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 -
This is not a huge mystery. If you're a left-leaning zoomer, you've spent most of your adult life watching right-wing Israeli governments take advantage of the US government to commit human rights violations while aggressively snubbing the Democrats and boosting the Republicans. You can invoke the history of the conflict or the gruesome spectre of a Hamas victory all you like, but you're contrasting ancient history* and lurid hypotheticals to current reality. If Israel had pursued a measured response to the Oct. 7th attacks (and especially if they weren't also constantly nibbling away at Palestinian territory), they would have been able to garner a lot of sympathy. Not from everyone - there are indeed people who think Israel can do no right - but from most. After all, it seemed like a vindication of the aforementioned lurid hypotheticals. Israel, however, does not do measured responses. And if the IDF's conduct isn't quite the war of annihilation their most vocal critics claim, it's still increasingly hard to argue that Israel isn't waging a war against the Palestinian people rather than simply going after Islamic terrorists.
Even if you're not left-leaning or otherwise sympathetic to the Palestinians, it's easy to feel like this is an incredibly one-sided relationship.
*which is not always especially favorable to the Israelis in any event.
Yeah, zoomers are brainrotted with tiktok slop and think the genocidal jihadis are oppressed. It's not a mystery, it's just a grim reminder we should have banned tiktok ages ago.
As opposed to brainrotted Boomers who think women and minorities are oppressed.
They didn't need Facebook to come to that conclusion yet arrived at it anyway, so the problem rests with the people, not the technology.
I mean, they were back the last century. At best, they're just slow to update and relying on cached thoughts from when they could last think independently. In that sense, it's less like rot and more like calcification/ossification.
If by 'last' you mean 'the 19th', sure, I'll grant that. At no point past 1920ish was this true for women (so no woman born/raised in the West knows what it's like to be uniquely oppressed- that it happened once upon a time is their origin myth, just like it is for the Indians); for minorities, at no point in Boomer living memory (post-childhood, so 13+: someone born in '45 would be post-Brown v. Board at that age) were they really oppressed.
It's something their parents and grandparents had reason to take seriously; what we're seeing now is the echoes and turbulence of a once-truth so widely held industry sprung up around it reaching its sell-by date. (This is also why, if LGB organizations did not embrace and pump up T, they'd have faded away like MADD did: their original grievances don't exist any more, hence the lie that they do must be defended ever harder.)
While I'm broadly sympathetic to the idea that women are less oppressed than is commonly claimed, I do take issue with your claim here. In the United States, The Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) was passed in 1974, and was the bill that allowed women to get credit in their own name without the signature of a husband or male relative. I would argue that lack of access to credit in one's own name is a form of oppression, even if it could be counterbalanced by paternalistic or progressive benefits.
It is also worth pointing out that families and social expectations can function as "tiny tyrannies", even if people are theoretically free according to the law. My mom grew up in a fairly patriarchal household, and when my aunt got into the Air Force Academy her dad (my grandpa) said "no, you're staying right here with the family" and my aunt meekly accepted his word as final. On the other hand, my mom got into MIT and when my grandpa told her she couldn't go, she basically said, "I wasn't asking for permission, I'm going to MIT." My mom was also the most stubborn of her sibllings, and I don't think it's a coincidence that she was the one that left the state they all grew up in and became an upper middle class engineer, while the rest stayed nearby like grandpa wanted and mostly didn't do as well (except for the one aunt who got into real estate and banking.)
Women are higher in the Big 5 trait of Agreeableness, and I think that means that even in legal regimes that are relatively favorable to women, they can still get "stuck" in a tiny tyranny through mere social pressure alone. The women who escape are either unusually low in Agreeableness for a woman (like my mom), or autistic/weird enough that they naturally drift away when given the chance (like Aella.)
No, this was the bill that made it a Federal legal requirement that women could get credit in their own name without the signature of a husband or male relative. The idea that the opposite was universally the case before 1974 is a recent fabrication.
Your understanding of the bill and mine are the same, though I certainly see that I didn't word it correctly in the post you responded to.
But even reduced, uneven access to credit is a form of oppression.
Like, are we going to pretend that the moment Esso started serving gas to black motorists nationwide in the 1930's, that suddenly black motorists were completely unoppressed as a group? Having to navigate an environment in which you can get an essential good from some firms, and can't get an essential good from others limits your options and often mean you're left with a worse set of choices.
Edit: Typo
Motte-and-bailey. Motte: Women weren't guaranteed equal access to credit, and sometimes didn't get it, prior to the Equal Credit Opportunity Act. Bailey: Women couldn't get credit at all without the signature of a male relative (Often coverture is mentioned, though that was largely eliminated by state legislation in the mid-to-late 19th century). The bailey makes a MUCH stronger case for "oppression", but it just ain't so.
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
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link