That both women and men are far happier living with traditional gender roles. That modern Western women often hold very wrong beliefs about what will make them happy, and have been taught to cling to these false beliefs even in the face of overwhelming personal evidence that they are false.
How traditional? 1600s Japan? Hopi? Dravidian?
Surely it would be quite a coincidence if precisely the norms prevalent in the youth and culture of the poster or his or her parents were optimal for human flourishing.
If anything, I have the convert’s bias in this regard, Michael, not the true-born believer’s. I’m fairly young and was raised in quite a progressive household. I’d suspect myself more of overstating my case because it has come to me as such a revelatory shock. But that’s neither here nor there, as I’m not advocating for any specific “tradition.”
I’ll posit that gender roles and dynamics since the feminist movement began in earnest in the 60s and 70s have proven to be a sizable and essentially unprecedented break from the previous continuum in Western societies going back at least a couple thousand years. I don’t know enough about 1600s Japan or Hopi or Dravidian societies to speculate as to whether they fit into that pattern too. I understand there are arguments that feminist regimes are actually more original to the human species and that patriarchy only appears with the advent of agriculture and monarchy/despotism. My understanding is that this is an open question, and again beyond my expertise. So I should readily concede that “traditional” is a highly suspect term.
So I’ll be even more blunt, since this is our comment thread to not worry about whether or not these views are currently acceptable, right?
My rather vague comment is based in a more specific belief that women like to be dominated by men, that these feelings are natural and not pathological (whether or not that makes them “right” is of course another question) that they are unhappy when their man is incapable of domination and are left feeling deeply sexually unfulfilled by the careerism which empowers them elsewhere in their lives, that the current social education of both women and men (at least in the circles of the US in which I move) teach everyone that it’s abhorrent and wrong for a man to assert power over a woman, that men who enjoy it are twisted assholes and that women who enjoy it are suffering from deep psychological damage, and that it is practically inexcusable for a woman to admit that her limbic system gives her pleasure signals when a man arouses her this way.
Naturally, I am basing the perception of this relatively new regime, at least in its current extreme form, on my interpretation of what came immediately before in the society in which I was raised (I don’t know firsthand as I was born well into the current regime), so your point stands, I suppose. But I don’t really think using this as a starting off point merits any twinkling snark.
The second sentence of my original post, however, contains the more important point. Regardless of whatever “norm” anyone has in mind, be it Basque, Dravidian, or Branch Davidian, the real problem is that the current norm actively teaches unhappiness-increasing lies. If the last regime was imperfect too, I’d counter that two wrongs don’t make a right.
Though as Z M Davis notes, not all beings value happiness highest. I readily concede that too.
What I personally have observed is that there are plenty of men and women who have a need or desire to be dominated. And that a minority of these people can’t deal with the idea that it’s “just” a sexual fetish or personal quirk, but must convince themselves instead that the entire world would be happier or much better off if only our entire society were male supremacist or female supremacist, accordingly.
I’ve also observed that there are plenty of people who have a leadership or followership preference in a relationship… but the desire to be the follower is both more widespread and more gender-balanced than the desire to be the leader.
So I guess what I’m saying is, the fact that there’s a large unsatisfied market of females wishing to be dominated (sexually or otherwise) should NOT be mistaken for an indicator that this is somehow “the way the world should be”.
That market is unsatisfied for the same reason its male counterpart is: there simply aren’t enough people of either gender with the inclination, experience, self-awareness, etc. to meet the demand.
It’s my impersonal understanding that the ratio of male submissives to female dominants is way worse than the ratio of female submissives to male dominants—both kinds of submissives will have trouble finding a dominant counterpart, but the heterosexual males have it way worse.
That’s why I said the desire to be a follower is more gender-balanced than the desire to be a leader. I also used “leader” and “follower” because “dominant” and “submissive” carry more sexual overtone than is actually relevant to my point… but also because it’s way easier for men to find socially “leading” partners than sexually leading ones.
