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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 3, 2023

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Celebs, boundaries and emotional abuse

So two stories have popped up around the same topic recently: how much men have the right to complain about or police their women's public behavior.

First off: recent mother Keke Palmer finally got to go out and enjoy herself, and her outing involved being serenaded by R&B star and notorious hound Usher Raymond. Her "baby daddy" decided to come out and complain that: "A man of the family doesn’t want the wife & mother to his kids to showcase booty cheeks to please others".

Well, that didn't go well. The feminist-aligned internet tore into him and he appeared to have been promptly dumped and, insult to injury, merch clowning him is now being sold

At the same time, "toxic masculinity" has a white representative to balance it out: Jonah Hill is now being attacked for being a misogynistic narcissist. Soon after the birth of his child, his ex decided to post texts showing his demand that she stops sexy photo shoots or overly close relationships with men or hanging out with women from her "wild past"

Hill is also facing a backlash from the DM women for "emotionally abusing" his ex via his boundaries and non-negotiables and his exploiting of "therapyspeak" to sanctify controlling behavior.

In both stories both men are excoriated for hypocrisy because these women behaved this way when they met, and expecting them to change (including after childbirth) is inconsistency.

So, what culture war implications to take from this?

  1. Keke Palmer's boyfriend had a very standard male reaction, regardless of charges of hypocrisy. Making it public that way was unwise, especially since he was the comparative minnow in the status competition. Times have changed. Maybe men like that should reconcile themselves to playing the role of the honorable wife who conveniently never sees any of these shenanigans, for everyone's sake. Of course, that would suggest some more restraint on Palmer's part...

  2. The situation is reversed with Hill. He has the status. Which I suspect is a significant part of the motive to release it now and draw in Deuxmoi-reading women to help win a battle that she couldn't have won in the relationship. As many people asked: why did she put up with his absurd demands (asking her to not post risque surfing photos when he met her through them) for any time whatsoever? Well, because he was Jonah Hill, presumably.

  3. No pretense to even wrestle with why men don't want the mother of their kids publicly on display. Just near-total lack of care.

  4. Obviously the concept creep on abuse continues.

  5. Is the celebrity (and wannabe celebrity) class just going to litigate every relationship online now for fans and political affinity group points...forever? The Hill thing happened a while ago and now it's supposed to be a thing? I suspect part of the push to call some of this "abuse" is precisely that there's a realization that no one should care about messy personal business. I assume the word game is retarding us coming to the conclusion one should in a panopticon: to stop caring. I wonder how long it'll hold.

Yes, the failure of many men was in not screening the mothers of their children for acceptable behaviour before knocking them up.

After doing a bit of reading it seems that Jonah Hill actually just dated the surfer girl for a year, stated his boundaries after observing unwanted behaviour, and they broke up for that reason (good for him). He then moved onto his current partner with whom he now has a child.

I don't blame Jonah for saying what he said in the way he said it. He said 'if you need to do these things, happy to support you, but I'm not the partner for you'. He was probably mildly insecure, but if stating those insecurities as boundaries is classified as abuse in a relationship then I would say 80%+ of women are guilty too (and a large percentage of men). I doubt he was talking about staying away from 'any friend he hadn't pre-approved of' (additional link with more texts giving context). From the additional texts it seems likely he was talking about guys hitting on her while she was surfing and her not extricating herself from the situation. She was 25 when they were dating, so pretty fair if she didn't know how to handle overly flirtatious men yet.

In contrast Keke's partner kind of brought it on himself by criticising her behaviour on Twitter. I don't know what he was thinking I think posting private relationship discussions publicly pretty much destroys your own reputation as someone safe to date by a large percentage of the population.

You shouldn't need to tell your partner what is acceptable behaviour regarding other men. Trying to change people is a recipe for disaster. Even if wild players/playettes change their behaviour in the early phase of a relationship (perhaps due to limerance or pair bonding), they're likely to eventually revert back to their old ways. As the old PUA saw goes 'you can't turn a ho into a housewife'.

