This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
The latest abortion kerfuffle is decently well in the past now, and we've had a number of good threads on it in various places. I think it's a reasonable time to ask here:
Have you changed your personal opinion or political position on abortion access at all over the course of the last year or so? If so, to what, and based on what?
I'm pro choice, and also pro-infanticide (of disabled children). Not as prescriptive policy, but something that ought to available as an option to parents.
However, I feel extremely disgusted and strongly about abortion activists, and think there need to be limits. Generally EU seems to have fairly sensible legislation.
Abortion and any similar killing is an extremely serious affair, and should be treated as such. Being proud of having an abortion seems completely perverse.
Hard to express what I hate about them. It's the same sort of disgust I have to people who treat dead enemy combatans with disrespect.
I'll take the bait. Go on then, spell it out
I am absolutely not pro-infanticide, but the killing, or at least exposure of crippled or deformed infants is extremely common throughout history. In ancient Rome it was considered something you kept quiet, but by no means a crime or a horrific crime as it might be considered today. Oftentimes people were not considered 'full' humans until they had lived a few years already, partially because mortality rates among infants and young children were so high. The idea infanticide is a heinous moral abomination seems to be a product of the slow christianization of western morality.
You could say that about a lot of things. Institutionalised rape, slavery and child brides were pretty common and accepted throughout the ancient world as well, but it would be unusual for a person to defend those things today.
Ancient world? A lot of the things were popular at most 200 years ago.
Some forms of institutionalized rape I think I could still argue for in an anonymous format. I think a reasonable argument can be made of a husband having sexual rights in a marriage presupposing he’s being a good husband and it’s part of the marriage compact. And Russian serfdom (which was supposedly quite harsh) and Chattel slavery was less than 200 hundred years.
That's the marriage debt, it applies to both spouses (wives too have a right to sex) and it's not rape, since in marriage you are presumed to give consent to sexual activity with your spouse. There was a fine-grained legal distinction that rape was sex without consent, and since married couples consented to have sex, the crime of rape could not be committed within marriage (which is not to say that the act of rape could not be committed).
Forcing someone unwilling, by threats, violence, or other coercion, is wrong. That's not what marriage is supposed to be. So even if the spouses have a right to ask for sex from each other, and merely "I don't feel like it" is not good enough reason to refuse, you should not rape your wife (or husband).
Well then what IS your prescription for the scenario where Spouse A says "Sex please" and Spouse B says "No I don't feel like it"?
I have enough Chestertonian-fence respect in the wisdom of the ten thousand generations before me to suspect that if there WAS a solution better than marital rape, they'd have thought of it.
This reminds me of many of Vox Day's blog posts back in the day. He'd say "Marital rape doesn't exist" and "Getting married implicitly gives permanent consent." People would ask him "Does that mean if your wife says 'Not tonight, I have a headache' you can just smack her around until she submits?" He would always dodge or just sneer at the question.
I thought he was being disingenuous then, and I think your "Chesterston's fence" here is a bit disingenuous.
Well, first of all, no, I think it's ridiculous to think that we should just accept the received wisdom of ten thousand generations of savages. There are a whole lot of things our ancestors believed for ten thousand generations and we only realized in the last few hundred years were stupid.
So legally, yes, a husband in most societies historically had the right to literally rape his wife (by which I mean "rape rape", not just threats, pressure, and cajoling), but even the most misogynistic cultures generally didn't think highly of a man who physically abused his wife and had to force her to have sex with him. I strongly suspect that even back in caveman days, couples with genuine affection for each other were looked on with much more respect than couples where the man was literally having to knock his wife over the head and drag her by the hair to get laid.
On to the present day, which you seem to think is missing a little something something because a man can't knock his wife over the head and drag her by the hair anymore. But presumably you didn't mean literally that. But then I would ask you the same question put to Vox Day: what did you mean? If your wife says "Not tonight, I have a headache," are you claiming that you should literally have the right to say "Tough shit, on your back," backed up by force if necessary?
So presuming the actual question is not "What if she's not in the mood sometimes?" but "What if she refuses to sleep with me, ever?" Well, obviously, your marriage is dysfunctional, and you have a range of options from counseling to divorce. Even if you're a tradcon who believes divorce should be off the table, I would think you would want to find out why your wife is refusing to have sex with you, and try to fix that. If it's a physical ailment, well, you did promise "in sickness or in health," right? If it's depression, she needs help, not being compelled to put out because it's her "wifely duty." If it's none of these things, and it's genuinely not your fault for being a jerk husband - if you're stuck with a woman who pretended to like sex until you got married and then turned it off afterwards, like in those horrible old Playboy cartoons, well, I guess if you won't divorce her, then it kind of sucks to have made a poor life choice. But seriously, what do you think should be your options in that case?
(And yes, I've made the assumption above that we are talking about the woman being the one who refuses sex, because realistically, if it's the man refusing to have sex, it's very rare that his wife has any ability to force him. But I'd say the same thing to a woman whose husband rejects her and the situation doesn't appear fixable: if you won't consider divorce, then I guess you're trapped in an unhappy marriage. Which is why I don't think divorce should be off the table.)
More options
Context Copy link
The solution was to consider it being a bad wife, and still not grant license for forcible rape.
More options
Context Copy link
That's always going to happen occasionally. The idea that any religious authority would approve of forcing it in all cases is silly, so I won't address that, instead I'll assume you're saying something like Partner B has been refusing sex for an extended period of time, say six months at a time.
While I'm a big Chesterton guy, you also have to consider that the thousands of generations before you lived in different circumstances. Particularly, I don't think you can keep the "forced sex is ok if you're married" fence up if you've torn down the "living within a community of people who you can talk to about it" fence. Maybe a Benedict option argument at some level? The idea of Marital Debt comes largely from ecclesiastical court cases where spouses literally went to a formal tribunal to determine the answers to these questions! At a less formal level, you and your spouse go to your mutual priest and confessor, alone or together, and seek guidance. Today, we call this practice marital counseling, the only difference is the training of the counselor changing from theological to psychological, from one brand of nonsense to another more cynically.
We've also lost the kind of family honor-bonds that protected both parties to a marriage. A woman in an abusive marriage might count on pressure from her father, brothers, uncles, male cousins, and general social opprobrium to prevent overly vicious abuse. A husband who was too violent with his wife risked social outcast status, or revenge, even if divorce was impossible. Today, that kind of thing is unthinkable: we don't live in close knit families, private violence is anathema, and there is no sense of honor that would lead a would-be-Sonny to defend his sister.
Catholicism, of course, absolutely forbids divorce. Other religious traditions, nonetheless quite strict on their own views, take different attitudes:
So what does a solution look like? Compromise, talk to each other, talk to spiritual/moral counselors you respect, reach a place where things work for both of you. Just like you would for literally any other marital issue.
More options
Context Copy link
Don't marry someone who doesn't feel like it for longer periods than you can tolerate?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link