(Part 3) Top products from r/FeMRADebates

This will be the third such large-scale social transition.

The first was from foraging to agriculture - humans had to transition from hunting game/foraging and working relatively few hours to working the soil and working many hours.

Then the industrial transition describe here.

The lives of agricultural and industrial people look utterly alien to foraging people. (Arguably, the story of genesis is an allegory about the transition to agriculture). For example, from Scott Alexander's review of Empire of the Summer Moon:

> So there was a bit of traffic back and forth between America and Comancheria in the 19th century. White people being captured and raised by Comanches. The captives being recaptured years later and taken back into normal white society. Indians being defeated and settled on reservations and taught to adopt white lifestyles. And throughout the book's description of these events, there was one constant:

>All of the white people who joined Indian tribes loved it and refused to go back to white civilization. All the Indians who joined white civilization hated it and did everything they could to go back to their previous tribal lives.

>There was much to like about tribal life. The men had no jobs except to occasionally hunt some buffalo and if they felt courageous to go to war. The women did have jobs like cooking and preparing buffalo, but they still seemed to be getting off easy compared to the white pioneer women or, for that matter, women today. The whole culture was nomadic, basically riding horses wherever they wanted through the vast open plains without any property or buildings or walls. And everyone was amazingly good at what they did; the Comanche men were probably the best archers and horsemen in the history of history, and even women and children had wilderness survival and tracking skills that put even the best white frontiersmen to shame. It sounds like a life of leisure, strong traditions, excellence, and enjoyment of nature, and it doesn't surprise me that people liked it better than the awful white frontier life of backbreaking farming and endless religious sermons.

However idyllic the word "artisan" seems, it's nowhere near as idyllic as the prospect of living like a foraging person is.

Quoth Robin Hanson from the introduction to The Age of Em:

> Like most of your kind, you probably feel superior to your ancestors. Oh, you don't blame them for learning what they were taught. But you'd shudder to hear of many of your distant farmer ancestors' habits and attitudes on sanitation, sex, marriage, gender, religion, slavery, war, bosses, inequality, nature, conformity, and family obligations. And you'd also shudder to hear of many habits and attitudes of your even more ancient forager ancestors. Yes, you admit that lacking your wealth your ancestors couldn't copy some of you habits. Even so, you tend to think that humanity has learned that your ways are better. That is, you believe in social and moral progress.

> The problem is, the future will probably hold new kinds of people. Your descendants' habits and attitudes are likely to differ from yours by as much as yours differ from your ancestors. If you understood just how different your ancestors were, you'd realize that you should expect your descendants to seem quite stranger. Historical fiction misleads you, showing your ancestors as more modern than they were. Science fiction similarly misleads you about your descendants.

(If you want to feel both of these things at once, try reading science fiction written in the '50's)

Point of all this: we can't look to the past as a guide to how we'll be in the future.

> Have you worked in the construction industry? I've been an elevator mechanic and a finishing carpenter. The first paid 50 bucks an hour and the base yearly income for a ticketed mechanic was over $100,000.

Perhaps it's a matter of where you live then. Before moving to the UK I was in Eastern Europe. I've not worked in construction, but have friends who have. They were well paid, when they did get paid. But nowhere near as well as you describe. And the financial crisis hit them hard. I'm glad to hear things are better elsewhere.

As to your comments about expectations in a relationship, yeah I agree that none of this means you will want (or have any right to expect) a 1950s housewife. But men I know have been in this situation and it has caused marital problems. I don't think that the people posting on this sub are a representative sample of the population at large. In any case, I brought up gender roles not to defend them, but to point out how (unfortunately still persistent) expectations may affect men's decisions and options.

Also, would you comment on the Slate article I linked? I believe it is informed by this book. A relevant quote from its description, which I think reflects my own thoughts on why academic lag in boys is a problem:
>Only policies that redress the balance between men and women through greater access to education, stable employment, and opportunities for social mobility can produce a culture that encourages commitment and investment in family life.

EDIT: it's -> its (doi!)

Kinda coming late to this.

