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Comment by georgeburdell | Hacker News Reader

As a happily married man (I say this only to pre-empt the aspersions of being a frustrated, involuntarily celibate man), I believe modern feminism has some logical inconsistencies, such as the above, to work out if it's to be a sustainable movement. I have my doubts, as fertility rates are higher in more conservative areas of the U.S. [0]. Another major inconsistency in feminism is upholding the career woman ideal, yet women's preference is still that the man should be higher earning or more successful.

[0] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/fertility_rate/fer...

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The critical flaw in contemporary popular feminism is the inability to acknowledge both that women have agency and that women use that agency to enforce gender roles.

E.g. the pay gap. The pay gap opens up only after marriage and especially children; in the majority of major metropolitan areas today, young single women actually earn more than men.

Heterosexual women's mate choice is what drives this: they have a strong preference for a male who makes more over one who earns less. Everyone wants to earn more money, but men have the additional incentive of needing to earn more to attract a mate. Given this incentive structure, it's inevitable that men as a group will outearn women.

Most individual women have an easy way to contribute to the pay gap statistic: either by not pairing at all, or by pairing with a man who wants to play a supportive role at home instead of being the "breadwinner." The large majority of women choose the tradeoff that results in the current social structure we see.

Men, of course, also use their agency to create this world with restrictive gender roles. But everyone recognizes this; point out that women also bear responsibility for their use of agency to create it and you get, at best, called nasty names.

> The critical flaw in contemporary popular feminism is the inability to acknowledge both that women have agency and that women use that agency to enforce gender roles. [...] point out that women also bear responsibility for their use of agency to create it and you get, at best, called nasty names.

This isn't accurate: Contemporary feminism has long been obsessed with this topic; specifically, how some women contribute to their own oppression. Books have been published debating whether or not this is an inherently bad thing. You're conflating feminism and society, but society isn't feminist. Sure, libertarianism exists, but our current governments aren't libertarian, even if they pay lip service to the ideas and ideals; the same applies to feminism.

Contemporary popular feminism treats women as reactive objects; slightly more sophisticated takes grant that women contribute to their own oppression, but usually through the lens of being duped by the patriarchy. And it has frighteningly little to say about how women contribute to oppressive gender roles placed on men, with many variants denying gender based oppression is even a valid category for men.

Finally somebody has had the courage to point out the "critical flaw" in contemporary modern feminism, a philosophy noted for it's static nature and universally shared beliefs!

Your thoughts and ideas are reasonable enough but you should have a little more intellectual humility when presenting them.

My only counter to what you've said is that I think while you acknowledge the inertia of the status quo makes on current gender dynamics, you are not appreciating how making even the slightest decision against the prevailing culture is incredibly difficult.

For example, I have a male, married friend who had a child and they used the mother's last name. This seemingly minor, insignificant little protest has already caused him like 10 problems because nobody can imagine a child not having their father's last name. Going against the status quo is not easy!

Note I said contemporary popular feminism. Obviously feminism contains multitudes, but what dominates the mass and social media is much less sophisticated take that doesn't do justice to the thinkers who conceptualize it.

Not normally something I'd get involved in (and I don't necessarily agree with OP), but I think you need to take a hard look at how you interpreted that. When you say sarcastically say "noted for it's static nature" and OP has already added the "contemporary, modern" qualifiers, well you're pretty much straw-manning them. They've already addressed the point that they don't think it's static, that they're pointing to specific ideas at a particular time in the best way they can.

So like, OP predicted your argument and tried their best to explain that's not what they meant, and you ran with that interpretation anyway. Unless there's some edit shenanigans going on that I don't see, I don't know. I'm trying to figure out a polite way to say this, but like from where I'm sitting you don't look like you're responding to OP, you look like you're responding to a straw-man that OP went out of their way to explain was not what they were actually saying.

> Men, of course, also use their agency to create this world with restrictive gender roles.

> The large majority of women choose the tradeoff that results in the current social structure we see.

As I said, the OP has reasonable points but to skate over these two obviously connected points while pointing out a "critical flaw" in feminist theory is very incomplete.

It it also a disingenuous argumentative technique to say that his points are so dangerous that to bring them up would get somebody called names. Most if not all academics would be happy to argue any of these points without name calling.

And also it is ridiculous to say that "contemporary, modern feminism" is a well defined term that means the same thing to everybody. What's modern conservatism mean? Modern liberalism?

Nothing is a well defined term that means the same thing to everybody, so if those are the standards you keep it's going to be impossible to have any kind of discussion. None the less it is possible for people to communicate, even given the vagaries of language, if you're willing to extend people the benefit of the doubt and try to actually understand what they're saying. I think you were remiss in your duty to extend that benefit of the doubt, to try to understand what OP was saying, and I think that's why you were dismissed and they're not responding to your more substantive arguments.

You might benefit from a read through of these articles: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/FaJaCgqBKphrDzDSj/37-ways-th...

Particularly the bit on "The Cluster Structure of Thingspace"

>>A verbal definition works well enough in practice to point out the intended cluster of similar things, but you nitpick exceptions. Not every human has ten fingers, or wears clothes, or uses language; but if you look for an empirical cluster of things which share these characteristics, you'll get enough information that the occasional nine-fingered human won't fool you.

Ok, what's the generally agreed on definition of popular modern conservatism?

There isn't one, and yet we still manage to have conversations about the alt-right and republicans and overturning abortion.

Also I'm not from the US so this really isn't my fight at all, I'm not arguing with you about this I'm just trying to point out where you're making a mistake that is going to make it difficult to communicate.

