Jordan Peterson

[inthesomeday]

Woah. Somebody just randomly coming across contrapoints without any prior knowledge? What’d you think?

 

[Kyriakos]

Staying on topic: as I was researching more about Jordan Peterson, I came across this video. What struck me is the revelation that Jordan Peterson combines some basic truths with lies and misrepresentations, which is basically what most Russian politicians do and what Russia state propaganda does, as well. I guess, Jordan Peterson could make a great politician in Russia.

I don't get some of the Americanisms and other weird stuff, but I think this girl did an excellent job at explaining Jordan Peterson and the Western philosophy (which I am more familiar with than with Jordan Peterson).

Well, he is cool, but he doesn't identify as a girl (see video below) and it is rather obvious he isn't biologically female either ^_^

 

[Миханя]

Well, he is cool, but he doesn't identify as a girl (see video below) and it is rather obvious he isn't biologically female either ^_^

Twitter clearly states she/her. Just like she says in the video, people choosing their pronouns goes hand in hand with the Western tradition of individualism and making choices for oneself. That's not communism, trrrust me on that.

 

[Bootstoots]

Staying on topic: as I was researching more about Jordan Peterson, I came across this video. What struck me is the revelation that Jordan Peterson combines some basic truths with lies and misrepresentations, which is basically what most Russian politicians do and what Russia state propaganda does, as well. I guess, Jordan Peterson could make a great politician in Russia.

Misrepresentations - absolutely. He fails entirely at understanding what the academic left really is and the various conflicts within it. And, obviously IMO, his fears about totalitarianism in the left are greatly over the top. Just because both present-day academic leftists and Stalin were both influenced by Marx does not mean that they have the same goals.

It is pretty easy to imagine that a world where identity politics reigned supreme would enable people to arbitrarily run straight white men out of their jobs based on trumped-up claims of bigotry or sexual harassment. In my experience, this is what is actually feared by opponents of "SJW" ideology. But the leap from there to driving them to the killing fields or instituting a Great Leap Forward is nonsense. It's the kind of provocative nonsense that causes people to become famous in this day and age, which is why he's so visible now.

Lies - not that I've seen. He genuinely seems to believe that the differences among left-wing groups are trivial and that they all have the same ultimate goal, which is fundamentally totalitarian in nature.

I don't get some of the Americanisms and other weird stuff, but I think this girl did an excellent job at explaining Jordan Peterson and the Western philosophy (which I am more familiar with than with Jordan Peterson).

This is an amazingly good video. Unlike basically everything else I've seen discussing JP, it actually takes the time to refute his claims and demonstrate his lack of understanding of what he is criticizing. And it does it in an entertaining way, no less!

I've seen videos by Contrapoints before and thought she made good arguments, but this one takes the cake.

What I especially liked was the way she points out that Peterson is essentially taking up the sword of modernism against postmodernism. The way that postmodernism involves deconstructing basically everything, but without building anything in its place, is profoundly disturbing to the sorts of people who want the certainty provided by science and reason, along with institutions that are purportedly defending rational principles. Although nobody seems to admit it, postmodern thinking mostly just leads to nihilism relativism. (edit: relativism might be a better word choice than nihilism)

That seems to be why both Peterson and others like him, and the New Atheists like Sam Harris, spend much of their time trying to defend modernism. They can't tolerate the way intellectual concepts are easy to take down but virtually impossible to replace. Their efforts will fail - postmodernism really has been largely successful at dissolving the intellectual ground we stand on and replacing it with quicksand.

-----

All of this said, while he gets quite a bit wrong in detail, there are some implications of what he says that actually do need to be taken seriously. For instance, while he says that gender differences exist - a mostly uncontroversial statement - he implies that they have effects that are basically impossible to get around. But it has become nearly impossible to talk about this in certain circles dominated by the identitarian left, including academia and several left-leaning private companies.