First- let me say that I have listened to this podcast on occasion, and usually enjoy it. In fact, I often find that when it does discuss women in history, it is extremely interesting because what is discussed flies in the face of a common perception of women in history (ie, that they were powerless and had no influence).

Because these particular episodes tend to be the ones most accurately described as "stuff I missed in history class"- they become the most memorable. If I were to describe the podcast to someone, I would probably mention that it often covered women in history. I wouldn't really write a letter of complaint, because... well, it would only really bother me if I felt that they were getting it wrong (and I am way too much of a history noob to really have that reaction unless we are talking about one of a very few things I have actually studied as an adult), or if I felt the presentation was deliberately partisan. It's not- and women featured in it are sometimes portrayed as protagonists, and sometimes antagonists- which makes it a somewhat refreshing take on inclusivity. In particular I remember some bit about the influence of washington wives in mid-18th century america that was none too flattering. Oftentimes I find that attempts to tell "herstory" paint women as a saintly underdog of history- always doing great things, never making mistakes. Sometimes you'll run into what seem to me to be strange emphasis effects (consider Pickering vs Leavitt. Variable stars are really cool, but somehow the context of their discovery as part of the process of nailing down the big bang theory is missing from wikipedia)^1. That's not what this podcast does.

When I hear "stuff you missed"- I assume it is going to be an examination of past events from perspectives not generally given the spotlight in history classes- which tend to focus on the stories of the famous and powerful, and the conflicts between them. The title of the show would lead me to expect to hear more about Leavitt than Pickering, because I would expect the history of nailing down the big bang theory to be prominent, whereas "Pickering's Harem" and the discovery of variable stars might be left out (although, I've really only read one history of the Big Bang theory, and that is where I first learned about Leavitt). "Pickering's Harem" is interesting outside of that particular bit of scientific history because it highlights how the conventions of the time (public discomfort at the impropriety of men and women working side by side at night under the light of stars) affected the professional opportunities available, even when you could pursue degrees in a field- especially if you've ever worked in an observatory and know how unromantic it is, and how little hanky panky you would expect in the freezing conditions that are required viewing things at night at high altitudes without introducing atmospheric disturbance.

I don't think I'd just write it up exclusively to implicit bias. Sexism exists, and there is resentment for ideologically-driven efforts in the area like this one. Historical innacuracy aside, detractors seem to derive far too much enjoyment from denigrating the woman who was incorrectly identified as the inspiration for Rosie the Riveter for only working a few weeks, or maintaining that Ada Lovelace was only indisputably the world's first technical writer to just claim that people just want accurate accountings of history. People seem to want history to reflect that people like them were important- and that people who aren't like them have their importance exaggerated. We expect some strange transitive property of history in which we seem to be tallying up what accolades we are personally worthy of, despite the fact that we had nothing to do with it.

1. Or maybe this is my own implicit bias operating. I'm not arguing that Leavitt deserves less attention- I'm saying that Pickering isn't getting enough at wikipedia, which is a little odd considering how important scientific writers like Singh find him.

Actually, I have read all her other works! And I like the first four books of the series she wrote (the first book of that series was her first book) a lot more than I like Uprooted. Though I do really like Uprooted! Her one previous series is military SF (well, military fantasy)/alternate history--it's set in the Napoleonic era (early 19th century) where, besides the Navy, there's also the Aerial Corps, consisting of crew-manned dragons. Books 1-4 are AWESOME. (Book 5 is interesting and good, Books 6 and 7 are okay, not great--Book 8, which is the last book in the series, is coming out sometime this year.)

His Majesty's Dragon by Naomi Novik

Here's a wonderful novel about white people, with the help of Disney, engineering their DNA into pure Disney cute wholesomeness. Bubbles, the Disney clone gets lost in the non manipulated DNA forbidden zone, where the black people live. A fantastic piece of Black American literature.
https://www.amazon.com/Negrophobia-Urban-Parable-Darius-James/dp/0312093500
The word for the OP's post is eugenics, and was THE cornerstone of the formation of the UN.
Just google United Nations Eugenics and see.
All of this science is geared towards serving the upper class, and none of it will ever be for the benefit of the normal people like us.

