Tyler seems to be trying to build a sort of ecumenical definition of feminism, where feminism is defined more by chosen point of emphasis rather than overall worldview, and therefore actually consistent with advocacy on male issues, just as one can be anti-cancer and anti-malaria at the same time, but choose to focus on one. Some feminists even take this tack in the abstract, saying things like 'men should do their own advocacy rather than expecting feminists to solve all of men's issues in addition to our own' when asked to explain the asymmetry of their interests.
In practice though, 'male issues advocates' and feminists inexorably clash. They clash of course because where male and female interests conflict (e.g., debates over parental custody, treatment of people accused of domestic violence), feminists often take the side of female interests over procedural equality, but also because choice of emphasis is viewed as a zero-sum game. Most feminists believe women's issues are much more severe than men's and therefore view the 'men's issues' side of things as similar to advocating for the oppressor; even when morally correct in theory, it is seen to reflect a ridiculous disproportionality; e.g., setting up a fund to defend rich southern plantation owners falsely accused of crimes in the South in the 1850s. Sure, there are probably some such cases genuinely warranting redress, but it reflects absurd priorities.
Some self-identified feminists do of course take a fairly ecumenical view of gender issues, but they tend to struggle to find acceptance among mainstream feminists.
You guys are placing an awful lot of eggs I the social justice/equality/fairness basket here.
Quite frankly, you're arguing about feminism like....men (nerdy men at that).
I prefer the Steve Sailer definition of feminism, which he phrases a few different ways about amounts to "I, woman with more masculine than average disposition, should rise in relative status to other women who have more feminine dispositions."
(or hilariously in the trans age, that literal men should rise in status as women above normal women)
This especially explains why a lot of feminism is about arguing with other women.
All the rest of it is just words. You start with the vibes and regurgitate the talking points you think will actualize the vibes.
Take "slut walks", the feminist cause of the day when I was a young man. The idea that such nonsense could slot into some logical discussion of gender fairness is laughable. Sure, they regurgitate a bunch of easily refuted stats about rape or something. But really, it sure looks like a bunch of not so attractive women who want to not feel so bad about what they have to do to get male attention.
When I worry about what my daughters will take away from feminism its an awful lot of bad habits and attitudes unrelated to fairness. I wouldn't want my daughter being in a slutwalk even if the gender pay gap wasn't made up.
Feminism: the view that society generally treats men more fairly than women
over
Feminism: the view that society generally treats women more unfairly than men
The second one feels more descriptive. The focus of feminism is less on men and more on women. For example, the "Pink Tax" is framed as women are charged more for the same product, not that men are charged less.
1) Under Tyler's definition someone might focus on and organize around solving problems that are specific to women because they believe they have a comparative advantage in doing so. I mean this is the norm for organizing around diseases (the people raising awareness/money for Alzheimer's, heart disease etc.. etc.. often do so because they can harness motivating personal passion and feel the satisfaction about fighting back against something that hurt them not because they think their disease is more harmful, has a better ROI etc.. than other diseases.
So doesn't it make perfect sense for people who have experienced sexual harassment and other challenges that are particularly faced by women (and thus may have extra insight, passion etc..) to focus on fighting those problems even if they think there are other, equally serious, issues faced by men. They just want to focus on fighting the problems they faced just like most people.
2) While one can debate back and forth what is the 'best' definition for the term feminism with respect to a variety of notions of best it seems like both you and Tyler agree that there is considerable disagreement as to what feminism means.
Given this disagreement and the fact that your arguments would proceed equally well if you'd called it "inequality feminism" or just made up any old term (since you are providing the definition) why make your book less persuasive to all those people who either understand feminism in a different fashion or simply want to avoid fighting over something as meaningless as a definition. For instance, many women who were part of the fight for equality back in the 60s when there was no question women were subject to discrimination feel strongly about their identity as feminists even if they believe women don't have it, on net, worse anymore.
I tell people that I am a feminist in order to signal that I’m not one of those awful guys who hates women.
If my daughter tells people she is a feminist, she is signaling that she is not part of a conservative or religious group where women have a lesser status.
I don’t think that people who would call themselves non-feminists are a group that Bryan would like his daughter hanging out with
"Not identifying as a feminist a good first step." Dropping -isms is very good step to seeing an issue without the censorious socio-political lens from casting shadow on easy to see behavior and actions.
