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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   33803 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 10, 2025

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A couple of months ago @Goodguy left the following comment here:

I think that in modern society the opinion that men should have more control over women's sexual decisions, other than potentially in the one case of abortion (because that one has potential moral implications beyond the woman) is just fundamentally loser-coded because the Internet has made it pretty clear that the majority of men who want to police women's sexual decisions are doing so out of sexual frustration. Of course there is a small minority of rationalist-types who genuinely care about the impact of women's sexual decisions on fertility rates or social cohesion out of a detached interest in supporting pro-social policies, but the modal guy online arguing for controlling women's sexual decisions is, assuming that he is not a genuine pro-lifer, pretty clearly doing it because he isn't getting laid as much as he wants.

I tried to initiate a discussion about this without success, with my argument being that single men „policing/controlling” the sexual decisions of single women (I'm including „slut-shaming” in this category) has actually only been a social reality in the minds of feminist culture warriors. It was never implemented as a tool of women's „oppression” anywhere. To the extent that such „policing” existed (if we want to call it that), it was mainly done by other women, mainly due to the simple and understood fact that it's such policing that serves the long-term sexual interests of women as a whole. And the men that did engage in this were mostly fathers with daughters, not single men in the current sense of the word. (One can argue that in traditional patriarchal communities it was normal for single men to band together and remove outsider single men through threats or force; I guess this may count as indirect policing, which isn't saying much.)

I'm open to reading any counterarguments but anyway, this is not the subject I want to address here. I think Goodguy touched on something rather important which didn't occur to me at first, namely that society used to have a different attitude regarding this issue before it became modern. There actually used to be a group of men who were basically deputized by society to morally shame women in certain contexts despite being technically single (as I alluded to this above): priests and monks. (And this doesn't just apply to Christendom.) They were also voluntarily celibate, which is another category that disappeared with the rise of modernity. (The cultural memory of this lingers on though, otherwise the people who came up with the „incel” label would simply have called themselves celibate.)

As I was pondering this issue, it also occurred to me that secularization meant that Western societies did lose something significant not just in this respect but others as well. It appears to me that secular society and the churches/denominations used to exist in a symbiosis with the terms never being openly stated. It's well-known that Christianity used to be in a culturally hegemonic/privileged position. But it's also true that the churches basically volunteered to take care of those social groups that nobody else wanted to look after because they're socially a pain in the neck:

  • singles who can't or won't get married (see: priests, monks, nuns)

  • generally adults lacking social skills to such an extent that they become shut-ins without outside assistance

  • sick/diseased people unable to pay for treatment

  • children sired by men who can't or won't become husbands and providers

  • poor people that are so helpless and lacking in agency that they die from poverty without the charity of others

  • children of married couples too poor to pay for any schooling

I think atheists and people hostile to religion in general emotionally get hung up on the former and lose sight of the latter. Some of them who did not lose sight of it came up with the doctrine of eugenics as a solution, but we know what reputation that has today. Instead we expect the state to pick up the slack and look after all these unfortunate groups, which only results in a multitude of horror stories about police departments, child protective services etc. being a useless bunch of uncaring buffoons.

I wonder what the rationalist point of view on all of this is.

As a general rule, actions which are immediately and directly harmful to others should be outlawed by the state. Actions which are generally anti-social but via some combination of indirectness, mildness, or fundamental to freedom or other universal human rights are not appropriate targets for the State's jurisdiction should be shamed and shunned but technically permitted. Actions which are neutral or have primarily personal impact (no externalities) should be tolerated. Actions which are positive but indirect should be socially praised and encouraged. Actions which are strongly positive, and have direct and objective measuremes should be subsidized, funded, or directly done by the State.

I see no reason why actions being done related to sex or done by women should be exceptions to this rule one way or another. Harmful actions like rape should be illegal. Anti-social actions like spreading STDS or having children outside of marriage should be shamed. Non-diseased non-procreative sex should be mostly ignored/tolerated. Having healthy happy relationships should be celebrated. Having reproductive and well-run families should be subsidized.

Half the problem is society and the media shaming housewives and celebrating career-obsession and promiscuity. If that just stopped a lot of people would have nicer relationships and families of their own volition, no compulsion required. Just stop digging the hole deeper.

I see no reason why actions being done related to sex or done by women should be exceptions to this rule one way or another.

Then you lack imagination and/or aren't starting from the correct initial conditions.

Let's assume that I am a woman (or more traditionally, let's assume I own one, so her financial situation is a direct extension of mine).

I depend on my beauty for my business, which is trading sex with men in exchange for their resources (either through an exclusive agreement usually called a "marriage", or more serially/casually).

When another woman distributes a naked picture of herself, or sells sex at a discount, it means I now receive less resources for the same amount of sex.

Therefore, pornography and fornication are immediately and directly harmful to me, so they should be outlawed by the state.

When another woman distributes a naked picture of herself, or sells sex at a discount, it means I now receive less resources for the same amount of sex.

That is indirect. This is the distinction I was trying to make by using that qualifier. Direct harm would be if someone literally steals money from you. Indirect harm is when someone does something that does not actually involve you, but has second order effects on you, such as economically competing with you and lowering your market value via supply and demand. The State doesn't/shouldn't make it illegal to open a gas station across the street from another gas station. The State doesn't/shouldn't make it illegal to open a soup kitchen and distribute free food next to a restaurant. The State doesn't/shouldn't make it illegal to distribute or sell sex for free or at a cheaper rate than someone else.

Let's assume that I am a woman, I depend on my beauty for my business, which is trading sex with men in exchange for their resources (either through an exclusive agreement usually called a "marriage", or more serially/casually).

When another woman distributes a naked picture of herself, or sells sex at a discount, it means I now receive less resources for the same amount of sex. Therefore, pornography and fornication are immediately and directly harmful to me, so they should be outlawed by the state.

It's never been remotely permissible as a theory of harm that "now I receive less resources for the same amount of X".

After Henry Ford, farriers received less for the same number of horseshoes. After Gutenberg, typesetters received far less for the same number of manuscripts copied.

The distinction between legitimate (and even laudatory) economic competition and unfair economic harm has never purely about raising or lower anyone's price or profit.

It's never been remotely permissible as a theory of harm that "now I receive less resources for the same amount of X".

Especially not in America where such people are typically deposited in the great unmarked grave of obsolescence historically.

Which is why we are collectively the richest nation in the history of nations.

It's never been remotely permissible as a theory of harm that "now I receive less resources for the same amount of X".

Unless you happen to come upon some political power. In fact, that is what it is for.

The distinction between legitimate (and even laudatory) economic competition and unfair economic harm has never purely about raising or lower anyone's price or profit.

Why? There is no fairness beyond a state of affairs which maximally advantages you and your immediate socioeconomic interests and believing in a concept of fairness outside of that is only useful insofar as it rewards you more than it does the other guy.

Parasitism is a valid evolutionary strategy.

Not sure if you're just not from a WEIRD country and this is foreign to your thinking, but it's in all our socioeconomic interests to impose rules of fair competition. And so we do so -- imperfectly as all human structures.

We all benefit from the automobile even if it puts the farrier out of business. Society doesn't let him block the car just because "it rewards the other guy more than him".

...it means I now receive less resources for the same amount...

...and therefore, anything outside of my monopoly is an infringement on my rights, and should be banned.

I'm mostly with MathWizard here. The treatment of sex violates those general rules. Unlike him, I can see a few reasons why they should be an exception, but I'm still not sure if they're sufficient reasons.

I would love for women's sexual and reproductive decisions to be none of my business. Unfortunately, I live in a civilization that insists quite forcefully that they are.

I think it’s just the natural order reasserting itself. I can’t think of a single culture anywhere in the globe, even going pretty far back in history, in which women enjoyed the near total sexual freedom and freedom to choose a career etc. that we have in the modern West. I think the reason is simple: it leads to all kinds of negative consequences for both men and women that functional societies were keen to avoid.

The first is rape and sexual harassment. When men think they can get sex from women without having to worry that her male relatives would beat the crap out of him, the urge to try to trick or pressure women into sex increases. And women going out at all hours, or meeting relative strangers the texted with online also increases the risk of outright rape. Especially when the culture encourages women to go out alone dressed in what earlier eras would have been streetwalker outfits. (If you think im kidding, compare the clothing that Julia Robert’s wears at the beginning of “Pretty Woman” — her character is a prostitute — to outfits that people wear to clubs). All of this has created the rape culture that feminism likes to blame men for.

Then you have the rejection of marriage and childbearing. Few women feel the need to marry, and of those who do, children are so far down the list that she’ll be infertile by the time she realizes she wants one. Our population is basically declining, covered only by immigrants from “shithole countries”. And it’s doing so because women are not being pushed toward marriage and family creation. They get casual sex in university while studying for the career that culture told them to want, and by the time they’ve paid back the loans they took out for a career, they’re done.

For men, it’s the loss of men’s spaces, and work that is meant for them. Men no longer have anything meaningful that sets them apart. They can’t provide for a family that doesn’t form when all the women are playing girl boss. They don’t get the prestige of doing a really tough job, because the women are there as well. And a lot of men’s activities and hobbies are colonized by women to the point that men are the ones who can’t make friends easily.

Then Theres the porn. Women now make porn for fun and occasionally money. So our culture is basically soaking in mountains of pornography and kids as young as 9-10 are finding it and using that to make sense of adult dating.

Honestly I'm unconvinced that there's some kind of clear link between male sexual frustration and rape. I don't think rape actually comes from that at all - at least not the bulk of it. Though rapist typologies are a bit problematic what I have read seems to run counter to this idea. Of course in relative terms, obviously women going out more will result in more rape, and women being "less safe" will as well, I think when viewed proportionally the connection appears to be fairly weak. It's not like women are being completely blind to danger either and take zero steps for their own protection. A much stronger case still remains that rape comes primarily from the circumstances of the rapist: "Sexual offenders exhibit heterogeneous characteristics, yet they present with similar clinical problems or criminogenic needs (e.g., emotional regulation deficits, social difficulties, offense supportive beliefs, empathy deficits and deviant arousal); the degree to which these clinical issues are evident varies among individual offenders" (and by type). I suppose you could argue that more socially stunted men leads to more rape, but that's not really what you seem to have actually said?

