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 -
A thing I don't think the 'manosphere' (loosely defined) has really grappled with, is men's role dismantling the 'patriarchy' (loosely defined).
" the patriarchy is [in a broad and very simplified sense] a system where men are responsible for women and women are accountable to men. (More accurately, it’s a system where women are accountable to their fathers/husbands and men are responsible for their daughters/wives.*) "
That works as a definition well enough.
For that system to hold, its a 2 way street.
A real question, culturally, do men want the responsibilities, or just the perks?
Its relevant that concurrent with Promise Keepers, we had elected Bill Clinton twice to the highest office in the land, JFK was considered the coolest possible politician, Joe Namath had been famous for going on 30 years at that point for being good with the ladies.
Culturally, men, held up that ideal as something to be aspired to.
If men are going to aspire to be cads, a feminism that decides that men aren't worth trusting the patriarchy to is a reasonable response.
My mental model of Promise Keepers, their main message was "hey men, be worthy of the patriarchy"
Promise Keepers as a phenomenon, it was always fighting massive cultural headwinds, it was founded with that express purpose.
Is it a failure that it's not still going strong 30 years later? idk, what's that half-life of these things? I mean Lilith Fair isn't still selling out shows, whatever Louis Farrakhan is up to, a million people aren't showing up in DC on the regular to hear him. These things peter out.
If some men took it to heart and actually lived better lives, I would say that counts as success, even if in 2025 the movement is a minor footnote in history.
I think that’s key. The church needs to teach men to do their part, even when women sin against them, and it needs to teach women to do their part, even when men sin against them. But it’s fine for a parachurch ministry, or a church’s men’s or women’s ministry, to focus on just one of these at a time.
I do think that such a ministry needs to be willing to frankly discuss the other side’s duties. But it would be odd if that were the primary focus.
It is kind of hard to continue with these duties in the context of modern economies. Setting aside how realistic it is for middle class/working class families to have only a single income, male physical superiority doesn't necessarily mean much from an earning power perspective anymore. Why must the male be the one that takes on responsibility/authority?
In the context of a parachurch ministry, the answer is straightforward: God designed the human sexes that way, and He has commanded us to follow that design. The Bible is pretty emphatic about this:
If I were to make a secular argument, I would build it on the distribution of temperaments in men and women and how they interact within this framework, and I’d refer to studies of different subcultures with different marriage norms, being aware of the biases in social psychology. But it’s much harder to make a normative argument that way, and there would be legitimate discussion to be had about when to strengthen traditional norms to benefit the average person and when to weaken them to benefit outliers.
When you believe that the Bible is God’s Word – and that’s the conviction the Promise Keepers were working from – then it has the right to make normative claims that human prudence does not.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Maybe. But not if all such are focusing on the same one; then you're just teaching that half to be chumps. And contrary to the GPs insinuation, it's mostly not men who are demanding perks without responsibilities, and insinuating that when talking about a group specifically called the "Promise Keepers" is especially bad.
...why? Are we going to take the People's Republic of North Korea on their word that their republic belongs to the People in a higher proportion than the ones not called that?
More options
Context Copy link
Sure. People are reluctant to teach women that they need to hold up their end even when their husbands sin against them.
In a culture that is so hostile to it, low decouplers – and most low decouplers are women – will hear that as, “He’s totally allowed to abuse you.” Some high decouplers will deliberately misinterpret it that way for rhetorical reasons. A pastor has the responsibility to distinguish the two and to break through honest misunderstanding where it occurs. But it’s difficult, and it’s risky, and too many shirk that duty.
That said, there are still going to be men who want to take the benefits without the responsibilities. Reminding them of their duties is noble work, as long as you don’t use it as excuse to ignore more common sins.
Edited to add the last paragraph.
Or that they need to hold up their end at all. Or that they even have an "end" to hold up.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Bit of a trick in this one. What are 'male responsibilities?'
I'd posit:
Almost any role men are expected to perform in society is one of these or a subset of these. Killing a spider in the house? 1. Tracking down and capturing a criminal? Blend of 1 and 2. Change the oil in the car? 4.
1 has been obviated by modern tech, and we prefer it that way.
4 is still a thing, but has been rendered pretty low status overall.
2 has been a nonissue in most places, especially the U.S., for a long time, and we prefer it that way.
3 DEFINITELY still happens, and we have systems in place to ensure it happens, but we have managed to mitigate much of the risk. And we prefer it that way.
But at any given time, if the need arises, men CAN be called upon to fulfill these responsibilities, to the death, if needed.
So the fact that most men haven't been called on to fight a war, kill a mammoth, or go down with a ship while the women and children escape doesn't change the fact that they could be called to do this at any time. And indeed, many of them spend a lot of time preparing themselves to jump into action even as the actual chances of needing to do so go down, since the impact of such events is still deadly and widespread.
So there's a disconnect. "Men don't live up to their responsibilities anymore" really means "men have managed to arrange a society that is mostly peaceful, robust against disaster, and produces more food than we know what to do with." And ignores "they also maintain readiness to take action to preserve this society if it is threatened" factor.
And this means mens' responsibilities are kind of invisible most of the time. So others (especially women) just assume men are getting all the perks whilst doing none of the work to earn them. Which might even be true... until its not.
This also explains why Firemen, Police Officers, and Soldiers still get some automatic cachet with women, since they signal themselves as a man who has actively sought out the male responsibility. Even though each of those jobs has only gotten safer/cushier over time for the reasons outlined above.
I do think its 'cheating' to suggest that women are excused from their obligations on the grounds that men aren't living up to their own standards, when the womens' obligations are relatively painless but very visible on a social level, and men's responsibilities are harder to perceive but extract a drastically higher cost when drawn upon.
So what seems to be the issue is that men DO maintain certain responsibilities... but thanks to successfully creating a highly advanced civilization, they've made it much less likely that they'll be publicly expected to perform those responsibilities at scale.
And yes, there are probably a lot of men who would reject the call to fight off an invader, track down a violent criminal, dive into floodwaters to save a child, or even to lift heavy equipment in the hot sun to construct a building.
And those that refuse those responsibility should, I say, be fairly ostracized.
But that's not really the question. As a man, I ABSO-FUCKING-LUTELY want/accept these responsibilities.
With that said... I ABSO-FUCKING-LUTELY want to minimize the chances of being called on to fulfill these responsibilities, by maintaining a civilization that is robust against such risks.
So bit of a contradiction there. "Yes, give me all the perks of maledom, and I will do my best to ensure that I am not called on to fulfill the responsibilities if I can help it."
But the problem I do keep hitting on, if you remove incentives for men to fulfill their responsibilities, and enough of them drop out of that role, its increasingly likely that the civilization they maintain will start to crumble.
I mean, maybe I'm the weird one but I don't think being hypothetically willing to do certain things is worth much compared to actually doing things. Would I kill a stranger to protect my wife? Sure. Do I think I will ever have to actually do that? Almost certainly not. Does that fact, like, oblige some gratitude or something on my wife's part? Create some responsibility to me? I don't think so. If it were a thing I actually had done, especially more than once, I would think differently but I don't think my hypothetical willingness generates much of an obligation on the part of others.
There's a CHH substack post that gets at a pretty similar theme (if anyone knows how to un-paywall substack articles let me know): You'll Kill Marauders, But Will You Change a Diaper?
The gist is that a lot of men seem to envision being a husband or father as entailing a lot of willingness to do violence and their contribution to these roles as being that willingness. This is, however, not a practical description of what is required to be a husband or father in a developed country. It's not to say that willingness is bad, but it is not something that is likely to be very useful.
More options
Context Copy link
Uh, you could have asked any chud what the man of the house's responsibilities are. It's to 1) pay the bills(as in earn the money to do so) 2) take the lead on security and safety issues, including those that are more annoying than dangerous(telling the salesman or political canvasser to go away) 3) do outdoor or heavier/more unpleasant chores(yardwork, taking the trash out, moving heavy objects) 4) provide final discipline for the kids(wait til your father gets home...). You might get some more awkward shuffling before admitting that women are supposed to cook and clean and take the lead on childcare and put her career second.
