site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 14, 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.

3
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

If anything, it's women who need to change their political philosophy to improve their dating prospects.

Women are the gatekeepers of sex. But men are the gatekeepers of relationships. It's trivial for men to fake woke beliefs in order to get sex in the urban dating environment. That's why we find so many examples of progressives who act like cads in their personal lives. It turns out that men will lie to have sex.

But women who are batshit liberals are doing themselves a big disservice. They are signalling low quality partner status and will find that, though lots of men are willing to bed them, few are willing to stick around. During my own brief experience with online dating, I swiped left on anyone who had overt political statements in their profile.

Women with unnaturally colored hair, face masks, piercings, tats, and radical beliefs will eliminate many of the highest quality men from their dating pool. They will soon learn that "all men are assholes" as they are used and dumped by a bunch of flaky woke dudes.

This is such a strange take. Those women didn't want to go on a date with men like you (conservative) and you didn't go on a date with them. Sounds like their filtering is working and you just don't like that it's a filter they care about.

Nah. It's not about politics, it's about mental illness.

I'm perfectly happy dating a liberal and they are perfectly happy dating me.

But people who signal far-left political beliefs in their profile are low value mates. (Same for far-right ones probably, although I never saw that).

Maybe these chubby purple-hair women tell themselves they wouldn't date a 6'3 chad in finance, but of course they would. They just don't pull those type of guys. They are deliberately lowering their value on the dating market with their poor signalling. In the end, they will have worse partners and worse life outcomes.

I think many women are lovely enough right up until you hit a hair trigger about Trump, politics, or whatever. And the tragedy of this situation is that this obstacle seems misguidedly imposed from one side of the gender dynamic. To quote a line from a pop song I can't really remember: "You're standing in your own way".

Is this kind of filtering 'working'? I guess you could say it is on an individual level, although I think even that's questionable, as I believe a lot of women are missing out on good catches with this zero-tolerance approach. Is this a good dynamic for dating writ large? Probably not given the endless bitching about it and the metrics getting fairly sloped.

A smaller irritant in the mix is watching the fuse on this behavior run down. I know women now in their late 30s or early 40s who suddenly pine for 'traditionally masculine' types, with their younger and luckier cohorts marrying red-hat yokels that take care of them - after years of setting up razor wire around that type of guy. You wish they'd gotten the act out of their system earlier. By comparison men will swallot a lot from their partners as long you're not screaming in their face or getting nasty about what TikTok has you mad about this week. A moderate 'blue hair' could be entirely dateable to most woke-averse men (assuming decently attractive and yada yada) as long as being political isn't the front and center of their being or a lense everything is seen through.

I used to see more couples in my life argue about politics without it ending in breakup or divorce. It seemed normal to me: you bicker about the 8 PM news a bit, you silently roll your eyes at thing your partner said, then you go to bed together before the next day of life's experiences - you know, the important part. To see this done away with so trivially is sad.

That's even a term for it.

I find it particularly funny because when I was single, I saw a lot of women whose Tinder bios included (or consisted of) "swipe left if you're a Tory/if you voted Leave". You're outright instructing men on which specific beliefs they need to fake to get into your pants!

Approximately no one dates based on politics. Everyone of both sexes looks for someone attractive, and the smarter ones in addition look for someone who they can have a pleasant time with and build a life together with.

Someone who turns their dating profile into a political screed is going to have a harder time forming relationships, but that's because they're revealing themselves to be an unpleasant person, not because of mismatches in political philosophy. A man who raves about Kamala and rants about Trump all the time is going to turn off even the most hardcore Democratic woman, and that's true regardless of the sexes and political valences involved.

Approximately no one dates based on politics.

I think that this is an oversimplification.

I think most Americans would not date a KKK member, a Stalinist or a Taliban. There is a certain (subjective) Overton window. Personally, I would filter less on who a partner supports than on why a partner supports them. There is a big difference between supporting GWB despite gitmo and supporting him because of gitmo.

Some disagreements are more emotionally charged than others. I would totally date an anti-nuclear woman -- I may believe that she is mistaken about what we need to get rid of fossil fuels, but that is hardly a moral failing. (Perhaps being pro-nuclear feels less excusable from the other side, though.)

Other disagreements are the opposite: abortion is always a hot-button topic, "baby murderers" vs "handmaid's tale".

Some beliefs, political or otherwise, indicate an epistemological incompatibility. Or, phrased less politely, I basically consider some beliefs crazy. Believing in Nazism is excusable if you are a kid raised in the third Reich, but if you were raised in post-WW2 USA, it is a red flag. Likewise, if you believe that Trump, once elected, will succeed in turning the US into a Fuehrerstaat, that would be a red flag. Likewise, if you believe that Trump won the 2020 election, and the deep state conspired to steal it from him.

Approximately no one dates based on politics.

"If I get pregnant, will my partner support me in getting an abortion?" is definitely something (some) women consider in their dating prospects. Although, there's certainly some amount of filtering by living in a city/more liberal area and assuming that's sufficient.


I do have friends who are single women in more conservative areas for job reasons who have pretty much given up on dating until they move elsewhere because their possible dating pool of non-conservative men is basically just their coworkers (since any liberal not stuck there by the job moves to a bigger city).

Approximately no one dates based on politics.

A quick Google search will reveal that "couples who support different political parties" is in the 25-30% range, and I've seen as low as 5% for a straight "Republican/Democrat" couple.

Basically everyone LGBT is going to care about politics, for fairly obvious reasons. Only 5% of the population, sure, but I think a smart person could reasonably extrapolate how "someone I can have a pleasant time with" might turn on politics in both directions.

Approximately no one dates based on politics.

Leftists disqualifying potential romantic partners for not being sufficiently leftist is absolutely a thing.

yeah. funnily enough, this scenario has kinda happened to me in real life. I'm not planning to vote because (a) don't live in a swing state and (b) don't have a strong preference either way. But when I say that to single ladies they hate it. they demand that I vote. I wonder what would happen if I was like "ok, i'll go vote for trump then..." maybe they would like that better?

I got dumped a few weeks ago, and while I there where some other issues I don’t think she could see past the fact that I’m not a progressive

Just say you don't talk about politics and/or that it's none of their buisiness. It is socially acceptable to berate people for not voting, and it is socially acceptable to berate people for voting Republican, but it is not (yet) socially acceptable to berate people into telling who they voted for.

Im pretty sure that if i said that, they'd instantly guess that im voting republican (or some weird libertaruan 3rd party)

And in many cases, ‘some weird libertarian third party’ is itself bad enough

I recognize my demographics and interests make it much more visible to me, but as existence proofs go…

Try it and report back. Perhaps this is one of those "shit tests" I hear so much from the Red Pill folks about.