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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   30505 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 12, 2024

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It’s easy to forget that when the large majority of men suck, the large majority of women are unhappy. If you think it’s tough being a shitty loser man in a low-sex marriage, imagine being his wife and having to fuck him every month. Having to muster up the willpower to, essentially, let a man that you don’t want to fuck – that every fiber in your body is screaming at you to run away from – rape you, because you don’t want to break apart your family or lose your stability.

Many wives and girlfriends, simply put, do not want to fuck their loser men. But the alternative is worse. Breaking families apart, losing financial stability and all of the labor their men provide, turning their lives upside down – these women essentially feel like their lives are being held at gunpoint. They don’t want to have sex, but the men in their lives have power over them, and because these men have power over them, they allow these men to rape them. They don’t love their men – at least not in a sexual way – and are simply allowing themselves to be used for sexual release by someone who has power over them.

Women who are married to or involved with loser men feel like handmaids, from the TV show. No respect, no love, just monthly rapes because the alternative is worse. And this is why The Handmaids Tale speaks to so many women.

Like most fictional novels, The Handmaid’s Tale caters to its audience. Not too long into the book, the evil oppressor man who owns the female protagonist starts to become interested in her for more than just her handmaid duties. And, of course, there’s another man that she eagerly wants to fuck in between forced fuckings, who loves her back because, as we all know from Twilight, 50 Shades of Grey, and other such books, men always fall left and right an average woman for absolutely no reason whatsoever simply because there’s something so darn indescribably special about her. The book quickly turns from its dystopian commentary about America’s dark future into a tale of this woman’s hopes, dreams, and attempts to escape to a better life with a better man – directly speaking to its target audience of unhappy wives.

Remember, the majority of men are losers. Well, not really. They’re average guys. But in the eyes of women, that makes them losers. Most women are not happy with most men. They’re just whoring themselves out for money, labor, and stability. Meanwhile, they dream of an escape to a better life with a better man. And over time, these feelings take a toll. The Handmaid’s Tale speaks to modern women because modern women literally feel oppressed by their men. On some level, deep down inside, they feel powerless, used, and raped by the men who love them.

https://old.reddit.com/r/TheRedPill/comments/6dyf0y/why_women_are_so_entranced_by_the_handmaids_tale/

Man, that post is a blackpilled take completely divorced from reality.

Margaret Atwood and The Handmaid's Tale was not "unknown" to Western women until the TV series. It's been a very well known book since it was first published. Sure, very few women have ever actually read it, but even fewer men have - that line about how women "don’t give a flying fuck about books or literary concepts unless they see them on a screen" is doubly true of men. Seriously, it is a statistical fact that women read and buy more books than men. (Yes, the majority of books bought are romances, but even in other genres, except perhaps SF and non-fiction, women are bigger readers than men.)

It's weird seeing this poster take the old radfem line that all sex in a patriarchy is rape and women only pretend to love their men, and switch it around to say this is essentially true but it's because all women lust to be owned by an alpha. Horseshoe theory strikes again, I guess. Something something Hlynka?

The appeal of 50 Shades of Grey and similar stories is that yeah, a lot of women really do get turned on by the idea of being dominated, and some part of them wants a 6/6/6 alpha the same way some part of most men want a barely-legal bikini model, even if they love their wives. But the tonal and thematic differences between stories like 50 Shades (or John Norman's Gor series, which has some female fans as well though it's mostly aimed at men) and The Handmaid's Tale are pretty dramatic. I haven't seen the TV show, but no part of the book makes it sexy or appealing even to men who like the idea of dominating women or women who like the idea of a domineering man. The sex is constantly depicted as gross and degrading, they are all living in literal dystopian conditions (impoverished, deprived of basic necessities), and Atwood famously was inspired more by the Taliban than by Christian Dominionists. I can't say I can speak for Afghani women but let's say I have grave doubts about Dread Jim's belief that those women and ISIS brides are actually living in sexually satisfied bliss being literally owned by men who treat them as chattel. The women who are really into Christian Gray imagine a billionaire giving them his undivided attention and care - the point of the fantasy is that even if he's rough and controlling, he only has eyes for plain little ol' her, and they have super-hot sex, but then she's allowed to continue living her life as the cherished object of a rich man who's actually devoted to her happiness, not a religious fanatic who will beat her if she lets another man see her elbow.

It's a well known in certain circles finding that happiness, for American women, is correlated with traditional style marriages in a religious context. I'd like to see if the same finding holds true in Turkey, Iran, etc. In other words, Islamic marriages which are more contractual and put women on a lower level compared to men.

For most people here, "traditional style" marriage means something like "Husband is the head of household and primary breadwinner, wife takes care of the house and children, wife defers to husband in most matters but still has a voice and expects her needs and desires to be taken seriously, and should not be abused or cheated on."

People who think "traditional style" marriage means the husband is lord and master, does whatever he pleases, and she will shut up and take it because that is her role, are not describing real traditions, though they may be describing certain subcultures. The average Muslim woman certainly doesn't consider that to be what an Islamic marriage is supposed to be like.

Well yes, ISIS and the Taliban are likely deviations from ultrafundamentalist Islam(in which a man may beat his wife four times before being required to divorce her- rather similar to the rarest of rare criteria held to in Christendom before the enlightenment when you think about it). But Islamic fundamentalists do observably tend to treat their women worse than Christian fundamentalists, and the difference is old- we know women were more liberated under Christianity than under Islam starting at some point in the middle ages.

I'm just pointing out, because it is mentioned so often by people who seem to think "Islamic culture" = "women are treated as chattel/sex slaves" ("and this is how all traditional societies were!") that most modern Muslim societies aren't actually like that (and even in ancient times the "model" Islamic marriage was not supposed to be like that). Muslims are very conservative and trad compared to the West, yes. But Dread Jim/KulakRevolt's Bronze Age fantasies are just that.

I don’t think Jim and Kulak actually know what patriarchy is- it’s rule by, specifically, fathers, and that means the high-vitality young men BAP and Kulak idolize are on a short leash and don’t get to do what they want within the community. Patriarchal societies, again and again, tend to create structures to protect women from those young men, because patriarchs care about their daughters even if they don’t regard them as needing independence. Actual historical patriarchy is as much rule by the old as it is by men.

I think Kulak and Jim are taking feminist fan fiction of an actual anthropological phenomenon(where older men tend to hold social power) at face value. Rather ironic for such red pilled spicy take generators.

because patriarchs care about their daughters

The word is "dowry". Daughters aren't productive like sons, so if you have them, you're expecting to raise a high-quality girl for a one-time cash payout (which is the historical answer to what the "having a daughter is the ultimate cuck" copypasta points out).

It is not meaningfully distinguishable from pimping, which is why, shock of shocks, women don't like it very much. (In modern times the woman [and her husband] capture that value surplus, and the copypasta is just bitching about this while simultaneously not being smart enough to remember what used to happen.)

Dowry is the property given by the bride's family to the groom. I think you're confused as to what's what.

Bridesprices are an Islamic thing which doesn't exist in the west, and as far as anyone can tell, never have. Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, and most societies in Christendom gave property to their daughter's husbands/husbands' families upon marriage.

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