On reading your first paragraph my mind immediately went to the Greenham Common protests of the 1980s when women were the ones protesting (and encamped) outside the US airbase in the UK to protest about the stationing of cruise missiles there.
And of course well before that there were the Suffragettes - quite radical activists in their day.
None of which is to disagree with the points you make, especially now smartphones and Instagram can make protest an in-group activity. But only to say that for women, it’s nothing new.
I don’t share your enthusiasm for Israel at all - I find it hard to disregard genocide - but for the rest you are onto something. Two points: one is a personal beef: can we please stop calling leftist anti-liberalism “liberal”? I understand that in the US the term has been a bit distorted because until recently the market economy was broadly accepted by all, but that time is gone and philosophically liberalism is totally opposed to identity politics. The other one is that contemporary authoritarian attitudes code very feminine: it’s all about preventing people from doing things and expressing thoughts that supposedly are not “nice” - and supposedly hurt themselves too. Mama knows best apparently.
I respect that you want to separate your belief in Lockean liberalism from modern liberals, but Patrick Deneen (Why Liberalism Failed) and Ryszard Legutko (The Demon in Democracy) both make strong cases against this separation.
Thank you for the courteous comment. I read Deneen, not Legutko. The slippery slope argument is really unconvincing in my view. It has more than a bit of the “post hoc ergo propter hoc”. In the same vein, Lockean liberalism could be the consequence of absolutism. True maybe, but not very relevant. Also, being European, liberalism hasn’t been coded left for us since the 19th century, and identity politics are a typically American and, to a lesser extent, Anglo-Saxon phenomenon.
May I take issue with “genocide”? Be careful with your definitions. Genocide requires INTENT. What the Israelis are guilty of is war crimes: bad yes, but reckless indifference to mass civilian casualties (the definition of a war crime) is not the same as actually intending those deaths.
That's really interesting. I teach civics and philosophy and I found Deneen very convincing. I didn't see it as a slippery slope argument though., more of liberalism is liberationist by nature, so it cannot stop until all unchosen constraints (including the religious and moral conditions that make Enlightenment rights "self-evident") have been removed. Because everyone deserves to be completely free.
I do recommend Legutko if only because he has such a weird life experience: grew up under communism, studied Western philosophy and became a professor, then a Polish MP helping to steer his country from communism to capitalism, then an EU MEP, and then wrote all about it. Deneen people either agre with or don't; Legutko is worth reading even if you decide he's wrong.
But isn’t “cannot stop” the essence of the slippery slope argument? I’m not saying that it’s not true that wokeism is partly descended from liberalism: nothing these days isn’t, liberalism has fundamentally changed the world, and there are points of continuity. But what I do say is that wokeism isn’t the necessary end point of liberalism, just as liberalism is not the necessary end point of Christianity, despite being inconceivable without Christianity. The differences are very relevant, as is the fact that liberals and wokesters recognize they are in conflict over first principles. I’ll get hold of Legutko, thank you for the recommendation!
So if you don’t like genocide, how do you feel about what the Turks, Syrians and Iranians are doing to the Kurds? Or what the Muslims in Pakistan and Bangladesh are doing to the Sikhs and Hindi? Or the Egyptians to the Copts? And what the Syrians are doing to the Alawites? Or what is happeing in Ethiopia, Sudan, and Eritrea? Or in Nigeria and Mali?
Or do you only find it hard to disregard genocide when Muslims are not the perpetrators?
I feel the same, don’t you? There is a big difference though, our governments are enabling Israel, and not the others. Also, the Gaza genocide is ongoing. So there is every reason to be more attentive to what Israel is doing than all the other cases you mention.
I'm so relieved to see someone talking about this. For all that talk we had of young men moving politically to the right, nobody seemed to be noting that all our statistics seem to show that it's actually women moving sharply left, with men making a modest rightward shift. To me it became bizarre that the focus is on male rightwing extremism when it appears we have a much larger issue of female leftwing extremism.
