The basic line taken by the liberal commenters there was that there were no conceivable negative consequences if men ceased to be providers for their families and if women became economically independent.
That's actually the moderate liberal line: everything's going well, we'll make these changes and nothing bad will happen. A more radical liberal would claim that the changes were intended to sweep away the old and usher in an entirely different social order.
The "moderate" liberal attitude reminded me of Kristor's recent comment at VFR:
Modern culture is a veritable hurricane of vicious cycles, all originating in a gnostic pretense: Let's pretend that there is no inherent nature of things, so that we may mess ad libitum with the family, sex, economics, and culture, with no ill consequences. Hey, Presto! Pass a law! Make it so!
That's what I felt I was up against. It was left to me to try and argue the nature (or "working") of things (not always the easiest thing to do) whilst the liberals argued "no nature" in response. Some of the liberals did this more subtly than others (the first commenter "infinitely thirsting" doing the best job out of the liberals).
Here's a typical exchange:
Me: A heterosexual man will generally find femininity in a woman sexually attractive.
Liberal: Just so you know, there's no universal understanding of what "femininity" or "masculinity" entails - each culture has traits it considers womanly or manly and they vary widely.
Me: As it happens, the ideal of feminine attractiveness has stayed fairly constant throughout recorded Western history. From the poem Alison (thirteenth or fourteenth century): "With a lovely face she laughed upon me - Her waist small and well-made ... Kindest of ladies, hearken to my song". From the early 1400s: "The smiling mouth and laughing grey eyes, the round breasts and two long slender arms". From the 1500s: "There is a lady sweet and kind, Was never face so pleased my mind ... Her gesture, motion and her smiles, Her wit, her voice, her heart beguiles".
Liberal: The poem you linked talks about PHYSICAL BEAUTY (which has changed as well, especially in body type) and not social ideas of what is "masculine" and feminine
Me: The poems I linked to praised women not only for their physical femininity but also for being kind, sweet, smiling and vivacious - qualities which many men today would also find attractively feminine.
Our liberal cannot even accept the statement "A heterosexual man will generally find femininity in a woman sexually attractive." He finds even this too limiting for his purposes, he rebels against it. He suggests that there is no real existence to the qualities of masculinity and femininity, they exist instead as "social ideas" that change over time. Little wonder that he then believes that you can change from one social idea to another without any fallout, as the social idea doesn't relate to anything real.
But what if there has been fallout? What if there are high divorce rates, low marriage rates, below replacement fertility levels, resentments between the sexes, young men deciding "to go their own way", a coarsening of cultural standards and so on?
The liberals on the site either didn't recognise them ("talking about how society is going downhill is silly" wrote one) or else blamed large impersonal forces beyond our control (e.g. capitalism).
One final point: my post was voted up by 15 reddit readers and down by 8. So even though liberals dominated the comments, there does still seem to be an audience for traditionalist ideas amongst the men's rights readership.
(PS If there is a small "11 children" button under "kanuk876" you have to click it to read the entire discussion at the reddit site. As I write it's OK, but the way the reddit system works sections of the discussion can be hidden if they're downvoted.)
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