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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   28233 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 23, 2023

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Religious conservatives and sex-negative feminists both agree that casual sex in the society that exists is inherently degrading to women, that women should choose not to engage in it, and that men should be punished for engaging in it.

A problem here is that the religious conservatives who are allowed to speak in mainstream outlets under their real name have to make concessions to feminism in order to not get cancelled. So they have to argue that the real problem with feminism is that men will take advantage of women. They have trouble arguing directly that hooking up is a sin for women, a sin that many women will indulge in if allowed, and that women must be policed too, and not just men. However, these conservatives who making the socially acceptable right-wing argument, aren't actually accurately representing what the typical right-wing conservative man actually deep-down believes.

This is similar to the "Democrats are the real racists" trope that mainstream conservatives (at the National Review, etc.) get trapped in. To avoid cancellation, they can't just argue that affirmative action is bad because it is bad for whites. They have to make the argument that affirmative action is bad because it is actually bad for black people, because of "mismatch" or the "soft bigotry of low expectations" or because it won't prepare blacks for the "real world." Ultimately, these arguments do not work (the left can just extend affirmative action entirely through a person's career) and the conservative ends up just ceding the moral high ground to the left.

A problem here is that the religious conservatives who are allowed to speak in mainstream outlets under their real name have to make concessions to feminism in order to not get cancelled. So they have to argue that the real problem with feminism is that men will take advantage of women.

To be fair, that's been the Catholic Church's stated position for opposing birth control since the 1960s. See below the relevant section of Pope Paul VI's Humane Vitae:

.17. Responsible men can become more deeply convinced of the truth of the doctrine laid down by the Church on this issue if they reflect on the consequences of methods and plans for artificial birth control. Let them first consider how easily this course of action could open wide the way for marital infidelity and a general lowering of moral standards. Not much experience is needed to be fully aware of human weakness and to understand that human beings—and especially the young, who are so exposed to temptation—need incentives to keep the moral law, and it is an evil thing to make it easy for them to break that law. Another effect that gives cause for alarm is that a man who grows accustomed to the use of contraceptive methods may forget the reverence due to a woman, and, disregarding her physical and emotional equilibrium, reduce her to being a mere instrument for the satisfaction of his own desires, no longer considering her as his partner whom he should surround with care and affection.

I agree with them too. I used to work in university dorms. It was always the guys on the look out and pushing the issue. Stranger assaults were always guys too. Birth control further enables the worst behavior in men.

To be fair, that's been the Catholic Church's stated position for opposing birth control since the 1960s. See below the relevant section of Pope Paul VI's Humane Vitae:

Exactly. Since America conquered achieved world hegemony after World War II, the Catholic Church leadership have wanted to avoid cancellation (ie, losing non-profit status, having Catholics being auto-excluded from being members of the bar, being dis-invited from all establishment media, and also Catholics just generally not wanting to seem like fuddy-duddy "bad guys" by the standards of progressive morality, etc. etc.) and so have tried to put a more modern/feminist spin on long-standing teachings. So in the past 60 years, the Catholic Church has emphasized the angle of "we are actually the real feminists because sexual sin is a case of men hurting women,"

The Catholic Church has like a dozen reasons for opposing birth control in the same list, and one of them is ‘women are dumbasses and lots of them will get pregnant anyways, only they’ll be with guys that won’t commit because birth control moves sex earlier in a relationship’. This is a true argument but it is not a feminist framing.

No, the unpopularity of sin/policing rhetoric isn’t due to fear of cancellation. It derives from the general loss in status of religion. Hardline stances are unappealing when people can just…opt out. Go to communities which held on to that status—Salt Lake City, the Bible Belt—and you’ll find that they still have strict rules.

I grew up in the vicinity of Bob Jones. They had no qualms about their strict limits on interaction between the sexes. This is a school which, decades earlier, chose to pay back taxes rather than allow interracial dating.

No, the unpopularity of sin/policing rhetoric isn’t due to fear of cancellation. It derives from the general loss in status of religion.

That's...the same thing.

How do you mean?

I am arguing that religious authorities are pushed into softer stances because of ideological competition. Higher mobility and increased secularity has made it easier to opt out of religious communities and go somewhere you won’t be called a whore, etc. Thus the societies which still have strong prohibitions are those with the most cost to leaving.

I think this is distinct from the concept of cancellation, which to me implies that the authority chooses not to speak for fear of personal consequences, especially sourced from the general public. When BJU maintained their ban on interracial dating, the consequences were tax exemptions and court cases rather than picketing. This was possible because their detractors had almost no leverage over the supporters.

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