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 -
A new Jussie Smollet case? Another Nurse Karen versus black kids on rental bikes?
Former 'The Bear' writer handcuffed on train after alleged complaint from white woman
Alex O'Keefe is a writer for FX's The Bear and a former speechwriter for Elizabeth Warren. He's also black. On September 18 he was apparently arrested and taken off an MTA train when a white woman told him to correct his posture and he refused.
At least, that's how it's reported on Black Enterprise, which obviously has the most inflammatory version. Most other news sites, such ABC (above) and Newsweek ('The Bear' Writer Arrested on Train After Complaint From White Woman) also seem to be describing what at first glance is a pretty egregious case of "White Karen sics cops on a black man for being uppity." So egregious that I was immediately suspicious. I mean, really? A white woman just points her finger and has a black man arrested for his "posture"? In 2025, in the Bronx?
Well, reading the ABC and Newsweek articles, there are a few additional details.
So he was not actually arrested - he was cuffed and "detained," then allowed to board the next train.
Supposedly one of the woman's friends said "You’re not the minority anymore.”
There is plenty here to make this another scissors incident. I have watched enough bodycam footage on YouTube to imagine it going several ways. Maybe Karen really was being a bitch and didn't like seeing a black guy "manspreading." The cops arrive in authoritarian asshole mode, O'Keefe protests, winds up cuffed and taken off the train.
Alternatively, O'Keefe was spreading himself across two seats, the old lady wanted to sit in one of them, O'Keefe decides no white lady is going to make him move, and when the cops arrive and ask him to please move his feet, he goes into Aggrieved Asshole mode.
Or something in-between. I have seen variations of both these scenarios play out. I doubt this will blow up into a huge story since O'Keefe wasn't actually arrested, but I have definitely seen it in several places now, in some cases described as a near-lynching and something something Trump.
The woman's friend saying "You’re not the minority anymore” is one of those details that strikes me as so on the nose (remember "This is MAGA country"?) that I just don't know what to think. Is it fabricated? Did someone really decide to offer up the perfect soundbite like that? Or was it in the context of a longer exchange between her and O'Keefe (a context conveniently omitted in all reporting)?
Regardless of the merits of his claims:
I see this behavior (on bodycam videos) from my clients all the time, and it's always counterproductive. Even if someone is 100% in the right, there is no situation made better by being argumentative and belligerent with the cops. Once cops have shown up, the situation has gone to shit, and being a dickhead doesn't improve things. Passive resistance, petulance, argumentativeness, active resistance, outright assault on the cops... not going to help. It sucks, but being polite and pulling the "yes, sir, no sir" card generally keeps things from getting worse.
It's especially baffling from clients who claim they are in fear of the cops killing them at any second due to their race. What, the cop is going to decide to not kill you because you're so obnoxious? Very logical. It's reinforced every time I see bodycams of bored, time-killing cops doing a traffic stop during daylight where they're trying to give a speeding ticket (and do the usual cop thing of sniffing around for something else). Instead of giving a name, getting a ticket, and going on about their lives, that's the time clients decide the smart thing to do is refuse to give a name (or give an incredibly fake name and DOB), refuse to hand over a driver's license, and get belligerent, thus turning a speeding ticket into PC for arrest and a search of the car.
What's baffling? The cops are trying to make them eat shit (that is, to yield in a monkey dominance game) with all the 'yes sir' and 'no sir' stuff, and in the moment they would rather take the risk of greater consequences than do so "voluntarily". Probably especially culturally relevant to blacks, though I suspect all but the most beaten-down milquetoast PMCs dislike showing their belly that way. Law-n-order conservatives claim to think it's fine, but I think mostly they don't envision themselves on the wrong side of that.
Only a small fraction would have no dislike for it. But a much much broader class of people, actually the majority, would suck it up and do it anyway. Part of being a civilized adult is the ability to set aside your instincts and short-term desires and impulses in favor of the rational, long-term concerns. When I was a child and my brothers would annoy me I would hit them to make them stop. After getting in trouble enough times I learned not to do that. I don't enjoy obnoxious and annoying behavior any more than I used to, and if possible will seek non-violent solutions to end it such as politely asking, or avoiding people who do it. But at the end of the day if I am near someone being deliberately obnoxious and I can't extricate myself from the situation then I will suck it up and deal with it instead of violently attacking them. Because I am an adult and I have the emotional maturity to do that.
Every middle class white child is taught to be respectful and defer to the police. Because your natural instinct is to fight people who oppose you, especially when they're in the wrong, and this instinct leads to predictably bad results, so it requires being taught the correct behavior in this scenario so that you know when to suppress your instincts instead of following them. I am not black, I did not grow up as a black child in a black household, so I don't know first hand what they are taught. But it seems to be some combination of "the police are dangerous and will shoot you, they are your enemy" and "a real man fights their enemies instead of submitting to them like a weakling." Which even if taught as separate messages, and the latter is implicit in the culture rather than explicit, combine to create this sort of behavior.
Which makes it not exactly baffling that this happens, though it is baffling that nobody seems to be trying to fix it on the cultural level. There are lots of attempts to blame the police and reduce their aggression towards minorities, but I don't see the same level of impetus towards teaching minorities "Don't fight the police!" When this is the obvious and easiest solution to the issue. It's not that minorities need to be extra submissive towards police, it's that everyone needs to submit to police, but certain subsets of minorities haven't caught on yet and need to be brought up to the same level as everyone else..
Is this really that baffling? The last several decades have seen the continual rise of an ideology that is based on dividing populations into groups, declaring some of them "oppressed" and others "oppressor" and declaring that the former has zero responsibility to improve things and the latter has full responsibility to improve things. A prominent example of this phenomenon in a different topic (with mostly the same players) is "rape culture," where even advising a woman against putting herself in a position of vulnerability around strange/potentially malicious men with alcohol or other drugs involved is considered full-throated justification for her being raped. Heck, even pointing out the fact (citation needed) that this raises one's odds of being sexually assaulted has been equated with explicit condoning of rape.
As such, any sort of recommendation that black people adjust their culture such that the rates of violent or otherwise troublesome encounters with police go down is verboten. That's condoning White Supremacy which we can always invoke as blame-worthy (of course, abstract concepts like White Supremacy can't really catch blame - people that you think of when you think of White Supremacy, such as white people, or brown people who disagree with you, OTOH...) in any troublesome encounter between any black person and any cop for any reason. Whatever culture that black people have, it's either innate - and good and to be supported in and of themselves, because everyone (that we've deemed sufficiently oppressed) deserves to be not just tolerated, but celebrated, intrinsically for who they are - or an adaptation that they had to take on just so that they could survive in this oppressive White Supremacist world they were unjustly thrust into, and so it's 100% the responsibility of White Supremacists to modify the policing system such that black people have to spend zero effort to change their culture and the rate of troublesome police incidents involving black people goes down to zero.
You know, I feel like I haven't heard this one in a while now. Odd how fixations on these things fade, sometimes surprisingly quickly.
Feminism was previously a class interest group for college educated women- that is, young women living away from the protections of their families. This is the demographic most likely to get raped(although feminists were generally not very concerned about the most vulnerable members of that demographic, such as enlisted women in the military- only college educated ones).
Feminism is now mostly concerned with 'women' whose rapists give up and switch to beatings instead when they discover the truth.
Oh, come on. This is a pretty lazy sneer, and it's barely even coherent. Do you think #MeToo was about college?
And I could have sworn I'd seen you arguing trans violence stats were fake. It's not happening, but they're fixated on it anyway?
Metoo was about professional women in high status settings. This skews educated even if the examples that are highest profile mostly arent.
I have not, to my knowledge, argued that ‘trans panic’ wasn’t a thing that ever happened(although I have argued that it has not applied to murder). I have argued that it’s less common and less random than trans activists like to portray. But MTFs getting beaten up/attacked by a potential partner is a very plausible thing.
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