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 -
I have no idea what you are doing anymore. I've told you that I don't care what you call it, so long as we are talking about the same thing. At this point you seem to be fixating on words and definitions to get away from the meat of the matter. It just looks like you want to reject a framing of the conversation without saying it.
When someone is talking about the 'sexual market place' in the context of dating in the western world they are obviously not talking about brothels and prostitution. You are not being rational or precise with language when you play these word games. It is at best obtuse and obfuscatory.
The point I'm making is extremely simple. Man A gets approached by women, gets replies on dating apps and in general finds casual sex and relationships very easy to come by. Man B gets none of those things. In fact women don't even look at him for longer than 2 seconds to decide that he is not attractive.
Man A doesn't need to think about his life goals in terms of what he needs to garner attention from women. Man B does. Man B recognizes that if he does not come by some form of 'thing' or 'currency' or 'bargaining chip' or 'whatever word you want' to balance out his apparent unattractiveness to women, he will likely end up alone or unhappy. Both of these guys might be similar otherwise, but their struggle is not the same. Both want sex and affection. One needs the 'thing' to even be able to play the game, the other does not.
If someone uses "Nazi" to mean "conservative", then they obviously don't refer to conservatives, but would their usage really not affect their inferences or the inferences of others?
True, different men, like different women, have to work more or less hard to get romantic success. (This is more unforgiving for women than men: almost any woman can get sex, but what people usually want is a loving long term relationship, and men tend to be the gatekeepers for that. A man can work to balance out his unattractive physical traits, whereas a woman's degree or money is unlikely to help her much with the opposite sex.) This is because people care about physical appearances. Physical attractiveness is certainly helpful for initial attraction, though things like conscientiousness and agreeableness seem to be more important for maintaining love long term, since the latter requires a lot of empathy and (rewarding) hard work.
Now, why is working harder to get what you want through labour, exercise, study etc., rather than largely getting it due to inborn attractiveness, not "masculine"? Stereotypically, I would have thought the opposite: a man who is admired by women through displaying virtues and competence is more "manly" than one who is admired by women purely on innate physical grounds. Consider a reversal: is there something unusually masculine about the story of a woman who DID win the affection of her beloved through her abilities and character, despite her plain looks and innately awkward personality?
I appreciate the appeal of gaining easy approval due to one's looks, but I see it as a more classically female way to gain romantic success. Even in nature, among animals that do mating rituals, it's the male that needs to prove himself through dances, chasing the female around etc. in order to mate. Usually, the female just has to look fertile and healthy, and perhaps not even that, even if the result of mating is the male being eaten.
Think Cinderella (be beautiful and agreeable, then someone will eventually be nice to you) vs. Indiana Jones (handsome man, but still only gets the girl by proving himself, proves himself by solving problems and by saving her from danger - sometimes repeatedly in the same movie). Obviously, the latter is more of a classically masculine archetype: the questing knight in European folklore.
This is also seems to be why "saving the man from danger" has more of a maternal rather than romantic feel when it's a woman doing the saving, whereas "saving the woman from danger" has more of a heroic and sexy quality when it's a man doing the saving, unless it's literally saving his daughter as in the Taken movies. And if a man can save the village/kingdom/world/universe, then he's that much more of a classically masculine figure, since he must display great virtue/competence to do so.
To play your own game, if someone uses the term 'conservative' to refer to conservatives, I don't really know what they mean either. A conservative in rural Kentucky is not the same as a conservative in Washington party politics. A conservative today is not the same as a conservative from 60 years ago. What people are talking about and referring to is derived from context. Who they are, who they are referring to specifically and to what end.
I can, for instance, recognize that some person on twitter calling some 'conservative' a nazi is probably a lib/left/progressive voicing their emotional distaste more than they are making a relevant 1:1 comparison between 'conservatism' and the National Socialist German Workers Party of Adolf Hitler from the 1930's. By the same token I can disagree with their terminology I can recognize their actual contention.
As for the rest of the points you make, I feel like you are going a bit beyond the relevant subjects.
