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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   23699 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 29, 2026

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Thuletide on Fertility

According to Thuletide, the age gap «pedophilia» moral panic, spawned by feminism and kicked into overdrive during the #MeToo era that began circa 2017, is a potentially civilization-ruining phenomenon. He is, of course, not referring to very real problems, like grooming gangs in Britain, but the fact that 18-year-old boys are frequently accused of being an "Epstein diddy blud" merely for talking to 17-year-old girls. If you wanted to vaporize our already plummeting birth rates, stigmatizing any age gap larger than that between identical twins is a great way to do it.

From Thuletide's Telegram:

Girls typically reach physical sexual maturity (adult secondary sexual characteristics) between the ages of 15 and 17, while boys mature a couple of years later. Yet, it is disturbingly common to conflate an 18-year-old dating a 16-year-old — a relationship between two biological adults, legal everywhere in the West aside from a handful of deranged US states — with a 40-year-old raping a 9-year-old. Apparently, the people who do this have no problem with trivializing actual pedophilia (the sexual abuse of prepubescents), which causes immense and long-lasting harm.

The crux of this issue is that healthy male heterosexuality — the preference for younger but sexually mature women — has effectively been criminalized. Meanwhile, older-female age gap relationships are constantly celebrated by the Gynocratic World Order (see e.g. the safe-horny "dommy mommy" phenomenon), to the extent that female teachers who sleep with their male students are routinely spared jail time and socially excused: "Where was she when I was a student?!"

For all of human history until very recently, older-male-age-gap relationships were regarded as normal and good; the average age gap in America from 1850 to 1950 was 4.5 years. Even today, in face of widespread moral hysteria, the average 23-year-old white man and woman in the West prefer partners who are 2 and 3 years older than themselves, respectively. The evolutionary theory is simple: Men prefer fertile women, women prefer men who can provide for offspring; women are most fertile when young, men accumulate resources with age.

From his Twitter, he cites the following. Older-male age-gap relationships produce more children, with total lifetime fertility peaking at +7 years (although the variation from +3 to +13 years is very small). The negative fertility effect of older wives begins immediately at +1 year and declines linearly; at +3.5 years, couples produce 0.5 fewer children, on average. Obviously, this is due to women's limited fertility window, which is much smaller than commonly believed: by age 31, around 10% of women are sterile and around 50% are subfertile (they have difficulty conceiving, decreased egg quality, etc).

He concludes on Telegram:

To increase birth rates and reduce dysgenics, early marriage should be encouraged, particularly among the intelligent. Ideally, both husband and wife should be in their late teens to very early 20s. Older-male relationships between young adults (~16-25) should also be destigmatized. Society should be restructured to ensure that intelligent couples can have as many children as possible before age 30-35; reduce time spent in education, prioritize youth for high-paying jobs, give intelligent young men huge lump sums per child (funded by e.g. abolishing welfare), and so on.

Sounds like a better plan than complaining about phones to me.

You do not help yourself by exaggerating. 18 and 17 is fine, and everyone thinks so except for mentally ill people. 24+ and 17 is about where the controversy battle lines are set.

8 and 17 is fine, and everyone thinks so except for mentally ill people. 24+ and 17 is about where the controversy battle lines are set.

Thinking there is no problem with 18 and 17 but there somehow is with 25 and 17 is about as reasonable as thinking there is a problem with 17 and 18, imo.

Let's take that to the extreme.

25 and 17 is 8 year age gap. 18 and 17 is 1 year age gap. When Mr 25 was 18, Ms 17 was 10. You cool with an 18 year old fucking a 10 year old? Because that's where the objections are coming from: when A was the age B is now, B was way too damn young.

  • -10

I think your intuition of the ick of a relationship depending on the absolute age difference constant is not shared by most people. The xkcd standard of "don't date below $own_age/2+7" is a lot more reasonable (though also not a hill I am prepared to die on).

By your logic, a 35yo dating a 55yo is equivalent to a 35yo dating a 15yo. Yet I do not the much of a problem with the former, while I consider the latter pretty much always wrong.

If I have 25yo boxer fighting against an 18yo boxer, that may or may not be a fair fight, but it will not be in even remotely the same category as the fight would have been if the older boxer was still 18 and the younger boxer was 11.

