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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 24, 2022

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I just discovered ex-gay twitter. I personally agree with their viewpoint that a lot of gays would be happier be heterosexually married with the occasional gay experience. Mostly I just think most men even gay have naturally desires for a family and that’s best in a heterosexual relationship. And most gays don’t want to do the mundane women work of watching little kids but would rather be the more aloof father that does the male roles. You can put me in that camp that we are an evolved species with deeply rooted programming on what leads us to a happy life. And homosexuality to me seems like a couple of your genes are off that may individually have benefits but combined turned your gay, but the vast majority of your genetic programming is still happier in traditional heterosexual relationships. As a society we have decided that a small bit of a person their sexuality should dominate the totality of that person.

Culture war wise these views are far outside of appropriate viewpoints today. Anyway here’s the articles and twitter threads on the movement. Even for someone with a belief that society should be more libertarian I still think our culture has gone wrong and promoted the old ways is better for the species just not by government force.

https://www.piratewires.com/p/ex-gay-twitter

https://twitter.com/piratewires/status/1584941608688320512?s=46&t=Dc1wiLnAbZQuf1ZEsEPebA

a lot of gays would be happier be heterosexually married with the occasional gay experience

How do the women feel about this? It seems like open relationships are most popular among a crowd that uh, doesn’t think gay men should pursue heterosexual relationships, and the crowd that thinks gay men should just marry women doesn’t approve of homosexuality, and most women probably don’t want their husbands having sex with other people.

There are (conservative) cultures where it's considered semi-acceptable for married men to have sex outside the marriage. For example, I have met multiple women from Mexico who have expressed sentiments along the lines of "wives should never cheat, but if husbands cheat once in a while that's unfortunate but understandable."

I'm wary of the attempts to explain everything in terms of biology, but this clearly has evolutionary biology background. Man cheating on his wife, provided that he doesn't leave the family and spend too much resources on cheating, is a very low-risk thing. Wife cheating creates paternal uncertainty in the minimum, and the possibility of the family spending resources on the offspring the man has no genetical relationship to. Is it a surprise there's such an asymmetry here in some cultures (in fact, afaik, in many cultures)?

Re. the gay cheating side of the conversation: even taking STDs into account like someone mentioned, it does seem like "husband occasionally buggers some dude" is better for a woman's outcomes than "husband gets 2nd wife and kids to support, either legally or illicitly".

Most men's cheating doesn't go as far as "2nd wife" - in fact, many couldn't really afford it even if they wanted, but most wouldn't want it anyway. From this point of view, both hetero and homo cheating is driven by the same impulse - finding some experience or variety lacking in the monogamous marriage, without giving up the other benefits such an arrangement provides. And excepting STDs, in both cases it's low risk - unless the husband gets on the hook for child support or such. Indeed, with this consideration buggering some dude is probably lower risk, in general.

I was vaguely thinking of Afghanistan and other conservative cultures that nevertheless ended up with homosex on the side (maybe not entirely due to the Greeks invading them). And the competition from 2nd+ wives is a very real threat to women in some of those places.

It is a known phenomenon that males who are deprived of female company, either by being of low status or being in circumstances where there are just no females at all (army, ships, prisons), engage in homo-sex routinely, in almost any culture. I don't think it has anything to do with the Greeks, it's mere biology - male sexual drive is just too strong, and when you combine it with poor impulse control with is also common in such populations... In fact, in a very conservative culture it's also probably safer to bang a dude than to have sex with a female outside of marriage - that female likely has either a husband or father/brothers, and they would react very harshly against any such transgression. Again, nothing to do with Greeks here.