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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 3, 2022

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I don’t think women don’t like conservative men. It may be true that they don’t like conservative men who feel the need to overtly signal that they are conservative.

On the internet there are a lot of men who are conservative in a way that is informed by their resentments. They feel that the leftist world order hasn’t taken care of them and so they reject it. Fair enough. Obviously women don’t like these men because they aren’t successful or confident or handsome. If they had attractive traits they wouldn’t be resentful in the first place.

But there are lots of successful and confident men who are conservative. Most of the more conservative men I know in real life fall into this camp.

These men are conservative by nature or upbringing or whatever. But they are successful and confident, so resentment isn’t part of their politics. I don’t see these men having any trouble finding girlfriends or hookups in real life. And I live in a very liberal urban bubble.

They date women who generally are more liberal than them because that’s ubiquitously the political ideology of women in young urban areas. But neither the men or the women care that much about their political differences.

The women don’t care because they want confident successful men and don’t actually care about their partners politics. The men don’t care because they want hot loving girlfriends and think their partners politics are irrelevant.

Notably, these couples tend to follow traditional gender norms in their relationship to each other. Even if the women are strident feminist on Twitter.

if the above is true, why on earth would a successful handsome conservative man sign up for a conservative dating site? They already get laid on tinder and can find girlfriends that are comfortable with gender roles through normal dating.

thiells website is going to select generally for men who aren’t just conservative but who are conspicuously conservative. And worse, who are generally not successful with girls. And that’s going to be obvious to women regardless of their stated politics.

On the internet there are a lot of men who are conservative in a way that is informed by their resentments. They feel that the leftist world order hasn’t taken care of them and so they reject it. Fair enough. Obviously women don’t like these men because they aren’t successful or confident or handsome. If they had attractive traits they wouldn’t be resentful in the first place.

This is very true in my experience. Another thing ive noticed is that men like this often have a big part of their social circle online, so they dont realize how off putting their behaviour is to "normies". They actually think everyone agrees with them but is afraid to say it out loud due to political correctness. They dont understand that discussing race and crime with someone you just met signals low social skills for example, so when they inevitably get rejected they think its "wokism" and doubles down on it.

A similar thing can be seen in first generation immigrants who dont understand the social cues of their new society. They act in a way that signals low status, with the corresponding lack of dating success. If they dont have the ability to introspect and work on themselves the easiest solution is to decide that its all due to racism, and become resentful.

They dont understand that discussing race and crime with someone you just met signals low social skills for example, so when they inevitably get rejected they think its "wokism" and doubles down on it.

It is only "low status" if not discussed from the leftist angle, talking about the plight of innocent Black people shot by police and about their general status of victims of racism, incurs no social penalty.

I'm going to guess that if you're in a group of young women - political or apolitical - and start banging on loudly about "the plight of innocent Black people shot by police and about their general status of victims of racism" out of nowhere, a lot of them might nod along but also quietly think that you're putting on a show to get to their pants.

When I'm in a group of people who aren't involved in politics themselves, I generally just don't discuss politics at all, even when I in all likelihood would agree with them. Loudly starting to bang on about politics, any politics, in a company where you're just meeting new people, is going to make you be considered a weirdo, just like with any odd hobby that people often get very attached to and obsessed with.

a lot of them might nod along but also quietly think that you're putting on a show to get to their pants.

This is sufficient to prove my point. One would suffer a penalty, because one is suspected of merely pretending, and not actually being pro-BLM. The converse, of penalization of faking conservatism, doesn't exist in the dating market.

is going to make you be considered a weirdo

@Gugabe disagrees:

In my dating apps experience, putting anything other than 'left' in politics was putting the difficulty on Very Hard.

That is, bringing up politics is considered acceptable, but only leftist politics.

This is sufficient to prove my point. One would suffer a penalty, because one is suspected of merely pretending, and not actually being pro-BLM. The converse, of penalization of faking conservatism, doesn't exist in the dating market.

No, I think you're missing the point. It's not that they suspect you are pretending. They might believe you are actually sincere, but you are also expressing it performatively in a way that only makes sense if you're trying to impress them in a cringey way.

You aren't going to get in their pants even if they believe you really care about BLM. Normal people just don't wax on like that at non-political events unless they are either being performative or they're very bad at understanding social norms, either of which is a turn-off. Likewise, conservative men are not going to be successful even with women who are sympathetic to conservative ideas if they interject "Fucking wokes, amirite?" into every conversation.

I used this as a specific example because it happened to me when I took one of these guys to meet my friends. He was livid about George Floyds criminal background not getting enough attention, he kept repeating statistic about black/immigrant criminality and also said something about Obamas dad being a mass-murderer (and how this was somehow suppressed by the internet, but he had seen proof before it was scrubbed).

Imo this is not a good way of making a first impression, and he absolutely refused to accept it. He was adamant that he was the only man I had ever met who had a spine, and was quite proud of himself for saying controversial things that upset people.

In my friend group we keep things easy and light when we first meet someone. We dont even make edgy jokes really, so this kind of demeanor was seriously off-putting (as was his refusal to tone it down). Even my parents who are somewhat conservative never talk like this, and IMO this is the crutch of the problem. Regular conservative people dont base their whole identities around being provocative, they just try to live their lives according to their values.

He was livid about George Floyds criminal background not getting enough attention, he

Well, I was going to point out the similarity there is to African-American resentment.

The source of your resentment might even be 100% genuine and justified, but it is fucking tiring to listen to.