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Small-Scale Question Sunday for November 5, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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I find it ironic you consider the idea of a women 'selling her body' as loaded language in recent vernacular when and then proceed to issue the statement "After all, I would argue that a woman who marries a man for his money (to a first approximation, most women who have ever existed) is 'selling her body' to a much greater degree than a prostitute, who is merely renting it. And yet the wife is held in much higher esteem than the jezebel." which is a much more modern interpretation of marriage popularized in the last decade.

It's clear we won't come to agreement. I think the modern materialist/rationalist/objectivist notion that marriage is generally a pragmatic institution based off of materialism and risk aversion is generally false in a historical sense beyond well documented edge cases. This simplification is what largely damaged marriage as an institution and changes the game theory to make marriage seem risky with no real benefit. When marriage was considered a permanent union, people prioritized very different things in a partner than simply material wealth. The modern consumptive and transactional nature of sex and marriage has created significant costs in population growth and stability, family stability, and child rearing.