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 -
It’s not completely wrong at all. In the choice between a handsome, confident, successful and ‘evil’ man (a cheater, neglectful or abusive parent, etc) and a handsome, confident, successful and nice man, most non-damaged women will pick the latter. The issue is that being nice doesn’t outweigh the first three things.
Similarly, all else being equal men will go for the less promiscuous woman. But all else is rarely equal.
When the message is sent to men to "be nice" it's not really "don't cheat" or "don't be an abusive parent." Rather, it's things like "be kind"; "be considerate" "be a good listener" "be the kind of guy who helps her move a heavy thing" etc. So you are pulling a bit of a bait and switch.
(Even so, if a man is otherwise attractive but is a cheater or is abusive, it's not going to hurt his chances with women all that much. The fraction of women who are turned on by a guy who mistreats them is not just a small number of "damaged" women. Let's put it this way: If I needed to find a wife and I had a choice between being perceived as (1) a man who is kind, considerate, a good listener, etc.; and (2) a man who is a cheater and or abusive, I would definitely take the second option. Almost all women are disgusted by men who are kind/considerate/a good listener. Most women will put up with men in the second category if they are otherwise desirable.)
I find this hard to reconcile with reality, but I think it's for two reasons:
You are focusing on traits that correlate with other more or less desired traits. "Women," generally, may be attracted to men who cheat or are abusive, but not because they cheat/abuse. It's that men with attractive qualities like physical vanity and high-risk-taking are also more likely to be abusive and cheat. Men who listen well are probably also unattractive in other ways. Being someone who expresses kindness along with risk-taking and physical attractiveness should be the goal to attract the most women.
I suppose there are many women attracted to abusers and cheaters, but those would be exactly the women that I would not find attractive, including for all of the traits that likely correlate with those women: status chasing, too much attention to physical attractiveness, shallow thinkers, etc. It sounds like horrible advice, to me, for men to optimize attracting the most dysfunctional women.
Just so we are clear, are you claiming that, generally speaking, most men could improve their dating/romantic lives if they acted more kindly and considerately towards women?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
It's much simpler than that. It's "be attractive while doing these things". Imagine the two guys from the "hello, Human Resources" meme carrying a heavy box for a woman. One of them, she's staring at his forearms flexing, one of them she's watching the sweatstains break through his shirt with mounting disgust.
If you're reading this and it annoys you, stop typing and give me 30 pushups.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
But you're not comparing a "nice" man and a "not nice" or "less nice" man, you're comparing him with an "evil" man. In practice, "not/less nice" cashes out to something like "has judgment and standards about whom he is nice to." Which seems pretty evident to me to be more attractive to women.
More options
Context Copy link
Strong disagree. Hybristophilia and a predilection for dark triad traits are well-known patterns of female attraction. There is a reason why the stereotypical romance novel love interest is a werewolf or a mafia boss who treats the protagonist like shit for 90% of the story.
Girls simp for Snape and Sasuke, not Harry and Naruto.
I've long been under the impression that "dark triad"/"evil" is an imperfect proxy/correlate for what women find attractive in those instances (which is not that well-understood or easily described). Otherwise, redpill-type advice would be much more effective - the men who take it are usually already resentful towards women and society, are you saying that as a group they are still somehow more held back by scruples about doing harm to others than silver spoon fratboys who have never encountered meaningful social adversity in their life?
Any theory of female attraction also needs to explain incidental features of it such as the widespread fascination with horses, which is transparently sexually charged. You can hardly project more dark-triad/evil traits onto horses than, I don't know, hyenas or pigs.
This is related to Beauty and the Beast, and vampires/werewolves. Women want men who are dangerous to bad men, and kind to them. Lacking that, some will settle for generally dangerous.
There’s also the “tortured soul” energy of your examples — a werewolf, a vampire, and the beast are all cursed with an affliction that tortures them and separates them from the human. The women in the stories serve as a stabilizing force — in BatB, literally the lifting of the curse itself — that humanizes him.
They’re dangerous, but deep down, beyond the curse, deeply good. A man who gets passionate and heated, but can be calmed by a touch of his woman, is a pretty real scenario couples experience all the time. Everyone knows that guy who will start yelling about something, and his wife squeezes his hand, and he chills out.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
That's not too different from saying that obviously men like promiscuous women since women in the male equivalent form of fiction - porn flicks - are promiscuous, no? Fantasy is fantasy, reality is reality.
Porn flicks surely feature promiscuous women sometimes, but do they do so at the same sort of dominant rate as the gender-swapped version? Porn has become so diverse and large and also are extremely under-studied, so I don't know exactly. But, in general, men tend to care much less about the actual backstory of the women in the porn and much more about their looks and personality. And the personality tends to always be some form of "extremely eager to have sex with [viewer character]," I believe, but that's orthogonal to promiscuous. There's certainly cuck/ntr porn that's popular, but I don't think, in general, women commenting that you're the 6th man she's banging tonight is all that common or something that would tend to make some given porn better for most men, the same way that some man being a werewolf/billionaire/doctor would make some given romance novel better for women, all else being equal.
Personally, I have no trouble finding porn where there's no implication whatsoever of the woman (or women, as the case tends to be) has any sort of sexual history besides what happens within the bounds of that particular video, which strictly involves 0-1 males. As such, this type of porn where the women aren't known to be promiscuous appears to me fairly popular.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link