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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 14, 2022

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I am convinced that the Sex Divide is the greatest political engine of today, and that a big chunk of the culture war is based on the existance of this divide, and the inability of society to understand that political differences between males and females have an enormous biological basis.

After I finally understood this concept, I began to "notice", being always passionate about politics and speaking about it, that the discourses and the nature of the topic I discussed with people were and are heavily genderized.

Having a political or cultural discussion with a female is, in general, radically different from having one with a male, not only regarding the topics of interests per se (males more interested in economics or raw politics, female more interested in immigration, equality or similar topics), but also regarding "how" to approach a discussion.

I feel way more free talking with males, because I always had the impression, confirmed 95% of the times, that I can be more open and direct with what I felt without receiving a backslash, that can be personal (simply the person screaming at you or hating you) or social (person beginning to talk with other people in your social network) (NB: I am not American and I do not live in a very polarized society). Apart from the political extremists and activists that you can meet, the following things happened often:

  • Me and the other male have a disagreement, that can be harsh or about an hot topic, but that resolve itself in a shake of hand.

  • We disagree on a lot of topic, but also agree on other ones, making the discussion constructive in itself.

  • I discover that the other male have a lot of, uh, hidden opinions that he does not reveal in his network, often because of female backslash.

In general, I love to talk about politics or culture with other middle or low class males, because I always "received" something in exchange after the discussion, something that can be a new reflection on a topic, an earnest discovering of new knowledge, or simply understanding more some concepts.

Meanwhile, apart from a selected group of very close female friends and a selected other few, almost all the discussion with females ended with a disaster. In spite of me trying to move in a different manner, being more gentle and less direct, and understanding that I need to adapt to other people when I talk about something, the discussions simply does not start well and end well. What happens is:

  • We have a disagreement, and at this point the discussion or close itself ("It is useless to continue, why we should?") or degenerate in a very uncomfortable discussion where the woman put herself as an emotional victim of what we are talking about.

  • If the discussion does not degenerate but continues, it is always redirected to morality or feeling or about a generic "natural law". At this point if I try to redirect the discussion negating the opposing point (I do not agree with your morality or I do not care about this morality) it simply degenerate again in a morality context, where your worth as individual is put on a public pedestal.

The result of all of this, after years of experience... is that I do not talk about these kind of topics with women anymore, apart from a selected few. When I have this kind of conversation I always strive for earning something, that can be knowledge, human connection or shared experiences. Why doing these with women, when the things that you can earn are statistically negative?

Adding to what I said, I also need to mention that, after lowering down the kind of topics and approaches that I have with women, both my dating life and romantic life radically improved. I do not know if it is a coincidence or not.

My political discussions with young women have been centered on their feelings of moral obligation to an issue of victimhood. This comprises a good 80% of all political discussions. Immigration is simply about what is best for the brown migrants that the media has painted as victims, which young women are now to sympathize with (to the exclusion of the domestic population). This sympathy is definitionally a bias, a form of emotional bigotry that prevents any objective assessment. For immigration it’s what is best for brown migrants, for policing what is best for blacks, for picking a cabinet what is best for women and minority representation. The political messaging that targets young women is like Nazi propaganda films that successfully painted Germans as victims with pure stories, but more potent and all-encompassing. To turn one of these propagated young women into a supporter of less immigration, as an example, you simply need a potent story of some ugly criminal immigrant abusing a beautiful poor disenfranchised Native American or black girl or something, and if that story catches on (and they consume it in the zombified state that they often consume media) then the political transformation is complete. This is my honest view, you are welcome to disagree, a huge chunk of women I know think entirely in terms of social sympathy for victims, and some men do too.

As someone who is very annoyed by what one might call the 'attitude of victimhood', I've come to be persuaded victimhood and privilege are the defining characteristics of any discussion about ethics, and by extension politics. I've done so reluctantly, using objective assessment.

While the manifestations of Wokeism are often clumsy and wrongheaded and outright ridiculous for some of the reasons you cite ('emotional bigotry' makes some sense), the beating heart of the movement seems to have the correct moral intuition that life isn't fair & there are things we can do to correct the most egregious outgrowths of this in order to alleviate suffering & expand flourishing.