As an example that he cites frequently, women have, on average, higher levels of agreeableness in the Big Five personality model, which is generally considered the best personality model out there (keeping in mind that it is a model - all models are wrong in detail, but some are useful). The difference comes out to about 0.5 standard deviations - large enough to have substantial effects if this is a trait which influences life outcomes. And it appears to be correlated to less willingness to negotiate salaries or act ruthlessly in a dominance hierarchy such as lobster fights corporate management. This - and not just conscious or unconscious discrimination/harassment - may explain some of the gender pay gap as well as the underrepresentation of women in positions of leadership.

There are other things like this as well. For instance, James Damore's infamous Google memo stated, among other things, that there are inherent differences in interest (not ability, but interest) between men and women, which are unlikely to be socially constructed and which explain male overrepresentation in many STEM fields. I've been struck by the fact that very few people who are hobbyists or - especially - crackpots in STEM fields are women either. There are very few women at sciencemadness.org (amateur chemistry) or fusor.net (building amateur fusion reactors/particle colliders). People who write physics or departments claiming to have disproved Einstein or created their own Theory of Everything are virtually all men, as well.

Meanwhile, while physics, computer science, and most engineering fields have remained male-dominated, with a female percentage that has stagnated in the 15-20% range, women are getting a majority of new biology Ph Ds and are a majority of new MDs. Their ability to crack into fields that were once just as male-dominated while remaining small fractions of others suggests that it might not just be social conditioning behind this.

My point isn't really to talk about that issue specifically at length - given this thread's history, we should make a new thread if we want to talk a whole lot more about it. The bigger issue is that this sort of thing should be mentionable in polite company/academia/internal company memos and not a firing offense. The fact that it has become a de-facto thoughtcrime is a big part of why Peterson with his exaggerated claims of modern left-wing totalitarianism has become popular.

edit: changed nihilism --> relativism

 

[Synobun]

I don't know that any actual judgments can be made about the number of women in male-dominated fields yet. There's been one, maybe two generations since the education swing came into being. Not so sure that this is long enough to say definitively whether or not the differences between the primary genders would result in such a skewed ratio in certain jobs.

 

[Миханя]

Misrepresentations - absolutely. He fails entirely at understanding what the academic left really is and the various conflicts within it. And, obviously IMO, his fears about totalitarianism in the left are greatly over the top. Just because both present-day academic leftists and Stalin were both influenced by Marx does not mean that they have the same goals.

I think people in the West are obsessed with Stalin as the face of communism, but what we had under Stalin was not communism — it was state capitalism. The state was the corporation which owned the "means of production" and almost owned the workers, as well. It's one of the biggest jokes of the 20th century, in my opinion.

It is pretty easy to imagine that a world where identity politics reigned supreme would enable people to arbitrarily run straight white men out of their jobs based on trumped-up claims of bigotry or sexual harassment. In my experience, this is what is actually feared by opponents of "SJW" ideology. But the leap from there to driving them to the killing fields or instituting a Great Leap Forward is nonsense. It's the kind of provocative nonsense that causes people to become famous in this day and age, which is why he's so visible now.

This must be some very US-specific problem because I don't really understand what any of that means or who "SJW" is.

What I especially liked was the way she points out that Peterson is essentially taking up the sword of modernism against postmodernism. The way that postmodernism involves deconstructing basically everything, but without building anything in its place, is profoundly disturbing to the sorts of people who want the certainty provided by science and reason, along with institutions that are purportedly defending rational principles. Although nobody seems to admit it, postmodern thinking mostly just leads to nihilism.

Nihilism was a movement, particularly popular among Russian nobility circles in the 19th century: people so spoiled by the riches they did not know what to do with their lives. I don't see how postmodernism leads to nihilism. Just because some philosophers say that gender and race are "socially constructed" does not mean you can just drop them without thinking and pretend like they don't exist. In my opinion, all postmodernism does is just confirm the relativity of human experience, thinking, and the "temporality" of human ideas. To me, the main takeaway from postmodernism is that concepts change over time, and everything comes from a long history of something else. Basically, human societies are one long continuum of ideas which evolve over time. Where is nihilism in that?

As an example that he cites frequently, women have, on average, higher levels of agreeableness in the Big Five personality model, which is generally considered the best personality model out there (keeping in mind that it is a model - all models are wrong in detail, but some are useful). The difference comes out to about 0.5 standard deviations - large enough to have substantial effects if this is a trait which influences life outcomes. And it appears to be correlated to less willingness to negotiate salaries or act ruthlessly in a dominance hierarchy such as lobster fights corporate management. This - and not just conscious or unconscious discrimination/harassment - may explain some of the gender pay gap as well as the underrepresentation of women in positions of leadership.

There are other things like this as well. For instance, James Damore's infamous Google memo stated, among other things, that there are inherent differences in interest (not ability, but interest) between men and women, which are unlikely to be socially constructed and which explain male overrepresentation in many STEM fields. I've been struck by the fact that very few people who are hobbyists or - especially - crackpots in STEM fields are women either. There are very few women at sciencemadness.org (amateur chemistry) or fusor.net (building amateur fusion reactors/particle colliders). People who write physics or departments claiming to have disproved Einstein or created their own Theory of Everything are virtually all men, as well.

Meanwhile, while physics, computer science, and most engineering fields have remained male-dominated, with a female percentage that has stagnated in the 15-20% range, women are getting a majority of new biology Ph Ds and are a majority of new MDs. Their ability to crack into fields that were once just as male-dominated while remaining small fractions of others suggests that it might not just be social conditioning behind this.

This has to be a US-specific problem, again. You had women locked up in homes up to the 60's or something. As bad as USSR was, after the 1917 Revolution, Bolsheviks emancipated women from the home and into factories, armed forced, and academia. We had women command battalions during World War II, we had women scientists, and women workers. Of course, sexism continued to exist and still exists today, but there is a larger percentage of women doctors and engineers in Russia than in the West.

Also... Karl Marx said that the environment shapes the individual. If women in the US are raised to be mothers and homemakers, then it is quite logical that their interests in science would be less. Not because women are "naturally" less interested in sciences, but because they were raised to be in such a way. If you raise boys to cook and sew, then for the majority of them, it will be their interests.

Consider this example: when my nephew went to high school in 90's Russia, boys and girls had all the same classes except one. I don't know how to translate in into English, but the idea is basically for a couple hours a week all girls go to learn about cooking and home economics, while all boys are separated to learn about wood carving and bolts and nuts. There is no "nature" in this: school kids are literally separated based on gender and taught different things.

So just to recap: if you encourage boys to go into science, they will go into science; if you don't encourage girls to go into science, they won't go into science. Considering that present-day "feminism" is only a couple of generations old, I am actually surprised how much women in the world have accomplished. I mean, women couldn't even vote 100 years ago — they were basically not even considered full human beings.

Also, something I learned about recently: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sultanate_of_Women. Clearly, even in the Muslim Ottoman Empire women were trying to seize power as much as they could despite the attempts to keep them away. Let't not forget Catherine II of Russia who staged a palace coup and killed her husband to become the Empress of all Russias, or the fictional Lady Macbeth, etc. etc. The desire for power and all other human things are the same across all genders/races/whatever. To me, it's a fact of life.

 

[inthesomeday]

Welcome, friend.

The only thing I disagree is your definition of nihilism. I think philosophically it’s more than boredom. But other than that spot on

 

[Bootstoots]

I don't know that any actual judgments can be made about the number of women in male-dominated fields yet. There's been one, maybe two generations since the education swing came into being. Not so sure that this is long enough to say definitively whether or not the differences between the primary genders would result in such a skewed ratio in certain jobs.

This has to be a US-specific problem, again. You had women locked up in homes up to the 60's or something. As bad as USSR was, after the 1917 Revolution, Bolsheviks emancipated women from the home and into factories, armed forced, and academia. We had women command battalions during World War II, we had women scientists, and women workers. Of course, sexism continued to exist and still exists today, but there is a larger percentage of women doctors and engineers in Russia than in the West.

Also... Karl Marx said that the environment shapes the individual. If women in the US are raised to be mothers and homemakers, then it is quite logical that their interests in science would be less. Not because women are "naturally" less interested in sciences, but because they were raised to be in such a way. If you raise boys to cook and sew, then for the majority of them, it will be their interests.

