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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 9, 2026

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I think it's simpler to just say that some large fraction of men would jump at the opportunity to have sex with an unconscious woman if there were no consequences. This is the nature of men. We have known this since the beginning of time. Most adults understand this already. The vast majority of men know this, because some part of them has the same urge, or if not, they are familiar with the corrupting force of male sexuality in general, and this particular manifestation is hardly a surprise. Women largely know this force, too, because they have been told of it, or because they have been targeted by it, though they sometimes pretend not to know.

Have we really known this? What large fraction?

It would be uncharitable to say you are typical-minding here, and I am not trying to establish myself as some kind of saint by saying "What the fuck?" but really... what the fuck? To me, having sex with an unconscious woman would have pretty much zero appeal no matter how hot she is, and I have a hard time believing I'm some weird undersexed outlier. It's not even just about it being rape (which it obviously is), but it would also be like fucking a RealDoll, which I know some men do also but I have always thought has to be the absolute last refuge of the desperate and pathetic.

Obviously there are men who get off on it (I know there are men who will stick their dicks in anything warm), but I'm unconvinced, even if this guy found 72 of them, that they aren't akin to rapists and pedophiles... sure, we all know these urges exist in the male population, and they aren't super-rare, but neither are they... normal.

It's harder for me to say why women aren't eager to bring this up as ammunition in the gender wars. Doesn't this vindicate the radical feminists?

It only vindicates them if you agree with them that this is in fact the natural state of men and we'd all do it if given the chance and that every husband secretly hates his wife. That's certainly a view unironically held in parallel, horseshoe-like, by a certain strain of radical feminists and ultra-misogynists, but the problem is that they are largely wrong about men being amoral rapacious monsters barely(unfairly) held in check by society.

And perhaps it's simply that there is nothing to fight about. There is no toxoplasma, no scissor statement

Well, yeah. I doubt even our he-man woman-haters will be able to muster much of a "This wasn't actually bad" argument. How do you defend it? She was unconscious so she didn't really suffer? She's female and therefore should be available for any use to which her husband sees fit? You have to go pretty far out there to defend the indefensible. Some things don't engender disagreement even between liberals and conservatives.

To me, having sex with an unconscious woman would have pretty much zero appeal no matter how hot she is, and I have a hard time believing I'm some weird undersexed outlier. It's not even just about it being rape (which it obviously is), but it would also be like fucking a RealDoll, which I know some men do also but I have always thought has to be the absolute last refuge of the desperate and pathetic.

I’d add my 2 cents from a dudebro perspective.

If you’re a toxic shitty dudebro with a friend group of the same sort, you’re likely to regularly engage in acts that you basically consider to be pranks. Either you do this in a pair or in a group, or by yourself, but also in the latter case you’re mostly doing it to gain bragging rights and form memories with other shithead dudebros.

Some examples I can think of: acts of vandalism and theft typically associated with teenage delinquency. (Smashing up the mailbox of that neighbor you hate. Stealing a car while drunk, going on a joyride at night, abandoning it at some desolate place. Stealing and shoplifting for the hell of it.) Pulling pranks on your loser computer nerd classmates and bullying them. Getting blackout drunk and boning the town slut. Getting some loser broad drunk/drugged and spit-and-roasting her with your bro. Lying to some woman you picked up that you’ll use a rubber and then doing her bareback. Going on an exotic vacation and boning some whorey tourist girls. Picking up some fat girl who’s clearly desperate and without self-esteem, debasing her sexually (but still consensually, at least in the everyday normie sense of the word) and never calling her afterwards. Jizzing on your girlfriend’s hair even though you promised her you won’t do that. And boning some unconscious / passed-out girl.

The sole reason you’re engaging in any of this is so that you can brag and tell stories about it to your bros, have a good laugh about it and down another round of drinks, and forget about it until you bring it up again sometime later. It’s not that you’re proud about it; on some level you do realize that all of this is kind of wrong, and that you’d never do this to a woman you do care about, or you imagine you would care about. And it’s also assumed that you’ll embellish or simply make up some details. After all, it’s done for laughs, to have fun. Your bros know it, and you know that they do the same things, the embellishment included. It’s basically a male bonding ritual. And it’s not like sleazy women don’t have something similar anyway.

To me, having sex with an unconscious woman would have pretty much zero appeal no matter how hot she is

I am a man who happens to have this fetish, and indeed I am a man who related this fetish to my gf, she thought it was hot, and we contrived some bs about our apartment being too close to a busy highway in order to get a doctor to prescribe heavy-duty sleeping pills that we could indulge this fetish. And it was great.

