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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 22, 2026

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"A far wiser man than either of us once noted that the principled application of left-wing equality and classism rhetoric results in sexual justice for incels."

Well, left winger would answer that sex is not necessity like food and shelter, and historically aware person would answer that lack of sex is not revolutionary force, that all historically documented revolts and revolutions were triggered by shortage of food, not sex.

Ahem:

“You can’t compare this to, like, poor people who complain about being poor. Food and stuff are basic biological human needs! Sex isn’t essential for life! It’s an extra, like having a yacht, or a pet tiger!”

I know that feminists are not always the biggest fans of evolutionary psychology. But I feel like it takes a special level of unfamiliarity with the discipline to ask “Sure, evolution gave us an innate desire for material goods, but why would it give us an deep innate desire for pair-bonding and reproduction??!”

And they'd be so wrong it's actually kind of embarassing.

Unmarried men surplus is probably one of the most well established predictors of political instability, it's just not as strong as famine, and it tends to coincide through banditry.

"Partheniae"

Mostly mythical event "at least three distinct traditions", and not rebellion - sending excess populaiton overseas to found new city was SOP at the time. None of the traditions say that Partheniae wanted to get laid, but to get land of their own.

"Sabine women"

Pure mythical event.

"Nian Rebellion"

From your own source:

"Their slogan was "'kill the rich and aid the poor.". Not: "Let's get laid!"

"Crusades"

Economic motive for crusades is completely discredited by modern scholarship - crusading was never profitable, emarking on crusade ruined both ordinary nobles and great kings, but they persevered for centuries, as if they really believed in Holy Land. And sex motive was never ever proposed by anyone.

If lack of sex is common motive for revolutions and urprisings, you would be able to cite numerous examples from well documented history, where well fed and comfortable people go set the world aflame just because they can't get laid.

I did not bring up the crusades and as you point out they are not relevant, so I don't see why you have to reflexively bring up Riley-Smith. The existence of the juvenis as a class generated by primogeniture, which is Duby's central relevant claim here is far less controversial.

And if that is criticized it's under the auspices of primogeniture not being as universal as he assumed, not because it can't mechanically generate the social class he names and its set of incentives.

As to the Nian Rebellion, I'm just going to straight up link the article that makes the relevant claim https://kar.kent.ac.uk/11430/1/surplus_men_IS_article.pdf I think it's a bit silly to deny that the Guang gun existed as a class because you want to believe bandit slogans literally.

Moreover, these are but the most famous examples, you can draw from an almost endless well here, James Barrett or Ben Raffield have made this same argument for the Viking invasions among others: https://profmarkcollard.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Raffield-et-al-2017-EHB.pdf

The claim that a surplus of unmarried men generates social instability because it creates incentives for defection and banditry is supported by a lot of cross discipline scholarship. I could also have mentionned the work of Laura Betzig which goes over a similar argument on 104 societies, surely that's numerous examples enough: https://www.academia.edu/48337408/Despotism_and_Differential_Reproduction_A_Darwinian_View_of_History

Now it's not airtight and beyond question, what is in social sciences, but the idea that this widely shared and not fringe at all thesis is something that an "historically aware" person could dismiss it out of hand is ridiculous.

Indeed thé crusaders bragged about being unusually non-rapey by the (low)standards of armies at the time. We can probably take this with a grain of salt, but it does indicate sex wasn’t the motive(armies which are motivated by sex slaves tend to brag about how many and how beautiful their captured women are).

Just because you don’t believe in medieval Catholicism doesn’t mean they didn’t.