site banner

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
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

A heart attack is involuntary. What makes it a threat is that you are going to act if they don't do as you demand. The fact you are pinning actions you are going to take to hurt yourself on them makes it more abusive.

Again though remember the original example was about other people hurting themselves. So maybe we're losing it in analogies.

If I say stopping medication to bipolar people increases the risk of bipolar people killing themselves. That can be either true or false. Whether I am bipolar doesn't change anything about what those other people do. If I say I will kill myself if you stop that medication, then that is a different type of statement.

If my son is a truck driver and wants to call out to play Call of Duty and I say, if you don't deliver that shipment of widgets, the widget factory will shut down and people will lose their jobs, some might starve and some might even commit suicide, I am not going to hurt anyone or myself, I am pointing out the potential consequences of his actions. I might be making those consequences up to guilt him, or they may be true or I may be exaggerating them for effect. But we can't tell which without knowing about the widget factory and the financial situation in the town etc.

I think what offends, at least to me, about this line of argumentation is that it implicitly incentivizes committing suicide. It's a kind of brinksmanship of slave morality. It has the same kind of energy of forums that hear about a mass shooting and are, often not even secretly, hoping for it to be their kin slaughtered by the hated outsider. It's this ugly race to the bottom of grievance where instead of groups showing how excellent they are everyone is slavishly hoping for their ingroup to come out as pathetic and worthy of sympathy as possible. It's an impulse I recognize in the worst parts of myself. And if this is the impulse that gets my ingroup what it wants why not indulge it?

Yeah that got a bit too abstracted.

The problem is, you are 100% correct imo, the idea that better treatment of trans people will reduce the risk of their suicide is not inherently abusive, and it's a fairly standard part of risk management re the mentally ill. Which is why it became such a popular talking point. But then you had trans people lobbying for their community with it. And when trans people started lobbying with that talking point the potential for abuse increased by orders of magnitude, because when you lobby for the community you belong to, anything which affects your community necessarily affects you.

And a percentage of trans people, like a percentage of the rest of the world, are manipulative abusers who saw a superweapon - by ramping up the emotion and playing on their fear, they could make their community (many of whom are on hormones, never mind their default mental state) feel like they were being viciously persecuted and driven to suicide. Then even if someone points out that they are a sociopath manipulating everyone, they can discredit them as a transphobe trying to kill trans people.