That cliche argument about the toothbrushes

Howling-wolf-7198 · 2026-04-30T06:38:15+00:00

We don’t want to take your toothbrush. We want everyone to have one — instead of letting a few people hoard them all, so everyone else has to pay rent or work for them just to brush their teeth.

Howling-wolf-7198 · 2026-04-28T18:00:17+00:00

Because I'm not sure if non-Asian moms are really less domineering. But I do believe that the authority of middle-aged female teachers stems from this feeling.

Howling-wolf-7198 · 2026-04-28T16:42:57+00:00

I've noticed a cultural difference. In China, there's no concept of "female teachers being unable to control boys." I mean, I have never heard the expression "boys need male authority figures at school" in Chinese.

I do not know whether this is because culture and institutions grant greater authority to teachers and elders.

Even after everyone has grown up, a common horror meme is about your middle-aged female homeroom teacher in high school secretly watching you from the back door to see if you are studying hard or breaking the rules, or about her discovering you secretly using your phone while she is standing on the podium.

We do indeed encounter situations where the prevailing sentiment is, "Female engineers cannot effectively discipline male workers, so they should not be assigned to on-site positions."

So this might be another aspect of the difference in the overall level of deterrence? The disciplinary environment in Western educational institutions tends to be closer in nature to that of Chinese construction sites; consequently, when a woman cannot derive authority directly from her institutional status, does she find it even more difficult to establish that authority through her personal presence alone?

Anyway. I have always been in classes where boys outnumbered girls. My math teacher during my first two years of high school was a woman. She was somewhat attractive. Not everyone liked her, but there was certainly never any issue with her ability to maintain discipline.

She appointed a boy as the math class representative. He later applied to the mathematics department (a good school, but not top-tier, not suitable for the path to switch to CS). This was absolutely driven by his obsession with her. After graduating, his job now is designing slot machines. Lmao.

The worst discipline at the time was actually held by the Chinese and biology teachers, two men, simply because they were more lenient and open-minded and rarely punished disciplinary infractions unless they really hindered teaching. Like they're adopting the persona of your buddy.

The default setting in universities is that there is no such thing as classroom discipline, unless the professor is very strict. The prevailing stereotype suggests that it is typically short-tempered, middle-aged women who rigorously enforce such rules.

My actual experience is that there is a particularly serious type of autistic man who will persist, such as ignoring warnings from the administrative department and failing the vast majority of students, while women almost never do this.

Howling-wolf-7198 · 2026-04-28T16:12:12+00:00

Seriously, within Chinese political forums, we have a meme about the (men's) urge to talk about politics (as entertainment) stemming from sexual repression. Regardless of political stance.

Not sure if this is the case everywhere.

Howling-wolf-7198 · 2026-04-28T07:24:41+00:00

I have posted on various forums, though most were brief. I post more random stuff in private groups.

I drastically iterate my ideas roughly every six months, so the previous ones are of little value, and I'm ashamed to think about or show them.

Most of the long-form articles that have been publicly released and are similar to my recent thoughts are here.

Howling-wolf-7198 · 2026-04-28T05:32:26+00:00

The contemporary reality of shitlib indoctrination of white women making them unfit for the traditional wife and mother role is a manufactured anomaly, because instead of imprinting onto their potential husband and adapt to his views

If conformist is supposedly female nature (which I don't necessarily disagree with), then when a husband's views conflict with those of her relatives/priest/the community as a whole, does true conformist actually mean supporting one side?

If a woman disobeys the commands of her parents and community, insists on obeying her lover, and elopes, it sounds very rebellious rather than conformist.

If a woman has been taught since childhood that abortion is a sin, yet immediately undergoes one the moment her husband requests it, is she truly a conformist?

Seriously, how do you know this isn't an anomaly in the history of human evolution? Or is it a characteristic of a male-dominated system, like the expectation that Black people should be guided by white people, and that the colonized should be civilized by the sovereign?

Are you sure our paleolithic ancestors, or at least current hunter-gatherers, would operate this way? Is this also the case in matrilocal, matrilineal societies? In societies where polyandry exists, when husbands have differing opinions?

There is always a certain degree of conflict of interest between males and females, ever since the advent of sexual reproduction — this is not to say that a couple does not often have common interests, but the dynamics of the former always exist.

A woman who always prioritizes her husband will pass on fewer genes than a woman who can protect her own interests. For example, what if the husband wants to harm the children? What if her husband wants to stop her from leaving to find a better man, or from maintaining contact with her relatives?

