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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 2025

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Why am I (and others of an older generation) so horribly prejudiced against perfectly normal people covered head-to-toe in tattoos and piercings? Why do we cling to our outmoded beliefs that tattooing of that extent reveals low-life trashiness?

Well, cases like this, for one. Add in drugs (but of course drugs were involved) and it's a mess. Why, how can I look at the photos of this productive member of society and think to myself "that's a crazy dangerous person?"

Because he is a crazy dangerous person.

Also, while I'm at it, let me give out about the members of my own sex who hook up with crazy dangerous guys and still persuade themselves that this is the human equivalent of a velvet hippo cuddlebug pitbull who won't ever bite their own face off:

Jurors took just over four hours last month to unanimously convict Mr Scannell of the murder.

He struck Mr Baitson from behind the left knee with a sword at the Eurospar car park on Newtown Road in Cobh, Co Cork on the evening of March 15, 2024. Medical evidence revealed that such was the ferocity of the attack, the samurai sword cut through muscle, artery and bone and partially severed the leg.

... A letter from his partner, Alison Roche, was read to the court which said he was a devoted and loving father and partner.

She said her partner had battled alcohol and drug addiction issues but that everyone deserves a second chance at rehabilitation.

"Addiction is horrible," she wrote.

Mr Scannell has 11 previous convictions, one from July 2016 for assault causing harm in which he received a two year suspended sentence from Cork Circuit Criminal Court.

So let me get this straight: he's covered literally to his head in tattoos, he sells drugs, he's a drunk and a junkie, he's violent with the criminal conviction to back that up, and he just straight-up violently murdered a guy with a samurai sword over a disputed drug debt. But he's such a loving partner and father!

I honestly don't know why some women are so stupid. Yeah, loving and devoted up to the minute he swings at you with a sword, you silly girl.

Back to my main point: people covered in tattoos and/or piercings are the human equivalent of aposematism, change my mind.

I honestly don't know why some women are so stupid. Yeah, loving and devoted up to the minute he swings at you with a sword, you silly girl.

Because up until that point, they think it's hot that he could attack other people with a samurai sword, but he could never do that to them because he just loves them that much / they alone have the power to tame him / he's so emotionally dependent on them that his world would collapse without them / insert-their-preferred-framing-here.

So the hotness can win out over prudence and risk aversion.

I'm a woman myself, I don't understand it, but I've seen enough of women who do hang out with these kinds of guys and shack up with them and have kids by them.

I don't know if it's because they've grown up where all the men around are like this, or what.

Without doxxing myself too much, a friend of mine recently witnessed a hostage situation in his building, with a particular lowlife slashing his girlfriend across the face and threatening to kill her baby.

The kicker, this guy was the baby's father, and the third child the mother had had with him.

Admittedly, this was an underclass woman, so not exactly the heiress and Jeremy Meeks.

My explanation is just that same women are hybristophiles, just like some guys are into feet or whatever.

Oh, yeah. "He's not like that with me" up to the minute he is like that.

I don't get it, I genuinely don't. "Love" must be one hell of a drug, to hollow your brain out like that.

Also, in a lot of these situations and that class, the guy doesn't give a damn about if the woman gets knocked up or what. If she wants babies, fine. If she doesn't want babies, fine. It's her job to ensure she doesn't get pregnant. So it's perfectly plausible he'd threaten to kill the baby because it isn't his baby to him in any meaningful way. (The only use of "my client is a father of three children" to the likes of those scumbags is so their lawyers can plead them off in court).

I suspect there's a common thread of fatherlessness.

Speaking of heiresses and hybristophilia, The case of Constance Marten and Mark Gordon was concluded yesterday. I was reading through the newspaper report of the history of the pair and thinking about yours and @Crowstep's comments and how maybe she disproves my fatherless hypothesis given that she's an aristocrat, surely she had a more stable family structure than most, and then there it was:

She was also deeply affected at the age of nine when her father suddenly walked out on the family.

Voice of @Sloot: "Every time"

And a similar story applies to Gordon.

The youngest of five children, he never knew his father, who refused to meet him or support him financially.

From reading various offhand comments around the internet I get the impression that people without fathers seem to build them up in their minds as infallible role models who are tirelessly dedicated to mentoring their children in learning the skills of how to do every single thing that a real man should be able to do, whether it's something utterly mundane like learning to shave all the way through to how to build a diesel locomotive and expertly butcher a beef carcass with a chainsaw at the same time. And in the absence of this ubermensch role model they seek out substitutes who appear to fulfill some aspect of the superhuman sized hole they've conjured ("if only I'd had a father he would have [done the impossible] for me"). The boring reality is that most average dads are justifiably too busy working to pay the bills and support the family to do too much more than telling their kids to clean their room, do their homework and pull their weight around the house, which in turn provides much more sensible standards for what a normal man should be.

True, but having both parents around is different to "and then dad shook us off like we were dirt on the soles of his shoes and set out for a new fun life with a new fun family". That has got to hurt. Even a distant, neglectful father has to be better than one who made the choice to reject you in favour of someone else (someone better).

Were you into horses, or have you ever empathised with girls who were? The sentiments always struck me as similar, and seemed to be at least slightly correlated.

Because up until that point, they think it's hot that he could attack other people with a samurai sword, but he could never do that to them because he just loves them that much / they alone have the power to tame him / he's so emotionally dependent on them that his world would collapse without them / insert-their-preferred-framing-here.

You and most other posters on this thread seem to think that women are only interested in dangerous men being dangerous to other people and are obviously in denial about the possibility that dangerous men are dangerous to them. I don't see any reason to assume that. Why can't women (well some women, I'm not a believer in the redpill position that all women. are the same) be actively attracted to men that are dangerous to themselves. I don't really think that the women that feel a strong attraction of total lunatics like this (as opposed to the normal attraction to bad-ish boys) are deluded about the fact that they may themselves be harmed by them, in fact that may add to appeal. Plenty of men and women like to jump out of planes or free climb, I don't see why these women have to be lying to themselves about danger to involve themselves with dangerous men.

You and most other posters on this thread seem to think that women are only interested in dangerous men being dangerous to other people and are obviously in denial about the possibility that dangerous men are dangerous to them.

Oh no, I don't think that at all! In fact I thought about including a line about that in my post - "she could simply have a masochistic streak, she could enjoy the palpable sense of danger" - but I decided not to, because I find that comments are generally more persuasive and attention-grabbing when you only include one bizarre claim instead of multiple.

I do think the "I'm a highly distinguished person to him" aspect of it is probably stronger in the majority of cases than the "I like being in danger myself" aspect, simply because even the most masochistic and self-destructive people still show an aversion to acute physical danger. Although, funny enough I just linked someone downthread to Freud's essay on the death instinct, where he explores how a primordial instinct for self-destruction could coexist alongside an apparently overriding concern for self-preservation. That could certainly be relevant in cases like this.

I don't see why these women have to be lying to themselves about danger to involve themselves with dangerous men.

Typical mindedness fallacy, we don't see the appeal in a dangerous partner, but some women fucking love that shit. They fawn over the only group of men not completely crushed/subservient to our modern "safety" society. They like them prcisely because they are dangerous/murderous/thieving etc..

we don't see the appeal in a dangerous partner

It's actually not a fantasy structure that's exclusive to women! It's just more common in women because, obviously, men are the more violent and aggressive ones.

Do you know how many audio files there are for guys with titles like "serial killer yandere ties you up in her basement because she wants to be with you forever ASMR"? A lot more than you might expect!

Or just the number of men who enter and remain in mutually self destructive relationships with insane bpd chicks.

You’re correct of course, but surely there is a difference between fantasising about something and getting dangerously close to the reality?

Mind you, I’ve heard of some guys who find the extreme jealousy of some RL Japanese girls hot in a ‘look how much she cares about me’ way so maybe not.

Yes, but drill it in a little deeper, the demonstrated ability to wreak havoc on your enemies is catnip for women since in the ancestral environment that was a major signal for genetic fitness, that you would produce strong children and could protect them to adulthood.

That's why I don't quite think that its a failure of risk-aversion (I mean, after the first time he hits her, sure), since on an evolutionary level, there'd be a larger risk to pairing with a guy who was physically incapable of defending you.

But it is bonkers that once they feel attraction the prefrontal cortex isn't able to project the longer term consequences of pursuing the guy. Not just that he might beat her, but that he's got no real prospects for building wealth or raising a family in a stable environment. This is so fucking primal that you see fashion Heiresses getting knocked up by sexy felons and a literal Rothschild leaving her husband to date a rapper.

And yeah, there are counter stories about wealthy men blowing up their lives and leaving faithful women to pursue or marry a stripper or even literal prostitute. No doubt. But far as I can tell that's never socially celebrated or sanctioned or really excused.