You have some other good points, but claiming more sexual freedom for women is overall bad for women because it will cause more rape is not a good point at all. Also, the assertion that more acceptance of casual sex leads somehow to more pressure have sex seems a bit mixed up to me, much less an increase in "tricking" women to have sex. This is just not a coherent point at all.

Also, the assertion that more acceptance of casual sex leads somehow to more pressure have sex seems a bit mixed up to me, much less an increase in "tricking" women to have sex.

For me, this is pretty clear. You can frequently see questions like "by what date are you supposed to have sex?" on dating forums or reddit (or maybe just the latter). Usually, the answer is anything between "the first date" or "no further than the fifth date". These kinds of rules and expectations absolutely do increase the amount of pressure on dating couples to have sex before any kind of commitment, unless you count going on a few dates as commitment. Girls don't want to lose good men they find. I think there is pressure on men to ask for sex frequently as well. If you don't, you might be gay or not into your date very much.

I think there is pressure on men to ask for sex frequently as well. If you don't, you might be gay or not into your date very much.

My understanding is that women really, really, really don't like having a man choose not to have sex with them when they're turned on. Because men are almost entirely higher in sex drive than women, the expectation (and not necessarily an unreasonable one) is that men will be ready to go at any time and all a woman has to do to get some is appear interested. So a man not being into it is a massive ego hurt: "Am I that ugly?" And like all ego hurts, the defense mechanisms start triggering like an intrusion prevention system, and obviously the problem isn't her -- it's that he's gay and no woman would please him, or he's an impotent loser.

The accurate understanding that both men and women have complicated reasons for wanting or not wanting sex at any particular time is hard to adopt and introduces complexity, and the human mind craves simplicity, especially simplicity that results in the protection of the ego. Hence why something like intersectionality, which on the face of it ought to introduce greater complexity and accuracy in the face of how varied social experience is and how many different social hierarchies there are, ended up in actual practice to simply mean adding more of the reductive social rankings that were already in the oppression olympics.

They don’t get the prestige of doing a really tough job, because the women are there as well.

Outside of healthcare I'm not sure this is the case at all. If it is, it's a much smaller problem than 'tough jobs' being replaced by mechanization and automation.

Instead we expect the state to pick up the slack and look after all these unfortunate groups, which only results in a multitude of horror stories about police departments, child protective services etc. being a useless bunch of uncaring buffoons

The history of religious charities is not exactly immaculate either. The reality is that if you give people power over the desperate, some of them will abuse it.

However, it's also not really correct to say that responsibility transferred from church to state. In some places (especially Catholic countries) the church and state provision of aid were heavily enmeshed. However, you also had things like the English poor laws, which were secular, state-provided relief (of a sort) for the desperately poor. More commonly than either, people in the described categories simply went without aid if they weren't situated within a community they had strong ties to. The social support systems of the past were quite narrowly applicable (almshouses were for people who nowadays we'd consider 'homeless'), don't generalize to modern contexts very well (relatively few people live in small agrarian communities, and even those have been radically transformed from pre-industrial forms), and in some cases have no modern analogs.

I wonder what the rationalist point of view on all of this is.

I am not exactly a rationalist, but I am generally unimpressed by romanticization of the past. I am likewise skeptical of the desire to reserve a privileged spot for religion in the functioning of society. It is true than in some cases religious organizations did provide certain social services, but I don't seem much reason to think they were uniquely capable in that respect.

However, you also had things like the English poor laws, which were secular, state-provided relief (of a sort) for the desperately poor.

The first Poor Law was introduced in 1601 to fill a gap in society that had been created (according to schoolboy history) by the dissolution of the monasteries or (according to revisionist histories of the Reformation) by Protestant spiritual coercion being less effective than Catholic spiritual coercion at getting the money in, so secular coercion was required instead.

I use the term "spiritual coercion" literally - in a society where people actually believed in their religion, "pay up or go to hell" is directly coercive in the same way which "pay up or go to jail" is today.

The benefit of having charities handle it is that it never is forced to become an entitlement. You can put requirements that ultimately help the person get out of the traps they are in. Governments, at least in modern democratic nations really can’t do that. In modern states, you are entitled to things like food, housing and health services, simply because you live in the country (and in the 21st century, you don’t even have to be here legally). So a person can be perfectly able bodied and collect welfare benefits for basically a lifetime, without having to get a job or do any community service, or go to school. You just go on welfare, and so long as you draw breath, you get a check. People can be generations deep in welfare as well. A charity can say “no, if you want to keep getting help from us, you have to do something productive. You either get a job, or if you truly can’t, you can volunteer with the charity. Your kids have to attend school. You can’t be on drugs.”

Government welfare schemes do do all those things. Unless you are too disabled to work, I am not aware of any countries where you are officially allowed to live for more than a few months as a welfare bum, or more than a few years as a welfare mother. (Unless you count able-bodied retirees in their 60's and 70's as welfare bums, which I do but a supermajority of the electorate don't). In every country I have looked at,

The US has no cash or cash-equivalent welfare at all for able-bodied, childless paupers. In the UK assistance is gated by a fortnightly interview where you have to show receipts for your job search. I don't know much about Continental Europe, but the generous benefits in those countries are limited to people who have already paid into the system. I do know that Italy has no means-tested benefit for people without a contribution history and explicitly expects them to sponge off their parents.