Men have made lying socially unacceptable for 4,000 years. This is where the expression "a man is as good as his word" comes from. We even have "honour among thieves". Even criminal men don't like men who lie.
Also, women have no "mothering instinct". The vast majority of "positives" that have been promoted about women were lies and propaganda. This was necessary to get men to marry them and have children with them. Men have been the victims of endless propaganda and lies about women presented by women. "Girls are sugar and spice and everything nice" while boys are "slugs and snails and puppy dog tails".
One minor quibble, a reminder that Lukianoff in his analysis of mental health versus sex versus politics, did not attempt to control for the fact that males are socialized to be more stoic compared to females, and as a result are less likely to visit a mental health professional, less likely to be as open with that professional about their emotions, and I would speculate are less prone to admit to receiving such a diagnosis. I suspect that if there was a way to factor that in it would mostly eliminate the difference between the sexes.
Or if he had used a different measurement of mental health, like suicide rates for example, that also would have produced a very different result.
I don’t think this undermines your own analysis at all though.
It's possible that higher female neuroticism might balance out stoic socialisation anyway. I take your point, but I'm not convinced it would change the results dramatically. Male suicide as I understand it is linked to various predictors, often relating to jobs, income, and relationships. While I think the male suicide rate could be better understood and certainly taken more seriously, it doesn't necessarily mean men have worse mental health. It may mean that they're less mentally flexible in response to those suicide predicting circumstances, but that doesn't necessarily correlate with poor mental health or diagnoses. It might be, of course, but it shouldn't be assumed or pathologised.
Higher male suicide rates shouldn't be pathologized, but "higher female neuroticism", whatever that is, should? That's an interesting take.
But that brings up another confounding factor in Lukianoff's analysis - how do we distinguish between kids' 1) actual declining mental health and 2) increasing social tendency to describe the world and themselves in catastrophized terms?
Are they crazier, or merely more dramatic? 🤔
And one more - what shifts have taken place if any, in psych professionals' patterns of attributing diagnoses to observed behavior?
And finally, what male biases if any did these male researchers bring to their analysis? Is it just me, or does it have a "See I tol'ya, b*tches be crazy y'all" feel to it just with more expensive words?
I've not read Lukianoff's analysis firsthand, and my initial comment was somewhat flippant because again, I think the pattern is legitimate. Gimbrone et al. 2022 did a similar analysis using 4 items to measure depression in adolescents (getting around the issue of needing a medical professional for a diagnosis). The trend was the same. No major difference based on political orientation prior to 2012, and then a sudden divergence between conservatives and liberals, most dramatically for liberal females. The trend is there once issues of socialisation around medical behaviours are removed from the picture.
Neuroticism is a personality trait which is around 50% heritable, and which is higher in women than men (on average of course). Neuroticism isn't something I'm suggesting should be pathologised either. Though it does capture a tendency towards negative affect/feeling. It may be that the effect of neuroticism was not particularly apparent in relation to mental health and political orientation prior to social media, but that once social media hit critical uptake, perhaps messaging, approach, or calls to action from the liberal side of politics was a) resonating with women naturally higher in neuroticism, b) facilitating a transition from conservative to liberal for those with baseline higher neuroticism, and c) creating a natural political separation based on underlying personality traits.
Comparing based on suicide rate would likely present a very different picture though, and one I'd be interested to see. My only point there was that male suicide seems to have a strong situational component that doesn't necessarily correlate with mental illness (though of course you'd expect some vulnerability to be present that would explain why some men in given situation x choose suicide and others do not).
We also shouldn't dismiss the potential effect of raising awareness about mental health itself, which really kicked off with the rise in social media. Awareness would lead to more attentiveness to one's mental health. In some cases this may lead to use of support services that are useful. In others it may lead to an over-attentiveness and a sensitivity to all types of mental discomfort, counterintuitively fuelling the problem. We would also predict this would affect women more strongly, as women are generally more active on social media.
OK, I can see that you appear to mean well, but also that you have no idea what you're talking about.
Your expressed thoughts are not scientific (I'm a scientist, I should know), not coherently analytical, and wildly at odds with basic precepts of psychology - suicide isn't necessarily a sign of of mental illness?? That's just silly.
I don't know why you thought you were qualified to comment, but you are not.
"You're just being mean" is something a child says in response to adult criticism.
If you want to be considered a scientist or researcher who is qualified to use the scientific method, you must learn to cope with negative feedback, and make constructive use of it.
You strayed out of your lane and were called out on it. Rein in your ego, and learn from it.
"Women moving to the left is a global phenomenon."
No Claire. Women have always been natural communists. There is even a play from Ancient Greece called "The Assembly Women". The women put on fake beards and go into the Assembly and vote in communism. It is a comedy but it has a valuable lesson. If you let women vote you will get communism. Indeed, that is exactly why women were given the vote, to implement global communism.
At the end of the day Claire, you women simply refused to listen to us men. You refused to learn from us. You refused to take our advice. You refused to follow our instructions. You refused to follow our demands. And, in my last offer in January this year, you women refused to even take a vow of obedience to me so I could get you women to help me clean up some of the mess you have made.
So now us men are going to clean up the mess you women have made and you are not going to like how we do that. But given you women have refused to even speak to me in public for 17 years to sort out the mess you created? You only have your selves to blame that us men are going to clean up the mess you women made without your input.
Worth noting that one area where women get radicalized and don't get let off the hook is ISIS brides. They are dealt with pretty uncompromisingly. But notably that isn't a care-based ideology.
I would say that cementing your arm to your car is extreme. I also feel that answering an anodyne observation with “I can’t even…” and/or “I’ll lose my s_it” is a kind of manipulative avoidance tactic I have run into many, many times. Aggressive vulnerability, like hitting the kind of man you know would never hit you back. Using men’s only innate advantage against them.
"radicalization—defined as rigid commitment to an ideological cause to the point where it distorts one’s worldview, harms mental health, undermines relationships, or disrupts functioning"
Trying to damage the Mona Lisa or Degas' Little Dancer by throwing paint on it is extreme, regardless of the underlying cause.
I noticed this at Columbia. A large portion of the protesters went to Barnard, who’s is a women’s college. I wondered whether Barnard was accepting more far left students bu a his explanation makes more sense
Finally, it’s been said. I suspect I am not the only man who noticed this years ago, but we could not say so in public. That observation needed to be made by a woman, and you have done so, Claire, with intelligence and clarity. Thank you!
The whole article does sort of dip slyly into misogyny. Those silly women couldn’t possibly have their own conscience and opinion, they must simply be wanting to “fit in”. They couldn’t possibly have a moral objection to injustice and violence. And what exactly was so extreme about the examples you gave? women have engaged in all sorts of protests and direct action and interference well before social media. Even when they were relegated to domestic life. You know, pamphlets? Also, the men are all up in the comments congratulating the author. Read my first line again.
Claire, this is well planned. The single biggest problem women have today, and will have for the next 1,000+ years, is that you did not listen and learn from those of us men who had your best interests at heart and tried to tell you that you were being lied to. You called us "misogynists", "male chauvinist pigs" and "sexists". You said that when we tried to teach you something we were "mansplaining".
In the end, you women destroyed your own credibility. You nuked your credibility every time you let a woman commit perjury. And now you must live with the consequences of your actions and you are not going to like it. Oh well. If women wanted to start the 10,000+ year process of undoing even a small portion of the damage you have done? You would make me the worlds most famous man and you women would support me. But instead you hate me and you are trying to have me murdered. Not a good idea.
"There is no way of influencing men so powerfully as by means of the women. These should therefore be our chief study; we should insinuate ourselves into their good opinion, give them hints of emancipation from the tyranny of public opinion, and of standing up for themselves; it will be an immense relief to their enslaved minds to be freed from any one bond of restraint, and it will fire them the more, and cause them to work for us with zeal, without knowing that they do so; for they will only be indulging their own desire of personal admiration."
