> women have asserted themselves in the workforce
Agree.
> young women being the creators of mass culture for their generation
Citation(s) needed. I've never heard an argument for this or even seen someone suggest it before.
> partial driver for why everyone is so much less independent
Even if we take your previous statements as true, what does that have to do with peoples' independence?
To me (and my own confirmation bias pet issue), it seems much more likely that having recordings and visible online identities the way we do now with smartphones, ever present cameras, and social media causes people to think a lot more about how they're perceived by others.
And, the flip side, spending so much time seeing other people via tv, online videos, social media, etc constantly reinforces what "normal" behavior looks like.
People are also so absorbed in modern media that they just do way less interesting stuff overall imo.
> I'll reply here in good faith: I just don't see how you connect those dots, or why this has anything to do with gender.
That's a reasonable opinion to doubt that gender affects this at all. I'm not certain it does myself, but I thought it was worth discussing in case there is a role there.
> Citation(s) needed. I've never heard an argument for this or even seen someone suggest it before.
I heard it in person from my sister over a year ago, I don't have scientific data at all for this. Totally 'just, like, my opinion, man.'
Having said that, here's [1]/[2](archive link) some Forbes blogger who relatively compactly lays out the theory of how young women are creators of mass culture for their generation.
> Even if we take your previous statements as true, what does that have to do with peoples' independence?
I mis-spoke here I should have expanded 'independence' there to represent people's awareness of the 'slow life history path' that is more common today.
> To me (and my own confirmation bias pet issue), it seems much more likely that having recordings and visible online identities the way we do now with smartphones, ever present cameras, and social media causes people to think a lot more about how they're perceived by others.
You know I think this is very fair and probably more relevant than my comment. If everybody is watching us all the time, we act on our best behavior and are not (for better/worse) feeling as much at liberty to be our unfettered deviant selves.
> And, the flip side, spending so much time seeing other people via tv, online videos, social media, etc constantly reinforces what "normal" behavior looks like.
Also fair. There are many subcultures now, from fountain pen collectors to fantasy writers to Managed Democrats (as a random and /definitely/ not specific-to-me example), and you can tailor your behavior to what the community expects just as the royal we used to do back when we would use internet forums and learn what they liked/didn't like.
> People are also so absorbed in modern media that they just do way less interesting stuff overall imo.
I could see that. I do a lot of potentially interesting things in-person or in LAN that I will never let go WAN, I know that the public web is the largest/harshest critic out there and the downside risks are ever yawning while the upside risks are not that much. So if others come to similar conclusions, then the only online stuff that most normal people will put up will be the curated social media appropriate highlight reels.
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradsimms/2024/05/30/teenage-gi...
0. One of the ideas that has tagged along with inclusion has been changing from an input focus ("e.g. No girls allowed in treehouse!") to an output focus (Fewer girls than boys are in the treehouse). In the input focused model, you want to change the rule to stop excluding girls. In the output focused model you also need to change the treehouse to be more attractive to girls. From this, any 'deviant' interests that happen to be gendered (or racial, cultural, etc) get suppressed in the name of creating inclusive outcomes.
1. Most humans have a natural urge to conform to those around us, some just experience it stronger or weaker than others. When 'deviants' are included in a non-deviant space, their deviant tendencies face a subtle yet strong conformity pressure that wouldn't be felt if they were excluded entirely.
2. 'Deviants' being accepted more widely means they don't need to create or find their own spaces. Hence there are fewer spaces where the deviation is locally normal, which would allow the conformist pressure to enhance and refine the deviation.
Okay, this is good answer here because this is more of what I was after. I would initially lay this effect exclusively at the feet of feminism, but I agree now that there are a lot of other movements that could be put into that slot as well.
If we could keep the input focus gains of feminism/$movement while identifying/losing the output-focus overreaches of $movement, I think we would all be better off. Moderation is the key.
Politics jumps in to find that level of moderation, and I've already used all of my 'stir the HN pot' tokens for this month so I will leave further discussion there alone.
Thanks for a good comment that expands the discussion further in the direction I wanted to go but couldn't articulate in my post.
(Granted, I don't totally buy into their claims that society is more conformist than it used to be in the first place; it's clear that _crime_ has fallen, but there's no particular reason that that should be joined at the hip to non-conformism and their evidence for cultural stagnation is far weaker than their evidence on crime).
Meanwhile, conservative male spaces tend to be all about being in group and forcing everyone to be like them. And about forcing women back to dependence.
(Which isn’t to say I agree with your take, I haven’t given it much thought. But anything to do with feminism potentially having negative effects is verboten).
But in the interests of attempting to not be so conformist and give us something interesting to discuss about this interesting article, I will try this anyways, and if you have a problem with me saying this then feel free to flag and move on, I don't care enough to get into a flame war about this, but I believe I'm not trying to troll or get a rise out of people.
Perhaps this is the feminization of society? As women have asserted themselves in the workforce and due to young women being the creators of mass culture for their generation, perhaps this is a partial driver for why everyone is so much less independent.
I dont know, this thought is not done and I'm already expecting incoming fire from someone somewhere, but perhaps this could help drive this.
Then again, it's more likely that this fits one of my conformation bias pet issues.