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Gentlemen of The Motte! We have often been led into discussion about What Is Wrong With Women Today? arising out of topics from directly dealing with the current crisis of male loneliness, female pickiness, and TFR decline to discussion of recent election results, leading to the happy dreams of an economic crash that will finally put women in their proper place:
Well, you may be heartened and warmed to know that this is not a new problem, nor are the proposed solutions new either! Back in the November 1904-April 1905 issue of Popular Science Monthly, a learned gentleman (both a BA and an MD, so qualified to speak for both the arts and the sciences) diagnosed the ills of the day due to the pernicious habit of educating women, and shewed forth the path of ruin that society would continue to tread if matters were not taken in hand.
Alas, the gentleman of a bygone day was proven lamentably correct, but you can take solace from knowing you are not alone, and that women have been ever thus. I myself was introduced to this gem via a Tumblr post and I humbly link it here, while extracting some plums for the delectation of the superior sex. Though I am too agéd and raddled with the ill-effects of promoting independent mindedness in the feeble brain of a female via excess of schooling, mayhap it may save some younger woman from the travails of pride and neglecting her womanly destiny! (While the scholarly concern of the paper also touches lightly and briefly on the adverse effects of extending higher education to the common class of men as well, I am assured the audience of The Motte are of a finer fabric and thus well deserving of the benefits of this, and so at no danger of ill-effect):
HIGHER EDUCATION OF WOMEN AND RACE SUICIDE
BY A. LAPTHORN SMITH, B.A., M.D.
MONTREAL.
Brace yourselves for some hard biological facts which only a medical man can speak on with assurance: higher education renders women insane! Yes, due to the strain it puts upon the delicate female brain, the added stresses of maternity leave what reason a woman may possess overturned!
You see? It is more advantageous for women to be lightly educated to a basic level but remain somewhat ignorant and indeed be slightly dumb (but strong as ox) in order to better fulfil their wifely and motherly duties. Science has proven it! And who can gainsay what Science has said?
But read on! The dreadful custom of late marriage has both rendered women incapable of performing their natural functions, and imperilled not alone the health but the souls of men:
If your daughter refuses to wed straight out of high school (should you even permit her to attend such an institution), then it is her fault and none other if Roistering Ralph, a slip of a youth of thirty, engages in drinking, smoking, gambling, and patronising ladies of the evening. He, poor chap, cannot help himself; it is the duty of young ladies to lead, guide, and control the menfolk.
Over-education makes women picky, fastidious, fussy, and renders them unable to appreciate a good, decent man:
Even if these harpies deign to wed, they then impose impossible demands upon their husbands in order to maintain luxurious and idle lifestyles:
In short, better a content, submissive, stupid woman as wife even if she is inferior to you in social class:
Women, do your duty to avert the perils of race suicide! Men, be stalwart as fathers to guide your daughters in the way they should go!
To reiterate what I said earlier: there's a peculiar tension in certain strains of gender-roles conservatism which simultaneously holds that motherhood is the highest and most virtuous calling to which a woman can aspire, and also that because women aren't directly engaged in productive labor that they deserve less (or no) say in important decision making.
The ones who care about respectability will usually mouth something about complementarianism, but it's fairly easy to find people willing to come out (anonymously, on the internet) and say that they think women are lesser beings need to be disenfranchised and oppressed for the good of society, because if they're not kept in line they'll ruin everything. However, this tends to be a sort of one-sided trad affectation that marries old school male supremacism to a rejection of traditional masculine obligations.
To make another observation on top of that, you only ever see the kind of observation you are making in a vacuum that doesn't also factor in that men have a lot of duties in a more traditional system. The accusation that the "gender-role conservatives" would be quick to reject traditional masculine obligations seems quaint given that we have historical and modern examples of men being put to that test. Sure, some run, but most accept their place in the meatgrinder of whatever war being foisted on them.
Do the detractors of "gender-role conservatives" offer any argument in relation to this fact? Should the women of Ukraine be obligated to have children in the name of their society after a sizeable enough percentage of men have proven their mettle as cannon fodder? Or are the womenfolk free from any costly duty to society regardless of anything?
One can easily agree that there are a great many ailments afflicting all sorts of people making arguments over the internet. What I don't see is how in a broader context, one can look at the modern setup of alleged male and female freedom and the demonstrably disastrous consequences and say that this is fine. It's obviously not fine. So what should the "gender-role conservatives" be saying?
Because the point there is that this "conservative" mindset doesn't really have much to do with the reality of the past they are imagining. It's basically a fantasy of having a maid/sex doll. It's not conservative, it's just anti-feminist and misogynist. Compounding this is a borderline delusional assessment of what women actually do. To hear it from a number of mottizens, women are overwhelmingly employed as HR administrators who exist to leech off hard-working men.
