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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 14, 2025

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When you have something of great value, it tends to become the only thing that people ever want from you. We can consider Elon Musk as a figure of intense material and symbolic value. He's one of the wealthiest men alive, he runs X, he runs SpaceX, he had a spectacularly public falling out with Trump, and these factors undoubtedly dominate in virtually all of his interpersonal interactions. It's probably a bit hard for him to just be a "normal guy" with "normal friends", innit?

This is something that is far more blessing than curse; a member of the aristocracy may chafe at the fact that their inherent social standing is all they will be known for, but it's sure better than being the serf that finds themselves without much value by default and who will need to scrape and bleed if they want to reach even a fraction of that. This dynamic shows up in the relations between the sexes as well, even in symbolic ways. Hell, women's clothing is skewed far more towards that of the aristocracy than men's clothing is; many items of male fashion evoke utility and/or discipline in some way (even male formalwear derives from military uniform), whereas many female fashions are expensive, throwaway fripperies which embody the idea that status is earned through not having to display utility, and being able to attain resources without having to dirty your hands by doing hard work.

Really there's a grand irony here that I think puts the lie to the idea that women would want to be treated like men: The only reason why women can even complain about that is because of that inherent value. The only reason why anyone even listens to these complaints in the first place is because they are women, and people feel their needs should be catered to and that their complaints carry more weight than that of the male sex. It is okay if women consume resources; they are the appropriate beneficiaries of help, and attending to their complaints is a worthwhile use of others' labour. The same is not true for men. Even the people making complaints along the lines that women can never stop being seen as women often self-consciously capitalise on the fact that they are either female or acting on behalf of women to give their point more weight.

If we are to start treating women like men (something I fully support, by the way, PLEASE actually start doing this), the answer to this complaint should be "suck it up, buttercup, and deal with it". The fact that it is not, and that women expect people to actually take these complaints seriously and spend time, resources and effort dealing with the supposed problem, tells you everything you need to know. Nobody, not even the women making these protestations, truly want women to be treated like men. So many women have been spoiled with this pernicious and unrealistic idea that tradeoffs are not or should not be a thing, that they can "have it all" - but the reality is that they can't, and that results in them never being happy and treating equality like a buffet where they can just pick the parts of the bargain they like while leaving behind everything they don't (so, the last century or two of gender activism). Try as you might to force reality to conform to that fanciful ideal, that's not how anything works.

When will you learn.