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ZorbaTHut  2yr ago (text post)   45549 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022

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I think the decline in fertility below 2.1 (replacement rate) can be directly linked to modern day feminism and women's rights. However, what I have noticed is that rich female friendly nations do far better in terms of birth rate than rich conservative strict gender role societies.

For example - France has a fertility rate around 1.8. 1.7 for the US. Germany 1.4.

In the east with more strict gender norms the rich societies however have far more abysmal fertility rates - Japan 1.3, South Korea 0.8, Taiwan 1.1, Singapore 1.2.

Now one may argue that the decline in fertility rate is not due to feminism and women's emancipation but rather due to improvements in wealth of society. However, a counterpoint to this is that faster modernizing societies; in terms of becoming more feminist, tend to have declining fertility rates even when not wealthy nations.

Example- Nepal - 1.8, India - 2.0-2.1.

Based on the above data I would posit that feminist societies result in fertility rates declining to below replacement rates, but once a country is wealthy it is far worse for the population to remain conservative than for it to be a feminist nation due to the fact that conservative rich nations do far worse on population growth than feminist nations.

Conclusion - modern feminism doomed/ saved human civilization to constant steady population decline and that's the best case scenario for population demographics from all the options currently available.

Thoughts?

I think any attempt to use some generic form of "traditional" or "conservative" is going to be more confusing than enlightening here. It matters quite a bit what the tradition being conserved is.

I mean the liberation of women as per modern standards is a very new event barely a century old in most nations of the world. So conservative can be safely used as a catch all term for ideologies that do not support women's liberation at the modern feminist range.

There are many things that are very very new that have at least as obvious of an effect, most obvious is widespread cheap birth control, which itself is likely not unrelated to the rise of feminism. There is greatly increased global connectivity and a comensorate reduction in local connectivity. The world is generally more peaceful to most people's experience which is in most ways a boon but could very well erode the cohesion of communities and thus family formation.

My point is that if we're trying to figure out why tons of very different cultures are having this issue it doesn't seem like a good idea to first reach for a cultural reason. It's much easier for the Japanese to be disrupted by our products than our culture.

Disagree with your final point. America's greatest export of the past century has been it's culture. Name one country without pizza or superman. ( You may argue that Pizza isn't American and I would reply exactly, their cultural propagation is so extreme we even give the Americans claim of non-American western inventions. )

Agreed with everything you said in first para. Cheap birth control makes sense, but birth control is available to every single one of these countries yet they have different fertility rates so birth control isn't the only thing. I don't know how your statement about more global connectivity explains fertility decline. More peaceful world more people can leave their homes harder to find mates in a different geographical environment makes sense. However, any of your points that work are an additional reason for fertility decline but in no way state that feminist ideology is not a part of this population decline.

Name one country without pizza or superman.

Pizza and superman are products. How many of these places celebrate halloween or play American football? I do know what you mean, everyone is wearing our blue jeans as the meme goes but are they actually thinking like Americans?

Why did American feminism come about when it did? The story as I know it is most credibly that these previously mentioned technologies along with house hold labor saving technology came around and obsoleted the traditional feminine gender roles and feminism was created in search of a new role for women who suddenly found themselves with way less responsibility and it's associate meaning. It seems more likely that this same process happened in there other places rather than the memes created after the fact.

Pizza and superman are products.

These products contain ideological content. Even a basic Pepsi ad contains ideological implications.

Arguably American cinema was progressive relative to much of the world back when it was conservative. Now? Every story is about how society is keeping a woman/teenager down and it's their job to fight for their inalienable right to be free and do things their own way against a hidebound system.

This is not just portrayed as right but normal. Can't tell you how many times I've heard in American media that teenagers are natural anarchists who need to break the rules (and what of all the teenagers that have historically thrown themselves into the threshing machine of initiation rituals to prove themselves to the tribe?)

Why did American feminism come about when it did? The story as I know it is most credibly that these previously mentioned technologies along with house hold labor saving technology came around and obsoleted the traditional feminine gender roles and feminism was created in search of a new role for women who suddenly found themselves with way less responsibility and it's associate meaning. It seems more likely that this same process happened in there other places rather than the memes created after the fact.

