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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026

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Interestingly, I once pointed out that the social function of Sororities is PROBABLY to select for women who can be DISCREET about their promiscuity. quoth me:

Perhaps THAT is what these sororities try to filter for? Discretion? Like can you maintain public appearances and not hurt your sorority's social standing by, say, making your bad behavior obvious and obnoxious, can you conform well enough that nobody would single you out as a 'bad' girl or a goody two-shoes? Well you might be marriage material!

And clearly, Jane Doe in this instance failed that test HARD. Which, yes, you can reframe it thusly:

She was mistreated by those men, who allowed her to have sex with them even though they had no intention of returning any of that favor.

Feminism and the sexual revolution have done away with any sort of 'consequences' for having sex. That was the point!

You bang, and any further connection is completely optional. If you use protection, then you won't have to worry about a pregnancy or STD popping up, and nobody needs to talk about sticky stuff like 'marriage' and 'long term relationship', just keep things fun!

But uh oh that's not quite how human endocrine systems work, and the social systems we've built on top of THAT are still running on that basic hardware: don't make people feel icky, don't besmirch other people's status, don't break too many taboos at once (unless you're high status enough to do so), and people will rank you in their head accordingly.

One year back I had made the point about how schizophrenic our clashing taboos around sex and nudity are now:

Thanks to cell-phone cameras, women can send nudes to any guy they find attractive. This is not a big deal, "it's their body!" But thanks to cell-phone cameras, women are not as prone to whip out their boobs at a party on the off chance it gets posted online. Oh, and of course if you post a woman's nudes online you can often literally be prosecuted for revenge porn. Because sex and nudity are no longer a big deal, you see.

And here you get the worst instantiation of this paradox. The males got to exploit the 'norm' (but not really) that a promiscuous woman is not shameful to get some instant gratification here and the female, despite not doing anything (morally or legally) 'wrong' is still condemned for it, but the social condemnation is not subject to due process and does not care what her 'defense' is ("I'm a strong empowered woman who will not be shamed!") But we still do have one major, universally agreed norm which has legal teeth: Nonconsensual sex is very bad, and those who force themselves on women MUST be ejected from the social sphere. So its not only the ultimate sanction, its the only one that helps a humiliated woman regain social approval. Its literally the only consistent norm we have left, and we even choose to blur the lines around THAT. Wait, we also have strong norms around relations with kids, but I am NOT touching that right now.

And thus...

SOME days I wish I wasn't autistic enough to expect that social norms should be explicitly stated and followed, and that the actual law should at least try to conform to the actual social norms we follow, not just the kind of vaguely stated 'expectations' we have for people's behavior, that we know privately (or maybe not) are impossible for the average person to conform with. It'd be easier to just go with the flow if I didn't notice the contradiction.

But the on others, I look at all the snafus that normies get themselves into by following base instincts while running with the naive assumption that social rules don't matter, even though their own core psychology, at the end of the day, cares ONLY for social rules and maintaining status by not violating them.

Grumble grumble traditional rules are proven safeguards and all that.

And I just thank the lord that I'm just autistic enough to notice those areas where the stated rules conflict with the subtext/unstated rules conflict with the inherent human drives and desires and tactically avoid treading in those areas without sufficient protection. If it takes level 10 status awareness and level 9 charisma to sail those stormy social seas successfully I'd just as soon be a submarine, illegible to most until I CHOOSE to surface.

I'm dead certain that 95% of the time, everyone involved in the Ketamine/cocaine-fueled college gangbang 'gets away' with whatever they're doing. Fine, we just never hear about it after the fact because the players are more discrete or the Frat/Sorority are better at damage control. But I'm also certain that these people live lives much more filled with drama and dysfunction than is strictly necessary, and they'd be much more fulfilled living under the very basic, traditional rules that dominated society up until 5 (historical) minutes ago.

Take it up with the hippies.