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 -
Thesis (not a terribly original one, but here it goes) as food for thought / discussion fodder:
The online proliferation of the man vs bear in the woods meme, plus similar earlier social media phenomena with a feminist message are, in reality, generalized and simplified expressions of women's overall frustration and latent anger directed at the loss of manhood initiation rituals that characterizes modern post-patriarchal atomized societies; namely, the current social reality is that adolescent boys and young single men are no longer vetted by fathers, elders, brothers, uncles and other pre-vetted eligible men before they are, in effect, released into their wider social circle from the family environment, which makes it rather difficult and risky for single women to separate eligible men from ineligible men.
I've asked my gf about this.
Women seem to assume that "in the forest" means "without social consequences, ever". Meaning, they suspect that some significant portion of men do not actually have an innate problem with rape and violence towards women, they simply do not do it most of the time out of fear.
She claimed that many women who responded with "bear" were victims of violent rape who literally would rather die than be raped.
She also claimed that most wild animals leave you alone if you are not a threat.
I'm pretty sure (3) does not mean you have a high chance of surviving a bear encounter. I would shit my pants and start running away the moment the bear started approaching me, make myself a threat, and get caught and mauled.
And while this may sound crass, I think getting mauled by a bear is worse than rape. I would rather be raped as a man that get mauled by a bear.
2 sounds like nonsense, but 1 and 3 are at least plausible. I think another underdiscussed component of the dress colour of the bear question is that in recent years, the threat of bears seems to have been massively memed up in American outdoorsmanship-adjacent circles, at least based on sheer volume of "this is how to survive a bear encounter" videos that Youtube injects into my feed, the comments on them and the vibes of the 4chan "innawoods" greentext corpus. If you are a host of this meme (which is likely to correlate with being male), you might think of it as common knowledge and not consider the possibility that women responders don't actually think of bears as uniquely threatening (as in some other cultures), instead parsing the answers as saying that from a baseline of your threat level assignment to bears, they think men are worse.
Is there a tangible reason why it's getting memed up?
Something of this form (easy and accessible way of signalling preparedness and baseline belonging to a more aware and professional group) seems to get memed up often enough - the bear safety thing reminds me a lot of the older "trigger discipline" fad, which was characterised by an endless torrent of people who wanted to be adjacent to American gun culture making a show of nitpicking media that depicted characters as keeping their fingers on a firearm's trigger without imminent intention to shoot. The particular choice of subject matter is probably opportunistic.
(Trigger discipline scissor question: "Which of these two situations is more dangerous? Lone woman at frat party with handgun, finger on the trigger to be ready to defend herself at any time / lone woman at frat party, unarmed". The 2A demographic will probably contend that she's more likely to hurt herself in an accidental discharge in the former than to get raped in the latter.)
So will the average Democrat. I think you’re misjudging the Venn diagram of “people who think rape is common” and “people who hate and fear firearms”.
Then make it a taser or something. I would've thought firearm sentiment to be more who/whom - not that this is actually realistically going to be championed by anyone, but would a "guns for women only" policy be instinctively opposed by most blue tribers?
Take away the firearm, and you might have a scissor, but not one that touches the 2A crowd. It’s along the lines of “believe women”: the scenario is underdetermined, so you have to import either the red- or blue-tribe assumptions. Whichever you choose makes the answer obvious.
The blue-tribe assumption regarding firearms is that most uses are illegitimate. At best, mere ownership makes those illegitimate actions more likely. At worst, expressing support for firearms is announcing intent to commit a crime with one.
This is enough to justify near-total gun control. I think that preempts any instinctive opposition to “guns for women only.”
Also, women really don’t care for guns. Ownership rates are like 3x higher for men. Maybe it’s historical, maybe it’s the masculine love for machinery—we’re way more likely to own guns, let alone commit gun violence.
In the frat house case, neither tribe is going to say the girl is justified in brandishing the gun. If you want to cut on the gender angle, you need a different scenario.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link