Maturity is one of these s-curve things. A 10yo is still in the phase where she is rapidly gaining life experience, and a 17yo can sometimes run circles around her in emotional maturity and pressure her into sexual behavior which is not in her long-term interests.

But in the next seven years, that gap between them will get smaller as the initially 17yo will hit diminishing returns on his growth. At age 17, she is much more likely to consider the possibility that he is just looking for a quick fuck when he is talking about how they are soulmates for eternity.

Age both of them by another seven years and the relationship would be entirely un-Problematic. He will not gain great powers to charm women out of their pants between age 24 and 31, and at age 24 she will very likely know what she wants in a relationship and have some judgement on whether the 31yo will give her that or not.

I've been thinking about this a little, and I do think the difference is that with the age-gap, men are thinking about the sex (sorry, guys) and women are thinking about the relationship. Guys are thinking "Well is she old enough to be legal? Okay? What's the problem?" and women are thinking about "Yeah but she's way too young to have anything in common with you, what will you talk about, how will you both navigate problems when they arise, are you only interested in her because she's green and malleable and can be moulded to what you want?"

I'm not saying this operates on a conscious level, but I do get the impression the men here are coming at it from the angle of "if she's big enough, she's old enough" (to steal the wartime recruiting mantra) and dressing it up in "evolution, baby, it conditions men to want the nubile fresh baby-making machine full of prime eggs for genetic maximisation".

Uh-huh. How many of the fellas laying out elaborate arguments about "sixteen is old enough" really do want to have twenty kids that will all be raised in sequence in the same house and that they will have to provide for? Because if we're talking about evolution-driven nubile fertile reproduction-maxxing, that's what it looks like, not "have two kids that we pour resources into so they end up in the upper-middle class".

are you only interested in her because she's green and malleable and can be moulded to what you want

I do note that the gender-reversed version of this - wives should get a husband who's not yet set in his ways and wives can and should mould their husbands - is lindy and entirely uncontroversial. Sure, there's no move to bang 16 year old boys but this seems like another case of things that used to be expected for both sexes now being abandoned on one side for the sake of female freedom whilst the male version tightens if anything.

are you only interested in her because she's green and malleable and can be moulded to what you want?

I agree many women seem to think suspiciously in these terms but it seems like a real theory of mind failure. Men by and large are not looking for the hassel of having to mould a partner into what they want besides a handful of fine adjustments at the end - I have taught my wife the proper way to load a dishwasher.

Nah the logic of why it is questionable is wrong. The same logic would hold it’s wrong if you add ten years to each (ie a 35 year old and a 28 year old). Yet no one blinks an eye at that (yet he was 18 when she was 11).

I think the concern is that teenagers are quasi adults and actual adults can prey on them easily — much easier than other quasi adults.

So 18 and 17 is fine. 35 and 28 is fine. But 25 and 18 is questionable

Literally how does their age 7 years ago matter in the present? It's not even the "babysitter fucking their ward once the ward grows up", they had not known each other in this hypothetical.

It matters for the life stages. 30 and 50 is not so big of a gap in experience and knowledge as 25 and 17, even though the former has a bigger chronological gap than the latter. And the suspicion always lingers that wanting the young, unformed, and inexperienced partner is so you can control them to get what you want out of the arrangement, not what both mutually want and need.

Leonardo diCaprio is probably the example people look at here, and while there isn't that terribly bad a disparity in ages (26 for his current partner while he's 51 is still nearly twice her age but she's in her mid-20s so an adult), the string of "relationships that end after a while and always with younger women" does seem to indicate something. I think men look at him and go "good for him, he can have his pick of hot young things and dump them when he's bored" but women look at that as "never married, no sign of marrying, partners much younger, that's a guy who's immature in some fundamental way and not a fully-formed adult".

Ten and seventeen are very different ages, and it is in no way inconsistent to treat them that way. You are, presumably, ok with, say, 32 and 50- maybe a bit weird, but few people would say 'it's a problem'- even though when 50 was 32 32 was way too young to be dating adults(or, I would say, anyone at all).

I'm totally against 25/17 and the OP but this logic doesn't hold water either.

Are you against a 30 year old marrying a 50 year old? When the 50 year old was 30, the 30 year old was only 10! Nevertheless, it seems quite clear that a 30 year old can consent to marry a 50 year old.

I'm totally against 25/17

How do you justify that at all?

