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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 23, 2024

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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)?

If/when a daughter gets married, at her wedding I’ll likely be thinking “thank goodness this is finally someone else’s problem.”

Sloot I'm not going to lie the thought of you having a daughter seems like the premise for a sitcom.

Such a thought has been expressed to me both online and in real life. It does sound kind of funny, that me getting burdened with a daughter would be some form of comedic, karmic justice.

However, I’ve had both various younger and older female family members visit and crash at my place for an extended period of time, without me needing to thot-patrol. Many of the younger ones I’ve spent quite a few hours/days babysitting when we were younger; vice versa for the older ones. I’ve also had both various younger and older male family members visit and crash at my place. And clearly, as a child, teenager, and young adult, I’ve visited and crashed at my older family members places various times.

Thus, such a sitcom would probably be more boring than expected.

a sitcom would probably be more boring than expected.

Alas, my image of you as a modern-day Don Quijote is tarnished.

"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".

It seems like a fairly natural continued escalation of the combined thoughts "I care very deeply about protecting my daughter", "I have an extremely expansive definition of protecting my daughter which includes preventing her from ever having a relationship with a man, regardless of what she wants", and "you should be scared of me because I am criminally insane, particularly in these daughter-related matters".

I'd interpret "pointedly-gun-cleaning-in-front-of-the-boyfriend rituals" - your words - as "hurt her and I kill you", not "be her boyfriend and I kill you". After all, if he's her boyfriend and it was "be her boyfriend and I kill you", the father would already be shooting, not cleaning the gun.

"you should be scared of me because I am criminally insane"

Vigilante action in response to family member raped/beaten/murdered is the natural response of human men; it's the way humanity's kept the peace for the vast majority of its history. The idea that it constitutes insanity? I'm not saying there aren't arguments you can make, but it's not obvious; you ought to make them.

It‘s pathetic bluster on the father‘s part. If we still lived in a society where such threats were made in earnest, the suitor would have to answer with murder or a duel. Ignoring the threat would mark you as his inferior, a guy he has right of life and death over, his kidnapping victim, his servant. To add insult to injury, your morals are questioned. The only peaceful response would be to lowkey threaten to cut the father‘s head off if his daughter ever reports that he raised his voice to her, sir.

I'd assume the ritual is considered, at best, overreacting these days. Assumed thought process of the boyfriend in question:

  1. I already know that a father would respond with violence if I hurt his daughter like this.

  2. Also, I'm not a barbarian and I don't need to be explicitly threatened to respect a woman.

  3. The above two are obvious.

  4. The dad is making a threat before such a threat is warranted.

  5. The dad might have a very different definition of "hurting his little girl" than normal people.

  6. The dad doesn't want anyone (else?) to fuck his daughter ever.

Consider a different situation of lower stakes: if someone punches you, you're usually within your rights to fight back, and unless it's a very uneven fight you'd likely do so instinctively. But you don't go around telling people "don't fuck with me or you'll find out" before it looks like a fight, do you?

I already know that a father would respond with violence if I hurt his daughter like this. Also, I'm not a barbarian and I don't need to be explicitly threatened to respect a woman. The above two are obvious.

Neither of these is obvious in the usual situation here (i.e. the boyfriend is meeting the father for the first time). There are fathers that wouldn't, these days, and there have always been boyfriends that are/do.

But you don't go around telling people "don't fuck with me or you'll find out" before it looks like a fight, do you?

I’ve seen multiple lower-class, self-proclaimed trailer-trash people do exactly that. But that’s also precisely the same sort of person that would make a big scene about greeting his daughter’s date with a shotgun draped across his knee.

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.

Then I question how you can be a traditionalist. Woman transfer from father to husband contingent on present and projected future funds and quality of said husband is the cornerstone of traditional thought.

Fundamentally, "men own women" is how the initial conditions work out when assuming a biologically-burned-in fear of 100% chance of pregnancy every time a woman has sex, and when all labor providing primary economic goods being only meaningfully accomplished when conducted by men (women may provide secondary economic goods, but are useless if there are no primary goods- cooking is useless when there is no food to cook) women must sell the only valuable thing they possess- their bodies- for the right to those primary goods.

Over the last 200,000 years of human evolution those axioms have never, ever been false. So, uh, why mess with tradition- especially because, if men throw that away because 'it feels bad', there's no guarantee that women won't use the tools for manipulating men that same 200,000 year evolutionary process gave them to just be turbo-selfish and fuck up everything (with revenge as the excuse).

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.

I do hope you're not implying that one must write a comprehensive AAQC-worthy dissertation on a topic to qualify as sufficiently non-directly-insulting. It's a high bar to clear and I think you'll remain disappointed again and again when someone fails to meet it.