June 26, 2018

"The party wants women educated, yes, but it is worried that educated women will decide not to marry men and have kids..."

"... compounding the surplus of males caused by the one-child policy and potentially destabilizing the country. 'The direction of the future is that women are supposed to play the role of wife and mother in the home,' said Leta Hong Fincher, author of 'Betraying Big Brother: The Feminist Awakening in China.' Though this thinking has been around for at least a decade — most notably in sexist messaging about marriage — the Zhenjiang program appears to be the first college course in feminine virtue under Xi. 'According to traditional culture, women should be modest and tender, and men’s role is working outside and providing for the family,' said Duan, 21, before a class on tea ceremonies. 'I want to be a model for my children.'... The party insists that this reflects the Confucian values at the core of Chinese culture.... 'The country is emphasizing traditional culture, so we are providing courses,' [said the director of the program]. 'This is a new era. History is moving in a better direction.'"

From "'Hold in your belly... legs together': Chinese college teaches female students to be ‘perfect'" (WaPo).

ADDED: What did Confucius say about women?
Confucius had very little to say about the roles and expectations of women in the family or in society. Thus it was left for Confucian scholars to apply the principles...

Song Ruozhao wrote in “Analects for Women”: “To be a woman, you must first learn how to establish yourself as a person. The way to do this is simply by working hard to establish one's purity and chastity. By purity, one keeps one's self undefiled; by chastity, one preserves one's honor.... When walking, don't turn your head; when talking, don't open your mouth wide; when sitting, don't move your knees; when standing, don't rustle your skirts; when happy, don't exult with loud laughter; when angry, don't raise your voice. The inner and outer quarters are each distinct; the sexes should be segregated. Don't peer over the outer wall or go beyond the outer courtyard. If you have to go outside, cover your face; if you peep outside, conceal yourself as much as possible. Do not be on familiar terms with men outside the family; have nothing to do with women of bad character. Establish your proper self so as to become a [true] human being."

120 comments:

Gahrie said...

Confucianism sounds a lot like Islam in relation to women.

The dirty truth is that the Chinese are right...the more you educate and liberate your country's women, the lower your birth rate. yet women absolutely have the right to liberty and education.

Somebody needs to invent an artificial womb stat.

traditionalguy said...

Sounds like a pro-Melania propaganda. And that means pro-Patriarchy.

Vive La Chinoise.

Eleanor said...

Unless the state intends to also raise the kids, an artificial womb isn't going to make much difference. Most women who don't want to have kids aren't all that concerned with giving birth. They just don't want to rear children. They don't want to put the time in or spend the money. On the balance sheet, the kids lose.

rhhardin said...

The "I don't give a fuck" tee shirt from the Melania collection is a hot item.

Armstrong and Getty

tim in vermont said...

Stifle yourself, ladies!

the lower your birth rate. yet women absolutely have the right to liberty and education.

Yes. The human race didn't come with an operating manual and a set of best practices. We had some ancient texts that worked for a long time, and which we have now largely discarded. It's all game theory with high evolutionary stakes. The optimal game theory solution in terms of continued survival of our culture is probably unacceptable to us, but perhaps not to the Muslims, who may well end up dominating the world.

rhhardin said...

The problem is actually misleading women about what they will be able to sustain a future interest in.

Women don't think long-term. Everything in the moment.

tim in vermont said...

Women don't think long-term. Everything in the moment.

The problem is that this is a sweeping, as they say, generalization. But it would seem to contain a kernel of truth. Sometimes it seems like, and you can see it often in the comments here, women apply their emotions to problems rather than reason. Emotion is nice and all, and it is important for reason to be tempered by sympathy for one's fellow humans, but emotional "reasoning," like this whole brouhaha over child separations at the border, cannot solve the problem in any stable way and in fact, it creates perverse incentives to cause the problem to continue. Incentives that are clear to people who use reason to get what they want. To solve the problem, one has to free oneself from the moment.

Bob Boyd said...

Central planners always create more problems than they solve.

Ann Althouse said...

"Women don't think long-term. Everything in the moment."

Men are even less long term, if you understand the problem at the physical, sexual level.

It is women who have limited reproductive potential and have (rationally and genetically) and an interest in making sure they will be protected for the next X years.

Why doesn't the Chinese govt train the men to be better men? It sounds to me as though the women are thinking of avoiding the motherhood path because the men aren't kind and supportive enough to make it a good choice.

Gahrie said...

Emotion is nice and all, and it is important for reason to be tempered by sympathy for one's fellow humans, but emotional "reasoning," like this whole brouhaha over child separations at the border, cannot solve the problem in any stable way and in fact, it creates perverse incentives to cause the problem to continue.

Althouse has in fact argued that emotion should be a part of reasoning. This obsession with emotion and feelings is exactly why I believe women should not be allowed to vote.