It’s the “doing another guy’s wife” and “doing a fugly old grandma” that confuses me about the appeal. Not the unconsciousness, which, indeed, is a distinct improvement over the vanilla sex act.

I can get the appeal of sleep sex as an extension of a freeuse fetish (where the focus is on relieving oneself without the worry of mutual pleasure, essentially enhanced masturbation) but I'm baffled that you consider it a strict improvement. Not being able to see the woman in pleasure is a considerable opportunity cost, even setting aside the lost potential of her active participation.

The two parts of your statement do not logically synch up. If you don’t consider it an improvement, then you don’t see the appeal, because, by your own logic, it is not appealing (compared to the default).

I think Eupraxia means that it's one thing for sleep sex to have its own appeal that might make up for the advantages it otherwise lacks relative to conventional mutual sex; and another thing to declare it a strict improvement.

I don’t know what the percentage is, but it seems we have ample evidence to conclude that some nontrivial percentage of men really would rape more or less any human given the chance. Between this case, the Epstein Files, Rotherham, wartime rape, I wouldn’t be surprised at any number between 5 and 80 percent of men.

5 percent I believe. I don't think you'd find 80 percent in an Indian slum.

To me, having sex with an unconscious woman would have pretty much zero appeal no matter how hot she is, and I have a hard time believing I'm some weird undersexed outlier. It's not even just about it being rape (which it obviously is), but it would also be like fucking a RealDoll, which I know some men do also but I have always thought has to be the absolute last refuge of the desperate and pathetic.

I'm just a "desperate and pathetic" virgin, but I think this sounds unreasonable. Isn't it a stereotype that the hotter a woman is, the less effort she feels that she needs to put into sex? Yet, despite this stereotype, men still seek out hot women (including prostitutes). The difference between sex with a lazy "starfish" woman and sex with an unconscious woman seems negligible.

Isn't it a stereotype that the hotter a woman is, the less effort she feels that she needs to put into sex?

I've encountered this claim on many occasions. There's no way to express the following opinion without sounding like I'm humblebragging, so consider this an inb4.

I've had an unusually high number of female sexual partners, so my sample size is unusually large. Some of those partners I would consider quite attractive (with the caveat that none were literal supermodels or Hollywood actresses); some were "mid"; some were not even that, and I only had sex with them out of sheer desperation at the tail end of a lengthy dry spell. If this claim (that attractive women put in less effort in the bedroom) has any truth to it, then in my fairly extensive sexual history I honestly cannot claim to have observed it firsthand. I've been with hot girls who starfished and passable girls who starfished; I've been with hot girls who were rearing to go and passable girls who were rearing to go. I think the best predictors of how enthusiastic a woman will be in bed are a) her basal sex drive (controlling for how long it's been her last sexual encounter); b) her sexual experience (everyone's a little shy and awkward their first few times; the trope of the pure virgin who's a demon in the sack during her deflowering only exists in porn); and c) how attracted she is to her sexual partner. In the latter case I'm thinking in particular of a fairly hot girl I met ~7 years ago, who did have sex with me but seemed of two minds about it. I imagine it would have been a very different experience if I'd been someone with whom she had more chemistry.

Frankly, I think this "hot girls are all crap in bed, while mid girls give it socks" thing is one of the purest, most transparent examples of sour grapes in human history. I daresay most men claiming as much have literally never had sex with an unusually attractive woman, and so aren't in a position to make any kind of generalisation.

The difference between sex with a lazy "starfish" woman and sex with an unconscious woman seems negligible.

I assure you, it is not. I've had sex with women who seemed a bit unenthused or tired etc., but I would never dream of having sex with a woman who was literally unconscious.

Isn't it a stereotype that the hotter a woman is, the less effort she feels that she needs to put into sex?

Uh, I understood the stereotype is that the hotter she is, the less effort she needs to put into obtaining sex. Which is pretty obviously true. The stereotype that hot women neither enjoy nor actively participate in sex is a new one to me, unless you're just referring to the stereotype that women in general don't really enjoy sex and only perform it to the minimum degree necessary to secure a mate. Which, may be true for a lot of women, but (ahem) I have it on good authority, not all of them.

I cannot say I am a connoisseur of prostitutes but my understanding also is that men generally prefer hookers to at least pretend to be into it and are not going to enjoy the experience much if she just lies there with an "Are you done yet?" expression on her face.

The difference between sex with a lazy "starfish" woman and sex with an unconscious woman seems negligible.

