Thursday, May 20, 2010

Liberal responses to Mrs Martin

How would liberals respond to my previous post on Mrs Martin? I found out when it was cross-posted to the men's rights page at reddit.

The basic line taken by the liberal commenters there was that there were no conceivable negative consequences if men ceased to be providers for their families and if women became economically independent.

That's actually the moderate liberal line: everything's going well, we'll make these changes and nothing bad will happen. A more radical liberal would claim that the changes were intended to sweep away the old and usher in an entirely different social order.

The "moderate" liberal attitude reminded me of Kristor's recent comment at VFR:

Modern culture is a veritable hurricane of vicious cycles, all originating in a gnostic pretense: Let's pretend that there is no inherent nature of things, so that we may mess ad libitum with the family, sex, economics, and culture, with no ill consequences. Hey, Presto! Pass a law! Make it so!

That's what I felt I was up against. It was left to me to try and argue the nature (or "working") of things (not always the easiest thing to do) whilst the liberals argued "no nature" in response. Some of the liberals did this more subtly than others (the first commenter "infinitely thirsting" doing the best job out of the liberals).

Here's a typical exchange:

Me: A heterosexual man will generally find femininity in a woman sexually attractive.

Liberal: Just so you know, there's no universal understanding of what "femininity" or "masculinity" entails - each culture has traits it considers womanly or manly and they vary widely.

Me: As it happens, the ideal of feminine attractiveness has stayed fairly constant throughout recorded Western history. From the poem Alison (thirteenth or fourteenth century): "With a lovely face she laughed upon me - Her waist small and well-made ... Kindest of ladies, hearken to my song". From the early 1400s: "The smiling mouth and laughing grey eyes, the round breasts and two long slender arms". From the 1500s: "There is a lady sweet and kind, Was never face so pleased my mind ... Her gesture, motion and her smiles, Her wit, her voice, her heart beguiles".

Liberal: The poem you linked talks about PHYSICAL BEAUTY (which has changed as well, especially in body type) and not social ideas of what is "masculine" and feminine

Me: The poems I linked to praised women not only for their physical femininity but also for being kind, sweet, smiling and vivacious - qualities which many men today would also find attractively feminine.

Our liberal cannot even accept the statement "A heterosexual man will generally find femininity in a woman sexually attractive." He finds even this too limiting for his purposes, he rebels against it. He suggests that there is no real existence to the qualities of masculinity and femininity, they exist instead as "social ideas" that change over time. Little wonder that he then believes that you can change from one social idea to another without any fallout, as the social idea doesn't relate to anything real.

But what if there has been fallout? What if there are high divorce rates, low marriage rates, below replacement fertility levels, resentments between the sexes, young men deciding "to go their own way", a coarsening of cultural standards and so on?

The liberals on the site either didn't recognise them ("talking about how society is going downhill is silly" wrote one) or else blamed large impersonal forces beyond our control (e.g. capitalism).

One final point: my post was voted up by 15 reddit readers and down by 8. So even though liberals dominated the comments, there does still seem to be an audience for traditionalist ideas amongst the men's rights readership.

(PS If there is a small "11 children" button under "kanuk876" you have to click it to read the entire discussion at the reddit site. As I write it's OK, but the way the reddit system works sections of the discussion can be hidden if they're downvoted.)

16 comments:

  1. A very important post.

    Its hard to argue with lefists or liberals sometimes. I listen to their arguments and my flesh crawls.

    I believe Kilroy was arguing along these lines earlier. If there's no recognition of "manhood", how can you speak on behalf of a "men's" movement?

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  2. It's as you point out, Mark -- the quest is for maximum personal freedom and autonomy in a libertine sense, and anything that is perceived as restricting this in any way is unacceptable. This is the ideology behind relegating everything about how men and women related to each other prior to around 15 minutes ago as being "mere social construct". If you don't make it social construct, that means it might have a basis that is not subject to being easily dismissed and changed -- which means one would have to accept certain limitations, in certain areas, when it comes to the freedom to self-define however one wishes. This is precisely why the % of attributes which the liberal will admit to be more or less fixed, or less subject to change, more inherent and less "constructed" is very small -- viewing things that way maximizes individual freedom of action, which lies at the heart of the entire liberal programme.

