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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 20, 2023

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China really is not so different from the West. For some reason the US has a practice of commonly mutilating the penis of babies. This doesn't cause so much harm as foot-binding yet it's bizarre and hostile.

Damn it random-ranger, here I was preparing the theory that adherence to non-racism makes Europeans into a moral mutants capable of suppressing their most basic moral instincts, and now I'm gonna have to add anti-semitism to the list. Seriously, I share a revulsion towards circumcision but let's compare the acts shall we.

Circumcision:

Brutal painful act lasting a few minutes, with additional suffering during recovery period

carried out against a creature who will not remember or know the difference,

reducing sexual fitness by (I'll just guess) 20%,

carried out by medical professionals beyond the sight of Non-Jewish parents.

Footbinding:

Several rounds of brutal painful acts distributed over several years, with additional extreme pain in between them,

carried out against a creature who will remember every moment of it, and is fully aware of the difference (she used to have fully functional feet),

permanent partial crippling into this disgusting... (I'll omit any words, you either feel it or you don't)

Carried out by the parents themselves with full knowledge and awareness of their actions as their daughter screams, over and over and over again.

/images/16772047502996655.webp

I agree that footbinding is worse than circumcision, I said it myself!

But they both belong in the category of 'really weird things that you'd surely not expect to be cultural practices'! China thought for some reason that small feet are better, that they were high-status. Then it got locked in as a cultural trait, this is what high-status women do and how you get married. As for 'extremely disgusting pseudo-medical operations carried out by parents thinking they're doing good for their child', we can hardly claim the high ground. I won't post images or testimony of gorey botched gender transition surgeries because I don't really want to see or think about the things that are happening right now, in our countries, today.

People are prepared to die for status! They'll cut off their balls for status, flagellate themselves for status, people will do anything for status.

Fundamentally both the West and the Sinosphere + Japan are great civilizations. We basically have the same problems in terms of diminishing fertility, technological anomie and so on. It's a symmetrical situation.

Edit: Chinese and North East Asians are categorized as 'white adjacent' for the purpose of getting discriminated against in our education system. There's a certain essence of whiteness that they have possessed by few others.

This is just basic signaling theory. It's high status to have bound feet because its a credible signal that:

  • I don't have to work. You know this because I physically am unable to work, and yet am obviously not malnourished.

  • I come from a high-status household. You know this because they bound their daughter's feet instead of putting her to work.

  • I care about my future husband. You know this because I had my feet bound to be more appealing to him