site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 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.

9
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

None of these points is unique to feminism. If the reaction of "discarding all concern for fairness, reason, logic and impartiality" is unique to feminism, then that suggests a problem with the feminist movement.

  1. Have you ever looked at, say, rightwing twitter? The responses from progressives are remarkably devoid of any content beyond bad faith, insults, and sneers. Applying moderation at a level that seems standard for feminist spaces would delete approximately 99.9% of all progressive discourse, depriving us of countless arguments like "No bitches?", "Small dick energy", "Educate yourself!", and endless other three word posts that boil down to "You are stupid!" or "You are bad!"

  2. I think plenty of feminist and leftist positions are morally repugnant; you can't reasonably expect me to be calm about it, or to be responsible for my own emotional states or reactions. Many of these issues are ones that are personally painful and morally insupportable. You are threatening me deeply on a personal level. As such, if you respond to this post, I will interpret it as violence against me. If I wasn't being obvious enough, this is intended as an example of being on the other end of emotional blackmail. But if you reply, I will take is as an admission against feminism.

  3. So when do you validate the anger of non-progressives at the efforts to queer their children? Or is there a category difference, where you expect normal people to be able to control themselves, while giving feminists the general presumption for self-regulation we usually hold for toddlers? For the record, I think this is deeply misogynistic.

  4. Who decides controversial versus non-controversial? This comes off like a trick, to place one side's incoherent rage on the same level as the other side's reasoned argument. It's just the same old intellectually bankrupt monodirectional power dynamics. Have you ever bothered to engage with the possibility that emotionalism is, in fact, a bad thing? There are topics I get emotionally damaged about; I made a post about it a while back. But I understand and accept that my emotionalism on this topics is counter-productive. My feelings are not an argument, not a justification. They are an obstacle to understanding. If banning emotionalism and appeal to emotion and emotional blackmail is harmful to feminists, then maybe feminists don't deserve a place at the adults table.

I don't think the reaction of decreased respect for liberal norms is unique to feminism, actually. Certainly, many centrists seem to complain about illiberalism on the left and right. But feminism is the context that I, personally, can speak to with the greatest amount of personal experience, so that is where I have put my focus in responding.

I do not, as a rule, look at Twitter unless I have to. But of course I take your point that there are also trolls on the left.

If you were genuinely finding this conversation emotionally difficult and wanted to discontinue it, I would let you. I would also not hold it against you, nor consider that to be forfeiting your position. This is because I do think that everybody's emotions are worthy of respect. Yes, that includes when right-wingers get emotional about the possibility that their children might be harmed by the influence of liberal norms.

Have you ever bothered to engage with the possibility that emotionalism is, in fact, a bad thing?

Of course. I'm very interested in this topic. I don't believe in the existence of a single set of discussion norms that will work for every group of people on every subject, and I think that disallowing "emotion" really does disallow certain sets of facts about how people feel. Emotions matter. Sweeping them aside can be counterproductive, sometimes.

However, I do appreciate that sometimes a ban on "emotion" is a genuine attempt to lower the temperature of a discussion so that people with very different views can actually hear each other, instead of just shouting past each other. Whilst I prefer a co-operative appreciation for the emotions of both sides to a terse ban on all emotional acknowledgment, I realise that different norms can be a benefit in themselves, and thus that in some contexts a ban on "emotion" may still be a useful tool.