It's quite simple. There needs to be a line drawn somewhere, and 18 is as good a place as any.

No, I don't think this withstands basic scrutiny. The optimal line drawn curve is definitely n shaped, and it definitely doesn't peak at 18. Also, there does not need to be a line drawn somewhere, other strategies like test and examinations could be used instead.

Exactly. It could be 17 or 19 and the moral arguments wouldn't change much. The important part is that there's a widely agreed line below which you are violating a social compact. This is also why a less formal environment might bend the rules sometimes, so as not to punish less anti-social cases.

You can move too far in the other direction; Mr 50 and Ms 32 may be okay now, but when Mr 70 and Ms 52 are together? Too much of an age gap and it ends up where the younger partner is more or less the caretaker for the older one while the younger partner is still near their prime.

Very few men are clamouring for the right to date 40 year old women, it's the guys who are pushing the limits on "if 17 old enough, why not 16? If 16 old enough why not 15?" that set off the alarm bells.

You can move too far in the other direction; Mr 50 and Ms 32 may be okay now, but when Mr 70 and Ms 52 are together? Too much of an age gap and it ends up where the younger partner is more or less the caretaker for the older one while the younger partner is still near their prime.

First of all, that's not really a good reason to oppose a relationship. Second of all... one partner is rather likely to end up the caretaker of the other one way or another.

Too much of an age gap and it ends up where the younger partner is more or less the caretaker for the older one while the younger partner is still near their prime.

Well sure, it's ill advised, but I hardly see why it's anyone else's business, unlike the 25/17 situation.

unlike the 25/17 situation.

This is not anyone's business except the 17 year old's parents. Society does not own other people's daughters. It's kind of creepy that random unrelated grown men are worried about what other people's daughters are doing with their private parts, actually.

I don't actually believe that parents should be able to do whatever they want with their children without limits, so this line of argument isn't convincing to me.

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This is not anyone's business except the 17 year old's parents.

Unfortunately, in ${CURRENTYEAR} parents are unwilling or unable to thot-patrol their daughters, so they want the state to act on their behalf.

Both conservatives and progressives agree that there exists a tradeoff between the freedom and protections afforded to teenaged girls and young women, so a compromise is struck by having the state restrict the freedom of and protections for teenaged boys and young men to maintain and/or expand the freedom of and protections for teenaged girls and young women.

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when A was the age B is now, B was way too damn young.

Do you extend this logic to retirees: that 78 and 70 are not supposed to date?

That's an 8 year gap and not as bad. Once over the age of adulthood and into maturity, the disparity is remedied. The problem at the younger end is that it's not about "Well she's physically able to get pregnant and deliver a child", it's about "she (or he) really is too damn young and inexperienced for all the troubles of adult life".

Even grown ups have their marriages fail due to problems, why would an 'old enough to be my dad and me' couple do much better under the same kind of stressors?

Presumably, they do better than two twenty year olds getting married because there's a real adult and a quasi-adult, rather than two quasi adults. Yes, that says all sorts of things about power dynamics in the relationship, which is the reason to look real hard at the guy who claims to want this(not nonsense about his browser history). But if he intends to marry her in a timely manner and treat her well, I mean, women are supposed to submit to their husbands anyways.

Yes, and then when the quasi-adult gets old enough to be a real adult, there's regret and "I married way too young to the wrong guy, now I have met my True Love and want a divorce".

I haven't seen a relationship that doesn't go through a rough patch after 7-ish years. Whether they will work through it, or crash out, doesn't seem to have anything to do marrying young or running into your True Love.

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women are supposed to submit to their husbands anyways.

We can't have nice things because feminists disagree with this. That's the core of it.

"18 and 17 is fine" was not the dominant view when I was in high school (which was not too long ago, and since then things have only moved in the direction of it being less fine). Every adult at school that spoke on the topic explicitly said that 18 and 17 was not fine, and 17 and 17 was also not fine.

It is still the case in some US states such as California that 17 and 17 is illegal.

The US just seems weirdly puritan about this. Age of consent in most of the world is slightly younger than 18, and it doesn't seem to cause problems. You can have a low age of consent so that teenagers are not punished for having sex, while still stigmatizing much older men having sex with someone half their age. And obviously 17 year olds should not be charged with possession of child pornography for having nude pictures of themselves on their phones.

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