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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 2, 2023

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Where are the Conservative Critiques of Family Court?

Conservatives, especially religious conservatives go on and on about the collapse of the family, declining sexual morality, and the increasing millennial failure to form families or have kids...

And yet I cannot think of a single major right wing thinker who's talked about one of the top 3 things causing all of this and which, unlike the pill, is a pure matter of public policy and government officials preying on the populace: Family court.

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Just as abortion was sacralized in post-60s as fundamental inalienable right, that women should not be forced to carry to term or have a child and deal with the financial and social burden it represented... and just as religious conservatives the country over started begging and pleading with women to not abort, but instead to have the child, and then give it up for adoption, that "obviously" they should not be burdened personally and financially with raising a child for 18 years over 1 night's sexual concourse... just please don't kill.

A new set of institutions were put in place to recreate every social, financial, personal, and hypothetical legal burden that even the most fever dreamed feminist never imagined a patriarchy might impose over one night's coupling. But for men.

Just as it became sacrosanct that every woman should be able to have sex and escape any possible financial or personal burden, even if she doesn't use protection, nor takes the morning after pill, nor avails her self of first trimester abortion, nor second, nor third, nor gives it up for adoption in the first, second, third or forth year, but in the fifth year, or even the fifthteenth! surrender the child to the state or for adoption with no ongoing legal, social, or financial penalty...

It became equally understood that the very second of coitus (or even without it if the sperm is stollen). That absolutely an child conceived will result in the man's complete legal and financial ruin. That the legal system gains full power over every asset, skill, or income source, he has ever or might ever have, and that if he tries to evade legal """Responsibility""" (as if this something that would ever consider being applied to a citizen of one of the other 82 genders) his wages will be garnished, his assets forcibly confiscated, he may be imprisoned, and in many jurisdictions his passport might even be confiscated.

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And yet Conservatives who claim to be critics of the state and claim to be critics of state intervention in family life... seemingly have nothing to say about marriage and the family being converted from an inviolable religious and moral compact, to a state contract whereby the entire thing can be disolved, and indeed is financially incentivized to be dissolved... except for the part where every asset and dime you might ever make is now at the sole discretion of the state for how it would like to redirect them.

They have nothing to say about a religious partnership essential being converted into a slavery contract. Nor that instead of doing the reasonable "Egalitarian" thing like setting a standard child support amount that all non-custody parents should be expected to pay as a universal obligation (all children being equal) family court judges are instead allowed incredible discretion to assign amounts based on the income or percieved competence of the non-custody spouse... because obviously bieng productive is the worst possible crime in our society.

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This is the great trend of conservative criticism. Point at the decay, (failing families, schools, communities, ethics) but cower from even raising the possibility that the laws and policies which caused the decay might be reversed.

Every conservative laments the decline of the family... none will suggest ending no-fault divorce or reversing the presumption of custody, such that a parent who cannot afford to raise a child on their own is presumed to be the parent less qualified to receive custody, thus removing the incentive for an unproductive deadbeat wife to divorce as a means to take her husband's assets.

Every conservative laments that social institutions used to work better, and that social values are decaying... none will broach returning to the policies and matterial realities that produced those quality institutions.

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Edit/ Addendum: (realized I didn't include this las night)

My solution is the same one that has worked throughout all of history in every institution that's been functional:

The person with the power is the person with the responsibility.

If women are to be empowered to abort whenever they like, surrender to adoption or the state whenever they like, and generally have full control... THEN THEY SOULD BARE FULL, TOTAL, AND FINAL FINANCIAL RESPONCIBILITY.

Family court should not exist.

The names on the bank accounts keep the accounts. Same with the houses and assets. And any joint assets accounts are divided in even... you don't even need a court all these things would happen naturally and the banks, etc. would oversee the pre-arranged division.

80% of divorces are started by women... this would end that very quickly and defacto limit divorce once again to real documentable instances of abuse. Since there would no longer be a financial incentive.

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Out of wedlock births should never result in a court case unless there is a criminal charge of sexual assault.

It should simply be the woman's full and final responsibility.

These are the conditions that produced the sexual norms conservatives were so fond of In the 19th century and before, if a man got a woman pregnant out of wedlock, that was a her problem. Full stop.

Even if a community thought they could try to force the responsibility on him, he could just disappear a few towns over.

This is what created the intense emphasis on chastity, and the sense of ruin that accompanied fallen women.

THESE ARE OUR TRADITIONAL SEXUAL VALUES AND INSTITUTIONS.

And not a single conservative will just full mouthed endorse a return to how things worked in 1890, instead they gesture at some version of a welfare state that never existed and lament sexual morality is collapsing whilst they use the violence of the state to prop up that immorality

.

If the founding father's had been threatened with a coterie of lawyers threatening to drive a wedge between them and their wives, then claiming for themselves the power to divvy up every child, animal and asset whilst claiming for themselves a share (often the lion's share)... The founding father's would have slaughtered them to the last.

