Girls and Software

Many things correlate to drops in real-world violence. Heat correlates with increases in violence; that is not a reason to depopulate the equator and colonize the Antarctic.

In general, the reinforcement learning present in humans mean that neural systems that are activated more are more influential, easier to activate, etc.. Exposure to violent media unsurprisingly results in increased availability (basically, increased access speed) of violent cognitions and behaviors, and lowered emotional responses (which is not a good thing -- it is very good to be disgusted at violent images, this is indicative of a trait called empathy which can be very adaptive in even the modern world).

Humans are not designed, evolutionarily, to disbelieve things we see. In our evolutionary environment, everything we saw was real. Special effects did not exist. It is actually cognitively effortful to disbelieve -- making research participants complete distractor tasks while having them discriminate between information marked, explicitly, as true or false causes them to be less accurate at judging. When you see a video game character kill someone and experience reward, that is an observational learning experience that is associating positive valence with violent behaviors.

Within the scientific community there's virtually no disagreement on this topic. Denying it is in the same class as denying climate change.

There is definitely a causal link between violent media consumption and violent behavior. Violent media consumption is neither necessary nor sufficient for violent behavior, but it is causal.

(This also does not imply that violent media causes large violent outbursts -- heightened availability of aggressive behavior could manifest as simply as being more easily frustrated or having a slightly quicker temper. But very small effects build up over time, sometimes into large amounts of lost value.)

I suppose your rhetorical question could be read as a value statement, in that it's ethically subjective whether violent behaviors caused by violent media are "bad". But since you seem to care about drops in real-world violence, I'll assume that isn't the case.

"If someone says they are my friend, I assume they claim to be a friend according to the definition of the word "friend"."

OK, good point. However friend is not really defined by Wikipedia. We all have an intuitive notion of what a friend is. Likewise I don't think people look on Wikipedia to check if they might be feminists.

My point is that many who say they are feminists because they want equal rights have actually joined forces with something much more negative instead.

"In either case, economic realities dictate who stays home and how long -- and that is an impediment to equal (parenting) rights."

But what if women choose jobs with lower pay but higher flexibility, so that they can stay at home with kids? Isn't that a sensible and reasonable choice? Which, btw., nobody is forced to make. There are plenty of women who earn a lot of money.

You will argue that society expects women to stay at home, but ultimately, people in the Western world are free to choose their own mates. I think a lot of men wouldn't mind staying at home and marrying well earning women.

As I said in other comments, I think it is actually a female privilege to be allowed to stay home, and also to choose jobs with lower wages. That's where I think feminists have it completely backwards.

If you think about it, why would a woman support a man staying at home? Why not pay a nurse instead, might be cheaper than paying half of your income. The other way round it doesn't work because women give childbirth.

Of course all the articles about relationships breaking when the woman earns more than the man make the cause out to be male desire for dominance and vanity. What if instead it is the women who can't cope with it - because they don't have to?

You look at the numbers and decide women must get a bad rap - you claim all you want is free choice for everyone. But the possibility that women chose their path deliberately doesn't enter your mind. That's the feminist bias at work. Which, btw., seems to assume women are stupid. Feminism is a weird beast indeed.

Another indicator that women's choices might not be so stupid at all is their significantly longer life expectancy over men's. Personally I'd happily trade a chunk of my pay check for a 10 years longer life.