Gahrie said...

Why doesn't the Chinese govt train the men to be better men?

No woman must ever be made to feel bad about, or responsible for, anything, ever.

Gahrie said...

Why doesn't the Chinese govt train the men to be better men?

They're too busy training fish to ride bicycles.

Ann Althouse said...

Why do you guys think it's "emotional" rather than rational for a woman to decided to get an education, be independent, and not take the risk of linking her fate to a man and the as-yet-unknown human beings who would use her body as an entry into the world and then make immense demands on her for the rest of her life?

I'll answer why: You are yourselves having an emotional reaction.

You smelled it.

Gahrie said...

Why do you guys think it's "emotional" rather than rational for a woman to decided to get an education, be independent, and not take the risk of linking her fate to a man and the as-yet-unknown human beings who would use her body as an entry into the world and then make immense demands on her for the rest of her life?

I don't think that those decisions are emotional at all. I think those decisions are rational and selfish. Just like the decisions of males not to get married and take the risk of linking their fates to women is rational and selfish in today's legal and social environment.

Where women are emotional is in their politics.

Gahrie said...

the as-yet-unknown human beings who would use her body as an entry into the world

Just as every human in history has done. Biology is a bitch, and cares not for our feelings and selfishness.

Meade said...

„”You smelled it.”

Hey that gives me hurt feelings!

Gahrie said...

We need to somehow return to a place where women and men want to get married, women want to have and raise children and men want to provide for and protect families. The problem is that the government and society reinforce exactly the opposite.

Douglas B. Levene said...

I teach law students in China. Each year at the start of school, all the ILs and professors get to stand up in a big lecture hall and introduce themselves. A few years ago, I remember one beautiful young woman standing up and saying her goal in law school was to get married. The other students all apparently thought this was perfectly normal. That young woman turned out to be a brilliant law student, graduating near the top of her class. She is currently practicing commercial litigation with a big firm in Peking, and is still with her boyfriend, whom she met in law school (another brilliant law student). I don't know if they've gotten married yet.

tim in vermont said...

We need to somehow return to a place where women and men want to get married, women want to have and raise children and men want to provide for and protect families.

There are some Marxists who want to have a word with you.

rhhardin said...

Why do you guys think it's "emotional" rather than rational for a woman to decided to get an education, be independent, and not take the risk of linking her fate to a man and the as-yet-unknown human beings who would use her body as an entry into the world and then make immense demands on her for the rest of her life?

Women in science, instead of doing science like your average guy, joins the Women's Workplace Issues Committee. It's more interesting to her.

Bob Boyd said...

"You smelled it."

Smells like canned worms.

rhhardin said...

Women in science organize conferences, social stuff.

Virgil Hilts said...

There is a great video series by two western men (ADVChina) who married Chinese women, live in China and drive around on motorcycles talking about China. I may have encountered it first on Althouse. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwNPa8fSXzzAZuT9859GVhg
They have a couple episodes where they talk about the differences between dating Chinese and western women that are great. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zo8hwh0dwA

rhhardin said...

Women are emotional by way of taking the short term view of everything. Everything goes towards details.

Men abstract from details, and go long term.

That's characterized as emotional vs not emotional, but in both cases it's going towards what holds the person's interests.

rhhardin said...

You can see why having short term thinking and long term thinking partners might have an evolutionary advantage.

rhhardin said...

If a woman does not understand something, she notes it but is not motivated to figure it out. Details are enough. A guy starts abstracting to get at what he does not understand. It's interesting to him. He drops details.

rhhardin said...

Consider a gyroscope.

FIDO said...

Education or Indoctrination?

Men are not perfect.

Marriage is not perfect.

That being said: save our illustrious bloggess, women are not perfect either.

But having a bunch of lesbians, Marxists, and rape victims who compose most Feminist studies departments to train women and over exaggerate every misstep and dissatisfaction in life and throw it all on the men is, by any objective standard, insane.

You almost never see any pro family speakers on the media, and you hear the constant 'preaching' that our (now less than perfect) blogess engages in: women are only getting educated because 'evil men' abandon them.'

Well, facts are difficult things. Seventy percent of divorces are done by women because 'I'm not happy'.

There is abandonment going on. It isn't the men.

It is the indoctrinated women.

I have one of the best, most high status and interesting jobs in the world. Even I am not '100% satisfied'.

This is life, not Sex in the City

rhhardin said...

Ask a woman in science to explain a gyroscope without mentioning angular momentum. To go beyond the textbook example in explaining it.

She will not have done that. Incurious about it.

Gahrie said...

Well, facts are difficult things. Seventy percent of divorces are done by women because 'I'm not happy'.

There is abandonment going on. It isn't the men.

It is the indoctrinated women.


