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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 18, 2023

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The last top-level comment (if that's the correct description) in last week's thread was a self-declared screed by @BahRamYou, which coincidentally reminded me of a short observation about the Ukraine made by @qqqq almost a year ago, which unfortunately generated no further discussion at all:

From a demographic point of view, it is much more interesting how a country with one of the lowest fertility in the world and a population of less than 40 million people will exist after at least 10 million people left it. (Most of which are women and most of them will not return). This will probably be the biggest gender imbalance in history. Will Ukraine declare itself the first incel state? Will it provoke insanely high levels of crime and suicide? It will be interesting to watch.

I thought about this a bit, and it occurs to me that the Ukrainian War is unlike other wars seen around the world since the beginning of this century because it indeed represents a sort of unfortunate perfect demographic storm, namely that 1) it affects a population that is relatively well acculturated into general Western norms of modernity 2) it is relatively close enough to Western welfare states to trigger a massive refugee wave 3) pretty much no control authority anywhere is trying to curb the flight of women, as opposed to the flight of men 4) the region affected is characterized by low fertility, even by European standards.

Based on what I know about the reality of sex differences, I'm sure the presence of large numbers of Ukrainian refugee women, I imagine a large portion of them young and single, in the EU has already generated high levels of resentment among local women, even if this is not visible in media reports. On the other hand, if the Ukraine, or at least large regions of it, has indeed become de facto incel land, which I imagine is indeed the case, I find it hilarious that, objectively speaking, this probably represents the first social realization of the scenario that average Western online feminists love to loudly complain about as a nightmarish dystopia to be avoided, namely a society plagued by enormous numbers of single, sexless and, one can imagine, bitter and traumatized, violent young men - and yet I'm sure you'll not see much or any discussion of this in feminist circles.

Western online feminists love to loudly complain about as a nightmarish dystopia to be avoided, namely a society plagued by enormous numbers of single, sexless and, one can imagine, bitter and traumatized, violent young men

Bitter, traumatised and violent, yes they treat that as a huge problem, but single and sexless? I’m not sure feminism explicitly worries about this, single and sexless men are to be dealt with on an individual level as inconvenient complainers who are to be ignored or shamed - feminism only deals with these men insofar as their situation (whether self-inflicted or not) causes them to step out of line. I don’t think women in general have this attitude but it’s the sense I’ve gotten from any explicitly feminist space I’ve seen.

feminism only deals with these men insofar as their situation (whether self-inflicted or not) causes them to step out of line.

Yes, that's what I meant, mostly. The issue of there being young men that are sexless and single is generally not discussed publicly as a social problem unless they step out of line one way or another, and violence of any sort committed by young single men is politically correct to discuss as long as it's possible to do so in the context of white men being radicalized by anti-feminists and generally being toxically masculine.

Or in the context of their being the agreed-on good guys, committing it against the agreed-on bad guys in what's agreed to he a "just war"?

True.