Haidt's Moral Foundations is useless. Sorry, but he just did not ask the right questions:
- Authority: liberals dislike the authority of church, but are much into the authority of scientific consensus or expert opinion
- Ingroup: liberals are not into nationalism, but debate forever about "party loyalty" (remember PUMA) and are loyal to social circles and friends no matter what
- Purity: not important, since the only thing conservatives have an exclusive disgust reaction to are gay men. Both liberals and conservatives have disgust reactions to pedophiles, and it is liberal-coded environmental activists who have a disgust reaction to polluting pure Mother Earth (okay okay that was an 1970's thing)
Funny how this works, really. I am not young, and interestingly I have heard the "incel" type charges against women far before I heard them about men. Of course this word was not used, but back then - long time - many men and some women were like "feminists are ugly unfuckable and unfucked, that is why they are so frustrated". Much later, similar charges were against men, and this time the word "incel" was used.
I still keep thinking about this. On one hand it is HUGELY disrespectful, when people come up with a set of... ideas... and to dismiss it all as "lol u unfucked". This should have no role in proper public speech.
OTOH I still notice that Kim Basinger was never really an angry feminist and Brad Pitt was never like the angry type of incel antifeminist. We KNOW people treat attractive people better, even when sex is not in the picture. There are studies of attractive people getting promoted at work, etc.
We need to find a polite and respectful way to consider how people's personal difficulties might fuel their political anger.
You are a wonderful contributor to public discourse, Claire. Keep going. Paul M.
On reading your first paragraph my mind immediately went to the Greenham Common protests of the 1980s when women were the ones protesting (and encamped) outside the US airbase in the UK to protest about the stationing of cruise missiles there.
And of course well before that there were the Suffragettes - quite radical activists in their day.
None of which is to disagree with the points you make, especially now smartphones and Instagram can make protest an in-group activity. But only to say that for women, it’s nothing new.
I don’t share your enthusiasm for Israel at all - I find it hard to disregard genocide - but for the rest you are onto something. Two points: one is a personal beef: can we please stop calling leftist anti-liberalism “liberal”? I understand that in the US the term has been a bit distorted because until recently the market economy was broadly accepted by all, but that time is gone and philosophically liberalism is totally opposed to identity politics. The other one is that contemporary authoritarian attitudes code very feminine: it’s all about preventing people from doing things and expressing thoughts that supposedly are not “nice” - and supposedly hurt themselves too. Mama knows best apparently.
I respect that you want to separate your belief in Lockean liberalism from modern liberals, but Patrick Deneen (Why Liberalism Failed) and Ryszard Legutko (The Demon in Democracy) both make strong cases against this separation.
Thank you for the courteous comment. I read Deneen, not Legutko. The slippery slope argument is really unconvincing in my view. It has more than a bit of the “post hoc ergo propter hoc”. In the same vein, Lockean liberalism could be the consequence of absolutism. True maybe, but not very relevant. Also, being European, liberalism hasn’t been coded left for us since the 19th century, and identity politics are a typically American and, to a lesser extent, Anglo-Saxon phenomenon.
May I take issue with “genocide”? Be careful with your definitions. Genocide requires INTENT. What the Israelis are guilty of is war crimes: bad yes, but reckless indifference to mass civilian casualties (the definition of a war crime) is not the same as actually intending those deaths.
I don’t think there is much doubt about intent, the declarations of the Israeli government are crystal clear. It’s hard to admit, but there we are.
That's really interesting. I teach civics and philosophy and I found Deneen very convincing. I didn't see it as a slippery slope argument though., more of liberalism is liberationist by nature, so it cannot stop until all unchosen constraints (including the religious and moral conditions that make Enlightenment rights "self-evident") have been removed. Because everyone deserves to be completely free.
I do recommend Legutko if only because he has such a weird life experience: grew up under communism, studied Western philosophy and became a professor, then a Polish MP helping to steer his country from communism to capitalism, then an EU MEP, and then wrote all about it. Deneen people either agre with or don't; Legutko is worth reading even if you decide he's wrong.