The problem is that chivvying the undeserving poor into work doesn't work well at the best of times, and doesn't work at all when done by large centralised bureaucracies. Victorian England was already rich enough that you couldn't whip effort out of idlers without paying the man with the whip more than the value extracted - the workhouses cost more than just paying people outdoor relief, and were deliberately and consciously maintained as an expensive tool of social control similar to the prisons. Conventional wisdom among British Jobcentre workers is that the signing on process is completely useless for genuinely unemployed people and the only reason for retaining it is that it preferentially inconveniences people with a cash-in-hand job to supplement their benefits.

The other problem is that when you go looking for people who could get a job with ordinary effort but choose not to, you don't find as many as you expect. You find single mothers who can't fit the available jobs around their childcare arrangements, you find disabled people who haven't managed to get a diagnosis through the bureaucracy, you find people who don't have a diagnosable disability but are clearly unemployable basket cases, you find people living in unemployment blackspots without the resources to move, and you find people who had a job when the economy was better and will get another job when the economy improves.

And the men that did engage in this were mostly fathers with daughters, not single men in the current sense of the word

As a matter of fact, single men were always a clear danger to traditional patriarchal conventions for the precise reason that their singlehood made them more willing and eager to break oppressive etiquette around courtship and partnering (both fathers approving, several months of courtship in the presence of chaperones, no sex before the marriage was contractually finalised and the wedding held, etc.) in order to gain immediate sexual access to a woman.

We have largely forgotten this today, but young men as a whole were systematically more socially liberal than young women well into the late 20th century! It's kind of obvious as to why : the father of a young woman at least theoretically cares about her wellbeing as his own kin, whereas the young man cares about getting in her pants and seeing how he feels the next morning.

Western literature is so chock-full of this that "single man transgresses patriarchal rule in order to bed woman" is basically a central, foundational trope of the Western canon :

  • Iliad
  • Romeo & Julia
  • Faust
  • Exodus 22 : 16 specifically highlights this situation and gives a legal obligation on it, implying it was common enough to require a one-size-fits-all law
  • Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Those are just off the top of my head, I'm pretty sure the Decamerone and the Divine Comedy also have instances of this.

I don't think there are any perfect instances of this motif in the Divine Comedy or Arthurian legend (as others have pointed out, Gawain doesn't fit at all), though you'll find many other variations on illicit love.

It is a common motif in Norse sagas in the form of the berserker stock character, who sometimes shows up to the father's farm demanding to carry off his daughter under threat of violence. Though, more often than not the berserker's aim is to marry by force rather than to treat the woman as disposable plunder, and he is almost always defeated anyway.

Outside of berserkers, among the more humanized characters, it's uncommon: while there is one case of a bad boy scandalously seducing a magnate's daughter (Killer-Hrapp, Njal's Saga), in the second nearest example that comes to mind, from Egil's Saga, it's a wealthy old widower (Bjorgolf) that comes calling on his social inferior to declare he will be taking his daughter home with him.

Lusty young men are more often a threat to husbands than to fathers.

Romeo & Julia

Juliette was too busy shooting her latest OnlyFans album, so she sent an undocumented stand in. Romeo later tweeted, "whatevs. still smashed"

but young men as a whole were systematically more socially liberal than young women well into the late 20th century

They still are, it’s just that the modern right is more socially liberal (in the way young men mean that word as “fuck off, Karen”, not what social liberals call themselves) than the modern left.

Women have always been a conservative force; progressivism is highly socially conservative (in the sense it elevates unearned group privilege and establishment interests) successor name for that.

It’s a symptom of old women now sharing power with old men rather than it being exclusively old men, as you mentioned. The first women to grow up in a world in a state allowing that to happen are arch-progressives and that is not a coincidence.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

That is not how I remember that one.

Yeah that one might be a reach, but I'm sure we can find a more fitting example elsewhere in the Arthurian Romance

Guinevere and Lancelot seems like the obvious choice.

Notably, while priests(rarely monks, who are by definition enclosed) did some preaching and confessions which could be interpreted as controlling female sexuality, my grandparents remember nuns doing this before Vatican II, and don’t mention anything about priests addressing female sexuality much. I suppose they did on occasion- high school headmasters must occasionally address a teen pregnancy, and in that era this would have been a priest. But my grandmother remembers her dress code being policed by nuns, listening to lectures about modesty and the dangers of casual dating from sister so-and-so, etc. The rule of thumb was that priests dealt with boys and young men, nuns with girls and young women, and the rule of thumb for conservative Catholics today is that young men and women, when they are separated, have gender appropriate authority figures and often teachers.

I believe in fundamental Protestantism pastor’s wives fill a similar role, but have no direct experience, only stereotypes.

And this female authority has also been eroded by secularization and modernity to an equal degree.

My grandparents grew up in what was, even in the immediate postwar era, considered a puritanical bubble of religious conservatism. Catholicism between WWII and Vatican II had a reputation similar to Mormonism today; the old-fashioned term ‘banned in Boston’ actually derived from the Irish-Catholic influence on the city’s government. Catholics were expected to accept a censorship regime, have a stricter dress code(my grandmother recalls being forbidden to wear shiny shoes on the theory they could reflect her underwear- women and girls were not allowed to wear trousers), marry soon after beginning courtship, etc, etc.

