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Are The Global Elites Coordinating to Push LGBT Acceptance And Gender Theory?
(1/2)
Last week @2rafa posted her comment about WEF conspiracy theories, concluding that the WEF is a mundane organization, pushing mostly boring neoliberal status quo stuff, to the extent they push anything at all. This post isn't necessarily a direct response to that thesis, but might be an interesting contrast to it.
I am a proud Deranged Conspiracy Theorist. It's a relatively new state of affairs for me, but some time ago I've tried the tinfoil hat on, and it seems to fit. This means when the WEF is in session, I browse their livestreams and videos, and if something catches my eye, I watch the whole thing. So when I saw the video titled Beyond the Rainbow: Advancing LGBTQI+ Rights, I knew I had to watch it.
It's a discussion panel featuring a diverse cast of LGBT (well, L and G as far as I can tell) speakers from around the world. We have
• Ben Fajzullin, an Australian journalist currently working for the German Deutsche Welle
• Fahd Jamaleddine, a “global shaper” from Lebanon
• Sarah Kate Ellis from GLAAD
• Tirana Hassan from Human Rights Watch
• Sharon Marcil from the Boston Consulting Group
This is in no particular order, to the extent there are themes in this discussion, they're rotated through the conversation, so going over it chronologically doesn't make a lot of sense.
The goal of the panel is to discuss success stories of the LGBT(QI+) community, and best practices on how to implement “this type of thinking”. They start off by bringing up how last year there were still 80 countries with sodomy laws on the books, and now we're down to 70. A reasonable point to start, if there's a steelman case for the global elites coordinating to push LGBT acceptance and gender theory, that would be it.
Would I have no objection if this was where the whole thing ended? I'm not sure, maybe @DaseIndustriesLtd made singletons sound too scary for me, maybe I watched too much Star Trek as a kid, and the idea of the Prime Directive ended up influencing me a bit too much, or maybe I just have an irrational fear of my elites betraying me for membership in a global club? Hard to say. During the Q&A someone in the audience brings up an example and example from the other side:
I don't want to be Americanized by Evangelicals any more than I want to be Americanized by Progressives, so I find it just as wrong as Davos-aligned orgs going around the world and spreading their ideas. The only way I could hold my nose, and tolerate it, is if one side was clearly winning, and this was the only way of preserving some viewpoint diversity.
Either way, while the goal ending sodomy laws is something I agree with, Davos panels on how to accomplish that make me uncomfortable.
This is still on the mundane side, because I also agree with gay marriage, but it raises red flags when you compare it to the western culture war. Many people already had their suspicions, but the pretty explicit “we'll get you next time” that the Singaporeans get to hear if they're paying attention, raises some interesting questions about the seamless transition from gay marriage to trans issues in the west, and about taking any future assurances about social reforms in good faith. Other then that, coming back to the point about singletons, even though I'm personally for gay marriage, different definitions of marriage are one of the central examples of what I think different cultures should be allowed to experiment with.
Later they make a point that this isn't something limited to the non-developed countries:
Originally they name drop Poland and Hungary, so it might sound like they are focusing on marriage laws, but “using LGBT rights as a battleground to try and harness the support of the conservative elements of society” is a fully generalized argument. Later on they describe the US in similar terms:
This is Sarah Kate Ellis describing the state of the controversy in the US. Everything you've heard about trans women in sports, placement in prison based on self-ID, concerns about the standards for diagnosing dysphoria in kids, the reversibility of puberty blockers, and their side effects, minimal ages for surgeries, eunuch fetishists promoting their fetish via WPATH, schools hiding children transitioning from their parents, Drag Queen Story Hour, and putting Queer Theory in school material have been reduced to the above paragraph, and it's made clear these stances are being deliberately pushed back on.
Someone seeing the WEF as boring and benign should also meditate on how despite gathering people from all over the world, they somehow seem confident no one in the audience is going to give them any push-back. They're not worried an American might say “you've misrepresented everything that's been happening in our country”, let alone that someone from a more conservative part of the world might proudly assert their values.
And of course, the part where she says ***they*** are exporting their framework globally, as she's sitting at Davos, talking to an international audience of some of the most powerful people in the world, is just... *Chef's Kiss* (there will be more of those).
I am confused by this paragraph. Is it surprising that people who think sodomy should be legal also think gay marriage should be legal? I'm not really seeing how there is an "explicit" "we'll get you next time" either. They're mentioning that they think its progress that Singapore has legalized sodomy but wished Singapore had gone farther and legalized gay marriage, or at least not added a constitutional amendment against it. Is it nefarious to express preferences about the laws and rules of other countries? On a panel dedicated to discussing exactly those kinds of rule and policy changes in other countries?
It's also not clear to me how Singapore was not "allowed to experiment with" laws against gay marriage or sodomy. As best I can tell there is no external actor coercing them to go one way or the other, it seems to me driven by changing sentiment within the country. Should countries be obliged to maintain laws they think are bad for the purpose of maintaining some kind of global viewpoint diversity? Is it wrong to try and convince countries to change their laws by reason and argument if not many countries have similar laws?