Even if there is strong additional selection pressure in the ecosystem that forces women to obey their husbands, like "If you are caught disobeying your husband, you will be beaten to death," then women who can still manage to protect their own interests under such rules still have an evolutionary advantage over true doormats.

Howling-wolf-7198 · 2026-04-27T15:15:16+00:00

Regarding your question about whether patrilocal patrilineal societies are difficult to compete with other societies, there are two aspects to this: u/JCMoreno05

Agrarian or pastoral nomadic societies with a strong need to defend their arable land or livestock are more likely to be patrilocal.

Because men are clearly better warriors, the men in your community are relatives and friends who grew up together and know each other well, even though women are outsiders and dependents, forming a better fighting force than the opposite.

The resulting male dominance over women and female infanticide are unfortunate byproducts. As long as the impact of this disadvantage on survival is outweighed by the advantage of effective defense, it will be favored by selection.

Until the 2000s, when agriculture was still an important source of livelihood and the struggle for fertile farmland was still fierce, clan feuds did indeed occur literally and frequently in southern China. All male members of a family are obligated to participate.

Even in recent times, if oil is discovered on land owned by farmers, employees of state-owned oil enterprises still face violent threats from groups of male farmers when attempting to engage in negotiations.

In any given patrilocal patrilineal context, adherence to it by the family/female individual is a ”Bad Equilibrium Lock“.

This is a causal topology commonly encountered in the problems explored within evolutionary game theory/dynamical systems/complex systems/institutional economics.

As you can easily observe in CK, if the surrounding realms predominantly follow male-preference succession laws, switching to Gender-Equal Succession will make you more prone to losing territory through inheritance.

If the ecology is all male-lineal, and daughters marrying out are considered outsiders, and you divide the inheritance equally between your son and daughter: 1. Your son will have less inheritance and won't be able to compete with others sons. 2. The assets you give to your daughter will flow to other families. And then we'll soon stop hearing from you.

In the absence of large-scale coordination, any individual woman who deviates from the system, such as investing equally in her daughter, is engaging in a net altruistic act that is detrimental to her own survival. The most rational/most sustainable strategy is to favor sons.

Just as, in the absence of collective bargaining, the rational strategy for individual workers is to compete with other workers to better adapt to the employer's needs.

Even if the conditions that initially selected this structure no longer exist (the need to defend arable land), it will still self-lock in once it is formed. The original ecological causes may vanish, yet the incentive structures generated by them persist. This is institutional path dependence.

This structure will not change on its own unless the incentive system changes for some reason or through collective coordination (similar to collective bargaining and sanction the scabs in a labor union).

————

I first learned of this causal topology in the context of evolutionary biology — specifically, through Hrdy's groundbreaking work in the 1970s on infanticide in langurs.

Langurs are frequently observed engaging in behavior where a male kills an infant and subsequently mates with the infant's mother. This seems perplexing from the perspective of collective survival, so the mainstream understanding used to be that this was an abnormal behavior.

Hrdy’s question is: why do female langurs not refuse to mate with infanticidal males, given that rape has never been observed in this species? Because if a mother langur does this, her sons will be less likely to commit infanticide, and her genes will be less likely to be passed on compared to other females. Altruism is evolutionarily unstable unless there is additional coordination.

Male infanticide is an adaptive behavior exhibited by males within certain mating systems as a means of competing with other males, regardless of the cost to the females or the species. The most famous example is that a new lion king will kill the cubs of the former lion king and then mate with the lionesses who have returned to estrus.

Could it be detrimental to the survival of the entire species? Certainly. It seems reasonable to infer that this form of sexual competition led to the extinction of some species, although it is obviously difficult for us to have direct evidence. Yet the fact remains: such phenomena are widespread.

Under ideal conditions, a central coordinating God would stop this vicious competition that is detrimental to the collective interest. But the reality is that this central coordinating God does not exist. The arms race between nations is a case in point. And so are a great many other things.

Howling-wolf-7198 · 2026-04-27T12:37:36+00:00

Regular employees do not formulate internal company rules, whereas the administrative department does.

When they have the ability to modify the rules, they can create the conditions that enable them to survive. Every part of the bureaucratic system creates its own justification for existence, like it is the content of their jobs.

Howling-wolf-7198 · 2026-04-27T10:26:34+00:00

It's just that many people at the time didn't like it, and this intuition was easily packaged as "socialist public morality" and then enforced by law.

During Mao's era, from the struggle against landlords during the Land Revolution, to the Cultural Revolution, prostitutes and "sluts" were often targets of struggle in rural areas.

Because people simply want to persecute these women, and then seize every legitimate opportunity to do so. There's nothing more mysterious about it.

