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 -
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.
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.
In other words, culture wars, like regular wars, are fought by the old with the young as merely collateral damage.
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