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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   14311 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 30, 2026

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I find it really quite interesting in that a story about a really terrible abusive man, the question posed is "what is wrong with women?" for her mistake of being with him.

I agree that it's an interesting question. And I think the answer is pretty straightforward: We are CONSTANTLY hearing that that there is something wrong with men; that men need to be taught to be more respectful to women; that policies need to be put in place to keep men in line; and so on. Obviously I agree with some of these efforts, although to a large extent society has gone overboard. At the same time, comparatively little attention is paid to the female side of the equation.

Here's an analogy: Pretty much everyone agrees that scammers are bad news and society and policymakers should take steps to cut down on the number of scams. One aspect of this, of course, is prosecuting scammers. Another aspect of this is educating people to look for the warning signs of scams; to hang up on suspicious callers; and so on.

Ok, now suppose Grandma Jane keeps almost falling for scams. It's gotten to the point where she walks into her bank and the branch manager steps out to tell her not to wire any money to India. Under those circumstances, it's reasonable to ask "what's wrong with Grandma Jane?" Doing so does not mean scammers "don't have agency." Rather, it's reasonable to look at both sides of the equation, so to speak.

Yeah. That's what I'm getting at here. And to address the follow-up comment, no it's not victim-blaming. Dousing yourself in barbecue sauce and jumping into a pool full of piranha is not an action where, if someone says "why the hell did you do something this stupid?", it is blaming the victim.

Rather, it's reasonable to look at both sides of the equation, so to speak.

Yes, that's called "victim blaming", and here's your obligatory apoplexy about how this means little girls will now get raped because they clearly wanted it.

The right way to deal with that is just to ignore it. Men are slowly learning to do that, but it's not an instinctual thing for them to do, so it's going to take another few decades for them to evolve far enough to have a healthy response to this.

The right way to deal with that is just to ignore it. Men are slowly learning to do that, but it's not an instinctual thing for them to do, so it's going to take another few decades for them to evolve far enough to have a healthy response to this.

Turns out that the feminist cliche about men not being sufficiently evolved for modern civilization was true, after all!

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