The bubble may be smaller and have laxer rules these days, but it is no more a bubble today than it was then. Even in the fifties, absolute opposition to rock music and banning girls from wearing shiny shoes was exceptional.

eugenics as a solution, but we know what reputation that has today

Interestingly I think eugenics is still extremely widespread, it's just been re-framed from a state-run often involuntary program to a voluntary program. Pregnant women take tests to screen their infants for likely fetal anomalies, and then they often have the option to abort them.

Eugenics as invented by the social progressives of the day was clearly and decidedly involuntary though.

Yes!

There was actually a wide range of opinions about the level of top-down coercion that would be permissible/necessary/useful. Many progressives, as far as I understand, explicitly rejected coercive measures, while others argued that they would be needed, since the populations most in need of eugenic correction would be precisely the ones least likely/able to voluntarily practice it. Some people wanted to limit coercive sterilization only to criminals and psychiatric inmates, while others wanted it practiced far more broadly. It was a sophisticated constellation of issues with a lot of nuance.

I’ll just say on a related topic it’s funny that there’s a group of men who do indeed try to control women’s sexuality and it’s their mission to increase it and enhance promiscuity as a way to gain more partners. This group is certainly larger than any “policing” faction, and they’ve also been wildly more successful at exerting such control over women, creating norms and expectations around when women need to put out and how fast. They’ve curated our culture that female sexuality is good and empowering and casual sex is fun and commonplace, that STDs don’t exist, etc. Yet this group largely escapes any criticism. Curious!

You might say they wanted to abolish that police.

I don’t see why the default for promiscuity should be to forbid it rather than allow it. It is a strange kind of ‘control’ that leaves the decision to the ‘controlled’.

Yes you don’t see why because like I said; the culture has been molded around you so you don’t see the costs of it. But the cost in STDs, family breakdown, child abuse and molestation, it’s all there if you would only have eyes to see

I don’t see why the default for promiscuity should be to forbid it rather than allow it.

Because it destabilizes any society in which it takes root.

Male violence is centered on three things; money (or money producing commodities; drugs), social esteem (or "respect"), and intimate partner exclusivity. This is as close to an iron law of humanity as possible. Men kill other men for the first two reasons and men kill other men and women because of the last reason.

We've advanced enough that killing for "respect" is penalized with swift and uncompromising punishment. You shot some guy because he called you out? That's a life sentence, pal. We don't, however, criminalize the proximate cause - you can talk shit about anyone pretty much to an unlimited extent (libel and slander notwithstanding) and there are zero legal repercussions (although perhaps there are social ones. More on this later).

The money/drugs questions is an interesting goldilocks situation. We criminalize murdering someone over money/drugs/assets/commodities. We criminalize the unlawful attainment of those things (theft) and in many cases (though less and less) we criminalize the mere possession of drugs. This is because drugs are still recognized as inherently high risk (if not outright dangerous) - especially when put in the context of male on male violence. Nobody should kill you over money and drugs, but if you did some crook shit to get them, you're still doing crook shit and can face consequences.

Now, promiscuity or intimate partner exclusivity. You can't kill your wife or girlfriend because she cheated on you. And, mostly, we don't think adultery should be criminalized. Up until the mid 20th century, however, adultery was harshly socially punished (I'm thinking of something beginning with a big Red Letter - "A"). As an interesting side note, adultery was and is still an offense in the United States Military. They don't give you 10 lashes or throw you in the brig, but it fucks up your career. That's interesting to me.

Only in this last case, promiscuity, have we seen a full scale social revolt on the social penalties brought on by the action. Are you selling drugs? Probably shouldn't do that. Did you steal a car and sell it to a chop shop? Bad. Did you start talking shit about Big Jim down at the pool hall? Better watch your mouth, son.

Oh, you slept with the nanny, or you slept with the pool boy? No one should deny or criticize your sexual self-expression and autonomy! Of course one can rationalize that argument into an isolated issue; a person's private sexual conduct with a consenting partner is no one else's business. But in a social context, it gets murky fast. Adultery ought not be criminalized (and, on the other side of the coin, both divorce and marriage ought not have any financial incentive tied to them), but rampant promiscuity and adultery still ought to face social consequences because that simply means the society in which they occur is aware of the high stakes of promiscuity / adultery's likely outcomes.

The 30,000 foot question this rolls back up into is; do members of a society have duties and responsibilities outside of themselves to that society that are not codified in law? Or, do we race to the bottom and leave it at "as long as you don't break any laws, you're fine."

As an interesting side note, adultery was and is still an offense in the United States Military. They don't give you 10 lashes or throw you in the brig, but it fucks up your career. That's interesting to me.

Does this always apply when the adulterer is in service in the US armed forces, or only when the spouse is as well?

You can't kill your wife or girlfriend because she cheated on you.

I'd add that, in certain circumstances and in certain jurisdictions, it was technically not penalized until the '70s or so.

[Standard traditionalist (men have more social license to cheat/get the better deal by default)-progressive (women have more social license to cheat/get the better deal by default)-liberal (space aliens who don't associate morality and sexuality as much) framing applies beyond this point.]

Because it destabilizes any society in which it takes root.