Consider this example: when my nephew went to high school in 90's Russia, boys and girls had all the same classes except one. I don't know how to translate in into English, but the idea is basically for a couple hours a week all girls go to learn about cooking and home economics, while all boys are separated to learn about wood carving and bolts and nuts. There is no "nature" in this: school kids are literally separated based on gender and taught different things.

So just to recap: if you encourage boys to go into science, they will go into science; if you don't encourage girls to go into science, they won't go into science. Considering that present-day "feminism" is only a couple of generations old, I am actually surprised how much women in the world have accomplished. I mean, women couldn't even vote 100 years ago — they were basically not even considered full human beings.

Also, something I learned about recently: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sultanate_of_Women. Clearly, even in the Muslim Ottoman Empire women were trying to seize power as much as they could despite the attempts to keep them away. Let't not forget Catherine II of Russia who staged a palace coup and killed her husband to become the Empress of all Russias, or the fictional Lady Macbeth, etc. etc. The desire for power and all other human things are the same across all genders/races/whatever. To me, it's a fact of life.

I don't think it has been proven that gender gaps are driven in large part by inherent biological differences. But the existence of large biological differences makes it extremely plausible - at least as a hypothesis; the evidence isn't in yet - that the equilibrium gender ratio is nowhere near 50-50 in all fields of employment.

This is an underlying assumption to arguments that, because a gender ratio is highly skewed in a variety of positions, there must be a large amount of social conditioning or outright discrimination/harassment causing that skew. This assumption is very shaky. But pointing this out, or conducting studies that happen to show this outcome and not concluding with "...and therefore social conditioning runs even deeper than we imagined", is so taboo in many circles that you can apparently be fired from Google for it. That's a big problem - we have to be able to discuss all the possibilities without risking severe social sanctions for making certain suggestions. Otherwise, we will never get to the bottom of what is really going on in issues we care about, while simultaneously driving people away from supporting equality in general.

This must be some very US-specific problem because I don't really understand what any of that means or who "SJW" is.

It's short for "social justice warrior", which describes someone who takes extreme left-wing views on identity politics. It's much like politically correct (PC). I will note that, just like PC, it is easily abused by people on the far right to describe opponents of racism/sexism/homophobia/transphobia/etc in general.

Nihilism was a movement, particularly popular among Russian nobility circles in the 19th century: people so spoiled by the riches they did not know what to do with their lives. I don't see how postmodernism leads to nihilism. Just because some philosophers say that gender and race are "socially constructed" does not mean you can just drop them without thinking and pretend like they don't exist. In my opinion, all postmodernism does is just confirm the relativity of human experience, thinking, and the "temporality" of human ideas. To me, the main takeaway from postmodernism is that concepts change over time, and everything comes from a long history of something else. Basically, human societies are one long continuum of ideas which evolve over time. Where is nihilism in that?

I wish there were a better word than "nihilism" to convey what I'm getting at. I definitely don't mean the 19th century Russian anarchist movement. And I don't have a philosophically sound concept of what I mean, myself - I'm still kind of trying to figure out the language to describe it.

I mean basically relativism, which would be a better word now that I think of it. I'm sure there are problems with that word choice too but not quite as many as with nihilism. What I mean is the stance that everything, save perhaps for some mathematical and scientific claims, is just made up by the society at large to serve whatever power interests happen to be controlling it or fighting for it. That you can just kind of choose whatever belief system suits you at any time. For example: Don't like arbitrarily causing women to go through lifelong pain? Oppose FGM. Support traditional cultures and dislike Western imposition of its own morality on them? Support FGM. It's all the same really, just arbitrarily pick one and go with it. Personally, I arbitrarily pick the first. But I totally get the second.

For all the critiques of relativism, I've never really found one that boiled down to anything other than extremely verbose versions of "the consequences of relativism are bad, therefore it is false", and/or "there are scientific problems with some worldviews" (true, so you modify the relativism a little to exclude scientific claims). I get the impression that trying to fight relativism is one thing motivates Peterson, Sam Harris (who disagrees with Peterson about a lot of things, but not this), and a lot of people who listen to them.