Shush. Women must never be made to feel bad about, or responsible for, anything, ever.

tim in vermont said...

It is women who have limited reproductive potential and have (rationally and genetically) and an interest in making sure they will be protected for the next X years.

Yes, that is very true.

Men are even less long term, if you understand the problem at the physical, sexual level.

Oh, I understand the problem all right, but women run into a roadblock, which is their hypergamy. I know (no offense Meade) that you have a position that women can find happiness by abandoning hypergamy, which is probably true, were it possible for the vast majority of women, yet somehow they can't.

Hypergamy doesn't bother me personally, I do fine with the ladies. But the fact of it sure seems to infuriate women, so much that when Trump pointed it out with his "let you grab them" line, women went into a snit that still hasn't stopped.

tim in vermont said...

I think the phrase is "You smelt it" BTW.

tim in vermont said...

Plus my experiences in a long technical career suggest that what rhharden is describing is very true. Men enjoy the stuff, women tolerate it to a point until they find a softer job where they don't have to tax their cerebral cortex so heavily each day.

Bad Lieutenant said...


rhhardin said...
Consider a gyroscope.

6/26/18, 7:24 AM


Nope, you're getting the Fleshlight. You'll find it more useful in your home than a gyroscope. (Perhaps. RTFM.)

OTOH, if you already own more Fleshlights than gyroscopes, feel free to exchange it.

FIDO said...

(And)not take the risk of linking her fate to a man and the as-yet-unknown human beings who would use her body as an entry into the world and then make immense demands on her for the rest of her life?


You can switch the genders here and still have a perfectly true statement. You seem to feel that ONLY women have any demands put upon them by spouses and children.

This is, of course, bullshit. (Edited to add: I apologize. It is not 'bullshit'. You simply don't care about the demands put upon men.)


But reading that...how horrifying you must find the very idea of children. I have no idea if you ever had any but if I were one of your progeny and read that description of how you felt about it, well, suffice to say it would be intensely hurtful.

Did you really mean what you said or was that a literary oopsie? Because it scans very badly.

Whether you meant it or not, it is standard Feminist cant that a baby isn't a baby, but a parasite sucking the Female Soul Illumination out of her body, one lumen at a time.

So the point is sound, however horrifying and selfish it is.

tim in vermont said...

Biology is impossibly retrograde.

Anonymous said...

Modernization and urbanization *do* lead to a breakdown in marriage and family formation. This is seen all over the globe. Trying to understand this strictly in terms of "progress vs. reaction" isn't going to explain (or help) much.

I noticed this in the earlier post re Mongolian women - it's all framed as progress! and freedom! and equality! and education! against sexists and bigots and fuddy-duddies. So geez, guys, just get with the program!

But the real dysfunctions apparent here aren't going to be solved by getting everybody woke about equality for women. (They're not going to be solved by larping in some fantasy of traditionalism, either, but that's another story.) The problems are the same in both traditionally very "sexist" societies and egalitarian Western societies where women have enjoyed relatively high status and personal freedom for a long time. And the problems of modernization and urbanization hit men even harder than they hit women.

FIDO said...

Angle-Dyne


Well, we've had urbanization for a 'mere' 7,000 years. People have had FAMILIES in cities for that same period of time.

So that point is sort of irrelevant. Yes, it's harder to raise a kid in a city, but we've had 7,000 years of practice. And we had drugs, alcohol, perverts, weapons, violence for that entire time (add famine, war and disease to the mix, so compared to the past, it's a piece of cake)

Did women not work for 7,000 years? The ghosts of your ancestors are laughing at you.

Modernization? What does that mean? Autos made chastity much more difficult (hey, a dry comfortable PRIVATE place to bone without worrying about the hotel manager).

We had families after the auto.

The Pill and Feminism both hit the nation about the same time...and marriage rates dropped off a cliff.

The Pill stopped quite a few marriages due to due date, true.

But Feminism is horrifyingly anti-family.

So I am less willing to give them any kind of pass, thank you. No soft landing for them here under the broad and irrelevant rubric of 'modernism'.

Roughcoat said...

Without my wife of 36 years I'd be lost. Probably dead too -- dead a long time ago and several times over.

Gahrie said...

You simply don't care about the demands put upon men.

Why would she? They're just splooge stooges.

Anonymous said...

"Why doesn't the Chinese govt train the men to be better men? It sounds to me as though the women are thinking of avoiding the motherhood path because the men aren't kind and supportive enough to make it a good choice."

Oh ffs Althouse. Yeah, that's it. You just need the government to "train" men to behave the way women say they want men to behave.

So women are "avoiding the motherhood path" in societies where the men aren't all that nice to women. Well, women are "avoiding the motherhood path" just as much in societies where the men are pretty damned nice to them. Apparently, something else is going on that doesn't have much to do with feminist theories of demographic trends.

