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Occasionally we are told that there is an epidemic of "male loneliness" or "male sexlessness" - an increasing number of young men are going long stretches of time with few or no sexual partners. But why is this a problem? Why should anyone care except for the sexless males themselves?
Evolutionarily, men have always been the disposable gender - the average male was historically much less likely to produce any offspring than the average female. In fact, depending on which estimate you go with, the average male is still significantly more likely to reproduce in a first world Western country today than he would have been historically. So why is there such concern over this particular dip in fertility?
You might say that a high number of sexless males is more likely to lead to violence and social instability - but plainly, that hasn't happened so far, certainly not on any appreciable scale. It's never been harder to imagine actual widespread social unrest occurring in the modern West, given how thoroughly people have been anesthetized with material abundance and cheap entertainment. (This question has been raised a few times recently, about the possibility of the culture war "going hot" over the Trump verdict or the border crisis or whatever - I am of the opinion that no, it won't "go hot", and such a development is essentially unthinkable at this point). Plus, certain MENA societies provide a case study in how you can have a resilient social order where the majority of women disappear into the harems of rich men and the majority of men are left sexless - these may not be pleasant places to live, but the society is capable of reproducing itself all the same.
What if the incel problem is downstream from the problem of marriage and therefore relationships being unattractive arrangements for both men and women, but especially men? This just came to me, but I used to be a loner guy. Pretty much the entirety of my 20's was spent alone. Tragic from a certain perspective, but I'm not crying over it. Now that I've had girlfriends I'm struggling with the idea of actually staying with one long term. Not because I'm emotionally, intellectually, or otherwise incompatible with the women available to me, but I just don't see the point. I take on all this risk and responsibility... for what? They take on a dependent role and have children (probably unattractive for them) for what? The answer can't just be sex. I feel like everything that once made marriage an attractive or necessary arrangement for both parties has been totally eroded and now we're just running on the fumes of the fuel that once made marriage desirable.
The implicit point of this analysis isn't that men have become especially unattractive and this is what's fueling the loneliness epidemic, but that the clear obsolescence of marriage has taken away any motivation for men to become attractive to women and to actually try.
Women probably feel the same thing and aren't trying to be "marriageable" in the way they once might have, but their role as the selector makes the problems that result from this societal issue seem less serious, though obviously they are feeling the effects as well. I think most women want to be married with kid(s) eventually, but invisibly, imperceptibly, their opportunity for accomplishing this passes them by, and they either have to settle for a man they otherwise wouldn't have if they knew what the deal actually was in their youth, or they go it alone.
You should have kids. It’s incredibly, unbelievably rewarding. Unless you’re literally on track to be the next Lincoln, having kids will be by far the most meaningful and impactful thing you do. And kids need a stable family life, so you should get married first.
I'm begging the people who push this line (which is true on its face) to actually run some calculations and estimate for the class how many actually marriageable women are available in the pool.
How many are single, heterosexual, haven't had kids already, are not grossly overweight, are not riddled with mental disorders, don't have a huge bodycount or any Onlyfans, and are actually interested in having and raising kids in a committed, monogamous relationship.
Otherwise you're basically telling guys to go bobbing for apples in a tub full of acid.
Have you done it? Anecdotally in my locality (SF) basically every late-20s/early-30s woman I know fits the bill. I have a bunch of female friends like this actively searching.
I've run numbers in the aggregate. I'm not standing by them as anything other than a starting point:
About 40% are obese. We've already thinned things out (heh) significantly right there. Maybe Ozempic will save the day.
19% are single moms in the U.S. and Canada. Although I imagine that changes drastically based on race, because I wouldn't have believed that number on first glance.
Around 5-7% are LGBT... although that's much higher for Gen Z women.
Somewhere around 25-27% have had mental illness diagnoses (not counting the severity). Might be 30%+ for the 18-35 year olds that we're talking about)
Around 28% have had 5 or more sex partners. 5 is an arbitrary cutoff, and I CATEGORICALLY DO NOT BELIEVE THE NUMBERS on this type of survey, but again, not an encouraging sign. Difficult to find hard data on how many have been strippers, or prostitutes, or sugar babies, or had Onlyfans pages.
If you want more reliable data take a look at STD rates by gender. Or don't. Its not a fun read. (This one IS hugely disparate based on race, to be fair).
EDIT: to add on, women have more student debt on average, and are less likely to pay it back. So now these women are adding financial burdens to any man who takes them.
And finally, drumroll please, somewhere around 40% of young women are left/democrat leaning. That's before you examine unmarried women specifically. Something close to 70% of single women are probably on the left, politically. Go ahead young man, take a swim in that pond, I'm sure it'll be fine. “Plenty of fish in the sea,” but barely any that are safe to eat.
So we're likely looking at a scarily small % of single women who are relatively chaste, mentally stable, straight, and politically 'moderate', AND also not grossly overweight. And this is what any guy trying to intentionally date and find a relationship is encountering: slim pickings.
And that's before we get into a guy trying to find a match in looks or intelligence.
And as I said in a different comment, women just aren't bringing much to the table to counter the risks, when divorce is still prevalent and doesn't favor the males.
I haven't done the analysis to figure out how these various stats interact (i.e. obviously there will be crossover, so you can't just treat all of these like independent factors), but my gut feeling is it won't help.
And keep in mind, almost by definition the most marriageable ones will get picked up early and removed from the pool and stay out of the pool (people capable of maintaining stable relationships tend to stay in stable relationships. Surprise!). So selection effects would suggest that you're far more likely to encounter the dregs when you're actively searching.
