site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 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.

2
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I was catching up on the quality contribution threads for last month (yes, I'm very late...) and I ran across this post from @Amadan.

I found this part specifically was interesting in the broader context of the discussion:

Assuming, of course, that their standards are not too high... You don't want fat Sally the checkout clerk or carousel-riding Cathy, fine. You insist on a 20-something slim attractive virgin who is agreeable and submissive? Hmm, good luck if you're not a 6/6/6. (Or a Mormon.)

One of these things is not like the other.

For men:

  • Six figures: quite difficult to do. Statistically only a fourth of the men in the US achieve this (and of course this assumes that the requirement won't change if all men achieved this).
  • Six feet: mostly driven by genetics and childhood nutrition. And only achieved by 14.5% of men in the US (according to Google).
  • Six pack: this presumably any man could achieve with sufficient exercise (and diet control) though it might be difficult to do concurrently with a six figure job.

For women:

  • 20-something: every woman will be a 20-something for ten years of her life.
  • Slim/attractive (they're mostly the same thing): partially driven by genetics? But still, exercise and diet go a long way here.
  • Virgin who is agreeable and submissive: these are all completely within the median woman's control. As they say, manners cost nothing.

Is it just me or is this scale a bit tilted?

(Apologies for responding so late and in a top-level comment; I didn't want this getting buried in a weeks old thread.)

Indeed. I have commented on this before:

Maybe women now do have ridiculous standards. But so do men.

Women's marriage standards are "six feet, six figures, six inches." Men's marriage standards are "teenage virgin". These are not the same. Every woman was a teenage virgin once (modulo the few who got broken in as lolis). Most men never meet the three sixes. There isn't a possible world where most women get what they want (becoming the exclusive wife of a top man); there is a possible world where most men get what they want, and we lived in it from the abolition of polygamy until the sexual revolution.

Never forget what they took from you.

And:

Yeah, great post. If you want a hot, relatively chaste, young, smart right-leaning woman, that’s not impossible, but you better be the equivalent of that as a man, namely a successful, attractive, charming, relatively young guy who probably has similar values, which in the case of chastity is likely some kind of religious conservatism. Young Mormon men seem to have no issue marrying chaste(ish) pretty blondes who will vote for Romney and deliver 3-4 children, because that’s their milieu. Too often some chubby suburban secular engineer whose primary hobbies are video games and online political discussion thinks he deserves the same.

The fact that you think these are equivalent requirements shows how ridiculously lopsided the sexual marketplace is against men. All a woman needs to do is be young and chaste, which is something every girl was at some point, and vote for a party that half the country supports. Meanwhile, a man who has spent decades studying and working to become an engineer or a lawyer is told "whoops, sorry, that's not enough, you also need to have interesting (to women) hobbies, be physically fit, and have a handsome face; I'm sure you will find time and energy to do all while you are working at a ridiculously demanding intellectual job, and also you better get all of that done way before you turn 35 because otherwise the idea of you marrying a 23 year old is just creepy!"

In other words, every aspect of a man's life, from his career to his hobbies to his body, must be optimized for attracting women, and it is no one's fault but his own if he fails.

"Women don't care about your struggles, they wait at the finish line and fuck the winners." -- Richard Cooper, The Unplugged Alpha

I know it's tempting to go meta and do some kind of both-sides moral equivalence thing here, but I think that's just wrong. Female sexuality is fundamentally stupid and evil in a way that male sexuality simply isn't.

I know it's tempting to go meta and do some kind of both-sides moral equivalence thing here, but I think that's just wrong. Female sexuality is fundamentally stupid and evil in a way that male sexuality simply isn't

I wouldn't go that far but I do think that polygamy is the male equivalent of unreasonable female sexual desires. Just as it's unreasonable for an average woman to want commitment from a highly desirable man, so too is it unreasonable for a man to want a harem. Unreasonable in the sense that the math simply doesn't work. It's not achievable for more than an ultra-small minority.

Even so, we are all descendants of (1) men who did in fact have multiple wives; and (2) average women who nonetheless were married to high-status men. And obviously this evolutionary past heavily informs the sexual desires of both men and women.

The difference, though, is that for the most part, men accept that they are not supposed to engage in harem-building. They may still try, but if they publicly complain about their lack of success, society won't tell them that they are perfectly fine and if they are having difficulties it's because women are unreasonably demanding exclusivity.

By contrast, if an average woman complains about not being able to achieve commitment from a highly desirable man, she will be told that her desires are reasonable and if there's a problem it's with men.

So I would say that (1) female sexuality is stupid and evil; (2) male sexuality is also stupid and evil; (3) for the most part, the stupid and evil aspects of male sexuality are kept in check by societal pressure; and (4) our modern gynocentric/feminist society has greatly lessened the checks on female sexuality, so that (5) it does in fact seem like "[f]emale sexuality is fundamentally stupid and evil in a way that male sexuality simply isn't."