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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   29602 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 2, 2023

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South Korea, Japan, and Russia that are more socially conservative than the US and western Europe on every metric.

Malarkey. All of these countries are extremely feminist by historical American standards, and by some metrics are more feminist than contemporary America. For example, South Korea ranked 10th in the world in the UN's Gender Inequality Index, which is far higher than where America ranked. I wrote a long effort post on this last year and part 2 and part 3

They’re progressive, but many don’t have legal gay marriage, which is the point.

Whether they're extremely feminist by historical standards doesn't matter. If feminism (or social liberalism in general) is what causes worse social outcomes, then more feminist/liberal countries should do worse than less feminist/liberal countries now. What are the metrics by which ROK is more feminist than the US or western Europe? Quick googling shows lower female representation in parliament, significantly lower representation in corporate boardrooms and leadership, about equivalent divorce, labor force participation, and college education rates (ROK's are a little lower for all). Abortion was illegal until two years ago.

Your post where you propose to cherry-pick a counter-narrative which makes ROK out to be a feminist hellhole is sourced entirely from reddit comments.

For example, South Korea ranked 10th in the world in the UN's Gender Inequality Index

Also ranked below multiple western European countries, none of which have any of these problems in nearly the same degree as ROK does.

In any case, the OP is about gay marriage, not feminism. Homosexuality remains much less socially accepted in ROK than in the west, and there is no gay marriage.

Russia is a particularly good example since, as you note in this post, Putin's government has made a big show of retvrning to tradition, revitalizing the Orthodox Church, and opposing the degenerate west, and yet he can't keep the fertility rate from continuing to crash or the kids from becoming atheist.

Whether they're extremely feminist by historical standards doesn't matter. If feminism (or social liberalism in general) is what causes worse social outcomes, then more feminist/liberal countries should do worse than less feminist/liberal countries now.

No, because of range restriction. Height matters for basketball, but if you do a correlation between NBA statistical success and height, there is no correlation. That is because everyone has already been selected based on height. Every country today is hyper-feminist, the actual differences between them in amount of feminism is small, so when comparing metrics like fertility rate or mental illness, other factors will matter more.

What are the metrics by which ROK is more feminist than the US or western Europe

Compared to the US, the UN Gender Inequality Index and ROK has actually had a woman president and the US has not. Compared to Western Europe, I suspect that ROK women, particularly single women, work far more hours in the office than American women. I suspect ROK has more of a princess culture, but I don't know how I would prove this to your satisfaction, it's not something that anyone reputable tracks and quantifies. There are many forms of feminism, "princess culture" is one form, Russian style gold-digging is another, girl-boss, strong bad-ass woman type is another. Countries are feminist in different ways.

Russia is a particularly good example since, as you note in this post, Putin's government has made a big show of retvrning to tradition, revitalizing the Orthodox Church, and opposing the degenerate west, and yet he can't keep the fertility rate from continuing to crash or the kids from becoming atheist.

He made a show but he did not actually do much of anything. Russia went full communist in 1918, and had 70 years during which it was way to the left on religious and feminist issues than the USA. It never actually recovered from that.

If there's no correlation between outcomes and degrees of feminism today on the international scale, then there's no reason anyone should take seriously the argument that feminism is responsible for worsening social conditions, because you won't admit to any control. The only control is the world 100+ years ago, and life back then was worse on every metric I can think of.

Countries are feminist in different ways.

What is your definition of feminism?

He made a show but he did not actually do much of anything.

This is like marxists who insist the reason USSR/China/Cuba/etc. failed to create a communist utopia is because they just didn't do communism hard enough. Maybe. But since there appears to be no correlation between communist policy and improved outcomes, there's no reason to believe that. Same here.

because you won't admit to any control

Yes, that is what I said very clearly my original post that I linked to. There is no control group.

and life back then was worse on every metric I can think of.

1950s America was massively less feminist than any white or east asian country today, and was a pretty nice place to live, a better place by many metrics. And to the extent things are better in 2023, it is mostly because of technological development, but the pace of technological development was greater in the 1950s, the nice things we have in 2023 are built on the groundwork of things discovered in earlier times, I do not think you can give feminism any credit for the nicer technological things we have in 2023 than we had in 1950.

This is like marxists who insist the reason USSR/China/Cuba/etc. failed to create a communist utopia is because they just didn't do communism hard enough. Maybe.

AFACIT, Putin did not substantially change policy at all. Did he enact something like the Hayes code for all TV and movies in Russia? Did he restrict women from going to college? Did he ban no fault divorce? Did he restrict single women from living alone? Did he add "honor and obey" to all legal marriage vows? How much money did he actually allocate toward pro-traditional Christian values media? Did he make being a member of a church in good standing a prerequisite for elite positions? Did he ban abortion? Did he ban birth control? These are things that were the norm in America 70-120 years ago, such policy changes are what it would actually mean to roll-back feminism.

Out of curiosity, are you married?

Yes. To a girl I met in college, who was an NPR liberal, who did not vow to obey me. But, she does accept my lead and gets deeply uncomfortable if I do not lead like a traditional male, if I do not act as a rock upon which my family relies. As an infamous crimethinker once said (paraphrasing since I can't find the exact quote: "Every successful modern marriage is secretly imitating a 17th century trad marriage" He exaggerates ... slightly.

