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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   27061 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 2, 2026

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It makes sense once you figure out it's never been about protecting children. (Death threat = topic is governed by conflict theory.)

It's about protecting old women from the competition [for men and their resources] young women inherently provide, in co-operation with a subset of old men [fathers] being able to credibly threaten to lock up whoever their daughters are dating. Whether this is a good or bad thing is out of scope.

All of the other stuff it's claimed the blanket approach protects against is already covered by existing laws (rape/kidnapping, extortion, and anti-incest for the rest of it), so by POSIWID that's not what the AoC is for.

It's about protecting old women from the competition [for men and their resources] young women inherently provide

You are not convincing me of the rightness of your views here: "yeah, given my druthers, I'd much rather a hot little 15 year old than that 30 year old hag, I'm only 46, I'm in my prime!"

yeah, given my druthers, I'd much rather a hot little 15 year old than that 30 year old hag, I'm only 46, I'm in my prime!

Which is a situation that "30 year old hag" (in your words) would naturally like to avoid. By cutting the top competitors out of the market, the rest of the competitors stabilize their positions.

Yes, the best men (from the most mercenary "sex for resources" perspective) are still going to select right at the limit. But since that market is artificially limited, the total supply of women is constrained, thus the definition of any given quality of man "settling for" becomes a correspondingly older woman (as that's what they can afford; age is usually a proxy for this, which you acknowledge). If no AoC, "settling" would be 20 (or a 8/10), but with the limit in place "settling" may be 25-30 (or a 5/10).

In this way, the AoC protects the sociofinancial interests of all women over it, at the expense of men (in the "not allowed to fully utilize resources for sex" sense, typically rationalized in some form of "men are objectively better than women and so have a duty to them") and women under it (typically rationalized as "too immature", but importantly the AoC doesn't actually prohibit these women from having sex, it just makes it so that the only men they can sell sex to can't afford to buy it).

Is this an overly simplistic model of how men and women form relationships? Sure- most people aren't quite that mercenary- but there's always some element of this present in every relationship (and is the fear keeping the relevant actors up at night).

You are not convincing me of the rightness of your views here

On the contrary, I think you are already convinced. It's not a crime to be on the high side of political power.

Let me assure you, 30 year old women are not thinking of 15 year old girls as sexual rivals and competitors, they are thinking guys who want to fuck girls that age when the men are the same age as the 30 year old woman are disgusting creepy predators.

Are you, at whatever age you are now, really scared that a 15 year old boy is going to out-compete you in the employment marketplace? The men on here who argue about "all women have of value are their tits and cunt, and that's all they have to sell, and as soon as they're over 20 they're undesirable, so they want to ban nice ordinary normal men who have perfectly natural preferences for 15 year olds from getting access to 15 year olds" are not coming across as rational giant brains, they're coming across as "welcome to the inaugural meeting of the Mensa branch of PIE".

they are thinking guys who want to fuck girls that age when the men are the same age as the 30 year old woman are disgusting creepy predators.

And if it wasn't obviously in their interest to publicly believe this, I might believe this as well. Half the problem with the "debate" is that this claim isn't being made in good faith; you acknowledge this yourself through your last sentence despite you already having established in previous comments that you know drawing that equivalence is wrong.

So, when everything anyone will tell you is going to be biased in their favor in some way, what else can you do but return to monke initial conditions and reason about what people will say about this topic now assuming those initial conditions remain valid (ignoring stuff like technologies [contraceptives, all known STDs of consequence cured except for one] with which human instinct is not natively compatible)?

The men on here who argue about "all women have of value are their tits and cunt, and that's all they have to sell"

And the women on here argue that "all men have of value is their ability to physically produce, and that's all they have with which to buy" (or "what price they can fetch on the employment marketplace"). Given gender equality, both should be valid.

The reason for the emphasis on this is that it's the only part of the dynamic we can actually control and measure, much like 6/6/6 is for women (but somehow that's acceptable, which again is why I believe women who do this while believing it's evil when men do it are mistaken at best and actively lying at worst). And every relationship is affected by these dynamics to some degree; there's no getting away from it, we're all human, we like good things, and may God have mercy on our souls.

Is it the full picture? Of course not; people marry their friends all the time to the point it's a meme, women actually seek out casual sex (contrary to an asymmetric biological imperative that they shouldn't), men actually seek out commitment, etc.- but to say that an age beginning with 1 or 2, or a total income that has 5 zeroes in it, isn't a measurable starting point at least some of the time (or at least an attractor, if not the primary one), and isn't the dominating portion of it from people who are working in a way compatible with their instincts? I think that's likely to be destructive.

really scared that a 15 year old boy is going to out-compete you in the employment marketplace?

They'll outcompete me in the dating marketplace for cougars and tomboys (if male sexuality in a woman, then they're probably looking for someone young in that unrealized-potential-is-attractive way); why even live?

if you honestly think forty year old women want fifteen year old boys, I don't know how to continue this conversation. Yeah, there are female predators out there as there are male ones, and they're both sick and depraved, not "this is simply evopsych in action".