Just as an aside, I've been reading your work since the early days of EconLog and was fascinated by the the things you would choose to write about. I remember a few years later reading an essay by Arnold Kling, a co-author at EconLog in which he described you as an intellectual bully, but I don't think he meant it entirely as a negative statement but more a matter of intellectual incompatibility. After reading the reply to professor Cowen I can understand this all the better. You have a persistent and vigorous reasoning and writing style. Off-putting but only to those who favor consensus over revision, even when revision is necessary,
> Calling a “series of proposals” that “would improve the lives of many women” an overall “improvement” again presupposes that our society treats men more fairly than women.
No, to a utilitarian it would be an improvement EVEN IF women were currently treated more fairly than men. Similarly, to a utilitarian it is better for the rich to get richer even if they are currently better off than the poor. I really would expect an economist like Bryan (even if he rejects utilitarianism) to know this.
Tyler has a clue when he writes that feminism's definition should be "weighted toward the status of women". Combine this with Bryan's definition and you get:
"the view that society generally treats men more fairly than women with regard to status"
This explains the beliefs and actions of feminists of all types. They don't want gender equality in logging or trash collecting, but they do in engineering and politics. It isn't that the former occupations are advantageous or not for men; that's irrelevant because the jobs are low status. Bringing up undeniable statistics on violent crime or combat won't change anyone's mind, because those aren't status issues. If a women is harassed, that feels like a power difference, which is a status problem. If street gangs murder each other, there is no status reduction, because that's just what gangs do. Obviously, feminists are more concerned with the former situation.
>“One reason for that being that they have never lived the lives of women.” Again, a thinly-veiled accusation of not just unfairness, but excess unfairness. After all, women have never lived the lives of men, but almost no one uses this fact to impugn their “understanding of the import” of anything.
Thank you! I was reading up on the orthodox academia views on male privilege and it was emphasized that men, not having lived as women, often don't even recognize their privilege. And there seemed to be no acknowledgement or self-awareness at all that the underlying logic is perfectly symmetrical.
Women have never lived as men. How do feminists know there isn't some female privilege they're overlooking? I say there is, and so do some trans-men who have transitioned and pass as men. Men and women are both "privileged" in various spheres to varying degrees and I guess if you tried to calculate who has it better overall, it's probably a wash.
It seems to me that you're chickening out. The belief that "society cares more about women's problems - much more," which you espoused in your original post on Don't Be A Feminist, is - to put it kindly - difficult to reconcile with your back-down position that "I say that the unfairness men and women endure in our society is very similar overall".
Don't back down. If you believe that society cares much more about women's problems, then it seems to me that you are led to a belief - one I have reached - that in fact the unfairness men endure in our society is considerably more severe.
If you look past the "who nominally occupies all the positions of power" question - as you partly do - the evidence is pretty compelling. Men train for and work in careers based more on income potential and less on personal interest, and work substantially more hours over the course of their lives, and consequently bring home most of the household income; there are enough studies showing men do at least as much household chores (men's chores are invisible) to call any suggestion that women are carrying the bulk of the burden into serious question; they have less free time overall and far less time with their children; they have only brief retirements; they have worse health and substantially shorter lives; they have worse mental health and vastly higher suicide risk; they die on the job literally orders of magnitude more often than women do; they are a full order of magnitude more likely to be a victim of violent crime including murder; they are almost equally likely to be a victim of domestic violence up to and including murder but there is virtually no awareness of nor support for them at all, and a past administration even tried to redefine violence to cover up the near-equality of victimization rates so that the absence of support mechanisms would be less glaring; procedural protections against false accusations have much lower social and legislative support if the accusation is by a woman against a man; they are much more likely to be in jail and receive much stiffer sentences for the same crimes; in divorce, their marital obligations weaken their argument for continued contact with their children; in divorce, the wife's ongoing obligation to them is usually zero, while they routinely face not only the loss of what they've worked for but also crushing ongoing obligations to someone they may already have had to carry financially for years (usually, the more carrying they've done, the more crushing the obligations); they are subject to enslavement by the military (which, bless its institutional heart, is totally opposed to the idea) while women are not, in large part because politicians realize wars would be much more difficult to prosecute if young women - rather than young men - were coming home in body bags; when there are fatalities - whether in natural disasters or war - the number of women and children killed is emphasized, underlining the idea that men's deaths matter less; they can safely be ridiculed in popular culture (and they are); need I really keep going? My fingers are tiring.
These points have been made for years, and they're routinely dismissed as "angry men" mimicking the women's movement to try to "preserve their privilege." Cassie Jaye's TED talk addresses that dismissal: it's been wrong for at least 50 years and it's worse than ever now.
