Funny that the right and left's stated goals are inverted from the impacts of their policy prescriptions. Left loves the collective, right is individualistic. Yet conservative gender roles, elevation of law and order seem like they especially benefit the collective, while leftist focus on the supremacy of individual & equity between individuals seems very harmful to the collective but maximally unrestrictive to individuals. What a contradiction!
One way to judge the effects of different norms is to look at foot voting. Around the world, the places with liberal post-sexual-revolution gender norms are the places people want to immigrate *to* (whether they are allowed is a different question), and the places that still retain traditionalist norms are those people want to emigrate *from* (again, whether or not able or allowed).
This is probably partly because of the direct appeal of liberalized sexual lifestyles, but probably not mostly so. A bigger factor is the institutional openness that is key to economic progress and that naturally correlates with sexual liberalism and its emphasis on bodily autonomy. Liberalism of all kinds is a great breaker-down of restrictive guild structures and promoter of competition, and what reactionaries want from traditionalist gender norms-- what they claim will deliver a benefit to women-- is in essence the forcible (re)establishment of a guild system that restrains competition by punishing those who "defect" from the guild. But the Great Enrichment is inextricably linked to the rise of a general anti-guild ethos, and it is no coincidence that places that have resisted that ethos remain mired in poverty.
“Men and women are natural enemies. “ I have a hard time squaring this quote with “most interesting on Substack.” It is not as though lesbians form super long lasting relationships, or gay men for that matter. Last numbers I saw indicated their relationships were as bad or worse than heterosexual when it comes to long term happiness. I agree that men and women have different reproduction strategies in a biological sense, but that doesn’t seem to be the source of strain in most relationships. I am told it is usually money, or just no longer liking the person.
In other words, reproductive strategies might be relevant for part of relationships, the earlier parts like dating and early marriage, but it doesn’t seem to account for the majority of later relationship problems. Especially considering that most similar human relationships start to break down after a bit for similar reasons. Think business partners, clubs, anything that has a higher level of expectation.
Once women got the vote it was inevitable that the bottom half would marry the state outright and the top half would at least like the leverage it brought.
Like all government services, quality isn't great but its hard to beat "paid for by other people."
Jordan Peterson has been beating the drum for a while now that short term mating strategies correlate with dark triad personality traits like narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism. Maybe not all preferences are deserving of equal weight?
"For example, I have written before that I believe that laws against abortion were part of the effort to discourage women’s pursuit of casual sex. Pregnancy outside of marriage was a sign of sexual laxity, and forcing the woman to carry the baby to term was a form of punishment. Once the sexual revolution hit, and women were no longer frowned upon for having premarital sex, the support for laws against abortion collapsed."
The laws against abortion collapsed in almost exactly the same way as same-sex marriage: a SCOTUS ruling. In both cases very few states allowed the action prior and public support was low. The changes after the rulings were massive. People adjusted their beliefs to fit what was legal.
As for punishing women, maybe that was once part of the picture. IDK. I'm about ten years younger than you and that's enough I don't have lived experience with that but it would surprise me. Many abortion activists still say that today and I just don't see it. It's a common theme. Attribute some belief to the other side that they themselves would never agree to. Abortion opponents are universally concerned about the fetus/baby and I don't think anyone can prove otherwise excepting maybe a few outliers.
Tove's "natural enemies" is too strong, provocative -- but they often want different things, especially in the sex novelty, long term commitment issue.
Two FANTASTIC graphs showing the overlap and the outliers, with peaks closer or farther apart.
Using same shaped normal distributions, as seems most appropriate most often.
Yet on the graphs, I'd argue that part of the change is not so much having the peak distance move farther apart, which is happening only a little, but that the shape of the curves are changing with higher peaks.
Imagine an alternate first graph with the peak difference as far apart as the second, but with right & left long tails so that there was a lot of overlap, with lower peaks.
They hyper-individualism of today is then a social norm changing of the prior big middle overlap towards more men & women both moving back towards their own personal desires rather than couple/ family values. And the curves becoming more "normal" as the social pressure for restricted sex in stable monogamous marriages goes down. Liberation!
