site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 23, 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.

8
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

A recent article in NR provides a good example of the nature of today's pro-life movement (emphasis added):

The Future of the Pro-Life Movement Is Going to Be Built in Our Own Homes

When I reflect back on the past year, one story keeps coming to mind. It’s not a cultural trend or a court case, but rather a very personal, hidden story that for all I know speaks to so many other hidden stories like it.

One of the most radiant, joyful people I know chose life against the odds when she was just 15 years old; she told her story on social media only this year. This woman, Veronica Keene, is one of untold numbers of women who chose life against the advice of most who knew her well enough to offer it.

{snip}

When I look at her life — and at her children, her grandchildren, and her happy 34-year marriage — I wonder how many women would have chosen life if they’d felt strong enough to reject all of the voices telling them not to.

{snip}

So challenge your young men. Encourage them to become responsible, loving men who will respect, honor, and take care of the women in their lives. Model strength and grace for them. Show up for them every day. Give them the love and guidance they need to help build healthy, supportive relationships as adults.

Set your daughters’ standards high, too. Make sure they know they can come to you for advice and support when or if they make destructive decisions. Make sure they know they are worthy of respect, deserving of love.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2024/12/the-future-of-the-pro-life-movement-is-going-to-be-built-in-our-own-homes/

I suspect that some people support or at least do not oppose pro-life because they see it as a "cultural" defeat for feminism. But ask yourself, is this really any better? There's the same gender-based double standards, but only one side is telling them the path to having a 34-year marriage is getting pregnant at 15 years old. (Yes, I know girls used to marry and have children at 16 back in the 19th century, the keyword there is married, very different from the trailer-park behavior this article is promoting.)

[ETA: you can read the article by using archive.ph]

I know girls used to marry and have children at 16 back in the 19th century,

Beyond the Hajnal Line, that is. Definitely not in either the US or Britain. (It's true that the average age at first marriage dropped significantly for both men and women immediately after WW2 in the US, but that trend only lasted a few years and never repeated.)

This wasn't unheard of for American women (for instance, Rachel Plummer married at 14).

I suspect that it was more common on the frontier, though.

It wasn't unheard of indeed, but wasn't the norm either. Probably not even in the frontier.

Indeed. In the 1550s in England, the average age at first marriage was 26 for women and 29 for men.

Why would this say anything more about the actual nature of the pro-life movement than what NPR wants it to be?

Presumably because this is from NR, the National Review, a mainstream conservative publication — not National Public Radio.

NPR (National Public Radio) != NR (National Review)

a "cultural" defeat for feminism

...

So challenge your young men. Encourage them to become responsible, loving men who will respect, honor, and take care of the women in their lives.

Set your daughters’ standards high, too. Make sure they know they can come to you for advice and support when or if they make destructive decisions.

This is what your run-of-the-mill anti-feminists don't get. Women nagging men into protecting them from the consequences of their decisions isn't particular to these or those ideological tenets. The law she lives by is that law and nothing else.

Yeah, as I recently mentioned, there's a lot of ideological agreement across much of the board when it comes to blaming men for the consequences of women's coffee decisions.

I think, technically, the pro-life position is "do not abort your child" - but it's true that Pro Life Tribe is bigger than that, and does have broader positions.

I don't understand the complaint you have here, though - based on the article, there's no recommendation of trailer-park behavior like getting pregnant at 15. There's an isolated instance where, from what I can tell, someone chose not to abort their child and has now been married for 34 years and has grandchildren. (It's unclear to me if she married the father of her child). This outcome seems good to me and I don't take the story to be recommending the route used to get there. Similarly, given that some number of people will, I am told, get pregnant at 15, keeping the child and getting married seems to me to be a preferable outcome to aborting the child and remaining unwed.

Maybe you can elaborate on what you find objectionable? Or did I miss something? As far as I can tell, National Review is not promoting out-of-wedlock teenage pregnancies as being a starting route to successful marriages, and if Veronica Keene married as a teenager the article doesn't mention it.

there's no recommendation of trailer-park behavior like getting pregnant at 15

There's no condemnation of it either.

Similarly, given that some number of people will, I am told, get pregnant at 15

What I find objectionable is the mentality that teenage pregnancies just randomly fall on some proportion of the population. In fact, they are far more likely to occur in some subcultures than others, specifically those that treat it as something that just randomly happens.

