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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 11, 2023

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Obviously the uncharitable explanation is that gay men are all perverts, but that's not the sort of thing that, well actually I guess it could be a quality contribution if you put enough effort into it, but it usually isn't and I don't particularly want to do it.

One easy escape is to just say that most men are perverts, but straight men are usually checked by the preferences of women. I don't think that's a complete explanation, but I do think it's mostly true and goes quite a ways towards explaining many of the differences between gay, lesbian, and straight sexual behavior and promiscuity. When I consider how I would have behaved in my early 20s if I had a group of attractive women that were on the same page as me, yeah, it would probably be about how the typical gay guy spends their early 20s.

If you look at actual (past or present ) patriarchal societies they don't have the straight equivalent of gay pride parades. In fact public displays of sexuality are more taboo than they are in the West. So I don't think it's the preferences of women that are keeping men from allowing public orgies.

I might be the wrong audience here (not a big fan of the pride concept in general) but it seems to me the most pro pride people tend to be straight females…

Noticed this too and confuses me. Even if they normally would react to sexual aggressive/leering men with "thats creepy". Maybe they feel like a tourist viewing a pack of lions on a safe Safari?

Patriarchy doesn't mean "imposed by men on women" It means men take the role of leaders. Like most culture it's primarily transmitted from one generation to the next through women teaching their children. I think it's wrong to model it as maximizing what men want although that is basically how unsophisticated feminists use the term.

I think this is a misunderstanding of patriarchy- it's the dominance of specifically older men. Younger men do not typically benefit under a patriarchy; patriarchal men prefer the interests of their daughters to those of their potential sons-in-law when those diverge.

You can model patriarchy as a straight man-woman class conflict, but you'd just be wrong. It's patriarchy, not andrarchy. And indeed, a lot of the supposed "feminist victories against patriarchy" were actually driven by younger men smashing systems of patriarchal control intended to keep them from creating scandals with young women; the sexual revolution* in particular was more young men rebelling against their elders with women along for the ride than it was driven by women.

*I'm referring to the second one, if it isn't obvious, but I do think that you can make a coherent case for the first sexual revolution being driven by the desires of returning soldiers more than by early feminism.

It's patriarchy, not andrarchy.

Yep. I'd take straight up honest to goodness matriarchy where we are ruled by 60+ year old grandmas over the current status quo, and I personally wouldn't expect there to be any significant difference between a proper patriarchy or a proper matriarchy.

I think there's something to that but it's still not that women are the ones discouraging high male sex drives, in that case it would be older men reigning in younger men. Though really I think the dynamic is less old vs young it's more that men of all ages have an interest in stopping their female relatives from being pumped and dumped for a variety of reasons. Like if a young man became the patriarch of a family because his dad died young he's not going to let other men sleep with his unmarried female relatives just because he's young and also wants to sleep around.

On the one hand you could say that younger men are harmed by the patriarchy since they don't get to sleep around as much but on the other hand they don't have to worry that their bride has a high body count because her family wouldn't let that happen. It's mutually beneficial in the same way that speed limits are: it limits my freedom to drive at 120mph through a school zone but the upside is that neither can anybody else.

I think there's something to that but it's still not that women are the ones discouraging high male sex drives, in that case it would be older men reigning in younger men.

That's just women arranging for the older men to control young men on women's behalf. Women are still ultimately responsible for it.

Based on what? Women have quite a lot power today and they aren't using it to stop younger women from sleeping around.

Because of ideological blinders, though. It's not grannies that have that power; it's specifically credentialed feminists.

and they aren't using it to stop younger women from sleeping around

Active attempts to degrade the pool of people younger women would normally be sleeping with (through the standard attacks on young men) is still an attempt to stop this.