Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
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Notes -
A number of times on this forum, posters with right-wing sensibilities have solicited dating advice along the lines of “Every woman I talk to expresses progressive opinions, so how do I navigate around the inevitable political disagreements?” Each time, several posters have asserted that this is not in fact as much of a problem as it may appear to be; if everything else in the relationship is going well and the woman respects you for other reasons, she not only won’t have a problem with your politics, she’ll actually start to mold her own political beliefs to become more in line with yours!
This assertion has always struck me as equal parts intriguing and bizarre. Certainly I’m familiar with much of the copious amount of commentary around psychological differences between men and women, including Dissident Right discussion of the “Woman Question”. I fully accept that aggregate differences in temperament and political reasoning between the sexes are real and substantial. Still, it’s tough for me to wrap my head around the idea that most adult women’s beliefs are malleable to that extent. Perhaps I just haven’t managed to wrap my head around the unavoidable truth that, when it comes to men and women, the inner machinations of each sex’s mind are an enigma to the other sex, and that a regime of healthy relations between the sexes requires both men and women to contort themselves into a mode of external presentation that renders them legible to each other.
Although I am currently in a situation wherein the relevance of this line of questioning is probably going to become significant to me in the pretty near future, I’m not actually asking for advice here. I’m actually more just curious as to how this supposed process actually operates. The claim is that a woman who is in a long-term relationship with a right-wing man will become more right-wing herself over time. How does this work? Is this only true of women who did not express a strong political worldview before the start of the relationship? If the woman did have progressive opinions before the relationship, will she end up explicitly repudiating those opinions later on? (i.e. “I was wrong about that, and you were right. I can’t believe I ever believed that!”) Or will it just be a more subtle shift over time, with the woman beginning to express right-wing opinions and either not noticing or not acknowledging the way in which these opinions contradict her earlier views? Does the shift reflect a genuine change of worldview within the woman’s mind, or is it merely a change in the views which she verbally expresses? (The really alarming and potentially blackpilling answer would be “There is no difference between those two things.”) Also, is this shift only sustainable if the woman does not have a larger social sphere of women who will reinforce progressive views and thus act as a countervailing force against the influence of the husband?
I realize that this is a series of questions and that the subject matter might be too broad for the “Small-Scale Questions Thread”, but it doesn’t seem to be appropriate for the Culture War thread either.
It's not that women's beliefs are malleable to that extent, it's that people's beliefs are malleable to that extent. Having consistent political beliefs serves no purpose for the vast majority of people the vast majority of the time, and is often actively harmful to one's own social standing. Their behavior is not what requires explanation; it is a perfectly sensible way to go about life and reduces the likelihood of interpersonal conflict, including in this example of relationships.
We are the weird ones here, and even to the extent that any of us have unchanging, well thought-out principles with regard to certain issues, we all have other areas where we haven't spared a single thought and are happy to go along with the herd. As an example, my father has strongly held political beliefs and acts according to them, but he has almost no opinions whatsoever regarding food. Whatever he is presented with, be it burgers, sushi, silkworms on skewers, African peanut stew, or roasted guinea pig (all things he has actually eaten), he will eat it without complaint and promptly forget about it completely unless asked a set of leading questions, and he finds it baffling that I remember the characteristics of different foreign cuisines or have any sort of ranking of them in my head.
Were the Guinea pigs tasty? They always looked like snacks to go to me haha.
The taste is pretty good, like a cross between chicken and rabbit, but picking meat off all the little bones is quite time-consuming.
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