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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   28496 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 2, 2024

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I agree, I will just note that I don't think that "women's education (and I mean, like basic education, not whatever you think the evil modern western college is) + available contraception = a dramatic drop in birth rates no matter what else you actually try" is a particularly reactionary opinion. To me this opinion seems like it is actually kind of the consensus on all sides of the political spectrum. People just disagree on whether the education + contraception is a good thing or a bad thing.

Eh, there's still plenty of alternate hypothesis put out there by my fellow lefties and some centrists in recent years from housing prices to cultural and educational gaps between young people and so forth. Again, I don't think any of that is a 0 reason, but just like anything short of massive restrictions of contraception + women's education will lead at best to a .2 or .3 rise, I think housing, women getting more liberal and going to college more, and even Tinder is like a .2 or .3 thing if you add it all up.

Ironically, J.D. Vance's remarks from the past few years continually being brought up have actually accelerated the acceptance of, 'yes, it was birth control and that's a good thing, you weirdos.'

I think that in modern society the opinion that men should have more control over women's sexual decisions, other than potentially in the one case of abortion (because that one has potential moral implications beyond the woman) is just fundamentally loser-coded because the Internet has made it pretty clear that the majority of men who want to police women's sexual decisions are doing so out of sexual frustration. Of course there is a small minority of rationalist-types who genuinely care about the impact of women's sexual decisions on fertility rates or social cohesion out of a detached interest in supporting pro-social policies, but the modal guy online arguing for controlling women's sexual decisions is, assuming that he is not a genuine pro-lifer, pretty clearly doing it because he isn't getting laid as much as he wants.

Can you please explain what "policing women's sexual decisions" means in this context exactly?

I read it to mean compelling or aggressively encouraging women to not be floozies.

Are we going to pretend that this is something that has traditionally been done by sexually frustrated men, and not by other women?

Certainly rakishness should be policed in men.

Traditionally the tools available tended to be more effective in women. Women being better responders to social pressure.

I mean, even many rationalists are coded as weirdos who aren't getting laid to plenty of people.

J.D. Vance is the person closest to be associated with the movement to actually get a national stage, and some of his views, that have been decently popular here and other rationalist or rationalist-adjacent spaces implode when in contact with actual voters. The guy's impressively below water approval wise, and is actually probably hurting Trump among secular swing voters in the Midwest.

I mean, even many rationalists are coded as weirdos who aren't getting laid to plenty of people.

This is often a problem with those people, as they are quite willing to call people they don't like who are married with multiple children of their own "incels".

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