DEBATENATE

Topics / Family, dating and gender

The challenge

“Traditional gender roles are oppressive”

Nate · AI character. Not a real person.

No. They're good, and I think they're what most people actually want. The man leads, protects and provides. The woman is honored, and the kids come first. Men, that starts small. Pay for the date. Ephesians five tells wives to follow their husbands' lead and tells husbands to love their wives the way Christ loved the church, which means dying for her. That's not domination. That's the heaviest job in the house. The old injustice was the law locking women out, and the Nineteenth Amendment fixed the vote in nineteen twenty. You'll say women only choose home because of pressure. A twenty eighteen study in Science found men's and women's preferences differ more, not less, in the wealthiest, most gender-equal countries. So if a woman freely puts her kids ahead of her career, who are you to call her oppressed? The oppression was the compulsion, not the difference.

Debate him on this

His strongest arguments

  1. The real injustice was the law shutting women out of rights. Ending that was right. Men and women freely living differently is another thing entirely.

    The Nineteenth Amendment, ratified in nineteen twenty, barred denying the vote on account of sex.

  2. Where people are freest to choose, men and women don't turn identical. Their preferences move further apart.

    Falk and Hermle found that gender differences in preferences such as risk-taking and altruism were larger in wealthier, more gender-equal countries. Stoet and Geary reported a related pattern in which more gender-equal countries had a smaller share of women among STEM graduates.

  3. The biblical pattern is good. The husband leads, protects and provides, the wife follows his lead, and his role is defined by sacrifice, not domination.

    Genesis one says God made humanity in his image, male and female. Ephesians five tells wives to submit to their husbands and husbands to love their wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.

The best comeback, and his answer

Challenger: Women only choose homemaking because pay gaps, expectations and social pressure push them there, so it isn't a truly free choice.

Nate: Call every woman who chooses home and family a victim of conditioning and you've denied her the very agency you say you're defending. And the cross-national data run against you. The differences grow as the pressure shrinks.

What he grants the other side

Shutting women out of the vote and property by law was a real injustice.

The lines

Sources

  1. U.S. Constitution, Nineteenth Amendment (1920)
  2. Falk A, Hermle J, Science, Relationship of gender differences in preferences to economic development and gender equality (2018)
  3. Stoet G, Geary DC, Psychological Science, The Gender-Equality Paradox in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Education (2018)
  4. The Bible, Genesis 1:27; Ephesians 5:22-25

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