It might be more useful to look around modern societies with low rates of family formation and see who *is* managing to pair up and reproduce, and where, and what there living/financial conditions are. For example, in my neighborhood there are a lot of families with 3, 4, even 5 children - with educated mothers, none of whom, as far as I can see, are into any kind of "traditionalist" life style. Normal, modern Americans. Yet the streets after school hours and on weekends look like something out of "Leave it to Beaver", with kids of all ages running around.

I don't think all this was made possible by the men being sent to government re-education camp.

Meade said...

“Smells like canned worms.”

Check your non-anosmiac privileges.

FIDO said...

Anyone want to mention happiness statistics for women? No?

Didn't think so. Because at it's base, Feminism is all about teaching women to be dissatisfied and unhappy.

Fernandinande said...

rhhardin said...
Ask a woman in science to explain a gyroscope without mentioning angular momentum.


Women don't explain gyroscopes. Because systemic sexism.

Youtube search 'gyroscope'.

There is one person of gender, eventually, who doesn't actually touch a gyroscope, much less machine one from brass as did some of the naughty white men and a considerably less naughty Asian guy, but she did make several facial expressions while reading a script about men doing things with gyroscopes. ("Vintage space" channel).

Fernandinande said...

"It might be more useful to look around modern societies with low rates of family formation and see who *is* managing to pair up and reproduce, and where, and what there living/financial conditions are."

Africa. Living conditions suck.

In the US, Navajos averaged 9 kids/woman in the 1960's, but they're down to about 6 kids/woman now. Living conditions kinda suck compare to the rest of the US.

Fernandinande said...

Fertility rate, total (births per woman)

1960 2016
6.1 1.2 Korea, Rep. (lowest 2016)
5.8 1.2 Singapore
5.0 1.2 Hong Kong SAR
3.3 1.2 Moldova
...
6.3 5.9 Chad
7.0 6.1 Mali
6.0 6.1 Congo
7.3 6.3 Somalia
7.5 7.2 Niger (highest)

It sounds to me as though the women are thinking of avoiding the motherhood path because the men aren't kind and supportive enough to make it a good choice.

LOL.

FIDO said...

I'm sorry. Swedish men practically have vaginas but the (non-Muslim) birth rates are so dire that after about 18 weeks (and after mandatory counseling), you need government permission to have an abortion.

So the not kind and supportive enough meme seems...questionable.

Granted, I don't mean ME, but other men with souls.

Sebastian said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Sebastian said...

The link between women's education and overall growth, on the one hand, and declining birth rates and family formation, on the other hand, looks pretty strong.

Many populations are already in steep decline.

So, does women's lib lead to societal death?

becauseIdbefired said...

Why do you guys think it's "emotional" rather than rational for a woman to decided to get an education, be independent, and not take the risk of linking her fate to a man and the as-yet-unknown human beings who would use her body as an entry into the world and then make immense demands on her for the rest of her life?

Is there a single action anyone can take that is not based on emotion? Isn't that the motive force behind everything we do, including to be educated and independent?

I would ask the opposite. Given 1.2 Billion years of sexual reproduction embedded in our DNA, how can it be rational to not reproduce? You think decisions you can make over thirty or forty years are going to be superior to a biological imperative forged over millions of regenerative cycles?

I suppose for some small percentage of people. Also, to the extent intelligent, independent women who do not have children are genetically based, is the extent that pursuing that course will eliminate those qualities from the gene pool. Eventually biology will win out.

Please do not misconstrue this as the idea women should not become educated. Individuals are paramount. I'm simply trying to answer the question.

Karen said...

Missing from both this discussion and the Chinese government’s indoctrination is another approach, which is to emphasize the high honor of motherhood, the blessings of children, the incredibly rich friendships you can have with them earn they are grown, the motivation they provide to think towards the future. These are the beautiful incentives parenthood offers.

Karen said...

When, not earn. Autocorrect attacks again.

Caroline said...

Make women modest and tender again!

buwaya said...

Re cities -

Mankind has not had 7000 years of practice with cities. Not successful practice anyway. Cavalli-Sforza figured this out decades ago.

Throughout history cities have been population sinks. Urban populations have never reproduced themselves. Urban populations anywhere would die out if not refreshed by a stream of country folk moving in.

Some of this, historically, had to do with biology, public health, infection, etc. But village life was not that much better in this way. What has always been true is that city people fail to reproduce.

People go to cities for material reasons, for the carnival attractions of "culture", for power; but the city is effectively a genocidal trap.

There are city-people indeed, surviving multiple generations as city-dwellers, but these are relatively rare (I recall a study from the 90's).

The modern world is, under some ways of looking at it, in some countries, one continuous "city". Hence the disastrous demographics of the developed world that are spreading everywhere else.