Don't chicken out. Society cares more about women's problems - far more. We're nowhere close to having equal levels of unfairness.
Normally when Bryan and Tyler argue, I agree with Tyler. I think this might be the first exception. I think Tyler takes a certain amount of pleasure in lobbing bombs at Bryan, and sometimes that leads him to start chucking grenades when it isn't really warranted.
1. Having received my copy, I was a bit surprised about just ONE blurb. I have US-titles with a dozen pages of blurbs. ;) Only Scott Alexander, the Great, was brave enough. As he wrote on his blog: "He asked me to write a blurb, then rejected my first few suggestions (“Bryan Caplan committed career suicide by writing this book; you owe it to him to make his sacrifice meaningful by reading it” and “I didn't think Bryan was ever going to be able to top the ‘education is bad’ book, but he definitely did”). He did end up including something by me on the back cover. I must admit I was kind of hoping it would be hidden among many other reviewer blurbs so that my name wasn’t too prominent, but I guess all those other potential reviewers chickened out, like I almost did." end of quote https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/links-for-september-2022
Where are the blurbs of Alex, Robin, Scott S. ...? It is not such an evil book and many profs do have tenure, right?
2. After TC's post, I felt I should first read Mill: "John Stuart Mill’s On the Subjection of Women remains one of the very best books ever written, on any topic, and indeed I have drawn my views from Mill. Everyone should read it." - Anyone here did?
Quite frankly, this back and forth on a topic that is not of much importance, seems to be an useless intellectual exercise. Bryan and Tyler are better off talking about if the Quantity Theory of Money is underrated.
Plus an useful thing to do when it comes to definitions is simply go back to a time shortly before the Great Awokening (circa 2010) and see how something was used and it almost always is the best definition of the thing. LGBT rights in 2010? Gay people should be allowed to marry. LGBT rights in 2022? Children should be allowed to surgically mutilate themselves. Same for feminism. Use the 2010 feminism understanding/definition.
Tyler seems to be trying to build a sort of ecumenical definition of feminism, where feminism is defined more by chosen point of emphasis rather than overall worldview, and therefore actually consistent with advocacy on male issues, just as one can be anti-cancer and anti-malaria at the same time, but choose to focus on one. Some feminists even take this tack in the abstract, saying things like 'men should do their own advocacy rather than expecting feminists to solve all of men's issues in addition to our own' when asked to explain the asymmetry of their interests.
In practice though, 'male issues advocates' and feminists inexorably clash. They clash of course because where male and female interests conflict (e.g., debates over parental custody, treatment of people accused of domestic violence), feminists often take the side of female interests over procedural equality, but also because choice of emphasis is viewed as a zero-sum game. Most feminists believe women's issues are much more severe than men's and therefore view the 'men's issues' side of things as similar to advocating for the oppressor; even when morally correct in theory, it is seen to reflect a ridiculous disproportionality; e.g., setting up a fund to defend rich southern plantation owners falsely accused of crimes in the South in the 1850s. Sure, there are probably some such cases genuinely warranting redress, but it reflects absurd priorities.
Some self-identified feminists do of course take a fairly ecumenical view of gender issues, but they tend to struggle to find acceptance among mainstream feminists.
You guys are placing an awful lot of eggs I the social justice/equality/fairness basket here.
Quite frankly, you're arguing about feminism like....men (nerdy men at that).
I prefer the Steve Sailer definition of feminism, which he phrases a few different ways about amounts to "I, woman with more masculine than average disposition, should rise in relative status to other women who have more feminine dispositions."
(or hilariously in the trans age, that literal men should rise in status as women above normal women)
This especially explains why a lot of feminism is about arguing with other women.
All the rest of it is just words. You start with the vibes and regurgitate the talking points you think will actualize the vibes.
Take "slut walks", the feminist cause of the day when I was a young man. The idea that such nonsense could slot into some logical discussion of gender fairness is laughable. Sure, they regurgitate a bunch of easily refuted stats about rape or something. But really, it sure looks like a bunch of not so attractive women who want to not feel so bad about what they have to do to get male attention.
When I worry about what my daughters will take away from feminism its an awful lot of bad habits and attitudes unrelated to fairness. I wouldn't want my daughter being in a slutwalk even if the gender pay gap wasn't made up.
