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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 6, 2023

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My point isn't whether you or anyone else advocates for relationships like that, it's just my observation that they happen with a high frequency. The reason everyone talks about "red flags" is because we are so blinded by flattery and the glow of an early relationship that we often miss when the other person actually doesn't respect us. We may not want to date someone like this, but we are certainly willing to trick ourselves that we aren't when we actually are.

Does the disrespectful attitude actually work out to be a majority of successful men? Well, maybe not. But a more defendable position is that every man has the experience of knowing some real assholes who have no problem picking up women, and I think plenty of women have seen the equivalent on their side as well. And many of these kinds of people are perfectly willing to gaslight their target into thinking that it's really "them" who is the one being selfish immature liar. And a toxic relationship can run on those fumes for a very long time.

This should all be common liberal understanding (and I am very liberal myself, full disclosure), and yet when a frustrated young man is resentful, suddenly the liberals become stoic. Surely it's something wrong with the frustrated young man that is preventing him from finding a partner? If a man were to so much as vent, surely that would be evidence of his own insufficiency? But because it's so hard to argue this in the liberal framework, arguments like yours have to be totally tortured to assume that most women, or most anyone, can sniff out good men from bad, and are immune to toxic disrespect.

It's much simpler, and more harmonious for the liberal worldview, to just admit that some men get screwed over by the way women judge attractiveness and by the way society teaches men to date, and that they should get to vent harmlessly if they so desire. And they should eventually let go of the resentment! But they shouldn't have their venting be held against them.

It's much simpler, and more harmonious for the liberal worldview, to just admit that some men get screwed over by the way women judge attractiveness and by the way society teaches men to date, and that they should get to vent harmlessly if they so desire. And they should eventually let go of the resentment! But they shouldn't have their venting be held against them.

By doing so they'd open the status quo up to legitimate critique. Their reluctance to do so is because of some combination of women are wonderful (women can do no wrong) and male hyperagency (men are responsible for everything that happens to them).

By not doing so it does lead to many men going through the 'anger stage' when they find out they'd been indoctrinated with social mores that are against their own personal interest. You could find them on forums like /r/theredpill and some never get over it.

If anything, admitting that "some people are bound to get screwed over" is pretty much fatal to the liberal worldview (which I'm here taking to mean "we all come out good/okay in the end"). Either you can't keep calling yourself a liberal and sleep easy at night anymore, or you go to some illiberal extreme worldview. Kind of like what we see with the rest of the culture war, really.