site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 14, 2025

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.

6
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Getting excited about A Play About David Mamet Writing About Harvey Weinstein, in which "Mamet is poisoned, castrated and murdered with his own playwriting award": https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/lifestyle/arts/mathilde-dratwa-david-mamet-harvey-weinstein-play-1236317797/

My play about this play about the famed playwright will settle all of this. In all seriousness, I am struck by the interview at the link, in which the younger playwright Dratwa seems much more upset with Mamet than with Weinstein, and for the crime of lasting success in her field (admittedly long past his prime, by all accounts).

Addendum: I guess this is a temptation facing everyone in the arts: you might go into it thinking you have something to say about society, or humanity, but you’ll probably spend all day thinking about art, so guess where you’ll find inspiration? Film, which seens to have been Dratwa's previous field, seems especially bad for this -- just filthy with "movies about the magic of movies."

Like @ThenElection says, it's not just that Mamet is "successful in her field." It's that Mamet is a dudely playwright who offends feminist sensibilities (yet he's successful!) who is also a right-winger (yet he's successful!) and wrote a play about a "women's issue" that should have been written by a (feminist) woman (yet he was successful!) and also she isn't very successful. It's unfair!

This is just petty poison pen writing. Like trans author Gretchen Felker-Martin writing a post-apocalyptic horror novel where TERFs are the villains and inserts a paragraph about JK Rowling getting burned alive in her mansion, or Michael Crichton making one of his critics a child rapist with a small penis.