site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 13, 2025

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.

5
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

The same cast of Baptists and Bootleggers hates prostitution and sex tourism, and related things like porn and men traveling for geographical dating arbitrage. The Baptists are social conservatives who hate those things for the usual reasons; the Bootleggers are women in general who hate those things because more sexual outlets for men means less leverage and bargaining power for women. There is tremendous compass unity when it comes to blaming men for women’s coffee decisions.

Unlike drugs where the suppliers are blamed more than the consumers of drugs, the consumers of sex (men) receive all of the blame while the suppliers of sex (women) are absolved. You fucking donkey vs. oh dear, oh dear, gorgeous. The exploitation narrative is an alibi for Western women to signal and protect their Wonderfulness and cover-up their own self-interest, one that Just so Happens to paint men as villains and women the victims. Sex Work is Real Work and sex workers are Stunning, Brave, and Empowered victims of capitalist, patriarchal societies that oppress and objectify women; men who use prostitutes or consume pornography are disgusting perverts and exploiters of women just trying to make ends meet.

Everyone who’s not an incel or misogynist knows women don’t care about height or wealth, and that hypergamy is a redpill myth. So if Western men find greater dating success by traveling, it must be because they’re exploiting foreign women or doing something else nefarious. The modal secular Western woman hates sexual/romantic offshoring—the idea that she could be a Replaceable commodity in the global marketplace, that she might have to compete with foreign women for Western men—lest she has to work on keeping herself thin and making herself pleasant to be around. After all, she’s not some sort of pathetic Pick Me with internalized misogyny.

It's bad enough that some unattractive Western men cheat their rightfully deserved fates in eternal sexual/romantic purgatory by going abroad, leaving fewer simps, orbiters, and monkey-dancers for Western women. Ugh, gross. What if a substantial number of attractive men start doing so, as well? "Are we dating the same man?" Facebook groups would need to expand to be global in scope. A city-level problem turns into a planetary one; you're already struggling with the Penguin and then one day Doomsday shows up.

In general, it appears many Western women have a haunting fear that somewhere, a Western man might be happy without it actively benefitting Western women. Sometimes that somewhere is right in front of them. Hence the occasional, amusing thread in FIRE- or AITA-adjacent subreddits to the tune of “Sold my company and happily fatFIRE’d, but now my wife wants me to get a job—what do I do?” or “My husband retired and now I resent him, AITA?” where she then goes on to talk about him like Tony Soprano talking about his son.

Western women like to portray foreign women who date or prostitute themselves to Western men as the victims of poverty and exploitation, that women in regions such as Southeast Asia or Latin America have no other choice if they want to put food on the table or have a roof over their heads. It certainly couldn’t be that, for the most part, such women prostitute themselves primarily for the same reasons Western women do, the same reasons Instathots flyout to Dubai to serve as human toilets: buy the latest phone, get their nails done, buy more makeup, expand their shoe collection, buy more expensive clothes, travel to exotic places and take photos of themselves. And sure, it makes paying rent and buying food easier too because money is fungible. In any case, spreading one’s legs is easier and faster than slowly saving up from working a 9-5 job like some regular schmuck. Then when she's ready to settle down after having had her fun and marry a Western or local man, she can just pretend she was an angel all along.

When it to comes to the topic of foreign prostitution, it’s like the sudden view of Western women that the default lifestyle of regions of the world such as Southeast Asia is to live in mudshacks or underground tunnels, akin to the Vietcong in a ‘Nam war movie. If foreign women are as desperate and destitute as Western women claim, then shouldn’t the Western men who date or use the services of foreign women be praised for stimulating the local economy and lifting women out of poverty? Or maybe Western men should just Be Decent People and give foreign (and Western) women money for free.

Plus, what happens to foreign men in such supposedly destitute regions? Do they just go, “guess I’ll die” since they don’t have quite the same prostitution options as women do? I suppose one could tack on an epicycle by saying: Due to lingering patriarchal oppression from Western colonization and cultural imperialism, foreign women don’t have nearly the same opportunities as their countrymen do, thus have no choice but to do sex work.

You mentioned once that you have many female relatives who waited until marriage for sex. Given that this is practically unheard of among the native Angloid population, you must be a foreigner, but from where? The Balkans? South Asia?

What does that have anything to do with his arguments?

Then when she's ready to settle down after having had her fun and marry a Western or local man, she can just pretend she was an angel all along.

You do realize sex workers are capable of having relationships while also being sex workers, right?

In all seriousness, this doesn't work out. I know a guy who married a prostitute made good (not as a client, they met elsewhere). The problem with marrying someone who has sex for money is that the mercenary attitude to sex tends to leak into their relationships. She ended up treating the guy as a sort of long-term john, cheating on him when she wanted more spending money or when his salary was too low for her liking. Also, of course, all the original problems that led her to prostitution were still there: awful criminal family, drugs, low motivation etc. The guy was far from perfect but this isn't a dynamic you want.

I read an interview once with a prostitute who also had a boyfriend. She said she loved him very much, but it caused problems all around. When she was with him she was tired from having sex in her job and just wanted to take a break. When she went back to work, she felt like she was cheating on her boyfriend. Not sure if she was telling her boyfriend the truth about her job, but it caused problems all around.

I know a guy who married a prostitute made good

That wording makes it sound like a relationship with an ex-sex-worker, not a current sex-worker. Or at least the guy thought they were no longer a sex-worker and turned out to be wrong about that.

If the guy believed being "good" requires not being a sex worker, then I can see how the relationship went poorly.

"Made good" is a turn of phrase. He married her. They were (supposed to be) in a committed, monogamous relationship for several years. There was some tension there, it's true, but he also did his level best to get her back on her feet and help her build the financial independence and social life she'd never been able to achieve on her own.

I think you have a very idealised view of 'sex workers'. This particular girl wasn't a free spirit being imprisoned by her awful sex-negative husband, she was a sweet, lonely girl who lacked the innate sense of self to turn down anything that made her feel good in the moment. She had been doing this since she left school, and it had left her physically broken and worn out in certain important ways. The cosmetic alterations she got, or had been encouraged to get by her pimp, had long term consequences that ruined her health. I can't say for sure, but I think she realised that she was rapidly running out of road, tried to escape, and kept getting dragged back in by drug addiction, criminal family members and chronically low time-preference.

Or at least the guy thought they were no longer a sex-worker and turned out to be wrong about that.

That's a rather strange reading of what he said. Nowhere in there was any mention of her returning to prostitution.

If the guy believed being "good" requires not being a sex worker, then I can see how the relationship went poorly.

You think she'd be showing him undying loyalty otherwise?

That's a rather strange reading of what he said. Nowhere in there was any mention of her returning to prostitution.

How did you interpret

cheating on him when she wanted more spending money

then?


You think she'd be showing him undying loyalty otherwise?

No, but believing your partner is fundamentally a bad person sounds like a poor basis for a trusting relationship.

How did you interpret

cheating on him when she wanted more spending money

then?

That she slept with other men, not because she returned to prostitution, but as some sort of act of petty revenge, or behavioral conditioning on her husband.

No, but believing your partner is fundamentally a bad person sounds like a poor basis for a trusting relationship.

You can believe someone did something bad in the past, but aren't fundamentally bad people. With prostitution in particular it's easy to believe the person was victimized into it, but when they're no longer doing it, it's still accurate to describe it as being "made good".