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 -
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.
Perhaps I'm too misogynistic, but this story of wishing to get conquered seems ridiculous (and reeks of second-hand cuckold fantasies, sorry). I don't believe we need any deep analysis of female support for liberal immigration policies, there isn't that much agency here.
Women usually commit to ideological positions that are endorsed by the distributed moral authority of the reference group, and rationalize it with readily available arguments; they are more conformist, more agreeable and, thanks to the incentive structure in education-to-early-career pipeline and their success there, more advanced in their addiction to teacher's praise and fellow user's like and retweet. The reference group being largely made up of fellow women, background social network radiation, media characters, Dem politicians, microcelebrities and such, women arrive at supporting liberalism, unless insulated in deep red bubbles. Liberalism of the sort endorsed by DNC, aka the current thing, feels like common sense, just what decent sane people vote for as a matter of course; indecent, insane, deplorable, mean people, racist grandpas who've regrettably survived COVID, and their ilk support the opposite of the current thing, and associating with them lowers one's intuitively calculated social credit score. On top of that, there is simple political power.
Power is based, powerlessness, meekness, nebbishness is cringe. Based thing is based, cringe thing is cringe, the evolution of society is guided via cringe policing and the side that can inject cringe/based connotations into the discourse better wins. We've seen this analyzed and practically applied countless times, starting with Torches of Freedom, or perhaps much earlier, at the dawn of universal suffrage.
Or, you know, young women might just vote for left-wing parties because they feel that right-wing parties are too full of people who view them misogynistically. One might indeed get an impression that such views might exist by reading a thread on this forum full of speculation about how this ineffable mystery can best be explainable by the fact that young women are vapid idiots who don't know their own good, or are fantasizing about being conquered by exotic brown-skinned immigrants, or so on.
One of your talking points is that women in the past voted conservative. And I doubt the conservatives then were less "misogynistic" than conservatives today. So mere "misogyny" doesn't repel female voters.
Historically both left-wing and right-wing parties were full of men who would, at least by today's standards, be considered misogynistic.
The approximate reason for women voting more conservative historically was probably their greater religiousness, with the left being associated with secularism and the right-wing parties being more explicitly religious. Nowadays, the whole society has secularised, which has had many effects, one of which has been the replacement of more polite and civil traditional religious conservatism with crude and boorish chest-tumping macho nationalism as one of the mainstays of right-wing politics. The former did have appeal to many women, the latter... not very much so.
More than the macho nationalism, which was very present also in the past, is the Libertarianism that probably makes the women flee.
There is nothing more repelling imho of the freedom-loving men who claim to be the only ones free in our society. Women cares about community, the problem is that the global/left communities appear more stable and welcoming and normal that the libertarian community.
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