Except a lot of places never industrialized to the degree the US did yet those ideas often still spread (tbf they're especially likely to take root in the elite classes)

There are American football teams in Europe. Like, it's not the most popular of sports, but it's there, and from what I've understood it's growing in popularity.

Halloween parties for adults have been a thing.

A product can be an extension of one's culture too as long as it is recognized as the creation of a specific people ( Americans in this case.) How would you define culture?

Are more places aware of what is holi or are more people aware of what is halloween?

I mean western influence has been expanding for the last century there is little doubt about that. Just see how the UN pushes for gay rights and countries do end up adopting it in numbers, similar case for weed legalization, both ideas born from the west.

It seems more likely that this same process happened in there other places rather than the memes created after the fact.

That would follow only if the other societies were becoming more women friendly in workplaces on the same curve in relation to their level of development which is not the case, instead you see an acceleration of western values disconnected from technological development levels where they were initially formed in non-western countries to the extent that far more third world countries are likely to grow old before they grow rich based on current trends when compared to the fertility and GDP graphs of developed nation.

How much of this is feminism vs other aspects of the western disease? Feminism is but one aspect, along with obesity, anomie and atomization, video games, wage, stagnation, and general sedentary behavior.

I wouldn't be surprised if the problem is that Westerners are fat and lazy which is a turn-off for both western men and women.

but Japanese and South Koreans are fit still they do not reproduce more. They have worse wage stagnation in Japan.

Atomization makes sense to a degree.

China's fertility rate is also dropping and they're far less friendly to Western ideas than those other two East Asian states.

Maybe the "Western disease" is just industrialization.

For example - France has a fertility rate around 1.8. 1.7 for the US. Germany 1.4.

In the east with more strict gender norms the rich societies however have far more abysmal fertility rates - Japan 1.3, South Korea 0.8, Taiwan 1.1, Singapore 1.2.

Note that the nations you've listed in the second category, despite having "strict gender norms", generally have both males and females employed at similar rates.

The link between feminism and fertility is simple -- working women have less time for childraising, and society never restructured itself to account for this loss. The Asian nations you've listed (and also Germany!) all have norms of extreme workaholic culture compared to the Western nations you've listed, and this is likely a significant cause of the reduced fertility in the former.

Whether 21st century feminism is doing well or not is missing the point; the bulk of the damage was done by developing the norm of both parents working in families.

; the bulk of the damage was done by developing the norm of both parents working in families.

Which ideology actively supports such a state of existence?

And when has it not been the norm for the vast majority of society? Most people probably couldn't afford to leave one half of the family at home, despite how the stereotypical view of a lonely white woman in middle class suburbia waiting for her husband and family to come homme has come to define the "dark times before feminism"

Or, more specifically, the norm of both parents working at jobs that do not allow children to be present, and requiring childcare until they are nearly adults.

There are plenty of traditional arrangements featuring what one might call a small scale women's cooperative growing and processing food and textiles, and I'm not exactly sure what the arrangement for babies and small children usually looked like, but it was almost certainly not the current model where three or so women tend them full time in one building, while their mothers do their own work for 8 hrs straight far enough away they can't stop back in and visit/nurse them periodically. This is very convenient if you're trying to run a factory or something.

Now that preparing food and textiles at a small scale is not so essential, I would like to see a resurgence of child tolerant work that is actually productive -- work from home seems a bit more flexible. I'm not exactly sure what that would look like, but I find it kind of absurd that my own job is all working with children all day, but there's no possible way to bring my own children if daycare falls through. This is certainly convenient for employers, but at the expense of other values, like encouraging family formation.

Ideally there would be some tolerance for kids in the workplace. Working from home may fix this, but presuming a work environment where the parents need to be in the office, I don't see the issue with having a creche or creche-like area that is near at hand. Perhaps have a 'parents' section within the office space to keep potentially noisy children to an area that causes the least disruption.

Meetings, where serious discussion needs to take place uninterrupted, only take up a portion of the typical office workers activities. Granted some office work requires a high degree of concentration and there should absolutely also be 'quiet spaces' dedicated for this type of work.