On this we agree. The rest of the paragraph, however, is irrelevant to the matter at hand. This is not a dissection of the sex wars from a point of view of who has it better or worse. Even if men in their current state are on aggregate more happy than women the problems they are having still exist and they can still be miserable. On top of that, men who can't even get a reply on Tinder are not gatekeepers for relationships. Looking at the situation from this angle loses sight on the topic of: attention from women, prosocial behavior and masculinity.
Because, as I maintained in my reply to OP, getting women is a competition. If you lose the competition it doesn't matter what you've done or how hard you have worked. And ultimately every man understands that if you are not successfully getting women, you are in a sense a loser compared to those who are successful. You can't be masculine and a loser.
How we see things in the abstract, infused with all our idyllic romanticism, is completely irrelevant. Like the Japanese veteran turned beggar shows. The heroic soldier doesn't return to the women of the country he fought for, where they await him with open arms in recognition of his struggle and feats of bravery. He returns to see them fornicating with the guys who nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And he is forced to beg them for scraps.
We don't need a hypothetical analogue from the animal kingdom to dispel our fantasy notions of how things ought to be. Some men need to own a house, at the very least, to get any attention from women. Other men don't.
You might really like the notions of masculinity and chivalry you express, or notions similar to 'constructive masculinity' as expressed by the author of OP's article, but that's just that. I'm not going to repeat what I've said on the problem prosocial masculinity faces, as I've already written a comment on it here
But I think it's safe to say that, again, it's dead in the water and a lot of men realize this.
Ok, now I'm sure I don't know what you are talking about. Why not?
Let me put it to you a different way then; If you can be masculine and a loser, why should a man who gets no attention from women but wants attention from women want to be masculine? Especially in the sort of prosocial sense as described by you and the author of OP's article.
Good question. I'll assume that by "loser" you mean something like "not romantic approved by women".
"Again I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to those with knowledge, but time and chance happen to them all." - Ecclesiastes
In the modern world, it seems that the best bet that most men have for romantic success is to embody a certain archetype of the Noble Warrior. I think that Jordan Peterson put it something like "dangerous, but civilized". Women will often go with just dangerous (the Andrew Tate phenomenon) but this seems to be when they have lost hope of the combination with being civilized. So, while there is no guarantee of success from anything in life, there are probabilistic rewards from virtuous masculinity for a lot of men today.
Additionally, there are valuable things in life other than women's approval, which isn't to deny the very strong attraction of the latter for most men. Many (perhaps all) masculine virtues are useful for these. Partly because life has these complexities, I don't regard every man who isn't approved by women as a "loser", if as this word requires some sort of negative judgement. Based on what I know about things like depression and procrastination, I think that such terms - though motivated by a desire for success in various activities, including romance - actually are counterproductive and lead, ceteris paribus, to diminished performance.
And yes, I've experienced that state of mind where it seems like women's approval (or even one woman's approval) is the only thing that really matters. It seems common among men at some point in their teens or twenties. I don't think that's a rational or useful mindset - except insofar as the suffering it causes incentivises them to greater states of knowledge, strength, and wisdom.
So, in short, you are right that there are no guaranteed rewards from prosocial masculinity, but this is true of anything, so if that was a reason not to want to do X, then it would be a reason not to want anything. Women's romantic approval can be an awesome experience, useful, fulfilling etc., but it's not the only thing that matters, and it's certainly not a basis for holistic judgements of a man's character.
I explained what I mean by 'loser' here :
But you are missing the point of the question. Which was sort of rhetorical and intended to help you understand what is being talked about, but your answer will suffice. As a followup:
If being prosocially masculine was not the best way to become a winner, why should anyone who wants to be a winner do it?
What do you mean "the best way"? Guaranteed results for everyone? Or just the best bet in an uncertain game?
Also, does "wants to be a winner" mean just wants to be a winner (romantically successful) or that this is one of multiple goals they have?
I am using the term 'best' in the same sense you used it in your previous post where you said their best bet for romantic success was 'virtuous masculinity'
This is genuinely starting to feel like an exercise in futility. The point I'm making isn't hard to understand. It feels more like you are trolling or deliberately being obtuse so you don't have to engage with the topic.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link