Here's an example, instead of saying "you can't point at contemporary modern feminism because language is hard and ideas are fuzzy" you can say "I don't think that the vice you're accusing these people of really comes up that often". Instead of trying to debate whether true feminists are whatever OP accused them of, you can just say that you don't think whatever OP accused them of is really a big deal that affects very many real people. Skip the definitional debate (you know what group they're trying to point at) and get right to the meat of the argument, whether that issues actually shows up in real life.

Eloquently put, you can add height on top of that. Any close woman I've talked to about this admitted that man needs to be higher, or cca same height. Otherwise he needs to be one hell of a charmer.

Another point is overall physique. Almost no woman admits it, but ask good looking gym builders who don't overdo it, how easy is for them to get a date. I don't mean from all women, but finding some decent looking one, often smart is simply much easier. Or even better - ask a smart well earning guy who was weak and pale who went through proper gym/sport transformation (while remaining smart well earning) - the change of interest from women is ridiculous. I can attest to that, I've changed few personal opinions after putting in enough time with free weights. Its not so much about muscle mass per se, but overall posture, confidence, happiness and projection of strength.

Women, much more than men, like to feel they are above primitive emotions and impulses. Well sometimes only till they aren't.

> Women, much more than men, like to feel they are above primitive emotions and impulses. Well sometimes only till they aren't.

Women have been ostracized, sometimes killed, for not appearing virtuous for thousands of years. Women strongly retain a defense mechanism of virtue signaling in sexual relations. It's overwhelming and suppresses true sexual preferences among women of all types (education, income level, age, cultural background and so on). Always keep this in mind when reading what heterosexual women say they want in a potential partner.

The thing is, I think we are just in a time of social rediscovery. Everything seems chaotic because there were a lot of repressed people in society who are just now finding the freedom not to hide themselves. Nobody really knows what it means to integrate all these new elements and we are trying to figure it out. Combined with larger geopolitical issues like economic inequality, immigration and climate change it seems like the whole world in in turmoil.

My point is that I feel like it's not necessary to hold these groups to the standard of being logically consistent and rational all the time. The movements are still in their infancy. They will make mistakes. It's all experimental right now. We will figure it out, but it may take generations so the best thing to do is just relax and be supportive.

Not sure why you’re downvoted so hard, but I absolutely agree that we are in a transitional state and so inconsistencies can exist (but not persist). Eventually, modern feminism will need to figure out how to empower women and convert (or create) more to sustain the movement. Otherwise, the default appears to be some form of religious fundamentalism.

The society I can think of that has made the most progress is Israel, as it is modern but also has a TFR of 3 and generally is an outlier on plots of TFR and GDP per capita

> We will figure it out, but it may take generations so the best thing to do is just relax and be supportive.

This sounds weird to me, like "support damaging behavior because that's how people find themselves". Because, after all, damaging behavior is what this thread is about. Sure, maybe someone will grow out of being an ass, but maybe they won't. If you support them "no matter what" instead of calling them out, you're prolonging that behavior.

> it's not necessary to hold these groups to the standard of being logically consistent and rational all the time

Not that we can't forgive and make mistakes, but aiming for other than "being logically consistent and rational" is likely a road to Hell, or rudderless at best.

They are actively teaching and promoting said freedoms to children. Its not just chain breaking but also bias building.

> Another major inconsistency in feminism is upholding the career woman ideal, yet women's preference is still that the man should be higher earning or more successful.

But this is not an inconsistency in feminism, this is a discrepancy between feminism and what many women actually want.

But then it's a movement by a minority of women who profess to speak for a majority of which the demonstrably do not represent

>But then it's a movement by a minority of women who profess to speak for a majority of which the demonstrably do not represent

I wonder how many analogues to that beyond feminism I can come up to that in a minute?

A person can want to earn their own living while also wanting a viable and optimal partnership with a qualified person.

If you see people as at least partially rational actors, "Have enough income on your own that you're not trapped in a situation with anyone," and, "Have a partner that is successful," aren't two opposed concepts.

It's not a logical inconsistency, it's actually rational. I think you may be falsely equating "consistency" and "fairness," or "equability," but they're distinct concepts: A person can want to be successful and still find a successful partner more attractive. This isn't inconsistent.

The inconsistency is when someone complains that their career is considered secondary to their partner's, when they intentionally sought after a partner with a more developed career.

> Another major inconsistency in feminism is upholding the career woman ideal, yet women's preference is still that the man should be higher earning or more successful.

And here is why there is not a single feminism. I made two categories, but there is more, it is just easier for my brain. You have the "liberal" feminism, targeting equality, and the "traditional" feminism (inherited from Emma Goldman and other marxist and Marxist-adgascent like Beauvoir, so maybe calling it traditional is wrong. Postmodern Feminism?) targeting emancipation. Emancipation is not equality, it is just asking to have the possibility to do what you are able to do (aka firewoman, general, or pornstar).

Short story about emancipation and empowerment:

At first, i thought it was the same. That the French "émanciper" was translated as "empowered", and did not go further. Then like 8 years ago (i was still a lib at the time), i've heard at the radio "We don't have an equivalent in French, this is the idea of empowerment". So i looked into the difference between emancipation and empowerment. Empowerment is practices to reach freedom for the self within the institutional structures, and emancipation, is a process of freedom for the self and others in society through challenging and changing the existing structures of power. Giorgia Meloni and Simone Veil.

> major inconsistency in feminism is upholding the career woman ideal, yet women's preference is still that the man should be higher earning or more successful.

Women's preferences don't define feminism. I think the Feminism is not a good word to describe feminism because it creates associations like these.

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