Like all philosophers, your analysis is biased towards your own idiosyncratic view. You are viewing gender relations through the lens of only a woman and not as a man.
> Meanwhile, human females only have one reproductive strategy: Very high-investment.
This is objectively false, and every single single mother disproves this point. Sperm banks cement it as false.
Women have two mating strategies, outlined by dating app data:
- Short term: the sexy son hypothesis. If a woman is impregnated by a promiscuous man, then her promiscuous son will spread her genes. That's why only 6' tall white blonde men with blue eyes can donate sperm (look up sperm donation demographics)
- Long term: everything you said
Here's the kicker **women do not engage in short-term mating strategies in tribes.** Meaning, when women are Jewish or Amish, they will almost never engage in short-term mating strategies, so your hypothesis is too narrowly focused on these groups instead of the wide expanse of human sexuality.
The reason women do not do this is because they will be shamed by other women in their tribe for not being married with child. The moment that your community exceeds Dunbar's number, the ability for women to be shamed by their tribe diminishes and single motherhood increases.
So, if you want to increase fertility, you must oppress women such that they are still demonized into not having a child outside of wedlock, which requires keeping your community small until you can split the community through mitosis. If women have too many children in one community, short-term strategies develop and the community collapses.
Women who opt for short-term mating and hope it will result in a sexy son still have a very high-investment strategy, because they will have to care for that sexy-son-to-be until he is grown-up. They only have a low-investment strategy by proxy.
One reason why women choose short-term mating strategies is that there are few men who offer long-term strategies around. But you are right that only oppressing males and not oppressing females at all does not make sense. Both sexes have impulses that fit in badly in society.
A counterexample for your thesis is the worldwide Sikh population, which also puts much more emphasis on males in terms of dress and ritual but has the lowest birth rates of all the religions in India
I don't think causality is in that direction. All cultures that engage males don't become highly fertile. A culture that strongly encourages its members to reproduce is the most fundamental prerequisite. To take a obvious example: No matter how many sacrifices Shakers required from men (abstaining from sex is quite a sacrifice), they didn't have children anyway.
Rather, my thesis is that asking women to have many children is pointless, because women will do what men reward them for doing. For that reason, numerous cultures that tell their female members to prioritize childbearing have low birth rates. No matter how much Catholic women are told to avoid contraception - they use it anyway because both society at large and men reward them for doing so.
The reason there is a focus on restraining females is because there is no point in “restraining” men when they already hold zero power in the dating world. There is nothing there to restrain. Women are the gatekeepers - they hold all the power in the dating world. They and *only* they decide when sex happens, when relationships happen, when marriage and kids happen - men have no say at any point in this process.
The majority of men are already ready and willing to commit to a monogamous relationship and have a large family - it’s just that these men are treated like a subhuman underclass to the average modern female, who feels entitled to having a top 1% man commit to them. Ignoring the effect of the vast proliferation of female hypergamy throughout the world in the social ills we’re seeing today is a comically inept oversight.
Well, I can say three things to this. First of all, it's pretty clear that it's the majority of men Tove is discussing. If 27% of men under thirty are virgins, that may be sad, but it isn't the majority. And while some of them may be attractive and virtuous people, it does stand to reason that many of these men aren't going to make very good spouses.
Secondly, if only 27% of men are virgins, there's a case to be made that they're actually lucky; my reading of the scientific literature is that over the course of our evolutionary past mitochondrial DNA was passed on at twice the rate of Y-chromosomes: https://academic.oup.com/mbe/article/21/11/2047/1147770
This is consistent with men delaying reproduction, or simply dying without offspring, as the default state of affairs across the history of our species.
But thirdly, you really just seem obnoxious. My responding to you at all is a deliberate mistake which I'm making anyway, knowing that I don't care whether you'll learn anything from what I just told you, and having no interest in whatever response this mistake will earn me. :p
Academic studies of Chassidic, even the accurate, valuable ones, rarely contain this insider, intuitive knowledge.
During Hurricane Sandy I had the Sociologist Jonathan Boyarin (a refugee from the Lower East Side) for a Shabbos meal & he had a keen understanding of the subtle sociological issues/questions to ask {e.g. Who would/could you make a shidduch with [arrange a marriage] outside your own Chassidus [Chassidic group/community with it's own Rebbe (leader)] and why?}
I'm genuinely surprised at the lack of anthropological texts about Orthodox Jewish communities. There are a number of good books about the Amish and about the Hutterites too, and that is how I know them. When it comes to the traditional-minded Jews I only find scraps of information here and there and rely a lot on first-hand informers like you. It is unexpected, but also a bit exciting.