But isn’t “cannot stop” the essence of the slippery slope argument? I’m not saying that it’s not true that wokeism is partly descended from liberalism: nothing these days isn’t, liberalism has fundamentally changed the world, and there are points of continuity. But what I do say is that wokeism isn’t the necessary end point of liberalism, just as liberalism is not the necessary end point of Christianity, despite being inconceivable without Christianity. The differences are very relevant, as is the fact that liberals and wokesters recognize they are in conflict over first principles. I’ll get hold of Legutko, thank you for the recommendation!
So if you don’t like genocide, how do you feel about what the Turks, Syrians and Iranians are doing to the Kurds? Or what the Muslims in Pakistan and Bangladesh are doing to the Sikhs and Hindi? Or the Egyptians to the Copts? And what the Syrians are doing to the Alawites? Or what is happeing in Ethiopia, Sudan, and Eritrea? Or in Nigeria and Mali?
Or do you only find it hard to disregard genocide when Muslims are not the perpetrators?
I feel the same, don’t you? There is a big difference though, our governments are enabling Israel, and not the others. Also, the Gaza genocide is ongoing. So there is every reason to be more attentive to what Israel is doing than all the other cases you mention.
The population of Gaza is going up. If the Iraelis are committing genocide, they're spectacularly bad at it. Which is unlike them.
A lot of Jews survived the holocaust, so in your view there was no genocide?
The population of Jews did not rise during the Holocaust. Be more precise in your thinking, please.
This is not even an argument. But ok, we understand your point, which is that Israel’s “right to exist” implies Palestinians have no right to exist.
I'm so relieved to see someone talking about this. For all that talk we had of young men moving politically to the right, nobody seemed to be noting that all our statistics seem to show that it's actually women moving sharply left, with men making a modest rightward shift. To me it became bizarre that the focus is on male rightwing extremism when it appears we have a much larger issue of female leftwing extremism.
Shaming, rallying, gossiping. A most concerning tool kit.
You forgot lying TL. The favourite tool of women and girls is lying.
I think that's a human thing.
What concerns me is ppl weaponizing the empathy of women. Hijacking that divine mother instinct.
"I think that's a human thing."
Men have made lying socially unacceptable for 4,000 years. This is where the expression "a man is as good as his word" comes from. We even have "honour among thieves". Even criminal men don't like men who lie.
Also, women have no "mothering instinct". The vast majority of "positives" that have been promoted about women were lies and propaganda. This was necessary to get men to marry them and have children with them. Men have been the victims of endless propaganda and lies about women presented by women. "Girls are sugar and spice and everything nice" while boys are "slugs and snails and puppy dog tails".
This goes back a very long time.
Brilliant and much-needed analysis, thank you!
One minor quibble, a reminder that Lukianoff in his analysis of mental health versus sex versus politics, did not attempt to control for the fact that males are socialized to be more stoic compared to females, and as a result are less likely to visit a mental health professional, less likely to be as open with that professional about their emotions, and I would speculate are less prone to admit to receiving such a diagnosis. I suspect that if there was a way to factor that in it would mostly eliminate the difference between the sexes.
Or if he had used a different measurement of mental health, like suicide rates for example, that also would have produced a very different result.
I don’t think this undermines your own analysis at all though.
It's possible that higher female neuroticism might balance out stoic socialisation anyway. I take your point, but I'm not convinced it would change the results dramatically. Male suicide as I understand it is linked to various predictors, often relating to jobs, income, and relationships. While I think the male suicide rate could be better understood and certainly taken more seriously, it doesn't necessarily mean men have worse mental health. It may mean that they're less mentally flexible in response to those suicide predicting circumstances, but that doesn't necessarily correlate with poor mental health or diagnoses. It might be, of course, but it shouldn't be assumed or pathologised.
Higher male suicide rates shouldn't be pathologized, but "higher female neuroticism", whatever that is, should? That's an interesting take.
But that brings up another confounding factor in Lukianoff's analysis - how do we distinguish between kids' 1) actual declining mental health and 2) increasing social tendency to describe the world and themselves in catastrophized terms?
