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AlterNet discovers the Manosphere's "secular sexism":
http://www.alternet.org/gender/christian-right-dying-who-fuels-misogyny-enter-secular-sexists-gamergate-and-mra-movement
I find this whole Dark Enlightenment/Neoreaction/Neopatriarchy development fascinating because it shows the failure of the progressive project to control the human mind. In the U.S., at least, progressives have a lot of control in centrally planning the culture towards Enlightenment notions of democracy, feminism, egalitarianism, cosmopolitanism, tolerance, etc. Yet thanks to the internet, men who previously wouldn't have had the means to communicate with each other have organized in a Hayekian fashion to discover that they have had similar damaging experiences with, for example, women in a feminist regime, and they have come to similar politically incorrect conclusions about women's nature. And this has happened despite the policies and preferences of the people who hold the high ground in education, academia, law, government and the entertainment industry.
I can see why the emergence of secular sexism drives progressive nuts, because they wrongly believed that sexism depended on certain kinds of god beliefs that have fallen into decline, as this AlterNet article explores. Uh, no, why would anyone have ever thought that? We can't observe gods, but women exist empirically, and men have had to live with them all along. If the resulting body of experiences with women have condensed into a patriarchal tradition which puts women in a bad light - well, you can't blame that on theology, now, can you?
The linked article is so misleading that I wouldn't try to derive any true statements about reality from it. It fails to mention any legitimate points of their opponents, and then concludes they don't have any. Five minutes on google would probably give better results.
(I strongly bite my tongue here to avoid going into specific details, but I spent the last month observing GamerGate and it is fascinating to watch how good job can media do to prevent some information from being ever mentioned, and how all information about this topic ultimately comes from the same two or three people.)
One thing, though. The article is pushing a narrative "all our opponents are actually the same" while in fact the only thing conecting them is, well, being opponents of one specific group in one specific topic. For example, there are many feminists in the GamerGate movement (no, Christina Hoff Sommers is not the only example), and also there are many people believing that feminism and men's rights are not contradictory. So the whole paradigm of "dark forces are rising" may be just a convenient excuse to explain away some specific failures or a specific group.
I believe advancedatheist is using it to illustrate the Progressive reaction to the Manosphere.
Of course you can. Theology is very easily observable. One can ask what the theology should be blamed on, but that goes back to the dawn of history and is but speculation and fog.
So here's some speculation for why patriarchal traditions are so prevalent, which I suppose has been at the back of my mind for as long as I've been aware of such issues, although I've never seen it stated so starkly as I am about to.
Men are physically stronger than women.
Without modern science, paternity cannot be observed, only enforced (see (1)).
It seems to me that these two facts are a sufficient explanation for the entire phenomenon of both religious and secular suppression of women. Men have been able to, men have wanted to, men have done. Might makes might. "If you want a picture of the past, imagine a man's boot stamping on a woman's face – for ever."
Explanations of how all women really want to be controlled by a strong man are window dressing, excreted by the virtual outcome pumps in the heads of those who find current mores uncongenial to continuing in that way, and who nowadays must use ideas as ammunition instead of stones.
Really, can you show me where?
You left out a few important ones:
3. A man can potentially impregnate many women.
4. Having a man to help raise a woman's children greatly increases their prospects (this is the reason your (2) matters).
5. Unlike his sperm, a man's attention is a rather limited resource.
So, women would prefer to have children by an alpha male. They would also prefer to find a beta male to help raise them (they would like even more to have the alpha male raise them but see (5)). Men don't what to raise children that aren't theirs.
This is no longer true in countries where women can earn their own living.
Don't generalize. Women are individuals, not a monolithic bloc.
Again, don't generalize. I'd much rather adopt an orphan than increase the amount of living people, all the while knowing my genes would much rather be copied. I don't fear my moral inclinations will be outbred; I can just teach them to my adopted children. Every man (and woman, and genderless person, and all variations thereupon) has hir own motivations and interests. Ignoring individual differences is one of the problems with this particular brand of sexism.
Any library or bookshop.
Markdown automatically renumbered your 5 to 3; if you want it not to, add backslashes i.e.
3\.,4\.and5\..Thanks, fixed.
Then way are women so willing to throw themselves in front of abusive men?
I think a lot of women believe that they are and/or should be able to improve abusive men.
Yes, and this belief appears to be sufficiently pervasive and impervious to evidence that its clear there is something more driving it.
My reading of the situation is not that women prefer abusive men or prefer to be controlled. My reading is that women (warning: crude generalizations incoming) like to be/feel protected and prefer strong men. Given this, some women consider being abusive to be evidence of strength, and some women are willing to trade some control or some abuse for getting a strong man. This may or may not be a good trade, depending on the circumstances.
For what (little) I have read about abusive relationship, my pet theory is that abuses are like superstimulus for things like assertiveness, confidence, strength, etc.
