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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 6, 2026

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Why is prejudice based on sex tolerable, but prejudice based on race & religion, not?

What made you come up with that observation?

Prejudice based on race and religion is not only accepted, but encouraged.
This is downstream of (I'd argue a direct result of) prejudice based on sex, which is accepted even more than prejudice on race or religion.

And that's just downstream of the fact that Cain's rights and responsibilities are fundamentally different than Abel's- so whenever you have an easily-divisible dichotomy where one side is lesser than the other, that dynamic re-emerges. Man vs. woman maps onto that pretty well (especially in the age of mechanization, and especially if Abel isn't paying attention to the downstream social effects), as does white vs. other and Christian vs. other to lesser degrees.

The Abel side has to pay attention in a way the Cain side does not. Abel doesn't need an in-group bias because he'll generally succeed wherever he goes (and developing one would be corrosive to Abel-ness); but in-group membership is life or death for Cain.

Ironically, encouraging the side of a population perceived as more likely to contain Abels to develop that in-group bias is the main thing that would destroy that perception, but the problem is only an Abel could do that.