There are very well established morphological brain differences between men and women, including differences in the areas which deal with spatial reasoning and interpersonal relationships, as well as differences in which regions of the brain men and women recruit for the same types of tasks. In some areas, men and women show markedly different brain activity even in activities where they show no gaps in performance ability.

The thing is all of this could related to differing socialization. Learned behaviors can cause visible structural changes to the brain, or cause people to perform tasks with different parts of their brain than they otherwise would (music training is a good example of this.) It's hard to come up with a set of evidence which could even theoretically force someone to conclude that there are psychological differences between men and women in aggregate which must be due to biology rather than socialization, given that we cannot presently predict things like how some difference in a protein involved in receptors for some neurotransmitter would cash out in terms of actual psychological differences with any sort of theoretical framework.

But, it does look like the weight of evidence significantly favors there being innate biological differences. According to the book I'm currently reading, there's even evidence for non hormonally-mediated coding for differences in brain expression on the Y-chromosome, which was news to me, although if the book discusses what the specific findings on that are, I haven't gotten to that yet. The more research that comes out in the field, the less it looks like we should reasonably expect men and women to be psychologically identical in the absence of cultural differentiation between them.

>In the case of many of feminism's causes, at the start, the majority of women didn't think they wanted what feminsm was fighting for. Many feminists refer to this as internalized misogyny.

Sure, but something like looser clothing restrictions was something that wasn't fought for exclusively by feminists either. Besides, whether or not feminists referred to it as internalized misogyny or anything else is somewhat bypassing the basic point I'm making, which is that there needs to be a concerted effort by some men to actually address it. Why would anyone care to change anything if men are really the only ones affected and men don't seem to care about changing anything?

>I doubt it. Women have massive influence on the criteria men are judged by. Largely because they are the ones in the role of judge.

Well, everything I've read on the subject seems to indicate otherwise. Manhood in the Making, a book by anthropologist David Gilmour is a cross-cultural study of masculinity. What he found was that masculinity and the traits associated with it was mostly enforced by other men. This isn't any surprise really given that femininity and feminine traits are largely enforced by women and females.

There's obvious overlap between the two, but at the end of the day most findings and studies that I've read seem to show that in-group enforcement tends to be far more important than out-group. The role of who's "judge" is often coming from one's own group. If you have any evidence to counter this I'll certainly be open to it, but everything I've seen indicates otherwise.

> The argument for AA is that it is overt discrimination to cancel out hidden discrimination that happens elsewhere in the process, or historical discrimination.

But that merely shifts the burden onto another innocent. If you could direct that burden onto the people who deserve it, that's one thing, but if someone else is left jobless or denied an application because they share a skin color with previous applicants who were given that job due to their skin color, I don't see how that's any better.

Going forward, counter-discrimination only works if it can be guaranteed to be proportional and targeted properly, otherwise it merely breeds new forms of resentment and discrimination. If it is overdone or mistargeted, you merely create new victims of discrimination. And, of course, better economists than any of us argue back and forth on whether or not affirmative action even works at all. As a libertarian economist, I tend to agree with other libertarian economists and be convinced by arguments against it.

One of the best examples I can think of is feminist philosopher Susan Bordo's The Male Body. Her essay of the same name is personally important in understanding our cultural notions of masculinity and how I relate to them.

>Really? You can demonstrate evidence that computer companies were refusing to hire women?

There are whole books on the subject. Here's one.

Here's another about the UK.

>Because the majority of law students are female?

Does that make my statistic invalid? We still haven't reached parity in the profession. Things aren't equal.

>It's apparently wrong if I minimize the concerns of elite women at Google who "suffer" from someone saying something they disagree with (which was apparently severe enough that some decided to skip work, the poor babies), but it's perfectly fine for you to claim that sex discrimination regarding access to resources and hiring is just a matter of men complaining about it being too hard for them.

