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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 29, 2025

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Well duh, 'you can just harass our daughters who did nothing wrong and followed the respectability rules in place in our society' resembles no historical society that has ever existed. Including in very patriarchal ones; what do you think the Taliban would have done to these boys?

There is a reason that, despite being skeptical of things like the 19th amendment, women's financial independence, women in pants, etc, I do not align myself with the faction on the motte which spits out spicy takes on women and then retreats to 'but but double standard! Boys just have to take it!' yeah, they do. Aside from the politically correct but very obvious fact that the statement 'men and boys are stronger than women and girls' does not need qualification(it applies psychologically as well as physically), you, uh, know what women do when they spend their girlhood being bullied and harassed by whatever boys want to do so? It generally looks like radical feminism; the breakdown in family formation in Latin America precedes the hyper-woke feminist wave in the region(and also the area's drop in TFR- these women appear to have retained conservative family values longer than their menfolk). Getting outraged about girls being abused and harassed with no recourse, far more outraged than in the case of boys, is a normal and healthy thing to do.

Yes, if a group of older girls doctored innocuous photos of a thirteen year old boy to be NSFW and started sharing them, this would be a bad thing and deserve to be punished. I am confident that you will not be able to find an example of this happening(you will, of course, be able to find examples of teenaged boys voluntarily sending NSFW content of themselves to young ladies who don't particularly want to receive any). The asymmetry of the sexes goes both ways. You can call be patronizing, but I'm not wrong.

Yes, if a group of older girls doctored innocuous photos of a thirteen year old boy to be NSFW and started sharing them, this would be a bad thing and deserve to be punished. I am confident that you will not be able to find an example of this happening(you will, of course, be able to find examples of teenaged boys voluntarily sending NSFW content of themselves to young ladies who don't particularly want to receive any). The asymmetry of the sexes goes both ways. You can call be patronizing, but I'm not wrong.

A group of girls in my high school were literally sharing real pictures of me nude as a child, family photos taken by my parents when I was in preschool, laughing while making lewd comments about my penis every time they saw me. They were never punished for it, nor were the pictures confiscated by teachers or other adults outside school. I was told to just ignore their harassment. "Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words [pictures] will never hurt me." I can only imagine things have gotten worse now that digital images makes sharing so much easier.

Girls become sexually aware much earlier than boys, while they are still on-par with or even stronger than the boys, and sexually harass them mercilessly until the boys reach puberty and the trend reverses. The vast majority of men and boys who sexually assault/harass women were themselves victimized as children. Maybe if we took a little care for protecting them when they were vulnerable, they wouldn't lash out later in life. Maybe, if we taught them by our protective actions of them that such behavior is wrong, they would believe us. But no, we instead simply say "It's different" when women and girls do it to boys, tell them to treat women the same as men, and wonder why such victimized boys don't give a shit about victimizing girls in turn.

I think I should state a clear position rather than just responding.

Fairness, and broad equality of burdens, is important to me. This means I'm somewhat happy to go with any one of:

  1. We put exactly the same burdens on men and women, and expect the same behaviour from them both. I don't think this is wise, because of innate differences and consequent disparate impact, but it's fair.
  2. We decide that men and women have different natures, and thus should play divergent roles to at least some degree, but try to keep the burden somewhat fair. Both men and women are punished for poor behaviour and/or failing to fulfill their role.
  3. We are paternalists and decide that men are stronger and women weaker and more delicate. Men are given more burdens but are also given more power, respect and rewards. This applies at the bottom of society as well as at the top. Women defer to men.

To my mind we live in a society that nominally believes in equality (1) but rewards womens' hurt feelings with all possible aid plus harsh coercion/punishment for men, and rewards the difficulties of men or even physical violence towards them with contempt. What makes me very angry is when traditionalists, on the Motte or elsewhere, shrug and say, 'well, we might advocate for (2) or (3) but in the current political climate, all we can do is make sure that men hold up their side of the bargain and women will have to do their own". In practice this means that traditionalists will happily pile onto men with the rest of society, and then make awkward faces and back off whenever women do something that these traditionalists are supposed to be against. Self-declared traditionalists become indistinguishable from the most sadistic of man-hating feminists.

By contrast, I and at least some of the 'double-standard' Mottizens advocate for (2) or (3) but acknowledge that for now we are supposed to be living in (1) and demand to be treated fairly by that standard.

To return to the object at hand, I am quite happy with punishing the boy for bad behaviour, just not giving them a violent beating. Likewise, I think the girl should be punished for instigating a violent beating for a boy who had not actually physically harmed her and also "punching and stomping" them. Likewise, since I believe men and women are different (2) I doubt that you will find this exact scenario reversed but there are plenty of cases where girls gleefully ruin a boy's reputation and make him miserable for fun and I think that they should be punished just like the boy in this scenario.