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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 11, 2023

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Slut shaming never disappeared. A favorite Gen Z TikTok topic is slut shaming women based on their ‘body count’. Women still slut shame each other the same way they always have, this is a fundamental way of in-group policing / mate guarding for women. Hoe, thot, ‘for the streets’, all common terms, the problem is more mixed messages from media and conflicting messages from young people which are confusing for teenagers.

Slut-shaming happened in the social context of monogamous patriarchy, where women had neither economic independence nor reliable means of contraception, where early marriage was the norm, and which no longer exists. You know that perfectly well.

I see parts of it repackaged into FDS-like content where women encourage each other to not put out for any random fuckboy. They don't use the word slut and put an emphasis on "they don't deserve you" rather than "you're a worse person for fucking them", but the message remains.

Fair point. It doesn't surprise me. I remember people in the Manosphere making this prediction more than a decade ago, namely that women who feel duped by the message of sex-positive feminism will start advising their daughters or younger female relatives to avoid casual sex in general. But this message is not anchored to any moral code, conviction or worldview, and has no structural basis in current society. Rejecting the sexual revolution out of nothing but spite, regret and resentment will not change anything.

Average age of marriage in some conservative Muslim countries (eg. parts of North Africa) is well over 25, in Algeria it’s 28 for women and 32 for men; it’s unclear that sexual conservatism requires early marriage.

Seriously?

When delayed marriage is normalized, it creates more incentives and also opportunities for promiscuity. Isn't that self-evident?

Promiscuity is usually out of culture, not out of desperation (otherwise it wouldn’t start young).

Desperation isn't the issue here.