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I think you are being a little naive here. Not disingenuous, but you are presenting something of a straw man. You're basically making the Marie Shear argument: "Feminism is the radical notion that women are people."
Now to steelman this, I know what feminists would say is "Duh, we know anti-feminists don't think we're literally not human, we mean they don't treat us as people like themselves with agency and full equal rights." Which would be fair enough, but if you look around (even in a place like the Motte with no shortage of anti-feminists), you will find very few people who think women aren't "people." Yes, we do have a few posters who literally do think women are p-zombies or should be property, but they are a minority.
The people here who oppose feminism are mostly not tradcons who want to repeal the 19th (though there are some of those too). They are people who have grievances with feminism as it manifests today, particularly third wave or "intersectional" feminism. Such "currently-not-widely-adopted" feminist philosophies would be things like #BelieveWomen, which is a classic case of motte-and-bailey, the Motte being "take women's claims of being harassed or assaulted seriously and don't assume they're making it up," the bailey being "Believe any woman uncritically and never express doubt about a rape story," even if it doesn't pass the sniff test.
Intersectional feminism is what also brought us trans ideology, which got many previously feminist women terfed out. JK Rowling, unambiguously a committed feminist, is now called a fascist and worst by many modern feminists, simply because she doesn't agree that trans women are women.
I try to be sympathetic to feminist arguments, because I do in fact believe women are people, but very much of modern feminist writing seems to fall within the stereotype often described here of women wanting all the privileges, none of the responsibility. The memes are kind of mean, but they also aren't... wrong. (I note that the linked article makes an earnest argument that "AKSHUALLY the problem is when men flirt and it's unreciprocated!" Which entirely misses the point.) I think of people like Amanda Marcotte and Jessica Valente, who were vanguards of modern third wave feminism and are some of the most bad faith writers I've ever had the misfortune of once taking seriously. They are practically memes themselves, with zero self-awareness.
Saying "feminism is feminism" and you don't split it into "waves" is kind of like a Christian saying he doesn't split Christianity into denominations. Well, great, you can say "Christianity isn't a religion, it's a relationship with God" all you want, but it is, in fact, a religion, and people ostracize, cancel, and even kill each other over denominational differences. I don't know if I can think of examples of feminists literally killing each other over sectarian differences, but as JK Rowling would point out, they most certainly care about them even if you claim they don't exist.
Well, I don’t appreciate being insulted by being called naive. I heard a lot of that growing up in life, and through sheer statistics I’ve must’ve contemplated the declaration too many times to appreciate it anymore.
As an ex-Christian who went from Lutheran to Methodist to Baptist and then just plain Protestant, I don’t really split it into denominations either and consider it antithetical to the whole Christianity kaboodle. If people are ostracizing, cancelling and killing eachother over denominational differences I can’t imagine God would sanction such behavior since I can’t find it in the 10 Commandments. That a lot of Pharisees think they’re Christians, to me, doesn’t change the definition of being Christian. If God is real, I’m certain there is a great deal of people in for a violent awakening dancing to the tune of “Charlie’s Inferno” when they die.
In my opinion, when I look around the Motte, I actually see a majority in people who think women are not people. Thinking a woman is secretly happier being a stay at home mother and TV shows, newscasts, movies and teachers have convinced her to be miserable removes her agency and treats her own choices as math results, or that women are inherently less funny, less intelligent, less emotionally resilient than men because of their genes. The casual language around here about women is so very much not centered on speaking about them as if they are people capable of the same quality of thought as me in my opinion. In the same vein, if a bunch of misandrist and misogynistic people call themselves feminists, they’re wrong and hopefully will cringe at themselves with enough introspection.
I can’t comment much on your opinion on transgenderism since I don’t think it’s an ideology. I certainly wouldn’t call JK Rowling a feminist since she thinks “femaleness resides in the sexed body”. I’m not a woman because I have titties and estrogen, I’m a woman because I identify with the Western cultural construct of a woman, and in elaboration, I don’t wear a skirt because it’s biologically wired in me to do it. Implying anything else removes my agency, which doesn’t treat me as a person, and therefore isn’t feminist.
Well, the alternative is believing you're just being disingenuous, which is more insulting imo.
You seem to define a lot of things according to how you personally feel about them. JK Rowling definitely considers herself a feminist, and on every single issue except trans women, she is probably on the same page as you. Yet you feel comfortable asserting that she is not a feminist because you are a third wave postmodernist feminist.
My opinion is that you are in fact a woman because you have "titties and estrogen" and that woman is not purely a social construct. You can disagree, and maybe there is some way you could prove me wrong, though I doubt it. But it doesn't mean I cease to consider you a person.
Agree to disagree? I don’t think I’m giving the impression of being honest and sincere, I think I am being both lol. That you struggle to understand how I can sincerely have my beliefs is one thing, but saying at best I’m inexperienced and at worst I’m a liar, well, Idk what to say other than “think what you want” and “that’s not very nice”.
I highly doubt JK Rowling and I are on the same page about every single issue except trans women. She probably doesn’t agree gender roles are a social construct, since she’s a TERF. She also likes to deadname trans women on Twitter; digging into the myriad of opposing sub-issues in that would be too long.
