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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 22, 2024

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I think what rape culture is defined as is the rejection of current year ideas about consent, and the idea is that in locker rooms and frat houses the discussions about sex generally reject such ideas.

Now this is obviously dumb, mainly for the reason that current year ideas about consent are dumb. Like in the matter at hand, this young woman agreed to have sex with five hockey players. This was a bad decision, but she did in fact make it, probably because she wanted to make it, and I’ll wager dollars to donuts that she went to this celebratory gala understanding that she would be expected to have sex with hockey players, and not thinking that they valued her conversational skills.

And that’s the crux of the matter- current year ideas about consent are a repudiation of both patriarchy(which they call purity culture) and 70’s macho man stud culture(which they call rape culture). Young women make moronic decisions about sex relationships and romance which they usually regret and talking them out of those decisions is a key reason for the patriarchy/purity culture axis, and thinking those decisions aren’t a big deal/just a cost of doing business/on the woman is the main argument for the rape culture/macho man axis. Can’t have either, so you spin incoherent ideas about consent to make dumb sexual decisions a woman later regrets out to be rape.

I find current year sexual ethics weird simply because to me they assume that the woman is stupid. Like yes she’d gotten drunk. But she made every decision up to and including sex, knowing the entire time what each decision meant.

It's not that they're stupid, it's that they're hypoagentic, while men are hyperagentic. It is the man's job (on pain of imprisonment) to determine, at every point, what she wants and to make decisions in her best interests, even if she is saying otherwise.

But hyoagentic discourse seems by nature to assume that the person being talked about isn’t capable of being a real agent, because if they could, the discourse wouldn’t make sense. I can’t say that Klingons cannot be held responsible for trashing the place because you pissed them off, and simultaneously believe that said Klingons are capable of not acting out on their impulses. If you can easily bypass their rational agent’s brain, then and only then are they not responsible.

I’m responsible to care for myself as I am an agent. I’m responsible for my sobriety or lack there of. I’m responsible for choosing where I go and what I do. I think that’s my issue. It’s treating women and minorities as if they’re small children that don’t have free will of their own and can be easily tricked by white men into doing something stupid.

I’m responsible to care for myself as I am an agent. I’m responsible for my sobriety or lack there of. I’m responsible for choosing where I go and what I do.

Until that goes sideways, and you manage to stick someone else with the bill. This is commonly called "having your cake and eating it too", "privatizing gains and socializing losses", or more commonly just "privilege".

Is it logically consistent, or matching even a small child's understanding of "fairness"? Of course not- either you do not have the responsibility to care for yourself as an agent and therefore should have none of the rights, or you do and have all of the rights(1).
But it is consistent with the Inner Party weaponizing the tendency of Outer Party men to prioritize the well-being of women over themselves (Orwell never explicitly elaborated on where the Junior Anti-Sex League comes from, though extrapolating that the only sexual satisfaction permitted Winston is an explicitly-ugly old prostitute, and considering more women than men believe that "men having sex with young women is bad", I think his conclusion is that it comes from women-as-class... an interest group to which Julia is a gender-traitor) in a sociobiological milieu where that no longer makes any sense.

Their biology hasn't caught up with the facts on the ground, and this creates a power imbalance bad actors are actively exploiting (as they are in this, and other, cases).

(1) Unless you're between the ages of [biological adulthood] and [local age of majority], where you have all of the responsibility but none of the rights- every time you hear the phrase "charged as an adult", or one of this group being charged for something that's only a crime when you're this age (underage drinking/drug use, firearm possession, nude selfies) this is what's happening.

It’s treating women and minorities as if they’re small children that don’t have free will of their own and can be easily tricked by white men into doing something stupid.

You're assuming a consistency that isn't there. The idea is that women are fully equal adults when it benefits them, but easily manipulated sympathetic victims of male perfidy when it benefits them. That this views cannot be logically reconciled does not matter.