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.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
The rules are ambiguous as to which thread should be used for culture war related/adjacent small questions, but I'll take a guess that the mods would prefer questioners err on the side of the culture war roundup, so I'll ask this here:
How much of the "Michelle Obama is transgender" conspiracy theory is genuine vs trolling? And, among those who genuinely believe it, what are the proposed explanations/is there a consensus for the Obama daughters' parentage? Adoption would be too difficult to cover up, but so would Michelle being transgender, to begin with, so I suppose that's not a great threat to the theory. If the full amendment history of the relevant section of Illinois legal code is available online, finding it would require more effort than I care to make, but "the exception that implies the rule" indicates that it was the Illinois Gestational Surrogacy Act enacted in 2005 that allowed pre-birth orders for putting intended mothers on Illinois birth certificates:
"Birthers" didn't hesitate to demand the release of Barrack Obama's own birth certificate - what about his daughters' birth certificates? (Or is the conspiracy theory all trolling or are those who genuinely believe it the kinds of people who wouldn't consider even its immediate implications or ...?)
The Michelle Obama trans thing is a good example of the trade-offs that social liberalisation impose.
Like, back in the late 2000s, when Michelle Obama was not any more popular on the American right than today, I don't recall anyone proposing that she was trans, simply because "trans" was not on most people's radar.
Michelle Obama, and millions of other mannish-looking women, have been negatively impacted by trans liberation. Trans liberation has brought it into the realm of the thinkable, the reasonable, that any given mannish woman or petite man could in fact be biologically not their presenting gender. What previously would have been only a cruel, childish insinuation now has to be... seriously considered?
30 years ago, in a workplace, if someone had suggested that Sandra with the square shoulders, or Sarah with the sharp brow, was in fact a transsexual - this would just straightforwardly be a (fireable) insult. Now though, the same woman can be concern-trolled and made insecure by ostensible tolerance.
It's as though, in a future which continues leftward socially, we were to see emancipation of incest and "motherfucker?" become a polite and reasonable query.
I really feel for these mannish girls. When I was a teenager, I went out with a beautiful girl who nonetheless had kind of a square jaw - more square than mine anyway. She was terribly insecure generally (like most teenaged girls?) and I happened across an old photo of the pair of us in my parents' house yesterday and thought, damn, the way the shadow falls on our faces there - a 2020s teen might well read this pretty 2000s girl as actually trans
Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course.
But actually there clearly is, or at least, it's reasonable that even an otherwise orthodoxly liberal young woman might not want to be read by strangers (potential romantic partners particularly) as MtF. There is a certain harm imposed by this.
The general public is no good at Bayes - there are quite a lot more mannish-looking women around than there are genuine MtFs. Yet now young people, even when looking at old photos from the twentieth century, are apparently having their trans-radars ping on like pictures of dowdy kitchen maids and 1940s housewives
An interesting point to consider in the utilitarian calculus of trans liberation
The concern over mannish girls being concern trolled en masse with no recourse looks like concern trolling to me. If the Obama transpiracy is anything to go by, cruel childish insinuation is quite bad at masking itself.
From what I see, young men that look a bit gay have not been smothered by concern trolls who insinuate they're actually gay and do it so cleverly that they can't be rebuked. Those are the benefits of a culture that promotes accepting people as who they say they are.
I'd say the main trade-off to our contemporary Western settlement on The Gay Question is that it has cast in suspicion huge swathes of male friendship, more than it has caused effete men to have a particularly harder time than they would have otherwise
It's a commonplace observation that male friendship outside the West can look pretty gay to modern Western eyes. Men holding hands, openly prioritising male relationships ahead of their romantic one with a woman, openly declaring love for one another, a warmth and intimacy that seems gay as hell to me, frankly, as a typical Western man.
It's also a commonplace observation that there's a crisis of loneliness in the West, more acutely among men, and downstream increases in depression, misery, suicidality and addiction and all the rest.
I don't think these two facts are unrelated, and I think that's quite a heavy burden that all Western men, and the women that like them, have borne for the ostensible liberation of our irrepressibly-gay brothers
To add to this in a different direction, there's the issue of malicious ambiguity and suggestion.
I was once at a viewing of Y Tu Mama Tabien at a campus "art house" while in college. I was there because the girl I was trying to sleep with was there and I was more than willing to sit through that mindless nonsense if it meant appearing "deep" and "thoughtful" to her.
As I remember it, during the movie's climax, the female lead has sex with both of the male leads (consecutively, not concurrently) and then, for some reason, the two male leads have a homosexual encounter. The two male leads, up until this point, are pretty typical - albeit Mexican - BroDudes. So, it's kind of an abrupt and hamfisted tranisition. I think it's supposed to be a message about the "blurry lines" between male bonding and homosexual acts? I don't know. There was a similar vibe around the whole Brokeback Mountain thing (which, funnily enough, was completely and obviously rehashed by The Power of the Dog - which one a bunch of awards).
In the "discussion" that followed the viewing of the movie, some freshman of ambiguous gender and obvious lack of ability related an emotional and oh so brave personal anecdote about "experimenting" with his childhood best friend before matriculating to college. He told us, the captivated audience, that although he is definitely straight, it was still an amazing and tender experience.
I thought the speaker was probably gay as hell - Not That There's Anything Wrong With That (TM).
Looking back on these various movies and the "discussion" that followed Y Tu Mama Tambien in particular, I think there's some level of subtle support for homosexual activity among straight men that can accompany otherwise anodyne discussions about gay people / culture etc. I can't put my finger on the reason for this. I think it's far short of hardcore grooming (as it mostly occurs in adult groups, for one). Perhaps it's just a "personal expression" thread pulled too far. Maybe light-grade fetishism? Sexualize virtue signaling on the part of practitioners? Again, I'm not certain about the why but I am closer to certain that it does happen.
Reasonable people can assert, "Suggestion isn't coercion. It's not like these people are forcing you to commit sexual acts of any orientation!" Which is true. But consider the social repercussions your average DudeBro might face if he were to go around casually chortling, "I dunno, Stacy, maybe you should go get naked with Brenda and just kinda see what happens. Could be pretty fun!" Or, as another comparison, change the independent variable from sexual orientation to race - "Yooooo! You gotta go try asian P*ssy!" or "Jewish guys always lay pipe well" -- all received outrage would be more than expected.
Yet, as that clip from Atlanta points out, the de-facto response from The Party of Science (TM) is "sexuality is a spectrum you can really do whatever you want." It's not coercion, it's support so subtle that it's eternally deniable, but there is a there there.
I believe the Roman word for this behavior was 'insidias'. Female-type anti-social behavior is generally difficult to punish on an individual level; that's why the average human society seeks to punish it pre-emptively.
Yeah, that's what the priests, teachers, and scoutmasters of years gone by said too, arguably even accurately. How'd that work out for them?
It's all over the schools. The "conservatives" have the right of it- it is a destructive thing- they just don't have the tools to describe it properly (which is why the tendency of its proponents to intentionally play stupid evolved in the first place).
It's just the distaff counterpart to that ass-slapping and casual harassment the '70s (and before) were famous for [which is what your counterexamples pattern match to]. Either both of them are OK, or neither are.
Thanks! This actually aided my understanding.
Would it be your opinion, then, that the hard-to-define behavior patterns I described, and you expanded, actually do fall on a contiuum that includes outright grooming? That is, they are different in magnitude, but not in kind.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link