What I find objectionable is the mentality that teenage pregnancies just randomly fall on some proportion of the population. In fact, they are far more likely to occur in some subcultures than others, specifically those that treat it as something that just randomly happens.

From what I've seen, conservative and particularly religiously conservative communities – and there's a strong overlap here with pro-lifers (and, you might be relieved to hear, National Review!) are much more likely to articulate getting pregnant out of wedlock as a moral choice rather than a sort of chance occurrence [although I am unpersuaded that anyone really believes that] – so I think perhaps you're misattributing that mentality to pro-lifers.

But I also think pro-lifers have noticed that one driver of abortion is shame, and (since their view is that an unborn child shouldn't be aborted) they think "see, pregnancy is not the end of your life, you can be a happy and successful person even if you get pregnant unexpectedly" is a better message than "you moron, you complete idiot, you skank, you got yourself knocked up."

I think it can be hard to articulate a holistic message of "women shouldn't get pregnant out of marriage, that is a moral failing on their part if it is volitional, but if they do they should bring the child to term and trust that good things can still come out of that life" because there is some degree of tension or mixed messaging there, but I do think this is what a majority of strong pro-lifers in the United States believe and a position National Review is much more likely to air than, say, the New York Times.

only one side is telling them the path to having a 34-year marriage is getting pregnant at 15 years old

That isn't what the words you've quoted have said. They say that is a path, not the path. Any sane pro lifer in this day and age would probably Counsel waiting until graduating high school before marrying the sweet heart and, maybe naively, they'd Counsel not having sex until then. But if you do have sex before then, and that sex does result in a pregnancy, they'd say you should not abort the pregnancy and instead raise the kid, leaning on your family and the family of the father for support in doing this which they also think should be provided.

"Any sane pro lifer in this day and age would probably Counsel waiting until graduating high school before marrying the sweet heart and, maybe naively, they'd Counsel not having sex until then."

Then why doesn't the article say that?

Then why doesn't the article say that?

Presumably the same reason it didn't wade into tax policy or include a pot roast recipe. It isn't an article attempting to lay out structured life advise for young people. It uses a story about some girl who made the best of a bad situation and they want to celebrate that choice without litigating a counterfactual world where she behaved better up until the point of the needing to make that choice. And then it goes on about needing to reach and inspire young people to also not get abortions. It say nothing at all about whether it was good to pregnant at 15, they're probably christian and the sex was almost certainly out of wedlock so one can presume they disapprove of it. The point is that if you find yourself in that situation they want you to keep the baby.

This is an article by pro life people speaking to pro life people, they probably expect the good faith of the reader to not assume they are encouraging something that not many encourage. Or maybe they have some other article supporting 15 year old marriages that I'm not aware of?

Presumably the same reason it didn't wade into tax policy or include a pot roast recipe. It isn't an article attempting to lay out structured life advise for young people.

The title of the article is "The Future of the Pro-Life Movement Is Going to Be Built in Our Own Homes." Subtitle is "We have a tremendous opportunity to actively build the future of our culture, starting with our kids."

It's a meta level up, it's giving advice to kids, it's giving advice to parents and some larger vague community. The difference between and article meant to be read by teachers and students.

What’s naive about it? There are lots of people who don’t have sex before marriage, which is what the pro-life position would actually advocate.

Abstinence before marriage is a fine choice, but given that it is far from universal, an ideology that aspires to mass-influence should probably make some accommodation or at least nod at reality.

It is not naive to advocate for what you want, it's naive to do so without any awareness that it's a very minority position.

Part of the pro-life program is making that position mainstream. Abstinence has been a core part of pro-life since pro-life became a thing.

Sure. And complete cessation of all animal products & testing is a core part of PETA. But in the meantime they still agitate for lesser goals that they hope are stepping stones to that reality.

I was astonished when my fiancee's family got indignant and saw it as a red flag that we were waiting until marriage to have sex.

I'm astonished you were astonished, and I'm curious just what rock you've been living under to be unaware that the average person would see that as a very odd life choice these days, and probably indicative of other trad religious leanings they might disapprove of.

Yes, I was a lot younger and not yet so aware of how out of hand the situation had gotten in general.

EDIT:

probably indicative of other trad religious leanings they might disapprove of

Also, yes.