Also, to make things more complex… there are plenty of people who like to go both ways… and there are people who want to be sexually dominant but socially submissive or vice versa… if you’ve actually met and spoken with enough real people (without the self-selection bias that occurs when people with identical kinks get together), it quickly cures you of any idea that you can just say, “This Is The One True Way Relationships Should Be.”
(My wife owns a lingerie and adult toy/video store, and we’ve socialized with a lot of kinky and swinger folk, including gay, transgendered, etc. -- for a fairly broad definition of “etc.”)
This makes a lot of sense. I’m thinking of the dilemma my husband and I had when I wanted him to learn to swing dance, but neither of us wanted to learn to lead. Or my 6′4″ male friend who told me sadly that sometimes, he just wants someone who’s bigger than him, whose shoulder he can lean on.
Totally agreed. The thread starter has made a rash and morally suspect assertion—morally suspect because talking about people’s happiness as exclusively a simple thing to be manipulated through cultural dogma, and the only grade on which a life can be rated as pleasant or not is whether a dogma brings the sensation of pleasure to certain individuals in certain circumstances or not—well, it goes against seeing people as an end in itself, and it’s just icky.
My rather vague comment is based in a more specific belief that women like to be dominated by men,
You might be Generalizing From One Example—just because you like that doesn’t mean all women do, and in fact I strongly believe that some women do and some don’t, where by “some” I mean “more than 5% and less than 95%”.
I’m curious—is your personal evidence anecdotal, qualitative, quantitative...?
Michael Vassar also makes a good point—the values and implications of “traditional roles” vary a great deal across time, and especially across socioeconomic status. There are certainly career women in the West who perceive taking time off to care for children as a relief from the rat race and a chance to contribute to society in another positive way. They might feel differently had they been, say, a 12-year old Zimbabwean girl who never attended school, was married to an older man to help her family’s finances, developed an obstetric fistula in childbirth, and never left her husband’s compound again. That isn’t just traditional, it’s an active reality for millions of poor women around the world. There are also many happy, healthy, educated African career women and stay-at-home-moms, of course. The context of “tradition” is very important.
I agree. But even though feminists (and other women exposed to the rhetoric) may say they want gender “equality” to increase their happiness, it is not necessarily the real reason. Once it becomes possible for women to enter the workplace (for any reason), competition will force other women to follow suit. Elizabeth Warren’s research shows, for instance, that positional goods (housing, education) have experienced tremendous inflation since the ’70s. The quality of these goods hasn’t improved commensurately.
I think most people would agree with that statement, if you ask them to think about it a little more. Happiness, or “expected happiness” is just one term in the utility function. There is also “expected unhappiness” which might encompass things like suffering, pain, negative emotions. The concept of utility tries generalize enough to add these things together, but at an everyday conceptual level these seem to be different things (nevermind about how emotions manifest physically.) For instance, we can be happy about one thing and yet about another e.g. “my infant daughter is beautiful, but I’m sad that my parents did not live long to share this joy with us.” People seem to understand this: in English we have the word “bittersweet”, and the juxtaposition of joy and melancholy seems to be present in many other languages and cultures.
Back to the question of value: are people more eager to avoid loss than to pursue potential gains (of the same order of magnitude?) Experience points to most people putting more effort into keeping what they have, even if they are relatively unhappy with their situation. Part of this is probably evolved defaults of the brain influencing even what you might call conscious decision making.
And don’t forget about morality. Although we might try to reconcile the two, there is often some tension between doing what is “right” and doing what we expect may make us happier.
I know for a fact that I value truth over happiness . I tend to do things that other people often point out to me would have “gone better” if I did it some other way or if I did something else entirely .
Vague promotion of “traditional” values or ways combined with equally vague bashing of egalitarian movements that apparently are a threat to the relevant traditions is one of the most reliable applause lights that there are.
That both women and men are far happier living with traditional gender roles. That modern Western women often hold very wrong beliefs about what will make them happy, and have been taught to cling to these false beliefs even in the face of overwhelming personal evidence that they are false.
