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Is there a youth backlash brewing against LGBT?
I came up out of the subway the other day, and nearly my entire field of view was filled by a massive glowing screen full of flapping pride flags, wall-to-wall and six feet tall. It was a project by some charity or other claiming that "hate crimes" (or victimization, or incidents, or whatever they measure) jump by 60% during pride month. I've been so burned out by the sight of that flag everywhere that the only reaction I can muster is "maybe stop being so obnoxious about it then?" From the POSIWID perspective, one could consider the purpose of pride month to be to spike hostility against LGBT people, so why do it?
A long tweet from sci-fi author Devon Eriksen claims that pride month is downstream of the "toaster fucker" problem, in reference to an ancient greentext. Condensed: the internet brings together people with bizarre niche interests (what he calls "toaster fuckers" — he claims it's meant to be a general term but he's clearly writing about the LGBT theater of the CW). A supportive online community stops these people from leaving the toaster in the kitchen and adjusting to the normal world around them, and instead these online groups metastasize, eventually spilling over into the wider world: intra-group status competitions start with "who can fuck the most toasters", lead to "'toaster-fucker pride' bumper stickers" and then "bragging about how they sneak into other people's kitchens and fuck their toasters, too" and "swapping tips for how to introduce kids to the joys of toaster-fucking."
I think I agree with some of that description but not all of it, and may write it up in another thread if I get time, but it's not so important for this post. I need it as context for the bit that I think is more accurate: the normies getting fed up with all the toaster-fucking, the backlash, and the response (lightly edited to concatenate multiple small tweets, but no words changed):
I think this explains the split in normie opinion pretty well: red states have had more than enough and that's led into the various legal battles that Devon alludes to, school choice advocacy, campaigns to replace progressive school boards, etc. I don't think I've seen "beaten with fenceposts"-level backlash (I figure it would pop up here if it was an issue), but even the memory of such events in the semi-recent past could explain normie "I want to be a good person so I'll call myself an ally"-ism. Compare the number of "racist hate crime" hoaxes over the past few years, to the point where "the demand for racism exceeds its supply" has become a dark joke among cynical online commentators. I don't think I've seen LGBT activists fabricate incidents (certainly none as badly as Jussie Smollett did), but it seems useful for a group to have opposition to keep its supporters energized ("our work is not yet done!") and I could definitely see obnoxious pride month displays as accidentally serving this function.
Onto youth. A recent tweet by a newish Twitter account, America_2100, claims a drop in support for LGBT over the past few years (2022–2023: US-wide: -7 points; Republicans: -15 points, to a 10-year low of 41%; Democrats: -6 points; "young people": -8 points). In particular, they claim Gen Z's support for gay marriage dropped by 11 points between 2021 and 2023, which is double the time span of the other stats but could indicate an ongoing decline in support. Unfortunately the tweet doesn't source the surveys it refers to beyond saying that it came from PRRI and I don't have hard data beyond a couple of anecdotes. Lime, a scooter rental company, made a pride-flag crosswalk in Washington a 'walk-the-scooter' zone after several teenagers were arrested for leaving skid marks on it. I saw a recent comment on a gaming subreddit (sorry, I can't find it), in response to yet another pride-month-themed mod, saying something like "don't be discouraged! 50% upvotes for a pride mod is pretty good these days". But when I interact with university students, the discourse is still very pro-LGBT: they talking about being excited for pride events, etc.
So, questions for the floor:
There is no anti-gay backlash, because it was never about the gays. It was always about social status.
As was written in the scriptures, Right is the New Left.
Gay flags everywhere did not originate with the gays, it originated with PMC young adults using the gay flag as a way to gain status over their older rivals. A young PMC woman would ostentatiously support gays, showing she was more empathetic, and thus higher status, than her mom or her boss. This was a costly signal to send, as gays gave older people the ick.
By the early 2000s, as gays were unquestioningly accepted in PMC culture, the signaling moved to the lumpen-PMC. They aped the mannerisms of the upper-PMC, as a way to show they were PMC. A gay flag and a degree from a third tier school was their way of signalling they had transcended their suburb. The upper-PMC, meanwhile, moved to trans, as a way to signal they weren't backwards, behind-the-times lumpen-PMC
Now the lumpen-PMC is all into trans, and the young and well-off PMC I know are sheepishly and ironically supportive of trans. Being too loudly into inclusion is now a marker of being that worst of all things, a social climber.
We're now at a moment where loudly supporting LGBT causes isn't a way to thumb your nose at your fat middle-aged lumpen-PMC teacher - it's the ideology of your fat middle-aged lumpen-PMC teacher. Gen Z Believes Wokeism Is Only For Ugly People. Young women don't want to be seen as frumpy, and young men are inherently oppositional.
I'm guilty of this myself. I'm about as supportive of LGBT people as you can get without actually sucking a dick, but I'm very quiet about it, because I just don't want to be, or be associated with "those people" - the fat, half-head-shaved, mask-wearing, purple-haired screechers.
I'm sorry, gays.
That might be some of it. But part of it was a lot simpler than that- it was just a way for gay men to easily meet so they could hook up. This was especially important in the pre-grindr days, but even now they seem to like having a summer-long outdoor sex party.
Unfortunately, that means the rest of us having to endure all outdoor public places turning into a summer-long gay sex party, but whatdya gonna do.
https://www.irishtimes.com/politics/2024/06/19/three-gay-men-hunted-in-phoenix-park-by-six-men-with-knives-in-shocking-incident/
It's possible that in this incident from last week the purported 'victims' were just walking at night in an area known for public sex between men, when they encounterd an armed homophobic gang. There are other scenarios that seem more likely.
well, that does sound horrific. I am sorry that it happened, and I hope that my stupid comment was not read as encouraging that sort of menacing behaviour.
No I didn't read your comment as promoting menacing.
Our societies used to have solutions to the outdoor gay sex party problem. Buggery was illegal in many jurisdictions. Even after it was decriminalized public sex in parks or toilets was still criminal and there was a stigma still to participating in homosexual activities.
Now that buggery isn't a crime in the west. The stigma on homosex is largely gone, in the west. Policing and prosecuting public sex acts is virtually non-existent in the west, people are left to solve their own problems. In some areas I suspect this would look like armed neighborhood watch groups rousting those they suspect are up to public buggery.
I'm not sure this encounter rises to horrific.
How do you limit or reduce undesirable behavior by a determined cohort if it's not prosecuted or stigmatized? Vigilante groups have been a traditional answer.
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Hey, some of us fatties have reasonable opinions about things and a civilized demeanor!
(said with tongue firmly in cheek)
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I don't think this is true. Young men want to establish themselves as full grown men(tm), and in our culture that means having a badass attitude, or so they think. But IME convincing young men to listen to their authority figures and they'll grow up is not actually that hard- you have to listen to them and convincingly walk the talk you give.
You also need to have convincingly masculine authority figures for them to emulate. In post-Boomer western culture, the institutions that should be pointing to exemplars of pro-social masculinity as authority figures for young men to emulate are instead pointing to outlaws and women.
Isn't this why Andrew Tate and Daniel Bilzerian experience the popularity they have? They fill the vacuum of non-converged masculine authority figures, despite their apparent low quality.
Were you thinking of Audie Murphy types as pro-social masculinity? Do you have any examples?
I was more thinking of Average Centrist Dad as an achievable example of pro-social masculinity - if you think that you need to be Audie Murphy to be a real man then you may have been huffing too much feminist propaganda about how husbands and fathers aren't masculine because women can do that to.
Shouldn't this be the minimum standard? I was thinking of something more aspirational.
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Or in other words, we can see that conspicuous consumption applies to social capital as well.
The thing that bothers me the most is that it's no longer possible to talk intelligently about it. The Newspeak perpetrated by "those people" has damaged the discourse and prevented progress in ways that are as trivially true as DR3, which is why I don't get along with them.
