site banner
PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   35697 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 3, 2025

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.

5
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Reuters: Health clinics grapple with US funding squeeze

It seems funding hasn't been fully restored and a lot of affected clinics don't have sufficient cash reserves:

Three community health centers near Richmond, Virginia, were forced to shut down after federal funds used to pay staff salaries remained inaccessible since last week, said Virginia Community Healthcare Association spokesperson Joe Stevens.

As of Friday, another nine centers across Virginia also could not access federal funds but continued to see patients by tapping into reserve funds.

"They will need money in the next week," said Stevens. "We don't know why some centers can access funds and some cannot."

In Virginia, community health centers provide medical, dental, behavioral health, pharmaceutical and substance use services for approximately 400,000 patients. For much of the state's rural areas, the centers are the only option for primary care, said Stevens.

One center that was still unable to access federal funds is in southwestern Virginia, where the next closest option for medical care is more than an hour's drive, he said. Most providers were able to access Medicaid and grant monies once the spending freeze was rescinded. However, some say they are still cut off from payments used for essential care, including medical, dental, prescription drugs and behavioral health.

And, of course, problems with transgender-serving clinics and federal grants for STI prevention and treatment:

Late last week, some healthcare centers that provide HIV prevention services and care for transgender patients received notices that grants issued by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would be terminated. The letters cited the Trump administration's orders on diversity and gender identity, according to three recipients of the notices.

A spokesperson for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention referred questions about the grants to the Department of Health and Human Services.

St. John's Well Child and Family Center, a network of public health centers in South and Central Los Angeles, cannot access $746,000 remaining from a $1.6 million grant used to provide prevention, testing and treatment for about 500 transgender people at risk of HIV, sexually transmitted infections, tuberculosis and hepatitis C.

"We have made a decision not to cut back any programs because of any threats from the federal government," said St. John's President Jim Mangia.

St. John's has joined a lawsuit filed by California's attorney general contesting the funding cuts. Mangia says he will seek private funding to make up the loss.

The LGBT Life Center in Norfolk, Virginia, received a letter stating $6.3 million of the organization’s funding, or 48% of its annual budget, would be terminated, said spokesperson Corey Mohr. The center provides medication and monitoring to 400 patients with HIV.

I'm curious what the LGBT Life Center's grant was for, given that St. John's had 25% more patients. Maybe it was specific to HIV-positive patients and treatment is genuinely more expensive than prevention? But I had thought PrEP, PEP, and ART were the same medication at different doses, and that progression of HIV to AIDS is very uncommon, so that wouldn't make much sense.

St. John's Well Child and Family Center, a network of public health centers in South and Central Los Angeles, cannot access $746,000 remaining from a $1.6 million grant used to provide prevention, testing and treatment for about 500 transgender people at risk of HIV, sexually transmitted infections, tuberculosis and hepatitis C.

When I was younger, I had developed pretty libertine attitudes about human sexuality and I still mostly have the same gut feelings, but every now and then, I bump into things that make me think the conservatives have a point. This is roughly $3K per person for STI testing and treatment. Why? Why do these people insist on doing such consistently risky behavior that they need constant STI surveillance? Even being somewhat promiscuous doesn't result in constant infections, the behavior here really just has to be completely outside the range of anything that most people would consider normal. As you note, the other Life Center apparently spends about five times that much per capita, clocking in over $15K per person.

Making everyone else pay for egregiously bad behavior is just galling.

This stuff never stays confined to one community forever. In addition, the US medical system guarantees anyone access to healthcare (if they don’t pay for it, the state and/or all insurance users do), so you’ll be paying for much more expensive AIDS treatment in the long haul. If reducing promiscuity is the goal, cutting funding for PrEP seems like a poor place to start; gay men were highly promiscuous even at the height of the AIDS pandemic (that is in fact how it happened) and I doubt they will become less so today, when the disease is more easily treated and no longer a death sentence.

I am open to the idea that this is actually the best policy given a number of realistic political constraints. This does not move me to find it less galling that I'm stuck paying for people to live degenerate lifestyles. Avoiding HIV is absolutely trivial, but the "community" in question apparently insists on spreading HIV.

I do not like subsidizing homosexuality, or promiscuity more broadly. But how far does this go? I'm pretty happy with a policy of 'you choose not to be monogamous, you're going to get STD's on your own head be it. No public funding for testing, treatment, or prevention. Medical providers aren't obligated to give STD treatment.' To be clear, I wouldn't oppose sodomy laws either.

There are quite a number of conservatives who halfway do it. Letting people die from preventable STD's when they choose not to prevent them by sane and reasonable sexual behavior is beyond the overton window.

Meh. Fuck around and find out, literally- I don't think it's practical to criminalize straight casual sex outright, but the government shouldn't be in the business of making it a less risky decision. Perfectly fine with fornicators getting diseases as a consequence of their sinful decisions.

Government pays for treatment, but your name and photo are added to the state social disease register, linked to you Tindr / Grndr profile?

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats