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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 3, 2023

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Agree that Men are no less likely to rewrite their own perspective on their own memories. I think a lot of this is linked to the need for internal self-consistency. If someone express traditionally conservative morals, yet acted in a very not conservative way earlier in life, it makes sense they would write it off as a "wild time" in their life, with a likely follow on of "but I grew up / got more mature etc." What's more, I don't necessarily think there's anything wrong with this. Learning from experience and changing your views based on that experience is sort of how humans work. I'd rather someone used to be kind of an asshole and then got over it versus continuing to be an asshole but somehow "consistent" in their values?

The sex difference I see (incoming: anecdata) is that female self-revision seems to frequently remove any personal agency let alone fault. It's not that Alice chose a bunch of Bad Boy Bobs in her 20s because she wanted fun and thrills and, hey, turns out Bad Boy Bob was in fact a Bad Guy. Instead it's (ancedatally) more often "Bob turned out to be such an asshole who could've known that a guy with prison time, no job, and a stolen motorcycle wasn't a sweetheart!"

Whereas, with my male friends, I hear a lot of "Yeah, she did sleep with three other dudes but .... she was a stripper and I knew that so .... what're you going to do."

All this being said, I don't chalk it up to innate brain differences between men and women. Ideas and culture matter. Contemporary feminism is rooted in hyper-liberation theory and maximal individual freedom of expression without any consideration of personal responsibility, let alone behaviors that strengthen societal bonds. Women are told that sexual libertinism earlier in life is a profound way of expressing themselves. How can there be any self-critical examination of mate selection criteria and interpersonal trust if the whole point is to just do it!

"Well, aren't young men fed the idea that they can have fun in their 20s going out to bars and bedding dozens of women as well?" Sure, but, as has been pointed out many, many other times on The Motte, it's fundamentally harder for all but the top .1% of men to get sex on demand. Secondly, and more broadly applicable, how many Bro-movies have some variation of "don't stick your dick in crazy?" Is "fuck boi" not a term in common usage in a derogatory manner? As underdeveloped as these ideas may be, at least there is some concept of future repercussions of reckless personal decision making (bonus: hasn't "Man up" been used by both TradCon folks as well as all but the most insane gender-dismantling leftists?)

Young people in society will always have higher degress of openness and risk taking. We need this for society to continue to function. The balance that tradition and positive elder role models play is to create the acceptable outer bounds of those behaviors to create a hard check on catastrophic (both personal and societal) consequences of those decisions. I think current feminism has done a lot to blow up even the outermost of those boundaries. The current result, and future prospects, were excellently summed up in @FiveHourMarathon's quality post from this March

"Bob turned out to be such an asshole who could've known that a guy with prison time, no job, and a stolen motorcycle wasn't a sweetheart!"

Whereas, with my male friends, I hear a lot of "Yeah, she did sleep with three other dudes but .... she was a stripper and I knew that so .... what're you going to do."

That does often happen with men, sure. However what also happens very often is "man gets with new girl, man's friends see that she is crazy, man doesn't see it because he's too into her to care, months later man realizes that she is crazy". Which is the same thing as your Bob example from above.

Anyway, if you ask enough guys for their opinions you will probably eventually find criticisms of women for doing pretty much anything whatsoever. If the woman goes with Bob, someone will say that she is being irrational even though she finds Bob to be hot and it's pretty rational to want to fuck people you find hot. If she follows her more logical side and goes with Tim the nice nurturing guy, someone will say "see, women are not as big risk-takers as men are" or "she actually wants Bob, she is just using Tim as a beta provider". If she decides to not sleep with anyone, someone will say that she is a prude. If she sleeps with both Bob and Tim, someone will say that she is too promiscuous.