this is absurd, there are plenty of countries who have high levels of shame where aids is still running rampant. and to even imply that we (the us) didn’t have high levels of pre-marital sex in “the good old days when we could shame people” is naive to an extreme.
Are you serious?
Pre-marital rape is a massive issue there, as is underage rape, and rape "to just teach those women a lesson".
I imagine, though, that while the numbers for various rape types are probably relatively high compared to other countries, those crimes still affect a tiny minority of women and wouldn’t move the broader needle on HIV rates. I would guess that date rape is also extremely lower than in the west due to courtship practices being very different (which would work against high HIV rates).
The (frankly kind of bigoted) assumption here is that being well intentioned and having the “right” attitudes towards female sexuality is somehow more effective at preventing rape than strict social separation of the sexes.
And you’re correct that non-consensual sex is a relatively small factor in HIV rates compared to widespread consensual sex with multiple partners.
> Then women who end up in such situations anyway are considered fair game, more or less.
Would you say this part is accurate?
> And let’s not forget that we live in a country that became a world power under a social structure that was much more rigid and repressive than the one we have today
Great point, it’s interesting how eager people are to perform large scale social experiments in rapid succession and with no roll back button.
Alcohol?
Was it significantly more rigid and repressive than in other countries at the time? I don’t think so.
Also your AIDS and sex related crime statistics seem to be imaginary?
These sound like the arguments I hear from people that wish BD should have stayed East Pakistan.
Not sure why you are trying to invoke shame for something that is a well-known effect of economic conditions, and which has been observed to change with those conditions much faster than (and likely driving rather than driven by) cultural change.
> America had 100,000 people die of drug overdoses last year, whereas societies that shame people for drug use have far lower rates of overdoses.
So do countries that shame people less, like most of the rest of the developed world.
> Middle eastern and south Asian countries that shame people for pre-marital sex largely managed to avoid the AIDS epidemic that gripped similarly poor countries in other regions.
Which is some good luck for them, but one of the reasons it spread so much and i nterventions were so difficult jn Africa was strongly shame-centering cultures interfering with both prevention and treatment (and even acknowledging the fact and nature of the problem.) So, kind of not helping your argument.
Ascribing it to “economic conditions” blinks reality. Americans are economically better off now than they were in the 1960s, when TFR was much higher. Wealthier states like Massachusetts have much lower TFR than poorer states like Idaho and Nebraska. And whites are much more affluent than Hispanics, but have much lower TFR.
The effect of culture is apparent even when you dig further into subgroups. Asian Americans have the lowest TFR, despite being the most affluent and educated. But Muslim Americans, who are also wealthy and educated, have a much higher TFR than whites and other Asians. Both are more collectivist and less individualistic cultures, but there’s a long history of population control ingrained into East and south Asian culture, while there is a strong emphasis on procreation in Islam.
Frankly, it makes me laugh when I hear it. Poor Hispanic and Muslim immigrants are hard at work raising the next generation, but college educated white Americans “can’t afford kids.” Right.
No, it reflects well-established reality.
> Americans are economically better off now than they were in the 1960s, when TFR was much higher.
Yes, exactly. Globally, on a by-nation level, prosperity in general and social safety nets in particular, as well as access to birth control, are close and immediate drivers of reduced fertility. When family is your only old-age, disability, or unemployment support network, the economic incentive to have a large family is greater. When those are socially provided, raising children is a cost without as much of an economic purpose.
> But Muslim Americans, who are also wealthy and educated, have a much higher TFR than whites and other Asians.
Muslims in the USA are not more educated than the general population, having college degrees at about the same rate as the general population (31% in 2017, vs. 34.2% for the general population). [0][1] They also aren’t more affluent, being similarly likely to have an income over $100,000 but more likely to have an income under $30,000 than the general population. [0] Also, Muslims aren’t categorically Asians or categorically non-White (in fact, more are White than Asian, racially [0]), so you should either not use “other” for either racial category or should use “other” for both; the non-parallel use suggests you think Muslims are categorically a racial subgroup of Asians.
[0] https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2017/07/26/demographic-...
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/184260/educational-attai...
And let’s not forget that we live in a country that became a world power under a social structure that was much more rigid and repressive than the one we have today. Our relative decline in economic importance is probably caused by other economic trends, but it’s pretty wild to say “shame doesn’t work” despite the evidence to the contrary.