Some women get imprinted with this kind of behaviour in such a way they are no more able to find attractive kinder men.
Some women are willing to throw themselves in front of abusive men. It doesn't follow that all women really want to be controlled by a strong man.
Some women are. I don't have the feeling for what proportion of women are willing to have relationships with obviously abusive men.
The usual account of abusive relationships is that the abusive escalates fairly slowly-- I don't know whether the initially abusive relationship is too embarrassing to talk about.
I don't generally bother pointing out typos, but this one might be worth fixing.
Thanks. Corrected.
Please stop making comments like this.
shminux is right here, this is not a helpful attitude on your part. While it's important to avoid encouraging political debates on LessWrong, exercising virtues such as moderation and tolerance when such issues do come up is even more important.
I agree. That's why I looked at advancedatheist's comment history before replying. If this were the only such comment, I would not have called it out-- but this user has a history of posting similar comments.
Now, advancedatheist has also posted comments that advocate neoreactionary positions in ways that I consider totally appropriate for LessWrong-- this one, for example. But IMO there's a clear difference in tone and tenor between that and this.
This request is likely to be ineffectual without something more concrete. The OP makes several rambling points, it's not clear which you disagree with.
I disagree with the general concept that LW is an appropriate place to post bizarre, mindkilled political rants.
I agree that the tone sucks. However, some of the points are valid. For example, the large chunk of opposition to (online) feminism is now from the mens rights crowd, not from traditional-gender-roles crowd. And this pattern should be expected to continue in the future.
For example, the main opposition to assisted suicide in the US is currently religion-motivated. However, in Canada and elsewhere where religion is only a minor player, the main opposition is from the secular disability rights movements. The advocates of the right to die with dignity will find themselves opposing similarly "progressive", kind and compassionate people, once the issue is no longer about faith.
You can probably name another issue or two where overcoming one obstacle only leaves you bashing against a different, unexpected one, without having made much progress.
I don't particularly care about whether the points are valid. This kind of discussion isn't what LessWrong is for, especially when it's being posted with this sort of tone.
Ah. You did mention something about "mindkilled", right?
Yes, ha ha. This is a serious matter, though. I believe that it really truly doesn't matter whether someone's political points are good or not. LessWrong should not allow itself to be a venue for this sort of behavior, especially when it's accompanied by this sort of tone.
In order for the LessWrong community to flourish, I think it is critical that it be divorced from bickering over political matters. So when it comes to posts like this one, I really truly don't care whether their arguments are valid or not-- either way, they shouldn't be on LessWrong
For discussion of political matters? A bit late for that, I think. This train has left the station.
I disagree. "Bickering", of course, is a word with negative connotations, but I see no reason to taboo political discussions here. Politics of all sorts are important in real life and having a giant blind spot doesn't look too useful for that winning thing that rationality is supposed to be about :-/
So far on LW people have shown their ability to have civilized discussions even while disagreeing about politics. That's a good thing.
Has it? Insofar as it has, that's been thanks to our own failure to tend to basic principles. I think that in order to better reach as many people as possible, it's critical that LW avoid politics and the potential biases that can result.
I do agree that having civilized discussions even while disagreeing about politics is important. But there are other venues for that, like Slate Star Codex, and if we indeed need more of this I think it's better to move it off-site.
Mind killed means that someone is using ineffective heuristics. You can follow pretty irrational heuristics and still get the correct answer by luck.
No. "Mindkilled" means that someone is not amenable to reason.
Not being amenable to reason is following an irrational heuristics for determining truth.
And the main point still stands regardless. You can get the right answer even when you are not amenable to reason.
Well, nearly all of progressivism can be summarized as an attempt to ignore this kind of logic and see what happens.
Progressives hold that stereotypes promote arbitrary, random and generally false beliefs about groups of people. But then why do these stereotypes remain stable across generations? And why don't people ever get their stereotypes mixed up?
For example, if some said that he didn't mind having registered sex offenders as neighbors because their presence wouldn't hurt property values and his community's reputation, you wouldn't praise this guy for his lack of stereotypical thinking. Instead you would question his judgment.
Ironically progressives don't have a problem at all with promoting stereotypes which put rich people and businessmen in a bad light. The popularity of Ayn Rand's alternative humanism pisses them off because she got some market share in reversing these stereotypes, and again in defiance of progressives' central planning to reshape the human mind like clay,.
Rational expectations equalibria are a thing. To take a somewhat exagerated example, if everyone thinks that girls suck at math, so no one teaches girls to do math, then no one will ever find out whether or not girls actually suck at math.
"Throwing like a girl" is a prime example of that sort of thing. Throwing like a girl turns out to be throwing like someone who's inexperienced with throwing.
