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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 17, 2025

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A while ago I got into a debate with some people. I claimed, and thought it was uncontroversial, that monogamy is not most men's ideal relationship arrangement. Of course, neither is full polyamory (which involves knowing your girl is banging other men), but most men would love a relationship where their woman is exclusive to them while they can sleep with other women on the side. I was met with unanimous shock and disagreement. That "I just didn't respect women if I felt this" or accusations that I'm typical minding. But I suspect most men actually do agree with me, and the ones who claim otherwise fall into a two categories 1) Men who are sour graping. That is, they know they couldn't pull off an arrangement like this (which tbf is most men, including me) so pretend they wouldn't want it anyway. 2) Ones who "want" it instinctively but are opposed for religious reasons 3) The few who actually just disagree. Cases like Greene's seem to vindicate me. His girlfriend, Kayla, is an attractive woman (happy to cite my sources) who speaks Korean. Most men, in theory, would be happy to score even a 1st date with a woman like her. And yet he couldn't help but risk his relationship by cheating on her with a clearly unstable sex worker? This is very common pattern among famous/successful men. Maybe all it takes is the knowledge that they can repent and get away with it (she agreed to marry him following all this, after all). But clearly the impulse already had to be there. I remember some Motters experiencing envy at Gaiman's escapades when they were revealed to the press (I still don't know the details of them like I mentioned), so are we dispositionally different than the male population at large or just more honest?

"Me and this other very unusual guy who sleeps with people who have all the qualities of poisonous tree frog have this preference therefore everyone probably does" is not a compelling argument. There's like three layers of selection going on here. I don't think you're really steel manning the opposing view here which is more complex than "I wouldn't even want to have consequence free sex with beautiful women that my wife actively approved of and made our bound closer", which is a very spherical cow way to look at human relationships. I don't think that kind of relationship actually exists, or if it does it would either require a wife that I wouldn't want as a partner or for me to not care about hurting my wife.