site banner
naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32208 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 23, 2023

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.

13
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Now, just for starters, I realize this is a semantic battle that's lost, but I will nonetheless keep pointing it out: "TERF" at least originally meant Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist. Radical feminism is a specific school of feminist ideology, it doesn't just mean "feminists who are really zealous and strident." It's actually quite fringe in modern feminism. Rowling is a feminist, and could probably be described as a Second Wave feminist, but she is certainly not a radical feminist.

I would also dispute the "Trans-Exclusionary" label, but that's somewhat more subjective, depending on what you mean by "exclude."

I've shifted to "trans-critical feminist" for the same group. I feel like "gender critical" is confusing terminology, in that it really is transgender critical, but "critical" is more accurate these days than "exclusionary", and, as you note, a lot of these people are not radical feminists.

(I think the "TERF" terminology was originally more accurate -- the split started with radical feminists who distrusted men and therefore wanted to exclude trans women from certain kinds of feminist events. But the usage has broadened to the point where the wording needs to be improved.)

I feel like "gender critical" is confusing terminology, in that it really is transgender critical

I don't agree, though I'm confused because there are so many definitions of "gender".

The ideologies that sprung up around this word, in living memory, have various implications that I and others disagree with. Only one of these implications is proposition 1 - that it's actually possible to be a woman in a male body.

Whereas I and many others have no problem with proposition 2 - that some people with male bodies really wish they were women, and will behave in ways more typical of women where doing so causes no harm to others (in the usual classical liberal sense).

I am 100% accepting of proposition 2, so the only aspect in which I am "transgender critical" is in the gender aspect. I'm critical of those ideologies around "gender" that endorse proposition 1, and have other implications I don't like.

As I understand it, the word "transgender," in current usage, specifically means someone who considers themselves to actually be a gender that is incongruent with the one they were initially sorted into. So, you've got no problem with trans people's gender expression. The thing you have a problem with is that they are transgender.

How society treats people mostly doesn't depend on whether they're a man or a woman, because that mostly doesn't matter. Where it does matter (prisons, sports, changing rooms, healthcare, etc.), it's almost entirely an issue of sex, not any of these new conceptions of gender.

Consider proposition 3 - that it is immoral not to replace sex with some conception(s) of gender, in the above contexts.

Perhaps the biggest sense in which I'm "gender critical" is that I'm critical of proposition 3.

The thing you have a problem with is that they are transgender.

This doesn't seem correct. I have a problem with people who push proposition 3. Most of those people are cisgender. Some of the people on 'my side' are transgender. (For all I know it could be a silent majority of transgender people who are on 'my side'.)

I think there just needs to be an acknowledgement that when people talk about TERFs, they are conflating two distinct, though thus far allied, categories. Quoting myself from the old forum:

I think the thing is that there are really two categories - let's call it TERF 1 and TERF 2 - which are obviously related but still separate.

TERF 1, or actual TERFs, are classic radical feminists who fully share all the viewpoints of the ideology - there are two distinct classes of humanity, men and women, these are defined by their biological features related to reproduction, nevertheless they don't have mental differences and the subservient societal status of women and the related cultural factors are explained by the history of male oppression of women to control their reproduction etc (ie. patriarchy). They usually make zero bones about their absolute opposition to men as a class, tend to advocate female separatism from to as good a degree as possible, and their opposition to trans rights activism flows from their belief that any attempt to obfuscate the biological reality of men and women can only be another facet of patriarchy preventing women from organizing as a class. Or that's how I've understood this ideology, at any rate.

TERF 2, or TE"RF"s, do not actually fully share the previous view. Instead this is an inchoate category of people, in great majority women, who for one reason or another have come to dislike trans rights activism and have latched to the movement established by TERF 1 types since there's nothing better for them.

(The alternatives are religious conservatism which is unappealing if you're not religious, have a liberal religious perspective, have a non-mainstream religion or otherwise don't wish to share the religious conservative conclusions, the sort of far-right nationalist ideologies that just come off as reification of assholishness and are right out if you're an ethnic minority, and Quillette/IDW-style anti-trans rationalism that often just comes off as too autistic for most people and seems like too thin a gruel anyway for someone who wishes for something more solid and uncompromising.)

Even if TERF 2 types might not share the full set of ideas by TERF 1 types - they don't wish to fully separate from men but instead have relationships and even marriages with them, they might browse FemaleDatingStrategy style sites and engage in performative femininity etc. - they can often pick and mix whatever they like, typically related to anti-trans and anti-sex-work rhetoric, and combine it to an unwieldy soup with various bargain-bin liberal ideological shibboleths, the sort of conservative tendencies they might not even admit to themselves, and the sort of "the men are SO stupid" style flippant rhetoric that often passes for feminist analysis even though it's just the sort of a thing women have really talked among themselves throughout the entire history, relating to the fact that men are, indeed, often stupid.

What might also attract TERF 2 types to TERF 1 ideologies is that TERF 1 ideology represents what might be called "ossified progressivism" - it's a veritable historical time capsule of a point of view that was cutting-edge in the 70s, but which the onmarch of progress, so to say, has then bypassed. One can see it easily when browsing TERF forums, there's a constant befuddlement about how feminist movement achieved many of its goals in the 70s but now the new crop of progressives is, from their point of view, throwing them away.

This sort of ossified progressivism might not be big-c Conservative, but since it, indeed, conserves a certain sort of an intellectual output of a previous era, it can appeal to people who feel a (usually unconscious) conservative impulse within themselves, but cannot identify with any actual ongoing conservative movements, for reasons listed above.

TERF 2 types are, for obvious reasons, more populous than TERF 1 types, but since they don't really yet form an organized tendency within the movement, the TERF 1 types still stay in charge and can exert some control over the movement, also of course hoping to affect TERF 2 types so that they can become consistent TERF 1 types. This might change if some group realizes the TERF 2 types are a separate group and manages to create a whole new ideology and movement on its basis. I think the "conservative feminists", for instance, are trying to do just this.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats