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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026

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I subscribe to the idea that literally everyone involved was degenerate for their participation in the act (the girl and the guys alike); her escalation into rape accusations is another matter entirely and does not reflect kindly on her or her ability to own her mistakes. But:

If you don't want to risk being thought a slut, don't have a drug-addled gangbang, it's really not that hard.

I really just think progs and trads alike would only be satisfied with the reintroduction of The Patriarchy™ (and probably not even then). They are literally stating that women do not have the capacity to regulate their own sexuality and cannot take full responsibility like adults when they get themselves into situations that make them feel shame or do not yield the outcomes they want, and that the responsibility should be displaced onto men collectively, who must decide on their behalf what would be good for them or read their mind to divine what they Really Want, then regulate their sexuality for them by preemptively stopping them from making stupid decisions and putting out in a way that won’t yield results. They are all just babes in the woods who cannot be expected to assess risk or bear the consequences when their gambits fail.

Of course, you can’t expect every single man on earth to take responsibility for a woman’s Honour and Dignity, so the practical implementation of this is to provide her father and brothers and other male relatives who would naturally care about her the most with the authority to make sure it is preserved. Frankly the discourse surrounding this is some Islam Is Right About Women-tier shit, and I struggle with not believing that women’s lib was a horrible mistake when women en masse seem intent on demonstrating that they are radically unsuited for the “empowerment” they so value. If I didn’t know better I would think this was a conspiracy to turn people into misogynists; it’s just so farcical that I could not have dreamt up better ammunition if I tried.

In a hyper individuated world, women can't control their sexuality. Neither can men. That's why, in every society in history sexuality has been heavily regulated by custom and law.

They are all just babes in the woods who cannot be expected to assess risk or bear the consequences when their gambits fail.

Maybe libertarian sexuality works really well for some subset of hyper-rational economically privileged people living in a co-op in Berkeley. Maybe. But for the large majority of people, men and women, that leads to ruin. Predictably, and we as a society have to bear the costs. Descriptively, they can't assess risk or bear consequences when their gambit fails, which calls for external regulation.

That's why, in every society in history sexuality has been heavily regulated by custom and law.

Yes, and presumably in the system you’re imagining, men and women alike are to be heavily punished and held accountable for breaches of the sexual code, not this fucked-up one way system where all agency and responsibility is placed on the man to Know Better as the ostensible buyers of sex under this framework (whereas expecting the seller to not give away free candy willy-nilly, then complain they were robbed because they just assumed people would donate after taking candy, is too much to ask). That line of thinking naturally lends itself to a guardianship system, which is a system most people making this argument would feel very uncomfortable with. They are not taking their ideas to the logical conclusion; in my experience they would like women to be sexually liberated while at the same time believing that liberation should still come with the ability to displace responsibility onto the nearest man because you were just such a poor little exploited damsel. It is untenable to let women freely put out and to let them still go crying for redress, sympathy and a shotgun wedding when they don’t get what they want out of their investment. Nobody can control a woman, yet everyone must avenge her nonetheless once she is unhappy with the consequences of her own actions.

I’m not a sexual libertine (as I said, everyone here is degenerate). I really just want things to be consistent.

Descriptively, they can't assess risk or bear consequences when their gambit fails, which calls for external regulation.

To clarify, in a world where you are afforded the right to assess risk for yourself and freely make decisions as a liberated individual, you should also be expected to accept the consequences of these actions. People who gamble or invest in a highly leveraged crypto ETF that ends up losing them money might not be the best judges of risk, but as an adult they are judged to be able to make these decisions and suffer the consequences, without having the ability to point to the nearest person and displace all accountability.

We live in a sexually liberated world, and perhaps that is not the world we should live in, but it is. “Your standards applied consistently” and all that. Frankly I am also very perturbed by how trads seem to try and agree with feminists on things like these, instead of forcing them to adhere to the sexual liberation many of them claim to want for themselves. By carrying water for them trads are not actually helping bring about the trad system they so valorise, they’re just pushing the Overton Window in the direction of Sexual Liberation+, which is just milquetoast sexual liberation except now there's shiny new features like the ability to endlessly play victim of your own choices and blame men every time something goes wrong or (gasp) they don't give you exactly what you thought yourself entitled to from sex.

I'm increasingly of the opinion that "full adulthood" isn't something that should happen automatically but something that should instead be available to everyone and needs to be actively sought out.

My wife would almost certainly prefer to not have the right to do plenty of things she technically has the right to do. She knows she is vulnerable to scams and would prefer to not be able to enter contracts on her own, except in some limited capacity like buying groceries.

I don't think she is alone. I think a shitton of people would like to have more limited "rights", like not being able to receive phone calls from anyone, enter into contracts over the phone, only being able to enter into contracts over the internet with third-party white-listed vendors, etc.

It kind of works a bit like this with some investments and bank services, you can't just stumble into making some types of transactions.

I'm not sure this extends to sexual or romantic stuff but it follows the same principle.

In tribal societies, boys sometimes have to complete some dangerous ordeal in order to be considered men. What would the equivalent be for girls?

In hard patriarchal societies like ancient Greece or modern India, there isn't one because women are never considered full adults. In soft patriarchal societies like ancient Rome or medieval Europe, when her first husband dies - the only women who enjoyed what men would consider full adult freedom were widows.

That said, peasant class women in premodern societies enjoyed far more rights de facto than they were supposed to do de jure because their work (i.e. textiles) was just as essential as men's.

The wedding night and their first childbirth?

It is untenable to let women freely put out without policing from society or men and to let them still go crying for redress, sympathy and a shotgun wedding when they don’t get what they want out of their investment.

I think this is missing a very critical aspect of this situation: she probably got what she wanted out of the investment and wouldn't have "gone crying for redress and sympathy" absent another necessary ingredient. Others saw an opportunity to exploit her experience for their own gain, and pushed her to "reinterpret" the situation to advance their agendas. She and the men directly involved are not the only degenerates in this story.

Others saw an opportunity to exploit her experience for their own gain, and pushed her to "reinterpret" the situation to advance their agendas.

What do you mean?