Which ones, and what are the symptoms of that destabilization? Be specific as to how people fucking is the first step in the causal chain. The 1960s US seemed pretty stable to me besides the tons of bombs being dropped in mailboxes and on Vietnam and the occasional race riot, and I don't think those things were due to a lack of specifically-virgin pussy.

And while "I can't believe there's so much non-virgin pussy, what the fuck, these women are just giving it away seemingly at random" is a typical radicalization story stated by at least one Islamic terrorist, it seems absurd to blame that reaction on the liberals.

we criminalize the mere possession of drugs. This is because

of a bunch of reasons; what's it to you if I shoot up in the privacy of my own home? No, you criminalize the possession of drugs because it's a combination of being low-class with very little (or negative) perceived socioeconomic value compared to their perceived sociopolitical risks (a trait the other possession crimes- guns and explosives, certain types of pornography, etc. also tend to share).

you slept with the nanny, or you slept with the pool boy? No one should deny or criticize your sexual self-expression and autonomy!

Where does your brain go, that you would assume my outgroup isn't also selfish bastards?
You're forgetting that this is a destructive thing to do even in a sexually liberal culture, not because sex is uniquely bad on its face (and sexual liberals do indeed reject that notion) but because, most of the time, it's violating an explicit agreement not to do that. The problem is not with the sex, though it is made worse by it- the "but it's not a big deal, sex = free, why is my husband leaving me" is a rationalization/excuse after the fact. This is also why it makes sense for a career where people live and die on the fact they can trust you not to be doing stupid bullshit like this to sanction it, especially one where you find a lot of traditionalists.

the high stakes of promiscuity / adultery's likely outcomes

The ultimate problem for traditionalist-progressives is that what their instincts tell them about sex (and the impact and seriousness thereof) and what the actual truth is (that if you're not a fucking retard you're not going to get pregnant or an STD beyond herpes- and while herpes is a big deal, it's nothing compared to the million dollars a bastard child costs) no longer match.

This is why the feeling that there should be more social stakes (and indeed, why they're created artificially by progressives filling a power vacuum left by a liberal withdrawl/die-off) is a unique vulnerability. But the reverse of female-privileging selfishness is not male-privileging selfishness (and vice versa).

do members of a society have duties and responsibilities outside of themselves to that society that are not codified in law?

Trivially, but good luck making society reward those duties and responsibilities with the corresponding rights and privileges.

not because sex is uniquely bad on its face (and sexual liberals do indeed reject that notion) but because, most of the time, it's violating an explicit agreement not to do that.

And that agreement is made because bad to do the things that violate it. Theres a difference between following liberal rules, and believing in liberalism - much like with secularism.

I had a very difficult time following your writing and was unable to understand your arguments (or agreements?) with my post.

Could you perhaps try an abridged version with a simpler structure?

Because it destabilizes any society in which it takes root.

The problem with assertion such as these is that modern society is really its own extraordinary thing. From his food to his health to his habits to his reproduction, man is unlike other animals, and modern man is unlike other men.

Male violence is centered on three things; money (or money producing commodities; drugs), social esteem (or "respect"), and intimate partner exclusivity.

Is this an established theory, or did you come up with that yourself? Either way, my objections are:

  • assumes some rational reason for violence, when there are better ways to get money, respect, intimate partners. In modern society, the only people using interpersonal violence have low self control.

  • It’s missing raw hatred of the other guy as motivation

  • those are valid reasons for female killers as well

Adultery ought not be criminalized (and, on the other side of the coin, both divorce and marriage ought not have any financial incentive tied to them), but rampant promiscuity and adultery still ought to face social consequences because that simply means the society in which they occur is aware of the high stakes of promiscuity / adultery's likely outcomes.

This position of ‘no criminal, only social repercussions’, looks like an incoherent compromise to me. You don’t have the heart to beat your daughter and flog her suitors, so you unload the burden of your repressive sexual project onto society. The passive voice will do your dirty work, shunning perhaps. It’s like the woke saying ‘freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences’ – who will administer the consequences, exactly? If it’s you, and it surely won’t be me, then it’s not society.

I would, and have, called out both men and women to their face on issues of promiscuity. I don't mean passive aggressive quips. "What you are doing, I find disgusting and degrading." - "Random sex with a silly girl you met at a bar last night makes you look desperate and weak." This has resulted in the termination of friendships and, in one case, a received threat of violence.

I appreciate your quick resort to hypothetical child abuse and felonious assault, but I don't think any of what I wrote can be construed as me flinging a burden of mine onto society.

Thank you for calling it a repressive sexual project. That is exactly what it is. Sexual gluttony should be viewed the same way gastronomic gluttony is viewed; with a recoiling disgust. I will add, as this was not clear in the original post, that I am equally against male promiscuity. The Andrew Tate's of the world that try to perform the mental gymnastics to square the double standard of "men can sleep around, woman cannot" not only fail in that task, but end up revealing their own lack of self-control, lack of adherence to higher principles and virtues, and high likelihood of defecting from a male group for their own selfish reasons. By their fruits. I am glad they are so open about it.

The Tate thesis, insofar as there is such a thing, is that its perfectly fine for you to know who he is, because he doesnt need your cooperation. Weve created a society where he can be rich just fine without being trustworthy. Hence also the islam thing - whether he personally would or could change his tune in a more traditional society remains in question of course, but he may well die before it comes to that.

