site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 2, 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.

5
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

You cannot justifiably in any sort of good faith punish men for not wanting to "settle down" with a former college party favor any more than you could justifiably punish them for not agreeing to permanently staple a bag of dog feces to their forehead. The limit of public policy is where people would rather accept any punishment you can reasonably enforce than comply, and trying to force men to LARP a happy tradlife with former campus bicycles is definitely past that limit for a not insignificant number of men.

Whew, this is a lot...There is also a precedent for it multiple times recent western history, from Jamestown to Australia, with my favorite being Parisian prisoners being offered freedom if they agreed to marry prostitutes and move to Louisiana. So yes we have punished men for not "stapling dogshit to their heads."

I also don't know if you went to college, but if you did you should know that most women aren't "bicycles", sure there were some, but that has always been the case.

The medieval church literally offered an indulgence for marrying a prostitute, as well.

Getting promiscuous women married even if that isn’t the preference of men has been a TPTB goal for forever.

Whew, this is a lot...There is also a precedent for it multiple times recent western history, from Jamestown to Australia, with my favorite being Parisian prisoners being offered freedom if they agreed to marry prostitutes and move to Louisiana. So yes we have punished men for not "stapling dogshit to their heads."

An offer of freedom isn't a punishment. If you're going to offer men bounties for marrying flawed modern women, then yes that's a whole different story. If instead of taxing singles you want to offer more for married couples and see how low men are willing to go for the rewards, then that's their choice and I have no problem with it.

I also don't know if you went to college, but if you did you should know that most women aren't "bicycles", sure there were some, but that has always been the case.

Obviously it depends on the college and the time period, but it's a fact that female promiscuity is a more prominent issue than ever before. Tinder isn't a wildly popular enterprise for no reason. The increasing amounts of (sometimes, increasingly less) softcore pornographization of themselves that women engage in on social media (and real life with their basic wardrobes) isn't without consequence. It's pretty obvious if you don't live in a willfully ignorant bubble.

I mean, forget any quibbling we could do over what constitutes a "bicycle": Any amount of past casual sex is too much for wife material, unless you are a cuckold, which I personally am not. Of course you might say, "This is the most fucked up time period for male-female relations perhaps in human history, and I will accept a bit of cuckoldry in exchange for not being alone forever.", and I won't judge you too harshly for that, but that's still the bargain if your wife has any sort of a casual sex history. You're trading cuckoldry for companionship.

An offer of freedom isn't a punishment. If you're going to offer men bounties for marrying flawed modern women, then yes that's a whole different story. If instead of taxing singles you want to offer more for married couples and see how low men are willing to go for the rewards, then that's their choice and I have no problem with it.

Taxing and incentives are exactly the same. If you don't marry a prostitute and people who do are getting extra cash every month. This is just a tax with extra steps. The people that don't marry prostitutes have to stay in jail, now not for their original crime but for refusing to marry a prostitute. This is punishment for refusing the offer.

Big Red Pill/Black Pill energy you've got going here as well, the user name alone is worth a chuckle. If you look at a lot of stats "modern" women are actually having less sex and fewer hookups than their parents generation, and fewer still than the generation before that. Why get pressured into sex at 16 at makeout point in a 68' chevelle when it is much easier to sit at home and snapchat with your friends and watch netflix after soccer practice. This trend has only accelerated over the last 10 years to the point where even major news outlets are picking up on it. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-08-03/young-adults-less-sex-gen-z-millennials-generations-parents-grandparents

Before AIDS it was a sexfest for 2 decades. Society is much less promiscuous than it was 50 years ago.

Surveys during the 1970s reported that by age nineteen, four-fifths of all males and two-thirds of all females had had sex

  • American Decades: 1970-1979: Vincent Tompkins, Judith Baughman, Victor Bondi, Richard Layman (1995)

People all caught up in this stuff never seem to have a very accurate view of the past. The rose tint of history tends to distort into whatever you imagine you would like it to be.

Also the definition of cuckold is raising another man's child. If you're not doing that you're not a cuckold. Maybe according to you you're dating or marrying damaged goods, but you're not a cuckold.

If you limit your dating pool to only confirmed virgins checked and confirmed intact by the royal court's physician. You're going to have a bad time.

If you limit your dating pool to only confirmed virgins checked and confirmed intact by the royal court's physician. You're going to have a bad time.

Particularly because the men ranting about this issue never seem interested in upholding their side of the bargain. The old social contract was a two way street.

I think there are a modest but meaningful number of men online, whether they were successful cads or not, who are coming to realize that rejecting Christian sexual ethics has been bad for people of both sexes. I wonder if they'll be the one group of irreligious moderns who will find the natural law persuasive.

Oh they are holding it up alright, just not on purpose.

Any amount of past casual sex is too much for wife material, unless you are a cuckold, which I personally am not. Of course you might say, "This is the most fucked up time period for male-female relations perhaps in human history, and I will accept a bit of cuckoldry in exchange for not being alone forever.", and I won't judge you too harshly for that, but that's still the bargain if your wife has any sort of a casual sex history. You're trading cuckoldry for companionship.

In all your writing, this is the closest you give for a rationalization as to why marrying a woman with (if you'll forgive my paraphrasing, feel free to replace with terms of your choice) a 'high body count' is bad. And yet, your meaning of the word cuckold doesn't comport with any definition I've seen used before - you're suggesting that in a monogamous marriage where neither partner has slept with anyone else since the wedding, the man is nevertheless a cuckold if his wife had casual sex in college? You're just trying to use the shock/meme value of the word cuckold to smear a perfectly healthy marriage.

Seriously - what is your concern with the situation outlined above? STIs? The woman may have a child prior to the marriage? Okay, set those aside for the moment and let's explore cases where neither of those apply. Explain to me what is so wrong with a woman who has casual sex in college, settles down in her late 20s and has a family in her 30s without resorting to broader arguments about society and fertility.

Seriously - what is your concern with the situation outlined above? STIs? The woman may have a child prior to the marriage? Okay, set those aside for the moment and let's explore cases where neither of those apply. Explain to me what is so wrong with a woman who has casual sex in college, settles down in her late 20s and has a family in her 30s without resorting to broader arguments about society and fertility.

He will not be able to explain this - he was banned right before you said this (I missed this too when I replied to his earlier post).