Feminism and modern ideas of individualism, products really of urban life, are not compatible with survival. Technology caused many population booms, effectively increasing populations in the countryside, that mostly have attempted to move to cities, but this palliation is wearing out. The latest migration wave to the "city", I think, is the mass-movement of third-world people to not just their own cities, but to the developed world. Technology makes this ultimate "country" to city movement feasible.

There is something about human biology, inherent in the social aspects of human nature, that is incompatible with cities.

buwaya said...

In the long run, are individuals paramount?
I doubt it.

Anonymous said...

FIDO: Well, we've had urbanization for a 'mere' 7,000 years. People have had FAMILIES in cities for that same period of time.

So that point is sort of irrelevant.


Uh huh. Bugman bible, chapter and verse:

"But the process of 'globalization' - increasing trade, migration, and economic integration - has been going on for thousands of years. Therefore, contemporary observations that the current scale and pace of globalization are starting to have something more than business-as-usual disruptive effects on human societies are misguided. I blame far-right reactionaries for any problems we're experiencing. If we just purge society of their pernicious influence, everything will be back to normal."

"Migration, too. Humans have been migrating since forever. So anybody pointing out that the scale and pace of contemporary mass migration might be causing more than the usual amount of social disruption associated with migration is wasting their time on irrelevant factors."

"So I am less willing to give them any kind of pass, thank you.

I don't give "them" and their exacerbating ideologies a pass either. But my not giving them a pass isn't going to do jack-shit to fix anything, either. 50 years of indignantly "not giving a pass" to moronic progressive ideologies hasn't done jack-shit to change and reverse them. Hey, I just gave Althouse shit for her dumb feminist analysis of the problem. Again. Woo hoo! That'll turn the tide.

No soft landing for them here under the broad and irrelevant rubric of 'modernism'."

Well, good luck to you in your plans to fix the problem of declining family formation by getting contraception banned.

Roughcoat said...

Cities have the best pizza. So there's that.

As for cities being genocidal traps: don't think so, but in any case this isn't true of suburbs, e.g. my suburb and many (most) others in the region, where we're breeding like rabbits.

YoungHegelian said...

The direction of the future is that women are supposed to play the role of wife and mother in the home

This reminds me of the National Socialist's ideas for women in the Nazi Volksgemeinschaft.

This is not as outlandish as it may seem to Western ears, brought up as we are to reflexively think of Nazism as evil incarnate. Many other cultures around the world do not share our loathing of Hitler & Nazism (e.g. the Arabs). There were, and still very much are, fascist underpinnings to the political ideologies that have governed 20th C China.

Roughcoat said...

There were, and still very much are, fascist underpinnings to the political ideologies that have governed 20th C China.

Even more so 21st century China, which is actually a fascist super-state. The Chi-Coms pay lip service to Marx and Mao et. al, but that's all it is, lip service.

Anonymous said...

Roughcoat: As for cities being genocidal traps: don't think so

"Genocidal", no, lol. But populations sinks, yes.

...but in any case this isn't true of suburbs, e.g. my suburb and many (most) others in the region, where we're breeding like rabbits.

Mine, too, but that's just the point. All the mothers in my suburb are college-educated, consuming the same popular culture, and exposed to the same progressive hooey in college, and "liberal"-minded, not a bunch of rad-trads. Yet here they are, breeding like rabbits.

William said...

From the Japanese occupation and on through the civil war, the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, some one hundred million Chinese perished. One hundred million people starved or murdered to advance a political goal in a period of forty or fifty years. This argument about reproduction doesn't sound like the biggest problem the Chinese have ever confronted. Debate on the best ways to reproduce are inherently civil because civil discourse is a necessary if not sufficient precondition for sexual intercourse. Other debatable items have led to mass starvation and murder.

buwaya said...

This sort of thing, the collapse of fertility, is of course statistical.
You see a reduction in reproduction below sustainability, but this is not going to be visible as an even effect across the affected population. It will be more effective on some than others. Some of those Mongolian women do find husbands, after all, and have children, and doubtless somewhere in Ulan Bator there is a neighborhood where they can round up enough kids for a decent birthday party.

The suburban families you see are very likely selecting their homes as a partial consequence of their relative immunity. What you don't see there are those womens childless sisters or classmates.

Roughcoat said...

Another "we're doomed" message, then?

Roughcoat said...

Your Doom-fu is as strong as it is relentless, master. But I shall resist it.

Howard said...

When social evolution out-paces cultural and biological evolution, the insecure panic and call for a return to the good old days.

Roughcoat said...

'Tis cause for lament, 'tis. Therefore I shall lament:

Oh, the leaves are falling, the flowers are wilting, and the rivers are all going Republican. O Ramar, Ramar, ride quickly on your golden unicycle and warn the nymphs and drag queens! Ah, who now shall gather lichee nuts and make hoopla under the topiaries? Who will trim my unicorns? See, even now the cows laugh, Alas, alas.

Responsorial: "We are the chorus, and we agree. We agree, we agree, we agree."

mockturtle said...

Howard comments: When social evolution out-paces cultural and biological evolution, the insecure panic and call for a return to the good old days.

Would you say, Howard, that the French Revolution was an example of social evolution outpacing cultural and biological evolution?

Ann Althouse said...

“Althouse has in fact argued that emotion should be a part of reasoning. This obsession with emotion and feelings is exactly why I believe women should not be allowed to vote.”

You misunderstand what I’ve said, which is based on brain science. It not about what i think should be but on what is. Read “Descartes Error.”

Maybe disqualify yourself from voting if your comprehension is this low.

Anonymous said...

AA to Gahrie: "Althouse has in fact argued that emotion should be a part of reasoning. This obsession with emotion and feelings is exactly why I believe women should not be allowed to vote.”

You misunderstand what I’ve said, which is based on brain science. It not about what i think should be but on what is.


Lol, missed that. Gahrie still flogging his irrational, emotion-charged misreading of that point?

daskol said...

Do read "Descartes Error." It helped me to understand myself and others. Regarding long-term vs. short-term thinking, here's an example of how differently women and men think. My cousin (girl) just got engaged. To her, she's now excitedly planning the wedding. For her the anticipation is the wedding, the waiting is over: she's engaged, she's going to get married and have a married life. Yay! He, on the other hand, is a huge stress case. Planning the wedding, thinking about the wedding, freaks him out. He's coming to terms with the responsibilities of adulthood and what it means to support a family. She's excited to have met her goal. He's terrified about whether he can live up to his own and society's expectations of him. We are very different creatures, women and men.

buwaya said...

"When social evolution out-paces cultural and biological evolution,"

Then the environment is changing faster than the organism can adapt, which is usually why species go extinct.

buwaya said...

A flawed, overly-emotional or rather erroneously-emotional movie, with exactly this premise -

Spielberg's "AI"

The real tragedy was right there in the beginning, in that the childless woman purchased an artificial boy to supply some consolation for the child she could not have. An emotional Band-Aid. And that this was just one little slice of tragedy inside a vast one.

FIDO said...

Excuse me. I can think of two points which caused marriage to drop off the deep end: the Pill and Feminism.

The Pill is morally neutral as are most technologies. And women have been using means to control their reproduction for centuries as well. So it is a matter of quality and scale. Not kind.

To be clear: I never said that we should ban the Pill. Never implied it but you clearly inferred it.

Now Feminism...

I appreciate your taking Althouse to task for her...reflexive comments...after our discussion. She will, of course, never listen to any man on this issue. Perhaps she can join that Brit Bint who wanted all men incarcerated. Might as well reeducate them while they are there. Who exactly defines a 'better man' again, Ms. Althouse?

To stray a bit off point: we have a generation of single moms had every opportunity to raise 'better men' . How exactly is that working out for you?

We have schools filled with Feminist Friendly Teachers with fewer men then ever engaged in child rearing.

The stats are in You Ladies are doing a shitty job raising 'better men' Ms. Althouse




However you implied that technology and Modernism are the reasons for these ills, without giving examples.

Well!

I prefer more specifics. We can start by discrediting Feminism. It is an ugly ideology which has called for enormous social damage.

But here is a specific: porn. It has severely lessened the influence women have on men to engage in matrimony particularly when combined with the 'charming' personality changes caused by Feminism.

So on that example I would agree with the technology idea. What else you got?

elkh1 said...

They can quote Confucius, but the Red Guards had killed Confucius in Mao's Cultural Revolution.

The more educated the women, the better they can fend for themselves. They don't need to stay home and serve their men on hand and foot or bear them children.

daskol said...

On hand and bound foot. Chinese femininity and the Chinese feminine ideal are very Chinese.

daskol said...

Not to get all multicultural, at least not in the sense that progressives abuse the word, but applying Western modes of interpretation to Chinese events can lead to misunderstanding. n.n. was doing that in the thread on the Chinese woman who helps other Chinese women find rich husbands and get satisfaction thereof. Put on your China hat when contemplating Chinese things.

daskol said...

Anybody here from China can help?

daskol said...

There're like, well over 1bn of them, and not a one here? Interesting.

daskol said...

Taiwan?

daskol said...
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n.n said...

Moral, Natural, and personal imperatives. Go forth and reconcile... or Gaia will do it for you.

daskol said...

buwaya puti said...
"When social evolution out-paces cultural and biological evolution,"

Then the environment is changing faster than the organism can adapt, which is usually why species go extinct.