None of the above would be perfect though. Having kids in the workplace would reduce net-efficiency of office workers on some level, at the benefit of better work/life/family balance.

Interesting point. Another example would be Russia, which has had severe fertility rate issues that it recently overcame a bit, but it seems like are going to become an issue again.

A counterpoint to this would be Israel, which is somewhat conservative but has seemed to surmount its fertility issues. Israel is a special case, though, of course.

The apparent overcoming of the fertility issues was just the echo of the previous baby boom, the one in which I was born. If you look at the population pyramid you will see how small the effect was and that it's over already.

However in Israel there is an extreme poverty rate which would explain the high fertility rate. The rich israeli's aren't the ones reproducing a lot, its the majority poor ones.

The most fecund in Israel are also the most religious, a relationship that holds elsewhere as far as I know. They just happen to have a comparatively large class of Amish-like hyper-religious types relative to other industrialized nations.

I don't think that conservatism is the relevant factor that is lowering the birth rate of Asian countries. For Japan and South Korea in particular the insane work/school expectations are probably much more to blame. There's also the various ways in which young men are becoming more unattractive to women (video games, porn). The decision to have kids is influenced by such a large number of factors that I don't think it's possible to come up with a fast explanation for the lowered birth rates.

They're further along in terms of sex, love and life being commoditized. We'll get there soon, though

Could be. I like your reasoning.

Do modern Japan, South Korea and Taiwan have strict gender norms? All of these countries have a thriving feminist movement.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminism_in_South_Korea

To make this happen, numerous attempts to eradicate these laws were held by feminists and these attempts made slow but firm change over time. By 1962, the first revision on family law was made. The traditional huge sized family could now be separated and re-arranged as a new family with fewer members with their own rights to decide where to live and work. Although it did not directly make a positive effect on women's law, the revision contains its meaning on change of people's perspective over social structure. On the following revisions in 1977 and 1989, substantial changes were made and approved by law. Since the 1989 revision, property division upon divorce and succession prone to male were prohibited; parental right was fairly shared by mother and father that introduces the right to meet the children after divorce.[6] Although many improvements have been made, the family-head issue and exogamy of same surname or ancestry still remained to be changed. Without rectifying them, women couldn't achieve the position as one of the family's representative and freedom to create or re-create social relationship under law(e.g. remarriage, adoption, etc.).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminism_in_Japan#World_War_II

Prior to World War II, women in Japan were denied the right to vote and other legal rights. After the surrender of Imperial Japan in 1945, the Allied occupation, on the order of general Douglas MacArthur, began drafting a new constitution for Japan in February 1946.[26] A subcommittee including two women, Beate Sirota Gordon and economist Eleanor Hadley, were enlisted and assigned to writing the section of the constitution devoted to civil rights and women's rights in Japan.[27] They played an integral role, drafting the language regarding legal equality between men and women in Japan, including Articles 14 and 24 on Equal Rights and Women's Civil Rights. Article 14 states, in part: "All of the people are equal under the law and there shall be no discrimination in political, economic or social relations because of creed, sex, social status or family origin"

I don't think so. Saudi Arabia and to a lesser extent Turkey have strict gender norms. I recently read an interesting article about how Turkish government officials and the media ruthlessly promote family values. Apparently over 50% of Turkish daytime television is devoted to marriage shows, where they explicitly promote women getting married. Ankara’s Mayor, Melih Gökçek, has stated that a mother who considers abortion should ‘kill herself instead and not let the child bear the brunt of her mistake.’ There might have been something more in the context or translation but this was in 2012 and he only got criticized for it- he was mayor up until 2017.

I think saying modern Japan has strict gender roles is a bit like someone from Greenland arriving in Inverness and saying "this is a big city!" But then there's Manchester, London, Shanghai and Tokyo. Pre-WW2 Japan had strict gender norms. Afghanistan has strict gender roles. The West hasn't experienced strict gender roles in living memory, we don't know what they look like. This isn't to say that strict gender roles are a good or a bad thing - that really depends on what you think about the Repugnant Conclusion. But I think truly strict gender roles do work at raising fertility, even in fairly rich countries like Turkey.

