This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I cannot be a feminist because my opinion of women is too high.
See, I hear all these tales about female weakness or incapacity or feeble-mindedness, told when needed to rescue a sister out of a scrape, but if I were to list them all out, they would add up to a picture of women as the most fragile and pathetic creatures that, from my own life, I know isn't true.
That is: when is a woman actually responsible for her own actions, without her biology or psychology getting in the way? I have heard:
So, best-case scenario (no pregnancy or trauma,) that makes a total quantity of two-and-a-half years of a woman's entire life when she's a responsible adult. (I'm sure I haven't thought of something; those two-and-a-half years seem mightily exposed on their own...)
In this case, what we are hearing that some of Jane Doe's key behavior after the gang-rape, which seems, to the naïve observer, completely incongruous with it having been a gang-rape, is actually a "textbook trauma response.: "Fawn," so they say. Don't you know? It's not just "fight or flight," but actually "fight, flight, or freeze." No: "fight, flight, freeze, or fawn." No: I've even heard "friend" added to the list. (One can only wonder what other words are going to join up.)
Now, people do not actually behave as though all of the proffered excuses are true. It seems almost that they are facts that are only supposed to exist when convenient. We are certainly not supposed to treat women as these zero-resilience headcases buffeted about by their wandering wombs if that means infringing on something that they want to do (like, to say the least: vote,) even if that's a responsibility we would under no circumstances want to leave to such a miserable creature.
So I say no to all that. No to the omnipotent trauma excuse. No to the idea that women are uniquely vulnerable to, and excused from good behavior due to, their hormones (I would say that a man is a good man to the same degree that he executes self-control over his own hormonal [testosterone] impulses; I would hold a woman to the same standards, perimenopause or no.) This is what equality means. This is, for all my own life has told me, what being an adult of either sex means.
The nuance is, though, that most of these omnipotent excuses are exaggerations of real things. ("No to youth as an excuse? Even for newborns?") And for charity's sake (and for intellectual humility's sake,) I grant some greater accommodation and understanding to others (women in particular, in this case,) than I expect for myself. But that feels like one of those cracks big enough to drive the whole program through. I do not want to close it. But every time I hear another one of these omnipotent excuses brandished beyond all reason, that crack gets that much narrower.
More options
Context Copy link