site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 7, 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.

13
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

It’s unfortunate that discussing the link between transgenderism and sexual fetishism has been made taboo in public discourse. If you spend any amount of time in online transgender communities you’ll see that the fetishistic aspects are clearly a huge component of it.

You can't call it a fetish, because if it's a fetish, then I get to say "keep that shit away from me, don't involve me in your fetish."

That's the angle I find the least interesting. Even if true, it doesn't say much about where we should take the discourse on trans issues.

What I find absolutely fascinating is the entryism aspect, or laundering ideology through respectable-looking institutions, and our system being either unable or unwilling to do anything about it.

Yeah, that's the thing. Ordinary trans people have been used as the stalking horse for the fetishists and the grifters taking advantage of "hey, if I say I'm a woman, I can get sent to women's prison not men's prison".

Few years back, when I was discussing the trans rights stuff with other people on another site, I and those who were dubious about the whole thing like I was were being assured that "What you fear will never happen; no man or boy is going to go to all the trouble of saying they are trans simply in order for some peeping tom opportunities". A little later, after the first offences by individuals claiming to be trans, the line was "they're not really trans, they're ordinary perverts/criminals" (this, despite the simultaneous line that "you're trans if you say you're trans, no gatekeeping").

I think people have nailed their political colours to the mast and invested too much time and effort, often for personal reasons, into trans rights activism so they feel any backing off or accepting the cases where conservatives were right are going to mean giving up everything, so they grit their teeth and ignore this stuff and if they have to, they come out and support it. Because otherwise, the right-wingers were right about the things they said would happen if trans activism got its way about social normalisation, and that undermines everything they've fought for.

I and those who were dubious about the whole thing like I was were being assured that "What you fear will never happen; no man or boy is going to go to all the trouble of saying they are trans simply in order for some peeping tom opportunities".

I feel like there's an interaction with the binary oppressor/oppressed model here. I've seen similar contentions, where the premise is that nobody would ever claim a marginalized identity falsely or lightly, because the experience of the Oppressed is categorically worse than the experience of the Oppressor. There is nothing that could possibly be worth the agonies of the soul one would be taking on to claim an Oppressed identity, save the pure truth of the matter itself.

The binary model cannot permit any recognition that it is ever, under any circumstances, in any way, better to be a member of the Oppressed group than the Oppressor; the binary all-or-nothing thinking would make such an admission tantamount to claiming that it is always, under all circumstances, in all ways, better to be a member of the Oppressed group than the Oppressor, in which case you're claiming that their real statuses are reversed, and are attacking the moral justification of the Oppressed group. Attempts at nuance or complexity or using one's head instead of one's gut will feel, on that gut-level, like nothing more than a direct enemy attack.

Does this really happen or am I just making this up? Well: have you ever heard someone say "[so you're saying that Xs are] the real oppressors" or "...really oppressed", when the matter of a potential advantage to belonging to an oppressed group is discussed?

I have.

Certainly knowing the etiology of a phenomenon is an important step towards developing a holistic understanding of it.

I'm not saying that all cases of transgenderism can be reduced to a fetish, but, it's still something to keep in mind.

How /d/are you >_>

In seriousness, one major problem is actually having to talk about the subject knowing people are going to reply "ok, let's see your open tabs Kurt Eichenwald."