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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 1, 2024

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I'd also guess that smaller average family size in the west makes it such that women are less likely to have brothers, male cousins, etc. who can step into such a role if needed

Some other things that I think can expand on this point:

First, in addition to women being likely to have fewer male cousins compared to past generations, I have a feeling that people in general probably aren't as close to their cousins as they used to be. It seems that modern transportation (ie. cars for short-ish distance, planes for long distance) psychologically encourages people to move farther from their families when they're out of school. While the faster transportation seems like it would just extend the range at which people can maintain relationships (ie. driving 30 minutes to go a few towns away sounds like it isn't that different from walking 30 minutes to the other side of town), I suspect that's also something psychological about the distance such that a lot of people who theoretically could maintain closer relationships with their families despite the distance don't.

(There may also be dunbar-related reasons for less close adult family relations. When you live in a town of 1k people, your family is going to be part of your community that you interact with regularly, whereas as more people live in higher-density areas this is no longer necessarily the case).

The second reason is that for blue tribe women, I suspect that even setting aside any issues of fatherlessness or not having any close brothers or male cousins, the men in question wouldn't be willing to step in to intervene anyways, as private violent resolution to issues (or the threat of such violence) would be seen as wrong, and also a blue tribe woman's male relatives are also going to be blue tribe and would have a lot to lose in their personal and professional lives from having a violent criminal record.

So TL;DR: In addition to having fewer male relatives, women are probably not as close to those relatives as in the past and said relatives are going to be more reluctant to take matters into their own hands.