If a boy throws like a girl, he's taught and/or shamed out of it as quickly as possible. If a girl throws like a girl, well, what did you expect?
I've phrased this in the present tense, but the culture's improved on the subject.
Now consider a similar-sounding stereotype: "Men are physically stronger than women". Think that's fixable by different expectations?
While some stereotypes reflect cultural expectations, some reflect biological reality.
Strength is determined by biology and behavior; the stereotype reflects both biological reality and cultural expectations. Note that boys are/were expected to be stronger than girls even before puberty actually creates a meaningful biological gap...
Not defending the progressives in general here, but there are two very simple explanations for your question.
1) Some stereotypes don't remain stable across generations.
For example, I heard that in the past, pink was considered a "boy color" and blue was considered a "girl color"; or that it was believed that black people would be bad at sport. So, some stereotypes change and some don't; and we would need a meta review to find out whether there is something special about those unchanging stereotypes, or whether it just means that if you flip a coin two or three times, sometimes you will get the same result repeatedly.
2) If a stereotype already exists, it is more easy to keep believing in the existing one (confirmation bias) than to invent a new one.
(Disclaimer: None of this is meant as a general proof that all stereotypes are incorrect. It's only an explanation of how a stereotype that happens to be wrong could remain stable across generations.)
Except as you've just pointed out:
Identifying a mechanism pushing towards outcome X is not inconsistent with observing that sometimes the outcome not-X happens.
I don't think most progressives assume stereotypes are arbitrary or random. The standard progressive view seems to be that the stereotypes were based on the fundamental attribution error: attributing negative traits that a group has to their innate nature rather than to negative influences.
Example: Members of group A enter region dominated by group B. The educational system in region B focuses on entirely different languages and historical periods than the educational system in region A. Group B considers intelligence to be demonstrated by a mastery of language and history. Group B then assumes that members of Group A are inherently unintelligent, instead of assuming that there's a good reason why otherwise competent members of Group A are completely inept at Group B language and history.
Group C denies group D access to certain types of training for reasons that are, at the time, valid. The reasons become invalid. Group D asks for access to those types of training. Group C points out that Group D currently has no demonstrated skill at those types of tasks. Group D is being stereotyped as inherently bad at something, when in fact they are merely untrained.
Why don't progressives put the same effort into dismantling insulting stereotypes of their political opponents (certain types of rich people) in the same way that we do for other groups? Presumably, because rich people can afford to hire PR agents, and are not suffering harm from stereotypes*, and because people generally do not make their political opponents look better.
*I haven't seen evidence for rich people being harmed by stereotype threat, but if some study shows they are, please link me to one.
Not sure what is the "standard" progressive view, but the one I see a lot says that stereotypes are tools of oppression and domination.
I'm sorry if this is a rude request, but I'm very new to the LW commenting process, so if anyone knows why my comments here were downvoted, I'd really appreciate it if that person would tell me, so I can improve my future participation on this site.
Thanks in advance!
The request is not rude and actually fairly common (but is not guaranteed to bring responses).
Note that LW up/downvoting is a noisy process and you shouldn't attempt to find meaning in every single vote. Also, this.
At the moment, all your comments seem to be net-upvoted, so there seems no evidence of a systematic objection to your participation. As I've observed elsewhere as well, comments that can be taken as supportive of progressive positions have lately garnered a few downvotes early on, which tend to get reversed by subsequent upvotes over the next few days. I wouldn't worry about it.
I suppose there isn't really a standard progressive view, but I attend Young Democrats meetings, my school voted with something like a ⅔ majority for Obama in the last mock election, and I read newspapers and magazines that target a progressive audience, so I encounter a lot of progressive viewpoints.
I thought that the "tools of oppression and domination" was a reference to how stereotypes are used, not how they are formed. I don't really picture a bunch of people in positions of power deciding that the best method to oppress people was to assume insulting things about them, instead of, say, passing harmful legislation, so I assumed that other progressives would agree with me on that point.
Also, I wanted to discuss stereotype origins without using phrasing that made the originators of those stereotypes look immoral, because I thought that doing so would distract for advancedatheist from the point I was trying to make, so I shied away from that explanation.
If you are into that kind of thing, you can view stereotypes as soldiers in memetic warfare. If you want to win, you want to shape your soldiers and not just pick whichever ones happen to come along.
The problem is that progressives consider it evil to attribute negative traits to innate nature and will refuse to update in that direction even if changing influences doesn't improve the trait.
Thus if a negative trait happens to actually have an innate cause, progressives end up going on witch hunts trying to find the w̶i̶t̶c̶h̶ oppressor whose evil s̶p̶e̶l̶l̶s micro-aggressions are causing the negative influences.
LOL: "had" to live with them. I like (= I find humorous) the implied, possibly unintended, sexism.
