site banner
PaperclipPerfector  8d ago (text post)   31504 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 5, 2026

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.

5
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

You might say gay men arranging to have sex with each other in a toilet shows how disgusting gay men are, but I'm pretty sure it shows how much women class up the sexual experience. There would be a 10000x increase in straight couples having sex on oily cardboard in alleyways if women were down with it.

I never planned for so many of my sexual encounters to be on high thread count Egyptian cotton sheets in nice clean rooms but I'm glad women are there to carry the load on this one.

EDIT: I just remembered a story. A friend of mine was visiting my city. He was staying in a nice hotel. The next day his girlfriend was scheduled to arrive and they would go back to his hotel room. So, that morning he made his bed and scattered rose petals on it to dial up the romance. He then met up with his girlfriend, had dinner and drinks and took her back to the hotel room. The bed was not how he left it! Apparently, housekeeping had come in, seen the clumsily arranged rose petals, seen the shitty way he made the bed, and undid the whole thing, made the bed so that it was crisp and perfect and then more tastefully scattered the rose petals.

I like to imagine that the female hotel housekeeper couldn't even bear the thought of his girlfriend being fucked on messy sheets.

I'm glad women are there to carry the load

No one had better laugh at that! Not even a snicker! We're better than that, guys.

I can only hope your buddy left a nice tip. That kind of thoughtful approach to hospitality is on the outs.

Now, personally, I'm not "disgusted" by gay male sexuality, at least not in the usual sense. It's more confusing to me, I can no more relate to the desire to have my back blown out by a hairy Greek bull than I can to the idea of getting off to a woman's armpits. I am also deeply jealous, buggers live the straight-man dream, as much sex as they can stomach with an unending cock carousel a single swipe away. A mid gay man gets ten times the action of a top 5% straight dude, with 10% the hassle.

I can no more relate to the desire to have my back blown out by a hairy Greek bull

So, I'm not sure that gay men find each other as attractive as straight men find women.

More story time: when I was younger I thought I could be gay and got really wasted one night and visited a gay bathhouse[1]. And there were men everywhere in towels making eye contact each other considering hooking up. All you had to do was meet and go to one of the many rooms nearby to fuck. And it was NYC so everyone was fairly attractive and fit. It was actually as efficient a system as it could possibly be. But something I noticed was that there was actually much, much less hooking up than you'd expect. Don't get me wrong it was a den of depravity, but men would cruise past one another for a long, long time before they found someone they wanted to actually have sex with.

I'm very sure if it was a room of half men and half women, every woman wearing a skimpy towel that was at least as fit and put together as the gay men in my bath house were, would be propositioned 5x a minute.

Gay men can be sex pigs but there's some other dimension to having sex that's clearly more complicated than if attractive man then sex.

  1. I learned that night that I was absolutely not gay.

You may be interested in the infamous Red Means No review from last year’s contest.

So you already know that at a typical orgy the median attendee doesn’t have sex, and the majority that do have sex only do so with the partner(s) they came with. You’re also aware that an RMN orgy averages 5+ sexual interactions per person, making it a breakthrough in modern orgy technology. Sounds great on paper, but what is it actually like to go to one of these?

If those are the stats for orgies, perhaps the bathhouse was pretty competitive.

That was... something. I have been around the block a time or two, but orgies where you pretend-rape women are a tier of degeneracy I have never really seen before.

Fair, though the median orgy has the failure mode where the average attendee is unattractively old or ugly or gives off psycho vibes.

Can’t say I’ve been to a gay bathhouse, but I’ve been to plenty of gay clubs. Sometimes it’s to go meet a girl who’s with her gay friends, because I couldn’t talk her into ditching her friends and coming over. Sometimes it’s me who brings the group to a gay club because I’d like to shake off a gay friend or gay friends of a girl I’m trying to bang.

I’m actually way more down to meet a girl who’s at a gay club with her gay friends than at a regular club with a mixed group or just her girlfriends. Gay friends play the least defense and are the easiest to shake off.

Sometimes a girl’s straight male friends will befriend you, especially if your presence occupies a potential cockblocker—the girl you're trying to bang—in which case you all suddenly become mutual grassroots wingmen. However, sometimes straight male friends can be more hostile or territorial. Understandably so, as oftentimes they’re subsidizing the bill or splitting it with the other guys in the group. Few guys would be happy about sponsoring a girl’s night out only for her to get poached away to poundtown by some other random guy. However, there’s a limit to how overtly they’re willing to try cockblocking since they don’t want to look like a jealous cuck. They’ll eventually leave you be as they see you’re not that easily outmogged and go off on their own quest to get laid.

