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PaperclipPerfector  26d ago (text post)   34037 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 16, 2025

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The abortion debate below brought to mind something I've been thinking about for a while. There's been a convergence of sorts between mainstream Republicans/conservatives and the far-right, but there are still many differences, such as on the Single Mother Question. The far-right (which includes most people on this website) views single mothers negatively, while the mainstream conservative view is very different. For instance, here's what Speaker Mike Johnson said about Medicaid:

Medicaid is for single mothers with small children who are just trying to make it. It's not for 29-year-old males sitting on their couch playing video games. We're going to find those guys, and we will SEND them back to work!

Mainstream conservatives and the far-right agree that the welfare state serves to subsidize single motherhood, but only the latter thinks it's a bad thing. Mainstream conservatives' embrace of single motherhood is connected with abortion politics. One mainstream conservative pundit put it succinctly: "you can't be pro-life and anti-single mom." Many on the far-right responded to her tweet with "just watch me" and others scratched their heads, wondering what she meant. But there's a certain logic to it. Much of the motivation for abortion comes from women not wanting to be single mothers. You can respond to this in two ways:

  1. Tell them not to have premarital sex.
  2. Tell them to keep the baby because single motherhood is a heroic thing to do; you're CHOOSING LIFE.

The far-right prefers option 1, I've heard it many times on this website. But do you think it will actually be effective in changing behavior? I personally suspect that given the options of not having sex or having sex at the risk you might have to drive out of state and get an abortion and then get shamed by some online anonymous far-rightists, the latter will be the popular option. Just a vague suspicion I have. So it doesn't surprise me that many conservatives choose option 2. It also harmonizes better with the current conservative political coalition, which is increasingly reliant on the votes of low-class and non-white voters who have higher rates of single-motherhood. We wouldn't want to be elitist, looking down our noses at the salt-of-the-earth working class now would we?

  • -18

You can respond to this in two ways:

  1. Tell them not to have premarital sex.
  2. Tell them to keep the baby because single motherhood is a heroic thing to do; you're CHOOSING LIFE.

Why not both?

Because 1 clearly doesn't work?

Remember all the abstinence only culture war stuff in the late 2000s / early 2010s?

Pretty sure abstinence only sex ed resulted in the highest rates of teenage pregnancy

I don't know; I think this is not responding to the actual argument.

I think most traditionalist Christians would say, you want a culture that treats sex like it's sacred and important. Abstinence only sex education might be part of that, but it pales in comparison for norm shaping to other forces. And the norm shaping in the 90s and 2000s, via Hollywood, and network TV, MTV, and the radio, was absolutely drenched in liberal notions about "sexuality" and "sexual liberation". (I'm honestly not sure where to put internet porn in this discussion, because although it shaped certain norms about behavior, I'm less clear about its role in normalizing public social roles about sexuality, and I suspect it played an important role in the #MeToo sex negative backlash towards male sexual assertiveness). I mean, I grew up in the religious South in the 90s. And all the Southern Baptist families around me still had to deal with the fact that their kids were marinating in a sexual culture being promulgated by a million vectors of national broadcast media, all heavily liberalizing, whether they liked it or not. Fights over abstinence based education were rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. I think, given that broader media context, that sure, abstinence based education probably couldn't have worked. And it may well have been that kids from more traditional or religious households were less likely to be on birth control or have condoms and then, after amorous circumstances intervened, ended up getting teen pregnant. I don't know (although the other comment about the usual racial cofounder can never be ignored when it comes to the South).

If traditionalists say "tell them not to have premarital sex", they generally mean something much, much bigger and deeper than the contents of a stray sex ed class. They mean something like, a healthy culture in one where all the various sense-making institutions treat sex like it is sacred, and important, and something set aside, and not to be treated likely or traded like a product - and then people will respond to that and treat it thusly, rather than treating it like a trip to the amusement park with a new friend. Progressives deeply disagree with this, but they understand the impulse, because this is precisely how they feel about "racism" and "sexism" and "xenophobia" and "homophobia" - they get very, very upset if people treat those topics lightly, and they insist that all the various sense-making institutions that they control treat these topics as sacralized, and important, and set aside, and that everyone participate in their universal morality story.

Lots of cultures historically have had much more consensus on treating sex the way that traditionalists would prefer it were treated, including America in earlier eras (the fact of the pill coming into existing in the mid 20th century complicates this discussion, of course). And claiming that that never worked is probably a tall order, and disingenuous to boot, because the actual crux of the argument for most progressives, really, is not, "Did it factually work?" It's "I don't want to live in a world where sex is that culturally locked down and hidden away". Which is fine, but accepting that means abandoning the fig leaf of scientism and accepting that different groups just fundamentally have incommensurable worldviews and values.

Lots of cultures historically have had much more consensus on treating sex the way that traditionalists would prefer it were treated, including America in earlier eras...

I always feel like this is way oversimplified.

“There are 80,000 prostitutes in London alone and what are they, if not bloody sacrifices on the alter of monogamy” -- Arthur Schopenhauer

I highly doubt a traditional culture has ever existed where most high-agency (read: upper class, free, generally attractive and fit) men reached the alter after their teenage years as virgins.

Assuming it were possible to settle such a bet, I would put considerable money down that no King of France ever reached his wedding night a virgin other than Louis XVI, and we know how that turned out.

Really, it's probably worse than that: if I asked the many Louis' and Francois' if they were virgins when they got married, they'd be confused by the question. "What do you mean virgin, I'm a man you fucking idiot?"

What we're dealing with is a result of a culture built around equality, of the classes and the sexes, and the results of that culture.

Well, we got free love and contraception and abortion and divorce, and there are still plenty of prostitutes in London, and seemingly increasing amounts of young women selling sex for cash as a signal of empowerment or something. Schopenhauer plainly could not envision OnlyFans.

I do wonder where he got that figure, and who he was including in that. Did he mean "if only men could marry several women, there would be fewer women having to sell sex to survive"? Or did he mean "if living together without marriage was tolerated, many of these women would be in stable relationships"? Because uh, we got that, and we still have prostitution, escort work, sex work, porn, etc.

EDIT: Yeah, looking it up a little, those figures seem debatable. Schopenhauer could be including "poor women who sold sex from time to time, women living in irregular unions, women in temporary relationships" and the likes:

Although London police reports recorded there to be approximately 8,600 prostitutes known to them, it has been suggested that the true number of women prostituting during this time was closer to 80,000 (Rogers).

During the Victorian Age, prostitution did not subscribe to any one tradition; some women lived in brothels, some with soldiers or sailors, and some worked on the streets. Judith Walkowitz, a professor of history at Johns Hopkins University, highlights the different avenues available to prostitutes in her book Prostitution and Victorian Society. The most common form of prostitution during this time was streetwalking. Women who performed this act were most commonly those who supplemented their daily income with money they could earn by prostituting on occasion, but there were also some who used streetwalking as their primary source of income.

...During the Victorian Age, the number of prostitutes who actually lived in brothels was considerably low. Despite this, customers that behaved inappropriately towards the prostitutes that did inhabit such places were normally unappreciated and unwelcome (Walkowitz, 23-25)

I would tend to go with the police estimate for "prostitutes who are street walkers or in brothels" rather than "80,000 genuine no other income or relationship prostitutes". The link for the 80,000 figure seems to go "I got this from Rogers" "Hi I'm Rogers and I got this from Mayhew" and where did Mayhew get it?

To understand the mid-Victorian perception of prostitution we must appreciate the scale of the concern. Mayhew tells us that in 1857 there were 8,600 prostitutes in London known to the police but that the true number may have been nearer to 80,000 (Mayhew p. 476).

Mayhew, H. London Labour and the London Poor. Penguin, London 1985

Digging that one up gives me this source:

To show how difficult it is to give from any data at present before the public anything like a correct estimate of the number of prostitutes in London, we may mention (extracting from the work of Dr Ryan) that while the Bishop of Exeter asserted the number of prostitutes in London to be 80,000, the City Police stated to Dr Ryan that it did not exceed 7,000 to 8,000. About the year 1793 Mr Colquhoun, a police magistrate, concluded, after tedious investigations, that there were 50,000 prostitutes in this metropolis. At that period the population was one million, and as it is now more than double we may form some idea of the extensive ramifications of this insidious vide.

And here I stop, because I am not going to chase down Dr Ryan and the Bishop of Exeter.

But another writer cautions that Mayhew is not the most accurate for data:

Mayhew seems not to have corrected the errors in his text, even when he was willing to acknowledge them. (The long list of errata at the end of Vol. I is mostly taken up by inaccurate calculations.) E. P. Thompson’s conclusion seems reasonable: ‘Every single table and set of statistical data in Mayhew must be scrutinised, not for dishonesty or manipulation, but for sheer slipshod technique and haste in getting to press’, ‘The Political Education of Henry Mayhew’, Victorian Studies, 11 (September 1967); 41–62 (p.58).

Anyway, be it 8,000 or 80,000, contra Schopenhauer the problem was not monogamy but rather poverty: the lack of secure employment and good wages for working and lower class men, and the lack of employment for working and lower class women (street sellers of everything from flowers to vegetables to small items was the fall-back if no steady employment in domestic service or elsewhere). So it's the economy, stupid, not sexual politics that was driving women into part-time or full-time prostitution.

I like this analysis and I agree with your commentary

My point was embracing "Tell them not to have premarital sex." is a method that won't work, and thus, is silly to endorse

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