site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

2
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Scoot into the parallel universe of gay interactions, and penetration somehow doesn't seem to work that way. Eight dudes hooking up in various configurations, younger one plied with drugs by the others, and nobody would be surprised to hear that two of them ended up dating afterwards.

I'll caveat that there's probably more selection effect than just orientation in this hypothetical. Gay orgy guys are not the only preference point, and there's some strong if not perfect barriers between the two. There's also some people where the orgy would be a fun weekend, and mixing alcohol and pot wouldn't be noteworthy, or 'vhs head cleaner', but ketamine would be a nope right out situation.

((And, conversely, there's a pretty nontrivial excluded middle the other direction: there's folk who are tied into the gay drug orgy hookup situation that wouldn't turn down a woman for a long-term relationship because she was, too. I'm not going to say every bi guy thinks the spuydjeks solution is desirable, but if it's a literal fantasy for me even as a monogamous bi guy, and no small number of less monogamous bi guys are more openly willing to chase it. That might be a 1% of male population thing, but we're not exactly talking a supermajority of yaoi fangirls out there, either.))

This is fascinating stuff, I always love getting little windows into other groups' relationship politics.

Gay orgy guys are not the only preference point, and there's some strong if not perfect barriers between the two.

Curious if the non-orgy gay guys have that sentiment of postcoital sexual disgust and contempt for a partner who's been penetrated, or what @rayon calls "the corrupting power of cock"?

Like, maybe some guys wouldn't marry another dude who was actively sleeping around, sure. But in the gay community do you see men suggesting that friends are impure or vile or undateable because of contact with a single-digit number of other men's cocks? In a parallel situation to this frat party, does the drugged ketamine novice get ostracized, deemed forever gross and undateable, disinvited from parties for not having put up more resistance to the other guys?

spuydjeks

You'll have to forgive me for not knowing the background: what exactly is this?

Sorry. It's a MMF romantic relationship.

To be fair to the yaoi fangirl hypothesis, the artist is a woman. To be slightly more descriptive, the comment section has an absolute ton of guys wishing for one of the two slots.

Ah, ok, I think I see it now. I thought that was MMM at first and simply missed the context clues from the post.

I do notice that the pairing appears to be highly masc/androgynous masc/actual girl, though, which is interesting. Seems like it's really convenient to have both a physical rock of the relationship, and then one who's more 'aligned' with the girl's other interests, yet also have them not be the same person.

It makes me suspect that there are a couple of possible attraction modes for the modal woman: one for physical dominance where it would be unattractive for them to worry about the alignment/feels stuff, and one for alignment/feels where it would be unattractive for them to worry about the physical stuff, where one man also serves as a stabilizing force for the other, or rather, isn't going to be turned off by the attribute that's unattractive to the woman. I get the distinct impression that trying to do both ends poorly.

And I see no indication why that wouldn't hold sexually as well, or even necessarily be unworkable in practice- though it does mode-lock the more andro male into a role that might not necessarily have been the most productive thing for them to do.

(And really, if there's only one objection I have to being in/trying to start a gay relationship with someone, it's this. Sure, I could lock myself into the physically dominant role, which is what he clearly requires of me to bother flirting back, but that's not where I get most of the joy out of a relationship... and so inevitably I'd end up doing the exact same threesome thing to do the emotion/build-up things I couldn't do with that partner, which from other experience is inevitably going to feel like cheating, because in truth it kind of is.)

My read on yaoi fangirls is that they're more aware of this dynamic than the general populace. Which, if it's written by more-aware-than-average women, seems correct, but falls short on productive ways to deal with that (other than explicitly form a polycule, which seems like a hyper-autistic solution to both recognize and resolve the cognitive dissonance about 'cheating' I described earlier... and evidence bears that out).

(As an aside, I notice that there are some women who sometimes aren't always aware of this, and get kind of confused when this 'threesome' dynamic asserts itself under certain conditions, because [if you only consider the existence of the physical dom position] the andro man is by that definition malfunctioning because there is no 'andro' role, so what is [in full context] male co-operation can only [from the first perspective] be observed as 2 doms fighting over the single position. Maybe men instinctively understand this dynamic better, but good luck getting them to tell you it exists.)

I don't know if this effect is symmetric or mirrored across to yuri fanboys or by extension MFF couplings. More research is clearly required.

It makes me suspect that there are a couple of possible attraction modes for the modal woman: one for physical dominance where it would be unattractive for them to worry about the alignment/feels stuff, and one for alignment/feels where it would be unattractive for them to worry about the physical stuff,

This either/or thinking doesn't check out to me. Scan women's romance literature and you'll find countless instances of the ideal being a strong and physically protective male partner who's also tender and emotionally attentive, something like having a guard dog who's tough to other people but a sweetie to you.

I suspect some women don't have a lot of experience meeting this type IRL, so it's likely that the splitting into tender partner + strong partner is a workaround for someone who's been traumatically convinced that strong + tender (or, as Sabrina Carpenter says, "jacked and kind") combo doesn't exist in a single man. You see something similar in the many romance heroes who are constructed as dashing and brash while also having some kind of physical handicap or emotional wound, which is perceived as making them safer to be around.

Then, too, there are a lot of people who falsely believe they display unappreciated "tenderness" when actually they're just passive or defensively/anxiously polite, neither of which is especially attractive.