Can't say I've done either, but damn, who are these guys finding? And obviously, the difference would still be pretty significant in terms of at least implied consent (which, evidently and depressingly, a lot of guys still seem to think is a quaint modern notion that we shouldn't care about that much).

"Obtaining" is probably not the correct word. She's "obtaining" sex with the man whether she's enthusiastic or not, after all. That's not the relevant part. What I think is going on here is that hot women normally assume, for a good reason, that they have a strong mesmerizing effect on men. If she submits to a man's desire, she assumes that he'll be so overwhelmed with urge and longing that he'll be unable to think of anything else but taking her in hand and ravishing her. This has indeed been normally the case throughout history. It's just the typical female fantasy (heh) and the reason why "rape fantasies" exist. The idea that she'd need to proactively take additional steps to inflame his urges so as to ensure that he really wants her and that he's really enjoying it all is, frankly, not only alien but also degrading and demoralizing to her.

Uh, I understood the stereotype is that the hotter she is, the less effort she needs to put into obtaining sex.

That's less a stereotype than a factual statement. But @ToaKraka is far from the first person I've seen claiming that attractive women are crap in bed, while mid women are demons in the sack. I don't think there's anything to it, but I have independently encountered multiple men making such a claim.

Uh, I understood the stereotype is that the hotter she is, the less effort she needs to put into obtaining sex.

I'm pretty sure I've seen jokes on 4chan (and possibly even on Reddit) about how the ugly "practice girlfriend" will put in extra effort in bed while a hotter woman will not. But I can't find any such jokes after a cursory search.

they are largely wrong about men being amoral rapacious monsters barely(unfairly) held in check by society.

I think you're wrong here actually. I think you're the one doing typical minding, and most men are actually like this. Some are like you and me, who find that behavior repugnant, but then... Africa. And India. And and and.

I think this is another case of fish in the post-Christian sea having no idea about water.

I linked this down-thread but there's notes about each of the convicted rapists in this case here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pelicot_rape_case#Convicted

Do you see a pattern?

I'll admit some of these fit some stereotypes.

Nizar Hamida

Had eight prior convictions, including domestic violence and attempted abduction of his child with a former partner.[65] Said he went for a sexual encounter to celebrate the end of his bachelor days as his wife-to-be was arriving shortly from Tunisia.[64]

Mohamed Rafaa

Had prior conviction for raping his 17-year-old daughter, for which he was sentenced to five years' imprisonment. Raped Gisèle while the Pelicots were at their daughter's holiday home on the Île de Ré.[64]

Hassan Ouamou

Convicted in absentia having fled the country, travelling between Morocco and Romania claiming no intention of returning to France. Thirteen prior convictions in connection with theft, violence, drugs, and possession of weapons.

But to me it's not that solid a pattern. Plenty of these people have proper French sounding names and like they'd be familiar with Christianity.

The most solid theme for me is: losers and imbeciles with a splash of psychopathy.

I also noticed the overrepresentation of Arab names among the perpetrators.

I'm skeptical that Christianity (or Western civilization) is the sole difference, though I know this is a popular theory (with Christians). Yes, large parts of the third world are rapacious hellholes, but there are ancient and contemporary non-Christian societies that do not seem to have been such.

I'd like to draw the distinction between states with enough capacity (and will) to deter rape by threat of violent reprisal, and peoples who believe that rape is implicitly morally wrong regardless of circumstance.

As far as I can tell this is a uniquely Christian innovation. Even the notion that a woman should have the final veto in whether she gets married seems to be Christian; c.f. the custom of the priest asking her if 'she does'.

Jewish legal codes speak for themselves and Islam is cool with sex slaves taken in wartime. Pagans understood rape as a normal reward for conquering armies and that higher class men could naturally enough have their way with lower class women, not to mention slaves.

Really, the notion that rape is wrong is fairly peculiar historically.

Same with murdering one's own infant children but that's another topic.

Jewish legal codes speak for themselves

Could you expand on this? I'm not familiar.

As far as I can tell this is a uniquely Christian innovation.

I mean, the Chinese have evidence of this in writing even in pre-Imperial history; 墨子 discusses punishments for rape during the Warring States period, and various annals including 春秋左傳 and 詩經 describe rape in a decidedly disapproving manner. I'm sure other cultures would

This is, of course, in the background of a very different philosophical culture and climate than Christian Europe. For one, the Christian idea of sin is probably actually quite peculiar, which I suspect makes much of the difference in mental interpretation.

墨子 discusses punishments for rape during the Warring States period, and various annals including 春秋左傳 and 詩經 describe rape in a decidedly disapproving manner.

