162 Comments

Ah, I see that you only need a single statistical correlation to firmly believe a cause, and a cause for that cause. I wonder why social scientists bother writing those long reviews of many studies before deciding on the most plausible explanation?

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"Feminism" is not a protected term, anyone can call themselves one or get called one by others so no one person can show "feminism's agenda", in fact there isn't even one "feminist agenda", just like there no one "capitalist agenda": many people with different, even conflicting opinions call themselves "feminist" or "capitalist" or are labeled as such by others. Someone who doesn't even understand that has no business on this site.

P.S. the same goes for the word "patriarchy" (you were right to challenge someone who thinks they can just define for the world what is patriarchy and what is not, pity you were not as critical of your own opinions).

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So being opposed to cuckoldry = patriarchy?

I guessed you've just shown what feminism's agenda is.

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Twitter seems like a horrible medium in general and an especially ill-suited medium when you're worried about being quoted out of context. There's no space for context.

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Noah Smith seems simply evil, as clean as they come. You should stop transacting with him.

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As a woman who's experienced both, being cheated on is much worse. Physical pain is fleeting - it only lasts for the moment. Ego pain lasts forever - every time you think back. Being sexually assaulted honestly didn't affect me at all. I just laughed afterwards, because what else could I do? My only thought was, people do silly things when intoxicated.

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Hi there! This is unrelated to your current conversation, but we were talking on Noah's Dismal Science article. I seem to have been banned shortly after I posted my comment that gave specific criticisms of Noah's presentation of the research as unethical and intentionally misleading, so I'm not able to respond in the way you requested. I've emailed you at the hotmail address on your blog, and I'm editing my earlier comment so that my criticisms can hopefully get past the moderation team to people other than you.

(Please keep my email address quiet, I like anonymity.)

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I don't really buy that defense, because Heartiste's help is not going to give good data. His commenters are not inclined to honest introspection.

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He isn't interested in "image management", i.e. signalling, but rather in investigating the biases underlying such phenomena.

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Hanson and I both live in the US, so we tend to disproportionately focus on it. I was aware of Ireland's relatively restrictive laws, but not the other countries mentioned.

Perhaps states should change their laws, but Hanson is generally less interested in campaigning for policy changes than wondering why the status quo is the status quo.

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The Canadian case is interesting ( http://www.canlii.org/en/on... )

I don't read the case as standing for the proposition that DNA tests are "no barrier." The case only held that they aren't an absolute barrier.

To put the matter in American law terms, the father waived ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wik... ) his right to deny paternity because he accepted responsibility despite having good reason to doubt the paternity. Most rights can be waived by one's own informed conduct when it causes someone else to change their position.

Apart from the letter of the law, I think it's true that's there's a strong trend to dissociate "paternity" from biology. Men who are concerned about whether it's really their kid are viewed as dinosaurs. [How can homosexuality be extolled as psychiatrically normal if having children that are yours biologically is a very big deal?]

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we put men in jail over child support, which is a contractual breach

Which, to anyone seriously contemplating the practice, is outrageous.

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Rape is in itself not a condition for abortion in countries like Ireland, New Zealand, South Korea and some Australian states. Refusing to pay child support after a negative DNA test is legal in the Netherlands, at least a dozen US states and a man in the UK once got a court ordered financial compensation from his ex-wife for cuckoldry. Really all the US needs to do is to get the other 38 states to change their laws regarding mandatory child support, don't you agree that would be a much more elegant solution than having a moral police or making comparisons with the rape of women? Instead of imprisoning people for cuckoldry perhaps it would be better to do something about a stupid law that makes the effects of cuckoldry so terrible in the first place.

I think Robin is allowed to make the comparisons, freedom of speech and debate is important after all, but this whole thing is now descending into apples and oranges territory, see the poll on heartiste that Robin decided to link to and that compares the least possible form of rape (and rape of a man) with the worst possible form of cuckoldry. You too automatically assume that a raped woman lives somewhere where abortion after rape is legal (and doesn't cause her to be disowned/shunned by her family and community) and where contesting paternity is impossible. Would you accept a radical feminist comparing cuckoldry in the Netherlands with rape in Ireland?

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SCOTUS has ruled abortion is legal everywhere in the US. The Canadian supreme court has ruled that DNA tests proving a man is not the father is no barrier to the requirement of child support payments. In the U.S men have been fined for failure to pay child support payments when they have never even met the mother, but were simply wrongly noted as the father due to a welfare bureaucracy that doesn't care what mistakes it makes. And going to another state would not affect such fines, unlike abortion in pre-Roe America.

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Allying yourself with Heartiste in any way was a mistake, if you're at all concerned with image management.

I'd recommend you take a look at the study Noah cites: there's a lot in it to challenge his claim that economics is the most biased social science. The study is actually quite well done and doesn't oversimplify like he does.

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That was never the underlying theory. In the days of divorce trials, the woman would be deprived of her alimony for infidelity

In practice that has not happened significantly since 1820. Normal procedure was in practice that the man gets punished for his wife's infidelity. And since 1880 or so there has been no hesitation in applying criminal style punishments to supposed male breaches of contract.

No matter how flagrant the wife's adultery (Example Queen Caroline) a man could not get a divorce for his wife's adultery, so had to pretend that he was the one at fault, and indeed, this was the justification for no fault - that pretty much everyone found to be at fault was falsely pretending to be at fault.

You argue that it is irrelevant whether rape or cuckoldry is more hurtful, because one is a contractual breach and the other more akin to assault, but we put men in jail over child support, which is a contractual breach.

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