Girlfriends are more of a double-edged sword, more feast or famine. Girls care more about the opinions of their girlfriends than straight male friends. If girlfriends wish to try to cockblock, they’ll be way more shameless than straight male friends in doing so. They’ll stick to the girl you’re trying to bang like gum and help pester and shit-test you to death. They may even try to pressure you to pay their bill. Girls don't have the burden of performance that guys do and girls have automatic social currency that guys don't, so girlfriends can throw hissy fits and manufacture drama to cockblock you in a way that would be social kamikaze for a straight male friend. On the other hand, if girlfriends are flirty with you, it can skyrocket the girl you’re trying to bang’s attraction toward you thanks to female mate-choice copying. Additionally, the girl will then be more willing to leave with you to get you away from her friends.

But yeah, I too have Noticed that the vibes of gay clubs tend be to tamer and less horny than what straight men might have in their heads as a stereotype. I’ve chalked it up to gay men having more of an abundance mentality than straight men.

For a straight guy, if he doesn’t strike while the iron is hot with a given girl, who knows when the next opportunity might come with a new girl. For a gay guy, the next nut with a new man is always around the corner. The gay guy is also more likely to have recently gotten laid, perhaps earlier that same day or night. He might still be recharging, still in the refractory period from his last romp.

The sense of urgency is different between straight and gay men. It’s always two-minutes-left-in-the-4th-needing-a-touchdown for a straight guy trying to seal the deal with a chick he hasn’t banged yet. For a gay guy, it’s always pre-game warmups.

Being a gay man is like a superpower. Operating under a permanent state of post-nut clarity if you so choose, but otherwise still having the mental hardware of a man—plus the time, money, energy, and headache saved from not having to deal with women in sexual/relationship contexts.

Being a gay man is like a superpower. Operating under a permanant state of post-nut clarity if you so choose, but otherwise still having the mental hardware of a man—plus the time, money, energy, and headache saved from not having to deal with women in sexual/relationship contexts.

It's a plausible theory, but why go to a gay bath house if you have post-nut clarity? They're not even bath houses in the traditional sense. You'd hate to just chill out there if you're not trying to get laid.

A gay bar or gay club is still fun even if you're straight and not horny. A gay bath house is not.

Speculating off your description of the NYC bathhouse you attended and my background vibe:

Even gay clubs, including those in NYC, generally aren't open 24/7 (much less having a decent crowd 24/7). Why not just chill out at a gay bathhouse on occasion in your free time? If some guy catches your fancy while you're chilling, you have the option of flagging him down for a session in one of the side rooms. If not, not a big deal, there's always some other day.

I meant "bath house" is doing a lot of work. They're not, like, a sauna and a hot tub and other spa things. This one was just a shower area and also hallways to rooms. No real place to chill.

I learned that night that I was absolutely not gay.

I can only encourage self-discovery.

Now, you have to remember that gay men are satiated! The regularity with which Genghis Khan fucks his bountiful and bodacious harem might start off strong, but will inevitably taper due to boredom. On the other hand, if you suddenly gained access to the lady's quarters, you'd spray seed while the sun shines, or some other incredibly mixed metaphor.

I'm very sure if it was a room of half men and half women, every woman wearing a skimpy towel that was at least as fit and put together as the gay men in my bath house were, would be propositioned 5x a minute.

This is a rare occurrence. Fit gay men can go to a bathhouse whenever they feel like it. Hetero men in the former scenario would make the most of it with a scarcity mindset, gay men might well be bored and there just to do something more interesting than rubbing one out.

Same reply as for @Sloot

https://www.themotte.org/post/3442/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/398788?context=8#context

You might say gay men arranging to have sex with each other in a toilet shows how disgusting gay men are, but I'm pretty sure it shows how much women class up the sexual experience. There would be a 10000x increase in straight couples having sex on oily cardboard in alleyways if women were down with it.

Agreed. Male homosexuality just shows you what male sexuality looks like when it's unconstrained.

I actually disagree and I wonder if this line is just propaganda that millennials have been fed our whole lives.

It seems to be that a large percentage (30%, 60%, 90%?) of gay men truly enjoy being deviant. The gayness is part of their expression of being counter to normal behavior. Many seem to lament the mainstreaming of gayness having taken a lot of the fun out of it. Deviant, abnormal sex is explicitly part of the appeal.

It seems to be that a large percentage (30%, 60%, 90%?) of gay men truly enjoy being deviant.

I'm sure there are some, but celebration of deviancy is often a reaction to being stigmatized. If you're an American homosexual older than ~30, you grew up in an environment where casual homophobia was virtually guaranteed even in fairly liberal environments. Much of the point of Pride was(/is) to be in-your-face in reaction to people telling you to stay in the closet (or die) because you were a moral abomination.

