
Gendercide: The worldwide war on baby girls - tokenadult
http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15636231
======
klenwell
"Throughout human history, young men have been responsible for the vast
preponderance of crime and violence—especially single men in countries where
status and social acceptance depend on being married and having children, as
it does in China and India. A rising population of frustrated single men
spells trouble."

In The Moral Animal, Robert Wright discusses this in addressing the social
benefits of egalitarian, pro-monogamy social values. As a kind of real world
experiment illustrating the meliorating effect of marriage, consider this:

[http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2001/12/all-
you-...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2001/12/all-you-need-is-
love/2351/)

In the 1970s, the PLO reigned in the radical militant young men in Black
September by marrying them off.

Apart from the obvious horror of infanticide, this is what I find most
unnerving about the widening gender skew in these countries.

~~~
Mz
The American West was "Wild" until women started showing up in adequate
numbers to provide wives for men instead of just whore houses.

------
billpg
My favorite story is of someone who sold a treatment that guaranteed boys,
offering a full money back guarantee if you had a girl. Half his customers
were fully satisfied.

Quite clever I thought.

------
wooster
I have a friend whose mom told her: "I wish I'd left you to die when you were
born." She's Chinese, and a successful Chinese-American entrepreneur.

I can't even begin to imagine what a mindfuck that must be.

------
sruffell
I don't have anything new to say about the larger societal issues raised in
this article, but as a father of a young daughter, this article certainly made
me feel sad for all the daughters who aren't given a chance.

~~~
kls
No doubt, I read this article with my 2 year old daughter in my lap and my 3
year old son sitting in the other chair and cannot imagine choosing her over
him or vice verse. It really makes you wonder how much societal norms affect
things that seem like basic human tenants.

------
lionhearted
I just finished Genji Monogatari, a work from 12th Century Japan. It follows
Prince Genji from being born to an low ranking concubine of the Emperor and
follows his adventures, and how he gets exiled, and returns, and eventually
becomes Emperor himself. Very interesting read.

Anyway, at one point in the book, he meets a family in the countryside where
the mother had died and the father was working off in another city, leaving
one last elderly grandparent in the care of a 10 year old girl. Genji took
her, raised her, and she became a member of his household. About 10 years
later, after Genji's wife died, he actually married her.

Anyway, it'd be totally politically untenable to loosen the adoption
restrictions, and going as far as to allow adoptive parents to compensate the
family would never happen. It'd be just politically impossible due to
perceptions involved, and maybe that's a good thing. Still, infanticide is no
good, and I wonder if there's other solutions if we could broaden our
perspective.

------
wooster
It's fairly easy to see that this is going to be one of the great causes of
worldwide instability in this century. Many of these societies will be left
with little choice in the face of political and societal forces but
territorial expansionism, civil war, totalitarianism, or cultural suicide.

~~~
kiba
The European and the Japanese is declining in population. Greece is already
bankrupt.

The United State government is racking up extraordinary debt, backed with
little saving. If it keep doing that, we may entered not just stagnation but
collapse.

There is also the agriculture crisis in Africa as a certain fungus ravages
crops all over. It has already spread to Iran, I heard.

The 21st century certainly hang in the balance as we flirt with danger.

~~~
barrkel
US government debt actually isn't very high, nor are interest payments very
high compared to GDP. And racking up extraordinary debt is the correct
counter-cyclical response to an extraordinary recession. Governments shouldn't
be reducing spending or increasing taxes when the economy hits hard times.
Instead, it should reduce spending and maintain or raise taxes when the
economy is doing well.

And Greece isn't bankrupt. You can't reasonably say that a country is bankrupt
until it starts defaulting on its loans.

~~~
kiba
_US government debt actually isn't very high, nor are interest payments very
high compared to GDP. And racking up extraordinary debt is the correct
counter-cyclical response to an extraordinary recession. Governments shouldn't
be reducing spending or increasing taxes when the economy hits hard times.
Instead, it should reduce spending and maintain or raise taxes when the
economy is doing well._

Why would government spending help the economy at all? Let give people shovels
to dig holes and fill it back it in! Surely, breaking windows will make jobs
for the glassmakers.

Let not forget that all the fancy infrastructure projects that the government
is making has to be maintained. We may like all the new roads that we're
paying for right now, but too many roads mean higher maintenance bills, which
mean higher taxes and less money for consumers to spend it on or save.

Maybe it is better to let all the irresponsible firms bankrupt themselves and
let people who made the correct bet win all the money. Let the Nassim Nicholas
Taleb of world win big.

The free market runs on firm failure, not just firm success.

~~~
nazgulnarsil
even the relatively intelligent and contrarian crowd on HN doesn't like
hearing this. there's no way we're not screwed in the long term.

~~~
ars
The parent post was modded down to -1, but had no replies. That is NOT
appropriate on this site.

You only downmod for spam and stupid comments. If they are wrong they go to 0.
If you disagree then reply, but you don't downmod just because you disagree.

~~~
tokenadult
_You only downmod for spam and stupid comments._

That is still under discussion.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1057347>

(The linked comment is not the most current comment on the issue, I'm pretty
sure, but one that came up readily by searching.) An older comment by pg

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171>

appears now to be superseded in part. I will follow the group culture here
where pg (the site founder) and the moderators take it.

~~~
nazgulnarsil
in reality people will always vote in accordance with making the thread look
more like they think the thread should look.

------
hga
A note on South Korea:

It is by far the most Christian nation in Asia: 29% in the 2005 census and the
largest (vs. 23% for Buddhism and 46.5% no religion). This is going to have
_very_ strong effects on social attitudes towards women and means what
happened there in reversing this problem very probably won't elsewhere.
Certainly not the PRC with its suppression of religion (of _any_ non-Party
dominated mass organization) and likely not in India with its well entrenched
two major religions and their focus on each other.

------
araneae
If we wait long enough, this problem will fix itself.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisher%27s_principle>

Too bad evolution is so slow.

~~~
Retric
Humans don't have a 1:1 M/F ratio. It starts at ~1.05:1 at birth and with men
dieing off sooner.

~~~
Rexxar
The 1.05:1 probably permits to have a 1:1 ratio at the age of reproduction in
a pre-industrial societies.

~~~
araneae
Exactly. The only individuals relevant to evolutionary processes are those
that reach reproductive age.

~~~
DaniFong
Completely false. Consider bees. Almost all females in a bee colony don't
reproduce, but if the other females left the whole colony would collapse, no
work would be done.

~~~
araneae
First of all, honey bees are an exception to Fisher's principle.

Secondly, your reasoning is more generally completely irrelevant.

What you said was analogous to this:

Children can kill their mothers in childbirth, so obviously kids before
reproductive age are still relevant!

Ok, so obviously non-reproductive individuals can affect the transmission of a
person's genes. So can hurricanes, viruses, and cows. However, when you're
solving your nice systems of differential equations to look at the
evolutionary dynamics of various genes, _you only consider reproductive
individuals,_ because these are the only ones that transmit genes.

Yes, non-reproductives can have effects in evolutionary dynamics, but _only_
as passive environmental elements. Dying because you have a gene that makes
you susceptible to a virus is the same as dying in childbirth, to evolutionary
processes. There's natural selection against the genes that made you weak to
the virus, and natural selection on the genes that made your fetus too large.

I hope that makes sense. It can be hard to communicate with people from
different fields; they use words differently than you do. (I'm a graduate
student in evolutionary biology)

~~~
DaniFong
If you paid closer attention to the physicists, you'd realize that exceptions
break the rule: they're clues to a more general theory. Is it so inconceivable
that a postmenopausal woman might provide some fitness benefit for their kin?
What evolutionary basis could there be for a person risking their life for a
stranger? There are many more forces at work here than strict biological
decent.

~~~
araneae
You missed the point.

The grandmother hypothesis doesn't contradict what I said at all. If you
wanted to model evolutionary processes, you only stick in the reproductives,
because they're the ones that will be producing more copies of their genes in
the next generation.

As for risking your life for a stranger, evolution doesn't always find the
maximum; it often settles in local maxima. If a strategy works 51% of the
time, it will persist.

And yes, there are more forces at work than biological decent, but I don't see
how that's relevant to anything I said. It's so imprecise it can't help but be
true. So much for physicists.

~~~
DaniFong
I highly recommend the book "The Extended Phenotype," by Richard Dawkins.
These are hardly new debates.

~~~
jacquesm
I wouldn't single out any of Dawkins' books for reading, read all of them if
you can afford the time.

------
akgerber
As China grows economically what is the likelihood of it simply allowing
female immigration and thus pass this problem off to poorer nations?

~~~
rsheridan6
Where are you going to find that many women? Nowhere but Africa, or possibly
Latin America. That would lead to an interesting culture clash.

------
scorciapino
Meh, this is a war against MEN.

In a society with such a gender imbalance, women can be more picky and some
men are left without hope of getting a partner. Without a partner, what are
they going to focus on life, if not work? And who is gonna get their money
when they die?

Communists may be evil, but they aren't stupid, so it's unlikely they haven't
foreseen this.

~~~
orborde
It's only great for the women who aren't murdered at birth. I'm not sure
there's a clear winner in this gender war interpretation of yours.

EDIT: Did the math and concluded that for a normal sex ratio of ~103 to turn
into one of 120, you'd have you be losing 14 of every 100 females through
either prenatal abortion or unreported killing at birth.

~~~
hga
Actually, things tend to get _really_ ugly for girls in a society where they
become a scarce and valuable resource for their families. E.g. their value is
in what can be extracted in the marriage market (note the comments on how this
is skewing savings in the PRC), not in what they intrinsically are.

All in all I'd have to say this helps explain why the PRC is ramping up their
police state (e.g. see
[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870424050457458...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704240504574585120857399040.html))

------
detcader
What a blow against the Online Ads cause: I start to read the article, and a
"subscribe now" popup slides right over the first paragraph. Nice.

