This is anonymous, so I'll speak my mind. Maybe it's helpful to you.
They call it Dutch superiority because they are superior. I immigrated from the United States, and I would never go back at this point. People are still people here, but society functions, and that is because people are critical. Education is better, family relationships are better, infrastructure is better, treatment of the poor and less fortunate is better. And OP is right in that you clammed up, in precisely the way the article describes, at the slightest criticism of Anglo-Saxon culture, despite the fact that you have been describing just how much you dislike said culture in your voluminous comments.
My advice is to start being critical if you want your culture to survive. We really do see how silly you all are, and it is really more sad than anything. Fijne dag!
Note that the discussion was about Anglo-Saxon culture, not the U.S.A., which is a beast of it's own and the problems you speak of are not Anglo-Saxon culture, but extreme capitalism.
You will find many of the benefits of which you speak in other Anglo-Saxon nations such as Canada as well. In fact, Canada ranks far higher than the Netherlands in social mobility indices, and social mobility in the Netherlands is not very high compared to other developed nations, only average, but social mobility is very low in the U.S.A..
The arguments you raised here were not of anything that was spoken of in this discussion, but of how much less capitalist the Netherlands is than the U.S.A., which would similarly apply to any other developed nations.
The topic spoke of gender relationships, which is entirely unrelated, and I remain that I'm sceptical that it's truly as bad as claimed, for I have seen as many anecdotes that point to the opposite from Anglo-Saxons.
But yes, I have seen many an Anglo-Saxon rant on the internet that speaks of a ridiculous, dystopian doom scenario in Anglo-Saxon gender relationships, where the male cannot walk outside with his own children alone, lest he be arrested on the spot for child abduction, and the female cannot buy his own automative vehicle, for the salesman would first ask for permission of a male relative ere he be allowed to do so. — these stories seem very exaggerated, but I have certainly read stories that go to this length.
I have also read counter anecdotes that claim that there is no real problem, and that much of it seems to be outright whining of how bad it is for the home team makes me sceptical that gender relationships are truly as bad as they claim in the Anglo-Saxon world. What I do think is perhaps the big problem is the tribalist nature and tensions, and how quickly people see ghosts, and complain on being mistreated on their tribe. The Anglo-Saxon seems to very often be a team player by nature, an be quick to shout sexism or racism, when other factors might be at play.
I would personally never live in Canada either. As someone who can say from experience what this culture is really like, I tend to agree with the dystopian doom scenario and that entails all of North America. Try it for yourself if you like.
You really cannot speak your mind with a female coworker in the United States. My guard is fully up because I have experienced numerous difficulties with "just being myself" that have never caused issues here. Threatening to go to HR to get one's way is something that I have experienced personally and seen multiple times with peers, and the men never win. However, this is in the context of startup/tech culture, and it is a worse problem in this area.
In relationships, they know that they can always take the children. The government/society fully supports them regardless of the circumstances. A big female content creator in the U.S., neekolul, went on twitter to trash her ex-husband despite the fact that she was tried and convicted of felony domestic violence for stabbing him during a fight, but her fellow female content creators shrugged and supported her anyway. It's the most horrible example of many, but the point is, it's real. The people who don't believe it are delusional or have an abusive partner themselves.
I'm curious. Do you have any colleagues from the UK or from southern Europe? How do you treat them? I am similarly guarded with women from these places, although not nearly as much as I felt I had to be in the United States.
> You really cannot speak your mind with a female coworker in the United States.
Perhaps, but this is a different matter to how the poor are treated, wouldn't you say?
Do you feel that Canada also treats the poor poorly? or that it has merely also inherited Anglo-Saxon gender chivalry? As I'm sceptical of the former, but not the latter.
> In relationships, they know that they can always take the children. The government/society fully supports them regardless of the circumstances. A big female content creator in the U.S., neekolul, went on twitter to trash her ex-husband despite the fact that she was tried and convicted of felony domestic violence for stabbing him during a fight, but her fellow female content creators shrugged and supported her anyway. It's the most horrible example of many, but the point is, it's real. The people who don't believe it are delusional or have an abusive partner themselves.
Well, these would indeed be some of the doomsday stories of tribalism and gender relationships I often hear of Anglo-Saxon culture where everyone has decided who is right and who is wrong based on little more than “What team do you play for?”, that I have never experienced in the Netherlands.
But, then again, such stories, as in this case, seem to once again come from a team, and are anecdotal, so perhaps exaggerated. The other team frequently paints a doomsday scenario in the opposite direction, of which I am as sceptical as I am of this one due to it.
> I'm curious. Do you have any colleagues from the UK or from southern Europe? How do you treat them? I am similarly guarded with women from these places, although not nearly as much as I felt I had to be in the United States.
None that spent their formative years outside of the Netherlands, no.
The one very mild experience I had in life with someone who did seem to on some level believe in “gender relations” was indeed with a friend of mine who had Finnish parents, and was born in the U.K. but lived in the Netherlands since four years old and spoke Dutch accentlessly. Perhaps it's a coincidence that this is the one person who had such perspectives, but perhaps it isn't; it does make one wonder that the one person happened to be a natal foreigner, but his foreign ancestry was seldom something that came up.
There were certainly not gendered excuses or accusations of sexism, but there were sometimes remarks in the vein of “Are you even aware of that I'm female in how you treat me?”, at least initially, after which it mostly went away.
They call it Dutch superiority because they are superior. I immigrated from the United States, and I would never go back at this point. People are still people here, but society functions, and that is because people are critical. Education is better, family relationships are better, infrastructure is better, treatment of the poor and less fortunate is better. And OP is right in that you clammed up, in precisely the way the article describes, at the slightest criticism of Anglo-Saxon culture, despite the fact that you have been describing just how much you dislike said culture in your voluminous comments.
My advice is to start being critical if you want your culture to survive. We really do see how silly you all are, and it is really more sad than anything. Fijne dag!