But even for the ones who grasp the scope of traditional masculine obligations, they fail to understand the other side of things. They ignore or denigrate everything women do - often aspiring to literally prohibit them from participating in anything they deem important, or imagining them as a kind of leisure class - and then claim that the things they have reserved to men entitle them to supremacy.
Yes. "Traditional gender roles suck and are outdated. Stop enforcing them."
One of the problems with blaming modern views on gender for societal collapse is that it doesn't track. Socially conservative countries seem to be struggling with these issue more than very liberal ones (e.g. Korea or Poland vs Sweden or France). It seems like the gender trads have looked at the consequences of pulling ourselves out of poverty and said they'd rather go back to the crushing misery than try to figure out a way to reconcile prosperity and freedom with having 2.1 kids.
At the very least, if you claim to value women, treat them adults with an equal say rather than some cross between property and a child you can fuck.
The funny thing is that this isn't even a hard ask - this is pretty much the normie conservative lifestyle. I might find your average conservative man to be kinda sexist, but I don't think he
Most critics of the conservative mindset aren't understanding men when they point to the existence of the 1950's as a better state of gender relations between the sexes than 2025 can yield. I've never met a single detractor you could ever say this to without them trying to shove back down your throat the proposition that the mid-20th century wasn't some kind of utopia, as no conservative I've met has ever said that. Incidentally it was never until I saw men arguing with the blue hairs that I'd even heard the term "bang maid" before. I thought it was the right-wing that was supposed to be misogynistic. This is just women hating on other women. I don't know where this denigration of traditional vocations like motherhood come from. I think motherhood should be given formal recognition as a real career path and women who choose to pursue it at the expense of a career in the private sector should be paid by the government, provided they meet certain conditions.
To your last point, maybe the reason you keep hearing it from mottizens are because women are more often than not net tax recipients whereas men are net tax contributors in the economy. They take more than they give back all whilst claiming it's everyone else that's entitled when it comes to making any demands upon them as "equal" citizens in the nation. You're entitled to the fruits of your labor, and now you've also got to shoulder the burden with everyone else.
It's largely women that have a problem with this in 2025, not men. They're the ones who want to hold men to historic conventional standards of behavior. Men have no problems living a life emancipated from the 'sexist' norms of treating a woman with respect and common decency if that's what they choose and insist on. Peace. Have fun. If you want to be treated like a disposable piece of garbage at worst and with indifference at best, you can have it. But this is based on a complete misunderstanding of what the average man's life is like. Men literally never hear words like "thank you," "I love you," "appreciate it," "you do a good job," etc., a single time in their entire lives.
"Women" aren't to blame for the collapse of society dude. But any complex analysis of the question begins with analyzing what each group's contribution to the problem is. As a side note, when the data surrounding the demographics first started making waves more than a decade ago, it was well agreed on that that this was a problem of highly developed and industrial societies first and foremost. It doesn't mean conservative societies will be immune from any impact. No one has said all conservative solutions to address the problem are going to work. But it's 'only' a conservative solution to the problem in nature that's likely to work. A "conservative" culture isn't simply a "conformist" culture. It's a pro-natalist, family oriented society focused on the collective good. Decree 770 was very paternalistic and against individual "freedumb" but at least it's prolonged the life of Romania; we'd probably be worse off without their contribution to the culture of cyberspace. Good luck Japan.
One of the marvelous things about the Motte is how often you'll get one Mottizen saying "no one is saying X" in the same thread that another Mottizen is saying "X, and furthermore X doesn't go far enough." Or, hilariously, the same comment.
It's sort of implied when one says that a) motherhood is the highest aspiration for a woman b) women don't deserve to have an equal voice in society because the things they do are less valuable.
We're back to the rose-colored vision of historical gender relations. "Treating a women with respect and common decency" has not been all that common. Aside from the sheer volume of dirtbag (or outright abusive/predatory) behavior that was written off, women's status was generally contingent on conforming to extremely confining standards of respectability. Fall outside of that and you were fair game.
Nor, frankly, do I think it's correct to say that traditional gender roles are enforced primarily by women. I don't think critics of traditional gender roles have much issue with the idea that everyone plays a part in enforcing gender roles, but that includes the massive role that men play in enforcing standards of masculinity on other men - especially in conservative spaces, which tend to be especially intolerant of perceived effeminacy. Failing to meet these standards can quickly make you an object of mockery and contempt in the eyes of other men.