    I would also say that there would be enough liberals who would shush concerns about "adverse impact" as being irrelevant on the view that more freedom is always better, even if the "price" of that increased personal freedom must be paid. In this context I am reminded by the small brou-haha we had here in the US about the "surveys" which suggested that women have grown less happy over the past 40 years while men have become happier -- some indignant feminist warriors in the 55+ camp wrote articles saying, basically, "look, we didn't fight our fight about happiness, we fought it about freedom -- you have the freedom we fought for, and we never promised you it would make you happier or not, that's your problem, not feminism's problem" and so on. In other words, things like the erosion of marriage in most social classes is seen, even if admitted, as a legitimate price to pay for increased personal freedom.

    It really is a single-minded idea -- whatever maximizes personal freedom is justified in every situation other than a situation which directly harms another person -- and even then that can be justified by various arguments (such as the ones around abortion). One of the main reasons why it has been so successful in the culture is precisely because it is a simple message and an easy sell: more freedom for everyone, and don't hurt other people. It's almost an intuitive message, really, until you see what is actually being advocated, and even then often it's too late because of the sheer seductiveness of the idea.

    It's important to remember that this is the core idea which Genesis identifies as the core, first sin -- namely rebellion against restrictions in the face of the seductive idea of being free from them. The Tree of Knowledge was, in effect, the Tree of Freedom, for in granting knowledge of good and evil to humans themselves, the reliance on God's rules in this regard could be cast off, and they could be "free" of these restrictions, and able to judge for themselves. The contemporary liberal movement reflects this rebellion in spades, and its appeal should be very unsurprising -- it appears to be something that humans intrinsically find appealing, and to be the prime source of our weakness, in moral terms. Hence easily exploited.

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  3. In other words, things like the erosion of marriage in most social classes is seen, even if admitted, as a legitimate price to pay for increased personal freedom.

    Yes, you do sometimes find liberals who admit that there might be negative repercussions but who think it a cost that has to be paid for increased autonomy.

    There's a small example here regarding women in frontline combat roles.

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  4. There's another example on exactly the same issue here.

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  5. I just love this one:

    Do I agree we should be interdependent? Yes. Has this ever involved the woman just staying at home not doing anything to contribute but take care of the home? No. Not even in most conservative of times. The vast majority of women throughout time have had to work at least part time, and I don't mean just keeping the house--either farming, or weaving, or selling crafts, but directly contributing.

    I'm glad my husband has a different opinion of my feminine contributions.

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  6. Liberal: Just so you know, there's no universal understanding of what "femininity" or "masculinity" entails - each culture has traits it considers womanly or manly and they vary widely.

    I don't really care about a universal(global) understanding; I care about the understanding of the particular culture I LIVE in. And in American/Western countries the universal(if one must use that word) understanding is that females are to look feminine. You being told that there is "no universal understanding" was merely a distraction.

    "talking about how society is going downhill is silly" wrote one"

    Quite a few people on the Titanic also thought it was silly that the ship was sinking. So, they went about their last few hours doing their thing....same sort of denial I think.

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  7. Should have linked this poll. Certainly shows what feminine attributes men value more.

    http://seasonsoftumultanddiscord.wordpress.com/2010/05/18/its-poll-time-again-lady-and-the-tramp-edition/

    Crude but true.

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  8. Leftists do not always want to maximize personal freedom. This needs to be emphasized because we don't want the Left routinely represented as "pro-freedom" and the Right as "anti-freedom". Leftism is, in fact, highly authoritarian in its relentless desire to impose its will on others, to crush its intellectual and political opponents, to dictate proper patterns of thought and behavior, and to increase state intervention and control in every aspect of human life. The Left only wants to "maximize autonomy" in order to destroy existing institutions; now that this has been largely accomplished, we see ever-increasing restrictions on personal autonomy within Left-dominated institutions. It's all about "freedom and decentralization" until they get what they want, and then after that, absolute centralization and strict discipline are the order of the day.

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  9. Mark,

    I posted a couple of comments lately that never appeared in your comments section. Is this your subtle way of telling me not to bother to post here? Or are you just saying those individual posts weren't up to some standard you have? I don't want to be making more comments if they're not going to be made available for others to read.

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  10. Rob,

    The comments should appear immediately on the thread. I only very rarely remove comments and that's only for flagrant breaches of bad language/personal attacks.

