This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
A question: why do people believe that people - especially men - who are unsuccessful with romantic relationships are unsuccessful because of a lack of moral virtue? A man who's 30 years old and has never gone on a date or kissed anyone is assumed by default to be some kind of fat, basement-dwelling loser. When he is in fact a short but fit engineer, or a corporate lawyer, or a programmer for Google, he's then roundly criticized for being misogynistic or lacking in moral virtue. Occasionally, darker - much darker - suspicions are raised: let's say that there are reasons why these men frequently avoid being around unrelated children. It seems difficult for people to comprehend that an apparently healthy, gainfully-employed individual could fail to meet with romantic success despite a decade of trying...unless there is something seriously morally wrong with them.
Someone who fails at being a salesman, or a business owner, or even at playing basketball worth a damn...doesn't get that. "I'm a nice, decent, hardworking guy...but I can't sell shoes at Nordstrom, I've been working hard to do this and have dreamt of being a salesman since I was 12" is a kind of absurd complaint. He might be a fine human being and maybe he'd make a great heavy equipment operator, but he just doesn't have the talent for sales. We don't think there's something morally wrong with our hero because he can't sell shoes, or because he's a short, clumsy guy that sucks at basketball.
Because men are assumed to be the ones who have agency in this regard. Men act, women are. And therefore if something goes wrong it’s men’s fault.
Adding to that that many people, especially women, have experience with men whose approach to dating is morally undesirable, but no experience with men who are unsuccessful at dating for some orthogonal reason. Yes, men with morally undesirable approaches to dating are generally doing OK for themselves romantically, but that’s often what women have to go off of.
As for OP, there are many women in the Philippines and Ukraine who would be happy to have you.
BTW, OP shouldn't see these women as "lesser" than western women given that they're more likely to say yes to him. I don't know about Ukranians/Pinays specifically but I would venture to say that they are probably going to be more loyal, invest themselves more into seeing you succeed and make a better mother than their equivalent western counterparts (ofc bad apples exist everywhere so choose with care). When you're 50 what will matter is the bond between you and your wife and how secure your relation with your family (children if you want, in-laws), not how hot or desirable she was at 25.
This is another benefit of getting your parents/other elders to at the least shortlist a bunch of people they think would make good partners for you and then you choose from this set rather than choose completely by yourself. In the latter case you'll be more focused on the short term benefits of your potential partner than the lifelong ones they provide and are more likely to end up choosing a suboptimal person when averaged out over your whole life.
I think part of the problem of discontent is that people are not thinking of marriage and family life in their 20s (and maybe even 30s) because that's redolent of their parents and they don't want to think of themselves as being in that slot of the stage of life yet. They want the fun that our sexualised society tells them is out there - if you're in college, or college-aged, you're going to parties and banging hot chicks/studly guys! You're having all kinds of exotic sex! You're not tied down yet, because society as a whole agrees it's your right to be young and have fun. So if you're not getting that, why not? It's your right. It's owed to you. Someone or something must be to blame.
And that can be the patriarchy or feminism or Women Are Wonderful or Rape Culture or Toxic Masculinity or the Cock Carousel or something. But it must be something to blame, because the old conservative rules were too confining and stuffy and we've agreed to dump them in the name of self-expression and liberty and happier, better lives. So why aren't we getting the happier, better lives? If only women were traditional and submissive to men! If only men were in touch with their emotions and feminist!
More options
Context Copy link
With respect to Ukraine or any other nation which suffered through the Eastern Front of WW2, it's mostly a simple case of a lopsided sex ratio favoring men (in current Western societies, it's the opposite case), and women there being socialized accordingly.
I was thinking about this in college and after; I remember vividly working in a hardware store after graduating college and looking at washing machines, fantasizing about twenty years from now looking at washing machines with a blunt, abrasive, caring, fit wife. Then, I still thought that sort of thing was realistic.
I think you meant to reply to a different comment.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I happen to believe in this theory:
Garbage IN, garbage OUT.
Consider the type of person who will willingly endure a relationship with someone they are disgusted by in order to lift their family of origin out of poverty. An admirable sacrifice, to be sure - but wouldn't you feel some resentment? BurdensomeCount: I'm assuming you're a straight dude. Imagine if your whole family got, say, AIDS or cancer or something. But there was some rich gay dude who would save 'em if you married the guy. He's ugly as hell and kind of smells bad, to boot. Would you take one for the team/your family? What kind of resentment would you have for him? How would you ultimately feel about the sacrifice - and it is a sacrifice - that you are making?
Hold up, you're significantly changing the situation by making it a homosexual relationship. I can have children by marrying a very ugly woman, I cannot have children by marrying an unpleasant man.
OK, assume he'll spring for surrogacy; he's rich, after all. Does that change anything?
