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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 26, 2022

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A little space, where John and Susie are allowed separate interests, as long as Susie (or John!) can join the same Baking Club or Economics Forum, isn't a bad thing. I think we threw the baby out with the bathwater when we pushed for closing those down.

I don't know that America made a conscious choice to downgrade friendship - Bowling Alone was calling the decline of social interaction and traced it to much earlier in time (which implies it isn't just ever more hegemonic feminism at play)

And, tbh, a lot of hobbies (And even sites) are still functionally gender segregated, outside of spaces where you can get sued for it.

The declining friend group issue may be its own that then exacerbates others (e.g. like turning one partner into the end-all,be-all - which may also be helped along by monogamy)

I do think the glamorisation of romantic love has a lot to do with it, and this is probably more so for women than men, but I'll let the men answer that for themselves.

Our culture has made romantic love the supposed peak of existence, there is a Mr. Right, the soulmate, out there for you and until you find him (or her) then your life is not worth living. When you do find them, they will be the all-in-all to you, this will be the most important relationship in your entire life, they will meet your every need. And when the romantic glow fades and you find that the soulmate is just another struggling human, then you dump them and go out to find the real soulmate to live happily ever after.

Which is stupid, because no one person can be everything, and they shouldn't have to be. When it was accepted that men had their own interests, and women had theirs, and once married you would have kids and women's main priority would be their family and home, then there was more room for people to get on. John could go off with the boys, and it wasn't a hanging offence. Susie could have her night out with the girls, and that was fine. They didn't have to be in each other's business all the time, and they had a wider circle of people to meet their emotional and other needs, rather than putting all the eggs in one basket.

I think also women took on the role of managing friendships once married; it seems often to be that the friends of a couple are different to the friends each individually had before. But now we're supposed to put our romantic partners above our natal families or our friends, and they are supposed to come first in everything (except your career). And then we had the breakdown of the bargain, and maybe it was good that it broke down, but it hasn't made all the problems obsolete. Now women are supposed to 'have it all' - a career and a relationship, and men are supposed to be whatever ideal modern feminism holds up. So there is more strain on people, and more dissatisfaction: you are not having the perfect work life and perfect relationship and being fulfilled and all the rest of it, and it's easier to blame the other party for it - it's all the fault of men who still have all this privilege, or it's all the fault of women who take advantage and then fall back on "you are supposed to treat me as special".

I don't have any solutions, but maybe putting down the guns in a ceasefire is a good start. Yes, men did have a social advantage, but men today aren't the oppressors (unless they are, you know, burning their wives in dowry murders). Yes, women do have a social advantage today, but we should be aware of that and not expect six impossible things ("I didn't really want to kiss him but we were both drunk and I felt pressured into it so it was rape because I didn't consent the way I'm supposed to consent").