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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 29, 2026

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The issue is rather simple, though you may dislike it. Men are attracted to youthful features combined with developed secondary sex characters, and it's around 15-ish that most girls begin to really exhibit that combination. That is when most men start to notice girls sexually, even if they are not especially interested in actually having any kind of relationship with them for other reasons. Probably around 25 percent of men have a strong preference for women who look like they're about 15-18 years old, whether they are actually that old or not. The actual age has nothing to do with it.

It seems like ethnic Europeans might be outliers in having a stronger preference for women in their 20s, since Europeans have long practiced later marriage and tend to remain fertile longer than other groups. I suspect this might be genetic, and this makes Europeans unusual. For the rest of the world, the preference for younger girls is even stronger and much more culturally normative for most of their history. Just look at all the recently arrived doctors and engineers literally chasing after unattended schoolgirls in Europe today. You might as well try to train your cat to not chase the mouse.

Now, all these preferences are telling us something about the human evolutionary history of sexuality. We have inherited these instincts because they were successful among our ancestors. We're all descended from men and boys who got with fertile teenage girls at least some of the time, and so preventing that is going to have consequences for overall sexual behavior and fertility. There are trade-offs here along multiple dimensions, and it's not clear to me that the maximizing the taboo is the best solution in all circumstances.

Probably around 25 percent of men have a strong preference for women who look like they're about 15-18 years old, whether they are actually that old or not. The actual age has nothing to do with it.

It seems like ethnic Europeans might be outliers in having a stronger preference for women in their 20s

The infamous OkCupid graph suggests 20 is the upper bound for what men, on average, find the most attractive in women. The Bruch & Newman paper lowers this upper bound down to 18, where the decline in women's attractiveness is monotonic from 18 to 60.

Thus, given the truncations, we don't actually know what age of girls/women men find most attractive on average. And since the Bruch & Newman sample is drawn from Americans and the OkCupid sample likely is too (if not, it'd be heavily composed of Americans)—unless non-white men literally prefer pre-pubescent girls on average, it's unlikely white men's (if that's what we mean by ethnic Europeans) modal preference peaks too far north of 18.

I don't dislike it as such, we can't help our preferences. We can help being creeps. And "I'm forty and I want to fuck a girl literally young enough to be my daughter, and this should not be considered a bad thing and it should be legal" is about being creepy.

I've said this before: men's sexuality is so goddamn easy. Tits, ass, young as you can get 'em, and don't bother with the contents of the container for the tits'n'ass because you don't care about the person, you just care about getting your dick wet. Evolution may have engineered that, but evolution engineered a lot of things that we've had to rein in for the purposes of moving beyond being primates on the savannah.

Tits, ass, young as you can get 'em, and don't bother with the contents of the container for the tits'n'ass because you don't care about the person

When teenaged boys/young men lament being invisible to teenaged girls/women, they're told it's their problem, that it's a skill issue, and that it's up to them to level-up and Git Gud if they wish to Be Seen and Cared About as potential mates by teenaged girls/young women.

This principle can be generalized. If teenaged girls/young women wish to Be Seen and Cared About as more than "tits'n'ass,” it’d be up to them to level-up and Git Gud.

However, given how common it is that teenaged girls/young women choose to wear outfits that show off and draw attention to their tits and/or asses, choose to take pictures of themselves or have pictures taken of them posing to display their tits and/or asses prominently—their revealed preferences are that they rather enjoy being sex objects and being seen for their "tits'n'ass."

Sloot, we're never going to agree on this. I do wish girls didn't go for tits'n'ass, but they've been conditioned that this is what boys want and this is how they should be and we've moved on culturally so that wearing skimpy is the new default. And the boys on here arguing about nubile and young aren't wanting modestly-dressed women who will only hold their hands until the wedding night and no divorce ever.

We're both ordering the waves to retreat and neither of us will have that happen.

I do wish girls didn't go for tits'n'ass

Indeed, you do have a persistent habit of launching into histrionic reactions toward other commenters based upon your wishcasted vision of what girls and women are like (in the positive direction) and what boys and men are like (in the negative direction), which often leads to you being /r/confidentlyincorrect and amnesic in never updating.

but they've been conditioned that this is what boys want and this is how they should be and we've moved on culturally so that wearing skimpy is the new default

If young women are so readily conditioned, so easily influenced, so lacking in agency, so weak in mental constitution—that they can't take ownership of or accept accountability for their revealed preferences for being sex objects, that instead such a revealed preference can only be attributed to societal conditioning and internalized misogyny from the patriarchy—perhaps we should do a holistic reassessment of the capabilities of young women with regard to other areas of life, such as voting, providing legal testimony, serving as jury members, signing contracts, etc.

but they've been conditioned that this is what boys want

Conditioned by who? Is it conditioning or is it what boys actually want? If we assume that's what boys actually want (which I don't think is fully true, they also want emotional affection etc, of course from suitably attractive girls), does that mean they should get it? Are girls simply "conditioned" to do whatever, without their own agency? Only boys are supposed to have agency and overcome their nature? If girls are not able to deal with the incentive landscape provided by unconstrained gender-mixed interactions, parties, social media, intra-female competition arms races, then what?

There used to be a counter-force to that "conditioning", mainly provided by the father saying that the daughter is not allowed to wear such a skimpy outfit. It was then decided that this prevents female liberation and empowerment and is oppressive patriarchy and has to be abolished. Now what?