Admittedly this is just me living here (in Japan), but Japan has pretty damn solid gender norms to this day. As with all generalizations of this sort, there are many many exceptions, and yes, it depends on one's definitions of strict in this case. Women still go about in frocks and heels here--and I mean college students going to class. The biggest changes I've seen in 20 years are not necessarily on the side of women--for whom the glass ceiling is still very much present and the most lucrative work to be found relatively easily is sex work (and you name it, it exists here)--but in men. Men here have slowly (at least in popular culture and what I routinely witness say, on trains) become more dandified and dainty. This could be to some degree a temporary influence of trends in South Korean pop (There's a complex relationship there--South Korean banned Japanese music entirely until 1998 and only then did the Japanese begin thawing attitudes toward K-Pop, which has since become massive here, along with Korean TV dramas). Anyway Japan is no Afghanistan to be sure but it's night and day compared to, say, Australia or the US.

I am curious if the strict gender norms you mention for eastern societies are worse for women with children vs. women without (my suspicion is that they are). This would seem to present a real disincentive to having children.

In societies with more equal/flexible gender roles, there is less of a loss to a woman's status and freedom when she has children, which makes it more attractive. Now just imagine if men and women bore equal responsibility for child-bearing!

But even in western societies that bear equal responsibility for children, the total fertility rate tends to be below replacement. Which suggest again that it is not a solution, just something that slows down population decline to acceptable levels. So maybe yeah it is a solution.

"The west", "Asia", and "India" are large areas with complex culture that are internally similar in many ways. So you'd expect china/japan/SK to have similar birth rates, and to be similarly feminist - but there are many other potential causes, as there are many other shared attributes. So just picking two ways in which the areas are internally similar and externally different doesn't prove much - maybe it's skin color? maybe it's "collectivism/individualism", maybe it's the legacy of communism, maybe it's that "paradoxically, countries that industrialize late feel the effects of modernity more rapidly". none of those are really plausible but - maybe it's japan/china/SK's work culture? dunno.

As for why SK/japan are so low - are there any in depth articles exploring why, from the details of the lives of people who live there? The similar-person who would get married, or have a few kids out of wedlock in the US - what do they do in japan instead? Large-scale "data-driven" articles about it are numerous but fail in a similar way to the above.

I recommend the book Lovesick Japan <-- no idea if that formatting will work (edit: It did! Yay)

The title, yes, is kind of cheesy, but it's a fascinating insight into Japanese historical trends in love, marriage, and infidelity.

Maybe cultures that grew into industrialization had more of a chance to gradually adapt to it?

Or maybe in their effort to catch up, they made a lot of unwise sacrifices to reorient their entire society to be 100 percent in service of that goal? Probably more the latter.

I'm not sure if that's the explanation. But it does seem to me that Japan and Korea are ahead of the curve compared to us, in terms of tech, capitalism/life being commoditized, and culture.

Why would skin color make people have less children?

Why would collectivist ideals create less children when under collectivist ideals people work for society?

The legacy of communism never reached India or Singapore.

The Arab states were barely a few decades later than Europe, yet their fertility rate remained very high for a long time and only began to start declining to near replacement rates around the same point in time where they started attempting to culturally modernize.

Mexico is the most overworked country in the world and has a far higher fertility rate than the developed Asian nations.

Among commentaries by Japanese women, South Korean women, one of the primary reasons listed appears to be that they are required to focus both on their careers but also expected to live by very old traditionalist gender norms once they get married. This fits within my statement that modern industrialized and developed societies with traditionalist gender roles would see the greatest decline in fertility rates.

As far as I can tell the shoe I claim fits is fitting better than any of the shoes you have stated as alternatives.

First four lines: as said in OP, "none of those are really plausible", I agree.