As an aside, I find it worrying that you find treating people with respect and common decency is not a universal basic obligation. Like, why would dismantling gender norms lead to men treating women badly? This would lend credence to the misandrist perspective.
I'm sorry, what? I think you're basically wrong in your assertion that gender roles are primarily enforced by women, but it's at least arguable. This is so unbelievably alien that I'm left thinking that you're trolling.
Why? Every conservative solution I've seen proposed is some flavor of putting the toothpaste back in the tube, ignoring that the world has changed in innumerable ways.
Not sure why you're necro'ing an almost two week old post, but I'll bite.
Depends on what issue you're talking about and the details therein. Should it be a surprise different people have different opinions? Any large enough group is going to have dissenting opinions, even from within their own camp.
There are two fundamentally different views you can have on this type of thing.
Human mating and relationships are too important and shouldn't be left to individual choice and preferences.
Human mating and relationships should be left to individual choice and preferences.
Neither of these propositions are true to the outright exclusion of the other, entirely. But they exist on a spectrum. The state has an interest in the propagation of the next generation. Humans are still in control of their romantic choices and attitudes. From 1, it should be easy to understand why motherhood is of such great importance. Without a future generation, your country and society will rapidly cease to exist. Virtually all of the arguments against it lie on the side of 2. I also happen to believe that for the majority of women, their own individual fulfillment is best found through the emphasis placed on motherhood through 1. Through my own life experience of people I know. That's not conservative dogma. That's simply an empirical fact that also happens to vindicate my own position.
Yes, not all women share that same pursuit. And of those that don't, I say let them. Women who have no desire to be a mother or don't think they would make a good one, probably shouldn't be one. Their kind will wash out overtime anyway by the future generations that will continue to show up and replace their position as well as that attitude. It's why the far right-wing is growing and reproducing itself, not the secular world. The secular world is a dead end from the get go due to their social values. Don't worry about us dude. We'll be fine.
Did you not read my statement at all? That's exactly what I said with respect to American history:
You just blew right past it and ignored it. "Utopia" was the key word in that sentence. Meaning. Pin-up girl's of the 20th century were largely propaganda. It was 'not' a utopia at all. The classic image of the man and woman with 2.5 kids living in a white picketed fenced home with the family waiting outside for dad as he pulled up in the driveway from work was largely a myth. But it was nevertheless a known thing that did happen. There were things about that time and place that were much better than what we have currently.
Incidentally as a historical sidenote, you'd happen to be wrong if you think women were as oppressed as people like to tell each other.
If you take specific cases at the times they existed, it's easy to understand this. And plenty of examples can be extrapolated to the modern era. But if you want to take a historical case. One reason the niqab became a primary garment of women in Arab tribal society in medieval times had to do with the fact that women were so frequently kidnapped from competing tribes, the best the men could think of to prevent it from happening (you obviously couldn't guard them 100% of the time) was to cover them up so they couldn't tell which women bandits would be picking up. It was a way for men to protect women. That's wholly different from today's views where the Taliban would execute a woman in a sports stadium for visibly wearing nail polish. They’re oppressed to the hilt in shitholes like that.
Plenty of women today will often tell you they want equality. They will also tell you they want a man that makes more money than them. What historically has been the standard that enforces such ideas? Gender roles. Women will tell you they want a masculine man you can carry out traditionally male tasks and activities. Women in return will refuse to uphold the traditional corollary of that. That's gender roles. Men don't have a problem with abandoning gender roles because a man will date across his station in life. Women often won't. So why are these norms enforced in one sided ways? They want you to fit your role as a man while they're free to behave as they like. Women are the ones primarily enforcing gender roles. Men don't have a problem treating women equally. Women do. To be a privileged person and be treated like a man feels like oppression.
Whether it's an obligation or not the best way this has been found to work is by enforcing norm and custom (i.e. what conservatives call "tradition) on the population. You can have decency without tradition, but the best way to get it [historically] is often through a social/life script that tells you how you're supposed to act and behave, lest you face punishing consequences if you deviate from what you're told. Also what we call gender roles. The notion of the "fair sex" didn't arise out of 21st century egalitarian dogma. It's wholly antithetical to it. That came from my ideological side of the aisle. If I look around today, I don't at all see a great state of health between the sexes. If you think dismantling a bifurcated view of the sexes doesn't open the flood gates to an anything goes social landscape I'd say you aren't using your eyes very much.
Seems to me you have a hard time coming to grips with the fact that several people here know exactly what I'm talking about.
Romania and Georgia did it. Hungary and Russia are struggling. What's the difference? Both are pro-natalist, right-wing policies. The former took extreme measures. The latter doesn't go far enough. (Exactly what you were complaining about earlier.)
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