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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 27, 2026

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What do you think of male-female dating dynamics relative to the culture war? I have a lot of thoughts on this but ultimately think the people worth pursuing are not crossing people off their list because they don’t believe in X or Y.

But it might be beyond your control. As an American, I remember swiping on tinder in London and seeing ‘Do not swipe if you are Republican’ but they replaced the word with something called the Tories. Clearly some people will only date people that share the same ideology. Which is fair if you want someone to nod along to whatever you say, I guess.

It gets tricky when you outright pretend to believe things you don’t. It’s not courageous or respectable. Not apologizing for what you believe is paramount to gaining the respect of your partner. Obviously, when I say this, I’m really talking about relatively conservative men dating liberal women. And honestly, except for far left people like Hasan piker that glorify violent revolution in such a way that they do a 360 and put off conservative ethos, I do think men women find attractive aren’t the male feminist, Bernie bro type. It’s almost like a yin and yang thing where you want some tension with your ideals.

Unlike religion, I really don’t see a need to agree with my SO on much of anything (odd to me that JD Vance and Usha married despite this). It’s sad to think that, on the spectrum of ‘not scaring the hoes’ political ideology, you could have a good thing with someone, say the wrong thing, and lose a relationship because of it.

Only thinking this because I’m coming to terms that I don’t necc need to date a based woman who appreciates old Sam Hyde stuff and edgy right wing leaning online happenings. I’d rather not select for political belief, find someone that will lightly argue with me, and has no interest in that stuff. Likewise, I’ll voice my opinion to her but not make fun of her for being on bluesky or whatever

It depends on whether these beliefs are deeply internalized and impact real life behavior and decisions, or if they are vibes, aesthetics and slogans. It also matters how radical the woman is in the left ideology. If it's relatively moderate, echoing the mainstream schooling and institutional messaging, then it just signals being well-adjusted and agreeable. If they are mindkilled into talking about this all the time and are turning antinatalist because of the climate crisis and freaking out about the issue of the day all the time, then it's a pass. But most people live their lives modeled around what they see around them in real life. If they grew up in a stable family, have siblings who managed to form stable families and are going about life in a "normal" and "sane" way that is functional in the existing society (I do see that not everyone agrees on what that is, but you have to judge it from your own position), then it doesn't really matter if they are doing some signaling with these things that have been shown to them as being "the good causes" from kindergarten on, their whole lives.

In fact, I'd be more wary of an urban young woman who somehow decided to go "based". It may not be an issue but it seems they somehow couldn't fit in, either because they are very disagreeable and contrarian, or they had to rely on this strategy to stand out and attract men, which is also suspicious. It can all be clarified and may be fine, especially if they come from some conservative family or simply have this kind of social group somehow and it's not some kind of daily crusade, who knows.

My point is these declarations of party affiliations, slogans, logos, symbols are often superficial and compartmentalized. They are not much deeper than whether she likes Nike or Adidas shoes. What matters is how they behave on a daily basis, what they value and how they see the future, whose life advice they take seriously, what kind of life patterns are present in her closest friends and family, what's her personality like etc. But the deeply held beliefs and the life patterns they take seriously are super important. You have to agree on the actual ground level of how you live together, when and how you have kids, how you split the tasks, how important careers are, is moving every few years to climb the ladder worth it, versus staying put in one place and settling for long, etc.

If you're not aiming for a marriage and family yet, and plan to break up in a few years (or months) either way, then yes, you only need minimal compatibility in abstract beliefs, you just need attraction and a compatible schedule and activity level and agree you'll use contraception and abort if that fails. Well, okay that's a bit of agreement required right there...

In fact, I'd be more wary of an urban young woman who somehow decided to go "based". It may not be an issue but it seems they somehow couldn't fit in, either because they are very disagreeable and contrarian, or they had to rely on this strategy to stand out and attract men, which is also suspicious.

I think it is also relevant that both wokism and the "based" right are malignant from a normie or establishment liberal perspective. If your worldview is normie or establishment liberal, you shouldn't date a wokist or a "Nazi", excluding the scenario where you are a man going for a pump-and-dump in which case the fact that she is a human being with thoughts and feelings is mostly irrelevant anyway.