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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 11, 2025

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The points that you are making have become commonly accepted, at least among highly online people. I'm saying this as a social observation, not as a criticism of you.

The modern highly online understanding of male-female relations is pervaded by PUA teachings, attempts at evolutionary psychology, a general notion that "the game" is a brutal Darwinian contest, and a deep mutual mistrust between men and women. Many of the modern dating conversation's insights are accurate, and the conversation is not new - men and women have been treating and discussing the art of finding a sexual partner as being a skill or an optmizable strategy for probably almost as long as there has been language.

It's good to look at sexuality from this analytic side. But past a certain point, looking at it analytically becomes very drab, boring, and limiting. Viewed through the lens of purely analytic sexual gamesmanship, both men and women seem like horrible creatures whom no-one would really want to be with other than for a cheap temporary bodily satisfaction, an ego boost, perhaps money... just not for the joy of being with them.

If one doesn't already know the vital lessons that the analytic perspective teaches, it is very useful. Lessons like: Don't be a simp. Have confidence. Don't automatically trust people just because they are attractive. Flirting is largely about nonverbal communication. Don't expect the logic of sexual attraction to work the same way as the logic of friendship. Women are attracted to status to some extent. Etc. These lessons are especially important to pick up if one is shy and/or inexperienced and/or neuro-divergent, or has some other issue that has prevented one from already learning these things.

However, the analytic perspective by itself is joyless and one-dimensional. If taken too far, it reduces romance and sex to a real-life equivalent of grinding a video game. Joy re-enters the equation if one sees the other person as someone who transcends yourself and your image of them and predictions about them. The jaded perspective thinks "oh boy, here's yet another woman who is just like all the other women". And while there is a grain of truth in "all women are like that" (or "all men are like that"), it is not actually true. All women are not the same. All men are not the same. And to over-analyze them, to treat romance and sexuality like attempting to optimize a game strategy, turns the whole thing into a meaningless chore.

By the way, I think that what I am saying applies equally whether you're looking to settle down monogamously or whether you want to go out and keep meeting new people for sex. My comment should not be taken as advocacy for settling down.

However, the analytic perspective by itself is joyless and one-dimensional. If taken too far, it reduces romance and sex to a real-life equivalent of grinding a video game. Joy re-enters the equation if one sees the other person as someone who transcends yourself and your image of them and predictions about them. The jaded perspective thinks "oh boy, here's yet another woman who is just like all the other women". And while there is a grain of truth in "all women are like that" (or "all men are like that"), it is not actually true. All women are not the same. All men are not the same. And to over-analyze them, to treat romance and sexuality like attempting to optimize a game strategy, turns the whole thing into a meaningless chore.

You have it exactly backwards. Everyone starts here. Well, I donno, maybe I shouldn't say that. Maybe kids these days really are growing up on a steady diet of Andrew Tate and Pearly Things instead of romantic heroes in fiction. Maybe I'll circle back to this.

But back when I was a young man, this was our default stance of myself and the peers I knew. Overwhelmingly myself and my male peers viewed and treated the women we tried to date as a person who transcends ourself and our image and predictions about them.

And overwhelmingly we were disabused of those notions. "All women are like that" doesn't spring out of the void. It springs for many from spending their entire 20's experiencing women like that. Some of my peers made the adjustments and adopted what "red pill" truths and strategies they could stomach, others were too disillusioned at the amorality of dating to continue.

Sure, many people start there and then get disabused of their original innocent notions. I know that well. I went through some of that journey myself. My point is that, once you've reached the point where you've absorbed the lessons that a more analytic and cynical perspective has to teach, it's good to go to something more innocent and joyful, to a perspective that respects the cynical lessons but is not hollowed out and made joyless by them. I think it is possible to be a romantic without being a clueless simp. The red pill cannot be the final stage, at least not for me. It is just so utterly boring and unappealing to look at romance and sex from that perspective. When I read most red pill authors I get the sense that they're not even enjoying the sex that they are having, it is just an ego boost for them.

If a man is not succeeding sexually because he has not absorbed enough red pill lessons then by all means, he should absorb those lessons. But if he gets stuck at that stage, it's hard for me to imagine him being actually happy with his sex life. The red pill people don't seem happy or sexually fulfilled no matter how much sex they're having, they seem constantly angry and they seem like they hate the women they are fucking.

I am absolutely not advocating that guys stay stuck in some kind of simpish innocent outlook. I went through the whole PUA thing myself, that's part of why I'm writing all this. My point is just that there is something more out there. I'm not saying that one shouldn't "spin plates". What I'm talking about is separate from the question of whether one should be with one woman or many. My point is that even if you "spin plates", it's pointless unless you learn how to deeply enjoy it and be happy with it. If it's just a chore to get ego boosts, it's rather valueless.

I guess let me be clear. Not I, nor any of my peers, were spinning plates.

Well, there was one guy... but there's always one guy...

The point I'm trying to make is that red pill observations about women where the only thing any of us found with any explanatory or predictive power. They were horrifying, and reduced women to attention seeking narcissist/children most of the time. But damnit if they didn't work. And frankly, at the time, they hardly seemed worse than the covers of women's magazine's you'd see in the checkout isle proudly advertising ways to "train your man".