Maybe there are good refutations of relativism out there - if so, I encourage people to reply with them. The plainer the language the better; I'm willing to learn some stuff to understand this, but obscurantism is frowned upon.

edit to clarify: By relativism, I mostly mean moral relativism. I'll further modify moral relativism to accept that a human tendency towards certain types of moral behavior has evolved and probably has a large bias towards cooperative group behavior, like sharing food with your clan most of the time and not murdering people for no reason.

 

[metalhead]

As an example that he cites frequently, women have, on average, higher levels of agreeableness in the Big Five personality model, which is generally considered the best personality model out there (keeping in mind that it is a model - all models are wrong in detail, but some are useful). The difference comes out to about 0.5 standard deviations - large enough to have substantial effects if this is a trait which influences life outcomes. And it appears to be correlated to less willingness to negotiate salaries or act ruthlessly in a dominance hierarchy such as lobster fights corporate management. This - and not just conscious or unconscious discrimination/harassment - may explain some of the gender pay gap as well as the underrepresentation of women in positions of leadership.

Does he view this as a problem, or is this just a "well, that's the way it is because nature" argument? I think many feminists are generally understanding that it may indeed be good science that shows personality traits differ across the broad population of humans as between the sexes. The feminist rzesponse to this, from what I've read, is that this necessitates a rethinking of the entire structure of professional workplaces, so that "male" traits aren't the ones which give one access to promotions and higher pay.

Thing is, until you actually break down the very real gender barriers in STEM fields, you don't know. I think most people would be accepting that maybe there are real gender differences at play, if there were real efforts to exclude other reasons from the equation. The problem is that a lot of people - and I dont know if this applies to Peterson or not - use this argument as a reason to oppose efforts at gender equality.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

I mean, women couldn't even vote 100 years ago — they were basically not even considered full human beings.

Whereas men have all been voting since the late Bronze Age of course (circa 100 years ago).

 

[Broken_Erika]

Whereas men have all been voting since the late Bronze Age of course (circa 100 years ago).

Assuming their coin purse was large enough of course....

 

[Bootstoots]

Does he view this as a problem, or is this just a "well, that's the way it is because nature" argument? I think many feminists are generally understanding that it may indeed be good science that shows personality traits differ across the broad population of humans as between the sexes. The feminist rzesponse to this, from what I've read, is that this necessitates a rethinking of the entire structure of professional workplaces, so that "male" traits aren't the ones which give one access to promotions and higher pay.

Thing is, until you actually break down the very real gender barriers in STEM fields, you don't know. I think most people would be accepting that maybe there are real gender differences at play, if there were real efforts to exclude other reasons from the equation. The problem is that a lot of people - and I dont know if this applies to Peterson or not - use this argument as a reason to oppose efforts at gender equality.

Peterson is kind of squirrelly when you try to pin him to a specific position on this sort of thing, but he heavily implies he supports the "that's the way it is because nature" side, while suggesting that women should try to compensate by being less agreeable in negotiations and the like.

Overall, though, his thinking on feminism is not at all advanced - I don't know what he would do if you tried to point to studies showing that less agreeable women are treated worse than equally disagreeable men. I also don't know what efforts at gender equality he would support and which he wouldn't.

Ultimately, I think, the solution is just the pragmatic one of trying to remove barriers as much as possible and then finding out whether each field remains with a heavily slanted gender ratio or not. That's kind of what is happening already, slowly and imperfectly.

 

[Миханя]

Consider this: my nephew's parents are both math teachers, and when he was growing up, they started teaching him counting when he was 2-3, then pushed him to do algebra in first-second grade (7-8 years old in Russia). They enrolled him in the физмат (physics+math) schools, so by the time he graduated he already knew thermodynamics, theory of relativity, and the theoretical underpinnings of calculus. Is it because he is a boy? Is it because he is naturally talented? — neither. He actually never really enjoyed it and was definitely not a Mikhail Lomonosov level genius, but he was trained to do physics and math, and that's what he does in his work now.