How traditional? 1600s Japan? Hopi? Dravidian? Surely it would be quite a coincidence if precisely the norms prevalent in the youth and culture of the poster or his or her parents were optimal for human flourishing.
If anything, I have the convert’s bias in this regard, Michael, not the true-born believer’s. I’m fairly young and was raised in quite a progressive household. I’d suspect myself more of overstating my case because it has come to me as such a revelatory shock. But that’s neither here nor there, as I’m not advocating for any specific “tradition.”
I’ll posit that gender roles and dynamics since the feminist movement began in earnest in the 60s and 70s have proven to be a sizable and essentially unprecedented break from the previous continuum in Western societies going back at least a couple thousand years. I don’t know enough about 1600s Japan or Hopi or Dravidian societies to speculate as to whether they fit into that pattern too. I understand there are arguments that feminist regimes are actually more original to the human species and that patriarchy only appears with the advent of agriculture and monarchy/despotism. My understanding is that this is an open question, and again beyond my expertise. So I should readily concede that “traditional” is a highly suspect term.
So I’ll be even more blunt, since this is our comment thread to not worry about whether or not these views are currently acceptable, right?
My rather vague comment is based in a more specific belief that women like to be dominated by men, that these feelings are natural and not pathological (whether or not that makes them “right” is of course another question) that they are unhappy when their man is incapable of domination and are left feeling deeply sexually unfulfilled by the careerism which empowers them elsewhere in their lives, that the current social education of both women and men (at least in the circles of the US in which I move) teach everyone that it’s abhorrent and wrong for a man to assert power over a woman, that men who enjoy it are twisted assholes and that women who enjoy it are suffering from deep psychological damage, and that it is practically inexcusable for a woman to admit that her limbic system gives her pleasure signals when a man arouses her this way.
Naturally, I am basing the perception of this relatively new regime, at least in its current extreme form, on my interpretation of what came immediately before in the society in which I was raised (I don’t know firsthand as I was born well into the current regime), so your point stands, I suppose. But I don’t really think using this as a starting off point merits any twinkling snark.
The second sentence of my original post, however, contains the more important point. Regardless of whatever “norm” anyone has in mind, be it Basque, Dravidian, or Branch Davidian, the real problem is that the current norm actively teaches unhappiness-increasing lies. If the last regime was imperfect too, I’d counter that two wrongs don’t make a right.
Though as Z M Davis notes, not all beings value happiness highest. I readily concede that too.
What I personally have observed is that there are plenty of men and women who have a need or desire to be dominated. And that a minority of these people can’t deal with the idea that it’s “just” a sexual fetish or personal quirk, but must convince themselves instead that the entire world would be happier or much better off if only our entire society were male supremacist or female supremacist, accordingly.
I’ve also observed that there are plenty of people who have a leadership or followership preference in a relationship… but the desire to be the follower is both more widespread and more gender-balanced than the desire to be the leader.
So I guess what I’m saying is, the fact that there’s a large unsatisfied market of females wishing to be dominated (sexually or otherwise) should NOT be mistaken for an indicator that this is somehow “the way the world should be”.
That market is unsatisfied for the same reason its male counterpart is: there simply aren’t enough people of either gender with the inclination, experience, self-awareness, etc. to meet the demand.
It’s my impersonal understanding that the ratio of male submissives to female dominants is way worse than the ratio of female submissives to male dominants—both kinds of submissives will have trouble finding a dominant counterpart, but the heterosexual males have it way worse.
That’s why I said the desire to be a follower is more gender-balanced than the desire to be a leader. I also used “leader” and “follower” because “dominant” and “submissive” carry more sexual overtone than is actually relevant to my point… but also because it’s way easier for men to find socially “leading” partners than sexually leading ones.
Also, to make things more complex… there are plenty of people who like to go both ways… and there are people who want to be sexually dominant but socially submissive or vice versa… if you’ve actually met and spoken with enough real people (without the self-selection bias that occurs when people with identical kinks get together), it quickly cures you of any idea that you can just say, “This Is The One True Way Relationships Should Be.”
