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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 6, 2026

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If she were to follow up her statement with “and so as a rule I don’t date Black guys” then we have a problem. That’s discrimination because it ignores the humanity of individuals (and also creates hard feelings that are often counterproductive on a societal level). I realize this is not always cut and dry (what if she says “and so I’m reluctant to date Black guys?”) but I strongly believe we should save the vast majority of the moral approbation for this kind of specific individualized behavior.

I feel that at the point where we're throwing moral rebukes at people for their dating choices we're dancing very close to "here lies all of France" - this is not how you avoid societally-counterproductive hard feelings. It's no secret that African-descended women do substantially worse on dating sites (and presumably, other forms of dating) than others, almost certainly because an extremely-large slice of men find them ugly. Now, those women's appearance is certainly not their choice, but the men's conceptions of beauty are also not their choice. The only possible compromise here would be literal arranged marriages; if we don't want that, and we insist on making this a moral issue, then we're going to be fighting ourselves forever for no conceivable gain.

The bright line of "nobody gets to tell you you're evil for your dating choices" sounds like a good one to me.

I'd say that someone's appearance and attraction is, mostly, uncontrollably subjective (and likely unchanging), so yeah it's a good instinct to be cautious of gatekeeping there. But part of the context of the conversation here is about personality and other stereotypes, so refusing to consider dating someone because you think their personality is probably a certain way is almost certainly discrimination.

Dating is a bit of a side quest though compared to most everyday interactions, since it's also not like people are entitled to a certain level of dating interest, and so I think it's reasonable to think that different aspects and phases of romance might need to be treated separately. Plus we all know opinions about 'checklists' for finding a partner are all over the place. Even with all these caveats, exempting dating entirely (as you seem to suggest?) from conversations about discrimination, prejudice, and stereotyping feels fundamentally wrong.

and we insist on making this a moral issue

True, but remember what this is actually litigating. Because the worth of woman-as-class (statistical aggregate and instinctual behavior, not a value judgment) is specifically beauty, this is an attempt to make it so that women who provide much beauty and those who have little are equalized in political power. That's the moral [redistributionist, communist, equality, "equity"] angle.

This is why it's most salient for the ugliest ones, and why the ugliest women tend to be the most feminist- they have the most to lose. (Of course, the ultimate extension/expression of the power to equalize this is demonstrated by the ability to force other women to treat men-dressed-as-women as women, including when it comes to dating, which is why you only hear about this in women's spaces, never men's.)

It's not actually about men-as-class here other than the inescapable fact that they are the arbiters of who is beautiful and who is not (in the same way women are for success in men). Women must solve this for women.