Being a wife and mother, like being a house-husband and primary care giver to the kiddies, is work- but it is unpaid work, rather like my writing this now. If the material life style, psychic reward and Expected Wealth outcome associated with being a house-wife is higher than that of being a house-husband, or if opportunities to do so are unequal, then we will expect to see gender inequality even absent obvious differences in productivity.
Good 'mechanism design' can improve things for everybody. New technology can radically change life-chances. As an idiographic matter, there are always ways to use subsidiarity based mechanism design- i.e. superior knowledge of local conditions- to unleash productive forces and improve incentive compatibility. By focusing on 'minute particulars', some communities have risen. By talking paranoid bollocks about abstractions like 'Gender' or 'Race', great mischief has been worked.
As a case in point, Dr. Alice Evans asks on her blog
Why Do Gender Inequalities Persist?
This begs the question, why does gender persist? The answer is biological and game theoretic. There is some point to asking it and some benefit from testing Structural Causal Models offered in answer.
Yet more fundamentally, why does genidentity- i.e. the existential relationship underlying the genesis of an object from one moment to the next- persist? The answer is metaphysical and answering it appears useless because no Structural Causal Model is involved. Thus this inquiry can't 'pay for itself'- though it may have motivated Gestalt psychology or something of that sort.
This begs the question- why persist in asking stupid questions? One answer is that it may motivate some form of Academic or pseudo-academic availability cascade. Obviously, now we have a bunch of academics specializing in Gender Grievances, their mercenary self-interest will ensure the persistence of the stupid question they ask.
Long experience tells us, that Evans & Co can do nothing whatsoever to tackle the problem they address. They will offer no 'Structural Causal Model' which can be used in a piecemeal manner to alter local outcome. Instead, they will stress the
The Importance of Beliefs!
e.g. sticking pills into dolls labelled 'Boss Man' or 'Male Chauvinist Pig' in the belief that this will enable you to travel back in time & hook up with Shulamith Firestone- before she got too crazy.
Over the twentieth century, more women gained education, economic autonomy, greater mobility and wider social networks.
The same was true of men- where it was true.
Many expanded their horizons, chose their own husbands, and kept their fertility under control.
Also true of men- and not just gay men either.
Yet, a woman may still be abused at home, harassed on city streets, and unfairly treated at work.
This is true of some women and some men.
If victims cannot secure accountability, abuse persists with impunity.
It may do, it may not. If 'abuse' is profitable it will persist unless there is an effective sanction.
Women’s autonomy can also be circumscribed by legislation – forbidding abortion or stipulating obedience to male guardians.
Furthermore, Women's autonomy can be circumscribed by their listening to other stupid women and then doing really stupid shit. Obedience to female guardians may have worse outcomes than some alternative male or transgender guardian.
Being jailed or having your legs and arms lopped off can seriously circumscribe autonomy. We must all change our Beliefs so as to reduce the incidence of such types of underserved incarceration or mutilation.
Men’s control – of property, custody, and women’s bodies – is thus legally entrenched.
Which is why it is perfectly legal for your male guardians to chop off your arms and legs and make you live in a suitcase. Wake up sheeple! You could be next!
At this point, it would be only fair to pay a tribute to 'Doctor' Evans whose property and body have probably been controlled by men in the past. Indeed, they may be controlling her now. We may well picture her, lacking arms and legs, tapping out her blogposts with her nose at the direction of an evil cabal of 'Guardians'.
Façades of reform may be enacted by states keen to improve their international reputations but left enforced.
That is certainly what happened in Britain. According to the letter of the law, it was not actually permissible for Evans's guardians to chop off her legs and arms and make her type her blog with her nose.
And without family-friendly policies or cooperative partners, women remain saddled with childcare, depressing their earnings.
Fuck you babies! Why do you insist on popping out of vaginas?
Seldom seeing egalitarian alternatives or successful resistance, women may internalise their subordination and reluctantly comply with a seemingly unchangeable status quo.
As opposed to chopping their own arms and legs off and going to live in a suitcase and then typing out a blog using just their nose not coz evil Guardians are forcing them to do so but because they just feel like doing it for the thrill of the thing.
If men monopolise prestigious positions,
e.g. being the Guardians of women who are then forced to chop their arms and legs off and squeeze into a suitcase and then type a blog with their nose
others may regard them as natural leaders.
Only if natural leaders tend to occupy prestigious positions.
Women may doubt their capabilities, be reluctant to put themselves forward or vote for others.