I'm not sure that male strategy is the sole determining factor. I read somewhere that in areas "depopulated" by war, meaning mostly "de-maled", until the sex ratio reaches 10-to-1, the fertility-per-female is not strongly affected. Of course, we're talking about reasonably modern cultures where women have considerable autonomy in determining their fertility. (I'm reminded of an anecdote from US Black culture a decade or two ago, a women (who didn't seem to be married at the time) was berated by her mother, "You're 35 and you only have three kids!".)
I would expect that an important part is r vs. K selection, whether there's much to be gained from concentrating one's investment in a small number of children. The top 20% or so of the US income distribution seems to be extremely r-selective in behavior, and across that span, income rises rapidly with percentile rank.
As someone else noted, one thing that would help with fertility is if society normalized "having children along" as part of adult events. But that is diffusing the overheads of child-raising across the community. It does seem that is easier if the population perceives child-raising as a *collective* job, which seems to be correlated with populations that have been settled for a couple of generations that perceive themselves to be ethnically uniform.
My thinking is that a lot of our cultural institutions have, over the long term, evolved to rein in men for the good of society as a whole. Viewing things through the lens that everything is only for the purpose of controlling women, and therefore must all be destroyed, has been a mistake. Culture controls all of us.
I also agree with your point that women are more likely to follow the lead of men. We can see this in strains of feminism in which women try to emulate less useful male mating strategies, going against our general natures, in the name of equality.
I noticed that you never provide an explanation of what you believe gender equality is or how it’s measured. It’s hard to agree or disagree with your argument without knowing what you’re arguing for.
In a secular society, the answer would be to conscript men for a few years in their youth.
An exemption for men with children would offer a useful incentive, too - with the proviso that should they separate from the mother of their children, they would then owe twice the service they had been exempted from.
As usual feminism comes down to to restricting male choice and freedom whilst increasing female choice and freedom. Women are fully in control of the birth rate. They can choose to have or abort a child with or without any man's knowledge or consent.
The modern world of sex and child bearing started with the contraceptive pill and we are now in age of the abortion pill. Both were eagerly adopted by females to engage in higher levels of promiscuity than before. And in the current era we hear about the incel cohort which no one seems to be certain how much in number they are but IMO seriously undemines the whole argument put forward. But with the %of sexless males between the ages of 18 to 30 running at twice the rate of their female equivalent and the STI rate amongst females similarly asymmetrical we should see the clear correlation. The causation being their decision to choose the top 20 %of men as their sexual partners which those christian sluts are happily engaging in too.
If having children is high status then women will have children. If women are oppressed such that the only way to raise their status is to give birth to allies then that oppression is adaptive. I want to live in a world where women are not oppressed. Therefore I must see childbearing as a duty. Otherwise I invite the oppression of my daughters.
I have a perception that the Amish culture is way more fragile than Orthodox Jews. Amish culture protect themselves by fleeing from modern culture. If the modern culture somehow penetrates them, it is over for them. Orthodox Jews live in cities and have learned to live in proximity to this modern culture.
Kinda lost me with the overall point here. Amish & Jews are ugly people. At least the Amish have organic farms.
Jews have filthy tunnels with mattresses & if we removed the latter I imagine porn hub & only fans works go away too.
My white Christian neighbors have 3 kids, kinda autistic tbh. Other neighbors are trash & I wish they had less kids.
I only had 2 because nobody told me how special I was & how great my destiny could be given my pedigree. I will simply raise my kids to see themselves as noble. That’s the magic bullet. Modernity is decedent but Nobility is a virtue amongst the ruins.
I always enjoy your takes on religion. I'd be interested to hear your take on my religion, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS, Mormon).
I am catching up on your writings and see that you speak a lot on the topic actually.
Like all philosophers, your analysis is biased towards your own idiosyncratic view. You are viewing gender relations through the lens of only a woman and not as a man.
> Meanwhile, human females only have one reproductive strategy: Very high-investment.
This is objectively false, and every single single mother disproves this point. Sperm banks cement it as false.