I think about this video constantly ever since I first saw it.

The stated admission (that I do not think is a joke!) that even a literal villain who slaughtered her people can instantly win her over by... pointing a sword at her throat.

I think about this video constantly ever since I first saw it.

The stated admission (that I do not think is a joke!) that even a literal villain who slaughtered her people can instantly win her over by... pointing a sword at her throat.

From the comments of "Please don’t vote because democracy is a local optimum":

Downloading a girly cartoon romance at random, labelled as a romance and intended for a female audience, and skimming it: Princess is much younger than the prince, and has been given to the prince to seal a peace treaty: The deal was that she was supposed to marry the King, but the King took one look at her and unilaterally changed the deal, giving her to the Prince instead. Prince treats her like the small brat that she in fact is. Prince is a leader of men, commander of the army, and has slaughtered various people in princess’ immediate family. The deal is that her land conditionally surrenders to the prince’s King as a result of military defeat, but the prince has to marry her so that her people get representation and her royal lineage does not totally disappear. Story is that, like the King, he does not want to marry her, because she is a small brat and much hotter chicks keep trying to get his attention, and she homicidally hates him because he has with his own sword killed one of her beloved relatives, and his army under his direct command has killed most of her other relatives (hence the marriage)

Skipping over a zillion frames of the prince in manly poses experiencing deep emotions, thinking about deep emotions, and talking about deep emotions, to the end, they start to like each other just in time for the scheduled wedding,. Final scene is that he goes off to war again and realizes he misses her. He wears the sword with which he killed her beloved relatives in every frame except for a frame when they go to bed, including the frame where he realizes he misses her.

Well I did not check every frame, but every frame that I checked he is wearing that sword, except when they were in bed. As far as I could tell in my somewhat superficial reading, he never regrets or apologizes for killing off much of her family, and treats her as an idiot for making a fuss about it until she stops making a fuss about it.

My account of the story is probably not completely accurate, (aagh, I am drowning in estrogen) but it is close enough. Prince, Princess, sword, arranged marriage, and sword.

So, I would say that the intended readers of that romance rather like patriarchy, and I would not believe anything they said to the contrary.

And:

Well, duh. Having high status people fall in love with you is an obvious sort of wish fulfillment plot.

Yet in films targeted largely at males, for example James Bond, the sex interest girls are generally low status. High status girls is not a major male wish fulfillment fantasy, whereas in romance, high status guys are as uniform as moaning in porn.. Even when the sex interest girl is a badass action girl with batman like athletic abilities, for example Yuffie the thief, she gets in trouble for stealing stuff, making her low status.

Further I doubt that there are what males would call action scenes in twilight because if there had been, males would have willingly watched it. What you are calling action scenes were probably status scenes involving violence and cruelty. I assume this because many, possibly most, romances have status scenes involving violence and cruelty. Love interest cruelty in romance is as predictable and repetitious as the girl moaning in porn. The point is not action, but to prove the love interest is potentially capable of cruelty and violence.

In an action scene, James Bond is in grave danger. In a romance cruelty scene, the love interest hurts someone really badly without the audience ever feeling the love interest to be in danger. The heroine is never in danger from the love interest, but the main point of the scene is that she could be. He is dangerous and badass. Hence the propensity of the prince to knock off relatives of the princess with that prominent and lovingly depicted sword.

In contrast, the main point of an action scene is that the hero is in danger. For example the henchman Jaws in “the spy who loved me” is way more badass than James Bond, so that the audience believes James Bond is in danger. No one is ever more badass than the romance love interest.

This is so fucking primal that you see fashion Heiresses getting knocked up by sexy felons and a literal Rothschild leaving her husband to date a rapper.

Looked both up as the links were a few years old:
Chloe Green does have a son with Jeremy Meeks, but they soon separated. She now has a second child with a successful businessman who is not as tall, is white, without tattoos and has a dad body. And Kate Rothschild has a baby with a (lot younger than her) soyboy environmental activist.

The hot criminal seems to do ok. He doesn’t have a superstar career, instead a bit of modeling and acting in cheap D-Movies, but a quick search doesn’t find any scandals or unhinged drug stories. I found a recent interview where he sounded normal and self-reflected.

The rapper Jay Electronica was for a time a mysterious wunderkind star, but he never delivered (people waited a decade for his first lackluster album). He made the news a few years ago for this banger verse:
"I bet you a Rothschild I get a bang for my dollar, the synogogue of Satan want me to hang by my collar"