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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 12, 2024

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and men do best in somewhat more risky environments where they might sire children with many women.

This is not your main point, but it's always seemed like a particularly BS part of the whole redpill evopsych narrative to me. Men may have evolved instincts to take advantage of conditions where promiscuity is possible, sure. But that's not the same as them "doing better" under those conditions.

I recall a discussion here pointing out that the modal historical outcome for superfluous weak males is not frustrated inceldom, but early violent death. Given that a monogamous pairbonding system vs. a lothario/harem system necessarily offer identical expected value in terms of offspring, and that the harem almost certainly offers lower expected value in terms of personal pleasure owing to the lothario's diminishing marginal returns from screwing multiple partners, I don't understand how men in these spaces seem to regard promiscuity as some kind of inherently manly value that's unfairly gatekept in our women's world.

What you correctly hit upon here regarding polygynous systems marks a crucial distinction between blackpillers/self-identified-incels and redpillers/PUAs. The latter are more in favor of polygyny and harems, as they see themselves as better able to thrive under such a system, armed with their Game. The former, in contrast, long for a patriarchal system of strictly-enforced monogamy and government-mandated gfs.

Of course, to any normal, well-adjusted person, this all has the same flavor as arguments between the People’s Front of Judaea and the Judaean People’s Front.

A fair nuance. I'm not quite a red piller and do think that monogamy is a good a social technology. For the evo-psych perspective though it's sufficient that men with the ability to influence such things would generally prefer more risk though as it's selected for where they can influence reproductive success and irrelevant where it doesn't.