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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 16, 2023

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As others have noted, the sexual revolution is slowly being reversed

Anything but. We're not witnessing the "reverse-engineering traditional sexual norms". They're reverse-engineering the half where men are 100% responsible for everything that happens before, during, and after sex. That's it.

Notice that there's no restrictions on women or power over them by men being "rediscovered". It's just the parts where men are responsible for everything.

This doesn't really contribute to the conversation imo. I agree with the direction, but it's mostly just 'boo outgroup'. They're reverse engineering a small part where men are responsible if they have sex with women who are too drunk to make good decisions. Not everything! Everything would be something like 'if you have sex with any woman you have to marry her'.

You are correct. Consider that Megan Fox and E Ratajkowski are now examples of feminism. Making men to lust for you is now considered empowering. So this is not a reversal of sexual revolution for both genders.

It's just the parts where men are responsible for everything.

As @PierreMenard says,

As they have always been.

To follow it up slightly differently, the prior equilibrium still had men being responsible for everything, but the rules were much much clearer. She didn't put a ring on your finger? Not acceptable, dude, and you clearly and obviously know it. People decided to destroy these rules and the equilibrium with them. Some would say that a few intentionally destroyed these rules so as to exploit their high status and multiply their own sexual partners. There was a brief window of hope where proponents thought they could formulate a new equilibrium around a different solitary rule: consent. Setting aside a philosophical discussion of whether this actually does the thing we want it to do from a theoretical perspective, it has been tried for a few decades now and found desperately wanting. As @Walterodim points out, this is the last gasp of hope by its proponents to patch over the glaring issues. I think it likely that this will be double and triple downed on, to ever higher levels of absurdity and oppression, but it will eventually topple under the weight of its inherent contradictions. Is it likely that it'll collapse back to the prior equilibrium, which had proven relatively stable for thousands of years? Probably not. But it will likely collapse to some other equilibrium. These sorts of revolutions are a bit unpredictable when they finally come crashing down, so it's too difficult to call whether the new equilibrium will continue trying to retain the feature where men are responsible for everything or whether that feature will actually be weakened for the first time in search of something new.

I think it likely that this will be double and triple downed on, to ever higher levels of absurdity and oppression, but it will eventually topple under the weight of its inherent contradictions.

See also - age gap discourse and the evident belief that 22-year-old women are basically children when it comes to romantic decision-making. Frankly, I can't even disagree with the underlying claim, but failing to articulate the actual concerns coherently results in recursively weird commentary on how immoral it is for a 30-something man to sleep with women that just graduated college. People can't say, "it's a dirty trick because you know she actually wants commitment, you cad", so we wind up with discussion of power dynamics that doesn't make any sense if you believe that the women involved are actual adults.

It seems like this accusation gets thrown at men providing commitment more often than at men who hookup and leave, though.

It's just the parts where men are responsible for everything.

As they have always been. Now it's up to men to let women fall hard. Find a good woman, have many children and teach every single one of them not to be promiscuous. Tell your sons to beware of promiscuous women, the general atmosphere of city life and so on.

Feminists will either have 0 or few children that they will have trouble raising on their own or with cowardly, weak feminist men.

You don't need to do anything to give these women their just reward, they will find it on their own.

Easier said than done. I for one don't live in a religious enclave and I don't have the wealth to isolate my child from the world without it turning sour. Or maybe there are good ways to accomplish this that I am unaware of.

Well I don't have teenagers yet so I can't tell whether any of my efforts will bear fruits.

Ideally you would homeschool and keep them in a more traditional environment. It may all be for naught in the end anyway. I don't think it's possible to keep up the efforts without a religious conviction that this is what God intends you to do.

From an individual point-of-view, it may be more beneficial to fully embrace the world and its mores and go where 'Progress' says you should be going without looking back. Embracing 'white boy summer' might catch you syphilis or a fentanyl OD but maybe not.

Tragedy might just as likely strike the god-fearing Christian. Perhaps it will be easier for them to recover thanks to the virtues imbued in them by the tradition, but they may still end up in objectively worse circumstances, from a strictly worldly perspective.

Feminism should not be an issue to the modern godless man. They just need to learn to play it like an Andrew Tate or a Trump. The moral rejection of the sexual revolution and its consequences can only be downstream of religion, not whatever ideology is currently wearing the skin of Christian civilization.

I've actually come up with a name for this. I kinda had to because I'm seeing it more and more these days, and it's more aggressive than ever. I call it "Dark Femme". It's basically this mix of traditional and modern gender norms that always benefit one direction, and frankly, is often incoherent.

I'm just going to put my two cents here, just to make it easy. I do think there's something to avoiding the crazy. However, let me say this. I've seen a lot lately, discussion about it's not actually "All Men" and maybe women should have some agency and responsibility for recognizing and avoiding red flags. And people do not react well to this at all.

Frankly, this Dark Femme culture wants the toxicity and excitement of the red flags, but in a safe controlled way. One of the first things I said when I abandoned Progressive politics (before it was even really a thing TBH) was that I rejected the "theme park" expectations that society be made into a super-safe but still exciting place that caters to people's wants and desires in a perfect way tailored for them. It's just not possible.

So yeah. Don't stick your dick in crazy seems like good advice. But that advice doesn't go down well at all when it's coming back around.

I've actually come up with a name for this. I kinda had to because I'm seeing it more and more these days, and it's more aggressive than ever. I call it "Dark Femme". It's basically this mix of traditional and modern gender norms that always benefit one direction, and frankly, is often incoherent.

I've seen it beautifully summed up on the A Voice for Men website:

Feminists promote gender equality, as long as it benefits women. Anti-feminists promote gender inequality, as long as it benefits women.