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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 4, 2024

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I think I agree with you? I find your prose to be a little serpentine and hard to follow at times.

The short version is that the people who don't need sexual ethics for the sake of sexual ethics (and their "sexual ethics" comes more from practical constraints than anything handed down from on high) came to power and re-made marriage laws in their own image.

Could I request you try rephrasing this so that I can better understand. Again, I'm pretty sure we're on the same page.

Sure.

I think the "new" post-Sexual Revolution sexual ethics were made by people who didn't, or couldn't, recognize that most relationships are at least a little dysfunctional (we were very rich at the time, which can cover up a great deal of bad in a relationship- no fights about cooking if you can just afford takeout, after all- and sex was the least risky it's ever been in history due to reliable hormonal birth control and no incurable STD of consequence). When the pro-SR people are talking about "liberation" [but only pre-1980; post-1980 the actors change as the below takes effect], this is what they're talking about.

But if you give that group power, they enshrine their autistic/childish/unrealistic views of how sex and relationships (and by extension, men and women) operate into law. And the problem with that is the same one as it was with legal equality- it just tilts the playing field in favor of the sex whose advantages were most illegible to the system (and so abuse of those advantages stopped being controllable, creating the problems we have now).

The trick, then, is in implementing that inequality/equity- making sure the people who do need those rules obey them (and are protected by them in return), and making sure the people who don't need those rules do not have to (but are not).

Thank you!