Women have two mating strategies, outlined by dating app data:
https://graphpaperdiaries.com/2018/10/21/judging-attractiveness/
- Short term: the sexy son hypothesis. If a woman is impregnated by a promiscuous man, then her promiscuous son will spread her genes. That's why only 6' tall white blonde men with blue eyes can donate sperm (look up sperm donation demographics)
- Long term: everything you said
Here's the kicker **women do not engage in short-term mating strategies in tribes.** Meaning, when women are Jewish or Amish, they will almost never engage in short-term mating strategies, so your hypothesis is too narrowly focused on these groups instead of the wide expanse of human sexuality.
The reason women do not do this is because they will be shamed by other women in their tribe for not being married with child. The moment that your community exceeds Dunbar's number, the ability for women to be shamed by their tribe diminishes and single motherhood increases.
So, if you want to increase fertility, you must oppress women such that they are still demonized into not having a child outside of wedlock, which requires keeping your community small until you can split the community through mitosis. If women have too many children in one community, short-term strategies develop and the community collapses.
Women who opt for short-term mating and hope it will result in a sexy son still have a very high-investment strategy, because they will have to care for that sexy-son-to-be until he is grown-up. They only have a low-investment strategy by proxy.
One reason why women choose short-term mating strategies is that there are few men who offer long-term strategies around. But you are right that only oppressing males and not oppressing females at all does not make sense. Both sexes have impulses that fit in badly in society.
A counterexample for your thesis is the worldwide Sikh population, which also puts much more emphasis on males in terms of dress and ritual but has the lowest birth rates of all the religions in India
I don't think causality is in that direction. All cultures that engage males don't become highly fertile. A culture that strongly encourages its members to reproduce is the most fundamental prerequisite. To take a obvious example: No matter how many sacrifices Shakers required from men (abstaining from sex is quite a sacrifice), they didn't have children anyway.
Rather, my thesis is that asking women to have many children is pointless, because women will do what men reward them for doing. For that reason, numerous cultures that tell their female members to prioritize childbearing have low birth rates. No matter how much Catholic women are told to avoid contraception - they use it anyway because both society at large and men reward them for doing so.
Humorous idea on first glance, but severely misdiagnoses the problem. “Oppress men so they stop being so promiscuous,” when this graph exists? https://www.kvakil.me/posts/2022-05-15-young-male-virgins-washington-post.html
The reason there is a focus on restraining females is because there is no point in “restraining” men when they already hold zero power in the dating world. There is nothing there to restrain. Women are the gatekeepers - they hold all the power in the dating world. They and *only* they decide when sex happens, when relationships happen, when marriage and kids happen - men have no say at any point in this process.
The majority of men are already ready and willing to commit to a monogamous relationship and have a large family - it’s just that these men are treated like a subhuman underclass to the average modern female, who feels entitled to having a top 1% man commit to them. Ignoring the effect of the vast proliferation of female hypergamy throughout the world in the social ills we’re seeing today is a comically inept oversight.
Well, I can say three things to this. First of all, it's pretty clear that it's the majority of men Tove is discussing. If 27% of men under thirty are virgins, that may be sad, but it isn't the majority. And while some of them may be attractive and virtuous people, it does stand to reason that many of these men aren't going to make very good spouses.
Secondly, if only 27% of men are virgins, there's a case to be made that they're actually lucky; my reading of the scientific literature is that over the course of our evolutionary past mitochondrial DNA was passed on at twice the rate of Y-chromosomes: https://academic.oup.com/mbe/article/21/11/2047/1147770
This is consistent with men delaying reproduction, or simply dying without offspring, as the default state of affairs across the history of our species.
But thirdly, you really just seem obnoxious. My responding to you at all is a deliberate mistake which I'm making anyway, knowing that I don't care whether you'll learn anything from what I just told you, and having no interest in whatever response this mistake will earn me. :p
Academic studies of Chassidic, even the accurate, valuable ones, rarely contain this insider, intuitive knowledge.
During Hurricane Sandy I had the Sociologist Jonathan Boyarin (a refugee from the Lower East Side) for a Shabbos meal & he had a keen understanding of the subtle sociological issues/questions to ask {e.g. Who would/could you make a shidduch with [arrange a marriage] outside your own Chassidus [Chassidic group/community with it's own Rebbe (leader)] and why?}
I noticed that Professor Moshe Krakowski wrote powerfully about this here.
https://www.commentary.org/articles/moshe-krakowski/new-york-times-slander-hasidim/
I'm genuinely surprised at the lack of anthropological texts about Orthodox Jewish communities. There are a number of good books about the Amish and about the Hutterites too, and that is how I know them. When it comes to the traditional-minded Jews I only find scraps of information here and there and rely a lot on first-hand informers like you. It is unexpected, but also a bit exciting.
