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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   32419 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 2025

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I usually wonder about this kind of thing in a different sense, because men in spheres bemoaning lack of trad values often mention virginity but I'm never clear on if they're offering the same virginity themselves.

You aren't clear because it is not relevant. Nobody cares if the groom is not a virgin, least of all the bride. Look up mate choice copying (or, as PUAs call it, pre-selection).

It's like worrying about how the groom will look in a dress.

The Catholic church cares and a bunch of traditional Christian churches and systems of morality care. A lot of Churches forbid masturbation and have shame circles where men confess to masturbating and try not to do it. I don't think the Catholics go that far but masturbation is still considered a sin.

Also while in traditional cultures the bride might not care if the groom is a virgin. She will care if he's a known womanizer because she wants him to be faithful to her after the wedding.

Nobody cares if the groom is not a virgin, least of all the bride.

But as @Clementine points out, in older systems the duty wasn't grounded in the preferences of the relationship partner. If you start with "your bodies doesn't belong to you as fun toys to fuck around with, and your lives doesn't belong to you as a fun game to score as much worldly status as you can; both of you are given this for a higher purpose," then you get rather easily to all the natural-law thinking about the high status of sexual continence and faithful marriage and self-sacrifice and family formation, for both men and women.

I don't think you can get there from quid-pro-quo negotiations between two rational actors with no common commitment to a higher moral purpose, because prisoner's-dilemma thinking kicks in immediately, as in fact you can see in responses below. Yeah, but what if s/he defects and I get exploited? Sure, I'll [maybe]cooperate eventually, but s/he needs to go first.

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