What is DR3 ?
Urban dictionary doesn't know nor does wikipedia.
"Dems R (the) Real Racists." It can mean a few different things, but usually making fun of conservatives who take liberal arguments at face value and smugly call out perceived hypocrisy, accomplishing nothing except legitimizing the liberal frame.
You know "ha, dumb libs banned high school algebra for Racial Equity, guess they're the real racists for thinking blacks can't do math! Vote Republican for true Racial Equity Praxis!"
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I agree for the most part, though I think an under-considered part of this is that LGBT and other Woke phenomena are now official dogma meaning that not only is it useless as a signifier of status, but that it’s something that everyone is more or less required to believe in public. There’s no place where one can really be openly and explicitly anti-LGBT in polite society. If you’re not pro LGBT everything, and you tell people this in the workplace, you’re going to have to clean out your desk. If you say it in school, you’re going to have a chat with the school counselor trying to get to the bottom of your bigotry. If you say it online, you’re getting reported to either your workplace or your school.
But the thing is, that all of this performative behavior the requirement to not only not be against it, but be for it makes the opposite an act of rebellion against The Man. The model isn’t anything politically motivated, it’s the same thing that drove kids to liking weird bands, or take up smoking, or dress funny or get piercings. In the 1990s, liking rap was not because white suburban kids discovered spoken word poetry set to music was cool. It was cool because it got a huge and often negative reaction from the adults. They liked rap precisely because Mom and Dad and all the adults hated it and would yell at them about it. Kids took up smoking and vaping less because they like it and more because it would annoy and frighten the adults. One of the great draws of this is of course that such reactions prove that you’re independent and not controlled by the adults. A kid like that, one that rebelliously refuses to bend the knee to what the adults think of them especially in the teenage world (although somewhat in college as well) is one that everyone else thinks is cool.
I think that youth rebellion is somewhat astroturfed.
Most kids are conformist. Maybe some small percentage will truly rebel, but the overwhelming majority will only rebel in allowed ways. That's why LGBT among teenagers took off in the 2010s and not the 1990s. By that time, LGBT had become an allowed method of rebellion, much like gangster rap was in the 1990s.
We're not about to see a kids rebel by being performatively right-wing. It's not allowed. Teenagers find other harmless ways to annoy their elders, like brain rot memes.
Which isn't to say that LGBT will remain cool now that it is official state dogma. It won't. But rebellion against it will not be tolerated either.
Aren't most of the 'Active Clubs' young men? I don't think I'd describe them as performative.
You appear to have cut off my quote to invert what I said which was this:
I was not my intention to invert your meaning but to rebutt it by providing a counter example. I've updated the quoted text to avoid confusion.
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I'd say the idea of teenage rebellion as a social reality originates from the era of capitalism when teenagers appeared on the consumer market as a separate target audience. It was no coincidence that the thing all outlets of teenage rebellion had in common was and is their profitability.
"The revolutionaries are on CBS [Records]" - 1968
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I agree that direct rebellion to LGBT won't be tolerate. You won't suddenly see a resurgence in kids calling the dork loser in class a faggot.
But I think ostentatious differentiation will always be there. The original punk rock aesthetic was all about LOUD self-distinction. Unnatural hair dye, spikes and other metal ... thingys ... on clothes, dramatic makeup. You couldn't not be seen because everything was arranged to catch the eye.
So how do you loudly self-differentiate when the PanGenderDemiQuarks have taken over the library?
Retro inspired hyper-normie gender roles. It's not the weird TradWife meme, it's a kind of Volume-Up-To-11 1980s masculinity. To me, it kind of complements a lot of the Instragram Face, cosmetic conscious women online who, despite their large followings on a silicon valley platform, probably have pretty right-coded beliefs about gender and gender roles.
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In other words, culture wars, like regular wars, are fought by the old with the young as merely collateral damage.
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