site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 6, 2023

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.

16
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

To contextualize a bit, I’m a MRA-ish antifeminist and rafa, while having some feminist sympathies, can hardly be called a mainstream one. So you shouldn't pattern-match this criticism to the general, frequently feminist, view. The line ‘men want to replace their wives with younger models” is indirectly aimed @2rafa , as they have expressed such sentiments in the past.

I think some redpill concepts obscure more than they reveal. You limit your argument to single women already, but that is not how it is used (awalt).

One can explain the attitude you describe in single college-educated women with general human failings, ego protection and sour graping. Feminism and other forms of female chauvinism, when present, obviously don’t help. But those are not the insurmountable, almost genetically coded obstacles redpill thought makes them out to be, encouraging bitterness and helplessness.

That's the thing, I think you're obscuring more than you're revealing by trying to put everything into generic boxes that can apply to both genders. For example, you can kind of explain "roid rage" through general human concepts like regular rage/anger. But no, the very specific hyper-violent presentation of roid rage is caused explicitly by excessive male hormones. You can also see in general that men express anger and rage much more violently, and that some unlucky men can even get something resembling roid rage more or less naturally. An angry women is just frankly not comparable, and will consistently express that anger very differently. Violence in general is more or less a male-specific problem, with women who are engaging in substantial violence being basically a rounding error (yes, I know the female domestic violence stats; no, I don't think it's very comparable).

The same applies here as well. Being perpetually, unhappily single due to inappropriately high standards is pretty much a female-specific problem. You can kind of find similar-ish behaviour in men if you squint hard enough (some super-high status men seem to have trouble holding a long-term relationship, but they also seem pretty happy dumping their young model gf for an even younger model gf), but again, it really isn't very well comparable. Every single guy I've met that claimed to be single due to his high standards immediately jumped at the opportunity once any woman showed him any attention whatsoever. It was just pure cope.

I agree though that viewing this as as insurmountable is wrong as well. As an individual, there's plenty of things you can do to improve your chances.

Don’t concur with your anecdotes. I don’t think incels or hikkikomoris act like they would jump at the chance to have any girlfriend (not that I condemn that attitude, again, legitimate preference).

I think the situation is symmetrical. For every complaint about men making no effort and being childish, there’s one about women being fat, expecting too much. It’s a market. At the end of the day, some of the inventory sits unsold despite there being some buyers left. Only they want to pay 10 dollars for a bunch of apples, and the sellers want 15. I have no sympathy for their intersex whining ‘the sellers/buyers want to exploit us, they’d rather have nothing than our perfectly good offer.’ Then it degenerates into two separate locker room talks about useless men and bitches.

Adjust your price or live with the fact no transaction will take place, both of you. No side is especially wrong or irrational here.