Yes, the failure of many men was in not screening the mothers of their children for acceptable behaviour before knocking them up.

And what would you advise they do: be celibate for life? Not have children at all? Being cheated on sucks, I will agree. So does divorce. But that isn't the worst thing that can happen. I've seen plenty of things just as bad or worse. Food addiction, drug addiction, attempted murder, physical abuse...

No, you date women, have sex with them (with protection) and observe their behaviour. If they are not 'wife material' (whatever that is according to you) then you move on to someone that is. You don't try to change them, you just move on. Nothing about this method has anything to do with celibacy. If you are talking about the low % chance of a condom breakage and then an actual conception happening, well I would mitigate this by either accepting the risk or not sticking my dick in obvious crazy.

Jonah (for all the faults I have with him as a typical Hollywood progressive) did it the right way. All the Twitter noise is just nonsense that will blow over quickly. I think the fact she needed to post their text history a year after their breakup for 'mental health reasons' is a sign that she regrets him getting away and needs validation from others to stop her bad feelings.

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Date the sort of woman who might be described as "modest." Who is pretty enough, but not a performer or surf instructor and model. This, of course, comes with its own drawbacks; she'll be harder to bring to the film premier, and maybe won't make your friends jealous or know anything in bed.

It sounds like the hope and expectation was to date a performer who loves attention, and that she would come around to increased modesty based on conversations/love/childbirth, but it's not too surprising that didn't work out, especially when these were full grown women of 30 or so.

or know anything in bed

There's a stereotype that it's highly conventionally attractive people that aren't good at sex

I'd love to know if someone has formally investigated this. It doesn't jibe with my personal experiences very well at all.

Pickup Artists had a lot of anecdotal data about this, but it never panned out into solid knowledge. There's no surety that having sex with an uglier girl with better 'skills', is a more enjoyable experience than a model (of your type) that acts like a starfish (due to limerence or your hormonal/nervous system firing on all cylinders)

Completely agree. But even on the original question I'm not persuaded the correlation is all that (inversely?) strong. I've had sex with mid or ugly women who were crap in bed, and with gorgeous women who were enthusiastic and passionate.

Hmm. If you have a lot of something, you can get away with not learning the things that other people need to learn. Many beautiful people get away with being assholes or not as competent. Trust fund babies born with silver spoons in their mouths sometimes misuse their privilege in ways that peasants like you and I that must work for a living can't pull off. Not every rich person goes to Yale, gets trashed at parties, and urinates off of balconies onto the peasants below...but a few do. When you have the same peasants you just pissed on at midnight sucking up to you the next day because your dad's a billionaire and you've got connections...you can be an asshole if you like.

I'm glad to see that you're coming around, if this comment says what I think it says.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the last time we spoke you acted as if you'd rather be celibate than take a chance on women! I'm not being rude here, I think it's a good change.

Hmm.

I have heard that there was some kind of unique wisdom that you could only get from sex and relationships. As such, it makes sense to be less choosy about your first relationship than subsequent ones. I am very aware that if you are quite unattractive or autistic, sex and relationships for both men and women can be a kind of Faustian bargain. It's up to each individual to decide what they're OK with; as long as they're not being evil, it's their choice.

Bringing children into a situation like this makes things more...complicated, though.

Also, the Devil generally holds up his end of the bargain, but gets his pound of flesh in the end.

Yes, the failure of many men was in not screening the mothers of their children for acceptable behaviour before knocking them up.

To be fair though, there aren't exactly as many innocent virgin women without an instagram account as there are men. Men have to compromise on something, looks, virginity, Iq, personality, tattoos, mental health, weight etc. Most people are forced to settle rather than are able to chose whatever they dream of.

I believe that one of the reasons why so many people are single today is because too many people are unattractive. Lots of people are obese, many women have tonnes of bagage, there are men who can't do a single pull up or survive three days without electricity. Partially due to the housing market a lot of young men live with their parents. People are remaining single because they can't find someone decent while they themselves aren't decent.

I believe that one of the reasons why so many people are single today is because too many people are unattractive.

Yeah. Also there is the fact that the things that men were/are traditionally good at (heavy labor and war) aren't nearly as important in the modern world, while the traditional male failure modes of essentially being a violent/drug addicted/game addicted jackass are still just as bad. It's pretty arguable that Joe Median isn't a good deal for Jane Median these days. I'm not at all saying that this is a bad thing; there's been plenty of arguments that patriarchy was a sheltered workshop for unattractive dudes.

Also there is the fact that the things that men were/are traditionally good at (heavy labor and war) aren't nearly as important in the modern world

imma push back on that because let me just say that if men stopped doing all the things you could reasonably consider "heavy labor" for a week then entire industries and nations would be brought to the brink of collapse.

The modern world has definitely freed up large swathes of the population to do things that don't require lifting the equivalent of their body weight from parallel multiple times a day, and shoved those jobs where it is still expected off to the periphery. But the stuff that DOES require heavy labor as an input (agriculture, construction, energy production) are all FOUNDATIONAL for civilization.

But, from a cultural perspective, the physical and personality traits associated with engaging in heavy labor have certainly fallen out of fashion, so such guys are probably disadvantaged when it comes to finding mates. since a woman might have to take a status hit to be seen associated with such a man.

But the stuff that DOES require heavy labor as an input (agriculture, construction, energy production) are all FOUNDATIONAL for civilization.

Fair enough. But...suppose that something (a virus maybe) just nerfed the shit out of male strength, leaving most dudes as weak as the average woman. This would suck, but we'd learn to adapt and even if there was no cure, 10 years after that virus hit we'd be doing OK. This being said, I'm not sure that greater male physical strength is required for agriculture or construction. I will say that construction would be more expensive and less efficient if you only had women working it. This being said, if we had a good deal of warning that dudes doing heavy labor would down tools and stop working we could most definitely keep things going. Designing tools to be smaller and more readily used, building machinery to automate certain parts of processes, and having more people on work crews could allow civilization to keep chugging along.

The median man, as you said, doesn't need to be swole in order to earn a living.

But...suppose that something (a virus maybe) just nerfed the shit out of male strength, leaving most dudes as weak as the average woman.

This has already happened. It's called "mass industrialization" (even the swolest man is absolutely nothing compared to the power of the three-phase induction motor, the air compressor, the internal combustion engine, and the thinking machines though those would come much later), and had completed its takeover of the United States by about 1920 (other nations would be slightly ahead or behind); the negative effects of this would be temporarily reversed by an economic golden age from about 1950 through 1970.

It's worth noting that though some societies have had these conditions (the Peoples of the Longhouse being the most relevant example, as those societies never needed to develop agriculture or industry in the 10,000 years between running into a more advanced civilization), it has never been the case that these conditions were true for the most advanced society on the planet. I don't believe that 4 generations of people is enough time to change underlying biological realities though admittedly technology will eventually be good enough to obsolete women just as hard (if that technology is not banned... but it probably will be, with the usual bullshit justifications).

This being said, if we had a good deal of warning that dudes doing heavy labor would down tools and stop working we could most definitely keep things going.

And now you know why male interests have no representation in the halls of power today, and why progressivism lacks the concept of positive-sum economic growth entirely. Countries that are less industrialized, meaning "men are more required to create primary goods", tend to (need to) afford men more political power.

there aren't exactly as many innocent virgin women without an instagram account as there are men.

I don’t think this is true, and if it is it’s leaning pretty heavily on ‘without an instagram account’. Pretty sure that men are less likely to wait til the wedding night in every population, everywhere, even when age adjusted. Men are dramatically more promiscuous when you restrict things to the subset of sexually active adults, as well. Even if you put a lot of stock into instagram being bad(and I won’t dispute that- it seems like insta is pretty bad, especially for teen girls), it’s not entirely fair to only be concerned about instagram and not male typical vices.