site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 24, 2022

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.

20
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Were the prison camps and torture ever the main representative of conversion therapy in the USA? It’s still going on, and AFAIK seems to consist mostly of team building activities, awkward talk therapy, lessons in gender appropriate hobbies, prayer, and now ivermectin because of course it does.

Beats me, fortunately it's all outside of my experience. I guess it's just one of those things... you can set up a hundred nice wholesome pray-away-the-gay camps, but just a couple of your friends do some electroshock torture on child prisoners and suddenly that's all anyone wants to talk about. 🙄

Were the prison camps and torture ever the main representative of conversion therapy in the USA?

My understanding is that it involved literal Clockwork Orange style condition/torture. Being given drugs that induced nausea, and then being forced to watch gay pornography. Electrical shocks to the genitalia in response to arousal at gay porn. Basically attempting to condition the body to not be gay.

Given then people who ask young kids "Hey, boys can play with dolls too, do you still think you are a girl?" are accused of "conversation therapy" now, I have doubts about whether gay conversation therapy was what they say it was.

Oh, I'm sure they can come up with a few examples of torture camps if they want. I have doubts about whether that was the mainstream or if the most common example was a more-awkward version of a standard summer camp.