More options
Context Copy link
I'm not sure what kind of obligations you are thinking of for women, but the first one that comes to mind for me is pregnancy and childbirth, and I would not describe that as "relatively painless". Sure, it's better now to have 2.1 children with an epidural instead of 10+, but I think it's still a more arduous obligation than what the average man in the west will be called upon to do in their lifetime.
You might need to recalibrate your perception the sort of work the average dude has to complete in his life, and the pains they will suffer as a result of them.
Looking at the top, call it 20% of guys and assuming they represent all men is the EXACT issue that leads to intersex resentment, I think.
And just as modern society has relieved a lot of the risks that men are otherwise expected to deal with... it has also made the entire childbearing process less painful and FAR, FAR less risky for women.
(thanks to men)
So this sentiment doesn't move me an inch, although I'm on record with saying that bearing and raising children SHOULD accord a woman high status!
Hmm, I think it's definitely true the average (as in the mean) man does more dangerous and arduous work than the average woman. The workplace fatality rate for men in 2023 (that was the year I could find consistent numbers for) was ~7-8x the maternal death rate that year.
However, I'm less convinced that the average (as in the median) man does as much dangerous work. About 65% of men work some kind of management/service industry/sales job, and I don't think these jobs cause as much pain as birthing a baby. Even if the do, there's just as many women working them as men.
Not only that, but the workplace fatality rate for men exceeds the maternal death rate + the female workplace fatality rate by a huge amount. For example, I looked into this a while back and the number of men killed during 2018 by occupational injuries caused by transportation incidents, contact with objects and equipment, falls, slips and trips, exposure to harmful substances or environment, and fires and explosions is 4,119 men killed. This excludes injuries caused by "Violence and other injuries by persons or animal" as that category includes deaths by self-inflicted injuries on the job. Even excluding that, the number of male deaths exceeds the number of women killed in ALL occupational deaths (413 women) AND maternal deaths (658 women) added together (1,071 women).
Just to give you a sense of how large that margin is, in 2018, the number of men killed in occupational-related transportation incidents alone (1,929 men) exceeds the number of women killed in all occupational deaths and maternal deaths added together.
It heavily depends on how you define "dangerous". Work is something you do for most of your life, whereas childbirth is a very transient condition (especially today). Management/service industry/sales jobs are highly disparate types of work with highly differing demands, and just because women are as likely to participate in that large category of work does not mean they are subject to all the same stressors. It's been brought up fairly often in the context of the wage gap, but even within the same occupational categories your median man is likely to work more, take more strenuous and demanding jobs, and prioritise flexibility less, which results in women having higher satisfaction with their jobs (a consistent finding within the literature).
As for the health effects of constant stress, it results in elevated levels of cortisol over a long period of time, poor sleep, and so on, increasing risks such as cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, infections, strokes, etc. The WHO made an attempt at estimating the number of ischemic heart disease and stroke-related deaths linked to long working hours for the year 2016, finding that the worldwide number of deaths from long working hours was 745,000 from only these two causes of mortality. Men made up 72% of the deaths, and if you do the maths it seems men represented 536,400 of these deaths and women represented 208,600. In contrast, worldwide general maternal mortality for the year 2016 represented an estimated 309,000 deaths. And there are undoubtedly more sources of death from long working hours and other job-related stressors which doesn't just amount to things like "death by lobotomy via a falling metal pipe". I would not assume that job-related mortality in even these jobs is less of a risk than maternal mortality for your average American woman of the same social stratum, and I would not assume that the prevalence of this mortality is the same between the sexes just because there are roughly equal numbers of men and women with jobs belonging to this large category of work.
Obligation and sacrifice manifests in many ways which aren't immediately obvious. In general I tend to think people overweight things that are obviously unpleasant but transient over stressors that cumulatively accrete over one's lifespan - and in general I think the latter tends to have a greater overall impact on health and wellbeing in spite of the fact that they tend to be overlooked as sources of mortality. Attrition is important; it's the difference between feeling intense temporary grief vs. clinical depression. Unexpectedly getting kidney stones, while more painful in the moment, would not impact my overall life as much as being stuck in a job I dislike. I have a sedentary job which sometimes requires me to work a lot of overtime and weekends during crunch time (in fact I did so earlier this week), if asked to make a tradeoff between spending large swaths of my life slogging away at an inflexible, stressful job and giving birth to 1.5 kids at any given point in my life I'm inclined to say that at least personally, I think the latter may be a superior value proposition. I'm not saying having children isn't important or worth encouraging, but I'm not certain this conception of unpleasantness actually aligns with how most people experience it.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Management doesn't know what to do with a department that's "just a cost center, what does he even do, shouldn't we just eliminate the positions?". And once that happens, the consequences to a lack of maintenance usually don't show up for a while. Sure, they might be catastrophic, and often are, but that's future management's problem.