~~~
jpcx01
It's the economist so I'll put up with anything they throw at me since they
have such good content. Plus the ad was for their own product, and not some
3rd party crap.

I guess I'm just happy whenever I can actually access an article there. I
thought they put up a pay wall a few months back.

------
greenlblue
Girls in general are better people and killing them is plain stupid.

~~~
greenlblue
Honestly, why would anyone take offence at this and downvote? Most of human
history has been dominated by men and it has been war after war after war.
Throw in the several male prophets whose followers have created several
religions and the subsequent strife and women win by at least 1000 points. At
this point it shouldn't even be an issue which is the better gender.

~~~
araneae
There's a bit of cognitive dissonance in your post. It's obvious that you
think that the reason that men have been the head of wars is _innate,
biological determinism._ Yet men have also been the ones who developed science
and technology. On HN, almost all of us are men. Is that also due to _innate,
biological determinism_? If not, how do you explain the fact that all the
things you dislike about men are innate, and all the things you like are not?
And if yes, how can you say that women are better than men? Do you not value
science, technology, and entrepreneurship?

~~~
relay
I'm not going to argue on nature vs nurture but I will ask you a hypothetical
question.. if you had to make a choice between fast evolution of "science,
technology, entrepreneurship" and a peaceful world without war nor violence,
which would you take ?

If (I have no idea whether it's the case or not) biological determinism was
true and those views were confirmed, I still wouldn't see women as inferior.
Being smart enough to create and have low enough morals to use the atomic bomb
is NOT a gift, it's a curse.

~~~
araneae
Ask girls about their experiences in all girls schools and ask them if they'd
like to experience that for the rest of their lives. It's unlikely that
killing off all men and then cloning the remaining females is a viable
solution to world peace.

In answer to your actual question, though, you proffer a world with no war in
violence as an ideal. However, I challenge that idea that you would even enjoy
living in such a world; or at least enjoy living in such a world that is
necessitated by a total lack of violence.

In elementary school, we learned that the central element to every story is
conflict. A story with no conflict is boring. The same is true of life.

And then add to that that it's impossible to have a world without conflict
without giving everyone a lobotomy, which would then result in the sudden
collapse of civilization and the extinction of the human race...

It's a very simplistic world view you have that all violence is wrong.
Sometimes violence is necessary, and sometimes it's entertaining (sports or
action movies, anyone? Or a good beheading in the old days?). But even if you
disagree on those two points, conflict is inherent in any system where
individuals of the same species compete for resources.

There are such things as dumb questions, _especially_ if they're hypothetical.

~~~
relay
My world view is not any more simplistic than your biased view based on
western culture.The buddhist's nirvana is the absence of desire and while they
believe in reincarnation, they see it as a curse to those who are too much
anchored to their wealth and earthly delights. What seems boring to you is
some other people idea of paradise. I'm not religious myself but I feel
dramatically attracted by the underlying philosophy of Buddhism. There is
something wrong with you if you think that life needs to perpetuate violence
for thrill's sake.

~~~
lionhearted
> The buddhist's nirvana is the absence of desire and while they believe in
> reincarnation, they see it as a curse to those who are too much anchored to
> their wealth and earthly delights.

As a sidenote, I know Buddhism is quite popular in the West these days, but
after spending time in Asia, I don't see it as superior in practice to the
Western religions. The best of Buddhism, the most interesting and enlightening
concepts make it to the West. But they have just as much silly superstition,
social control, religious rank and hierarchy, and warriorship/violence in
their history as the Western religions. Actually, some of the finest fighters
of their era are the Shaolin and Honganji monks of China and Japan, who were
at times much equivalently brutal to crusdaders and jihadists.

As for me personally, I think struggle is a good thing. I think all the most
important and valuable aspects of life are struggle - living, thriving,
growing. Childbirth, one of the heights of human experience, is a brutal
struggle. Farming is struggle, hunting is struggle, cooking is struggle.
Training to dance or sing or play an instrument is struggle. I'm with you on
non-materialism as accumulating stuff isn't particularly effective, but I
(personally) reject the notion that struggle is bad. All the best parts of
life are a struggle or the fruits of struggle. I embrace struggle, I embrace
suffering for worthy causes - suffering in exercise, in farming, in hunting,
in cooking, in dancing, in having and rearing children. It's all struggle - I
don't want nirvana, give me this world and its struggles and sufferings, and
I'll embrace it fully.

> There is something wrong with you if you think that life needs to perpetuate
> violence for thrill's sake.

This I agree with, but I think the original commentor's point was a bit more
nuanced than that. I think he was saying conflict is necessary at times for
life, and he was also noting that people do enjoy observing conflict and drama
playing out. Myself, I've got mixed feelings on this - you know, I much prefer
baseball to American football for instance. I played linebacker in high
school, but watching a 6'6 220 pound receiver catch a pass in the air and get
destroyed by a 6'4 260 pound safety while he's largely helpless makes me
cringe a little. The strategy aspect of American football I quite like, the
brutality of it not so much. So I'm with you on some points, less so on
others.

