site banner
PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   5597 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 29, 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.

Just to make a general observation about the gender war as a followup to my comment on the Promise Keepers organization:

I think we can generally observe is that women’s main complaint about men is that desirable hetero men are unwilling to exclusively commit. If we accept this, we can also see that this is actually two complaints rolled into one. 1. The men that are willing to commit are undesirable (icky, clingy, lame, “chopped”, entitled, toxic, porn-addled, skinny fat etc.). 2. The men that are desirable are unwilling to commit. (On a tangent I’d argue that most of the lipstick feminist complaints made in the mainstream media by middle-class women about men in general do usually boil down to the rather similar complaint that 34-37-year-old successful, well-paid, charismatic, tall, ambitious etc. urban men are in no rush to marry 31-34-year-old college-educated middle-class office worker women.)

If we look at this logically, to the extent that it even makes sense to try doing so (which is a valid question in itself), there are two potential remedies for this problem. 1. Focus on the undesirable men that are willing to commit and somehow transform them into desirable men i.e. alphaize the betas 2. Focus on the desirable men and incentivize them to commit i.e. betaize the alphas.

Now I don’t know about you but to me it seems self-evident that #2 has more potential for success no matter how you look at it and yet virtually everyone who makes any sort of recommendations regarding this entire issue (and that does not only include Red Pillers) is promoting #1. No, really – I’ve never seen anyone advocate for #2, not even the Promise Keepers or, for that matter, any other similar group that does not claim to be feminist and is at the same time pushing the nebulous concept of a new positive masculinity.

Am I seeing things that are not there or is this really not the case? Because as far as I can tell, it is. It seems like there is a general unspoken consensus in society that trying to compel sexually successful men to commit to women is a completely impossible, pie-in-the-sky idea that deserves no attention at all; that, in other words, expecting modern women to elicit commitment from the men they are attracted to is laughable lunacy.

The fundamental problem is that female desires are inherently impossible to fulfill. Each woman wants to be the exclusive wife of an alpha male, but there simply aren't enough alphas to go around. If Chad has a soft harem of five girls, and you force him to settle down, then he can only settle down with one of them, leaving the other four in the lurch. Whichever girl that dated Leonardo DiCaprio before turning 25 gets to keep him, deprives all other girls of Leonardo DiCaprio.

From Sexual Utopia in Power: The Feminist Revolt Against Civilization:

It is sometimes said that men are polygamous and women monogamous. Such a belief is often implicit in the writings of male conservatives: women only want good husbands, but heartless men use and abandon them. Some evidence does appear, prima facie, to support such a view. One 1994 survey found that “while men projected they would ideally like 6 sex partners over the next year, and 8 over the next two years, women responded that their ideal would be to have only one partner over the next year. And over two years? The answer, for women, was still one.” Is not this evidence that women are naturally monogamous?

No it is not. Women know their own sexual urges are unruly, but traditionally have had enough sense to keep quiet about it. A husband’s belief that his wife is naturally monogamous makes for his own peace of mind. It is not to a wife’s advantage, either, that her husband understand her too well: knowledge is power. In short, we have here a kind of Platonic “noble lie”—a belief which is salutary, although false.

It would be more accurate to say that the female sexual instinct is hypergamous. Men may have a tendency to seek sexual variety, but women have simple tastes in the manner of Oscar Wilde: they are always satisfied with the best. By definition, only one man can be the best. These different male and female “sexual orientations” are clearly seen among the lower primates, e.g., in a baboon pack. Females compete to mate at the top, males to get to the top.

Women, in fact, have a distinctive sexual utopia corresponding to their hypergamous instincts. In its purely utopian form, it has two parts: (1) she mates with her incubus, the imaginary perfect man, and (2) he “commits,” or ceases mating with all other women. This is the formula of much pulp romance fiction. The fantasy is strictly utopian, partly because no perfect man exists, but partly also because even if he did, it is logically impossible for him to be the exclusive mate of all the women who desire him

Alphaize the betas? Not going to work. Much of what makes men alpha is zero-sum; fame, status, leader of men, etc. We are all richer and taller than we were before the industrial revolution. Doesn't mean women are suddenly much more attracted to the average man; it just means they keep looking for the top 20%.

Women's wants cannot be satisfied, and we are going extinct trying. Since they are going to be unhappy no matter what, we might as well go back to what worked for the last 5000 years; forcibly pair off each woman while she still young, virginal, and fertile, to a beta who is willing to do the work of building and fighting to support his civilization.

The fundamental problem is that female desires are inherently impossible to fulfill.

I basically agree with you, but I think it's worth noting that male desires are similarly impossible to fulfill. Most men would instinctively like to have a harem of women, adding in a new, young one every few years kinda like the king of Saudi Arabia does. Obviously this desire is mathematically unreasonable.

The difference, of course, is that society does not take this sort of desire seriously. If a man said that his girlfriend/wife should accept him dating others while still remaining faithful, he would get rebuked. If he said that every man should be able to build a harem in this way, he would be laughed at. But fundamentally, this is no different from the situation where an average woman has a fling with a highly desirable man and complains that he won't commit to her. Except of course in terms of society's reaction.

I’ve come across two witticisms on Manosphere blogs regarding this issue.

Plate-spinning / soft harems = promiscuity, as preferred by men; serial monogamy = promiscuity, as preferred by women.

And: the woman’s ideal is a strong man who’s a frightening menace to everyone except her; the man’s ideal is a virgin bride who turns into his personal slut. Neither is one bit more realistic than the other.

Plate-spinning / soft harems = promiscuity, as preferred by men; serial monogamy = promiscuity, as preferred by women.

And: the woman’s ideal is a strong man who’s a frightening menace to everyone except her; the man’s ideal is a virgin bride who turns into his personal slut. Neither is one bit more realistic than the other.

Agreed, but I think that again it's worth noting society's reaction. Imagine male and female online dating profiles which expressed these sorts of preferences. Which one would get laughed at by society?

Similar question with male versus female promiscuity.

True. As far as society is generally concerned, serial monogamy is not promiscuity.

That seems reasonable enough at a glance, since it does not have many of the downsides of "typical" promiscuity (the destabilising effect of making it not theoretically possible to match ~everyone up, greater connectivity in the STD transmission graph, unclear paternity...).

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