Kulak, I'd agree except that a woman having a baby requires, still, even now, a man to get her pregnant. And men who don't control their own fertility now see the effects of that. I agree that there is a lot of unfairness and damn stupidity, but come on.

It became equally understood that the very second of coitus (or even without it if the sperm is stollen). That absolutely an child conceived will result in the man's complete legal and financial ruin.

Oh gosh, oh no, the wicked vixen talked me into having an orgasm and ejaculating inside her. Oh woe is me! Whatever could I have done to avoid this? (Not have sex with her? Wear a condom? Get married first and be determined when you wanted to be a father, and then be a father who is involved with his kids?)

What is your opinion of things like fellatio? Anal heterosexual intercourse? A lot of things that men expect now as normal parts of sexual activity which once were considered the province of whores only, and even a whore might balk at some of them?

Men profited every bit from the sexual revolution as women did, and the bad effects of that liberalisation were argued down - by men as well as women - as religious imposition on the freedom of others, prudishness, repression and the rest of it. Howard Stern didn't get a reputation as a hero taking on the fuddy-duddy FCC by broadcasting home improvement tips and how to repair your car yourself:

Between 1990 and 2004, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) fined owners of radio station licensees that carried The Howard Stern Show a total of $2.5 million for content it considered to be indecent.

In May 1985, Stern claimed the highest ratings at WNBC in four years with a 5.7% market share of the afternoon audience. In a sudden turn of events, Stern and Quivers were fired shortly before they were to go on air on September 30, 1985, for what WNBC management termed "conceptual differences" regarding the show. ...In 1992, he believed Thornton Bradshaw, chairman of WNBC owner RCA, heard his "Bestiality Dial-a-Date" segment that aired ten days before his suspension and ordered the show's cancellation.

I don't like the rise of single parenting, abortion as birth control, and general promiscuity encouraging women to behave like whores - sorry, sex workers, where sex work is real work. But as they say, it takes two to tango. Men who were glad that now they could get free milk without having to buy the cow still have responsibilities.

And it's the children who suffer the most out of this entire mess of broken homes, irresponsible mothers, half-siblings with different surnames because you all have different dads, dads who never show up in your life and are out producing more half-siblings with other women that you don't even know exist. There was a bitter 'joke' in an old job that in about fifteen years time there would be a lot of unintentional incest, as the kids involved in what we were working on grew up and starting dating or at least hooking up with others they met out socialising, with no idea that was their half-sib.

Conservatism? Yes, I'm for the old-fashioned type where men who wanted sex without strings or consequences have to keep it in their pants (or pay for a whore) every bit as much as women were expected to do. Instead, we've got both sexes (and all genders) behaving like dogs in the streets, mounting a bitch in heat, and with as little thought for the litter of pups afterwards.

Oh gosh, oh no, the wicked vixen talked me into having an orgasm and ejaculating inside her. Oh woe is me! Whatever could I have done to avoid this? (Not have sex with her? Wear a condom? Get married first and be determined when you wanted to be a father, and then be a father who is involved with his kids?)

What is your opinion of things like fellatio? Anal heterosexual intercourse? A lot of things that men expect now as normal parts of sexual activity which once were considered the province of whores only, and even a whore might balk at some of them?

There have been cases of women using turkey-basters to impregnate themselves with semen that was not ejaculated inside them (kept from fellatio, or caught in a condom from either vaginal or anal intercourse). That's what KR is referring to, unless I miss my guess, with "if the sperm is stolen".

Oh gosh, oh no, the wicked vixen talked me into having an orgasm and ejaculating inside her. Oh woe is me! Whatever could I have done to avoid this?

A fine attitude to have as long as it is applied to women as well, which it never will be

Oh gosh, oh no, the wicked vixen talked me into having an orgasm and ejaculating inside her. Oh woe is me! Whatever could I have done to avoid this? (Not have sex with her? Wear a condom? Get married first and be determined when you wanted to be a father, and then be a father who is involved with his kids?)

Women these days seem to by and large (or at least women on the left) agree that just because a woman chooses to have sex, or chooses to not take birth control, or chooses not to get married, it shouldn't matter, and a women should basically be able to choose her own future regardless, whether via abortion, whether by putting the baby up for adoption, whether by keeping the baby and having the man pay child support, or whether by leaving the baby at a safe haven baby drop off. They have decoupled the decision for women to have sex from the decision to start a family or keep a baby.

Men want this decoupling too, and it wouldn't be hard to do it. Simply give the man the same decision of whether they want to be listed as the father on the birth certificate. You can even put a time limit on it, like he has to opt out before sex, even. If he doesn't want to be listed as the father, then the women still has the other aforementioned options, even right down to the no questions asked baby drop off.

If you don't believe that women should have all those options, if you believe that having sex means that a women has some sort of familial responsibility to society, to the baby, etc, then I can understand you thinking the same about men. Otherwise, I think it makes you a hypocrite to believe that just because a man has sex, he's taking these responsibilities.

