site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 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.

105
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Not unless you think the mothers are getting sexual pleasure from it, which does not appear to be the case in my experience. They focus on the pretty almost doll part I think.

I do think they are getting sexual pleasure from it, and further that it is not recognized as sexual specifically due to the sexist notion that women are pure. It is much the same as an exhibition fetish in my mind, but leeching off the attention directed at their daughters rather than at themselves.

but leeching off the attention directed at their daughters rather than at themselves.

This is actually kind of odd to me; I thought that the entire point of Pride was to go around dressed in some horrifically-ugly fashion and get attention that way. After all, everyone else there is doing that (the ones that are attractive, by contrast, were too busy actually having sex to attend).

Seems like a lot of work to get your kid to do that, who (if they aren't naturally on board with it) will probably at least temporarily resent you for parading them around for a day through the freak show where people say uncomfortable things to you while you wear an uncomfortable, poorly-fitting outfit (drag expression is not generally satisfied with "go to the clothes store and choose the distaff/spear counterpart of what you're currently wearing" and is generally as flamboyant as possible on purpose). Bonus points for boys made to sit still while you paint their faces far past the point of female sexual superstimulus (at least, I'm pretty sure that's why the stereotypical drag outfit has eye shadow rings the size of shiners and lips that make intentionally racist caricatures seem modest by comparison).

That's a lot of effort, cajoling, complaining, and whining to deal with just to get one's rocks off for a day per year; as such, while I'm sure there are some people that are into that simply because that's a constant to anything, the people who are taking their kids like that are likely doing it as a political statement in the same way taking your kids to abortion protests is.