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 -
Yeah. My dad was from a very poor corner of the North of England in a very large family and a bath was a weekly phenomenon in which the water'd be shared between the extended family.
People are generally unaware of how staggeringly modern a lot of expected current conveniences are.
Also, I imagine if you couldn't afford the luxury of a bath, but you lived in a city, you might have been able to go to a communal bath. Nowadays, that sort of thing only still exists in, what, Japan?
Hence the San Francisco bathhouses 😀 But yes, public baths and wash houses for the working class were indeed a fixture of large cities.
And the gay bathhouses have a provenance in the Middle Ages in Europe, where public baths became places of assignation (at best) or de facto brothels. You would be spending pretty much the entire day there and if you already had your clothes off...well.
Things like that helped in the condemnation and closing down of bath houses, as well as something this article points out: there weren't the kind of chemicals we use today to keep pools sterile, and if the owners/operators of baths weren't too scrupulous about changing the water, it was no wonder people began to associate frequent bathing with risk of disease.
The pop culture idea of the past simply being dirty because they were dirty, and also Christianity thought bathing was sinful, isn't correct but it's something that seems to be embedded in the popular imagination (the dung-coloured Middle Ages notion persisting even in Amazon's Rings of Power, where we can tell Bronwyn is an Important Character and Strong Empowered Woman because she's the only one dressed in bright colours).
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link