Any reason to use this:
Feminism: the view that society generally treats men more fairly than women
over
Feminism: the view that society generally treats women more unfairly than men
The second one feels more descriptive. The focus of feminism is less on men and more on women. For example, the "Pink Tax" is framed as women are charged more for the same product, not that men are charged less.
Two quick points.
1) Under Tyler's definition someone might focus on and organize around solving problems that are specific to women because they believe they have a comparative advantage in doing so. I mean this is the norm for organizing around diseases (the people raising awareness/money for Alzheimer's, heart disease etc.. etc.. often do so because they can harness motivating personal passion and feel the satisfaction about fighting back against something that hurt them not because they think their disease is more harmful, has a better ROI etc.. than other diseases.
So doesn't it make perfect sense for people who have experienced sexual harassment and other challenges that are particularly faced by women (and thus may have extra insight, passion etc..) to focus on fighting those problems even if they think there are other, equally serious, issues faced by men. They just want to focus on fighting the problems they faced just like most people.
2) While one can debate back and forth what is the 'best' definition for the term feminism with respect to a variety of notions of best it seems like both you and Tyler agree that there is considerable disagreement as to what feminism means.
Given this disagreement and the fact that your arguments would proceed equally well if you'd called it "inequality feminism" or just made up any old term (since you are providing the definition) why make your book less persuasive to all those people who either understand feminism in a different fashion or simply want to avoid fighting over something as meaningless as a definition. For instance, many women who were part of the fight for equality back in the 60s when there was no question women were subject to discrimination feel strongly about their identity as feminists even if they believe women don't have it, on net, worse anymore.
I tell people that I am a feminist in order to signal that I’m not one of those awful guys who hates women.
If my daughter tells people she is a feminist, she is signaling that she is not part of a conservative or religious group where women have a lesser status.
I don’t think that people who would call themselves non-feminists are a group that Bryan would like his daughter hanging out with
"Not identifying as a feminist a good first step." Dropping -isms is very good step to seeing an issue without the censorious socio-political lens from casting shadow on easy to see behavior and actions.
Just as an aside, I've been reading your work since the early days of EconLog and was fascinated by the the things you would choose to write about. I remember a few years later reading an essay by Arnold Kling, a co-author at EconLog in which he described you as an intellectual bully, but I don't think he meant it entirely as a negative statement but more a matter of intellectual incompatibility. After reading the reply to professor Cowen I can understand this all the better. You have a persistent and vigorous reasoning and writing style. Off-putting but only to those who favor consensus over revision, even when revision is necessary,
> Calling a “series of proposals” that “would improve the lives of many women” an overall “improvement” again presupposes that our society treats men more fairly than women.
No, to a utilitarian it would be an improvement EVEN IF women were currently treated more fairly than men. Similarly, to a utilitarian it is better for the rich to get richer even if they are currently better off than the poor. I really would expect an economist like Bryan (even if he rejects utilitarianism) to know this.
Tyler has a clue when he writes that feminism's definition should be "weighted toward the status of women". Combine this with Bryan's definition and you get:
"the view that society generally treats men more fairly than women with regard to status"
This explains the beliefs and actions of feminists of all types. They don't want gender equality in logging or trash collecting, but they do in engineering and politics. It isn't that the former occupations are advantageous or not for men; that's irrelevant because the jobs are low status. Bringing up undeniable statistics on violent crime or combat won't change anyone's mind, because those aren't status issues. If a women is harassed, that feels like a power difference, which is a status problem. If street gangs murder each other, there is no status reduction, because that's just what gangs do. Obviously, feminists are more concerned with the former situation.
>“One reason for that being that they have never lived the lives of women.” Again, a thinly-veiled accusation of not just unfairness, but excess unfairness. After all, women have never lived the lives of men, but almost no one uses this fact to impugn their “understanding of the import” of anything.
Thank you! I was reading up on the orthodox academia views on male privilege and it was emphasized that men, not having lived as women, often don't even recognize their privilege. And there seemed to be no acknowledgement or self-awareness at all that the underlying logic is perfectly symmetrical.
Women have never lived as men. How do feminists know there isn't some female privilege they're overlooking? I say there is, and so do some trans-men who have transitioned and pass as men. Men and women are both "privileged" in various spheres to varying degrees and I guess if you tried to calculate who has it better overall, it's probably a wash.
Rich outlive poor, whites outlive blacks, women outlive men; huh.
It seems to me that you're chickening out. The belief that "society cares more about women's problems - much more," which you espoused in your original post on Don't Be A Feminist, is - to put it kindly - difficult to reconcile with your back-down position that "I say that the unfairness men and women endure in our society is very similar overall".
