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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.