To be clear, my statement regarding the fact that you are naive or insincere concerned specifically your claim that "feminism is feminism" and that you don't consider there to be divisions or different schools of thought within them. You may genuinely believe that, but it's so obvious that these divisions do exist (and that other feminists are very aware of them) that it just seems kind of silly to claim you are following the One True Feminism and everyone else is either also on the same team as youor they've got it wrong.
... Have you ever actually talked to a TERF?
They very much do believe that gender roles are social constructs. That is their primary objection to men claiming to be women! They consider sex to be a biological reality, and gender roles to be social constructs, and from their point of view, trans women willingly adopt, play act and reify gender roles while claiming that they are based on some innate property. It's trans women who claim that wearing a skirt makes you a woman, and being a woman makes you want to wear a skirt.
Even if this is true, while I'm perfectly willing to have the Rowling debate again, it's irrelevant to whether or not she's a feminist, unless you think being a bad person (according to your ethics) means someone can't be a feminist.
I just feel like if I said something along the lines of “I think you’re being obtuse/pedantic/ignorant/childish/naive about this topic” to someone on here I’d be justifiably moderated, so it’s tough to feel like I’m getting dealt a lot of “you’re a troll, you don’t really believe these things”. But, as I said, the moderation on this site is not for me. I don’t want to bring it up a lot.
I’d retort to Mr. TERF that if gender roles are social construct as we agree they are, then there’s nothing wrong with a Western socially-construct man decided he wants to be a Western socially-constructed woman, because it’s all arbitrary in the end. A trans woman wants to identify with the Western social constructs that define a woman, how is that different from a Hindu deciding to be a Muslim? I technically consider myself to be non-binary because I don’t believe in gender. But, I’m also very comfortable with the aspects that make me a Western socially-constructed woman so much that I’m okay calling myself one despite not really believing in it. I admit I might be sounding a little confusing. I struggle sometimes to find an appropriate way to explain my opinion on gender since I consider the whole thing arbitrary and think everyone is actually a non-binary meat computer with either titties or balls.
There's a difference between "I think you're being naive" (there are a lot of ways to say "You're wrong" and most of them are allowable) and "You're a troll" (which I just modded someone for saying!).
As @FCfromSSC said, framing is very important here. If you are upset at being called naive, well, noted, but no, I would not normally mod someone for calling another poster naive. To me, that does not register as an insult like "stupid" or "liar" or "troll."
Okay, are we having the trans debate again? What if Mr. TERF says gender roles are socially constructed, but penises, vaginas, upper body strength and size are not? And therefore people with penises should not compete against people with vaginas in competitive sports, or be housed with them in prison, and sex crimes committed by people with penises should not be statistically grouped with sex crimes committed by people with vaginas such that we see headlines like "Woman convicted of raping toddler" when the "woman" in question is a person with a penis? Because that is the TERF argument in a nutshell. Not "Men shouldn't be allowed to wear dresses and call themselves she/her."
I'd agree with Mr. Terf that gender roles are socially constructed but the physical body is not. However, I don't think a person having a penis or vagina is a valid reason to stop them from competing against someone with a penis or vagina in competitive sports. I think what should stop them is weight classes, a principle I understand to already be understood in wrestling, and that has nothing to do with being a woman or man. I have met men the same weight class as myself or lower, and I have met woman with a weight class far above mine. I wouldn't want to compete with a clearly scrawny person or a clearly buff-as-all-hell person since the gap is so big the comparison in competition doesn't hold. And I don't think there's a problem housing them together for the same reason. Women beat the shit out of eachother in prison just as much as men do; house a buff woman with a scrawny man together and I'd see the same result if you reversed the weight class. If a prison houses two people who are clearly unequally matched in strength they're doing a pretty bad job with security and basic common sense.
I dunno, I see a whole lot more of "trans women are freaks in the head for being trans, trans women are clearly much uglier being trans and therefore must hate themselves, trans women are just horny men who want to peep at women pissing in the bathroom, trans women want to convince your kid they're trans to mutilate themselves because deep down they're insecure, xyz" than "trans women are unfairly advantaged in sports and trans women pose a safety threat to their fellow inmates".
https://boysvswomen.com/
Like, I'm sorry, if you want to insist men and women are exactly the same except for plumbing, I probably can't convince you otherwise, but the evidence is overwhelming that this is not the case. A man will almost always absolutely dominate a woman in the same weight class in every sport, if they have even remotely comparable levels of training.
For this I don't have a quick link to dispute the assertion, but I am extremely doubtful of this and wonder if you have any evidence besides that one episode of Orange is the New Black? I have read enough stories recently of convicted male sex offenders who conveniently announced their new gender identity and desire to be housed in a women's facility (frequently taking absolutely no steps to "transition" beyond maybe wearing a wig), as well as trans women who have assaulted female inmates in prison, that I think there are pretty good reasons not to incarcerate penis-havers with women, even if some of them might be sincere about their gender identification. I hate to use that word again, but you seem shockingly naive to just take at face value a convicted rapist's assertion that he's now a woman house him with women please?
You might be surprised just how much you'd have to skew that scenario to give the woman even odds. Like, yes, if he's a sickly 98-pound weakling who's never thrown a punch in his life up against 200-pound Berthilda the Gang-Banger, sure, she might be able to whup him. But otherwise? Not likely.
This is probably true, but the fact that many people are motivated primarily by disgust or moral condemnation does not make the very real physical concerns invalid.
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