Many seem to lament the mainstreaming of gayness having taken a lot of the fun out of it.

See also: Taliban fighters complain about having to work in an office instead of waging jihad. There's always going to be some people for whom the struggle was a source of meaning and excitement. The normalization of homosexuality means less interest in flamboyantly transgressive behavior as a show of defiance and more PTA meetings.

See also: Taliban fighters complain about having to work in an office instead of waging jihad.

Bro.

I feel their pain.

It seems to be that a large percentage (30%, 60%, 90%?) of gay men truly enjoy being deviant. The gayness is part of their expression of being counter to normal behavior. Many seem to lament the mainstreaming of gayness having taken a lot of the fun out of it. Deviant, abnormal sex is explicitly part of the appeal.

I wouldn't rule out the possibility that there are a lot of straight men who would be deviant if they could get a woman down with it.

I've spoken with a middle aged straight man who admitted to me he was constantly fantasizing about some pretty out there fantasy fetish scenarios involving his wife, but who knew from the few times he had brought them up that she would never come around to trying any of them. Who knows how many people are in marriages or relationships where they quietly settle for never getting the deviancy they crave?

We often only know about historical fetishism due to (possibly libelous) accounts of rulers with fetishes. Who knows how old some popular internet fetishes were historically? Maybe gay guys are more likely to bring up their deviant desires, and thus more likely to find someone at least game to try them out.

Where gay men have deviant sex with one another, straight men are balls deep in weirdo niche porn and gooning for hours.

Degeneracy finds a way. There's still a case to be made that solo, self-destroying degeneracy is Less Wrong (lulz) than inducing others to degeneracy with you.

Sure, lots of gay men enjoy being deviant, no argument here. But I'm curious how many straight men would be as deviant as that, were it not for a dearth of willing participants. I would hazard a guess that most straight men who've watched porn have watched and masturbated to pornographic videos depicting deviant sex acts that they've never had the opportunity to perform themselves. I would likewise hazard a guess that most men watching these videos would jump at the chance to perform these sex acts IRL if the opportunity presented itself. Like, if you were to conduct a survey asking straight people "would you participate in a gangbang if the opportunity presented itself and there was no risk of contracting an STD or impregnating someone/being impregnated?", I suspect the proportion of men who would answer in the affirmative would vastly outnumber the proportion of women (which is appropriate because... well, you get the idea).

Likewise, look at the kind of shit exceptionally wealthy men get up to (Arab princes, Epstein's clients etc.). You could interpret this as proof that wealthy people are all perverted sociopaths, or that power tends to corrupt; alternatively, you could interpret it as evidence that most straight men have fantasies that would strike the average woman as deviant, and only the sufficiently wealthy have the purchasing power to make their fantasies a reality.

At the same time, there are enough women to maintain the market for their own brand of sexually deviant books as well, yet we don't hear about men who have women waiting in line for a sliver of their attention.

Wait, actually, we do. They are called cult leaders. They swim in poontang. I don't know if having fantasies about jacking minotaurs off makes it more likely that the same woman will join a cult, though.

Hypothesis: Some portion of men we (and they themselves) would call gay are not so much gay as hypersexual. If you want to have anonymous bathhouse group sex and gloryholes, men are just your only option. They are more accurately bathhouse-sexual than anything else and the gender of their partners more or less just follows as a consequence.

For the most part, market forces are such that if you can have sex with men you will have sex with men. In the same way that if you're neutral between shopping at Target and shopping at Neiman Marcus, you'll probably buy all your clothing at Target.

Sure, but that understanding (which I agree is the correct one) would, if adopted, have negative effects on the interests of:

  • Traditionalists, who claim that gayness causes bathhouse-sexuality (this is an instinctual reaction to gayness for a few reasons, plus the New Testament lists them separately)
  • Non-bathhouse gays, where the Overton window protecting scoundrels bathhouse-sexuality provides broad cover for most bedroom activities
  • Progressives, who claim zero correlation simply to spite the traditionalists (most progressives lack the same instinctual negative reaction to gayness anyway [i.e. they're women, or were raised nearly exclusively by them], and it's natural/easy for them to tolerate something that isn't an injury)
  • Liberals, who want to conserve the fact there was a time in living memory when it was possible to do this with women too

Which has the ultimate effect of no group really wanting to be less wrong about this until they're forced by bad luck to address a bad actor.

When was it possible to do this with women too?

Around 1970.

I think you're describing bisexual men. If someone is equally attracted to both genders, but one of them is much easier to grab a hold of than the other, it makes sense to go for them first and then settle for women when you want to get married or go for the more socially acceptable option.

And lesbian bed death shows you the same for many women

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