(My wife owns a lingerie and adult toy/video store, and we’ve socialized with a lot of kinky and swinger folk, including gay, transgendered, etc. -- for a fairly broad definition of “etc.”)
This is very much my impression also—as a switch, I’m topping a lot more than would be my natural inclination because that’s where the demand is.
This makes a lot of sense. I’m thinking of the dilemma my husband and I had when I wanted him to learn to swing dance, but neither of us wanted to learn to lead. Or my 6′4″ male friend who told me sadly that sometimes, he just wants someone who’s bigger than him, whose shoulder he can lean on.
Totally agreed. The thread starter has made a rash and morally suspect assertion—morally suspect because talking about people’s happiness as exclusively a simple thing to be manipulated through cultural dogma, and the only grade on which a life can be rated as pleasant or not is whether a dogma brings the sensation of pleasure to certain individuals in certain circumstances or not—well, it goes against seeing people as an end in itself, and it’s just icky.
You might be Generalizing From One Example—just because you like that doesn’t mean all women do, and in fact I strongly believe that some women do and some don’t, where by “some” I mean “more than 5% and less than 95%”.
I’m curious—is your personal evidence anecdotal, qualitative, quantitative...?
Michael Vassar also makes a good point—the values and implications of “traditional roles” vary a great deal across time, and especially across socioeconomic status. There are certainly career women in the West who perceive taking time off to care for children as a relief from the rat race and a chance to contribute to society in another positive way. They might feel differently had they been, say, a 12-year old Zimbabwean girl who never attended school, was married to an older man to help her family’s finances, developed an obstetric fistula in childbirth, and never left her husband’s compound again. That isn’t just traditional, it’s an active reality for millions of poor women around the world. There are also many happy, healthy, educated African career women and stay-at-home-moms, of course. The context of “tradition” is very important.
I agree. But even though feminists (and other women exposed to the rhetoric) may say they want gender “equality” to increase their happiness, it is not necessarily the real reason. Once it becomes possible for women to enter the workplace (for any reason), competition will force other women to follow suit. Elizabeth Warren’s research shows, for instance, that positional goods (housing, education) have experienced tremendous inflation since the ’70s. The quality of these goods hasn’t improved commensurately.
I believe that many if not most people value some things more than happiness.
“Man does not seek happiness, only the Englishman.” -Nietzsche, on Utilitarians.
I think most people would agree with that statement, if you ask them to think about it a little more. Happiness, or “expected happiness” is just one term in the utility function. There is also “expected unhappiness” which might encompass things like suffering, pain, negative emotions. The concept of utility tries generalize enough to add these things together, but at an everyday conceptual level these seem to be different things (nevermind about how emotions manifest physically.) For instance, we can be happy about one thing and yet about another e.g. “my infant daughter is beautiful, but I’m sad that my parents did not live long to share this joy with us.” People seem to understand this: in English we have the word “bittersweet”, and the juxtaposition of joy and melancholy seems to be present in many other languages and cultures.
Back to the question of value: are people more eager to avoid loss than to pursue potential gains (of the same order of magnitude?) Experience points to most people putting more effort into keeping what they have, even if they are relatively unhappy with their situation. Part of this is probably evolved defaults of the brain influencing even what you might call conscious decision making.
And don’t forget about morality. Although we might try to reconcile the two, there is often some tension between doing what is “right” and doing what we expect may make us happier.
I know for a fact that I value truth over happiness . I tend to do things that other people often point out to me would have “gone better” if I did it some other way or if I did something else entirely .
I find it interesting that this comment is (currently) the highest-scoring, with 7 more points than the second highest.
(Oh, wrong, it’s second among top-level comments. Still interesting.)
Vague promotion of “traditional” values or ways combined with equally vague bashing of egalitarian movements that apparently are a threat to the relevant traditions is one of the most reliable applause lights that there are.
You’re looking at “Popular” instead of “Top”.