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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 16, 2023

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The solution is not to instead date inexperienced young things, these being the only things you can get, because their red flag detectors haven't grown in yet.

If someone sincerely believes that young adult women's red flag detectors are so bad that they can't tell the difference between good/bad yet then they should support a chaperone like an elderly family member having a level of control over young women's dating lives who can help them filter out the bad ones from the good ones. Unfortunately feminists really don't like that either.

At this point in my life I basically ignore anything coming from a self-professed feminist. I would encourage others to do the same, your existence will get better.

they should support a chaperone like an elderly family member having a level of control over young women's dating lives who can help them filter out the bad ones from the good ones

Unfortunately, 15-19 year old girls are right at the period of life where they're insistent "but we love each other! I'm so mature! you don't understand! it's not fair!" and they won't listen and will rant online about abusive parents trying to break them up and making plans to run away etc.

Seemingly you can't just lock your kids in their room anymore if they're trying to sneak out and see the unsuitable boyfriend.

Unfortunately, 15-19 year old girls are right at the period of life where they're insistent "but we love each other! I'm so mature! you don't understand! it's not fair!"

Not just girls. Though it never happened, reportedly my father wanted to get married at 16. We often joke about the lengths horny young boys would go to in order to get laid, some of them might even agree to marry, of all the crazy things.

If someone sincerely believes that young adult women's red flag detectors are so bad that they can't tell the difference between good/bad yet then they should support a chaperone like an elderly family member having a level of control over young women's dating lives who can help them filter out the bad ones from the good ones. Unfortunately feminists really don't like that either.

I think you could sell the idea to some of them (particularly those that have children), as long as the elder family member is a woman too.

But this isn't even about feminism, it's a general issue with post-classical liberalism. On one hand we must maximize individual autonomy, so the grasp that the family, church, and community have over us must go. On the other hand we cannot just stand there and watch as people drive off cliffs, so we must establish a quasi-totalitarian system of social control that will try to reproduce the benefits of family, church, and community.

Another part of the puzzle is that in order to destigmatize premarital sex, we ended up almost throwing away the very idea of romance. I had this conversation with my wife recently, where she was telling me how an older dude at work is creeping on a friend of hers. I felt that might be unfair to the guy, and we ended in an argument until I asked what is supposed to be wrong about the guy having feelings for her, and courting her with honest intentions. She said there's nothing wrong with that, but that is definitely not what that guy was up to.

But in this modern world a stable monogamous relationship (or, heaven forbid, marriage and family) is not a better thing to aim for than a series of casual flings, so we must once again invent a quasi totalitarian system of social control, that will try to do what the traditional one did, but with extra steps, so maybe no one notices.

I think you could sell the idea to some of them (particularly those that have children), as long as the elder family member is a woman too.

Oh sure, I don't think that would make much of a difference at all. The political attitudes gap between men and women closes once people enter their 50s, I don't expect a woman's mother to make significantly different decisions from her father, in fact I'd expect her to be even more cautious than her father in who she's willing to accept for her daughter because of greater risk aversion.

I think you could sell the idea to some of them (particularly those that have children), as long as the elder family member is a woman too.

Is that not the default for arranged marriages? Certainly ultra-orthodox Jewish matchmakers are women, and most Muslims I’ve spoken to mention that arranged marriages are really arranged by the mother even if in theory men make the decisions.

So they'd probably say "based" to the Jewish matchmakers, but be skeptical of the Muslim setup because formally the power is still with the man (we are still talking about feminists, rather than trad women). Not saying they're a majority, in fact it's probably a fringe of a fringe, but there's a strain of feminism feels like they've been taken for a ride by the powers that be.

Yep, generally it's women who do the heavy lifting in the arranging of marriages for us too. The father generally defers to his wife in like 95+% of cases, and it's widely agreed that it's a good thing (regardless of what the soap operas may display, they are designed to be interesting stories for viewers, and do not reflect real life statistics at all).

Yeah, realistically that’s about what I’d expect. It just seems like a job that winds up being women doing it because they want to do it more than men do.

Yeah. Male role is more of a rubber stamp/final approval in most matchmaking-driven cultures. Indian & Chinese, from what I can see, vast majority of the matchmakers are women.