site banner
PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   24135 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 10, 2024

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.

7
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

No, a Remote Amazon Tribe Did Not Get Addicted to Porn

A Times story about the arrival of high-speed internet in a remote Amazon tribe spiraled into its own cautionary tale on the dark side of the web.

Ok, which one of you chuds posted harmful misinformation?

During a weeklong visit, I saw how they used the internet to communicate between villages, chat with faraway loved ones and call for help in emergencies. Many Marubo also told me they were deeply concerned that the connection with the outside world would upend their culture, which they had preserved for generations by living deep in the forest. Some elders complained of teenagers glued to phones, group chats full of gossip and minors who watched pornography

As a result, the story we published June 2 was in part about the Marubo people’s introduction to the ills of the internet.

But after publication, that angle took on a whole different dimension.

Over the past week, more than 100 websites around the world have published headlines that falsely claim the Marubo have become addicted to porn. Alongside those headlines, the sites published images of the Marubo people in their villages.

The New York Post was among the first, saying last week that the Marubo people was “hooked on porn.” Dozens quickly followed that take. TMZ’s headline was perhaps the most blunt: “TRIBE’S STARLINK HOOKUP RESULTS IN PORN ADDICTION!!!”

Ok, what am I missing? This is a paragraph from the original article:

After only nine months with Starlink, the Marubo are already grappling with the same challenges that have racked American households for years: teenagers glued to phones; group chats full of gossip; addictive social networks; online strangers; violent video games; scams; misinformation; and minors watching pornography

There is no "some elders complained" here, it's a straightforward portrayal of the Marubo as a collective being afflicted with, among other things, minors watching porn. "Amazon tribe hooked on porn" is a decently accurate headline-length summary. Sure, shit got sensationalized, but that's a far cry from "falsely claim".

I've had a longstanding gripe with the NYT, Vox, and other supposedly higher-quality outlets, where they essentially prime their audience to read their content a certain way, while maintaining plausible deniability if anyone calls them out, but this is the first time I saw them go after someone for going with the intended reading.

What happened here, did the wrong people agree with them, so the story has to be called off?

Is anyone else getting the impression that since the start of the Great Awokening it has become standard practice in the mainstream media to portray the porn industry and its consequences in a categorically negative light, even if it's done in passing, like in this case? This wasn't always the case, as far as I can tell.

It's schizophrenic. It's always going to be seen as tawdy and low-brow, and earnest arguments that its consumption is sexually healthy ring hollow to most ears. At the same time, my weekly news feed seems to regularly drop an article or two about 'empowered porn stars and all their money' or 'a porn star was invited for a school book reading and incels can't handle it'. Few people want to be porn stars or would recommend it as a career, but there's a reflexive defensiveness against anybody who might ask 'what special qualifications does this whore have to read to my 5th grader?'. There's also 'former porn star, despite being forewarned, has trouble getting a normie job after exiting and isn't that so unfair'.

Hardcore straight porn is ugh the worst, but exploring your mommy kink with roleplay and bizarre anal insertions for the viewing pleasure of strangers is both normal and an exotic frontier you should explore assuming you're not close-minded. No, there is no sense to be made from this.

I knew someone who embodied this confusion, from a very generic middle-class Western background. She was very excited to do "Slut Walks", but she was worried that they were being appropriated by "actually slutty women" i.e. strippers, prostitutes, pornstars etc., and she's opposed to the sex industry in all its forms. Her ethos was basically that sex workers should never be judged negatively (at least if women or gay) but also that their industries should be abolished.

It’s kind of comical, actually. Average liberal feminist women seemingly believe that “sex work” is real work and should carry zero shame and no woman should be disadvantaged or discriminated in any way for engaging in it, should be legal etc., but at the same time society should not normalize it in any way i.e. there should never anywhere be even a hint of social expectation of unemployed or cash-strapped young women engaging in sex work. For example, if you’re some fat, sleazy, hairy, balding landlord, the idea of asking that unfortunate young college student barista renter who’s 2 months behind payment to pay off her debt in the form of blowjobs and sex should not even begin to enter your brain, because if it does, this evil society failed her.

All of this makes zero sense, of course. And let’s not even mention that sex work, by definition, is, you know, work, i.e. something you do even if you hate doing it, because you need the money. Also, it gets taxed. I wonder how many of these feminist culture warriors actually thought this through.

I think a lot of people on the left have a power model of sexual agency (and agency in general, e.g. low wage work) which is extremely dangerous, because there's no way to translate a power model into a predictable legal system, in the same way that e.g. a classical liberal or (Abrahamic) religious conservative model can be predictable. Classical liberalism: people have freedom and responsibility, outside of some explicitly demarcated boundaries. Abrahamic religions provide a textual basis for law that can be either consulted directly by the literate, or at least (in a functioning Abrahamic society) there is probably a set group of widely respected interpreters (priests, ministers, imams, rabbis etc.) whose advice is a reliable guide to what is acceptable behaviour, even if you (or they) don't know the whole system of laws.

In turn, this inherent unpredictability of power models of agency transfers huge power onto those social forces with the authority to determine what power relations make interactions "exploitative" or "not real choices", as well as who gets victim status and its perks. A cheap but clear example of this chaotic authoritarianism is given by the handling by the MeToo movement of sexual assault accusations against Brett Kavanaugh vs. those against Joe Biden: there was no predictable and explicit principle, so what you end up with is trial-by-media of a partisan and special-pleading sort.

An uncharitable assumption, but I think the easiest way of cutting this Gordian Knot is to presume that certain women, straight, lesbian, or otherwise, are fine with performing/acting sexually at/with other women. So long as no men are involved in the production of the act or the consumption thereof, there will be no contradiction.

Or, alternatively, women do like the idea as a high concept, just not so much the actual implementation thereof.

I'm pretty sure that female sex workers servicing other women exclusively don't actually exist.

Contrast the total lack of sympathy scabs got despite the fact that they were just trying to scrape by.

None of the allegedly contradictory statements you quoted are actually contradictory.

Well, either society normalizes a trade, in which case it carries no stigma or shame, or doesn't, in which case it does. I'd say it's that simple.

Not really, no. The stigma has at least two types, and a society (we'll assume a monolith society for maximum simplicity) can stigmatize both, one, or neither.

One kind of a "stigmatized practitioner" is shunned because he is seen as if he unduly extracts value from society as a whole, particular strata or random victims. Examples: street thug, politician, john, pimp, top 0.001% OF model, business owner.

You shun those from a position of morality, good-thinking and justice. At the same time, you recognize that those people are better off in some way, even if you try to sour grapes it.

The second kind of a stigmatized practitioner is shunned (or at least, their job/patronage is) because it is seen as viscerally, materially disadvantageous for himself. Examples: beggar, hermit, retail clerk, street sweeper, common prostitute, alcoholic barfly, OF whale.

Those people are either looked down on or pitied, but very rarely envied. Those who think of those people with disdain use the stigma on the field as a weapon against the practitioners (while often being fine with perpetuating/patronizing the trade itself, like those who eat at mcdonalds and still believe mcdonalds is not a real job for real people), while those who pity them weaponize the stigma against the field (which usually has type 1 beneficiaries, to boot).

Regardless of how you feel about individual participants or whether you are one, it is not incoherent to stigmatize the trade as a whole. It does not "make zero sense" for women to want to end sex work in its current iteration (which they see as mostly exploitative of women) while minimizing collateral to type 2 sex workers. That you don't empathize, or perhaps see ending sex work or ending the stigma against sex workers as against your interests, doesn't make it illogical.

Wait retail clerk and prostitute are equally shunned? I feel so out-of-touch.

More comments

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats