First, the video doesn't list sources. So I have to find them myself. Fair enough. I can't find the damned Pew Research article being cited
anywhere.
I found
this X post which lists
this article by a professor of social psychology, but I don't believe in appeal to authority arguments because the authority is biased but whatever let's assume he's smart. He cites
this by the pew research way back during the COVID-19 days in march 2020, 4 years ago. Not a SINGLE time is "mental" or anything synonymous mentioned nor can I find 56% anywhere but that's the article, not the dataset. I have to make an account to look at the actual dataset and screw that I'll take their word for it and the fact that left-wing and right-wing publishers are running with this let's just assume everyone's right.
The article used in the video:
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/apr/22/white-liberals-more-likely-have-mental-health-cond/
Rest of the post:
Normally I fact-check liberal sources because I find them to be a bit dishonest, but I decided to do a fact-check on this since unlike the channel I like to watch for political content this guy didn't go very far into sources and just did surface-level stuff and called liberal women with mental illness "psychopaths". Look you can use language like that if you want but if you do I'm gonna want a better source than an online article that you found.
Anyways, it is indeed correct if we take all those articles at their word since I'm too lazy to make a Pew account. The problem is causation. What is causing white liberal women to be more mentally ill? There are drawbacks to the ideology like the beliefs of helplessness and victimhood which I happened to be at the beginning of when I went to school what with the whole "you are a woman and you are oppressed and nothing will ever be better for you" stuff that was being pushed around while I was at school but the ideology in itself isn't gonna make you mentally ill. Oh, btw, it's not me saying that. That's said in the
article. Ctrl F in that article "victimhood" "white guilt" "misinformation" "white privilege" "panic" to see a few examples but I'm not gonna list them all out it's a short article you can spend 30 seconds reading it.
So let's stop using my bias and think for a second.
Liberals tend to be in the city whereas conservatives tend to be in rural areas. Cities have more widely available mental health resources, so I think it's natural that they would indeed be diagnosed with mental illnesses more because they're actually getting checked out.
If you're getting bored of reading, the next 3 paragraphs are me saying Marriage and religion = happiness and also do a bit of a thinking exercise using sources that don't know how to use statistics. So you can skip the next 3 paragraphs if you want.
Conservatives on the other hand tend to be more religious,
which is proven to improve happiness across the board and I will shamelessly use Pew Research as a source. Except... it's by self-reporting. Religion tends to tell you that being happy with your life is in itself a virtue. I'm going to make the dumb argument that they're
alexithymic so they're not
actually as happy as they think they are. They're still a bit happier but don't think that religion is the gateway to happiness. Weak argument I know. My point is that you don't need religion to be happy, but it helps. The video also says that religious people don't divorce as much, maybe due to strong faith. However, I really wonder what the abuse rates are among religious couples and how likely one is to try to escape that or if their religion gets in the way, or if it's "not abuse" they cope with it due to religion. Just a thought. Especially when I throw in that
1 in 4 religious marriages are abusive.
Here's the source the article cites. You'll find that it says 20% of men committed violence and 20% of women were victims. Doesn't say anything about women being violent of course because women are never violent /s. They say 20% at first then on page 36 claim it's 24%. Notice how it says "predicted probability" and not the actual rate. The article used the source and saw the probability and said "1-in-4 abuse rate" and even told us to go to that specific page for their source. That author has bad reading comprehension. The purpose of this was to tell you that you shouldn't take me at my word, nor should you take anybody else's at their word since nobody knows how to read research properly or uses it for themselves, like I am doing!
Yes, people who are married and have kids are objectively happier, much of the time. What I'm arguing against is that once again there's more to happiness than that and also marriage and children can be fucking terrible. Some people are not meant to be parents and you'll see tons of people on this forum who don't want to have kids or are distressed about being pregnant. Ultimately though, fair enough assumption ain't gonna argue it.
What I will argue though, is the line at about 8:20 in the video. He pretty much says that if you're secular you're devoid of purpose in life. K. Guess I can't find a purpose in raising a family (while being secular!) or volunteering or doing something else that I want to do. Maybe, just maybe, those liberals found a purpose in advocating in what they believe will make the country better. I highly disagree that it will make the country better, but they did find a purpose did they not? Kind of a weak argument on my part but I'm just trying to throw in that you don't need religion to have purpose. He also vaguely talks about conservatives believing in the notion of order. Fair enough. He makes the mistake of saying
moral order. Given how the context is talking about religion I'm sorry but you can be agnostic/atheist and moral too. He also doesn't say how liberals are disorderly so I don't really know how I can debunk him when he just doesn't even argue how conservatives are orderly in the first place other than just saying that they are because... religion I guess?
Let's also bear in mind age here.
Young people are more mentally ill than old people... or perhaps they're more likely to get it diagnosed at a young age? Asking for a fact-check on this. Those damn statisticians don't say whether it's old people being diagnosed at an old age, or if they simply have a mental illness at that age. What if there's just as many old people with mental illnesses as young people, but they just got it young? See it's those kinds of questions you need to ask when looking at these sorts of things. Young people are also more liberal than old people but I can't find a source on this that doesn't try to say
"Gen-Z and millennials are left-leaning and is staying to the left" but whatever. My argument is that young people are liberal, young people also get mental illness more. And it's not because they're liberal.
Lastly, you claim conservative social values will make women happier.
This
source that's a fucking stupid source because it doesn't show their damn sources other than say "pewresearch.com" says otherwise. Again just an exercise saying that you should look more into sources. In fact, the stay-at-home mom = happy/unhappy thing is a neutral stance from me. I see both sides but the research on both is flawed. That's just one conservative social value for women I thought of. Don't feel like thinking of more. Generally I think that having a parent raise kids is a good idea, but mostly for the children, and only if you can afford it.
What other conservative social values would make women happier?
The rates of mental illness between men and women.
Women are more likely to be mentally ill than men. This is a UK source because I felt like not being American-centric. This is something I just don't believe because I've lived as a man. Those rates should be more equal. I think women are more likely
to get help than men are since men are socialized to never show emotion and to always man up and all that. But if we just use it as a source, yeah, of course white liberal women have high mental illness... women are 3xs more likely to have mental illness than men. How is this surprising?
Welp. That's done. Just figured I'd throw this in for my weekly dose of the politics thread section that I normally avoid because then I end up wasting my time writing essays like I am now. I'm almost at 2000 words I seriously need to get a life. It's disjointed too but I can't be fucked to deal with it when like, 7 people are gonna read it.
Another example of psychiatric diagnoses being weaponized to push an agenda.