If that happened to me I'd be worried that my in-laws-to-be were indignant because they know someone else has already smashed it first, and didn't want shit to suddenly hit the fan one day when I found out.

Lmao, good point. If that's what was gonna happen much better it comes out for everyone before marriage.

How did that even come up? Seems like an odd topic to discuss over dinner.

I suspect the topic didn't arise over dinner but during a private conversation between the fiancee and her mother.

For some reason this reminds me of the joke that when your in-laws are asking you when you and their daughter will start trying for a baby, they're effectively asking you when you're going to start creampieing their daughter.

Isn't it normally implicitly taken for granted that your daughter is getting creampied after getting married?

That’s seriously a joke? What a bizarre, pornographic thing to think, let alone say.

Actually, in light of the discussion below, I have a different question to ask you: if you had a daughter, would you ever want her to have sex with anyone? It seems to me that a parent with a healthy relationship with his or her daughter would absolutely want her to have sex with her husband and then to bear children as the fruit of that union. Your recent comments, on the other hand, seem to imply that you believe anything other than perpetual virginity is a shameful thing in a daughter.

Meh. I wouldn’t fret over this issue. We’re only human, and people’s priorities can change in a short time when circumstances change. If you’re the daughter of an intact middle-class suburban family, you’ll probably be expected by your parents to avoid pregnancy at any cost while you’re a student. But then a couple of years pass and one day you’ll suddenly be expected by them and your other relatives in general to find a husband as soon as possible and get nutted into with the specific intent of getting pregnant. It does seem odd. It’s like one of the Asian-American(?) female commenters here who provided and anecdote about her mother. She kept pestering her with the question “When are you becoming a doctor?” after sending her off to university. Later it instantly turned into “When am I becoming a grandma?” – WTF? That’s the complete opposite of what she kept asking for! I imagine this is what @Sloot was referring to in general.

That’s seriously a joke? What a bizarre, pornographic thing to think, let alone say.

That's the nature of non-Dad-adjacent jokes, that there'll be some people out there who'll get their knickers a bit twisted upon hearing them.

It seems to me that a parent with a healthy relationship with his or her daughter would absolutely want her to have sex with her husband and then to bear children as the fruit of that union.

Yes, that'd be preferred if my real or hypothetical daughter had sex with her husband within the confines of marriage to produce children. I'm thankful that many of my female relatives did as such to bless us all with more young family members. I'm not a Stork-truther so I presume those pregnancies, when they occurred, were the outcome of marital sex.

What a bizarre, pornographic thing to think, let alone say.

Does "trying for a child" have a meaning other than attempting to get pregnant, usually achieved by a man ejeculating into a woman (in slang called a "creampie")? Unless it does, I do not anything worthy of this extreme level of pearl-clutching over a funny rephrase with the exactly same meaning, but with less obfuscation.

It actually goes beyond that. If we’re talking about a man and a woman who aged out of their peak fertility already, which in the current state of society is normally the case at first marriage, basically their entire lifestyles need to be oriented around the specific goal of successful conception if they want to have a child ASAP. That is, they need to pay attention to their diets, the ovulation cycle, biological clock, hormone levels etc. Whatever psychological blocks they may have standing in the way of that - which may be entirely possible, as they're basically expected to copulate with the specific intent of breeding for the first time in their lives - also need to be removed through therapy.

Most people have a concept of propriety, and most people understand that words have contextual or connotative meanings beyond the literal, physical act which they denote. "Make love", "have sex", and "fuck" all refer to the same action in a broad sense, but they obviously have very different meanings when you come across them in the wild.

Likewise, "I would like to have a child with your daughter", "I would like to breed your daughter", and "I would like to creampie your daughter" may all indicate that the person would like to have vaginal sex with the daughter in a way that's open to the possibility of conception and pregnancy, but obviously the connotations are very different.

Lewis2 is correct here - 'creampie' specifically is pornographic slang. It's contextually inappropriate because it communicates disrespect. Botond173 made an edgy and offensive joke.

Maybe you like edgy jokes, and if so that's fine for you, but pretending that it's not clear why someone might object is silly.

More comments

Someone made an offhand comment about how 'old-fashioned' it was (in general, and pejoratively) and I disagreed and it went from there.