Mildly, somewhat, eh. There's a pretty substantial step when you cross from someone who is the sex you're orientated towards into an entirely different sex that I think breaks the comparison. It should be plenty to get the point across that it's a particularly repulsive woman. Even just on the child rearing element it matters that the kid(s) would be biologically both of ours and raising them together creates a bond.
I propose a compromise of a trans man who is fully reproductively intact. And I think I wouldn't actually be resentful of this transman if they also took the relationship seriously. Even this version is kind of lacking because I think our perspective savior is likely to be willing to change some things about themselves at the savee's request which kind of interferes with the repulsiveness of a transman to your average man because the transman would at least make an effort to be more feminine to the preference of the savee.
That said I do find the whole mail order bride thing intuitively distasteful in a way I can't articulate well. Something about the transactional nature. Perhaps Disney has just too thoroughly colonized my mind.
Okay, they're a trans man. They're also 450 pounds with atrocious personal hygiene. And they're a trust fund baby.
I take issue with the bad personal hygiene and trust fund status. The usual complaintants are usually well funded through their own personal earnings and frankly the hygiene thing never did at all in my experience, high functioning people who question they're success aren't low hamging fruit like bathing. Seriously, the idea that this is someone earning well enough to sponsor a family coming over while also not having figured out that inoffensive smells factored in is a venn diagram containing only the severely autistic. It's nearly disqualifying that you actually unironically reference it.
I do accept them being 450 lbs and repulsive, but I think there is still room to feel love there. But I think merely very obese would be more fair.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Also I should add, non-Western women could be just as rich as Western women (and some of them, say from e.g. Saudi Arabia or Qatar, are) and assuming they had a good upbringing that taught them to value what is really important in the long term they would likely still be more attracted to you (assuming no cultural dealbreakers like you not being willing to convert) than their equivalent western counterparts.
It's about values fit, not about lifting people out of poverty.
The problem for women, then, is the men who expect to be able to bang hot chicks when they're 25, then when they're ready to settle down, get a woman who'll put up with a man not on his looks etc. but on other values, while the guy still expects he'll be able to marry an attractive woman.
If it's both parties accepting that "you take what you can get, and kissin' don't last but cookery do", then it works. When it's one partner expecting to eat his cake and have it, while the other partner isn't permitted to do so, then the resentment builds up and feminism is the logical outcome.
Feminism is nothing more than women taking on the role of the partner expecting to eat her cake and have it, while denying men the ability to. That similarly builds up resentment, leading to a never-ending cycle of hate.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Women are only attracted to the top 20% of men. Any society where the majority of men are getting married is a society where the majority of women are lying back and thinking of England. If you are uncomfortable with that, you can either try to become Chad or you can accept being an incel.
I'm comfortable with it; it worked fine for my ancestors, and if I am performing my duties as a man by providing and protecting then it is perfectly reasonable to expect a woman who will perform her own wifely duties. Whether she enjoys it or not is her own affair.
More options
Context Copy link
The difference is that non-Western women have been socialised differently and will not feel disgusted by a man who isn't the best looker. The things that disgust them are very different from the things that disgust western women and I would say that their "disgust set" is a better fit for long term thriving than the standard western one (no different to how someone who is disgusted by blood and feces is more "fit" for thriving in the world than someone who is disgusted by fresh food and water).
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I won’t disagree that moving in an east India direction would be an improvement for US courtship norms, but just suggesting it is about as helpful as ‘we should hold singles dances on the moon to help people who have no success on the apps’. It’s just not going to happen often enough to constitute a societal norm.
Eh, once there are enough of us in your country (through either immigration, higher birth rates or shorter generation time) it's going to start happening outside of the subcontinental community purely because of osmosis, and especially so if we make up the upper classes in your country (as people like to ape upper class behaviours). No different to how all Americans started eating Italian food once there was a critical enough mass of them in the US.
Sure it won't help white people in the current generation (and probably not even the next), but eventually they too will benefit (ofc this assumes no AGI, if AGI happens there's no use in predicting anything from that point onwards, it's called the singularity for a reason).
Or, more likely, Indians will acclimate to US norms.
More options
Context Copy link
They started eating the American version of Italian food, which is not necessarily the Italian version. And parents etc. setting the standards for marriage used to be the norm in the West, also, until it was overthrown by the ideas of romantic love being the only reason to marry, and more corrosively for marriage, easy divorce.
You yourself have given some indications that you want the best of both worlds: westernised women who will be happy to date and sleep with you so you get to sow your wild oats, then when you're ready to marry, a traditional marriage arranged by your parents. That's not really sustainable. If the USA does move back to the "nice girls don't, wait until marriage, and your families will settle the marriage" model, you and your peers won't have the opportunity to play the field anymore.
Maybe past me wanted that, current me has seen the error of my ways and thinks playing the field is a net negative for society as a whole and nowadays I have brushed off opportunities because I know there is very little cultural and values compatibility between me and the girl. I will not soil myself or her any further.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link