site banner
naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   34995 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 28, 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.

16
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Where do you see the Gender War going?
My Definition of the Gender War.

There are many fronts in the Culture War that can be more or less described as a 'Gender War'.

  • Front 1: Which pronouns to use? Does "gender even exist?

  • Front 2: Is Western society a "patriarchy"?

  • Front 3: Is Masculinity Toxic?

  • Front 4: "Incels".

This post is about Front 4. Growing male sexlessness. I am not going to make much of an empirical argument but more of a rhetorical one.

So what if men are having less sex?

  1. A large enough contingency of young men not having sexual partners is almost always a precursor for political and social instability. All that excess energy needs to be directed somewhere (work to provide for the wife and kids), if it isn't it usually boils over towards the rest of society as men seek out more violent and high-risk avenues to gain social status let that be joining gangs or starting political revolutions.

  2. Moreover, young men are the most productive demographic in society in just about every domain. If a large enough percentage of them don't see any reason/reward for working hard, they just won't.

It's getting worse.

A growing number of men not having sex is a canary in the coal mine. That whatever was holding the socioeconomic fabric together is deteriorating. Let that be worsening economic conditions (we got plenty of that), worsening economic inequality (plenty of that as well), or just worsening social institutions (Online dating is the plurality method of how heterosexual couples met., It's growing rapidly.).

The cultural wind is blowing

Not only that but the two sexes resenting each other is mainstream. As I was growing up in the early 2000s there were 'boys vs girls' conversations. But those conversations were light-hearted and there were no hard feelings.

Nowadays browsing through social media comment sections and talking to other young guys. The tensions are much higher. I see normies spouting black pill talking points all over Instagram and TikTok. And that seems to be the majority ideology. This is in stark contrast to the early 2000s and even the 2010s were the majority consensus amongst men could have been described as 'RedPill' or 'BluePill'.

If you want an example of the above, Read the comments of this video (Videos like this are an entire genre among zoomers). You can feel the tension in the comments. To me, it's obvious this girl is joking, even if the joke isn't all that funny or whatever. The comments don't suggest most people viewed it as such, the men are on edge. I'd wager they wouldn't have reacted like this a decade ago. Another interesting phenomenon is that unattractive girls produce content like this imitating the attractive ones who can actually get away with it and just end up sinking the sanity waterline further as young naive men peers who know her think "wait I can't even this this bitch?" and the women gas up their egos without being able to back it up.

I mean Andrew Tate is actually popular FFS! I have had so many of my normie friends and acquaintances ask me about what I think of Andrew Tate, and most of them say the same thing. "He's got a point, I agree with a large part of what he says". The man is a clown, he's a comedian in my eyes. The fact his rhetoric resonates with men despite all else is a testament to the times we are living in.

On the female side of the aisle, it seems like they are doubling down too. They will just make more TikTok videos like the one I linked above.

Where do I see all this going?

Increasing political and social tension. More fringe political parties are elected, and how that happens will be left as an exercise for the leader.

One can make the argument that countries like Japan and South Korea are already further along the line of atomization and sexlessness (their TFR is atrocious!).

I don't think East Asian countries with the rice farming optimized culture (and genetic predisposition against inhibition, extremely interesting but I can't find the link) are good proxies to model the rest of the world after.

India might be a candidate they have a Front 4 gender war as well, arranged marriage puts a damper but Hindu Nationalism is clearly on the rise.

It seems that we are in the perfect storm for worsening Gender relations. Economic struggles, increasing OLD (that comes with a massive amount of its own problems) app usage, increasing atomization, recommendation algorithms primarily suggesting media that lowers the sanity line (rage bait of the likes made by Ms Andrea Subotic), gender confusion, Males being vilified for???, Women specific AA, all of them compounding on each other...

(b) Because the complex modern State depends for its very existence on naval and military power, diplomacy, finance, and the great mining, constructive, shipping and transport industries, in none of which can women take any practical part. Yet it is upon these matters, and the vast interests involved in them, that the work of Parliament largely turns.

(c) Because by the concession of the local government vote and the admission of women to County and Borough Councils, the nation has opened a wide sphere of public work and influence to women, which is within their powers. To make proper use of it, however, will tax all the energies that women have to spare, apart from the care of the home and the development of the individual life.

...

(g) Because, finally, the danger which might arise from the concession of woman-suffrage, in the case of a State burdened with such complex and far-reaching responsibilities as England, is out of all proportion to the risk run by those smaller communities which have adopted it. The admission to full political power of a number of voters debarred by nature and circumstances from the average political knowledge and experience open to men, would weaken the central governing forces of the State, and be fraught with peril to the country.

A few choice cuts from the English Anti-Suffragist platform.

Every time this brand of gender-relations pessimism comes up, I have the same incredulous reaction, and I think it comes down to one underlying sentiment:

It seems that we are in the perfect storm

We have seen this one before. The anti-suffragists were sure voting would tear apart a fragile equilibrium between the sexes. They asserted the existing division of manual and domestic labor was not only stable, but optimal, and any changes would be disastrous for the State. If TFR data was available in 1910, I imagine it would have been quite the talking point, but without it, they could only mutter about “taxing of energies.” Their confidence was preserved for posterity on the public record, not just in the ephemera of YouTube comments.

So when you suggest that this time, TikTok is going to do what the assembly line could not, that influencers are more reflective of a culture than yellow journalism, that our economic circumstances are more stressful than two World Wars and a Great Depression? I remain skeptical. The fabric of society isn’t as fragile as you think.

The anti-suffragists were sure voting would tear apart a fragile equilibrium between the sexes.

But they were right, though. I'd call prohibition, which was a very gendered issue and the major suffragette policy issue, a huge disruptive to the body politic.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats