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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   27883 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 27, 2023

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I will answer the question in kind of roundabout way, the sexual revolution in my eyes is wish fulfilment of certain strains of feminism that basically worship masculinity. I am talking about people who had incorrect analysis of what the social relationships are - that men use male privilege to oppress women and created Patriarchy to reproduce that pattern, that marriage and basically everything is oppression. As with many religions and ideologies - you become what you worship, in this case feminists secretly worship this fantasy of male power and want it for themselves. In their own way they just seized the means of power and put on the other shoe to serve the "just" case of reparations for historical oppression. The thought that they were wrong all along and that they themselves manifested the monster they fantasized about - now in the real world only in pink - and that there is no basis for reparations and revenge, it is too brutal to contemplate now. The new female rolemodel is a caricature of toxic masculine man that feminists supposedly hate: she is powerful and calculating business owner who can also be physically imposing and aggressive as well as sexually promiscuous. She is formidable and feared by all around her, she is highly competitive high status earner and nobody will tell her what to do. She is stoic in her outlook and she is totally impervious to emotions - especially if they take the form of male or other oppressor tears.

Just look what ideal progressive modern woman should look like: she should be given free contraception at early teen or even pre-teen and get fast tracked into sexual experimentation including with her sexual preference and gender identity. Then she should of course spend her most healthy and fertile years of late teens and early twenties studying in college and slaving as HR representative for some nameless corporation while finding meaning not in family and children but by "doing work" on some activist and ideally feminist projects while popping birth control pills and experimenting with sex of course. Then she can go and have a "career" in her late twenties and thirties because every job is a career and groundbreaking work needs to be done on promoting justice of some kind. She may think about relationship, but her "career" and own "wellbeing" should be a priority. You also have right to pursue "career" as Instagram or OF model, it is just a regular work and possibly doable as a sidejob to being preschool teacher.

In her late thirties or early forties there is time to have your eggs frozen so that they can be implanted into surrogate Indian or Ukrainian mother and delivered to you on silver platter as if some pet like Khloé Kardashian baby - you do not even have to have any interesting excuse, just valuing your body is enough. You see, access to motherhood is a right and it is all about YOU as a Mother, the child is there just as a reminder for the rest of the society that you are so wonderful and capable of doing the most difficult work of all on your own. Then you can become happy wine whine mom and bitch about how men ignore women over 45 - which signifies that it is a good time getting some plastic surgery done and hit bars and clubs pretending to be teenager again. It is not as if you are some respected matriarch responsible for helping your gaggle of grandchildren navigating life, it is all about you until you end the misery by euthanasia in Canada. In the meantime go and slay it on the dancefloor in your seventies queen.

So is sexual revolution a failure specifically for women? Maybe not, if you are happy with the story above and you think that is an awesome culture worth reproducing by implanting your eggs into poor 3rd world women so that the state can pay for your single motherhood in case something happens - at least until artificial womb is invented and producing children will be a job of child farms on Epstein Islands of some "eccentric" billionaires somewhere. I guess that would also be a way to "reproduce" this "culture" and a huge win for the whole paradigm. Progress cannot be stopped, it is what it is and it is always good as it presents us with opportunity to move one step further even if we made two steps back.

Other people really view it as obvious failure as it produced inverted lifestyle where everything - from sex to childcare - is done in wrong order and often in opposite ways it was done before, often seemingly just in spite and as part of some endless revolt against religions or other traditions. Now half a century later this is how the new Orthodoxy looks like - and it does not look as hot.

Just look what ideal progressive modern woman should look like: she should be given free contraception at early teen or even pre-teen and get fast tracked into sexual experimentation including with her sexual preference and gender identity. Then she should of course spend her most healthy and fertile years of late teens and early twenties studying in college and slaving as HR representative for some nameless corporation while finding meaning not in family and children but by "doing work" on some activist and ideally feminist projects while popping birth control pills and experimenting with sex of course. Then she can go and have a "career" in her late twenties and thirties because every job is a career and groundbreaking work needs to be done on promoting justice of some kind. She may think about relationship, but her "career" and own "wellbeing" should be a priority. You also have right to pursue "career" as Instagram or OF model, it is just a regular work and possibly doable as a sidejob to being preschool teacher.

I am not a progressive, and I am probably more reactionary than 90% of this forum. But tbh this is a weak man. The ideal progressive life trajectory for women is something like ‘she has access to free contraception starting at puberty, experiments with sex and relationships as she feels is right, goes to college and gets established in a career, meets and marries a male feminist in her late twenties or early thirties, has the number of kids she wants and no more, and can juggle this with a fulfilling high status career without cutting corners on her family goals’.

Now you might say this is obvious fantasy, and except for a few women rich enough to afford full time servants that’s true, but it is what feminists hold up as the ideal even if they can’t get it.

Sure, I can agree also with that characterization. The main point being that relationship and marriage are of secondary importance. It is all about her, and the job of the man is to support the woman in her life path.

I don’t believe “wish fulfillment” is an adequate descriptor of second-wave feminism. Accusing your outgroup of lying about their deeply held beliefs demands some serious evidence, not armchair psychology.

It is no armchair psychology to understand people on their own terms. A lot of feminists believe that men use sexism to gain power over women. It is literally what they believe, so why it should be "psychologizing" to say that maybe they also believe that women can also use sexism against men to gain power? Why is it psychologizing to just state what some people literally believe? If somebody believes that cabal of twelve Jews and Free Masons rules the world, is it far fetched to say that maybe they also can believe that another group of 12 "good" patriotic people can possibly also rule the world utilizing the same level of control and make it a better place? It has to be in realms of possibility that such a mind can contemplate, desirable even at least as some sort of second worst alternative to Free Mason Jews being on top, right?

I’m sure the theorist would prefer 12 patriots to 12 Freemasons. But he won’t act accordingly, because he has other preferences, too.

A second-wave feminist might well prefer matriarchy to the existing patriarchy. But he also has other preferences.

You’re picking one such preference as the most important. I don’t think you’ve ruled out the rest.

A lot of feminists believe that men use sexism to gain power over women. It is literally what they believe, so why it should be "psychologizing" to say that maybe they also believe that women can also use sexism against men to gain power?

I don't know if "psychologizing" is the right concept, but I'd say that that's "misunderstanding" what (these) feminists believe. When they say they believe men use sexism to gain power over women, they're saying they believe something very specific with respect to men, women, sexism, and power, with no generalities about how these concepts can actually relate to each other. Sexism isn't a general thing that people can do to others by discriminating on the basis of sex, it a specifically BAD thing that only MEN can do to only WOMEN (and other non-MEN). Power isn't something people have over others as determined by what they can make others do or whatever, it's something only MEN have that they wield over others including WOMEN who thus get sexism applied to them.

So inferring from "they believe some people X does action Y on other people Z" to "they must believe that, at least theoretically, people Z could do action Y on people X" is misunderstanding their beliefs. They are perfectly capable of believing the former and disbelieving the latter in a perfectly consistent way according to their own worldview. You're not engaging with their beliefs and logic on their own terms.

Sexism isn't a general thing that people can do to others by discriminating on the basis of sex, it a specifically BAD thing that only MEN can do to only WOMEN (and other non-MEN).

Sure, I understand that concept. Bellow I even used similar example of Christian with strong beliefs. You can observe him praying, visiting church services and praising god and all that. But by understanding his beliefs you also can infer that he also believes in Satan as a force of evil. It would probably not be very far fetched to say that maybe such a person can accept that somebody got ahead in his life - getting rich etc. - by having nefarious help from demonic forces. Heck, with very strong belief you can see demonic forces in most innocent aspects of your own life.

That is the gist of what I wanted to say - that having strong beliefs has consequences. And I do not think that feminists are against using sexism to advance cause of women in the same way Christians would be against using demon worship to get ahead - like achieving pregnancy or destroying their enemies. The bar would be much lower for feminists in this case as the belief system is identity based as opposed to outcome based. "Sexism" against men is not real sexism, a boardroom full of women is the most feminist thing ever and opposed to being sexist.

In practice one can ascribe mostly arbitrary beliefs to people with this "maybe they also believe, it's in the realm of possibility" neat trick, while also sneaking it through as "just stating what people literally believe".

If somebody sincerely believes in Christian God, I think it is safe to assume that he also believes in Satan even if that is not the word you hear often. We can play the game all day long but it is not psychologizing to assume that.

The Satan is a documented feature of christianity, unlike ones you ascribe to feminism and other doctrines you dislike.

Of course it is well documented, it even has a name of toxic masculinity. You have it right there in the article:

Men who adhere to traditionally masculine cultural norms, such as risk-taking, violence, dominance, the primacy of work, need for emotional control, desire to win, and pursuit of social status, tend to be more likely to experience psychological problems such as depression, stress, body image problems, substance use, and poor social functioning.

If it is, you can express the phenomenon in the feminists' own words, instead of having to "extrapolate" or "safely assume".

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