Right, I have in the past argued that it is actually not too much to ask for young people to not have sex in high school. I just didn't want to make this a post about that argument so I gave theoretical ground.

Well, who'd be doing the asking? In the current cultural milieu, parents are unable or unwilling to thot-patrol their daughters. If parents can't or won't, what chance does anyone else have without a coup-complete solution?

Some parents are even outright enablers. For example, I saw this comment on DSL a few weeks ago and I was like alan_grant_removing_sunglasses.gif. Buying your teenaged daughter a larger bed so some boy can more comfortably rail her is taking the daughter cuckoldry to new heights. What's next, buying a chair for a corner of her room so you can better cheer on your little girl?

Thot-patrol is not how parents would typically put it, but that DSL comment is very much the exception- the electronic leash gets ever tighter, teen sex keeps declining, and with typical parental attitudes towards teen sex(especially parents of daughters) it doesn’t take a genius to connect the two.

That DSL commenter is European.

I think calling it thott patroling is probably not going to be very helpful. We're working on a kid now, if it's a daughter I may be naive but I think I can help her understand what constitutes good behavior in her own long term interest. I was receptive to this kind of reasoning as a kid.

Buying your teenaged daughter a larger bed so some boy can more comfortably rail her is taking the daughter cuckoldry to new heights.

What if she was married to him?

We live in a society where teen marriage is very rare, and matrilocality is simply not part of our history(even if you go far back enough to have extended families as the norm, they were patrilocal).

Moderately in the direction of what @BurdensomeCount said.

It'd still feel weird to me, but orders-of-magnitude better than the situation in the linked comment. It'd feel less so but also weird to buy a larger bed for a married son, but for somewhat different reasons. Channeling my inner Tony Soprano and Lucille Bluth: "What's wrong with you, Junior? You can't afford a larger mattress and bedframe to better bang your wife? How much could a set cost, like $10?"

Presumably a hypothetical married daughter and son-in-law would have their own house and income, so I wouldn't be enabling, hosting, and subsidizing their trysts. And, if they split, at least my daughter would be compensated via a mostly-consensual divorce settlement (and thus indirectly, me, for not having to do a complete bail-out of my daughter). Plus, all else equal, a married daughter would be older than an unmarried one, and the biological clock is ticking...

According to the linked comment, she received the bed as a gift for her 16th birthday, to make her boyfriend feel more comfortable.

That's very different. At that point the husband is a part of the family just as much as the daughter (or at least in a functioning social system would be seen that way). In fact now the husband is financially responsible for your daughter instead of you (in a functioning system again), so who's really getting cuckolded here we may ask if we want to go down that line of enquiry...

I have to ask this straight at this point, would you breed with your own daughter if inbreeding and social backlash was not in the cards?

  • -21

This is not a question. This is an insult masquerading as a question.

You've been warned about this before. Stop doing it or you will be banned.

How would you clarify whether there's anything behind a person's repeated, ambiguously ironic evocation of the "daughter is the ultimate cuck" meme without it sounding like an insult? Cuckoldry is a term referring to your wife being fucked by another man. Therefore, if you're being cucked when someone fucks your daughter, she must be your wife.

We have (had) self-proclaimed pedofascists here, so I can't really assume asking whether my interlocutor is one must be taken as an insult.

I do not believe for one second that you asked him if he'd "breed with his daughter" as anything other than an insult. You find his views offensive and you reached for what you hoped would be an effective way to express your disgust. I am not deceived about your intentions and I am telling you to stop. Express your offense in another manner.

More comments

That's a pretty typical attempt at well-poisoning when any man prefers, or is suspected to prefer, a real or hypothetical daughter to be chaste. "Hur dur, you just want to fuck your own daughter." Note women don't receive such attempts at well-poisoning when they prefer a real or hypothetical son to be tall/athletic/etc.

The purity ring dances were the most incestuous father-daughter events possible outside of literal orgies. This well was poisoned by purity ring enthusiasts circa 15 years ago.

That's a pretty typical attempt at well-poisoning when any man prefers, or is suspected to prefer, a real or hypothetical daughter to be chaste.

I disagree. While it is sometimes used to well-poison in this way (and while I do think that our society severely undervalues chastity and parents do have a moral responsibility to protect the chastity of their children and particularly their daughters), I think that "your behavior strongly suggests a subconscious-at-best desire to fuck your own daughter" is an insult that is deserved far more often than it is issued.