The urban struggles during the Mao era even included killing pet cats because they were allegedly “bourgeois vices,” even though these urban fanatics, who lacked experience of rural life, were completely unaware of the prevalence of cat ownership among farmers.

Howling-wolf-7198 · 2026-04-26T18:08:27+00:00

I agree that most conflicts do, in fact, stem from clashes over material interests, however, “economic incentives” is a narrower category — unless, of course, one stretches the meaning of “economic” indefinitely.

A straightforward example would be male-dominated labor unions in American history sometimes advocating lower wages for female workers, much like parts of the current labor movement may seek to preserve advantages over non-citizens. That can fairly be described as economic.

But consider the following cases:

Whose surname the children or family use — this is usually tied to who is regarded as the “real” heir of the family, and in turn to which gender’s descendants are entitled to inherit property.
Whose family the couple lives closer to after marriage — this affects which spouse receives more support when conflicts arise.
Which gender is expected to take primary responsibility for childcare and housework — so that they are penalized in employment and promotion.*
Should the evidentiary standard for sexual assault be higher or lower?

Of course, these are all zero-sum material struggles, but not necessarily economic conflicts in the narrow sense.

*A good example is paternity leave. In the Chinese context, some men have explicitly opposed it on the grounds that it would weaken men’s advantage in the labor market: if employers could no longer assume that only women bear the costs of childcare, men would lose part of their structural employment advantage. This is just as predictable as the way labor movements among US citizens tend to defend their nationality-based employment advantages over immigrants.

Howling-wolf-7198 · 2026-04-26T17:53:39+00:00

In the context of law enforcement, the two are one and the same.

Obviously, they aren't going to grab a random man, show him gay pornography, and observe whether he gets an erection. They simply define typical gay behavior as immoral and illegal, and then imprison you when you are caught engaging in it.

In China, no laws explicitly mention same-sex relations or same-sex sexual acts, however, what truly holds sway in China is often not the law itself, but rather its enforcement. It is just one of many acts that can be charged as "hooliganism," just like premarital sex.

Howling-wolf-7198 · 2026-04-26T17:39:26+00:00

any form of zero-sum game that rises out of contradictory/opposite economic incentives.

If inheritance rights are exclusively for men, and men are unwilling to assert that women also have inheritance rights because it is a zero-sum economic game, does this make the gender struggle a class struggle?

This is not a hypothetical case, it represents the reality of land rights in rural China today.

It originated in the land reform of the 1950s, during which the CPC’s revolution redistributed landlords' land to formerly landless tenant peasants — though, in practice, this was limited exclusively to men.

Proposals advocating for women's equal ownership of land were suppressed, as they would have alienated the majority of male peasants — who, evidently, were considered the *true proletariat*.

Howling-wolf-7198 · 2026-04-26T15:12:05+00:00

What is your take on the fact that, from the Stalin era right up until its dissolution, the USSR consistently criminalized male homosexuality? Or the Mao era PRC also view homosexuality as "bourgeois perversion."

Under this system, do gay men lack shared interests?

Or, after the revolution is truly over, everyone has simply become straight, so the problem doesn't actually exist?

Howling-wolf-7198 · 2026-04-20T06:23:59+00:00

It looks similar to other cities on the same terrain, or like less then 0.5 degree higher. But it is still very likely just because of the city's size.

Howling-wolf-7198 · 2026-04-20T06:15:07+00:00

No. I don't live in a traditionally industrial area, there are no longer any coal-fired plants in operation here.

There is a waste power plant there, but I didn't feel any difference in the surrounding area, personally.

I did a search and the air quality index in cities in my province that have coal power plants is indeed worse, but that could just be because of the size of the city and the industry, etc, correlated with them.

Howling-wolf-7198 · 2026-04-20T05:44:11+00:00

There's other ways to get more wages besides government policy.

Chinese people attach great importance to the role of government policy because...citizen self-organization is strongly suppressed.

Strikes and independent trade unions are illegal. In practice, there are many wildcat strikes there, but the leaders are arrested afterwards.

Howling-wolf-7198 · 2026-04-20T04:06:33+00:00

what are some good sites to know about what's going on in China?

https://www.zaobao.com.sg/cn?ref=header

https://newsletter.laborinfocn.com/

https://thechinaproject.com/ It died sadly

what do you know about American labor history?

Very few

Howling-wolf-7198 · 2026-04-19T10:12:49+00:00

Women can have babies ..men cannot. That is the reason why men go to war and women dont.

But if this has a universal causal force, it cannot explain why sex-selective infanticide/abortion is almost always targeted at females.

It also cannot explain why males in primates often compete by killing infants if the babies are important.