Indeed, they may find it difficult to get to the voting booth because many of them may have no arms of legs and may be shut up in a suitcase by evil Guardians despite the fact that this is against the law. Sadly, in England, such laws are merely cosmetic. They are not enforced.
These entrenched gender stereotypes curb deviation and contestation.
However they have proved good for the suitcase industry now Guardians of women all over the world have adopted the fad of chopping off their arms and legs and squeezing them into baggage.
And they are notoriously difficult to dislodge – for people pay more attention to information that confirms their priors.
That is certainly true. Once you know that most English ladies have been confined to suitcases by evil Guardians, you start seeing this sort of thing all over the place-
Notice the lady shown above appears quite happy. Why is this?
Dr. Evans explains-
Lacking exposure to more egalitarian alternatives, people may not question ideals of female submission and sacrifice.
The lady shown above doesn't get that women don't have live in suitcases. They could aspire to something better- like a steamer trunk.
Those living in remote rural communities, growing up in violent homes, without access to critical discourses, may regard wife-beatings as normal.
Which is why men shouldn't be chucked in jail for beating and killing their wives. The thing may be normal where they come from. On the other hand, Dr. Evans has hinted that the practice of chopping the hands and legs of ladies in London and confining them to a suitcase is not in fact legal. The law may be merely cosmetic. BoJo probably put it in just to get Biden off his back. But that law does exist. Guardians must stop mutilating women. This may sound harsh, but it must be done. I don't care if the thing is 'cool' or 'rad'. Just stop it already.
Women then try to endure what they perceive as inevitable. In Bemba (a Bantu language) this is called ukushipikisha.
This is false. That word is used in an evangelical and theological context. It doesn't mean enduring what is perceived as inevitable, but what is actually inevitable because it is the Will of God. I may praise my own extraordinary fortitude in having endured beheading at the hands of Taliban before turning the tables on them by kung fu kicking the shit out of them after which I picked up my own head and twisted it back on. But this isn't ukushipikisha. It is a stupid lie. I wasn't actually beheaded at all. You can't endure what is wholly imaginary or incompossible.
Likewise, live-in domestic workers in Latin America, associating only with their patronas, accustomed to servitude and daily reminders of their inferiority, may come to regard themselves as worth less.
Surely this happens to any one teaching a shite subject to cretins? The fact is, what you are doing is worthless. You are worthless- unlike the domestic servant in a poor part of the world who will accept as true her priest, or her friend's, assurance that her worth is beyond rubies.
That said, many men and women are privately critical of gender inequalities
very true. Just the other day, I was deploring the practice of chopping off arms and legs of local women. Then I saw a cop car. I stopped talking to my friend, the squirrel. For a moment it remained frozen gazing at my face blankly. Then it suddenly scampered away. That night- which was moonless- I was kept awake by a distant thud-thud. Was it a stealth helicopter surveilling me? I honestly don't know. Under BoJo's iron rule, people like me are afraid to speak any language other than a Dravidianized dialect of Bemba- which as Dr. Evans has pointed out, is a Bantu language. However by strategically interpolating a Na-Dene vocabulary, I seek to add a layer of encryption, so to speak, to my chats with squirrels on contentious topics related to Gender inequality.
but comply because they anticipate social condemnation. Key here are 'norm perceptions': our beliefs about how we will be perceived and treated by others.
If Evans speaks out about her own life in a suitcase- something which she has in fact communicated in a crepuscular manner- then she may be perceived as a stupid liar or be treated as a psychiatric patient, not an academic at all.
By interacting and observing their communities, people gauge which behaviours are broadly practised and supported.
This is why it is vital that people actually observe their own communities. If you don't see lots of women being carried around in suitcases then you should not support behaviors only tolerable in the victims of such Patriarchal practices.
Seeing widespread compliance, people infer widespread approval
Why? The thing is illogical. Compliance may be coerced. If it is the product of 'approval' we wouldn't call it compliance. We would say it was a spontaneous and enthusiastic type of behavior.
The 'norm perception' that peers, community elders, or government will chastise deviation furnishes individuals with a self-interested reason to conform.
No. It provides a reason to appear to conform though simulating great stupidity may be even more effective.
If men think they will be mocked for sharing care work, they may be reluctant to do so publicly.
If men are afraid of being mocked, they are pussies. When a big guy does care work, that work becomes prestigious. His acolytes compete to take over from him. If a baby or a kitten is put in a cell with a bunch of thugs, a pecking order will emerge with people higher up the totem pole getting more hands on care time.
