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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 7, 2024

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It was suggested in last week's thread by certain posters of a more traditionalist bent that a libertine attitude towards sexuality destroys the "magic special soul-bonding" that is proper to an authentic sexual connection. It is quite ironic to see the arch-Marxists of the Frankfurt school arguing for much the same position; although admittedly, in different terms, and for different ends. Maybe Hlynka was right after all??

Hlynka was right in the sense that some men just want to watch the world burn. Arch Marxists want Norms to overthrow, that’s what a revolution is, and they miss norms to overthrow when there aren’t any.

#MeToo can be seen as a spontaneous regeneration of older, more strictly codified standards surrounding courtship and interactions between men and women; although it has been purged of overtly religious content, it seems to me to derive from the same impulse as the more familiar religious style of moralism, because humanity clearly abhors a vacuum in this domain.

There’s an extent to which this is true, but there’s some clearly missing ingredients. Old style courtship was aimed at marriage with normal heterosexual sex as an inherent part therein. #metoo is not described thusly. It’s about stigmatizing normal heterosexual sex because it’s inherently an exercise in power relations between the sexes.

We can talk about the underlying motivations all you want, but at the end of the day the substantial difference in practice is right up above.