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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 6, 2023

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If your daughter comes home one day and says that a guy in her class who she sometimes speaks to came up to her and said “I want to fuck you casually without commitment, you up for it?” and she says she felt uncomfortable and walked away, what would you tell her? Would you tell her not to tell her friends because it might embarrass the guy? Would you feel sympathy with the guy who propositioned your daughter?

I would seek him out and look him in the eye. If he's a fuckboy he'd get a warning to stay away from my daughter. If he's a social retard, he'd get a primer on dating including a warning about second chances.

If he's a social retard, he'd get a primer on dating including a warning about second chances.

You would be very kind. Ordinarily these lessons are taught by peers. He needs you to tell him that as an awkward man he is fundamentally disgusting and transgressive for wanting a relationship - or at least that he is seen this way and that there is nothing whatsoever wrong with this.

The traditional perspective of the father on his daughter's sexuality is extremely protective, anachronistic, and colored by psychosexual status games, with incestual overtones. He's the last guy I would trust to have a fair opinion on the topic, like a mother-in-law's view of her daughter-in-law, although probably even more so.

Only a universalist could ask this. I can simultaneously believe that capital punishment is a bad policy that often unfairly harms the undeserving AND that anybody who so much as lays a finger on my loved ones should die in agony. The emphasis is on my here.

I just think that it is not a very good exercise, because for some, fatherly duties override almost all other moral concerns. The answer will therefore always be maximally protective of the daughter and maximally hostile to any perceived threats or slights. Regardless of the sympathy the threat may deserve in the abstract.

Tell her to cut him off completely and avoid him wherever possible. Followed by a lecture on Western degeneracy and how we (as a group of people) have our own culture and proud history and most importantly are absolutely not like them at all. Finally ending in a promise that if she desires we (our family) will happily find her a good man from a stable family and a similar belief system to us that she will with high probability be happy with (but first, finish your studies and graduate with good marks).

I'm going to say something perhaps inflammatory: If I had a daughter and that happened, yes, I would feel some sympathy for the guy who propositioned her, and I would expect her to understand that. In order to explain my position, I'm going to relay a personal experience of mine.

Many guys tend to not have the experience of being approached since they are the ones typically expected to initiate and take on all risk. However, I'm a guy who's had an experience of being propositioned by another guy, and though granted his advance was less direct than "do you want to be FWB" it was done by a random dude in a park who I had never met before (and I was admittedly a bit flustered by it and politely rejected him). My initial reaction wasn't really "What an asshole, fuck that guy", instead it was worry about the fact that perhaps I could've cushioned the blow of rejection a little further. My primary emotion was in fact a feeling of sympathy (and a bit of confusion about how he figured out my orientation on sight alone).

I did not think I should be offended simply because he suggested to me something we might both enjoy, and I did not envy his position. Being the one who initiates is terrifying, opens you up to the inherent humiliation of rejection and could end up with you on the receiving end of a claim of harassment. I felt an obligation to respect that. And while I did tell some people I knew about what happened (which I felt comfortable doing because we definitely did not hang out in the same social circles and in fact would likely never see each other again), I never provided any identifying information that would have reasonably allowed anyone even in his social circles to know who he was off my account alone. I certainly did not go blabbering about how terrible he was and in fact made it a point to stress to people I told that I did not think of him as a creep.

I would expect from any daughter of mine the same conduct I expect from myself. No amount of "but physical strength differences, though" works here, because I am unusually small and thin (I barely weigh 100 pounds) and the guy propositioning me was much larger. Furthermore, any claim that the consequences of unwanted sex for women is greater than it is for me also has to contend with the fact that women now have a huge amount of control over their sexuality even after the act has occurred as they have access to things like the morning after pill. As an aside, it is easier for women to escape the consequences of PIV sex than it is for men (whose financial obligations will be enforced even if the sex was against his will).

And yes, women have a different instinctual reaction to these things than men do because of the historic reproductive risks and costs of sex for women which no longer holds up under modernity. Humans are full of evolutionary baggage that isn't necessarily rational under modern circumstances. However, I expect women to deal with their feelings in a way that doesn't blow back on others who have according to all objective criteria done nothing wrong. Managing your emotions and not capriciously doing things that would cause others harm simply for offending your sensibilities is part and parcel of mature behaviour.

If I'd found out my hypothetical daughter had gone and told people about it, and found out it had blown back on the guy to the point he was being treated like a predator, I would definitely at least be telling her that her actions matter, and that she should have thought twice before badmouthing him in a social group where it could result in actual consequences for him.

EDIT: added more

I would unironically tell her to cut all contact with him and not do anything to piss him off too much. Things such as gossiping about it.

Not out of sympathy for him but because there are crazy motherfuckers out there and you dont want to be on the wrong side of someone with nothing to lose all the while being the reason he lost everything, justified or not. Not making unnecessary enemies is usually a good policy regardless of who you are. At the very least Id tell her to tell her friends to keep their mouths shut.

Complete social suicide like this makes rapists and school shooters and assaulters.

This is a leading question because the obvious answer that you want to get ("fuck that dude, you are right to shame him sweetie") is obviously going to conflate people who think OP is wrong because he is not conforming to traditional sexual norms (no casual sex, period), with those who think OP is wrong because he didn't play the game properly (casual sex is fine, OP just went about it the wrong way).

The issue is that if you accept a sexually liberal or libertine culture, OP didn't really do anything morally wrong he just committed a massive faux pas so he doesn't deserved to be permanently ostracised and labelled a dangerous incel. After all, all he did was believe the advice liberal society gave him to be honest and treat women like men.

Most people sympathetic to OP are addressing the fact he is operating in this sexually liberal environment, and judging it on that basis (and finding it hypocritical and treating OP unfairly on its own terms).

This does not mean I think a sexually liberal culture is a good thing. If it were up to me, all these young adults would be pulled away from casual sex. OP would an idiot lecher trying to defile a maiden with premarital sex, and the girl would rightfully scold and shame him for trying to take away her chastity (and I presumably would be the father with a shotgun threatening OP). But that's not the cultural environment this is taking place in, and the girl isn't shaming OP for trying to take her chastity, but for being an incel creep loser.

You can still accept a sexually liberal or libertine culture while arguing that some (mentally sound) people are morally wrong for being interested in sex or relationships at all, or for being interested in certain ways.

Absolutely based. Under my ideal belief system this dude did a lot wrong and deserves to be punished, but the reasons for that punishment aren't the reasons he's being punished for under modern western sexual degeneracy where Women Can Do No Wrong.