This invisibility reinforces norm perceptions that men do not change nappies or sweep the floors.
Norm perceptions don't matter at all. That's how come so much jerking off occurs.
If women anticipate discrimination, they may not put themselves forward as leaders.
Nor will men. So what? If you don't anticipate getting paid, you don't turn up for work.
Some women submit just to avoid being reprimanded, reproached, or beaten to a pulp.
But they still end up without arms and legs shut up in a suitcase
Added to that, many lack the economic autonomy to antagonise their social networks.
This is one of the most serious drawbacks of having no arms and legs and being carried around in a suitcase by evil 'Guardians'.
Widespread compliance perpetuates pluralistic ignorance, as potential allies remain invisible.
Or similarly shut up in suitcases.
So, women keep their heads down, take care of the kids, and endure patriarchal dominance.
The alternative being to type out a blog like this using only your nose because male Guardians have chopped off your legs and arms
Norm perceptions can depress use of government services, accountability mechanisms, and bottom-up pressure for reform.
No. Only Voodoo has that property.
In parts of Latin America, domestic workers presume that government will not tackle labour violations, so do not report.
This was also true of Knightsbridge, in London. Some victims along with other women, with the support of a local Tory MP were able to bring about change of a highly beneficial type. But this was done by focusing on what Blake called 'Minute Particulars' not telling stupid lies. The fact is everybody, including small kids, understand that 'norms' are defeasible.
Without seeing successful mobilisation, workers may be fatalistic, pessimistic about reform, reluctant to join a union or initiate labour claims.
This is even more true after that 'successful mobilization' proves entirely futile- though, no doubt, a couple of professional agitators did well out of it.
Likewise, if women think the police will be unsympathetic, they many not bother to report gender-based violence – as in Zambia, Bangladesh, Bolivia, and Pakistan.
Or London. But this is also true of male victims of female spousal abuse.
Women may get stuck in a despondency trap, moderate their ambitions, and reluctantly perpetuate the status quo.
Or they may quit a worthless academic department and get a proper job.
We know from socio-psychology that individuals’ group efficacy beliefs strongly predict collective action.
But we also know that socio-psychology is a crock of shit which fakes its results on an industrial scale.
That is, if people believe resistance is futile, they regard it as costly and fruitless.
This does not follow. X may be futile, but so long as it is fun we'll spend money on it.
But if everyone complies then pluralistic ignorance persists, as does the patriarchy.
No. Ignorance may persist but an institution which is incompossible for a species which arose in a Darwinian manner can't persist because it never existed in the first place. Why not just join Qanon?
This despondency trap compounds a negative feedback loop.
As does reading or writing stupid shite of this sort.
People only revise these norm perceptions when they witness widespread behavioural change (or hear of it from trusted sources).
But they soon see they have been lied to. Telling stupid lies does not provoke political change. It leads to being seen as a stupid liar.
But if gender ideologies only change after behavioural disruption, what catalyses the initial behavioural change, amid risks of social censure? How do societies overcome this “chicken and egg” problem?
By disintermediating stupid academics. There is 'local arbitrage' and then there are mimetic effects. Nothing more is needed. We don't have to change everything before anything can be changed. Nor do we need our Consciousness raised- though, no doubt, some party drugs would be welcome.
Feminist activism is fundamental to breaking the cycle
Since the Seventies, Feminist activism has been a treadmill of paranoid stupidity which has actively harmed women all over the world. But this is also true of all sorts of other 'second order' activism- i.e. demanding more of 'first order' activism rather than actually doing the thing and being judged on the result.
By speaking out, challenging patriarchal practices, collectively making a din, and thereby demonstrating broad support for social change, feminist activism can galvanise hope for reform, secure incremental advances, so as to catalyse further resistance and ultimately secure women’s equal rights, freedoms, and protection.
Something similar could be said about neo-Nazi activism. The difference is we all benefit if Women have better lives and life-chances. We do worse if Racists cunts gain power or even a modicum of respectability.
It is in our interest if there is lots of localized 'mechanism design'- driven by women with lived experience- which utilizes the skills of lawyers and accountants and economists and tech geeks and so forth. Sadly, the Academy can't be involved. It is stupid and useless. Still, in the same way that failed priests can become theologians or philosophers, useless people could be recruited to the Dept. of Grievance Studies so as to cater, in an adversely selective way, to a new generation of paranoid cretins. It is probably cheaper to let them manage each others grandiose delusions than to get Mental Health Services involved.
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