Are they crazier, or merely more dramatic? 🤔
And one more - what shifts have taken place if any, in psych professionals' patterns of attributing diagnoses to observed behavior?
And finally, what male biases if any did these male researchers bring to their analysis? Is it just me, or does it have a "See I tol'ya, b*tches be crazy y'all" feel to it just with more expensive words?
I've not read Lukianoff's analysis firsthand, and my initial comment was somewhat flippant because again, I think the pattern is legitimate. Gimbrone et al. 2022 did a similar analysis using 4 items to measure depression in adolescents (getting around the issue of needing a medical professional for a diagnosis). The trend was the same. No major difference based on political orientation prior to 2012, and then a sudden divergence between conservatives and liberals, most dramatically for liberal females. The trend is there once issues of socialisation around medical behaviours are removed from the picture.
Neuroticism is a personality trait which is around 50% heritable, and which is higher in women than men (on average of course). Neuroticism isn't something I'm suggesting should be pathologised either. Though it does capture a tendency towards negative affect/feeling. It may be that the effect of neuroticism was not particularly apparent in relation to mental health and political orientation prior to social media, but that once social media hit critical uptake, perhaps messaging, approach, or calls to action from the liberal side of politics was a) resonating with women naturally higher in neuroticism, b) facilitating a transition from conservative to liberal for those with baseline higher neuroticism, and c) creating a natural political separation based on underlying personality traits.
Comparing based on suicide rate would likely present a very different picture though, and one I'd be interested to see. My only point there was that male suicide seems to have a strong situational component that doesn't necessarily correlate with mental illness (though of course you'd expect some vulnerability to be present that would explain why some men in given situation x choose suicide and others do not).
We also shouldn't dismiss the potential effect of raising awareness about mental health itself, which really kicked off with the rise in social media. Awareness would lead to more attentiveness to one's mental health. In some cases this may lead to use of support services that are useful. In others it may lead to an over-attentiveness and a sensitivity to all types of mental discomfort, counterintuitively fuelling the problem. We would also predict this would affect women more strongly, as women are generally more active on social media.
OK, I can see that you appear to mean well, but also that you have no idea what you're talking about.
Your expressed thoughts are not scientific (I'm a scientist, I should know), not coherently analytical, and wildly at odds with basic precepts of psychology - suicide isn't necessarily a sign of of mental illness?? That's just silly.
I don't know why you thought you were qualified to comment, but you are not.
That's a rude and unproductive thing to say.
"You're just being mean" is something a child says in response to adult criticism.
If you want to be considered a scientist or researcher who is qualified to use the scientific method, you must learn to cope with negative feedback, and make constructive use of it.
You strayed out of your lane and were called out on it. Rein in your ego, and learn from it.
"Women moving to the left is a global phenomenon."
No Claire. Women have always been natural communists. There is even a play from Ancient Greece called "The Assembly Women". The women put on fake beards and go into the Assembly and vote in communism. It is a comedy but it has a valuable lesson. If you let women vote you will get communism. Indeed, that is exactly why women were given the vote, to implement global communism.
At the end of the day Claire, you women simply refused to listen to us men. You refused to learn from us. You refused to take our advice. You refused to follow our instructions. You refused to follow our demands. And, in my last offer in January this year, you women refused to even take a vow of obedience to me so I could get you women to help me clean up some of the mess you have made.
So now us men are going to clean up the mess you women have made and you are not going to like how we do that. But given you women have refused to even speak to me in public for 17 years to sort out the mess you created? You only have your selves to blame that us men are going to clean up the mess you women made without your input.
Interesting and sounds very plausible.
Worth noting that one area where women get radicalized and don't get let off the hook is ISIS brides. They are dealt with pretty uncompromisingly. But notably that isn't a care-based ideology.
