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.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
This is seemingly borne out in another thread:
https://twitter.com/datepsych/status/1625485234824261632
Where you can see that in the 18-25 demographic there's about 42% of women that claim zero sexual partners, about 43% that claim one sexual partner, and then looking at the male side, there's ~12% claiming at least 3 partners a year. Although one suspects the guys claiming 100 sexual partners a year are... exaggerating.
This would be relatively consistent with a view that many women are opting out of sex for want of a worthy partner and some smaller percentage of men are locking down multiple women from that remaining pool.
When I see gaps like that, I always wonder if there is a Clintonian problem with defining sexual partner, that breaks down strongly on gender lines. The classic anecdotal examples are something like, a Babtist "virgin" at Liberty University whose nickname in high school was the Headmaster; and a college boy who claims he got laid when he prematurely ejaculated on the dance floor.
I wonder if it is a broader phenomenon, where men are consistently personally including activities that many people wouldn't include objectively (cybersex for example), while women are constantly excluding "last name sex" activities that most people would objectively include like oral sex or manual sex. Have you ever seen data on that?
More options
Context Copy link
I'd actually assume gays could heavily skew this data. 100 is not impossible for some.
It's two sexual encounters with a novel partner per week. Some straight guys at the peak of their game who travel a lot could manage that, but distributionally, we're probably talking fairly out there in the long tail (e.g. wealthy airline pilot with a taste for prostitution). For gay guys, traveling a lot would also help, unless you live in NYC, Miami, SF, etc., but it's not nearly as extreme an outlier. There's also some difference between 100/year at a person's promiscuous peak, and 100/year averaged over a period of years, which is why frequent travel is a relevant variable--past a certain point, you need to go farther afield to find the low-hanging fruit, which is almost certainly more time/resource efficient than investing in a metaphorical ladder to pick the less accessible partners.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link