I would short Washington real-estate, but not ready to short all earth. Maybe because I have young children. Or maybe, the Digital Age and accelerating cognitive cycle of the hive mind could be real. The cycles are getting shorter. All those poorly educated college grads may be a lost generation (or two), rather than the end times of the West. The Chinese are oddly interested in China, rather than the rest of the world. The Chinese who are interested in the rest of the world tend to leave China.

n.n said...

Of Chauvinism and Dodo Dynasties.

daskol said...

Sometimes you guys are so gloomy.

daskol said...

We are all God's creatures, but God made all different kinds.

daskol said...

Well, I guess Gaia did that.

tim in vermont said...

When social evolution out-paces cultural and biological evolution, the insecure panic and call for a return to the good old days

But that's what trenches and Gatling guns are for, right Howard? The deplorable problem, the barnacles slowing down the ship of state.

Move over deplorables! Too bad but the world doesn't need you anymore! You are just insecure, and all we really want from you is to go away. No need to have any irrational fear! You just aren't in our plans! A small set of humans have demanded power over you by divine right, apparently, the right of being liberal and therefore adherents of the one true faith, and they have decided that your day is over. But it's not like the Chinese Cultural Revolution, where so many millions of people died! No we are good people, we are just going to imagine that you are going to fade away, stop voting, and one day we are going to wake up and you will be gone!

But guess what, the future belongs to the people who show up, and the people who show up are going to be the children of people who don't reject having children. If you want to somehow keep these people from being deplorables, you are going to have to use the Gatling gun, truckloads of lime, and long trenches method.

tim in vermont said...

Famine works to, worked for Mao, worked for Stalin. Two dreamers of a new future, leaving the "insecure" behind.

Howard said...

Aunty: Such a drama queen, it helps the cucks think they might feel a hint of chubb. The impotent are always quick to salivate over daydreams of bloody heroic demise. In one sense, your views anthropomorphize the Steinbeck character Lennie asking George to tell him about the rabbits. What actually happens is well documented: chronic under employment, alcoholism, opioid addiction, social media obsession, Fox News intoxication, depression, mania, increase in suicide, orbesity, decreasing lifespan, hairy palms, post nasal drip and the heartbreak of psoriasis.

daskol said...
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daskol said...

Curing people of ills they don't think ail them: that way danger lay. I don't think we're as far gone as some of the people here do, but that's a pretty chilling post Howard.

Howard said...

mockturtle: I'm too ignorant of the French Revolution to have an opinion on that case. I just can't bring myself to care anything about France (except Katherine Deneuve)... my German half I suspect. I definitely think that social running way ahead of cultural and biologic evolution explains the unprecedented mass murder that scared the first half of the 20th Century. If not for the success of MAD, Buyawa Puti's conclusion that this condition leads to extinction might have been correct. IMO, the world is on a much flatter part of the curve, but are still in danger as the part of the world where this evolutionary asymmetry is most acute is the middle east.

Inga...Allie Oop said...

If ever there was an overarching theme in the Althouse vommints sections, it’s been bigotry and misogyny.

I honestly don’t know how Althouse can stomach her own commenters.

daskol said...

Notice of difference is positive not normative.

daskol said...

To call what you see here bigotry and misogyny is to assume that these differences are bad and/or must be eliminated. It's a sign of an eliminationist mind. That's why Howard's comment on curing ills that people don't think ail them is creepy.

Inga...Allie Oop said...

“To call what you see here bigotry and misogyny is to assume that these differences are bad and/or must be eliminated.”

They are bad, they’re retrograde and ignorant. Far be it from me or anyone to want to eliminate deplorables or their speech. They have a place in the society, but that doesn’t mean we need to like what they say or agree with it. The more of it we hear, the better. Then we can more clearly see how repulsive it is.

“It's a sign of an eliminationist mind. That's why Howard's comment on curing ills that people don't think ail them is creepy.”

Relax, I doubt anyone cares enough about you people to eliminate you.

daskol said...
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daskol said...

Loops.

n.n said...

We are all God's creatures... Well, I guess Gaia did that.

A substantial minority place their faith in Gaia, but deem Her fitness function to be an inconvenient obstacle to social progress.

daskol said...

I don't think you want to eliminate me. It does sound, however, like you'd like to eliminate problems, where problems are sometimes people. Not the people who notice, but the people themselves who are the problem.

What is the place of these people in our society?

daskol said...

So, Inga, what of n.n.'s comment and my question? What is the place of these people in our society? How do we socially progress with all of these people around? Just by listening to them? Follow your logic to the end. You listen to them, and then...what? If their minds can't be changed, if they can't be persuaded, then what?

daskol said...

We just jeer at them? That seems rather half-assed.

daskol said...

Seems as though you're either logically inconsistent, or blind to the implications of your logic.

daskol said...