This is a common pattern across companies; it stands to reason that because the same people who end up managing companies also tend to manage a society more generally (something that is also a company, just a very large one, and when it fires people it tends to be more literal) societies inevitably end up sharing that failure mode unless something forces them not to be. In other words, any organization that isn't maintenance-first (or "isn't explicitly right-wing") ends up being wholly unable to do maintenance even when required (or "inevitably ends up left-wing", per Conquest).
Yeeup.
To take a direct example, Europe has gotten so far from the era where they had to worry about Russian/Soviet Invasion that they don't even maintain the basic military capacity to defend their own shores if there was ever a 'serious' outbreak of war.
This was brought into Stark relief with the Ukraine war, but they still seem to work on the assumption that the U.S. will backstop things.
Russia's big mistake was attacking one of the few countries in Europe with a will to fight back.
It’s clear they did not expect them to fight back much. It would be the same mistake to assume that of UK-FR-DE in case of russian invasion of estonia, say. The 20th century has shown that seemingly placid people can get quite excited about war, quickly. Okay, maybe the italians wouldn't fight. Then again, that may be for the best.
More options
Context Copy link
In their defense, that's all the countries which border them except Belarus (which is already aligned). Maybe also excepting Norway.
More options
Context Copy link
Yeah, the one they'd specifically been antagonizing for a couple decades and thus was actually geared for repelling them.
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
This gets really complex. Feminism versus patriarchy definitely is not a woman versus men conflict. In many ways, women are used as proxy forces by powerful men. We saw this with metoo, accusations can be used as weapons to take out political or corporate enemies, with the accusations against ones allies (eg Tara Reid) conveniently not believed. One can see 1900s to 1980s feminism as a plot by alpha men to get hot young women in the office away from boyfriends and husbands (present or future) where the alpha men could bang them. One could see metoo as an effort by normie husbands to seize back their women from the bosses at work and normie dads to keep their daughters away from the frat boys at college. But it gets more complex because it kind of backfires as the false accusations against the normie gets believed while actual predatory seduction by alpha men gets ignored ( the famous meme is true https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/hello-human-resources also an SNL skit with Tom Brady ).
And even in the 1960s to 1980s non-alpha men were psyopped and thirst-trapped into thinking that the sexual revolution would mean more sex for them, and so out of sin or out of ignorance they often did cheer on licentiousness in movies and among famous people.
Black pill on metoo:
Dershowitz faced an extended lawsuit from an Epstein girl supported by his rival Boies.
Boies in turn worked for Weinstein hiring ex mossad to stalk Ronan farrow.
It's all powerful men targeting their rivals all the way down.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I think it was Deiseach who once pointed out that second-wave feminism was actually a really sweet deal for men and a poison pill for women, with all the "free love" turning out to be just fucking around without any responsibility, and all later feminism waves are just an attempt at fixing this giant screw-up without admitting to it. I'd nitpick that it only was a sweet deal for a particular kind of men, but otherwise agree.
We’re already seeing modern examples of this. I remember saying the exact same thing whenever the topic would come up in my social round table years ago. It always felt like pissing in the wind. This stuff isn’t rocket science. I really don’t know how so many people missed it.
It's not that they're "missing it," it's that they psychologically cannot allow it to be true. The villain, convinced of the righteousness of his cause, only to wail "Oh God, what have I done!?" when forced to confront that what he has done is truly evil, is a creature that only exists in fiction. In the real world, to actually admit that one's core identity is a lie would be a narcissistic inury so great that any cost must be paid to avoid it.
More options
Context Copy link
Had an interesting thought.
"Consequence-Free Sex" is a great sales pitch on its face.
