unwilling man with a surprise pregnancy, or just a woman who changes her mind about wanting children? Because if it's the latter, that's honestly insane to me that you want me to scream at her about how much she sucks.
As for your edge cases, no, the most extreme and unlikely scenarios you can imagine are not societal problems. Just how many female-rapist babies do you think there are, anyway?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Getting vasectomy doesn't mean your wife cannot get pregnant, she still can, just from another man.
Adding to ControlsFreak's comment: In some countries, men cannot get vasectomy unless they already have children (2 in case of Russia), this requires women.
Well yes, and in some countries women cannot get abortions.
We're not talking about Afghanistan here. ...France had blanket ban on vasectomy till 2001.
Okay? What's your point? I am aware other countries are more restrictive than the US.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
This was not always true. I personally know a couple where the wife had to sign paperwork in order for her husband to legally get a vasectomy.
Society really used to treat marriage differently than we do today.
In the US? What state? Genuinely curious, because I have never heard of this. I've heard of doctors refusing to sterilize young people requesting it, claiming they might change their minds later, but I have never heard of a spouse needing to give permission.
I don't know what state they were in at the time. I knew them well after the deed was done, but she said that she definitely had to sign. I'm maybe a little less confident now that it was a legal requirement rather than doctor-driven, but I can't really tell. Search is broken in 2024, especially when looking for good history. ChatGPT seems to think some states had such laws into the ~60s/70s (and its suggestions would jive with my guess of where my friends probably lived back in the day). Maybe it's hallucinations all the way down...
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
A quick search tells me it's not (and hasn't been) legally mandated in the US, but a lot of doctors will require it anyway (which may itself be a HIPAA violation).
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
And a woman can have her tubes tied without her husbands consent. So here women and men have equal rights, but with abortion what is destroyed is inherently a product of two people, unlike fallopian tubes or vas deferens. A woman who never interacted with a man has nothing to abort, but she has fallopian tube.
Abortion:
Woman: legally allowed to make a decision on her own
Man: legally allowed to argue
Quitting a job/buying a car:
Woman: legally allowed to make a decision on her own
Man: legally allowed to make a decision on his own
I fail to see the parallel.
Yes, when women couldn't vote this was realized, but I am talking about today. Of contemporary political affiliations, only anti-suffragists (Edit: and those who hand around them) are familiar with the argument that women had political power, even if the vote was denied to them.
Edit: As spaces have increasingly clamped down on rightists deviations, it is increasingly unlikely for normies to have heard this.
So? Men can't get pregnant. This is not a convincing argument unless you're pro-life, in which case "It's not fair that the woman has the deciding vote" is not your actual objection. If you object to abortion on principle, that's fine - we don't agree, but you'd still be against abortion even if we made it a law that the mother and father both have to agree to it. If you'd be pro-choice if the father gets a veto, that would be interesting. Is that your position?
No, this isn't some secret knowledge that women, even in highly patriarchal and oppressive societies, have always been able to influence their husbands.
I don't think even Amanda Marcotte believes that women had literally zero influence or agency prior to the 19th Amendment. The argument is that having some "influence" exactly to the degree that your husband allows it isn't the same as having autonomy. If your argument is that women shouldn't have autonomy, fine, I understand that argument. But not being able to vote in a democracy is absolutely a lack of autonomy.
More options
Context Copy link
From the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women:
If a woman can unilaterally decide to abort or carry her baby to term, can men truly be said to have the same right to "to decide freely and responsibly on the number and spacing of their children" if all he can do is try to persuade her?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Not really the only thing. A man can radically alter his body's appearance by going to the gym a lot and lifting the right way in a way a woman cannot. He can hulk out.
They are? Poor financial decisions are not the sole domain of any sex, but the cluster is on the other side of the aisle AFAIK.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link