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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 18, 2023

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They’re not going to become “trad” overnight, they have no understanding of what that is, they were raised without religion, they are surrounded by a media environment that means they don’t have any real understanding of what reversing it would mean.

Just how deep does that lack of understanding run? Do these women actually still not realize that trying to outdo one another in pandering to the short-term sexual proclivities of the top 5% of men will never get them the one thing they really crave, which is the attention and devotion of a worthy man?

Have you met people of average intelligence, let alone the half who fall below the midpoint? The people we most often make fun of here are midwits already in the 90th+ percentile. Expecting average people, especially average young people, to accurately diagnose the complexities of the sexual marketplace is overambitious. They may be aware of their place relative to others, but their collective role in the machine isn’t going to be derived by the average 17 year old.

And in any case, there’s a defection issue here. The average 18 year old boy in modern secular France (for example) isn’t going to wait until marriage to have sex. A girl his age has no power over him, if she tells him she wants to wait, he’ll go fuck someone else who has not fully considered the reality of gender relations and concluded that promiscuity is counterproductive for women. She is left with two choices if she commits to this path. First, she could become a tradcath (or maybe Muslim), which presumably as say a secular Parisian (maybe not even of Catholic background) would involve abandoning the culture in which she was raised and wholesale LARPing to join a completely different largely rural subculture and belief system that will be suspicious of a young single person without a family history in the SSPX or whatever. Secondly, she could find a secular French boy so romantically unsuccessful or unconfident that he is willing to agree to the terms despite living in a promiscuous society. Of course, that young man is likely so shy that he’ll never even make a move, and may otherwise be extremely awkward, stunted or ugly (by which I don’t mean “not the top 5%”, but “in the bottom 10%”).

So in reality, the girl usually has to put out if she wants a relationship [that may lead to marriage] with an average young man in her league of class/education/looks.

The average 18 year old boy in modern secular France (for example) isn’t going to wait until marriage to have sex.

So in reality, the girl usually has to put out if she wants a relationship [that may lead to marriage]

Hold up. These are completely different scenarios. Why did you just move the goalposts?

I’m saying that defection from modern sexual culture isn’t a viable solution for most young women in the West even if they thought of it, which they probably wouldn’t. How is that not relevant?

Do these women actually still not realize that trying to outdo one another in pandering to the short-term sexual proclivities of the top 5% of men will never get them the one thing they really crave, which is the attention and devotion of a worthy man?

They’re not pandering to the “top 5%” but to the average young man their age, who grew up in the same post-sexual-revolution culture and so is not usually going to accept a single young woman telling him to wait for her.

Again, hold up.

  1. You and @iprayiam3 are specifically discussing the reactions of women supposedly used and abused by Danny Masterson and Russell Brand and, I presume, similar male celebrities and lotharios, i.e. the top 5% of men, not by average young man their age. You're claiming this is the understandable and sincere female reaction to the undesired consequences of the sexual revolution.

  2. In your comment above, you seem to be implying that a modern Western woman putting out in the framework of a long-term relationship on the path to marriage is somehow also an example of promiscuity. I think even on this forum most people would find that interpretation highly dubious.

The way I understand 2rafa's argument is that a woman that craves "normal" and traditional monogamous relationship is in a trap. In the modern environment she has to go out and risk getting burned by some sexual predator who will take advantage of her. A logical thing to do in such an environment may be to lash out utilizing available tools such as #MeeToo.

Some time ago there was an article here on The Mote by someone who pointed out to exactly this phenomenon using some Indian word. The phenomenon being demonstrated by an image of car cut in half used as a horse carriage complete with rubber wheels. It was too heavy and not suitable as a horse cart, but the new technology of car was successful enough to completely wipe out institutional knowledge of how to build a good horse carriage. So when a crisis came and fuel became too expensive so cars were not viable anymore, people used the tools available to them to put something together which was subpar to what was there before.

The example here is sexual behaviour where 2023, one such example is infamous sex consent app where people will be required to agree to a contract prior to having sex. If only there was an institutions where two people swore before witnesses that they are now in a relationship - including sexual one - voluntary and in full knowledge of consequences. So we will solve the situation surrounding sex and relationships with an app, because this is year 2023 and old things like marriage is no longer viable social technology anymore.

Some time ago there was an article here on The Mote by someone who pointed out to exactly this phenomenon using some Indian word.

Jugaad Ethics is the article you're referring to.

That's the one, thanks.

While I don't disagree with the main argument of the article, it seems its entire narrative hinges on a parallel derived from a misunderstanding. As the photo of the carriage in the article shows a car of East German manufacture, the Trabant 601, and there are pinetrees in the background, it seems obvious to me that the photo was taken in former Yugoslavia, or in a post-Soviet country, probably Romania or Bulgaria. The reason many Trabants were turned into such carriages is because socialist economic policies ended, trade was liberalized, people could buy used Western cars, and maintaining those crappy Trabants became pointless, but many rural people still needed carriages. It isn't that the infrastructure for car use collapsed, or that people forgot how to build cars.