This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Lesbians in porn do not act like lesbians IRL, but how men like to imagine lesbians. Likewise "girlfriend experience" is not named because it accurately portrays girlfriends IRL, but bevause it portrays how men would like girlfriends would act. Such conduct is not required to be prevalent among real GFs for the name to stay around.
A man who is "pleasant and affectionate and doting and caring for a [partner] with sexual desire as an undertone" is not as valued as highly by women, as it is by men. I would correct your statement to say "Most women want to be what you’re describing, but only with a man who she feels sparks in her the same utility gain". What that is exactly is a subject of debate, but one can't women and men value the same things in a partner. As you admit in the following quote:
Gender asymmetry is built into every point of this debate.
Every serious girlfriend I've had has been like this -- I haven't had many of them, 3 or 4 I suppose if we're generous, but the experience isn't at all foreign to me and when I've been in relationships, the women I've dated have given every appearance that they've valued being this way around me, and we've enjoyed each other's presence because we cared for one another, made each other laugh, felt like the best versions of ourselves around each other. If that experience is as rare as you're suggesting, then swipe right on my profile and call me gigachad.
It's true that things like being able to be a provider, being a psychologically stabilizing in the presence of crises, and caring about her physical and mental needs to an intense and specific degree, are things that women care about in their partners in a way that men don't necessarily do about theirs. Even as stable and formidible a writer as 2rafa, when she talked about being engaged, described how wonderful it was that her fiancé remained calm and helpful even in moments of crisis. Women aren't quiet about this stuff, and it's not stupid or malicious that they value these things. Husbands and fathers exist because women, especially pregnant women, are vulnerable in moments of crisis, and men's adaptive function to hominid evolution was to protect them and provide for them.
But there's more symmetry, at least at a greater level of abstraction, there than you seem to be implying. Both men and women ultimately want a partner that cares for them as an individual person specifically, who pays attention to their needs, and supports them and roots for them when times get tough. Maybe that's not possible in the long term, I'll grant the manosphere the possibility of reasonable doubt, but my experience seeing my mother with my father, my grandmother with my grandfather, my friend's mother with my friend's dad, and my own experiences with women, indicate to me that it is possible.
It may be true that this is much harder to find in modern times, and I don't actually doubt this at all. But blowing it up into an overall model of human behavior given the WEIRD and unique and socially atomized nature of modern times is a pretty serious empirical error.
It's true there's gender asymmetry, but gender asymmetry isn't malice in the same way that the fact that women menstruate and men don't isn't malice; it's just part of what the world is like for a sexually dimorphic mammalian species.
If you've ever been in online dating where you receive male attention, and I have, having explored in a bisexual phase, you realize pretty quick that a lot of male attention is low-quality not just in the sense that the men are basically normal, friendly guys who just aren't hot, or whatever, but that the men are simply just not great prospects under anyone's definition.
You'll get attention from 50 year olds, you'll get people who don't read your bio, you'll find a lot of guys whose profiles are basically "the worst possible selfie a human being has ever taken, obviously taken because the app asked, plus a bio that describes nothing about them." Oftentimes these guys will be aggressive, not even in a threatening way but in a really dumb way, like messaging you and then two hours later, after you don't reply, messaging "well it sounds like you don't actually want what you say you want, you jerk," like externalizing their frustration at one person who doesn't reply will somehow change their fortunes.
And that's not even an environment where the gender asymmetry you're talking about exists -- that's gay men, the most sex-forward group of human beings ever to walk the earth, and many of the same principles that women complain about encountering from men are present there in men looking for men spaces, too. This isn't really because men are horrid people or anything; it's just that the floor for men's attractiveness and basic social competence is pretty damn low, and because of the realities of the species men have to put some effort into being attractive, even to other men who are looking for men.
Complaining about that is of the same genre to me as women complaining about men not having to get pap smears -- your complaint is with God or Darwin or the universe as it exists, it's just what biology is, symmetry and equality was not evolutionarily adaptive. Feminists complain endlessly about the world not being equal for women, and the most confusing thing about the manosphere to me is that they copy them: yes, men and women are not biologically equivalent, them's the breaks.
But also, the main reason that many women don't like dating apps is their perception, which is not without evidence, that a huge number of men are looking ultimately to play the field and not commit to a particular woman. This is a gender asymmetry that resolves in terms of men not looking so great on the LTR-orientation front, and it too has its deep connections to evolutionary biology.
If you tell me the idea of a harem of beautiful women has never occurred to you as compelling because you're just so LTR-oriented and the picky dating app women just can't see that, well, I don't believe you. The thought's in my heart as much as yours, and if we want to be brutally honest about gender asymmetry we have to acknowledge the male desire for polygyny, and the fact that a massive number of men -- both hot and frumpy, rich and poor -- would take the option given the means and opportunity. If we're allowed to question seriously women's 'wonderfulness', then questioning men's 'wonderfulness' is also fair game.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link