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Blithering Genius's avatar

The first, and most important point, is to read something before responding to it.

At the end of my essay, I say:

"I am not blaming women, or anyone else, for the current problems with human sexuality. I am not a reactionary. I don’t want to return to a premodern way of life. I want modern civilization to succeed. I am not a traditionalist. We can’t solve the problems of modern civilization by restoring traditional religion and morality. Modern problems require new solutions."

So, I am not a reactionary. You are arguing against an imaginary opponent that you made up, so that you can prance around on your moral high horse. It's so tedious and boring. There's nothing intellectual about what you are doing. You're just creating noise.

You start by poisoning the well, telling your readers what I believe, despite not even having read the post. You use manipulative rhetoric to deceive your readers, telling them that I use deceptive rhetoric, so that you can impose your own interpretation on it.

You say "He argues that freedom is actually a problem because it assumes people always know what is best for them."

That is a lie. What I said was:

[begin quote]

Our culture assumes that freedom is generally good, and that people should be free to pursue their own desires, unless that pursuit conflicts with the freedom of others. This view is so pervasive that most people would struggle to understand a critique of it. However, it is based on dubious assumptions.

One of those assumptions is that people know what is good for them. This assumption is linked to hedonism. If pleasure and pain are the ultimate good and bad, then you have direct awareness of what is good and bad for you. You could be mistaken about the consequences of your actions, but not about what is intrinsically good or bad.

[end quote]

The assumption is not that people always know what is good for them, but that people *generally* know what is good for them. That is a core assumption of liberalism.

You say:

"That’s precisely why societies regulate activities like gambling, drugs, and unsafe working conditions while still upholding personal autonomy. The alternative—total social control—has been tried many times throughout history, always with disastrous results."

Obviously, those regulations do limit personal autonomy. So, you accept the principle that society should limit personal autonomy in certain ways, to protect people from themselves. For example, a new drug might be hard for most people to resist, so society should control it.

The point about total social control is irrelevant to the essay. In fact, it is irrelevant to anything, because no society has ever had total social control over individuals.

You say:

"The real trick here is how this logic is later applied to gender roles. By first calling into question human judgment in general, the author sets up an argument for why women, in particular, cannot be trusted with autonomy."

I never said that women, in particular, cannot be trusted with autonomy. That is not the point of the essay. You projected that onto it, because that's the position that you want to argue against. That's just more dishonesty.

You quoted me saying "I will consider the possibility that women evolved to be owned/dominated by men", however, you omitted the end of the sentence.

What I said:

"I will consider the possibility that women evolved to be owned/dominated by men, and cannot function in the modern environment of sexual freedom."

You say:

"This statement alone reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of how evolution works. Evolution does not design species for specific social roles. There is no any more than there is one that dictates kings must rule over peasants."

Sorry, but you are the one who is completely ignorant of evolutionary biology and psychology. First, sex roles are not social, they are sexual, or in other words, interpersonal. Evolution does create sex roles. In almost every sexually-reproducing species, males and females are different, and in complex organisms, they have different evolved patterns of behavior. I explained how the difference in reproductive strategies leads to different emotions and behaviors in men and women. This is well understood in evolutionary psychology.

Did I say that there was a "predetermined biological mandate that dictates women must be owned by men". No, that's a strawman. Read what I actually wrote.

I'm not going to waste my time going through the whole thing. That should be enough to let your readers know how dishonest you are.

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