I think the more plausible explanation is work culture, tbh - but, idk, it'd probably be illuminating to have someone who lives/d in sk/japan/china write about it, which presumably is on the internet somewhere, maybe on reddit or substack. Within the US, we see the opposite - more traditional cultures have higher fertility rates - even in very small senses like Rs having higher than Ds or christians having higher than muslims, mormons have significantly higher birth rates, haredi jews and amish have much higher birth rates, so it seems unlikely as a large-scale explanation.

Korea completely transformed itself from an agricultural country to one of the most advanced countries on the planet in a matter of decades. I think that goes a long way to explain their broken fertility rate.

I don't think industrialize late --> want to catch up --> over orient toward modernity is an implausible hypothesis

The work culture of these territories has eased year on year though, yet the fertility rate has continued to decline, one possible answer may be that they simply haven't gone past the filter of ease of work that results in a population rebound.

My personal hypothesis based on living in the East is that for the longest time sexual mating pairings were based on family/ community approval, so in a more modernized society where children are no longer interested in their families selecting sexual mates for them, they have no reference point or experience of directly initiating sexual relations or long term interactions with the opposite sex on their own. Add on to this the fact that their moral claims of how the opposite gender is supposed to be appears to be almost childlike in its purity, most people when interacting with the other gender would be finding something far more repulsive than whatever ideal standard they have in their head, a problem that is becoming apparent even in western mating settings.

Mormons are a minority outlier similar to the Amish though. Haredi jews are poor or deeply religious groups within their communities.

I think there's truth to this -- I think Italy, which is another 'modern but antiquated & extreme gender roles' country has one of the lowest rates in Western Europe.

Same for East European states.

I encourage all young people to have at least 4-5 children. Having only 1-2 children is selfish and insufficient, failing to even replace the parents once the likelihood of a premature death, failure to find a mate, or the likelihood of taking an unsuitable mate (e.g., with incompatible sex organs) is taken under consideration. For this reason, 3 children should be considered the bare minimum for anyone with an interest in continuing society.

4 children is where the greater benefits of family begin to manifest in creating a sense of community, especially as the children age and create grandchildren. Being raised with many aunts, uncles, and cousins creates a lifelong sense of belonging. Children will smaller families sense the absence of their extended families yet do not know that of which they are being deprived. Many parents selfishly have only 1 or 2 children, not wanting to take on the challenges of larger families. They deprive themselves, their children, and their grandchildren of the benefits of a greater family community, and for what? To preserve their free time so they may pursue degenerate hobbies? To preserve their material wealth, which does nothing to nourish their souls?

They deprive themselves, their children, and their grandchildren of the benefits of a greater family community, and for what? To preserve their free time so they may pursue degenerate hobbies?

First, there're other ways to have a greater family community: I know a family who lives close to their cousins and has a good community with them, despite their being only two siblings.

Second, do you claim that all hobbies are degenerate? If not, can you substantiate the claim that most parents of <4 children are specifically pursuing degenerate hobbies?

(Third, before we think about having children, perhaps the dating market needs fixing. But yeah, that's another topic, however personal it might feel to me.)

Dude there are 8 billion people on a planet that can maybe support 2 billion long term. What are you even on about?

What makes you think that the planet can support only 2 billion long term? "Carrying capacity" is just a function of available technology. We can support much more than few centuries ago already. Long term ecological strain, global warming and so on are likewise, merely problems of engineering.

I agree for the most part. But at our current level of tech, things are seriously fucked up. Have you tried fishing? Nothing like it used to be.

Yeah, agree with that - but just in a practical sense - whatever there is good about having two children, you get twice that for four - more human experience! Plus, an increased chance of getting a good genetic diceroll.

As someone from a huge family, I think 4 is probably the sweet spot and 5 is probably great if you have the resources for it. 6 or more though, and the children can become ungovernable and the sheer space requirements are very large. If your older children were sufficiently conscientious, it may not be as bad.

How is that working out in Bangladesh?

Bangladesh is currently sub-replacement fertility.

Bangladesh< Strike /Nigeria. Regardless Bangladesh would be a lot better of with about 1/10th the people.

May I ask how long you would enjoy living in a society where year on year the economic decline from population loss is a net negative?

Would you be willing to support depopulation policies if you were informed 20 years from now it would see your income halve?