Another example: my parents felt that the Soviet Union was going to collapse one day and that English would be the next international language, so when I was 12, they hired an English tutor who forced me to listen to vinyls with English speech and drilled the language into me. This has little to do with my gender or natural capabilities. The reason I am comfortable speaking English nowadays is all because my parents invested in my education early.

If you invest in children and encourage them to do something from an early age, of fudging course they will succeed in it. But when girls are told that "fighting is not girly", "science is not for women" and other stuff, how the hell do you expect these children to grow up and pursue what they want? If a 11-year-old girl wants to do physics, but you push her into homemaking, she can't do much because of parental authority and control.

I feel like this is such basic information that everyone should understand it: children often become what their parents raised to be. And the older people get, the more they resemble their parents in habits and views (generally). So if you raise boys and girls differently, of course you are going to see different results.

This is an underlying assumption to arguments that, because a gender ratio is highly skewed in a variety of positions, there must be a large amount of social conditioning or outright discrimination/harassment causing that skew. This assumption is very shaky. But pointing this out, or conducting studies that happen to show this outcome and not concluding with "...and therefore social conditioning runs even deeper than we imagined", is so taboo in many circles that you can apparently be fired from Google for it. That's a big problem - we have to be able to discuss all the possibilities without risking severe social sanctions for making certain suggestions. Otherwise, we will never get to the bottom of what is really going on in issues we care about, while simultaneously driving people away from supporting equality in general.

Why is this assumption shaky? If you look at present-day data and try to explain imbalances in terms of nature and not discrimination, then you end up with shaky reasoning yourself. For example, the US has had 45 presidents, 44 of whom are white males. Does that mean that any other ethnic/gender group is simply incapable of leading a nation? But if that's the case, how come all African presidents are black? And what about Asian countries? Or what about women? Women have been queens/empresses/presidents in every major country except the US. How come the US has not had a woman president in 45 tries? (Actually, more, since presidents get re-elected).

I don't like Hillary Clinton, but can you explain to me how Trump is better qualified to be a president, for example? Is she not a war hawk, like every other US male president? Is she not a pro-corporate capitalist, like every other male president? Aren't her policies basically the same as her husband's?

It's short for "social justice warrior", which describes someone who takes extreme left-wing views on identity politics. It's much like politically correct (PC). I will note that, just like PC, it is easily abused by people on the far right to describe opponents of racism/sexism/homophobia/transphobia/etc in general.

That's funny. People like that are called "liberals" in Russia.

I wish there were a better word than "nihilism" to convey what I'm getting at. I definitely don't mean the 19th century Russian anarchist movement. And I don't have a philosophically sound concept of what I mean, myself - I'm still kind of trying to figure out the language to describe it.

I mean basically relativism, which would be a better word now that I think of it. I'm sure there are problems with that word choice too but not quite as many as with nihilism. What I mean is the stance that everything, save perhaps for some mathematical and scientific claims, is just made up by the society at large to serve whatever power interests happen to be controlling it or fighting for it. That you can just kind of choose whatever belief system suits you at any time. For example: Don't like arbitrarily causing women to go through lifelong pain? Oppose FGM. Support traditional cultures and dislike Western imposition of its own morality on them? Support FGM. It's all the same really, just arbitrarily pick one and go with it. Personally, I arbitrarily pick the first. But I totally get the second.

For all the critiques of relativism, I've never really found one that boiled down to anything other than extremely verbose versions of "the consequences of relativism are bad, therefore it is false", and/or "there are scientific problems with some worldviews" (true, so you modify the relativism a little to exclude scientific claims). I get the impression that trying to fight relativism is one thing motivates Peterson, Sam Harris (who disagrees with Peterson about a lot of things, but not this), and a lot of people who listen to them.

Maybe there are good refutations of relativism out there - if so, I encourage people to reply with them. The plainer the language the better; I'm willing to learn some stuff to understand this, but obscurantism is frowned upon.

edit to clarify: By relativism, I mostly mean moral relativism. I'll further modify moral relativism to accept that a human tendency towards certain types of moral behavior has evolved and probably has a large bias towards cooperative group behavior, like sharing food with your clan most of the time and not murdering people for no reason.