"If society encourages people to be true to their own feelings and inner dispositions, the divide between men and women is likely to increase. "
Not discussed is age -- how, unlike adult height or IQ, where you are on the graph changes over time. As Rob H. notes, colleges are moving towards casual & hook up sex when young is ok, with monogamy after marriage in later 20s or early 30s, and faithfulness after. Women, especially, find out in their 30s that switching to marriage later isn't so easy -- because the men mostly want sex with young women, as well as marriage and family making. That was also my own personal trajectory. But being a young womanizer, then faithful husband, often is not what the family oriented nice women want. Age is a bigger problem for college educated, successful career woman who doesn't want to settle for a "leftover" choice man as husband, but failed to prioritize marriage over career in her most attractive 22ish years.
I have long been seeing small signs of the cultural backlash against hook up promiscuity, and now especially in my search of new karaoke songs (I'm a "Punk & Emo Rock" fan). "Let's talk about sex" had a line "we should be making love". Our society, and free market salesmen, want to use sex to sell and make it more consumable & disposable, while love is commitment + desire/sex.
Tove doesn't quite say that commitment means doing stuff you don't like, or at times you don't want, or NOT doing stuff you want. A committed relationship is needed for most folk to get meaning, but the stuff you don't like remains unliked. Or meaningless.
Here's a song about dissatisfaction with meaningless sex, and looking for love:
Women face a trade off between getting the best genes for her offspring, as measured by her attraction to the man, and getting a man willing and able to provide her and her children with support and paternal care. Young women don’t want to make that trade off.
It seems like there are two separate things that happened, greater acceptance of casual sex and greater acceptance of divorce and breakups from long term relationships. In some sense I'm fine with social norms that push a bit against casual sex as long as these don't rise to the level of coercion. But an unhappy marriage is poisonous and no one should feel obligated to continue in one.
Funny that the right and left's stated goals are inverted from the impacts of their policy prescriptions. Left loves the collective, right is individualistic. Yet conservative gender roles, elevation of law and order seem like they especially benefit the collective, while leftist focus on the supremacy of individual & equity between individuals seems very harmful to the collective but maximally unrestrictive to individuals. What a contradiction!
And what norms are best for children?
One way to judge the effects of different norms is to look at foot voting. Around the world, the places with liberal post-sexual-revolution gender norms are the places people want to immigrate *to* (whether they are allowed is a different question), and the places that still retain traditionalist norms are those people want to emigrate *from* (again, whether or not able or allowed).
This is probably partly because of the direct appeal of liberalized sexual lifestyles, but probably not mostly so. A bigger factor is the institutional openness that is key to economic progress and that naturally correlates with sexual liberalism and its emphasis on bodily autonomy. Liberalism of all kinds is a great breaker-down of restrictive guild structures and promoter of competition, and what reactionaries want from traditionalist gender norms-- what they claim will deliver a benefit to women-- is in essence the forcible (re)establishment of a guild system that restrains competition by punishing those who "defect" from the guild. But the Great Enrichment is inextricably linked to the rise of a general anti-guild ethos, and it is no coincidence that places that have resisted that ethos remain mired in poverty.
“Men and women are natural enemies. “ I have a hard time squaring this quote with “most interesting on Substack.” It is not as though lesbians form super long lasting relationships, or gay men for that matter. Last numbers I saw indicated their relationships were as bad or worse than heterosexual when it comes to long term happiness. I agree that men and women have different reproduction strategies in a biological sense, but that doesn’t seem to be the source of strain in most relationships. I am told it is usually money, or just no longer liking the person.
In other words, reproductive strategies might be relevant for part of relationships, the earlier parts like dating and early marriage, but it doesn’t seem to account for the majority of later relationship problems. Especially considering that most similar human relationships start to break down after a bit for similar reasons. Think business partners, clubs, anything that has a higher level of expectation.
Once women got the vote it was inevitable that the bottom half would marry the state outright and the top half would at least like the leverage it brought.
Like all government services, quality isn't great but its hard to beat "paid for by other people."
Jordan Peterson has been beating the drum for a while now that short term mating strategies correlate with dark triad personality traits like narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism. Maybe not all preferences are deserving of equal weight?