I ask this as a hypothetical ofcourse but I would be interested in your final response.

when populations decline incomes increase! More resources per person are available.

It was definitely true after the plague, but I'm not as certain it will remain true in societies with upside down population pyramids.

It is true of all societies. Fewer people = more resources per person. Once the oldies die off anyhow.

I'd be curious as to the contribution of rich ethnically French women to that statistic.

I would argue that it would still be higher than other developed nations rich ethnically white populations, as France does retain a higher fertility rate than any other white nation, including other white nations with a higher foreign born populace.

I think there may be some conflation of foreign born / immigrant status and ethnicity in that argument.

I suspect many of the native born women bearing babies in France are not ethnically French. I'm not sure there are good statistics on this in France.

The nearest thing to a statistic like that is share of sickle cell anemia screening. It wasn't looking good for the ethnically French more than a decade ago.

Why does that matter when native born women are french by nationality and birth? Wouldn't that result in their children being fully assimilated into french culture as they are 3rd generation french citizens by this point and generally 3rd to 4th gen is when the complete cultural assimilation period is complete?

The assimilation hasn't worked much better in France than Sweden or Belgium, the Netherlands, etc.

If assimilation was working I'd expect Mohammed to be a much less popular baby name.

Eh. If all the Mohammed's behave culturally french and are 3rd generation french citizens then they are french. Naming conventions live on far longer than all other cultural habits. Just look at the surname Smith for example.

Immigrants that are keen to integrate will change their names to take common names in their new countries, this is not a new phenomenon. Many European immigrants to the US changed the names to sound more American.

Nisei had predominantly western names. Living in Germany I met several Korean Karl-Heinz, choosing names native to their new country was a way to integrate and embrace the culture.

Saïd Kouachi and Chérif Kou were both born in France, their assimilation seems to have been incomplete. The same can be said for Mohammad Sidique Khan, Shehzad Tanweer, Hasib Mir Hussain in England.

Integration and assimilation is no longer the stated goal, that was modern. Post-modern is decidedly more multicultural.

Agreed with your last sentence. Idk, names change over centuries. Pretty sure most South Koreans in US would still be having Korean names but be American in every other way.

It's less a I am identifying with my cultural group thing and more a fuck it, I was born in America, whatever name I got is an American name now as well.

Again, not saying you are wrong, just saying you could probably find better metrics for level of assimilation than first name preference.

More comments

Based on the above data I would posit that feminist societies result in fertility rates declining to below replacement rates, but once a country is wealthy it is far worse for the population to remain conservative than for it to be a feminist nation due to the fact that conservative rich nations do far worse on population growth than feminist nations.

Within those less conservative nations, it's the more conservative subset having more children however. In Germany, refugees, recent migrants and obscure evangelical sects have tons of children, everyone else has mostly one, with sizeable minorities having none or two. How would your model explain this? More conservatism on the national level causes lower birthrates, but at the level of broad social subgroups it causes higher ones? Doesn't make sense IMO.

Simpson's Paradox is a thing that shows up all the time.

In group out group bias could explain it although I do not suggest that is the definite answer.

You are an outsider and conservative in another country. You see your community spread and grow. Feels good.

You are in your own country, you are already surrounded at all times by your own. You will be fine with the natural decline in fertility rate within your own country.

Other alternative would be that you primarily see that population boom among refugee groups not the wealthy immigrants from those countries which matches income relation to fertility.

In their own country with a larger population those conservative groups are a minority of the population as part of total, in a rich country with a far smaller population, they have a larger impact over the total.

3rd theory would seem more realistic as per my experience. In India there is a concept about how people who went abroad in the 70's or 80's appear to be more conservative than those that stayed in India from that time period. This is theorized to be primarily due to people retaining the culture they left with to another country, so they never had any natural changes in their cultural practices that they would have otherwise had over the years if they had remained in their own country.

So you have a cultural divergence. The Middle Eastern immigrant in the middle east is living according to the cultural values of the middle east now. The middle easterner in Europe is living according to the middle eastern values of whatever point in time they left which is their last true reference point.

Again, all hypothesis, it could be any of these or none of these or a combination.

