site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 21, 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.

Two leftist policies where I can understand the power dynamics but not the attitude: open borders for military-aged third-world men, relaxed (or none at all) prosecution on criminals, especially military-aged minorities who commit brazen acts of murder/assault/robbery.

As is always the case, these policies exist because a lot of parties benefit. Open borders is supported by capital, homeowners (keeps housing prices pumping), and leftists who gain the patronage of the newcomers. Criminals also help various parties. They drive out right-wingers (i.e. families). They use a huge amount of services that employ leftists. Like immigrants they become patrons to the left, to some degree.

I can see why these things are allowed to continue, but the above analysis is missing the source of intense passion that these issues receive. I don't think Amazon ever pushed for open borders, they just didn't complain end enjoyed the cheap labour. Homeowners don't go to open borders rallies because they want another point of appreciation. Chesa Boudin wants prisoners released because it's strategic. On these two issues specifically, there is only one source of intense passion: single, college-educated women.

This is confusing. Women are more risk-averse and place a higher value on safety, but at the same time they are advocating for violent criminals and random foreigners. There is also a strong element of hatred towards their own countrymen present in this, which makes sense given the policy but does not make sense given that they're ladies. It's similar to the pit bull owner thing. What's up with this? I've seen the meme around pseudopregnancy before and it fits OK, but it's not clear why criminals and foreigners would be the subject of this affection over anything else.

Maybe if a women feel rejected by or reject their own tribe themselves, they attempt to undermine it in the hopes of getting conquered by a different tribe? That seems overly complicated though, the answer to this should feel simple because it's emotional. Help me out here.

Lol, the motte is weird af

  • -10

Yeah, haha you’ll have to excuse me.

I took a break from this place for a bit and it was comedic for me to gawk at the take that young women are liberal because they want big strong immigrants to come mate with them.

It might not be wrong btw. I’m pro immigration and I tend to find foreign women really hot. Who knows if deep down that’s my real motivation?

Carry on, as you were!

Well, something has to explain the sex difference in these attitudes.

Maybe that difference is fake, and so nothing is needed to explain it. American polling on immigration from 2022

68% of women say immigration is a good thing, which is both a lot, and probably not enough to meet the idea of a biological imperative. Which compares to...71% of men who think immigration is a good thing. There is no gender split on this issue.

Or take the Trump elections as a referendum on immigration. Looking at exit polls in 2016 and 2020. That gives us a split of 54% and 57% females voting for the democrats, which even if we take that as equivalent to support for more immigration, is so so far away from pointing to a biological imperative to import young men or something.

This whole idea that immigration policy is driven by gender differences is made up bullshit, somewhere between (as @daseindustriesltd above) a cuckold fantasy and simply being so online that you assume that your enemies entirely consist of the women of twitter or whatever. It's getting tougher and tougher not to see this femoid-posting as a bit of of "What no pussy does to a motherfucker."

68% of women say immigration is a good thing, which is both a lot, and probably not enough to meet the idea of a biological imperative. Which compares to...71% of men who think immigration is a good thing. There is no gender split on this issue.

Eh, that's just asking about "immigration on the whole". I don't think OP is asking about H1Bs, but instead obviously about the illegal crossings at the southern border. Anecdotally, the news coverage of that is very much in the style of heart-string tugging that is traditionally aimed at women. If such a gender gap exists in this narrower area, I would bet that's a major cause.

Hey, someone find the data, I couldn't in a few minutes of cursory googling.

But even if women are 99% "concerned" about illegal immigrants and men are 99% concerned about illegal immigration; that still isn't going to be causally related to our policies. Because 40+% of women are still voting Republican and 40+% of men are still voting Democrat, so the split isn't being reflected in the political split. Regardless of how women feel about illegal immigrants, their actions are split nearly evenly, much too evenly to talk about it as a primarily gender driven issue.

Personally I think it’s partly just that young women are more empathetic and so they tend to put themselves into the perspective of someone who is facing difficult circumstances.

My tendency is to be in their camp, so I feel like I kind of understand, but also I do think there are other deeper motivators in my psychology too, and maybe listing these out might be helpful here. Here’s my theory. Young unmarried women have:

  1. High empathy with a wide circle. Ease of which you put yourself in someone else’s shoes when hearing about hardship. The opposite of this is “I got mine”, which not at all to vilify that, I think there’s a relationship with maturity here, where young people have a starry eyed “help everyone in the world” attitude, and mature people with families have a “help my immediate circle who I’m deeply connected to” attitude.

  2. High exploration and openness. Personally, my exploration and openness settings are dialed all the way up. Like, I’m not content in one place, I want to see and experience everything the world has to offer, my friends settle in with work that’s well paid and meanwhile I choose things that are less stable and lower paid but have more possibility for excitement. This is aligned with a sort of interest and fascination with experiencing other cultures than my own, which in turn fuels the attitude of “more languages being spoken in my city? More exotic foods? Heck yeah”. In fact this is my theory for part of why cities are liberal and rural areas are conservative. The kids who have high openness and exploration drive leave rural areas, they’d never be content there. Whereas the people who want more stability and predictability can withstand the life of being a rural farmer or living in a small town. And again, young and unmarried people want to explore, whereas older and/or married people want stability and predictability.

  3. Naiveness. I’ll admit I learned over time that I do think right wingers have a point when they point out specific dangers in completely open immigration. Having large influxes of people from countries with different cultures can fuel problems. There can be value clashes, you can wipe out the character of a place, you can import approaches to governance that are not compatible. I’ve grown to recognize that, and of course, it’s the classic thing about having a “bleeding heart” kind of attitude. You think empathetically and other calculations don’t enter the picture as much. This is also something which changes with maturity.

In all three cases, I think these are points which both women and young people tend to have more than men and older people. And I think the psychological changes that come from having children and starting a family dampen all three.

Having children narrows your circle of concern, lowers your exploration drive while heightening your stability drive, and cuts naivety in favor of colder calculus of what will best benefit your offspring.

Thus, young unmarried women prefer immigration, followed by young unmarried men, then those who prefer less immigration are married men followed by married women.

Addendum: people with the attributes above probably are often sexually attracted to foreign people, so your earlier comment likely has a good point embedded in it.

immigrants are seen as "big strong" when actually they are often presented as helpless victims

If we switch to the violent criminals example, everyone agrees they are closer to "big strong". The most violent criminals tend to receive huge amounts of fan letters from women, so that's weird. I think in the case women did agree that the foreigners are big and strong, they would sell them as helpless.

The most violent criminals tend to receive huge amounts of fan letters from women

Violent crime leans heavily male. The few violent female criminals that got big amounts of publicity get a ton of fanmail, too; adoring this sorts of celebrity, even the vile kind, seems more human than it does feminine.