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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 28, 2026

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The advantages to behaving like a lady are so great, I don't understand why more men and women don't try to give their daughters this advantage. Do they just not know? Do they think this behavior is incompatible with also being intelligent, educated, and highly-paid? Do they think it's just too hard?

It has been my experience that many of them think it is oppressive. The idea of having and maintaining behavioral standards that might sometimes (or worse, often) conflict with one's immediate impulses is routinely presented to young people as evidence of sexism or even racism. The replacement of "no sex before marriage, sex after marriage even sometimes when you're not in the mood" with "sex whenever you want, and only when you want" is an example of this shift in expectation development. Everyone reacts to these developments in their own way, but broadly speaking I would say it has resulted mostly in a great deal of hurt and confusion among young people today.

Yep.

There's a undercurrent of "literally any rule that might restrict or punish any given behavior is bad, even if I don't actually intend to break that rule" in everything now.

I noticed this year that almost ZERO women worse Sundresses for the summer.

They're sporting jeans and often baggier t-shirts. So not dressing traditionally feminine OR dressing in a way that appeals to the male gaze. Okay occasionally you see cutoff jeans that showed off the legs.

Its like they coordinated specifically to not show much or any feminine appeal this year, outside of their pilates classes or their staged instagram photos. Someone claimed to me that women decided that sundresses were porn-coded or something, possible downstream effect of e-girls exploiting various 'sexy' identities (including goth girls) to draw in customers so the only option to avoid the implication that you sell yourself online is to not be too sexy at all. I don't know if that's the right explanation, I'm just annoyed that "Sundress season" never manifested.

If you were the one 'defector' girl wearing a cute dress and actually entertaining the male gaze in some way you would have it SO EASY if your goal was to get dudes to approach with interest.

But if you told one of these women they're not "ALLOWED" to wear sundresses or that they shouldn't wear Goth girl outfits, they would throw an absolute shitfit at your attempts to restrict a behavior that she herself was choosing to refrain from.

Must be different worlds man. I saw plenty of sundresses all over deep blue New England. Also being a raver, I get no shortage of E girl fashion. Goth girls, frilly dress girls, anime style girls. They all want to look cute for each other and everyone else. And they're dating. I'm also in my 20s so maybe that changes shit.

Oh yes, if they're going to an event they'll wear the outfit! But wearing it out day to day where they might meet a random guy? Much rarer in my experience.

I am glad to know that New England is still observing tradition.

But if you told one of these women they're not "ALLOWED" to wear sundresses or that they shouldn't wear Goth girl outfits, they would throw an absolute shitfit at your attempts to restrict a behavior that she herself was choosing to refrain from.

That doesn’t seem unreasonable to me. I don’t smoke and have no interest in smoking, but I would strongly oppose any attempt to ban cigarettes. Likewise, I rarely drink, but I think Prohibition was quite the government overreach.

But if someone criticized a smoker because its bad for them, sets a bad example for kids, or its corrosive to the public good, without threatening legal consequences...

Would you feel the need to jump to their defense? Or to participate in solidarity events demanding smokers be left alone?

Quoth me:

there was a point in time where women were fighting to be able to (in theory) bare their breasts online and in public.

And yet, the vast, vast majority of women aren't pulling out their boobs on instagram. They just don't like being told they can't or shouldn't do it. And that was literally just Instagram setting their user policy! Not a legal restriction!

Women do that when anyone tries to police female behavior, anywhere.

We JUST CAME OFF THE LINDSAY CLANCY TRIAL, where tons of women, including jurors expressed solidarity with a woman who killed her own children.

Are you THAT libertarian? I assume no. So if we can't bring legal consequences down on a woman who kills children, what CAN we do?

I'm going to push back on this some:

And yet, the vast, vast majority of women aren't pulling out their boobs on instagram. They just don't like being told they can't or shouldn't do it. And that was literally just Instagram setting their user policy! Not a legal restriction!

Women do that when anyone tries to police female behavior, anywhere.

Nobody likes having their behavior restricted, men or women. Maybe it's an American thing, but it certainly isn't a women thing. I have no desire to paint my house bright pink, but if my city tried to pass an ordinance forbidding that, you best believe I would be at the meetings protesting. People of both genders don't like being told what to do, whether or not they intend to do it.