Putin has passed laws restricting the promotion of "non-traditional family arrangements", down-graded criminal penalties for domestic abuse, and allocated money to the rebuilding and refurbishing of Orthodox churches and cathedrals. He may not have put through every trad dream policy, but he is obviously making more of an effort to restore traditional arrangements than any western leader.

Yes, that is what I said very clearly my original post that I linked to. There is no control group.

So why should anyone take seriously the thesis that feminism is responsible for X bad thing in modern society, if there's no way to test it? Even if I granted that society is worse on net today than it was in the 1950s, Feminism is far from the only thing that's changed since then.

These are things that were the norm in America 70-120 years ago, such policy changes are what it would actually mean to roll-back feminism.

120 years ago, in 1900, the American birthrate had already been halved since 1800. Was that also feminism's fault?

He may not have put through every trad dream policy,

He hasn't done anything close to what was required. If we were ranking societies on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being the most feminist society in history, 10 being the patriarchy of 5th century Rome, I'd put the Ango-America in the 1700s as a 9, America circa 1900 as a 6, America in the 1950s as a 4, and Russia and the U.S. in 2023 as around a 1. Whether Russia is 1.3 and America is 1.1 and Sweden is 1.0 isn't a big difference. Maybe Putin moved the needle for Russia from 1.3 to 1.4. Maybe he didn't move the needle at all, his actions did not even do enough to arrest entropy decay and the continual allure of American hegemonic culture, and so Russia still went from a 1.5 to 1.3 during is reign.

So why should anyone take seriously the thesis that feminism is responsible for X bad thing in modern society, if there's no way to test it?

For the same reason anyone takes any argument about social or historical trends convincing -- they find some combination of imperfect statistical correlations, personal life experiences, historical testimonies, circumstantial evidence, reasoned arguments, etc. etc. to be convincing.

120 years ago, in 1900, the American birthrate had already been halved since 1800. Was that also feminism's fault?

It probably did have a major impact. America became substantially more feminist during the 1800s -- coverture was ended, the first states had already granted woman's suffrage. By 1918 Mencken was already complaining in his In Defense of Women that women had legally seized the upper-hand. Robert Dabney wrote in 1871 about northern conservatives caving on womens rights. In 1886, Henry Adams was satirizing feminism in Boston. You can play Wikipedia game and note how few children the notable 1800s feminists bore. Here is an interesting article making the argument that birth rates dropped earliest in the regions that were first hit by englightenment/feminist values, notably: France and New England.

It probably did have a major impact. America became substantially more feminist during the 1800s -- coverture was ended, the first states had already granted woman's suffrage. By 1918 Mencken was already complaining in his In Defense of Women that women had legally seized the upper-hand. Robert Dabney wrote in 1871 about northern conservatives caving on womens rights. In 1886, Henry Adams was satirizing feminism in Boston.

All of these datapoints are from the late 19th - early 20th centuries, and falling birth rates go back to the 18th century.

Here is an interesting article making the argument that birth rates dropped earliest in the regions that were first hit by englightenment/feminist values, notably: France and New England.

The suggestion that pre-revolutionary France was a substantially more secular society than England is dubious at best, and the article doesn't even try to argue that. Censorship of anti-religious and free-thinking literature was far less stringent in England, and religious pluralism far more advanced.

Granting that feminism is entirely or mostly responsible for declining birthrates, and since you apparently define "feminism" as the extension of any legal or civil rights whatsoever to women, what was so great about the mid-eighteenth century that it's worth returning half the human species to the status of property to restore?

returning half the human species to the status of property to restore?

It is my observation and studied opinion that:

  1. Women have enormous natural power because they have the power to make men immortal.
  2. Men inherently do not like to see the women they live like unhappy. It is my experience, my observation, and I don't have it on hand, but I remember seeing some study that a husband's happiness was very correlated with his wife's happiness, but not vice-versa. Or going back to the patriarchal age or Biblical proverbs: "It is better to live in a corner of the housetop, than in a house shared with a contentious woman."
  3. Women, like children, do not have the capability, physical or psychological, to be fully sovereign over themselves.
  4. Women, like children, actually like to be owned by a father/husband.

Feminists say that feminism "is the radical idea that women are human." Well it's more like feminism is the radical idea that women are men, that is, they thrive in having the same social and legal situation as men do (1). And that is not true -- it is fantasy-based argument that does tremendous harm to men and women alike. Women are their own thing, not men, not children.

So even if women, have little legal power, they retain tremendous power to bend men to their will, and to extract the means of a happy and fulfilling life.

And since women can never be self-sovereign, they are either wards of their fathers, wards of their family, wards of their husband, wards of the state bureacracy, or temporary wards of a rotating array of characters (their boss, their boyfriend). eg. I believe that only fathers and husbands have the knowledge and alignment of interest to actually take care of women in the best possible way.

(1) Actually, feminism is more like calvinball where women alternatively get treated as men, sometimes indeed as super-men, or sometimes as agency-free, angelic, children (eg, when they argue women shouldn't be made to publicly testify in college sexual assault cases, they should just be believed)

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