I don't know why whenever this comes up the first thing that happens is implications that people who are in favor of men having options actually hate women, or think that women are evil temptresses or something. Men who have opinions about this IME rarely think such things, and I think it's uncalled for and uncharitable to ascribe such motives to them. I think it speaks to the fact that that strategy of accusing men of hating women seems to be somewhat unchecked in power. Everyone wants to think that there are evil men who want to hate women everywhere.

Its really bizzare because like everyone of every gender hates everyone else... resentments are just the baseline of the adversarial/cooperative game that is any negotiation or sexual relationship.

Straight women bitch about men.

Straight men bitch about women.

Gay women bitch about Gay women.

Gay men bitch about Gay men. (I swear...the shit I've heard from my gay friends, They're more "homophobic" than my most conservative relative could ever be)

And trans people of both types bitch about both genders, cis and trans.

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Resentments and frustrations with the desired sex is like the baseline of all people everywhere...

The fact that we expect "Oh you just hate women" for any male perspective political discussion that touches on the sexual... but would be agast at anyone dismissing a feminist or abortion rights activist "You just hate men" is deeply telling of how poisoned these conversations are.

Oh gosh, oh no, the wicked vixen talked me into having an orgasm and ejaculating inside her. Oh woe is me! Whatever could I have done to avoid this? (Not have sex with her? Wear a condom? Get married first and be determined when you wanted to be a father, and then be a father who is involved with his kids?)

The issue is that one party has a gazillion options to either abscond responsibility or to forcibly share them with others, backed by the power of the state, i.e. men with guns - while the other party is looking down the barrel of said guns. It takes two to tango. Yet our society only cares about one set of toes being stepped on.

My solution is the same one that has worked throughout all of history in every institution that's been functional:

The person with the power is the person with the responsibility.

If women are to be empowered to abort whenever they like, surrender to adoption or the state whenever they like, and generally have full control... THEN THEY SOULD BARE FULL AND TOTAL FINANCIAL RESPONCIBILITY.

These are the conditions that produced the sexual norms conservatives were so fond of In the 19th century and before if a man got a woman pregnant out of wedlock, that was a her problem. Full stop.

Even if a community thought they could try to force the responsibility on him, he could just disapear a few towns over.

This is what created the intense emphasis on chastity, and the sense of ruin that accompanied fallen women.

THESE ARE OUR TRADITIONAL SEXUAL VALUES AND INSTITUTIONS.

And not a single conservative will just full mouthed endorse a return to how things worked in 1890, instead they gesture at some version of a welfare state that never existed and lament sexual morality is collapsing whilst they use the violence of the state to prop up that immorality

And not a single conservative will just full mouthed endorse a return to how things worked in 1890, instead they gesture at some version of a welfare state that never existed and lament sexual morality is collapsing whilst they use the violence of the state to prop up that immorality

This exactly. Modern western conservatives are still operating in the same framework as modern western liberals, while the societal problem is being caused by the framework itself. Only an exogenous change can bring about a solution to the issues of western modernity.

I would guess Kulak is angry, at least in part, because of cases like these: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/09/02/statutory-rape-victim-child-support/14953965/

California issued a similar state court ruling a few years later in the case of a 15-year-old boy who had sex with a 34-year-old neighbor. In that case, the woman had been convicted of statutory rape.

In both cases, it was the state social-services agency that pursued the case after the mother sought public assistance.

"The Kansas court determined that the rape was irrelevant and that the child support was not owed to the rapist but rather to the child," said Mel Feit, director of the New York-based advocacy group the National Center for Men.

Of course, the money is in practice going to said rapist, because custody is irrelevant and there's 0 oversight to make sure the money is actually being spent for the benefit of the child. And speaking of custody, no one seems to care about the child rapists raising children.

Is sexual inter course between married couples really that different now compared to decades ago? I think non vaginal intercourse was probably quite common. Big difference is now how those things occur as part of dating.

I mean, no, people who have strong taboos usually follow them. Observant Jews usually don't eat pork, Americans marry their cousins drastically less often than others, and people decades ago probably had a lot less oral sex. Of course there's probably no way to get high quality data on the subject, but the existence of a strong taboo is usually good evidence the taboo is generally followed. And the taboo on fellatio in the past was quite strong.

I vaguely recall seeing surgery data suggesting that fellatio rarely occurred outside of marriage but wasn’t uncommon within marriage. In the last twenty years pre marital sex shrank but pre marital fellatio skyrocketed.

I’ll see if I can find that data somewhere.

Surgery data?!

Survey data — autocorrect

Phew. For a second there I wondered if women these days used more teeth than I was thinking.

I’m open to believing it but my priors are that we should assume taboo sexual acts were genuinely less common.

Agree that premarital fellatio has probably replaced premarital sex to some extent.