Perhaps it is precisely because of the complex collapse of traditional sexual morality in our society that so many fathers are unable to articulate a desire to protect their daughters' virtue that does not ironically sound disgustingly incestuous. (I would certainly expect that this is a large part of the problem; the pathology I'm pointing at rings so false to me because it seems detached from any hope of eventually finding one's daughter a suitable husband. It's like a male-pattern counterpart to empty nest syndrome, at least as afraid of one's daughter growing up and getting married and moving out as it is of her falling victim to some cad. Watch out for rhetoric suggesting that the reason the daughter's chastity should be preserved is to extend her easy low-maintenance childhood; this implies both that the father specifically objects to the thought of his daughter getting married young and that he'll be fine with her becoming a slut once she gets too old to maintain the facade of childhood anymore.) In any case, though, I don't think that this behavior helps to preserve traditional sexual morality on either a personal or societal level.

("Rules for dating my daughter" t-shirts, pointedly-gun-cleaning-in-front-of-the-boyfriend rituals, etc, aposematically convey to me: "I am unable to distinguish between the concepts of protecting my daughter from men with ill intent and kidnapping her to go live together in a cabin in the woods, and I am very close to doing the latter; I have often considered the logistics of setting up a Josef Fritzl basement.")

Trads probably don't get to blame 100% of this problem on modernity, though. A lot of it does seem rooted in (echoes of the long-gone) patriarchal model, in which women are property first of their father and then of their husband, and, IE, rape is understood as a form of property crime. While such a model does have a lot to recommend it, it also clearly has a lot to disrecommend it, and though I have a very low opinion of feminism, I think one of the more compelling (and fringe) complaints they've made is that traditional societies seem to have had a lot of unreported incestuous rape going on. The parallel construction of father-daughter and husband-wife is clearly very easy to fuck up and confuse both in ancient and modern contexts, and I would generally urge people to maintain a clearer delineation between these roles.

Libertines would like us to think that the offputting thing about purity balls, purity rings, and the like is the purity, the thing that libertines want to destroy. The actual offputting thing is the balls, the rings, signifiers of marriage where no marriage can actually exist, with the father in the husband role. These young women should be getting married off ASAP, not LARPing as pseudowives for their fathers. I would also suggest that, when fathers participate in their daughters' weddings, they should take care not to equate themselves too directly with their new son-in-laws, and to generally be watchful of innuendo and scandal. General talk of "giving away my daughter" is iffy; talk of "giving this man my daughter to love as I once loved her, though we'll always know that I was first" is right out.

Of course, there are also men who deserve this insult for reasons that have nothing to do with some malformed defense of chastity. (Sometimes, indeed, because they are insufficiently protective of their daughters' chastity; because they proudly parade their daughters around in a sexualized fashion, unbothered.) Certainly, for everything positive one can say about Donald Trump, and there is a lot, this is an attack he has invited upon himself.

Obviously, I find things like purity balls, purity rings, “rules for dating my daughter” t-shirts, “pointedly-gun-cleaning-in-front-of-the-boyfriend rituals” to be colossally cringe. However, from those would be a massive leap to Fritzi-maxxing.

And I too find Trump’s comments and actions toward his daughter to be weird and cringe. I’m slightly, somewhat surprised that anti-Trumpers have not attempted to make more hay out of this over the past few years, but they also likely feel a bit handcuffed since Hunter and Beau Biden are eskimo brothers, and thus don’t want to work the incest angle too hard.

I would also suggest that, when fathers participate in their daughters' weddings, they should take care not to equate themselves too directly with their new son-in-laws, and to generally be watchful of innuendo and scandal. General talk of "giving away my daughter" is iffy; talk of "giving this man my daughter to love as I once loved her, though we'll always know that I was first" is right out.

I have attended many weddings in my adult life, but thankfully I’ve been spared from witnessing such cringe. If/when a daughter gets married, at her wedding I’ll likely be thinking “thank goodness this is finally someone else’s problem.”

That being said, this general phenomenon (not wanting your teenaged or young adult daughter to get fucked outside of marriage) is hardly limited culturally, temporally, geographically. For example, in some parts of Latin America, teenaged boys or young men will sometimes call the fathers of their attractive female acquaintances “suegro” in person; this is perceived as impolite and disrespectful, and said fathers will often seethe.

