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 -
Apparently Labor is going to treat Incel ideology similarly to political Islam in the UK (BBC, Guardian).
As a freedom of speech apologist, I don't think that this is a good development, but just the response to the latest moral panic and about as justified as the response to 'D&D satanism'.
What should be illegal is incitement to crimes. I am sure that this is already illegal in the UK. "Blow up Parliament for Allah", "Rape some bitches to protest against wokism", "Kill a cop to bring forth the dictatorship of the proletariat" are not protected speech, if anyone posts them on their facebook they would quickly be removed and the poster charged.
Of course, even here, technically enforcing this on more obscure pages is basically impossible without cracking down on the free internet as much as the CCP does (and possibly not even then). Punish what you can find and don't lose too much sleep over some .onion board which you can't police, or infiltrate them if it looks like they are planning concrete crimes in the physical world.
To make broader pieces of ideology illegal, such as "people should live according to Sharia law" or "Capitalism is just a development stage to be overcome" or "Women should have less/more power" would curtail freedom of speech too much for my taste.
I also don't think it will succeed on the object level much. Given that the punishments for simply reading the wrong ideology is hopefully going to be light (CSAM being the only content where merely intentionally viewing it should be a crime), that prohibition will do little to dissuade people from consuming Incel ideology. The main reason why an edgy teenager would not read something widely considered bad is not because the government forbids it, which is to admit 'this is so dangerous that we can't allow people to read it', but that it is generally considered lame in his circles. If Mrs. Cooper bans Incel ideology, that will make Incel ideology less lame, not more lame, because established politicians are invariably lame. (My vocabulary is probably half a century out of date, my point stands.)
They have no other option.
They have created a society in which people have less sex than ever, have fewer children than ever and can only dream of getting the housing their parents had at the same age. They have no idea how to fix it so the result is to find ways to make the people who point out the problems seem illegitimate.
There were large riots due to the problems immigration has caused. Nobody in government has a serious and realistic plan for fixing the massive issues so instead of acknowledging them they simply have to blame a handful of Russian accounts. It can't have anything to do with crime, lack of social cohesion, rampant housing shortages or any other issue that the politicians simply can't fix.
If someone is living with their parents at the same age that their parents owned a house the problem has to be their micropenis. They are loser incels and therefore not worth engaging with. There is no political option to create affordable housing as it would completely crash the financial system to bring down housing prices to 3x an average annual salary. Therefore, what is left is repression and arguments that are insults.
Incels are a real threat to the system. The system has failed to create a society in which people can find housing, start a family. People are angry and politicians have no solutions. Lots of young men with nothing to lose and no prospects are the greatest threat to any regime.
The birth rate makes the UK pension system completely unsustainable. Filling the gap with third world labour is going to cause major issues for which nobody has any answers. So if you ask how this is going to be solved your dick is small, you are ugly, your momma is fat and you are a Russian bot so you have no legitimacy.
The effect isn't primarily through direct government suppression. Maybe one or two people with nasty rhetoric will be punished, but it's about generating a news story "look at how evil incels are," not any real likelihood that they'll act. You'll probably have a government unit dedicated to convincing young, stupid men to say they'll commit outrageous violence, just for the sake of making sure that story percolates through media on a regular basis.
Its effect will primarily be to reenforce among women that men complaining about, well, anything are icky and low status (note that "dangerous" is not one of those adjectives). A guy complaining about his inability to pay for dates is really just an entitled incel, so he deserves to be excluded from society. And he certainly doesn't deserve to have his complaints treated as a systemic issue, because we live in a perfect utopian world where anything bad that happens is men's own fault.
Men will then self-censor and retreat from a losing battlefield, at best working until they become a good cog in the system or (more likely) turning in on themselves and self-soothing with video games and porn, until eventually hanging themselves.
Incels won't be a threat to the system, because men who are plausible leaders will never be actual incels, and no one will take the massive status hit that comes with taking up any incel-adjacent positions. Instead, incels will just end up being a drag on the system, supported by the dole and their parents' retirement funds. It's also a self-correcting problem: the more men that drop out, the easier it is for the remaining men. The negative feedback loop ensures the system is stable.
You know, as an actual literal tradcon I can say that this guy just shouldn't be dating- the man pays in relationships, that's part and parcel of rejecting modern gender roles.
I more or less agree with your point. Incels are by definition men who are thoroughly cowed by the system- obviously not the chads that are natural leaders, but not the lumpenproles that take drastic action at the drop of a hat either.
Does your tradcon ideology include any prescriptions at all that constitute the rejection of modern gender roles but at the same time do not disadvantage men, or at least do disadvantage men and women to the same degree?
Yes. We simply do not have very many doctrinaire feminists on the motte for me to argue with.
Ok, so "yes". Such as, what?
I don’t think women and girls should be encouraged to have jobs or seek higher education. I probably wouldn’t vote to reauthorize the 19th if it came up. I think rape laws should have differing burdens of proof for lack of consent depending on the victim’s sexual history, similar to old-style seduction laws. Should I go on?
These topics don’t come up on the motte often, because I A) don’t make that many top level posts and B) there are few other motteizeans that support old school patriarchy(which contrary to popular beliefs does not seem to generally advantage young men- it’s the rule of fathers not men in general, and might be more accurately painted as the rule of the old over the young rather than men over women).
I’ve posted before that there seems to be a sex-negative feminist/sex-positive feminist/tradcon/frat boy four way division, not a feminist/red pill one. I don’t inherently sympathize with frat boys over sex negative feminists- I don’t agree with either, and there’s no reason for me to pick one as my ingroup versus the other. That I don’t sympathize much with the young male desire for casual sex doesn’t mean I sympathize with feminism.
I guess what you mean is that so-called rape shield laws should be repealed?
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
More options
Context Copy link