But then you notice that some of the 'consequences' of sex are in fact good, desireable, and constructive, and throwing those out is really losing something important.
So women thought they were getting all the pleasure without the risk of pregnancy, STDs, emotional investment, or risk of abuse... and didn't notice that this was costing them a lot of the emotionally fulfilling aspects of it.
It was a talked about phenomenon even during Victorian Britain that some women were just completely “whorish” in their attitudes. So you’ve always had licentiousness and the overwhelming biological drive of people in their youth. The question in my mind has one to do with its proper place and context. The sexualization and commodification of everything is bad for both individuals and society.
Fully agree with you on the last paragraph. It also reminds me of the old, funny bash dot org quote:
“It used to be about sex, drugs and rock n roll. Now all we have is aids, crack and techno.”
In reading some accounts of the culture of the '60s and '70s, it seems like there were a LOT of true believers who genuinely thought that free love, LSD, and rock music was going to save the world and fix everything. And a lot of opportunists who saw how they could exploit this sentiment.
And as the quote implies, turns out there are some downsides to each of those things. The drugs in fact ended up killing a lot of the musicians.
To hear some tell it, the Altamont Free Concert was the day (four months after Woodstock, the apotheosis of the era) that dream died/the illusion popped.
"Wow, turns out getting people hopped up on drugs at a free concert with a Biker Gang (paid in beer) running security DOESN'T result in a peaceful, money-free utopia." And like a number of recent culture issues, the death of a black guy was the precipitating incident.
Richard Nixon was... more right than wrong about hippies.
For my part I think it was fully doomed when the Corporations Co-opted their sentiment to sell sugar water. Note this was the same year John Lennon released "Imagine."
Virtually the entire atmosphere of the postwar period was like that in the sense that the west came out triumphant. In particular with the US overwhelmingly being the biggest beneficiary. And with that you saw an attendant shift in the social values of the population with the abundant wealth that was following in.
Being the person that tried to restore sanity and imploring them to think of the long-term downstream consequences would’ve made you the party pooper or puritanical boomer of the previous generation. But the conclusion of all this wasn’t hard to see. A lot of what people complain about today and are writing I remember having the identical thoughts about in high school. And it’s not because I’m some sort of enlightened genius and everyone else is an idiot. I’m simply someone paying attention.
Well yeah I can actually sort of understand the logic there actually.
"Hey we've got this brand new drug that heightens sensory experiences but has seemingly zero side effects! Miraculous! And all these extremely talented musicians innovating genres with meaningful messages! And contraceptives so we can have the pleasure of sex without the risk! Truly this is an age of wonders, we can surely solve the world's problems if we just unite around something we all have in common!"
Then sprinkle some marxism in there. Can't forget to mention Jonestown where a bunch of self-professed Marxist-Communists got froggy and killed themselves along with a bunch of kids. That was later in the game, though.
Oh, and the Manson murders. 1969-1971 really killed any presumption of 'innocence' in this culture, didn't it?
The extra layer of weird spirituality that permeated much of the hippie era was a bit harder for me to understand. Lot of cults in that time period.
Whatever mindsets of the 60's has been repeated in the current era, it seems to be a firmly secular movement this time around, although most here can point out how "wokeism" is just a secular religion.
The CHAOS book talks about it at length, but the cracks were already showing by '67 (one example he doesn't mention that I think is noteworthy is that Love's Forever Changes was recorded in summer-fall '67 and was already pointing out what a crock all the hippie stuff was). The LSD era gave way to the amphetamines and heroin era, but it took until Manson & Altamont for the fruits of that change to become apparent.
More options
Context Copy link
That era was a mistake in a number of ways and now the excesses of it are running hard up against the wall.
This isn’t a product of some Marxist bogeyman though, although many similar aspects of it you can also find at home in the Marxist tradition.
Even the Nazis of all people recognized this problem under their own paradigm. Hitler wrote about it himself when he talked about the contrast of values he experienced in Munich and when he went into Vienna. He noticed that the cities and program of urbanization led into the production of a new system of social values that was individualistic, against the national community and that he saw as “degenerate.” That’s why his appointed ideologues beneath him like Walter Darre and others came up with notions like “blood and soil.” They viewed the peasantry as the ideal model for German society because of its community and family orientation towards society, and they wanted that adapted to big city life.
