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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 10, 2025

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I don’t know any male feminists in person, at least not well. I think, however, there’s another possibility- feminism changes social dynamics to result in more sex pesting.

In its weakest form, the insistence on women and men being just the same leads to dubious assumptions, like women being as agentic and interested in casual sex as men. This leads high-agency men(who are attractive to women, especially much younger ones) to take advantage of women without meaning to(eg, insistence on coming back to his place after a date, bedding with her because as least she didn’t say no, etc). As support for this weak form, I’ll offer the feminist solution to date rape being ‘affirmative consent’, ie that women have to specifically opt in to sex, they can’t just go along with it, and that most of these guys are accused of taking advantage, but not doing so forcibly.

In its strongest form, this is the idea that abolishing gender roles leads to men just trying to get laid, not seeking a relationship, and this inherently leads to worse behavior towards intended partners than the opposite. In itself this strong form has both an ultra-strong form, where the abolition of patriarchy means men no longer have any responsibilities towards women to go with their lack of leadership responsibilities, and a slightly weaker form that the abolition of gender roles makes relationships inherently difficult to seek for because they run off of gender roles. I feel like we discuss a Reddit story about this latter idea every once in a while- some young male, maybe a bit socially hapless, is interested in a young lady and she might have been open to it if he hadn’t approached her in a awful and awkward way that his grandpa wouldn’t have done- because he took feminist dating advice seriously.

There’s also a middle form, where the traditional structures of a patriarchy to protect women from men actually worked, at least to an extent, and when you abolish them unscrupulous men find themselves in a target rich environment.

I think all four of these ideas have at least some truth, but I also think most of what got outlined above is true to one extent or another.