It can't be that wrong if you're willing to do it here. Plenty of people feel the same way which is something I know because they have expressed as much. I guess it can't be that wrong to express this opinion.

https://www.amazon.com/Gone-Girl-Gillian-Flynn/dp/0307588378/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1521658496&sr=1-4&keywords=gone+girl

The book is a truly fascinating and disturbing psychological thriller. Not necessarily what you would expect from this one quoted section that received media attention. I never saw the movie.

There does seem to be a concerted effort to remove all-male spaces. Even the Boy Scouts aren't permitted to be purely boys. Feminism seems to be the primary reason for this attitude.

That doesn't prevent ad hoc all male groups from forming, but there's clearly defined and expressed hostility towards any all-male gathering.

> I think I've come to the realization that there's a severe disconnect within me between my emotional self ... and my intellectual self

Welcome to dual process theory - I'd totally recommend reading Thinking, Fast and Slow.

> And then the doubt starts. What if I'm wrong? What if I'm basically full of shit and I'm hurting a whole lot of people with my views? But if I change them, what if I'm THEN wrong?

Been there; done that. I'd say that I've just gotten reasonably comfortable with the idea that I'm probably often wrong, but then again I'd probably be lying to myself.

> And then put on top of that the feeling that maybe I should just go with the tribe so I don't even have to worry about this sort of thing.

I personally found reading The Righteous Mind pretty therapeutic - helpful in reducing your hostility to those in other groups as well as I think helping be less self-critical of the idea that you might later opt to switch groups.

> Do you have a citation for men being forced into marriage for this purpose? I assume this doesn't include marriage for political purposes.

I don't include political marriage.

Here's a citation:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0195069056/?tag=googhydr-20&hvadid=48273543768&hvpos=1t1&hvexid=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=15867766022954682348&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=e&hvdev=c&ref=pd_sl_6sk3d1qdgm_e

"Albion's Seed" is a huge, thick examination of four streams of migration and culture from Britain into the American colonies. It is so huge and thicnk that I'll just summarize the bit I am referring to.

The first of four sections examines the Puritan culture in New England. he refers to laws forcibly placing unmarried men into households if they left he paternal home, until such time as they married and moved into am marital home.

Later, 1890, a tax on bachelors was proposed that prompted the formation of one of the first men's rights groups.
http://gynocentrism.com/2013/12/20/mgtow-movement-of-1898/
The article goes into quite a bit of detail and this proposal was by no means the first.

So this is basically the Men are From Mars, Women are From Venus model of understanding human communication. It has been quite some time since I've read that book, but I don't recall it basing its findings very empirically. And the book is not without its detractors. Most of whom ground their insights with a lot more evidence.

Myself, I found the book somewhat insightful, but as with much pop-psychology, I wouldn't read overmuch into it fundamentally. While I can recognize the strategies for communication and dealing with stress he talks about in the book in myself and others, I can also see just as many counter examples in life (including prominently my parents and brother).

So it's a big and much disputed point as to the reality of the assertions. Which makes the why kind of a mute question.

But to answer it anyways, I'd say if it is reality, its most likely just a product of modern western culture. In other cultures men and women may have different strategies for communicating/deal with stress, and it may have been different in the not to distant past.

Trigger warnings don't solely serve to "allow" people to permanently avoid situations. They allow people to prepare for situations and to decide if they are ready to deal with them at a particular time in a particular setting. It's actually considered very therapeutic because it allows the person to prepare and to have the power to choose. Overloading or over exposing a person to a triggering situation can be very detrimental to their overall progress.

>"Flooding" , exposure therapy or prolonged exposure therapy is a psychotherapeutic technique, used to treat phobia and anxiety disorders including post-traumatic stress disorder. It works by exposing the patient to their painful memories, with the goal of reintegrating their repressed emotions with their current awareness. Flooding is a faster (yet less efficient and more traumatic) method of ridding fears when compared with systematic desensitization. In order to demonstrate the irrationality of the fear, a psychologist would put a person in a situation where they would face their phobia at its worst. Under controlled conditions and using psychologically-proven relaxation techniques, the subject attempts to replace their fear with relaxation. The experience can often be traumatic for a person, but may be necessary if the phobia is causing them significant life disturbances. The advantage to flooding is that it is quick and reactive effective