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 -
You're still doing it. If men are single because women would prefer not to settle for anyone but Chad, taxing single men is punishing the victim.
You’re implying there’s no marginal men who who would marry before 30 facing huge tax penalties but don’t when they aren’t facing those penalties? That seems unlikely. Many men are in long relationships around that age that would likely see faster marriage and children. Others would feel more pressure to find a spouse. So would women since the same would apply to them, and bigamy remains illegal in much of the West. So, yeah, I’m pretty sure it would make a big difference.
I am sympathetic to the idea of a bachelor tax, but it seems like it would either end up being a cruel punishment on the unattractive. And if you add some sort of loophole, it is bound to get exploited (see: professional rejecters)
There couldn’t be professional rejecters – you’d get 3 rejects and then you’re out, you pay the bachelor-spinster tax. If you do not reject, and are therefore rejected by those who drop out, you keep getting official dates with counterparts. Imagine the creatures who would find each other in the deepest depths of hell, 20-30 one-sided rejections below ground.
Anyway the real problem is not lack of cohabitation/marriage but childnessness. And that power lies entirely in women’s hands, legally. Just give some of it back to men: no abortion or contraceptives unless the husband/boyfriend gives his consent. His DNA, his choice, it takes two to tango, whatever cliché you prefer. Then you put the spinster tax on childless couples.
Or just pay like 10% of the most motherhood-friendly women to produce 20 children and raise them in an orphanage (they can visit of course) , that also works and intrudes less in people's personal lives.
Orphanages???
This exists, it's called surrogacy, there are couples who will pay for it, and there would be more if it were subsidized, as there's a waiting list for adoption of young children, though 20 sounds excessive. There probably isn't any way to make giving birth more than a couple of times for someone else not extremely low status. There was a thread a bit ago on DSL where a poster was talking about considering surrogacy so that his hot young wife doesn't lose her figure, and there's no way for the relationship between him and the surrogate, or the well off gay couple and the surrogate not to be pure power dynamics at scale.
Pumping out 20 children would be their career, they’d be comfortable. Just wombs essentially; artificial ones would also work. Our bottleneck is in the production of children, yet paradoxically, in resources, children are not costly, and we are swimming in resources. It should be easy to lift the barriers and ramp up production, provided we do not take an exceedingly sentimental stance on where children come from (“when a mommy and a daddy love each other very much….”) .
Then, if most women would rather have status than children, that’s not the state’s problem. It gets its taxpayers anyway, and children are brought into the world, which I find morally good, while still not forcing anyone.
I’m saying both that your allusion to “orphanages” suggests that you don’t know what you’re talking about, and that even the underclass doesn’t want to be “just wombs” professionally for 30 years. Not that you aren’t in good company, Socrates suggested it on the Symposium, just there are reasons you’ll mostly see that system in bleak dystopian novels.
Is being a professional surrogate mother for Western gays and infertiles not a popular job in poorer countries, such as Ukraine?
Apparently the best Eastern European place for surrogacy has moved from Ukraine to Georgia, due to the war. A quick search leads to, for instance, this, where at least one woman came from another Central Asian country by lying to the husband she doesn't like, and at least some women are having up to six babies for the agency.
I can't tell based on a short search how popular it is, but the four to six number sounds about what I would also expect from a woman who was into motherhood, and had found a husband to support her. I've heard of exactly one woman in my personal sphere who had 20 children, and then shortly died, leaving them to raise each other. You can get families like the Duggars by some combination of good health, religious belief, and media attention.
I'm not so much saying that there aren't women who are willing to have a basically normal amount of children, some of whom they sell. Just that having 20 and leaving them at an orphanage is too far.
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
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link