It’s also why when they went into Scandinavia, they viewed Oslo as “too American” and “socially degenerate” because of its big city and urban lifestyle. The big cities led to a “liberalizing of social values.” It was yet another example to them as reminder of why they envied the countryside. The Nazis actually disliked many aspects of German rural life and called their immigration into the cities “convoys of death.” But one thing they noticed in the 40’s was that the urban cities were producing less than half of the soldiery and births needed to sustain the war effort. The countryside on the other hand had something like a 13%-16% surplus it provided.
So whether it’s this extreme or that extreme, these lunatics or those lunatics, both ideologies ran into different varieties of the same problem. And no paradigm to date that I’ve seen has good solutions to these.
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
Still buys into a hyper-agentic view of lecherous men and women as true sexual objects without desire or agency. If some top men plotted to give sexually inert women sexual freedom to satisfy their perverted male urges, it stands to reason that they also gave them the vote earlier, the right to vote and work, anti-harassment laws etc. If vague dissatisfaction with the current situation is evidence of failure, those things and more were all poison pills.
Agreed. A lot of women really enjoy having flings with high status men. Perhaps it's a poison pill in the sense that eating too many potato chips is a poison pill. But the same could be said about men who spend their days womanizing.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
A more controversial red-pill, even among the red-pilled, but one I believe to be true, is that men are actually the more romantic sex and deal worse with promiscuity. Yes, men find it more enjoyable to sample new women and sleep with a different women each week. But men perhaps deal worse with seeing the women they slept with sleep with someone else...especially if they enjoyed a special connection. And since most men are not lotharios who can take pride in notch counts, but most men have dealt with very traumatic break-ups, on net, the sexual revolution has been bad for most men.
"Oh, I tell you, women are not the sensitive sex. That's one of the great delusions of literature. Men are the true romanticists."
I have that movie on-call, I really need to sit down and watch it for the full context of that quote one day.
More options
Context Copy link
Byron had a different view of it, but then again he was Byron. From "Don Juan":
Man’s love is of man’s life a thing apart,
’Tis woman’s whole existence; man may range
The court, camp, church, the vessel, and the mart;
Sword, gown, gain, glory, offer in exchange
Pride, fame, ambition, to fill up his heart,
And few there are whom these cannot estrange;
Men have all these resources, we but one,
To love again, and be again undone.
More options
Context Copy link
To an extent this is actually true. I’m a person that more easily gets attached after sex. I don’t like feeling used.
Psychologically there are just different types of people. It’s easy to just “discard” someone you have no investment in. I’ve always been a very monogamous person. I’ve had experiences in my late teenage years going into very early adulthood through my social group and the milieu I was in, and not out of genuine desire. I’ve never found it fulfilling or enjoyable when reflecting on it. The best I’ve always had was in romantic relationships and I have never had any desire to experience the former again, even though I’ve had the opportunities available to me from my original social group. It always makes me feel filthy, like I have to scrub the shit out of my body; and I’ve always been somewhat paranoid of diseases.
Man. Same way.
I've gotten to the point where I can justify a fling with a particular sort of partner who is clearly never going to be able to commit to someone, as a means of physically satiating the desire.
But I have to be so emotionally distant about it that it is simply unfulfilling.
Repeated sexual intercourse with someone you genuinely care for and know their ins and outs and exactly how they respond... its better in ways that you wouldn't even realize if you've only ever had short-term partners.
"Intimacy" is poorly understood and seemingly underrated as part of the experience. Of course, sometimes you just want the dopamine hit that comes with banging someone hot.
Indeed.
Some of the best sex I’ve ever had comes from caring about the pleasure of the person you’re with and seeing their emotion and excitement in it. Wanting to make them happy and fulfilled makes the experience much better. People that haven’t experienced that just won’t know. All they’ll ever think is being with someone is just a glorified way of jacking off and that you can do it with anyway.
I knew a ‘lot’ of women growing up. Peers, sisters of friends, friends of friends etc. We were all a group and I still know a good number of them. I was never lacking in opportunities for a fling. That was just never my thing.
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