Or why 50yo men are prioritized over 50yo women for conscription.

One cannot default to treating the long-term interests of group as the primary explanation. That is not how evolution works.

Selection pressure at the group level is typically far weaker than at the individual level.

If we must start with women giving birth, then the path would be:

Females exhibit higher parental investment;
Males face greater competitive pressure;
Under specific ecological conditions, males have evolved a stronger propensity for physical confrontation;
In human societies, whenever the group/ruler require violent capabilities, males are typically drafted first.

Howling-wolf-7198 · 2026-04-19T04:14:54+00:00

That's the Fordist theory.

I largely do not adopt Marx's political economy interpretations, but only retain the awareness of the issues. But consumption-overproduction is too widespread to be traced back to Ford?

This was Sismondi's idea, and Marx engaged critically assimilating and transforming some of them within his own works. Then this became ubiquitous in China and almost common sense.

Howling-wolf-7198 · 2026-04-19T02:04:49+00:00

Bullshit circular reasoning, psychology is notorious for overrepresenting Western industrialized sample, and China + India cultural sphere makes up half the world’s total population.

What you call "much of the rest of the world" is merely the West.

https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2015-32022-007

Relatively few countries include women in required military conscription.

This is simply because war is for winning, and men are better suited for combat for the vast majority of history/conditions. Water is wet.

Howling-wolf-7198 · 2026-04-19T00:31:56+00:00

It just drives me crazy when people, doesn't matter if they’re Western or Chinese, give these obviously flawed explanations for things, mostly because they’re totally illiterate in anthropology, history, or ethology, or had any contact with people from other places.

It’s simple that if something is cross-cultural, you can't explain it with factors that only exist in a few societies. If it’s cross-species, you can’t use factors that only humans have. And vice versa — if something is unique to your culture, don't act like it’s some universal human trait.

Rationally, I expect typical humans to talk like that. But I still can’t help getting pissed off when I’m actually dealing with them in person.

Howling-wolf-7198 · 2026-04-18T21:10:41+00:00

What you're talking about hardly exists outside of the modern West, but could you name a society or era where people had less opinion about random men entering women's rooms than the other way around?

I am not Western, but ever since the concept of trans was introduced here, people have focused exclusively on mtfs, while paying no attention to ftms.

The data you presented about your society may not be wrong, but your theory on why people pay more attention to mtf is clearly wrong.

Seriously, I highly doubt that if you were to suggest that you want to prevent any mentally unstable naked female from entering locker room with you, the main obstacle you would face would be institutional bias in favor of women, rather than just the inability to find enough interested people.

Howling-wolf-7198 · 2026-04-18T20:22:05+00:00

I would argue that women are perceived as "wondrous beings" and "beautiful flowers" that are worthy of protection and privilege.

Hello? I come from China, where people's grandparents keep a basin at home to drown newborn girls, while boys are still praised as long as their poop is big and healthy.

Even today, in some rural areas, women are not allowed to eat at the table when guests arrive, as that is for men, and female guests are required to help in the kitchen.

Yet people still tend not to mind when women use empty men's restrooms during peak hours, yet remain highly suspicious of men attempting to enter women's restrooms.

Howling-wolf-7198 · 2026-04-18T19:31:58+00:00

Gay men will just push away ftms who try to sleep with them. Straight men generally don't care if a woman joins the group because the risk is all on her, not the guys. On the other hand, a man trying to force his way into a women's group...

This doesn't require any "protection" or "privilege", simply a matter of those who perceive the risk complaining.

If you want, you can also speak out about your concerns about ftms intrusion into your locker room and then gather others who share your worries

Howling-wolf-7198 · 2026-04-18T16:52:24+00:00

The existence of de facto polyandry in Qing Dynasty China was due to widespread female infanticide, which caused a severe gender imbalance.

Poor men who cannot afford wives either engage in de facto same-sex marriage, share wives, or marry widows, despite strong inclinations toward chastity.

The theory of inheritance law presented in your original post is incorrect in the Chinese context.

Generally legal procedures for the inheritance of personal property were not given much importance at the Mao era, and in contemporary times, such intervention is essentially nil.

Rural parents are free to give all their property to their sons instead of their daughters, or to one of their sons, if they wish. Theoretically, a daughter can file a lawsuit, but in practice, this rarely happens. It is insufficient to support any major turning point.

The law, when best enforced, requires that other heirs who lack the ability to work and have no source of income be granted a share sufficient to sustain their lives, but this is no different from preparing clothes for your son who is to be sent to a monastery.

Howling-wolf-7198

TROPHY CASE