By the way, the differences that I reference above are differences between man and woman, differences between people originating in China and people originating in Scotland. Not the people who believe those differences to be "bad." To notice those differences is positive, not normative.

daskol said...

All are God's creatures. Or, if you don't lean that way, all have a place in society. Whatever place they'd like. Would love to know what you think their place is Inga.

mockturtle said...

Remember that Oprah said that we old white people 'have to die'. YouTube link

buwaya said...

"bloody heroic demise"

On the contrary, the demise on offer is the very opposite of heroic.
Depressing and squalid rather.
The bleak futility of an old age home, the decrepit last of us tended by some clever machines.

Freeman Hunt said...

The homeschoolers are still having kids. In the end, the world will be all homeschooling Catholics, evangelical Protestants, Orthodox Jews, and Muslims. Heh.

Inga...Allie Oop said...
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Inga...Allie Oop said...

Young women are having children, homeschoolers, those who send their kids to public school, professional women, stay at home women, etc etc etc. stop blaming all women for some women not wanting to spend their entire adult years raising children. One thing I’ve seen over the years in these discussions about the declining birthrate, the ones with no children whatsoever are the ones most outraged over it. So go knock up some woman and stop whining about it. Better yet, try not to be an asshole and women will find you more attractive and may actually want to procreate with you.

Howard said...

Blogger buwaya puti said...

"bloody heroic demise"

On the contrary, the demise on offer is the very opposite of heroic.
Depressing and squalid rather.
The bleak futility of an old age home, the decrepit last of us tended by some clever machines.


Exactly, but I was commenting on the fantasy that drives people like Aunty Tim from Vermont (Thanks Inga!) to avoid the mundane tragedy of real life.

Inga...Allie Oop said...

“Exactly, but I was commenting on the fantasy that drives people like Aunty Tim from Vermont (Thanks Inga!) to avoid the mundane tragedy of real life.”

Aunty Tim has an Adam’s apple, that was also a dead giveaway.

Inga...Allie Oop said...

Also, don’t cross dress, big turn off for most women wanting to procreate.

daskol said...
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daskol said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
daskol said...

Young women are having children, homeschoolers, those who send their kids to public school, professional women, stay at home women, etc etc etc. stop blaming all women for some women not wanting to spend their entire adult years raising children. One thing I’ve seen over the years in these discussions about the declining birthrate, the ones with no children whatsoever are the ones most outraged over it. So go knock up some woman and stop whining about it. Better yet, try not to be an asshole and women will find you more attractive and may actually want to procreate with you.

You care about women. Nobody here is blaming women for anything. We're just commenting on how they're different from men, and how men are different from women. We assume the world needs both men and women, so we're not saying one is better than the other (personally I'm glad I was born a man--will take a higher chance of early, painful death over all the damned hygiene related issues, including childbirth, so so messy). Chinese people may be a bit different from, say, people originating in Scotland. So what? Nobody is saying that's bad, or one is better than the other. Just noticing the differences. The differences are interesting. You're allowed to notice them. It doesn't make you bad, whatever you've been told.

Inga...Allie Oop said...

“We're just commenting on how they're different from men, and how men are different from women.”

Who is disagreeing with you?

“Chinese people may be a bit different from, say, people originating in Scotland. So what? Nobody is saying that's bad, or one is better than the other. Just noticing the differences. The differences are interesting. You're allowed to notice them. It doesn't make you bad, whatever you've been told.”

So who is disagreeing with this? “What I’ve been told?” Oh for pity’s sake.

What I said was bigotry and misogyny were bad in this country, a modern western culture. I read it on these threads everytime these subjects come up. The Chinese culture is not our culture, I put no judgment on it, but I certainly would not advocate it for my daughters. I thought you people here wanted to keep other countries’ cultures from transforming ours. I don’t know what you think you’re arguing against when you keep addressing me.

Inga...Allie Oop said...

Also, so you understand Daskol. My comment about misogyny and bigotry is not directed toward the Chinese people in this article. It is directed at the commenters here in this thread who consistently act like jerks when it comes to women and procreation.

buwaya said...

What is bigotry? What is misogyny?
These are not objective states. They are subjective and completely culturally determined.

In this present society, all subjective, culturally determined values are null. They have been completely slaughtered, every one, systematically. All dead. There is no good and evil, no truth or beauty. All there is is emotion, wildly flying about from one irrational obsession to another, worshipped as if it were some god of chaos. Bigotry and misogyny are just random words in the gibberings of the passionate chaos-worshipers.

buwaya said...

Modern mores are a struggling mass in some hellish pit of slime, things indistinguishable from each other, and ignorant of their own identity, indeed merging and splitting without reason, or coalescing abruptly from the protoplasm. Sometimes a mouth bubbles up out of the slime to shout a word.