I see an obvious problem with your analysis: perhaps, regardless of feminism or wealth, the east and the west have different sexual norms and fertility baselines.

Let me add on where I am coming from to enhance understanding.

I do not see a problem with population decline itself.

The problem is that a population decline above a certain rate would always result in a socio-economic collapse.

Add on to this the fact that after a certain point a country ends up being too small in numbers to be able to compete well with it's competitors if those other countries maintain long term higher numbers.

Now, as you said different countries have different sexual norms and fertility baselines. However, far as I can tell, any country that starts to align its laws with western women's rights ideals tends to see it's fertility rate drop faster than countries that have no to little contact with such ideologies.

This itself is again not the problem, the issue is that by the end of the day fertility decline beyond a certain threshold results in national instability and decay risks increasing.

Plus on a more personal note, I have never been a fan of death cults, not even those that actively speak of freedoms and liberty.

Adding on to this the fact that modern day feminism appears to me as one of the rare ideologies which place motherhood on the back burner as a worthwhile or celebratory value. Going as far as to not only deny it's value but to actively celebrate single independent livelihoods as the sole aspiration.

I could be wrong in my interpretation however and would like to hear your thoughts on that.

My thoughts are that feminism began as a misguided quest to treat women like men, then was adopted by bitter harridans and predatory men who realized the sexual revolution and increasing destruction of traditional mindsets would secure them steady supplies of consequence-free young pussy (a boon for the latter) at the expense of the stability and health of our previous culture (a boon for the former).

The goal of feminism is to let women be the type of men they've always hated. It's no surprise this suffocates fertility.

You showed up here saying that you got banned from the old site, and I think it's becoming clear why.

Be no more antagonistic than is absolutely necessary for your argument.

Some of the things we discuss are controversial, and even stating a controversial belief can antagonize people. That's OK, you can't avoid that, but try to phrase it in the least antagonistic manner possible. If a reasonable reader would find something antagonistic, and it could have been phrased in a way that preserves the core meaning but dramatically reduces the antagonism, then it probably should have been phrased differently.

Proactively provide evidence in proportion to how partisan and inflammatory your claim might be.

Also known as the "hot take" rule.

If you're saying something that's deeply out of the ordinary or difficult-to-defend, the next person is going to ask you to explain what you mean. You can head this off by explaining what you mean before hitting submit. The alternative is that the first half-dozen responses will all be "can you explain in more detail", which increases clutter and makes it much harder to follow the conversation.

I have an entire mod queue full of partisan flaming from you, and that's after I already handed you a warning. (Which isn't visible unless you hit "more comments", we clearly need to do a better job of permalinks.)

I'm giving you a one-day ban; you either need to behave a lot differently or find another site.

Is this the first ban of the new site? :D

We've silently banned a number of trolls, but I think this is the first not-a-straight-up-troll ban.

My thoughts are that feminism began as a misguided quest to treat women like men

Disagree unless you mean be given the same basic rights as men. Then the same financial and social freedoms as men. Acting like men was a very 2010's thing.

then was adopted by bitter harridans and predatory men who realized the sexual revolution and increasing destruction of traditional mindsets would secure them steady supplies of consequence-free young pussy

Disagree. 1960's feminism had a whimsical quality to it which would have genuinely attracted many followers who wanted to see the world be a nicer place.

at the expense of the stability and health of our previous culture (a boon for the former).

There weren't enough harridans in that time period. Most incels actually came to be in recent decades only.

The goal of feminism is to let women be the type of men they've always hated. It's no surprise this suffocates fertility.

That appears to have been the trend of only the newest wave of feminism.

I believe you are making the mistake of taking current day attitudes and extending them through previous historical time periods to come to conclusions as to what they were about.

No, the old waves I mentioned as the misguided quest.

If feminism misguided then why South Korea collapsing first?

South Korea

I haven't thought about OP's argument enough to have an actual opinion on it, but feminism in South Korea is heavily influenced by Megalia and WOMAD, which are basically 4chan-level cesspools with all sorts of insanity.

If fire is hot how come it hurts when a shark bites you?

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.


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