But all the same, when your attempts to treat women as people with equal agency and responsibility to you fail miserably for 10 years, and the advice you constantly receive is "Treat them like narcissist/children" and it works... I mean... how do you go back? How do you compartmentalize that back away? And once again, this isn't in the effort of getting laid all the time and having as much sex as possible, but merely getting a second date. Merely not being immediately rejected. And then maybe, if you are lucky, having her decide to decamp the cock carousel for you, and hoping she doesn't regret it and go back on your commitments to each other.

Now, I suspect there is a hidden breed of woman out there, well adjusted and predisposed to marrying a humble well adjusted man, and starting families. I may have seen a few back in my highschool days. I think some of them even married their highschool sweethearts, and I think some may even still be together. I think by some degree, if you are still dating in your 30's, you've got problems, and you are picking through other people with problems. I also think our society is destroying the environment that raises well adjusted, family oriented people, and they are damned near an endangered species at this point, such that the modal advice to treat women like spoiled children is probably the most actionable, especially into your 30's.

But all the same, when your attempts to treat women as people with equal agency and responsibility to you fail miserably for 10 years, and the advice you constantly receive is "Treat them like narcissist/children" and it works... I mean... how do you go back? How do you compartmentalize that back away?

Women have had the knowledge that men are sex-crazed brutes forever, they tolerate us anyway.

I think the issue might be the implict (?) belief that there is some kind of genderless human standard that women (or men) need to meet. There isn't. There's men and there's women, as different as chalk and cheese. Holding women to male standards is like expecting the cat to play fetch. The wise woman doesn't expect her husband to talk deeply about his feelings or know that she's upset even if she says she's fine. You should take the same attitude to women and their foibles.

This is true, but it begs the question. Yes, men and women have different foibles, but how do they compare? How do the standards for men stack up against the standards for women?

As WhiningCoil expresses above, the redpill perspective on women essentially considers them as men's lessers, baser creatures driven primarily by instinct. This is a perspective with strong cultural precedent, and its echoes persist to this day, even in aspirationally egalitarian societies. When feminists keep talking about wanting men and women to be equal, despite their equality before the law and the outright preference shown towards women by our cultural institutions, this is what they mean.

In this way, I'm sympathetic to both feminism and the redpill perspective; I do believe that women are to some extent more childish, instinctual, etc. than men, but I also think that this is a highly unfortunate reality, not something to celebrate or appreciate, and hopefully might be ameliorated by whatever means necessary, social or biological.

I do believe that women are to some extent more childish, instinctual, etc. than men, but I also think that this is a highly unfortunate reality, not something to celebrate or appreciate, and hopefully might be ameliorated by whatever means necessary, social or biological.

See, I'd just call that 'hating women'. I like women. I think it's good they're women.

Imagine someone suggesting that we somehow 'fix' children such that they just start as adults!

Would you then contest the assertion that women are fundamentally lesser than men? I think that @To_Mandalay is essentially correct in this thread about how women have always been considered lower on the Great Chain of Being than men, do you disagree?

I don't hate women at all, though I do empathize with women who seem to hate themselves like this poor soul. It seems perfectly reasonable to me for women to feel trapped by their biology, to despair that their ordained purpose is mere continuance of the species while the men drive forwards the transcendence of Man.

Would you then contest the assertion that women are fundamentally lesser than men? I think that @To_Mandalay is essentially correct in this thread about how women have always been considered lower on the Great Chain of Being than men, do you disagree?

In Christ there is no male nor female; excepting that, yes, women are obviously lower on the great chain of being, inasmuch as children are. This isn't wrong or bad. It becomes wrong and bad when we train them from birth to be upset about it.

It's literally Satanism. He teaches men that we should be as God and should resent the One who loves us and upon Whom we depend. Imagine teaching an eight year old that he should reject all guidance and authority from adults and make his own way and cultivate anger and disrespect for his parents. This is not good for the child.

I don't hate women at all, though I do empathize with women who seem to hate themselves like this poor soul

Yeah, that's the fault of men who allowed women too much freedom across domains such that they ended up stuck in this woeful state.

It seems perfectly reasonable to me for women to feel trapped by their biology, to despair that their ordained purpose is mere continuance of the species while the men drive forwards the transcendence of Man.

Well that doesn't hold at all. Motherhood is one path for women, and the right one for most, I expect; but at some point the kids are bigger and there are numerous ways for women to contribute beyond just birthing and nursing. Society used to be rife with social organizations run by women and we were all better off for it. Having some kids only takes a few years and then women usually end up with plenty of options for doing other things. This whole complaint is just a boogeyman scare tactic designed to divorce us from each other at ruinous expense to all.

The other path for women is loosely defined as 'monasticism', i.e. foregoing family to devote their lives to greater service to all. Also an acceptable path, though as I say wrong for most.

Believe it or not, women are prone to being very happy about being women without enemy action convincing them otherwise. Each of us has our place in the Great Chain of Being; embracing that is wisdom itself.