"For example, I have written before that I believe that laws against abortion were part of the effort to discourage women’s pursuit of casual sex. Pregnancy outside of marriage was a sign of sexual laxity, and forcing the woman to carry the baby to term was a form of punishment. Once the sexual revolution hit, and women were no longer frowned upon for having premarital sex, the support for laws against abortion collapsed."
The laws against abortion collapsed in almost exactly the same way as same-sex marriage: a SCOTUS ruling. In both cases very few states allowed the action prior and public support was low. The changes after the rulings were massive. People adjusted their beliefs to fit what was legal.
As for punishing women, maybe that was once part of the picture. IDK. I'm about ten years younger than you and that's enough I don't have lived experience with that but it would surprise me. Many abortion activists still say that today and I just don't see it. It's a common theme. Attribute some belief to the other side that they themselves would never agree to. Abortion opponents are universally concerned about the fetus/baby and I don't think anyone can prove otherwise excepting maybe a few outliers.
Tove's "natural enemies" is too strong, provocative -- but they often want different things, especially in the sex novelty, long term commitment issue.
Two FANTASTIC graphs showing the overlap and the outliers, with peaks closer or farther apart.
Using same shaped normal distributions, as seems most appropriate most often.
Yet on the graphs, I'd argue that part of the change is not so much having the peak distance move farther apart, which is happening only a little, but that the shape of the curves are changing with higher peaks.
Imagine an alternate first graph with the peak difference as far apart as the second, but with right & left long tails so that there was a lot of overlap, with lower peaks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNwDWDSmq2c&list=WL&index=150
They hyper-individualism of today is then a social norm changing of the prior big middle overlap towards more men & women both moving back towards their own personal desires rather than couple/ family values. And the curves becoming more "normal" as the social pressure for restricted sex in stable monogamous marriages goes down. Liberation!
"If society encourages people to be true to their own feelings and inner dispositions, the divide between men and women is likely to increase. "
Not discussed is age -- how, unlike adult height or IQ, where you are on the graph changes over time. As Rob H. notes, colleges are moving towards casual & hook up sex when young is ok, with monogamy after marriage in later 20s or early 30s, and faithfulness after. Women, especially, find out in their 30s that switching to marriage later isn't so easy -- because the men mostly want sex with young women, as well as marriage and family making. That was also my own personal trajectory. But being a young womanizer, then faithful husband, often is not what the family oriented nice women want. Age is a bigger problem for college educated, successful career woman who doesn't want to settle for a "leftover" choice man as husband, but failed to prioritize marriage over career in her most attractive 22ish years.
I have long been seeing small signs of the cultural backlash against hook up promiscuity, and now especially in my search of new karaoke songs (I'm a "Punk & Emo Rock" fan). "Let's talk about sex" had a line "we should be making love". Our society, and free market salesmen, want to use sex to sell and make it more consumable & disposable, while love is commitment + desire/sex.
Tove doesn't quite say that commitment means doing stuff you don't like, or at times you don't want, or NOT doing stuff you want. A committed relationship is needed for most folk to get meaning, but the stuff you don't like remains unliked. Or meaningless.
Here's a song about dissatisfaction with meaningless sex, and looking for love:
"I just had sex with my ex
And I don't feel nothing, feel nothing
Ever since we broke up
I don't know what love is, yeah, yeah
I just had sex with my ex
But it's still just fucking, just fucking, yeah
Ever since we broke up
I don't know what love is, yeah, yeah"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNwDWDSmq2c&list=WL&index=150
(When I'm quoting the lyrics it's easier to have the vulgar f-word, but still generally prefer not to use it.)
Women face a trade off between getting the best genes for her offspring, as measured by her attraction to the man, and getting a man willing and able to provide her and her children with support and paternal care. Young women don’t want to make that trade off.
It seems like there are two separate things that happened, greater acceptance of casual sex and greater acceptance of divorce and breakups from long term relationships. In some sense I'm fine with social norms that push a bit against casual sex as long as these don't rise to the level of coercion. But an unhappy marriage is poisonous and no one should feel obligated to continue in one.
Is there no link to this post or Substack, or am I just missing it? Would love to read more