And what makes it particularly bleak is running the numbers on the number of single males in the U.S., and consider how they're ALL chasing the same pool of women, almost regardless of the guy's age. A 50 year old can still have a fling with a 25 year old.
I would guess that what is actually GEOGRAPHICALLY AVAILABLE to a given man will vary too. SF may be a particularly unique circumstance compared to anywhere else. But the type of male you're competing against will also probably be top 1% too.
So yeah, MY read on the situation inevitably leads to the blackpill.
I want people to get married and have kids, but I feel like I can't, in good faith, tell guys to just bite the bullet and marry someone as quickly as possible when there's a veritable minefield out there.
Some of these are legit (like fertility) but if you’re giving up on having kids because your potential wife slept with 6 guys before you or is liberal, it’s an incredible self-own and you’re shutting yourself out of the most joyous thing you will ever experience in life over really tiny details. Obviously nobody is forcing you to compromise but I really hope you and others reading this don’t sacrifice your happiness on the alter of weird twitter dating discourse.
Please don't minimize like this. I didn't report the comment because I believe in addressing things like this head on instead of running to the Mods.
This isn't "weird Twitter dating discourse" this is, as the kids say, "lived experience."
I spent part of my 20s trying to find Mrs. Tollbooth in order to settle down. I kept an "open mind" the way mainstream culture told me to and didn't care about past promiscuity, political incompatibility, their status as a child of divorce and/or poor relationship with father.
Each one of these relationships failed catastrophically for what I recognize now as very significant character and personality failures. I'll admit that I probably didn't do enough to highlight and try to correct bad behavior (again, I was trying to be accepting) and, in at least one case, sort of gave up but kept having sex because sex is fun (I view this now as personal weakness. I wonder what your average sex positive person would say).
So correlation is not causation, right? That these women had "questionable" backgrounds doesn't mean that those background caused these bad situations, right? Bullshit. The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. These women had failed to demonstrate a high-trust and durable relationship with any man in their life up to that point (one was even openly, frequently, and hostile-y critical of her very mild mannered and milquetoast brother). Why in the hell would I take all of the available data and throw it out because "don't believe what you read on Twitter"
I should've been fishing in other streams. I realize that now and that's what I do now. I've also cleaned my own act up over the course of several years. My fear is that what @2rafa said in another comment somewhere in this thread is true - I missed the boat on good pair-bonding in my 20s and now will have to "settle" for a woman who did the same in her 20s, but likely has the same view as I do now. Is that really settling and will I quietly resent her for life? Probably not, that's stupid. The fear remains.
But @faceh isn't being some sort of Twitter edgelord when he crunches them numbers and comes up with "welp, blackpill might be on the menu." He's reflecting the reality of thousands of younger unmarried men. And that reality is now manifesting in meaningful ways
Yep. I fell for a few girls who had classic red flags (grew up without father. Claimed to be molested when younger. And/or were on various psych meds, for instance) and I BENT OVER BACKWARDS to be accommodating.
My efforts were not recognized or appreciated or reciprocated, and ultimately the relationships failed in EXACTLY the way you would expect given the stereotypes. The lady blows it up with some irrational, out-of-pocket behavior which completely ignores the actual history of the relationship. Total waste of time and effort to achieve a predictable result.
Eventually you get sick of ignoring your gut and taking chances on the hope that you found a diamond in the rough.
As far as I know, the ex who dumped me prior to our wedding hasn't found another long term partner in the 3 years since.
Suggests it wasn't a me problem.
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The problem is that "is liberal" tends to be an effective proxy for "is a gynosupremacist".
That's intensely corrosive to relationships for what should be obvious reasons, since someone whose axiom is "always take for I am better, never give for you are lesser" simply can't function in an environment of give and take (i.e. a healthy relationship).
And the reasoning is the same as the [steelman for the] virginity argument- "if she had any brains or working emotional regulation, she wouldn't have been given to man-hating in the first place", and being someone who could be vulnerable to social pressure/irrational hatred like that is a liability (corresponding copypasta: "if she's still a feminist, you aren't the one"). Will she fall back on blaming you just for being a man if and when things go bad? Will she take it out on your sons, resulting anywhere from simple quiet quitting to "I'm divorcing you because you won't gender-affirm the new daughter I would have rather had"?
I say this as someone who thinks "a lack of virginity means she's sex-obsessed with all men everywhere" is the spear counterpart of the above, and just as serious a problem, for the same reasons- as this is a clear symptom that the man has problems with his brain or emotional regulation, gives away a bit of underlying androsupremacy, and might take it out on you or his daughters if the relationship hits a rough spot (corresponding copypasta: "raising daughters is the ultimate cuck").
Every new video game or porno-tech (though I repeat myself) produced simply makes the definition of "much to the table" that much stricter. And I think this is relatively equal across genders- the amount of inherent boorishness/laziness in the average man, or inherent entitlement/screaming harpy in the average woman, that can sustain a relationship... is far lower than it was 100 years ago. Personality types that don't measure up are now much less likely to make it out of the gene pool (and that's even before getting to "is he stable?/is she attractive?") and will also be inherently more loudly resentful of this fact.
Almost no women IRL are like this. I’ve been on hundreds of dates in big liberal cities and I don’t think I ever met someone who meets this description. It’s a type of woman that exists basically only online and perhaps in some weird pockets you’ll never encounter in person anyway.
As for the virginity thing, I dunno, sleep with a virgin to get it out of your system. It’s just not important.
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They're all just risk factors that should be considered.
You want to make the case that guys should marry and have kids, show them the odds they're facing.
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