Nihilism in Russia was popular among younger rich people. Or maybe not filthy rich, but wealthy enough. There is Turgenev's novel "Fathers and Sons" which elicits nihilism... but anyway.

To me, only teenagers and young people (20's) can seriously take up on nihilism, and if Jordan Peterson's audience is teenagers and 20's, then it is no wonder they feel lost and confused and need a "daddy" to whip them into shape. Like the ContraPoints person said, if he does that, then more power to him. I just think it is a stage people can get out of even without Jordan Peterson's self-help, if you have a functional family or community of people you trust.

But I don't think all young people are lost and helpless. Recently we had a high school students march against corruption in Russia. Some of them got arrested and put in jail, which is absolutely horrendous but not surprising given our government, but it shows that these teenagers don't accept the dictator and are ready to march in the streets for a better future. I am sure none of them are even familiar with "postmodern neo-marxism", but the intuitively understand that the times change and that political progress must be made.

 

[Lexicus]

This assumption is very shaky.

Boots, this isn't even an assumption. There is absolutely, as a matter of established fact, "a large amount of social conditioning or outright discrimination/harassment" that works against women in basically every area of society.

 

[Миханя]

Whereas men have all been voting since the late Bronze Age of course (circa 100 years ago).

Commoners did not vote during the times of kings and tsars, but members of parliaments were exclusively male.

However, I was thinking along the lines of Athenian Democracy, which originated in the 5th century BC and allowed free Athenian men to convene and vote. It was also the time when older men preferred to have sex with underage boys and considered women baby factories. I find this more fascinating than the lobster hierarchy theory.

PS: But there was also Sparta, where women had more agency and authority. They even added Gorgo in Civ VI. Would Firaxis be considered "social justice warriors" for this?

 

[inthesomeday]

Literally yes. You can’t even add like Joan of Arc without being accused of snubbing Napoleon.

 

[Lexicus]

Commoners did not vote during the times of kings and tsars, but members of parliaments were exclusively male.

Talking to Manfred about history is useless, as he believes the past can be transcended by saying it doesn't matter on an internet forum. The truth is that while of course mass suffrage only came about relatively recently, the bourgeois "public sphere" is actually constituted by the exclusion of women. This was certainly the case in Greece where higher-class women were literally locked away (which is why it's funny that Jordan Peterson claims "the West figured out the individual 3,000 years ago" - does he think that classical Rome and Greece were "individualistic" societies in some sense?) and in Rome where women were totally excluded from public life, and only grudgingly allowed to own property on their own hook. And of course across basically all "civilized" societies women have suffered the near-total robbery of their reproductive labor, which is a situation that largely continues everywhere today.

 

[Миханя]

Literally yes. You can’t even add like Joan of Arc without being accused of snubbing Napoleon.

Well, Joan of Arc was technically not a leader of France, but Napoleon was. But yeah, Joan of Arc led an army and inspired the entire Frankish Kingdom in a war. Meanwhile, Elizabeth I or Maria Theresa were literally responsible for their "civilizations's" "golden ages". Interestingly enough, women could not have the title of Emperor in the Holy Roman Empire, so Maria Theresa, while technically being the real ruler, was only considered Emperor's wife and not an Empress.

By the way, did you know that bees have a monarchical structure with the queen at the head? Unlike lobsters, bees live on the ground and not under the sea. How come Jordan Peterson doesn't talk about bees?

Or what about fish which change their gender based on what the school needs? And have you heard of chimpanzees, where the leader of the pack has to be approved by females? And aren't buffalos basically socialists?

See, I can pick and choose any animal and make an argument why we should live in a matriarchal society or be governed by transgender individuals. But it's very late and I need to go sleep.

 

[Миханя]

PS: Maria Theresa also gave birth to 16 children while ruling the Holy Roman Empire. Clearly, being pregnant 16 times is not a handicap to some people. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[Broken_Erika]

See, I can pick and choose any animal and make an argument why we should live in a matriarchal society or be governed by transgender individuals. But it's very late and I need to go sleep.

I say put the Squirrels in charge of Humanity.