I do have to wonder, how many of the gentlemen on here with wives/partners, are willing to go into real life and not just argue on The Motte with "Let's face it, honey, if I got the chance and I wouldn't end up charged with statutory rape, I'd dump you in the morning for a fifteen year old to have my babies and cook my meals. That's just evolutionary psychology, science has proved it! And then when she ages out at nineteen or so, I'd dump her for a newer model in her turn. After all, over twenty in a female is going from 8/10 to 5/10 for guys, sad but true, nothing I can do about it".

A long time ago I used to follow the Youtube channel of The Young Turks. (Bear with me please.) The host Cenk Uygur was commenting on the clearly accelerating social trend of relatively hot female high school teachers in their 30s and 40s seducing their male students. He offered an explanation that seemed to be right on point. There is only one thing in this world that a teenage boy can offer a grown woman but a grown man will never do so: undivided attention. It's a temptation many of them can't resist, as their lives are deeply frustrated in that area.

There does seem to be a worrying increase in this, and I don't think it's "because my male students can give me undivided attention" (have you ever tried to teach a class of teenage boys?)

It's a combination of stupid idiot mentally ill women taking advantage of boys who are (due to modern standards of living) tall enough and physically developed enough but not emotionally or mentally mature enough for sexual relationships, to be fooled into "I really love you" and where societal standards do tend to laugh about it happening to boys and make salacious jokes about "I wish my hot teacher had hit on me when I was that age".

It's not funny and it can be every bit as traumatic as if it was older man/younger girl or older man/younger boy. Again, I see a lot of complaining on here about the attitude that Women Are Wonderful, and this is one area where it does damage: it is not taken seriously because even adult women are probably not capable of physically over-powering a teenage boy, so the view is "if he really didn't want it, he could fight her off". That's not how manipulation works!

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I think it's less "undivided attention" and more "absence of the open hostility/irony-poisoning typical between grown men and grown women[1]", where undivided attention is a [beneficial?] side-effect of that.

On the female side, I can't think of any larger refutation of "sex for resources" than intentionally going after men who don't even have those resources, and so are selecting for earnestness/potential more than anything else. It also throws out the protection that AoC is supposed to provide [to them as a class], since this is basically the only case where the risk is higher to the woman than it is to the man. (Not that they won't be arrested for sending nudes of themselves, but still.)

It's easier on the men, perhaps, since they won't even get selected if they aren't like that and they're already being frustrated by their cohort of young women only attracted to older men anyway. Perhaps it disadvantages young women once they hit 30 and this is basically allowing the good men to be taken out of the pool they'll be depending on later, but it's not acceptable for women to expect this and for the decent men to be forced to wait and have zero options until then.

It's a temptation many of them can't resist, as their lives are deeply frustrated in that area.

Yeah, can't imagine why that would be.

[1] The definition of "grown", of course, being "has become aware of, and internalized, that relationships are sex-for-resources because [reasons]". This is perhaps the main change puberty makes to your brain.

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In this way, the AoC protects the sociofinancial interests of all women over it, at the expense of ... women under it (typically rationalized as "too immature", but importantly the AoC doesn't actually prohibit these women from having sex, it just makes it so that the only men they can sell sex to can't afford to buy it).

It actually also protects the interests of women under it: selective enforcement empowers women to "sell sex" at its peak and then exploit the illegality of the men's action as leverage over the those they "sell" it to.

Blackmail material is frequently of negative utility to the one with it, insofar as it gives a murder motive to the subject of the material.

Yes, it has high tail risks (and rewards). I think the average expected value of blackmail is usually still positive though, particularly when supported by the legal system rather than opposed by it.

True; that's why the AoC is currently infinite (and the women still honoring this compromise are generally seen as suckers). I think I could be more precise in saying that they can't sell sex in the context of a relationship that isn't purely exploitative on the woman's part, though since that was the entire point of establishing the AoC in the first place...

All sex is rape [as women obviously can't be trusted not to call sex they regretted rape] + woman forced to marry her rapist [provided this didn't occur where anyone could have reasonably heard her cry rape] is a stable compromise, which is probably why traditionalist societies did that.

Raising the age of consent(it used to be, basically, the beginning of puberty) is a remnant of older laws intended to protect unmarried young women from older guys lying to them to get laid. There were a lot of these laws in the past, a high age of consent isn't an adequate replacement.

IMO you do need an AoC, although the argument that sways me is contingent on the AIDS pandemic. Specifically, consent without knowing about HIV isn't fully informed, which means you need sex ed, which means you can't have 5-year-olds consenting to sex because lol good luck getting them to comprehend sex ed.

16-18 is way too high, though. If teens are lying about their ages to get sex, your AoC is too high. Sex ed for preteens and AoC at 13-14 is what I support. And if you get rid of AIDS I'd be willing to abolish it - it's the only one left that is a big deal (the rest are either curable, vaccinable, or so minor nobody really cares).

AoC at 13-14

Don't make me quote The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon at you!