Why not? I mean, I don't say that we should or shouldn't put women in a bad light, nor that we should or shouldn't blame theology for that. But why we can't blame theology?
It's not like memes evolve to attain truthiness, or that humans are automatic maximizers / strategizers. Pretty any memeplex I know of has some form of "push away / ostracize my enemies". Understood, any meme that contains "kill all women" would have a pretty short lifespan. But one containing "enslave all women and use them as breeding cattle" could survive indefinitely, whether women are cattle or not. Isn't the whole Neoreactionary movement born under the fallacy that equates survivability with adherence to truth? I find this to be a somewhat inclusive description.
Despite this, I still find the linked article to be appalingly bad at presenting the issue with some form of objectivity. They are not even trying. But I don't know the site and I'm possibly mistaken assuming that it has as mission disseminating informations of some quality.
What definition of "sexism" are you using here? The word "had" there serves an important point, contrast this with the fact that people don't have to live with other ethnic groups.
Yes, they do. If this wasn't the case we'd still be on the savannah getting chased by lions.
Um, tribes have to compete with other tribes. Memes can't survive for long simply because they aren't immediately destructive.
Yes, but it could also imply that women are difficult to endure, and men would be better off without them. But of course this meaning was unintended, thus the humor.
But where does the selective pressure comes from? Why this pressure has not made the atomistic idea, or the spherical Earth, formulated almost three thousands of year ago, immediately popular? Why there are people that still believe in magic? Why we still believe in both relativity and quantum mechanics, despite these ideas being incompatible and more than a century old?
Yes, avoiding to be immediately destructive is not sufficient to guarantee a meme survivability, but cultures can lock all kind of memes if there's no immediate selective pressure against them.
For example, a society that has to battle on phyisical grounds, with physical strength, gains no immediate disadvantage over a more egalitarian society if it enslaves women.
A false meme can even gain a society some advantage, such as the case of an ethnic group that enslaves another ethnic group and makes them work for hard labor.
Past history was about guns, germs and steel, not about truth. Those are what has been selected. The rest of the memes are purely random junk.
As advancedatheist said in the OC:
Rather then mocking his phrasing maybe you should try actually paying attention to his point.
In particular truths about metallurgy and the chemistry of gunpowder.
I wonder if you realize that a direct implication of this statement is that treating women as not cattle offers no advantage to a society..?
Deleterious things get locked into fixation in genomes and biological systems all the time. I see no reason that deleterious traits cannot get fixed into cultures.
Oh, they surely can. But that gives those cultures a disadvantage and maintaining this disadvantage "indefinitely" seems to be a stretch, especially given how cultures are malleable and tend to change anyway.
Indefinitely meant more "comparably to a culture lifespan" than "until the heat death of the universe".
It's not that it offers no advantage, is that it offers no immediate disadvantage.
A discriminating culture that happens to have more material advantage at the start could just wipe other more egalitarian cultures without much concerns. It's only very recently that physical strength has lost its importance as a driving force in cultures clashes.
It is possible that in a future where intellect matters much more, but life is still cheap, a more egalitarian society will employ women more efficiently and thus prevail against discriminating ones. But it seems that the more material wealth we have, the more relaxed we are about the whole killing other people stuff.
Really, you think so?
Dark Enlightenment/Neoreaction is an ideology by a very small amount of bloggers who don't matter in the overall discourse. It's in no way the same thing as the MRA-movement.
Starting with a straw man and then asking " Why would anyone have ever thought that" is pretty bad form. National Socialism in Germany was largely a secular movement that also was sexist. Assuming that in general progressive thought ignores that history is something that says a lot more about the writer than about progressive ideas.
"If the resulting body of experiences with women have condensed into a patriarchal tradition which puts women in a bad light - well, you can't blame that on theology, now, can you?"
This starts from a false assumption ("the resulting body of experiences with women have condensed into a patriarchal tradition") and implies a false dichotomy (that men either dominate society because of religious beliefs, or because of some reason that progressives would prefer not to blame), and someone who posts on a website dedicated to rationality should see that. I also don't agree with the claim that history paints women in a bad light compared to men. Until recently we've seen an ugly domination of both men and women by men, and we still that in much of the world.
I see other commenters making the assumptions that historical authoritarianism by men signifies that this trait must have at some point either been advantageous to the species, or advantageous to women who chose to mate with "dominant" men and/or the children they bore. This assumption underlies a lot of anti-feminist philosophy online. Have you considered the possibility that there have been men who have passed along their genes by intimidating others (including other men)? Considering our species' history of violence, is it any wonder that tyrannical and Machiavellian males have had an evolutionary advantage? I have noticed that, especially in large societies, living under said men appears to be unpleasant for the masses who don't reign supreme.
Is the same true for violent and Machiavellian women? If so why doesn't the rest of your logic apply, if not why not?