Invoking Tyler Cowen's Second Law: A literature exists for everything.
I'm not sure that male strategy is the sole determining factor. I read somewhere that in areas "depopulated" by war, meaning mostly "de-maled", until the sex ratio reaches 10-to-1, the fertility-per-female is not strongly affected. Of course, we're talking about reasonably modern cultures where women have considerable autonomy in determining their fertility. (I'm reminded of an anecdote from US Black culture a decade or two ago, a women (who didn't seem to be married at the time) was berated by her mother, "You're 35 and you only have three kids!".)
I would expect that an important part is r vs. K selection, whether there's much to be gained from concentrating one's investment in a small number of children. The top 20% or so of the US income distribution seems to be extremely r-selective in behavior, and across that span, income rises rapidly with percentile rank.
As someone else noted, one thing that would help with fertility is if society normalized "having children along" as part of adult events. But that is diffusing the overheads of child-raising across the community. It does seem that is easier if the population perceives child-raising as a *collective* job, which seems to be correlated with populations that have been settled for a couple of generations that perceive themselves to be ethnically uniform.
My thinking is that a lot of our cultural institutions have, over the long term, evolved to rein in men for the good of society as a whole. Viewing things through the lens that everything is only for the purpose of controlling women, and therefore must all be destroyed, has been a mistake. Culture controls all of us.
I also agree with your point that women are more likely to follow the lead of men. We can see this in strains of feminism in which women try to emulate less useful male mating strategies, going against our general natures, in the name of equality.
“I have thought a lot about gender equality.”
I noticed that you never provide an explanation of what you believe gender equality is or how it’s measured. It’s hard to agree or disagree with your argument without knowing what you’re arguing for.
In a secular society, the answer would be to conscript men for a few years in their youth.
An exemption for men with children would offer a useful incentive, too - with the proviso that should they separate from the mother of their children, they would then owe twice the service they had been exempted from.
They have conscription in S Korea. Doesn't seem to be working.
As usual feminism comes down to to restricting male choice and freedom whilst increasing female choice and freedom. Women are fully in control of the birth rate. They can choose to have or abort a child with or without any man's knowledge or consent.
Women get pregnant outside of domestic settings all the time, just look at teen pregnancies and most single mothers.
teen pregnancies are at historic lows.
In this day an age of free contraception and abortions there really is no such thing as an accidental pregnancy.
Here’s a 14 page article series that offers a solution to gender inequality.
https://www.tannytalk.com/s/peace
The modern world of sex and child bearing started with the contraceptive pill and we are now in age of the abortion pill. Both were eagerly adopted by females to engage in higher levels of promiscuity than before. And in the current era we hear about the incel cohort which no one seems to be certain how much in number they are but IMO seriously undemines the whole argument put forward. But with the %of sexless males between the ages of 18 to 30 running at twice the rate of their female equivalent and the STI rate amongst females similarly asymmetrical we should see the clear correlation. The causation being their decision to choose the top 20 %of men as their sexual partners which those christian sluts are happily engaging in too.
I'm not so sure the modern world is so distinct. After all, infanticide was practiced ubiquitously in the ancient world.
If having children is high status then women will have children. If women are oppressed such that the only way to raise their status is to give birth to allies then that oppression is adaptive. I want to live in a world where women are not oppressed. Therefore I must see childbearing as a duty. Otherwise I invite the oppression of my daughters.
I have a perception that the Amish culture is way more fragile than Orthodox Jews. Amish culture protect themselves by fleeing from modern culture. If the modern culture somehow penetrates them, it is over for them. Orthodox Jews live in cities and have learned to live in proximity to this modern culture.
Kinda lost me with the overall point here. Amish & Jews are ugly people. At least the Amish have organic farms.
Jews have filthy tunnels with mattresses & if we removed the latter I imagine porn hub & only fans works go away too.
My white Christian neighbors have 3 kids, kinda autistic tbh. Other neighbors are trash & I wish they had less kids.
I only had 2 because nobody told me how special I was & how great my destiny could be given my pedigree. I will simply raise my kids to see themselves as noble. That’s the magic bullet. Modernity is decedent but Nobility is a virtue amongst the ruins.
You missed the part about the horns.
Very interesting ideas.