I doubt Jifry will see this, but just in case:

Do you believe that public policy - a welfare state, equality before the law - drives culture and dampens violence as well as promoting sexual equality?

Yes. A philosophy of society which says that it is the place of government -- the only organizational body of "society" that allows society to take collective action as a whole -- to promote the welfare of all members of society, as opposed to one that says it is only the place of private organizations and private individuals to help themselves or others, is likely to produce people who are willing to work together for a collective good, and are less selfish. Conditions in which people, in general, are selfish produce tragedy of the commons issues, and allows power and wealth to gravitate to small numbers of people, which accelerates the process. I think that while in many respects our culture has become smarter over time (I have no respect for reality TV, but compare it to The Price Is Right and I gotta say, it's more complex and interesting), we have also become more violent and selfish, and this is generally bad for everyone.

Do the other rich aspects of women's lives make public expressions of this unhappiness simply whining?

This is basically playing "my pain is worse than yours" and I don't want to do it. People who are unhappy with their love lives are unhappy, period, and they have the right to be, but they should understand that they could be *more* unhappy for completely different reasons if they were fulfilled in love.

My feeling is that people will always complain about whatever makes them unhappy, and I'm not willing to call them whiners, but I will say that if you're unhappy that you can't find a man with good looks and a personality that suits you, you're a lot better off than if you're unhappy because your husband beats you and you have no financially viable way to leave him. On the other hand, you may well be worse off than a woman who's unhappy because she has a good, loving husband and a few kids she wanted to have, and now they're teenagers and driving her and her husband nuts.

I still believe that your remark (please forgive my parsing the latter half of your sentence), "Women are much, much better off with a society where they must compete hard with each other for men..." is provocative and counterintuitive to the recurring discourse in Broadsheet. Rather than wring hands over whether there is such a thing as a "man shortage," you say that when it exists in a society that's not at war it's a good thing, a sign of progress if not a worthy goal.

Not exactly. I was comparing the situation of women competing hard for men with the situation of men competing hard for women, which is more the historical norm. I think the first is better for women and better for society (among other things, women who lose the man lottery do *not* tend toward violence or social anomie or gang behavior as men who lose the woman lottery do -- the worst thing women who are embittered and angry that they can't get a man to love them will do is be verbally cruel to men, and while that's bad it's not in the same league as becoming a rapist or a serial killer.) But I think the *best* situation is one with a belief in sexual equality and a mild sex imbalance in favor of women -- at most maybe 53%/47% -- where both men and women compete within gender for the attention of the other gender, but the proportion of the truly desperate is low; however, there's enough uncertainty about whether a woman will ever manage to marry that she will not expect a man to support her, and will take the initiative to develop career skills and manage her own life. Meanwhile, lower numbers of men means less crime and more value placed on male life, therefore less tolerance for war and male-on-male violence. The men are happier and more relaxed with each other *and* women, because their intra-gender competition for women is lessened; and I tend to think that women, who often assign themselves caretaking roles and become the sole emotional confidante of the men who love them, will be happier and less stressed if men in general are happier and less stressed.

I accept your arguments, but wouldn't a critic of your hypothesis say that we don't necessarily become better people when there are less men about? What of this fear of male "arrogance?" And aren't "girls gone wild" a sign of young women desperately seeking male attention in higher education?

Yes, actually I'd agree with that (not necessarily about the girls gone wild, since I don't know enough about that phenomenon, but the other points.) Too many women in comparison to men and you get desperation. Women will go for abusive men, cruel men, irresponsible men, and just downright bad men because they see little hope of getting a good man; men can be arrogant, as you pointed out, and see no need to compromise with women. So no, a situation with a serious sex imbalance, greater than 55% women, is also bad for women -- it's just not *as* bad as greater than 55% men, because desperate women are likely to hurt themselves and desperate men are likely to hurt other people, and you have a choice about hurting yourself but little choice about whether other people hurt you.

The piece about fertility rates being greater amongst conservatives as opposed to liberals and therefore suggesting that conservatives will simply outnumber liberals in the long-run is not new if you look around. Several easy examples come to mind: the first being in the Arab world where the "Arab womb" is the secret weapon in the struggle against the "Zionist entity". In Southern CA, the Hispanic population is now out numbering all others and is becoming more influential. In Miami, the expat Cubans are firmly in control. Some say that Europe will be 20% Muslim by 2050 for the same reasons. These may not be exact parallels but the outcomes are the same. With population swings, there is a transformation of the culture and with it comes a new value system. The article in questions seems to reaffirm the generally held view that the liberal wing of the political spectrum is now a minority and will likely remain that way for the foreseeable future. The imperative for liberals is to build bridges to other political groups in order to remain viable.