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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   27240 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 20, 2026

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I think you are being slightly unfair to the authors of the paper. You say they are arguing that "men ought to be marginalized for everyone's good," but what they are really saying is two things:

  1. Free mate choice and sexual equality leads to women being more selective, and thus less likely to find an "acceptable" man to pair with. (The same thing you have been arguing, essentially.)
  2. The solution is to make it more attractive for single women to have children.

At first glance, it's easy to see why this is setting you off, but if you read the paper carefully, they kind of admit the other part of your argument: "... because the only other alternative would be changing society in ways feminists won't approve of."

The authors maintain a dry and and academic tone throughout. It's not unlikely they are, in fact, pro-feminist and agree that yes, any other solution would be unthinkable. But it's also possible to read them as saying, "Well, we know no one will accept any other proposals, so let's just point out the only thing that's left."

Are they knowingly winking so they can get the paper published and not wreck their careers, or are they drolly accepting the thesis, as you assume? Who knows? But it seems they are at least aware of the contradictions.

That’s how I read it as well, a cheeky Straussian implied reductio ad absurdum. Especially because they choose to articulate it as “marginalization”.

I think you are being slightly unfair to the authors of the paper.

I did mention explicitly that I am not attacking the authors... and that I'm lamenting the larger cultural trend where the only solutions allowed to be discussed are those that aim at male behavior.

Hence my suspicion:

and this implied solution just appears to be the sort of blunt facial honesty that Norwegians are known for. I'm not attacking this paper.

But its all part of this larger trend. The Manosphere documentary is aimed at deflating male influencers, but offers no good solutions to men write large. The only people apparently allowed to publish their perspectives on gender issues are women. The disaffected male point of view gets no play at all.

The fact that nobody with any perceived authority can just say "men have valid grievances, and some solutions may inconvenience women" is symbolic of the issue. We can't make good progress without getting over that hump.

Well, here is exactly the toxic female attitude you describe, and one I think is disgusting. But it's also anti-feminist and playing with not against the patriarchy:

Alice, a former escort and sugar baby, promotes a self-developed dating strategy based on what she claims is her unique insight into male psychology. It’s called the feminine recalibration method, designed to teach women how to win the devotion of a “high-value man” — shorthand for rich, successful, decisive and ready to lavish his chosen consort with attention, expensive gifts and luxury travel. It’s what she calls “the princess treatment”.

Dreaming of “equality” in romance is a mug’s game, according to Alice, who posts on Instagram as femmefatale.elite. Instead, she says women should leverage their desirability as a means of getting men to provide them with the lifestyle of their dreams.

...Such attitudes are common in the online world known as the femosphere. Its other credos include all men are toxic; heterosexuality is a curse; and online dating is riddled with danger.

The femosphere is, of course, the female answer to the more notorious manosphere, the online network of communities that circulate misogynistic content and radicalise disaffected young men. Contempt for the opposite sex, received wisdom dictates, is mostly a male problem.

So the results of a recent survey carried out in collaboration with the British publication the New Statesman come as a surprise. It found that 72pc of men hold a positive view of women. In contrast, only 35pc of Gen Z women have a positive view of men.

Online, a new generation of experts and influencers has sprung up around the idea that “men are trash”. They have created an online ecosystem of commentators vying for the attention of a growing female audience, eager to consume the narrative that feminism has trapped women in a false consciousness that is keeping them exploited and unhappy.

Women have been lied to, this narrative goes. They have been conditioned since childhood to approach the modern dating market with all the earnest, open-heartedness of a Jane Austen heroine or a Disney princess. But the credits rolled before we got to see Prince Charming’s entitlement and toxic masculinity up close. And today’s wannabe Elizabeth Bennett must navigate a wasteland of dating apps, ghostings and dick pics in their fruitless search for Mr Darcy.

YouTuber Thewizardliz has no time for this. “Stop dating broke guys,” she tells her almost 8.5 million followers.

“Some of you women out there have been making men so spoiled. These days women are expected to be mothers, women are expected to be a chef… a cleaner, a nanny, a personal therapist, to give all of our energy. And then, on top of that, people also decided to say, ‘You know what? Let’s split the bill!’”

Female Dating Strategy, a female-­only forum on Reddit, has grown into a community of over 100,000 subscribers who regularly share advice on how to present as a high-value woman. Key strategies include being aloof and foregoing sex with a new partner until he has expressed commitment.

Instead of continuing to fight the patriarchy — a fight that to them seems a lost cause — these women have resigned themselves to operating within it, channelling their hopes for agency through the ability to attract powerful men and sustain their attention.

Once you have accepted that true equal partnership is a doomed aspiration, it makes more sense to treat love as a zero-sum game of strategy — a transactional arrangement in which the winner is the person in the relationship pulling the strings.

Liberal feminism, a growing number of young women seem to feel, was a lie.

How else to interpret the mountain of evidence exposing the burden of invis­ible labour on women? Or the unfairness of the double shift of having a job and running a home? Or the research that shows that if a woman earns more than her partner, he’s five times more likely to cheat and no more likely to help out with household chores?

And you know, I can see some rationale behind all that? The complaints on here, and the solutions proposed, are enough to turn women off. Women have too much choice! They're not taking available guys, they want the best guys out there! What we need to do to solve this problem is take education away from women, take choice away from women, make them marry the guy their father picks out, and what they need to do is be the traditional wife: compliant, attractive, attentive, never argue or talk back, let the guy make all the decisions, always be sexually available and perform the sex acts he wants no matter if the wife enjoys or likes them, never ask him for sexual favours, he's the master of the house, have kids, raise the kids, never ask him to get involved in raising the kids, oh and she should also pay her own way so have a job/career of her own even though she is also not supposed to have a job/career of her own since that would take away from her needing to marry a man to provide for her and having kids.

So women are leeches who don't deserve anything in a divorce because they never contributed anything to the marriage since they were stay-at-home wives and mothers, if the guy wants a divorce. But if they have jobs so they do contribute financially (since financial contribution is the only measure of contribution) then they are also wrong, because that makes them too independent and not being dependent on a man to live means they can refuse that available guy. Women should be economically dependent on men to force them to get married, but that economic dependence means they have no value in a divorce if the man wants a new, younger, wife (since men are attracted to the limited age range of nubile women and once your wife 'hits the wall' and stops being sexually attractive to you, time to trade her in).

I think the "femosphere" is a terrible idea. But sometimes, yeah, I see the idea: if men only value you for tits'n'ass, then maximise that to get the richest guy you can and get all you can extract out of him while you're still young and sexy.

I think it is much better if we treat each other as people, not as meat products to serve our every need with no wants of our own.

It's worth noting that 'marry the nice guy your parents pick out when you're in your late teens in lieu of job and degree' is simply not an option for most western women.

It doesn't sound like it's an option for most Eastern women anymore, either.

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