Yeah but they disapprove because it soils the man’s qi, in a ‘this practice is not consistent with obviating temporal desire and attaining the Dao’ sort of way. That a woman is involved at all, let alone an unwilling one, is of no consequence - they’d complain just as much about a long goon session.

hieroglyphics

Links: 1 2 3

I would argue that it is more accurate to say that it is "uniquely Western" as we see similar attitudes present in the late Roman Republic, but to the extent that one's notion of "Western Civilization" is inextricably entangled with the influence of Christianity, I agree.

Really, the notion that rape is wrong is fairly peculiar historically.

I would argue that women have always thought it's wrong, so it seems more like the notion that women's feelings should be considered is peculiar historically. And I don't think it's that peculiar, or that Christians have been particularly better about not raping and treating lower class women as public goods. It is definitely not a uniquely Christian innovation that women have some say in who they marry; Christians are not the first people ever who recognized female agency and gave women rights.

Your reference to Jewish legal codes and Islam makes me think we're going to go down the same road we've gone before, where the worst and most uncharitable readings of what other religious books say should be taken literally, without context, and as exactly what all those people really believe and those with a more humanitarian reading aren't really following their religion, whereas Christianity (and the Old Testament in particular) should be not subjected to similar treatment.

I weary of the women-haters (I don't mean you, though you seem to be giving them too much credit) who argue that the natural (and implied: correct) state of man is to treat women as property and before our modern age, no man in any civilization ever gave a shit how females felt about their treatment.

The changes to law codes imposed by Christian missionaries are, afaik, not really disputable; they do seem to involve women being asked their consent to marriage. This process occasionally happens today in parts of the deep third world where Christianization imposes huge increases in the rights of women over very low baselines.

It's fair to point out that Christianity does not immediately solve every problem with poor treatment of marginalized groups, and that societies which are not Christian often have some informal pressure for women to get the rights Christian law codes later guarantee(the Viking sagas are quite explicit that a woman's father's consent is important to a marriage, not hers, but use the girl's consent as a trope marker for good fatherhood). But anthropologists are still making hay out of cultural differences between villages in polynesia and remote parts of Africa and the Amazon which were Christianized at different times. It seems to be a robust finding that women and girls in traditional societies have a much better go(albeit not up to modern western societies) when their village is Christian.

I'm not disputing that Christianity greatly improved the lot of women (and the poor, and many other marginalized groups). I'm disputing that improvements in women's rights are uniquely Christian and that only Christian societies ever treated them as more than property.

I weary of the women-haters (I don't mean you, though you seem to be giving them too much credit) who argue that the natural (and implied: correct) state of man is to treat women as property and before our modern age, no man in any civilization ever gave a shit how females felt about their treatment.

There are precious few (though admittedly not zero) women-haters here who "argue that the natural (and implied: correct) state of man is to treat women as property". Most restrain themselves to recognizing that humans tend to view each other instrumentally by default, and that includes men viewing women instrumentally, women viewing men instrumentally, and society viewing both instrumentally. That the non-women-haters seem to only be concerned about the former and sometimes the latter--when women are being viewed instrumentally by society--demonstrates they don't view men as humans deserving rights and view women as inherently superior to men.

There are precious few (though admittedly not zero) women-haters here who "argue that the natural (and implied: correct) state of man is to treat women as property".

If I had a nickel...

It wouldn't be a lot of nickels, but it would be more than one.

That the non-women-haters seem to only be concerned about the former and sometimes the latter--when women are being viewed instrumentally by society--demonstrates they don't view men as humans deserving rights and view women as inherently superior to men.

The concise response to this is "balderdash."

The less concise response is basically the same with more words: people (like me) who push back against those who view women as instrumental goods/property are not the "Women Are Wonderful" simps the latter like to characterize the former as, but merely arguing that we are all human beings and part of rising above our monkey natures (which should be our goal as a species with starfaring ambitions) requires not viewing every relationship as transactional and every other human being as an instrumental good. This includes treating women as Sex, and whatever bad thing you think women treat men as.

How are "people who push back against those who view women as instrumental goods/property" and never push back against those who view men as instrumental goods/property while smearing any who do as "women-hater" not deserving of the title "Women Are Wonderful" simps?

How are "people who push back against those who view women as instrumental goods/property" and never push back against those who view men as instrumental goods/property while smearing any who do as "women-hater" not deserving of the title "Women Are Wonderful" simps?

I suppose such people exist, but I see people being accused of that with much greater frequency than the actual occurrence.