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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026

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This is one of the more interesting comments because it points to something real from the past; the ethical treatment of sluts.

(Minor Peaky Blinders spoilers below)

In Peaky Blinders, one of the later seasons, Tommy Shelby ends up marrying a literal whore. Her name is Lizzie. Everyone knows Lizzie is a whore. I think there's some subplot about one of the other Peaky Blinder guys falling in love with her before Tommy. I can't remember (I started to lost interest in that series pretty early on).

One of the reoccurring tropes is that nobody is every allowed to call Lizzie out on her whoredom. Of course, again, everyone knows. Lizzie is completely unmarriageable and Tommy marries her for some convoluted plot reasons and because the true love of his life died in Season 1 or something. Tommy essentially transfers his own social status onto Lizzie out of a kind of charitable cause.

A more succinct version of this comes from a passing line in the movie Bull Durham. One of the baseball players is marrying Millie, a notorious female fan of the team who sleeps with all of the players. One of the other players makes a quip about Millie's promiscuity which prompts the protagonist, Crash Davis (played by Kevin Costner), to harshly respond, "Anybody talks bad about Millie, I break his neck."

One of the features of the kind of late-traditional gender role structure is a handbook for treating sluts. They don't get to operate incognito, and they're kind of unmarriagable but 1. You don't call them out on the sluttery and 2. If they do get married, it's kind of a sexual carwash for them.

This helped things work. Now, with "ethical slut" / "ethical non-monogamy" being a "thing" (as the kids say), people are forced to look at this directly and the reaction is what it has always been - sluttery is bad.

Pride and prejudice offers a bit of a different view on the matter. Marriage can cleanse the transgression provided its marriage to the other fornicator.