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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 9, 2024

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Whatever happened to MeToo? In 2017 it seemed unstoppable and like it was going to really change quite a bit of the social dynamics between the genders. It’s since gone very quiet, has there been any more major celebrities or persons getting MeToo’d? The last person i remember getting destroyed is Cuomo.

It feels like there’s been basically zilch since then, although I could be wrong. Is this because men are finally treating women like sexless persons deserving of respect or is it merely that it was a passing fad?

As said already, Neil Gaiman was MeToo'd recently. So individual cases are still happening.

As for the wider 'movement', I think it's just the fact that outrage is exhausting, particularly if your goal (no sexual misconduct or hurt feelings ever again, anywhere, but people still couple up somehow) is impossible. Noahpinion has written about this quite a lot. Basically, the Great Awokening (God bless whoever came up with that designation) is winding down, as it was always destined to do. Humans can't do permanent revolution.

Scott has also written about this. New Atheism got replaced by pop-feminism which got replaced by Kendi-style antiracism as the very online left-wing topic of choice. Not sure what will come next, or if anything will come next.

Basically, the Great Awokening (God bless whoever came up with that designation) is winding down

It's winding down because it won. It has been installed as law. Every society requires a certain set of baseline social and ethical rules to function, and many of these rules require no extra "energy" to enforce. No one needs to be reminded not to go outside naked, for example; it's simply understood. You don't need a permanent revolution to uphold your strictures when your strictures have been integrated into the foundational social fabric itself.

Outside of all but the most deep Red social contexts, its simply taken for granted now that a man who claims to be a woman must be treated as a woman, and that non-whites are to be privileged in hiring, school admissions, and media representation. The revolution was successful. Everyone got the memo. We're not going back.

It really doesn't seem like this is true, outside of specific contexts. Roe is dead. AA is gone. DEI is declining. Trump is openly calling for a blood-soaked deportation campaign and nobody really cares (although maybe people realize he's just full of shit at this point). Even leftists like Matt Yglesias are calling for more immigration restrictions. Harris is sprinting away from woke as fast as she can. Ctrl+f for "trans" on her campaign platform brings up only 2 results, both of which deal with "transnational criminal organizations".

From her campaign website:

Protect Civil Rights and Freedoms

Vice President Harris and Governor Walz believe many fundamental freedoms are at stake in this election. They will fight to ensure that Americans have the opportunity to participate in our democracy by passing the John Lewis Voting Rights and the Freedom to Vote Acts — laws that will enshrine voting rights protections, expand vote-by-mail and early voting, and more. Her Administration will also continue to protect Americans from discrimination, building on her work to secure $2 billion in funding for Offices of Civil Rights across the federal government. And as President, she’ll always defend the freedom to love who you love openly and with pride. In 2004, she officiated some of the nation’s first same-sex marriages and as Attorney General, she refused to defend California’s anti-marriage equality statewide referendum. As President, she’ll fight to pass the Equality Act to enshrine anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQI+ Americans in health care, housing, education, and more into law.

The Equality Act explicitly adds protection against discrimination based on gender identity to existing federal anti-discrimination laws (titles II, III, IV, VI, VII, IX). That hardly seems like "sprinting away as fast as she can".

This mostly just seems to be about gay marriage, which even most Republicans are on board with by this stage.