site banner
PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   8194 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 15, 2025

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.

3
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I read things like this and remain grounded by the successful young white men in my family buying homes and having kids. Are they in prestige jobs? Partly. One is a corporate lawyer in San Francisco. Blonde, blue-eyed. He hasn't been shut out. My other brethren aren't working in anything prestigious, but they're doing something even better: starting families.

It's amazing how bad humans are at understanding probabilities. The existence of some successful white men doesn't mean there is no widespread discrimination against white men, any more than the existence of successful black women tells us that racism against blacks is fake.

Affirmative action's impact is by its nature stochastic, but as the old Democratic campaign line goes when you are out of work the unemployment rate is 100% for you. It's not that every white man makes 20% less, it's that some percentage of white men will be unable to get a job or a promotion or a project completed, while the rest move through their lives normally. If I'm at a law firm that commits itself to diversity in the partner ranks, it's not that I'll be paid less because I'm white when I'm an associate, or paid less if I make partner, it's that when I come up for partner I might draw the short straw and be up as the same time as a black guy or an Asian girl and get shafted.

"I don't know anyone who voted for Nixon."

I read things like this and remain grounded by the successful young white men in my family buying homes and having kids. Are they in prestige jobs? Partly. One is a corporate lawyer in San Francisco. Blonde, blue-eyed. He hasn't been shut out. My other brethren aren't working in anything prestigious, but they're doing something even better: starting families.

I would agree that at an individual level, there are still plenty of opportunities for young white men, perhaps more than ever before. At a societal level, though, this sort of discrimination is both counterproductive and wrong.

At any rate, I would definitely advise young white men in the US to avoid career paths such as academia where it's impossible to get ahead without being dependent on large institutions.

At a societal level, though, this sort of discrimination is both counterproductive and wrong.

This article reinforces one of the theses I encountered on Red Pill sites. Namely: if you elevate the relative social status of young hetero single men, it’ll incentivize them to pair-bond, marry and have children. Thus the marriage rate and the birthrate will grow, the average age of both men and women at first marriage will drop, and men will become more economically productive on average. This is what happened in the US after WW2, for example. If you do the opposite, you’ll get the opposite of all of this, which is what we’ve been seeing throughout the West for decades.

Namely: if you elevate the relative social status of young hetero single men, it’ll incentivize them to pair-bond, marry and have children.

We really do need a proper survey done of 20-25 year old men asking them "so, do you want to get a job, settle down, marry one woman and have three kids with her, I mean right now, not in ten or fifteen years time?"

Shakespeare for one didn't think the young hetero single men of his day were eager to settle down to domestic responsibility the very first chance they got:

I would there were no age between ten and three-and-twenty, or that youth would sleep out the rest, for there is nothing in the between but getting wenches with child, wronging the ancientry, stealing, fighting—Hark you now. Would any but these boiled brains of nineteen and two-and-twenty hunt this weather? They have scared away two of my best sheep, which I fear the wolf will sooner find than the master.

Ah, well. I guess there's nothing to be done. Men too awful. Good for nothing. Never did well. How could we ever hope to build a demographically stable future while carrying such worthless dead weight?

Hey, good reason to go for broke with longevity right? Maybe I can find support here for my $100T regenerative medicine campaign. Men being impossible isn't a problem if they're unnecessary for securing the future.

I think you know that surveys don't mean a thing in this context, at least not in the way you imagine. The current feminized world is all that 20-25 year old men - or their fathers, for that matter - have ever known and most of them cannot imagine any other, they don't grok what it'd mean. Either way, you as a woman(?) are probably also affected by the apex fallacy, which is why you'd probably be surprised by many of the answers to that survey.

Whether very early twenties men want to do this or not, it does demonstrably work- the military achieves a very high marriage and fertility rate with its population of, mostly, extremely young males from working class backgrounds.

The military achieves a high marriage rate by legislating benefits for married servicemen.

And these marriages are attractive to local women because the status of soldiers is boosted.

I'm not sure that's true. I don't think soldiers have a higher rate of being paired off than guys the same age that work at Wal Mart, but Walmart doesn't instantly pay their young male workers thousands of dollars extra for getting married.

Soldiers also have higher divorce rates than civilians.

If we made it a national policy to pay everyone thousands extra for getting married, instantly, we'd raise the marriage rate. I'm not sure that's increasing the status of young men, exactly, just paying people to get married.

Shakespeare has been dead for almost 510 years; I doubt he knows much about the modern situation. Anyway, it's certainly not clear that the particular cantankerous character you quote represented Shakespeare's views. He has young men who do want to (or do) get married.

Namely: if you elevate the relative social status of young hetero single men, it’ll incentivize them to pair-bond, marry and have children.

For me (as a conservative) that's one of those claims that's "too good to check." i.e. I really would like to believe it.

That being said, I agree that there is a decent amount of evidence to support this, for example:

  1. The Swedish lottery study, which apparently found that when a man wins the lottery, he is more likely to get married and stay married; when a woman wins the lottery she is more likely to divorce.

  2. Ultra-Orthodox religious groups in the US, such as Haredi Jews and the Amish. In both of those groups, young men have a good path to obtain social status (in Judaism, by means of religious study; among the Amish, by working the land).

  3. The evidence is pretty good that when seeking a long-term partner, most women have a strong instinct to "marry up," i.e. to prefer someone of higher status than themselves.

So yeah, I could definitely see that (1) taking traditionally male pathways to social status and opening them up to women; and (2) substantially closing those pathways to a lot of men by giving women preferential treatment would have a negative impact on birth rates and such. How big of a factor it is, I don't know. But I do think that the kind of society which is wise enough to avoid getting caught up in runaway gynocentrism would be a much better place for everyone, male and female.

Exactly. Delaying graduates getting their first meaningful job is liable to snowball

As is the overall delay of parenthood.

"I read things like how cigarettes cause cancer and remain grounded by my family's good health. None of the smokers in my family have gotten lung cancer. Even my grandfather, who smoked a pack a day, didn't die of any smoking related causes."

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats