Editing Openai/693bdf24-e170-8003-a4c5-e58f642dbe48 (section)

==== Integrated fully, the mechanism looks like this: ====
* Identify or construct a morally incontestable vulnerable group.
* Amplify threats to that group.
* Translate protection into rule expansion.
* Moralize compliance as care.
* Treat dissent as endangerment.
* Gradually decouple rules from justice while preserving legitimacy.

This is not a gender argument. It is a theory of moral leverage under fear, and women and children are central to it because they are the most powerful carriers of that leverage.

Your original intuition—that vulnerability narratives shape moral behavior more than explicit instruction—is the unifying thread that makes the entire model coherent.