The problem with assertion[s] such as these is that modern society is really its own extraordinary thing. From his food to his health to his habits to his reproduction, man is unlike other animals, and modern man is unlike other men.

"All philosophy written before the Industrial Revolution is best forgotten." --Justin B. Rye

The passive voice will do your dirty work, shunning perhaps. It’s like the woke saying ‘freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences’ – who will administer the consequences, exactly?

Moldbug's poltergeists?

Yet this group largely escapes any criticism. Curious!

What woman is going to criticize high status, rich, attractive men? Maybe you're going to find one or two, but generally it's not going to happen.

They criticize them abstractly but go all gooey when a specific one is in front of them.

I mean this group (the creators of the sexual revolution, the Hugh Hefners of the world) are criticized by traditionalists and second-wave radical feminists, who are the main groups who dislike the sexual revolution as it happened.

Radical feminists are far more concerned with access to abortion than anything else as far as I can tell. In other words, they are active participants in the sexual degradation of society. Traditionalist women don’t really have a voice

Which group of men would that be? The ones I would think of would be the philosophers and other important people behind the 1960s sexual revolution.

Yes those and elite men and even not so elite men who aspire to have soft harems

I mean, you’re essentially correct. It’s practically axiomatic that civilization requires (and arguably is) the control of young men. Whether they are controlled by old men (as was historically the case, and indeed this is what patriarchy is) or a mix of old men and old women (as is increasingly the case now) varies, but they were always controlled. This is also why you can’t really describe BAPism or Andrew Tateism as ‘trad’, even aside from the performative misogyny, because they appeal to some kind of mythical past where young men were in control to appeal to their powerless young male audience who are, like many young men, angry at the world and their lack of pussy (again - this is often as or even more true in many socially conservative societies, hence Tate’s popularity among young men in Muslim countries where sex before marriage is taboo). But a simple glance at currently extant highly patriarchal societies makes clear they were never in control, absent the state of nature of course (and even there, our knowledge of the pre-neolithic-revolution societies our ancestors lived in is limited; modern tribesmen are by nature exceptional).

It’s practically axiomatic that civilization requires (and arguably is) the control of young men.

Fundamentally, civilization is the control of violence.

Which naturally requires control of young men, both in that they're likely to use uncontrolled violence otherwise and that they're main tools for controlled violence.

All successful civilizations controlled female sexuality heavily, and used the promise of such as the carrot.

Because it is the best carrot out there.

All successful civilizations controlled female sexuality heavily,

CisHajnal Europe (from about 1000 AD) less than most*, and we are the most successful civilisation by far. The socially optimal amount of male control over female sexuality may well be higher than what we have now, but it is lower than what arises by default in the vast majority of societies.

One of the sources of confusion here is that people misunderstand the 1950's social model as a free-market outcome. Women working outside the home was and is fundamental to modernity (the first factory jobs were pink-collar) and the societies that better accommodated it outcompeted the ones that did not - notably on the battlefield in the World Wars. The 1950's housewife - i.e. the idea that respectable working class married women should not work outside the home - is a result of post-war America (and post-war Europe once it had repaired the war damage) deciding that is both rich enough relative to historical expectations and egalitarian enough to prioritise leisure over wealth accumulation. The whole point of the social model was to give each respectable family access to 40 hours a week of paid work at above-market wages, but not the ability to get ahead by working harder than that. Because if families can compete for social status by sending mum to work, empirically they will. Famously, this is what drove Elizabeth Warren to anti-feminist heresy in The Two Income Trap.

* Hoe-based agriculture produces the least patriarchal societies, plow-based agriculture produces more patriarchal societies, and animal herding produces even more patriarchal societies. Hunter-gatherer societies are all over the place. Premodern cisHajnal Europe is comfortably the least patriarchal plow-based society.

Hoes are the earliest form of agriculture. Does that mean that the first farmers where less patriarchal? I think Ive heard the opposite.

Hoe-based agriculture produces the least patriarchal societies,

Hoe-based societies are notoriously find only in places where heavy labor is not required for farming, and usually there are also good conditions. This results in men having the free time to engage in their favorite past-time - fighting to steal land and women from other men, and getting women to feed them, too. Men aren't pulling their weights because women can be free.

It's precisely one of the reasons why they are not really going anywhere and are never getting anywhere, and why the patriarchal, cattle-herding Tutsi, are, at the moment, invading a neighboring country 30x their size and winning.

less than most*, and we are the most successful civilisation by far.

Have, you, per chance, ever read any of these awfully boring 19th century novel written by women, mostly griping about marriage and so on ?

It's precisely one of the reasons why they are not really going anywhere and are never getting anywhere, and why the patriarchal, cattle-herding Tutsi, are, at the moment, invading a neighboring country 30x their size and winning.

That’s not patriarchy, for the same reason that 10,000 British didn’t rule over 300 million Indians or a few million Israelis didn’t hold back the combined Arab armies due to differences in patriarchal values. That’s just IQ.

animal herding produces even more patriarchal societies

I wonder why that is. (Unironically.)

As I understand it, livestock on the hoof is a lot easier to steal than the types of wealth you see in crop-growing societies. This means that men are a lot more valuable to the tribe, because they can guard cattle or steal the other tribe's cattle. But I'm not an expert.