Don't back down. If you believe that society cares much more about women's problems, then it seems to me that you are led to a belief - one I have reached - that in fact the unfairness men endure in our society is considerably more severe.
If you look past the "who nominally occupies all the positions of power" question - as you partly do - the evidence is pretty compelling. Men train for and work in careers based more on income potential and less on personal interest, and work substantially more hours over the course of their lives, and consequently bring home most of the household income; there are enough studies showing men do at least as much household chores (men's chores are invisible) to call any suggestion that women are carrying the bulk of the burden into serious question; they have less free time overall and far less time with their children; they have only brief retirements; they have worse health and substantially shorter lives; they have worse mental health and vastly higher suicide risk; they die on the job literally orders of magnitude more often than women do; they are a full order of magnitude more likely to be a victim of violent crime including murder; they are almost equally likely to be a victim of domestic violence up to and including murder but there is virtually no awareness of nor support for them at all, and a past administration even tried to redefine violence to cover up the near-equality of victimization rates so that the absence of support mechanisms would be less glaring; procedural protections against false accusations have much lower social and legislative support if the accusation is by a woman against a man; they are much more likely to be in jail and receive much stiffer sentences for the same crimes; in divorce, their marital obligations weaken their argument for continued contact with their children; in divorce, the wife's ongoing obligation to them is usually zero, while they routinely face not only the loss of what they've worked for but also crushing ongoing obligations to someone they may already have had to carry financially for years (usually, the more carrying they've done, the more crushing the obligations); they are subject to enslavement by the military (which, bless its institutional heart, is totally opposed to the idea) while women are not, in large part because politicians realize wars would be much more difficult to prosecute if young women - rather than young men - were coming home in body bags; when there are fatalities - whether in natural disasters or war - the number of women and children killed is emphasized, underlining the idea that men's deaths matter less; they can safely be ridiculed in popular culture (and they are); need I really keep going? My fingers are tiring.
These points have been made for years, and they're routinely dismissed as "angry men" mimicking the women's movement to try to "preserve their privilege." Cassie Jaye's TED talk addresses that dismissal: it's been wrong for at least 50 years and it's worse than ever now.
Don't chicken out. Society cares more about women's problems - far more. We're nowhere close to having equal levels of unfairness.
Normally when Bryan and Tyler argue, I agree with Tyler. I think this might be the first exception. I think Tyler takes a certain amount of pleasure in lobbing bombs at Bryan, and sometimes that leads him to start chucking grenades when it isn't really warranted.
1. Having received my copy, I was a bit surprised about just ONE blurb. I have US-titles with a dozen pages of blurbs. ;) Only Scott Alexander, the Great, was brave enough. As he wrote on his blog: "He asked me to write a blurb, then rejected my first few suggestions (“Bryan Caplan committed career suicide by writing this book; you owe it to him to make his sacrifice meaningful by reading it” and “I didn't think Bryan was ever going to be able to top the ‘education is bad’ book, but he definitely did”). He did end up including something by me on the back cover. I must admit I was kind of hoping it would be hidden among many other reviewer blurbs so that my name wasn’t too prominent, but I guess all those other potential reviewers chickened out, like I almost did." end of quote https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/links-for-september-2022
Where are the blurbs of Alex, Robin, Scott S. ...? It is not such an evil book and many profs do have tenure, right?
2. After TC's post, I felt I should first read Mill: "John Stuart Mill’s On the Subjection of Women remains one of the very best books ever written, on any topic, and indeed I have drawn my views from Mill. Everyone should read it." - Anyone here did?
Quite frankly, this back and forth on a topic that is not of much importance, seems to be an useless intellectual exercise. Bryan and Tyler are better off talking about if the Quantity Theory of Money is underrated.
Plus an useful thing to do when it comes to definitions is simply go back to a time shortly before the Great Awokening (circa 2010) and see how something was used and it almost always is the best definition of the thing. LGBT rights in 2010? Gay people should be allowed to marry. LGBT rights in 2022? Children should be allowed to surgically mutilate themselves. Same for feminism. Use the 2010 feminism understanding/definition.
Bryan, are you really so jealous of the attention Jordan Peterson gets?
Good on Tyler to take you (slightly) to task.
https://www.mattball.org/2022/09/my-review-of-response-to-bryan-caplans.html
typo: "you almost surely consider yourself a feminism."
feel free to delete this comment