“Suegro” just means “father-in-law,” although sometimes it can be used to refer to father of unmarried boyfriend or girlfriend. Thus, it’s not inherently gross or sexual in and of itself.

However, why does such a father seethe and react as if the teenaged boy or young man referred to his wife as “novia” (girlfriend) or “esposa” (wife)? Shouldn’t it be a compliment that a teenaged boy or young man finds your daughter desirable?

Does the father just secretly want to fuck his daughter? Or is he reacting as most men across time and cultures would do, in having an instinctive disgust response to his daughter potentially getting fucked outside of a committed, lifetime relationship (which these teenaged boys and young men presumably do not intend on providing)?

More comments

"Rules for dating my daughter" t-shirts, pointedly-gun-cleaning-in-front-of-the-boyfriend rituals, etc,

All those plus purity balls and the like are nothing but desperate, dim-witted but humanly understandable reactions to the harsh reality of the 'complex collapse of traditional sexual morality'. They also seem to be based on the rather flimsy assumption that a great bunch of sexually attractive, thuggish chads are tripping over one another to win the daughter's hand. The sad social reality is that she'll probably get proposed by one, maybe two ordinary dudes, provided that dad isn't around with his silly antics.

("Rules for dating my daughter" t-shirts, pointedly-gun-cleaning-in-front-of-the-boyfriend rituals, etc, aposematically convey to me: "I am unable to distinguish between the concepts of protecting my daughter from men with ill intent and kidnapping her to go live together in a cabin in the woods, and I am very close to doing the latter; I have often considered the logistics of setting up a Josef Fritzl basement.")

I am not seeing how "hurt my daughter and I kill you" equates to "I am unable to distinguish between 'hurt my daughter and I kill you' and being a rapist kidnapper".

More comments

the reason the daughter's chastity should be preserved is to extend her easy low-maintenance childhood

This naturally follows from the notion that women are property, though; it is your God-given unimpeachable right to prolong that adolescence as long as possible, and as such you may do as you wish. (The same applies to the incest thing, for what should be obvious reasons- of course, feminists have abused the privilege to rewrite 'marital rape' to mean 'wife who is only doing it to keep up the marriage', but from 1910 through now we thought the answer to 'unrestrained male selfishness' was 'unrestrained female selfishness' [and traditionalists by their nature had no good counterargument] so that's just what we get, I guess.)

"They're not even human beings until 25" (and the earlier age of consent laws, which traditionalists absolutely fawn over) were wonderful gifts to the traditionalists of that bent, especially because "preserve my child as being a child" is a natural small-c conservative impulse. In fact, that's a very womanly impulse, which should be highly insulting to those would-be property owners (who will state "our sex is endowed with a healthier sense of risk management" as a reason why women should be property) but I digress.

Remember, the most sexually libertine period in US history was also the closest to the traditionalist ideal; marriages still happened fast and young (despite only 1/5th of high schoolers retaining their virginities- guess that whole 'but muh virgin marriage' thing wasn't that important after all, and maybe simply having (on average) a more beautiful wife at marriage does a lot to sand that edge down). The fact that traditionalists failed to capitalize on the economic circumstances that led society to turn away from the sexual revolution (since this could have been a viable path as opposed to what the progressives laid down in the '80s) is, uh, all on the traditionalists.

Libertines would like us to think that the offputting thing about purity balls, purity rings, and the like is the purity, the thing that libertines want to destroy.

It's more about the stagnation and waste that an obsession with purity creates (just like the stagnation and waste that an obsession with ownership creates). Which your neo-traditionalism will naturally have to overcome- that is why you want marriages where none are set up to exist, because that is a way to overcome that (that doesn't enable the wicked wasting away of your daughters like the aformentioned progressive-endorsed LARPing does)- in other words, it is progress. Property rights come with property responsibilities.

Replacing it with nothing was, is, and will continue to be unworkable.

I'm tempted to nominate this for an AAQC.

See, @sun_the_second, this is how you imply you're wondering if someone wants to fuck their daughter without being directly insulting.

More comments

It's a typical response to literally referring to a man's protectiveness of his daughter's chastity (a woman he is expected to not be fucking) with the same terminology as a man's protectiveness of his wife's faithfullness (a woman he is expected to be fucking). It's quite rich to glug the poison straight from the skull and bones vial in front of everyone and then claim you were poisoned.

