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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 11, 2024

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My personal social circle is unhappy and distressed and posting lots of doomer posts, but mostly sane. They think the world is going to suck with Trump in charge, but they aren't threatening to leave the country or start underground railroads or join the 4B movement.

Online, it's hard to tell to what degree all the cataclysmic tweets and videos from leftists melting down hysterically and screaming that we're going to enter an era of plantation slavery and the Handmaid's Tale are nutpicking (the reason LibsOfTikTok is so popular is that Millenials and Zoomers so freely provide so much content) and to what degree they reflect a genuine widespread sentiment.

Online, it's hard to tell to what degree all the cataclysmic tweets and videos from leftists melting down hysterically and screaming that we're going to enter an era of plantation slavery and the Handmaid's Tale are nutpicking (the reason LibsOfTikTok is so popular is that Millenials and Zoomers so freely provide so much content) and to what degree they reflect a genuine widespread sentiment.

I know that Tumblr is very far from a representative sample, but the histrionic posts coming across my dash thanks to the #politics tag have been plentiful enough to exceed mere "nutpicking."

Well, "very far from a representative sample" indeed. If there is anywhere that I would expect 90% of the posts to be hysterical meltdowns, it's Tumblr.

Incidentally I'm kind of amazed that the word 'hysterical' hasn't gotten y'alled yet.

Likewise to @Amadan, I don't concretely know what "y'alled" means, but I'm assuming that you mean to express surprise that it's still acceptable to say "hysterical" given its origin.

I'll say, you're not allowed to say "hysterical" in the circles I run in without getting at least a remark about how we shouldn't use gendered and/or historically sexist/misogynistic language.

The thing is, 'hysterical' first and foremost described a gendered pattern of behavior. It's called what it is because women are much more prone to it than men, and always have been. So its 'origin' isn't even the problem, I think. And I think it's funny that people (not necessarily you) would have become so blinded to the realities of psychological and behavioral differences between the sexes that they'd parse 'hysterical' as not having anything to do with women except incidentally in its origin.

I'm certainly aware of the word's origins and why feminists object to it.

Whether or not hysteria is something women are more naturally susceptible to, though, I have seen enough hysterical men not to consider it to be a female-specific thing.

Yes; men can also behave in feminine ways. This doesn't make those behaviors masculine.

No, but it does make them not feminine if both men and women are prone to the behavior.

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