This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I found a post on /r/Destiny which I found insightful enough I want to post it in full here: Credit to /u/hello_marmalade
On the Sexualization of Women in Contrast to Men
A sentiment I've heard about women before is that they aren't valued for things other than sex. I think this is correct, but the sentiment lacks context.
I think something that gets missed, is that men will pretend to be interested in women for reasons other than sex, in order to get sex - however if sex wasn't an option, they wouldn't be interested in those women at all.
I think the implication is that these women would be noticed for their other qualities - but in reality, without the draw of sex, most people will be ignored. That's the reality for men, which I think gets lost in translation in conversations about sexual attention.
I think this is why you get situations where men will be very dismissive of women when they complain about this, or where the attitude in response comes from. From a man's perspective, these women seem full of themselves. The thinking going something like "Why the fuck would anybody be interested in you? You're just another random chick." Now that comes off as misogynist but I think the sentiment comes from the experiential reality of most men being essentially being invisible. This doesn't get verbalized, because I think it's something that happens so early to both genders that it just becomes part of a person's qualia. Like, just knowing that the sky is blue. You can see it, it's right there. You could argue for hours with someone before realizing that the sky is green for them, because you wouldn't even think to consider that they thought it was a different color in the first place.
Now, some complications with this. There are more issues with the constant sexualization of women. One is that it fucks up your ability to trust people. How can you know when someone is genuinely interested in you, or is faking it? Two, there will absolutely be people that will ignore your other qualities in favor of sex. Three, people will correctly, but nonetheless unfairly evaluate you with the awareness that other people may have given you credit for things unjustly in order to try and have sex with you, which will simultaneously do damage to your self esteem.
I think this leads to attitudes in women that make complete sense even if they're kinda shitty. Basically, if you're always going to be evaluated in regards to sex, then fuck it, get the best evaluation you can possibly get. Think of the F&F panel with Sneako. The first question they get asked is "How much to fuck you?" Well shit, if that's where we're starting, does saying "As much as someone is willing to give me," make a woman a gold digger? If all you're gonna be evaluated on is being a hole, then fuck it, might as well get the highest value. This then gets weaponized as those women being entitled, or shallow, but if you were never going to evaluate them on anything else, why should it matter?
However, by the same token, it leads to a situation where men will feel taken advantage of. I can say for myself at least (and I think a decent number of other men) that being horny can feel like you're being 'tricked' by your own body. Hell, there's even a term for the clarity after you cum: 賢者タイム "Sage Mode", or more commonly known as "Post Nut Clarity". The phenomenon seems to be so universal that it has equivalents in multiple languages that are disparate. I think this is where the sort of misogynistic hate and bitterness can come out of some men. There's a power that you feel a woman can unilaterally hold over you in a way you can't hold them, which can lead you to doing foolish things. As such, any woman using her sexuality for personal gain feels like "cheating".
Additionally, I don't think most women really understand just how invisible you can feel being a man - on almost every level. Personally, I think this affects us in a really deep, underlying way. I think every woman understands that they intrinsically have value. They have limited control over that value, and that value can overshadow everything else about you as a person - but you have intrinsic value nonetheless. On the flip-side, as a man, you are essentially worthless until proven otherwise. Nobody cares. You intrinsically are valueless at best, and a drain at worst. I think this also forms a root of resentment in men towards women who seem to fundamentally not understand this. The line of thinking being "Who the fuck are you? Why do you think you should be valued for anything other than being a woman unless you've earned it? Why do you think you've earned it the same way as any man has?" For some women, this is true. There are women who don't recognize that they've been given credit for things that nobody would care about if they were male. However, at the same time, this creates a situation where any woman who has earned her value is looked at with suspicion. Her successes cannot stand on their own.
Anyway, those are just some thoughts that have been bouncing around in my head. Just things that I see come up fairly often, but I don't feel like I hear these things mentioned very much. I think a big problem is that the people who end up seeing these things end up being too invested in their own side to achieve any kind of synthesis of these ideas.
Interested to hear other people's thoughts on this. There's probably some other shit I've missed, since this is mostly off the cuff, so I may add to this with edits later as I remember/think of other shit.
I think this misses a key factor to explain where the actual intersex resentment can come from.
Accepting for now the premise that men are functionally invisible for most of their lives, they DO have a key advantage over women in this particular game: their value INCREASES with time as they age... if they play their cards right.