I'm not attacking possessiveness or general "thot-patrolling" here, my question is about the specific choice of language. Do you want to make your daughter your wife, and if not, why do you imply someone fucking your daughter would make you the same thing as someone fucking your wife? You hide behind "but other people at other venues ask such questions for other reasons, and anyway those other people don't sufficiently interrogate women like that".

Note that women will absolutely receive accusations of wanting their son for themselves if they chase away all his girlfriends and marriage prospects, if I can help it.

why do you imply someone fucking your daughter would make you the same thing as someone fucking your wife?

Because, as should be obvious, I'm not equating the two; I just find it an amusing metaphor and hyperbole.

  1. A lot of men feel a certain sense of a disgust at the thought of random boys/men fucking his wife
  2. A lot of men feel a certain sense of a disgust at the thought of random boys/men fucking his daughter

If the first one occurs, one would say he got cucked. It's not hard to see why "cucked" could then be extended as a metaphor for the second. Cuckold itself is a metaphor derived from the cuckoo bird.

Do you get similarly indignant and performatively bewildered when someone uses a term like "Republicuck" or "wagecuck", or says that he or she got "cucked" by a blue-shell in Mario Kart right before the finish line? A week and a half back I microhumorously referred to myself as "wagecucking" or "salarycucking" in describing myself working a fulltime job; if you saw it at the time, would you have thrown a challenge flag to grandstand and "interrogate" me as to why I'd compare my employment status to my wife getting plowed by another man? If you did see it at the time, why didn't you?

You hide behind "but other people at other venues ask such questions for other reasons, and anyway those other people don't sufficiently interrogate women like that".

Or maybe I just didn't feel like indulging your snide attempt at well-poisoning beyond the response I gave. Bad practice to reward bad behavior.

More comments

You are the one who brought in "cuckoldry", which is normally understood to denote your sexual partner being taken by somebody else (and possibly you enjoying the (f)act). What did you mean, then? The fantastic cuck chair hypothetical you wrote after makes no sense either if you are really only using the phrase as hyperbole for "I would prefer her to not have sex, but I subsidise her having sex" and nothing more. Would you really be using the same vocabulary if we were instead talking about your cat getting it on with the neighbourhood strays when you did not want to deal with kittens?

Also, I don't see how wanting your son to be tall/athletic is anything like not wanting your daughter to have sex. One will get someone who shares your genes laid more; the other will not.

Most of this I recently covered here.

Would you really be using the same vocabulary if we were instead talking about your cat getting it on with the neighbourhood strays when you did not want to deal with kittens?

That does in fact sound like the kind of microhumor that would be well-within my personal Overton window. If I owned a cat that got knocked-up by some neighborhood strays and I recounted the story and wrote here that I got cucked—maybe there'd be some peal-clutching from those who don't like such types of (micro)humor—but I doubt there'd be salty comments demanding to know why I used "cucked" in such a manner and asking me if I want to fuck my cat.

Also, I don't see how wanting your son to be tall/athletic is anything like not wanting your daughter to have sex. One will get someone who shares your genes laid more; the other will not.

Along the lines of what @erwgv3g34 said—most men, if they could help it, do not one want their daughters getting "laid more" outside of marriage. Even for sons, there are limitations to this. Some men, albeit a minority, want their sons to wait until marriage akin as they would want for their daughters. Just instinctively, without any mental calculus, I wouldn't want a real or hypothetical son to be banging hookers, single mothers, or ugly chicks, even if there's no physical consequences and that means he's getting "laid more."

Also, I don't see how wanting your son to be tall/athletic is anything like not wanting your daughter to have sex. One will get someone who shares your genes laid more; the other will not.

The concept of "getting laid" does not make sense when applied to women. Any women who wants to have sex can do so by the simple expedient of spreading her legs. Men have to actually work for it.

Given this, the bottleneck for women's reproductive success is not having sex, which again any woman can do, but having sex with a man who has both the ability and the willingness to stick around and provide for her and her children and protect both from harm.

A woman who has sex with men without taking those facts into account is rightly derided as a slut or a whore, and she and her children would die out in the streets if the state did not steal money at gunpoint from productive, hardworking men to support her bastards.