site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 1, 2024

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

9
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I have noticed a LOT in recent years how almost all of young females' major complaints about how they're treated by men would dissolve if they had a strong, trustworthy male figure in their life who could act as a simple disincentive for outsider males to behave badly. Not that women should have a male escort where-ever they go, but if they could simply text said male and say "hey I'm feeling uncomfortable about this situation, what should I do?" and get some advice or, if needed, immediate intervention, then there'd probably be a LOT less regret in their lives later on.

Or better yet, instead of merely reaching out to her father, brother(s), or other male figures for last minute hail-mary advice or to serve as a break-glass-in-case-of-emergency meatshield, if the social norm was for a young woman to pre-emptively seek and heed their advice when they tell her to not do stuff like wear slutty outfits, do drugs, or get drunk outside of the house, much less wear slutty outfits out to do drugs and get drunk.

Or you know, to not work for a man who may try to bang her in close quarters. Or to not teehee around and spend time alone with unvetted men.

However, such an alternative would be coup-complete. The current norm is that fathers and brothers (or other male family members) have no right to tell their teenage or adult daughters or sisters what to do. Her body, her choice; such advice would potentially limit her rightfully deserved FUN and FREEDOM or make her feel JUDGED. Fathers and brothers should just accept that at most, their role is limited to bailing out daughters and sisters from their coffee moments, or picking up the pieces afterward when things go awry. She's a vulnerable girl/young woman who's already STRESSED from the TRAUMA; YTA if "I told you so" even crosses your mind. If anything, you should feel honored to serve.

There's also a chicken-and-egg problem. If the norm is that fathers and brothers or other male family members have no right to tell a teenage girl or young woman what to do, then they'll be less inclined to try. If they're less inclined to try, that means there's an increased chance of her getting into thotty hijinks. Her thottery leads to her male family members quietly quitting from her life even further to preserve their own mental health, which leads to more space for her to operate and get herself into thotty hijinks.

It’s worth noting that that’s a very blue tribe mentality. The core red tribe expects that fathers have the right to get up in their adult daughter’s love lives, veto marriage partners, scare off boyfriends who need to be scared off, set dress codes for co-resident daughters, etc. They don’t see it as absolute like in trad societies but it’s not seen as overstepping boundaries to have strong opinions about such things and express them with the serious expectation that she actually listens.

There is still some reserves of social capital left in the red tribe, but they are being depleted at an alarming rate. Red tribe loves television, but Hollywood writers and producers are all blue tribe, so every modern show pushes feminist memes, sexual liberation memes, pro-college memes, and rootless cosmopolitan memes. And people only watch modern shows.

Red tribe fathers who proudly quote the rules "for dating my daughter" cheerfully send their little princesses off to college without a second thought, where they will very predictably spend four years away from any male relative supervision getting covered in cum from head to toe by men who have zero chance of committing to them. A father forbidding a legally adult, academically successful daughter from attending a far away university over fears of promiscuity would be outside even the red tribe Overton window; at that point, his wife and family and friends and preacher would turn against him for stifling his daughter's future.

Even if his society is with him, a patriarchal red tribe father has no legal leg to stand on. Threatening a cad with a shotgun to get him to stay away from his daughter is assault; actually shooting the rake is murder. Physically grabbing his daughter away from a party where she is likely to end up banged and locking her up in her room is liable to end up in a cop showing up to white knight for her. If you cannot drag your daughter/wife home by the hair when she is out acting like a slut and give her a good beating and have your society, your church, and your law enforcement agency back you up and agree that you acted correctly, you cannot control your women's sexuality.

Red tribe fathers who proudly quote the rules "for dating my daughter" cheerfully send their little princesses off to college without a second thought, where they will very predictably spend four years away from any male relative supervision getting covered in cum from head to toe by men who have zero chance of committing to them.

Some fathers even pay a quarter mil or more for such a privilege.

Is the second link in the quoted portion what you meant, though? I suppose, in its stead the parent comment to the above link could also work, for getting covered in cum from head to toe (in addition to a well-diversified portfolio of other bodily fluids).

My (deeper red than most)extended family has gotten away with shit fairly recently; the idea that the literal letter of the law always be dictating what actually happens is suspect.

Also to the point, you’re massively overestimating the amount of promiscuity young women want to engage in. Daddy’s rules are a fallback reason for why not when that young woman believes her dad gets to make the rules. That article by the Muslim porn star that got posted a while back talked about this- the evangelical girls didn’t sleep with every guy that took them on a date because they had a reason not to do the thing they didn’t want to do in the first place(evangelical is probably a pretty good proxy for red tribe here; red tribers who go to college at least pretend to be religious).

That article by the Muslim porn star that got posted a while back

Could you find a link of that perchance

Unfortunately, the inability to thot-patrol daughters and sisters due to modern social and technological headwinds is not limited to the American blue tribe.

The struggle is real for fathers and brothers, ranging from working class Sao Paulo to bougie Shanghai.

American red tribe fathers and brothers can posture and bluster, but there’s hardly any guarantee their daughters/sisters will listen. The headwinds are just so against them.

It’s been a while since I looked into it, but I believe that American red state whites don’t have lower single motherhood rates than blue state whites. If anything, higher, especially for non-Amish and non-Mormons.

believe that American red state whites don’t have lower single motherhood rates than blue state whites

If I remember correctly single parenthood/Marriage rate can be pretty accurately mapped to the income quintile you are in. Looked at over years the two-parent rate of the bottom 2 quintiles plummeted the middle one dropped a slight but not significant amount and the top two are a flat line. I can't fine this chart again but none of this data is surprising, I would imagine income is a way better signifier than tribe for single parent rate.