I see your point but I don’t think you can call environmentalism extreme
I would say that cementing your arm to your car is extreme. I also feel that answering an anodyne observation with “I can’t even…” and/or “I’ll lose my s_it” is a kind of manipulative avoidance tactic I have run into many, many times. Aggressive vulnerability, like hitting the kind of man you know would never hit you back. Using men’s only innate advantage against them.
I didn’t think through my comment
"radicalization—defined as rigid commitment to an ideological cause to the point where it distorts one’s worldview, harms mental health, undermines relationships, or disrupts functioning"
Trying to damage the Mona Lisa or Degas' Little Dancer by throwing paint on it is extreme, regardless of the underlying cause.
Anything can be taken too far. At some point it’s no longer about the issue. It can be about the theatrics.
I noticed this at Columbia. A large portion of the protesters went to Barnard, who’s is a women’s college. I wondered whether Barnard was accepting more far left students bu a his explanation makes more sense
Finally, it’s been said. I suspect I am not the only man who noticed this years ago, but we could not say so in public. That observation needed to be made by a woman, and you have done so, Claire, with intelligence and clarity. Thank you!
Thank you Claire.
The whole article does sort of dip slyly into misogyny. Those silly women couldn’t possibly have their own conscience and opinion, they must simply be wanting to “fit in”. They couldn’t possibly have a moral objection to injustice and violence. And what exactly was so extreme about the examples you gave? women have engaged in all sorts of protests and direct action and interference well before social media. Even when they were relegated to domestic life. You know, pamphlets? Also, the men are all up in the comments congratulating the author. Read my first line again.
In the western milieu where male extremism is usually met with the full force of the state, female extremism is given free rein.
Claire, this is well planned. The single biggest problem women have today, and will have for the next 1,000+ years, is that you did not listen and learn from those of us men who had your best interests at heart and tried to tell you that you were being lied to. You called us "misogynists", "male chauvinist pigs" and "sexists". You said that when we tried to teach you something we were "mansplaining".
In the end, you women destroyed your own credibility. You nuked your credibility every time you let a woman commit perjury. And now you must live with the consequences of your actions and you are not going to like it. Oh well. If women wanted to start the 10,000+ year process of undoing even a small portion of the damage you have done? You would make me the worlds most famous man and you women would support me. But instead you hate me and you are trying to have me murdered. Not a good idea.
"There is no way of influencing men so powerfully as by means of the women. These should therefore be our chief study; we should insinuate ourselves into their good opinion, give them hints of emancipation from the tyranny of public opinion, and of standing up for themselves; it will be an immense relief to their enslaved minds to be freed from any one bond of restraint, and it will fire them the more, and cause them to work for us with zeal, without knowing that they do so; for they will only be indulging their own desire of personal admiration."
Adam Weishaupt
Haidt's Moral Foundations is useless. Sorry, but he just did not ask the right questions:
- Authority: liberals dislike the authority of church, but are much into the authority of scientific consensus or expert opinion
- Ingroup: liberals are not into nationalism, but debate forever about "party loyalty" (remember PUMA) and are loyal to social circles and friends no matter what
- Purity: not important, since the only thing conservatives have an exclusive disgust reaction to are gay men. Both liberals and conservatives have disgust reactions to pedophiles, and it is liberal-coded environmental activists who have a disgust reaction to polluting pure Mother Earth (okay okay that was an 1970's thing)
Funny how this works, really. I am not young, and interestingly I have heard the "incel" type charges against women far before I heard them about men. Of course this word was not used, but back then - long time - many men and some women were like "feminists are ugly unfuckable and unfucked, that is why they are so frustrated". Much later, similar charges were against men, and this time the word "incel" was used.
I still keep thinking about this. On one hand it is HUGELY disrespectful, when people come up with a set of... ideas... and to dismiss it all as "lol u unfucked". This should have no role in proper public speech.
OTOH I still notice that Kim Basinger was never really an angry feminist and Brad Pitt was never like the angry type of incel antifeminist. We KNOW people treat attractive people better, even when sex is not in the picture. There are studies of attractive people getting promoted at work, etc.
We need to find a polite and respectful way to consider how people's personal difficulties might fuel their political anger.