    I'm not sure what might be going wrong. Can I suggest you try again (having saved your comment somewhere) and let me know if it's still not working out.

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  11. Thanks Mark,

    I didn't save those comments, so I'll just make this one. Those two posts of yours you linked to in the comments section here are two of the best I've ever seen by anyone, anywhere on this issue.

    I have a question, though. How do Liberals explain the fact that they *don't* hold women to the same standards as men for jobs that women's bodies make them unable to properly perform, such as firemen, policemen, and combat soldiers?

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  12. Good question. As I remember, the liberals just insist that there's been no drop in standards, even if the training standards have been lowered to allow more women to get through.

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  13. Leftism is, in fact, highly authoritarian in its relentless desire to impose its will on others, to crush its intellectual and political opponents, to dictate proper patterns of thought and behavior, and to increase state intervention and control in every aspect of human life. The Left only wants to "maximize autonomy" in order to destroy existing institutions.."

    I don't really agree with this. The left's clearly states that its ultimate aim (as opposed to its methods) is to maximise individual freedom . However it disagrees with the liberal right over what means it intends to use to achieve this end. The left wants quick results and is quite happy to walk over some types of individual rights to achieve its ultimate aim.

    Remember, the left believes in equality of potential, so therefore things like heavy taxation are justified since the left sees these as temporary measures to prop up those who are oppressed until they are able to contribute to society on an equal footing.

    Many on the right fail to realise that Leftism makes perfect sense if you believe in the myth of equality.

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  14. Mark said,

    "Good question. As I remember, the liberals just insist that there's been no drop in standards, even if the training standards have been lowered to allow more women to get through."

    Or else they say women bring different skills.

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  15. The left's clearly states that its ultimate aim (as opposed to its methods) is to maximise individual freedom.

    Well, duh. Of course they're not going to say that their goal is a boot stamping in the human face, forever. But what do we see whenever the Left has power? In every case, we see reduced freedom! Heck, even the Soviet Union insisted it was the most free and democratic country on Earth, but what did that actually mean?

    The fact is that "freedom" means a different thing to the Left than it does to the Right. The Left regards what you or I consider "freedom" as its opposite - merely a reflection of the hegemonic bourgeois culture. Their conception of "true freedom" requires the overthrow of bourgeois social, economic, and political institutions (indeed, by "freedom" they mean freedom from these "oppressive" institutions) and the imposition of state control.

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  16. Hayek captures the Leftist perversion of the meaning of "freedom" in his "The Road to Serfdom":

    http://books.google.com/books?id=qg61T_I1mwsC&pg=PA77&lpg=PA77&dq=hayek+%22craving+for+freedom%22&source=bl&ots=3bhhAeSQUG&sig=B5CaeQS0G92EfAOhBa8Oetax95I&hl=en&ei=eBT5S6KAOYP78AaZ_8jECg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CCMQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=hayek%20%22craving%20for%20freedom%22&f=false

    "The Great Utopia

    There is no doubt that most of those in the democracies who demand a central direction of all economic activity still believe that socialism and individual freedom can be combined. Yet socialism was early recognized by many thinkers as the gravest threat to freedom.

    It is rarely remembered now that socialism in its beginnings was frankly authoritarian. It began quite openly as a reaction against the liberalism of the French Revolution. The French writers who laid its foundation had no doubt that their ideas could be put into practice only by a strong dictatorial government. The first of modern planners, Saint-Simon, predicted that those who did not obey his proposed planning boards would be "treated as cattle."

    Nobody saw more clearly than the great political thinker de Tocqueville that democracy stands in an irreconcilable conflict with socialism: "Democracy extends the sphere of individual freedom," he said. "Democracy attaches all possible value to each man," he said in 1848, "while socialism makes each man a mere agent, a mere number. Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word: equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude."

    To allay these suspicions and to harness to its cart the strongest of all political motives - the craving for freedom - socialists began increasingly to make use of the promise of a "new freedom." Socialism was to bring "economic freedom," without which political freedom was "not worth having."

    To make this argument sound plausible, the word "freedom" was subjected to a subtle change in meaning. The word had formerly meant freedom from coercion, from the arbitrary power of other men. Now it was made to mean freedom from necessity, the old demand for a redistribution of wealth. They meant freedom reduced to hunger for power and wealth."

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