Damn. That didn't even occur to me.

Physically harder to wrangle cattle than till the earth with a hoe or drive a plow?

Man, if they're tilling the earth with them, I'd think that would be considered more patriarchal.

Depends, are you tilling the earth using a hoe or alongside her?

Makes sense.

Regarding your last paragraph, I don’t think that’s a meaningful anthropological distinction. I’m sure there would be plenty of plowing in any truly hoe-based society.

It's certainly a distinction used by academic anthropologists, which given the epistemic standards of anthropology is only weak evidence that it is useful. Yudkowskian rationalists who read books by antrhopologists have said that this particular concept is non-BS, which is rather stronger evidence.

The broader point - that some, but not a majority of, sub-Saharan African cultures fit a pattern where farming is considered pink-collar work, men do very little useful work for the tribe, and women enjoy more sexual freedom than they did in almost any other premodern culture is well-attested by a wide range of Western commentators including journalists, travel memoirists, British imperialists, aid workers etc. as well as academic anthropologists .

I know, I was just trying to make a puerile joke.

If those civilizations were successful, don't you think they'd still be around?

Western Christian patriarchy is still around in the sense that we've been eating its seed corn for decades, as it was that successful.

Let’s judge what the modern west looks like in 100 years. The sexual Revolution is new. Like new new. It’s only been a few generations.

I won't agree that the Sexual Revolution has only been around for a few generations; I posit the people of medieval times certainly were not the paragon of sexual un-promiscuous behavior.

They are.

Which modern civilizations that exist today that also police their population's sexual activity exists today, according to you?

Islam is undoubtedly a civilization. Not as nice of one to live in as the west, but undoubtedly a civilization. So is India.

Fair, I questioned it wrong; which successful modern civilizations that also police their population's sexual activity exist today?

Fair, I questioned it wrong; which successful modern civilizations that also police their population's sexual activity exist today?

Mormons. Modern Orthodox Jews. Per some other discussions in this thread, possibly the less strict Mennonite sects. Ethnic Chinese Blue Tribers in the US. European traditional elite families still do it, although they don't (and never did) stop their sons banging lower-class chicks on holiday.

And of course the dirty little secret of the Blue Tribe PMC (see for example Charles Murray's Coming Apart) is that they police their own sexual activity much more than they are able to admit to.

More comments

Islam is still a good example of it unless you have trivial definitions of success that only apply to Faustians. Saudis and Emiratis live very modern lives in countries that still criminalize adultery.

But you can look at Eastern Asia too, the marital norms there are all still quite more stringent than Western mores, just in different ways. The West is an anomaly in how liberal it is with women, and quite literally always has been an anomaly in this way.

If eating the seed corn causes starvation, why is my belly full?

You (and many orhers in this thread) are acting like an MBA from Harvard or Yale is the seed corn of civilization, not the actual corn.

Huh?

  • -10

He's imagining the sexual revolution will ruin society. But it takes a while for the consequences to set in. Like eating your next year's seed corn will ruin your farm in a few months.

Thank you. As an aside, I can't help but think that Henry VIII initiating the English Reformation that separated the Church of England from papal authority and appointing himself Supreme Head of the Church of England to dissolve convents and monasteries for which he was excommunicated by the pope so that he could divorce his first wife Catherine to sexually pursue his wife's lady-in-waiting's sister was quite a revolution in the sexual world of England in 1509, and yet society was not ruined enough to not produce the grassroots social conservative activism in the 1960s. I struggle to see how the legal changes brought on by legalizing no-fault divorce and the sale of condoms and allowing women to own property and open bank accounts is more ruinous to a society than a society's government changing the fundamental religion of the country so that he could cheat.

My metaphor was much more literal than that. The corn of a society is its people. If your society has values that cause it to not reproduce itself, as ours does, it will simply cease to exist. Young people alive now will, if things don't change, see their societies wither to failure within their lifetimes. That seems to me to be an unambiguous lack of success. That it will leave a beautiful corpse is cold comfort.

There was quite a bit of grassroots resistance to the reformation in England and the Catholic Church has an entire category of saints associated with it(the English martyrs).

Notably also, the Anglican Church maintained until quite recently that divorce was impossible; Henry VIII’s annulment was based on a dispute as to whether Catherine of Aragon had consummated her marriage to his older brother before his death, which would have rendered the marriage impossible due to incest. The effect of the Anglican Church on marriage practices in England was restricted to a literal handful of cases.

It’s practically axiomatic that civilization requires (and arguably is) the control of young men.

This is an insightful framing that I haven’t seen before. I think you see the same concept in negative form in situations which we describe as “societal (or civilizational) breakdown.” When the structures of social control break down, such as in failed states like Somalia, we see uncontrolled young men follow their violent instincts, self-organize into warbands, and fight each other. Tribal societies where the elders have stronger control are less likely to fight each other compared to a situation where the younger men have more power.

When the structures of social control break down, such as in failed states like Somalia, we see uncontrolled young men follow their violent instincts, self-organize into warbands, and fight each other.

They've observed exactly the same phenomena among African elephants.

Somali structures of social control very much still exist- they don’t have a government, the tribes are still there.

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