The way she framed it conservatives in Singapore made a deal: "ok, we'll give you decriminalization, but we want to make sure it doesn't go further than that" (to that end they even "fortified" marriage in law). She makes it sound like it's an obstacle to overcome, not a compromise to be honored.
Yes, it's like expressing a preference on what kind of food your neighbor eats, or how often they have sex. It's none of your business, and it's creepy to poke your nose into it.
Do you see some creepy aspect in the story about American Evangelicals spreading their views on homosexuality in Ghana? Or is your only problem with it that you disagree with them?
There was a literal international conspiracy to get them to stop. It didn't not involve direct force, but these people did not recognize they're putting their nose somewhere it doesn't belong. Also, keep in mind when I brought up experimenting with different setups, I explicitly mentioned marriage, not sodomy laws.
They explicitly talk about coordinating to change sentiments within countries as well. This is something they should not be allowed to do, in my opinion.
The countries themselves can make whatever decisions they want.
Mostly yes. Especially if it involves conspiring to use corporations, NGOs, the country's own youth, infiltrating their media, in order to "convince" those countries to change their laws.
I mean, yea, from her perspective it is. I'm curious how you think this compromise works. It seems like your perception of it entails that, since the sodomy law is repealed, nobody is ever allowed to argue for the legalization of gay marriage for all time. This seems like a strange perspective to me, and certainly is not how I understand it. The compromise is about particular legislation happening now. Not about some commitment to never ever changing laws or advocating they be changed in the future.
I think there are many relevant moral differences between states and individuals and between state policies and individual preferences that make this comparison inapt.
The second one. I think evangelicals spreading their views in Ghana is bad, because I think the views being spread are bad. I have no particular issue with people trying to convince others of their viewpoints more generally.
If the conspiracy doesn't involve means or ends that I think are objectionable I struggle to see why I should object to its existence.
How would you even stop this? Should Singapore not be allowed to participate in the global internet, because maybe they'd see things that would change their views on LGBT people? Does the Singaporean internet need to be censored to ensure their present social values are maintained forever and ever? Is it bad to show people ads depicting LGBT people as normal people if such ads convince people that bans on sodomy are wrong?
I don't understand why "convince" is in scare quotes, what methods were employed that aren't covered by that label? I guess I just disagree that convincing people to change their ways by argument is wrong.
Oh. Then we have a fundamental value difference. I'm not sure how far we're going to get in this conversation with that in the way. I can only gesture wildly hoping you will understand whether I'm talking about my finger, or the thing it's point at.
Here's another one. Have you read the "Samsara" short story by Scott? What's your take on it?
To me it's cosmic horror. I shudder at the thought there's someone out there that could describe such evil acts in such a lighthearted way. The only way I can consider Scott not-quite-past-redemption is to tell myself it's meant as a Halloween story, and was posted a few days late.
Not for all time, but wait at least a generation or two. The other issue is the "nobody", like I said I think Singaporeans can make whatever decisions they want, I take issue with people conspiring to change their mind.
There certainly are differences, but none that I can see that are relevant to our conversation, or the argument I'm making.
In this thread I'm mostly interested in the question of the conspiracy's existence. A lot these are very frustrating for people in my position, because over the long term, people who are opposed to my views end up adopting a "that's not happening, and it's a good thing that it is" stance. If we can agree that it's happening I'm already mostly happy.
No to the latter. Like I said, it's up to Singaporeans to decide what decision they want to make, in this case it also means they decide what measures to take. If they want to be on the Internet, they can. If they want to censor it, it's also their right. I'm just against international elites conspiring to get them to change their mind.
What do you think about peer pressure? Cults? Using PUA mind-tricks to get a woman to say "yes" to sex, so it's technically with consent? None of these can ever count as coercion?
I think some of the tactics employed to try and convince the protagonist are impermissibly coercive, but otherwise am not seeing what evil acts are being described.
Maybe this is another value difference. I do not see what is wrong with trying to change people's minds.
I feel like one obvious difference is that state policies are coercive on other individuals in a way my neighbors preferences are not. Like, we're talking about legal coercion and punishment. That seems quite different to my neighbor having a preference for certain kinds of sex. Indeed, if my neighbors preference for sex involved coercing others (i.e. rape) I think it would become my business, in the same way the states coercion of individuals under the guise of the criminal law is my business. In a similar vein I think my values are universal. They are not just good for me, they are good simpliciter. My own values tell me there are impermissible ways of getting people to live according to my values (such as by coercion) but convincing people to have similar values to me is just good, in itself.
Fair enough! I think the "pro-spiracy" others have mentioned is probably a better conception. There are people in powerful positions that share a certain set of values and want others to also share those values. I'm not sure how much is literal conspiracy (surely some) but I think the pro-spiracy aspect is the dominant one.
I do think these things can be impermissibly coercive, but I'm going to need some evidence that this is what actually happened in particular cases.
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