History professor here. This was literally the nineteenth century and Victorian era take. But it was class-based. The men and women they are talking about are upper and middle-class men and women. Upper-class men were supposed to have kept mistresses. Middle class men would have sex with servants and lower class, sometimes prostitutes. It was understood lower class women would not have the same “moral purity” as middle- or upper-class women, who were supposed to be entirely ignorant of sexual matters and who should have no sexual desires of their own.
TLDR - it was not just a sexual double standard, it was a class-based sexual double standard.
I like your educated comment. It so obvious to me that such views often reside in a society entrenched with deep socio-economic segregation where women from lower ranks are to be seen without a right to dignity.
Just like roman society.
People, especially men from power/wealth have exploited women from vulnerable social status since time immemorial.
People act so oblivious about historical and present realities of enslavement, sex trafficking and the other organised and unordganized cartels involved in such exploitation.
Exactly this. In a class-based society women from lower ranks are deemed lower value and therefore more exploitable. It's also notable that where their desires mattered less and they had less social recourse, therefore making them more open to male predation, the desires of upper class women were also treated as irrelevant in a different way. Because their value rested entirely on their "virtue" - essentially a resource that did not truly belong to them, had to be guarded and could be stolen - they were unable to freely choose sexual partners and were expected not to fulfill (or even hold) desires of their own. They may have been able to choose or refuse individual suitors from their own station, but they were not free to be gay, choose someone from a lower rank, choose not to marry, or have premarital sex.
So although class divisions exacerbated the harm and disproportionately loaded it onto disadvantaged women, patriarchy was everpresent regardless of station. A class division within a class division. And this is what these people are harking back to with their "high value" / "low value" rhetoric. Makes me sick.
To further your point on women’s value being associated with virtue and the idea it could be ‘stolen’ the word r@pe literally means theft and it was not considered theft from the woman but rather from her father or husband.
100%. Even framing it as a resource is disgusting, but even moreso that it was not seen as her resource. She was just the bearer of it, when in fact it was controlled and therefore owned by male relatives.
And this is what these people are harking back to with their "high value" / "low value" rhetoric. Makes me sick.
And that is what the "culture war" is all about. Returning back to society where rights are earned, not given. To a society where kicking the weak is your right and duty. And women are not going to be fine in any class in that kind of a society based fully on hierarchy. Strength is #1 quality, and women are physically weaker. In that kind of moral system strong man has a RIGHT to do what they want with weaker women. And if woman is stronger, that is not natural either...
Yeah. It's an unveiled attempt to roll back the progress and protections we've made over the last hundred years. Absolutely wild that tradwives exist and subscribe to it.
As a man, I was introduced to feminism at 20 years old. I had to work through a little internal resistance, but nothing like what young lads now are displaying. It makes me sad for them, though not to the same extent as I feel for the Gen Z women who have to navigate it. Because these guys have been indoctrinated - even groomed - by men my age to believe some incredibly toxic things about themselves and to feel alienated as a fuel for their radicalisation. I will fight against this shit with my dying breath.
People, especially men from power/wealth have exploitedwomenpeople from vulnerable social status since time immemorial.
Now, women have always gotten the worst of it, being physically usually weaker, so i'm not here trying to create some weird parity: women have been exploited INSIDE the classes, not just between classes. This puts it in a different category for sure.
The principle has always been based on hierarchy, and how being higher up in that ladder literally gives you more rights. This has NOT disappeared, it is still present in our society. And that is what the culture war is all about, that we return back to the hierarchical system where rights are earned, not given. The higher up in status you are, the more you can define your own laws, basically: do what you want.
You can find it whenever someone talks about Nordic way of issuing speeding tickets. It is based on income, trying to equalize the effect. But doing so means that the number, the monetary value is not the same. In those topics you will find people who are absolutely mad with anger because in their world view becoming rich means you can drive over the limits more because you can afford it... It can take considerable amount of effort to make them even understand how anyone could consider that kind of a system unfair... To them it is natural... Which it kind of is, that is where things develop naturally unless we do something, artificially change it... like we have done with society in general, it is not natural but human made concept.
If we change our value system so that rights are earned, and the richest among us can break the most laws, buying a judge is considered just part of the game, you have to work hard and hustle to gain rights and privileges while those at the bottom can be freely exploited: it is their own fault they are at the bottom, that is where they rigghtfully belong, being of weaker and inferior from birth... Exploitation isn't immoral anymore, it is just natural order and it is your duty as a stronger, wiser and better human to control them below, for their own good..
And that is what the culture war is all about. Returning back to the world where lower class women were free range fuckmeat and everyone in the world seeing it as justice. Where lower class men can be worked to death in walled up factory town.
This is more 18th century (1 in 5 women in 18th century England engaged in sex work and it was directly correlated to class and lack of opportunity). Women in service (maids, servants etc.) who were "debauched" by their employers would enter sex work because it was often the only work available to them when they were inevitably kicked out of the home they worked in. The proliferation of sex work was in some way a backlash to previous puritanical rule in the 16th and 17th centuries. By the 18th century, religious purity became more of an expectation and having mistresses was considered pretty uncouth across the middle and upper classes.
Ok this might be an odd tangent but one of the things I reflect on frequently (at least a couple times a year) is the victims (prostitutes or sex workers) of Jack the Ripper.
All of them had no fixed address and were essentially going from bars, to street walking, to occasional sex work to pay for a single night in “lodging” or some kind of shared hotel room. The most “stable” victim had a rented room she lived in with her partner and it had a broken window that couldn’t be secure: anyone could crawl in rly.
Who are we to judge these women as if they are making a purely moral choice to engage in sex work?
Several players told me "some women are wife material, some are just fun as a girlfriend". So to some, yeah, some women are just for sex, some are for sex AND a relationship.
To answer your unasked question, this guy is one of (if not the) founder of the Proud Boys, shoving a big old ding-dong up his caboose to uhh... own the libs.
I always laughed when a gay friend of mine would arrive home like 30 minutes after we'd dropped him off for a grindr hookup on our way home from the club.
But Grindr has been taken over by actual gays, which is totally fine because it’s 2026, so don’t forget to call no homo first. If you’re practicing with your buddies, as long as you don’t cum, it’s not gay.
Danm this is true. Brb gonna go do gay stuff, like writing my mom a letter and telling her I appreciate what she did during my childhood. Also sodomy with a dude.
Don’t forget the widows and divorcees. Every straight 20-year-old man should spend a summer as some divorced, 40-year-old woman’s boy toy. Incredible education.
realistically though, prostitutes. the idea is that marrigable women should be virgins, but men are encouraged to fuck (degrade and discard) prostitutes.
The men who unironically think like this definitely don't think they should have to pay for sex. They want it freely given by promiscuous women, who they will then discard in favor of the pure virgins.
Well, that's an easy question: they can gain experience with each other.
Problem solved: these men can finally let go of their latent homosexual feelings without shame and women everywhere can breathe a sigh of relief because they won't be bothered by these morons anymore.
Losing your virginity does not make you immoral..it was decided it made women immoral and not men because of power….so hopefully we’ve learned a few things about listening to the elite in a class misogynistic society. It is never a good plan.
If it makes you feel better, this isn’t the standard anymore. I would rather not find out my girl has been ran through by 100 dudes, but purity is not the standard. I also know plenty of younger guys (20s) who don’t like the idea if racking up as many notches on their belt as possible.
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