Yes, it was sensationalist yellow journalism of its day, but it was also true that rich guys were having young girls pimped out by their poor parents to them, then at rape trials claiming "no, it was totes consensual" and getting away with it as the age of consent was that low. Hence, the raising of the age of consent from 13 to 16 by Parliament:

Under the Offences against the Person Act 1861, the age of consent was 12 (reflecting the common law), it was a felony to have unlawful carnal knowledge of a girl under the age of 10, and it was a misdemeanour to have unlawful carnal knowledge of a girl between the ages of 10 and 12. In addition, the 1861 Act had made the penalty for indecent assault or attempted rape of a girl below the consensual age two years' imprisonment. Although the age of consent was subsequently raised to 13 upon amendments made to the 1861 act with the Offences Against the Person Act 1875, these pieces of legislation were enacted to protect mainly the very young and the very wealthy.

Take it away, Mr. Stead!

London's lust annually uses up many thousands of women, who are literally killed and made away with—living sacrifices slain in the service of vice. That may be inevitable, and with that I have nothing to do. But I do ask that those doomed to the house of evil fame shall not be trapped into it unwillingly, and that none shall be beguiled into the chamber of death before they are of an age to read the inscription above the portal—"All hope abandon ye who enter here." If the daughters of the people must be served up as dainty morsels to minister to the passions of the rich, let them at least attain an age when they can understand the nature of the sacrifice which they are asked to make. And if we must cast maidens—not seven, but seven times seven— nightly into the jaws of vice, let us at least see to it that they assent to their own immolation, and are not unwilling sacrifices procured by force and fraud.

That is surely not too much to ask from the dissolute rich. Even considerations of self-interest might lead our rulers to assent to so modest a demand. For the hour of Democracy has struck, and there is no wrong which a man resents like this. If it has not been resented hitherto, it is not because it was not felt. The Roman Republic was founded by the rape of Lucrece, but Lucrece was a member of one of the governing families. A similar offence placed Spain under the domination of the Moors, but there again the victim of Royal licence was the daughter of a Count. But the fathers and brothers whose daughters and sisters are purchased like slaves, not for labour, but for lust, are now at last enrolled among the governing classes—a circumstance full of hope for the nation, but by no means without menace for a class. Many of the French Revolutionists were dissolute enough, but nothing gave such an edge to the guillotine as the memory of the Parc aux Cerfs; and even in our time the horrors that attended the suppression of the Commune were largely due to the despair of the femme vengeresse. Hence, unless the levying of the maiden-tribute in London is shorn of its worst abuses—at present, as I shall show, flourishing unchecked—resentment, which might be appeased by reform, may hereafter be the virus of a social revolution. It is the one explosive which is strong enough to wreck the Throne.

To avoid all misapprehension as to the object with which I propose to set forth the ghastly and criminal features of this infernal traffic, I wish to say emphatically at the outset that, however strongly I may feel as to the imperative importance of morality and chastity, I do not ask for any police interference with the liberty of vice. I ask only for the repression of crime. Sexual immorality, however evil it may be in itself or in its consequences, must be dealt with not by the policeman but by the teacher, so long as the persons contracting are of full age, are perfectly free agents, and in their sin are guilty of no outrage on public morals. Let us by all means apply the sacred principles of free trade to trade in vice, and regulate the relations of the sexes by the higgling of the market and the liberty of private contract. Whatever may be my belief as to the reality and the importance of a transcendental theory of purity in the relations between man and woman, that is an affair for the moralist, not for the legislator.

So far from demanding any increased power for the police, I would rather incline to say to the police, "Hands off," when they interfere arbitrarily with the ordinary operations of the market of vice. But the more freely we permit to adults absolute liberty to dispose of their persons in accordance with the principles of private contract and free trade, the more stringent must be our precautions against the innumerable crimes which spring from vice, as vice itself springs from the impure imaginings of the heart of man. These crimes flourish on every side, unnoticed and unchecked—if, indeed, they are not absolutely encouraged by the law, as they are certainly practised by some legislators and winked at by many administrators of the law. To extirpate vice by Act of Parliament is impossible; but because we must leave vice free that is no reason why we should acquiesce helplessly in the perpetration of crime.

You can cover that with child labour laws.

The weird thing about reading things in isolation from the mod queue is my first thought was "What the hell did Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez do now?"

reading things in isolation from the mod queue

(or from the firehose page)

You can't just "get rid of AIDS" while tolerating the #1 enabler of it: homosexuality.

Making a vaccine or a cure would work. That's what removed syphilis, gonorrhea, and hepatitis as problem STDs.

(Technically, there already is a cure for HIV - bone marrow transplant from someone with CCR5-Δ32 - but that cure is useless because either you take such doses of immunosuppressants that you effectively have AIDS anyway, or you get graft vs. host disease and die even quicker. I mean a useful cure.)

EDIT: I've seen some reports that getting a bone marrow transplant from someone without the mutation, and getting graft vs. host disease, might also work. Still not a useful cure.

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