A woman's value as a sex object, in contrast, has a ticking timer on it, and whether it's at age 30, 35, or 40, there will be a point past which she can never get the same level of attention for her looks that she used to.
And most of these women will be slathered in male attention starting at puberty, so they WILL notice this change.
Thus, we get a real issue where women get "taught" early on that they can use their looks and sexuality to get male attention and turn this into, well, whatever she wants, including sex.
Meanwhile, young men are simultaneously at their horniest and yet least capable of exercising good judgment in this age range... and some huge portion of them end up sexually unsuccessful WHILE they watch women exploit sex appeal for fun and profit. Often with older, established men.
So the lesson THEY'RE learning is that they're not good enough to stand out from the crowd and women are living life on easy mode as long as they're even moderately attractive.
Then a guy who finds himself alone in his mid-twenties either falls into despair or buckles down and presses his one advantage: time. Time to build wealth, acquire skills, get fit, and learn how to exploit said factors to the greatest extent.
And then soon the script flips. The dude who put in the effort and didn't blackpill himself is suddenly able to more easily land the hot young chicks who ignored him back then, meanwhile the women his age are losing the ability to effortlessly draw in male attention and have fallen back on... well hopefully they have developed some other valuable skill or trait.
So men get to feel the resentment early but (MAY) still find mating success later in life whereas women are likely to develop an expectation as to how easy life will be early on that will later be thwarted by age, and THEN they resent men their age for ignoring them and the men from her past for never settling down and leaving her to this fate of loneliness.
So men and women who are similarly aged probably end up looking and talking past each other as each side has a different set of experiences at each stage in life.
Young women ignore young mens' plight because they have no reason to care, and older men ignore older womens' plight because... they have little reason to care.
And this apparent lack of care or compassion when the other side needs it most would certainly explain resentment on both sides.
I have intentionally excluded the men and women who find a partner and settle down earlier in life since almost by definition they aren't contributing much to this problem, although the resentment that builds between some married couples is likely similar in nature.
Except 90+% of the time this part never happens. The average middle aged man isn't pulling hot young chicks, not even close. He might be able to pull other 40-year divorcees and single moms who used to be hot young chicks 20 years ago but that's not exactly the same thing
Sure.
But the prevalence of age gap relationships where the female is younger and the male is older vs. the practical non-existence of older-female, younger-male relationships makes my point for me.
Sugar daddy and sugar baby relationships, likewise, are FAR more common than the gender-swapped equivalent.
Leo Dicaprio is the ur-example here.
Older men can target and acquire younger women. Younger men either aren't targeting or can't acquire older women.
I pointed out 2 fates for the lonely mid-twenties guy. One is despair.
If a guy isn't in a relationship by then and doesn't try to maximize his sex appeal, then NO SHIT he won't be picking up hot younger ladies as he gets older, unless he takes some really financially irresponsible steps.
I don't think they do.
I don't actually have any numbers so I guess we're just playing Battling Narratives here, but my expectation is that maybe 0.1% of fourty year old men are banging college girls, while maybe 0.01% of fourty year old women are banging college guys*, so even if we say you're right and the proportions are out of wack, by a whole order of magnitude, it's still a rounding error even in the larger case and therefore hardly something to draw conclusions about the general anomie of men/women.
*(In fact while I was typing this the thought struck me that this is probably low, more because college guys are horny all the time than because milfs are attractive. So I am tempted to reject even your premise that 40 year old men get more 20 year old girls than 40 year old women get 20 year old guys. 20 year old guys don't need sugaring lol)
I DO! Feel free to tear apart the methodology if you can.
https://www.ipsos.com/en-us/news-polls/age-gap-dating
From the polls:
This surely implies that women are having less success finding younger men as they age, meanwhile younger women are finding older men fairly often, and older men are finding younger women at a similar rate (28% younger women have dated 10+ years older, 25% older men have dated 10+ years younger)
And when it comes to actual marriages:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_disparity_in_sexual_relationships#Statistics
Approximately 8% of married couples feature a male who is 10+ years older than the female. For the reverse: 1.7%. A 4x disparity.
Plug that into Bayes' theorem and smoke it, it has some interesting implications as to how so many men end up in a position to marry younger women, which is to say, men who are unsuccessful at finding a mate early in life but successful at finding a mate later... and succeed at finding a younger one.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link