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 -
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/democrats-want-reach-young-male-voters-how-get-them-is-up-debate-2025-10-06/
Reports like these have been an almost weekly occurrence all year. To state the obvious that none of these articles include: The Democratic Party and liberals engage in bulverism and bulverism alienates people. But is the problem purely liberals alienating young men or are conservatives also successfully courting them?
For a top level post on a fresh CW thread, I find this seems a bit lacking. While this would make a very civilized tweet, and you did include a few sentences of commentary, I think we should aim higher here.
If these have been weekly reports all year, you might want to include more than just one. Note that you can use the
[link-name](http://link-target.example)
syntax to format links. Lines starting with>
introduce quotes, you can use that to give the audience the money quote.--
Bulverism means that rather proving the claims of your opponent wrong, you find some evil reason why your opponent would believe them. In the context of SJ, I think a prime example would be 'obviously anyone who notices that the murder rate among Blacks is higher is incredibly racist'.
A decade ago, SJ was very popular among young people. My gut feeling is that SJ was always a bit more female than male leaning, but I also think that any political movement which is popular among 22yo female college students will also have male followers due to sex related reasons, if nothing else. A cishet man in college in 2016 wearing a MAGA hat would probably not have gotten laid a lot. So a related question would be if the young women today care less about politics, or if people just stopped having sex.
So one question would be what has changed about the young women.
It could be that as the median SJ proponent grew older, the next generation simply found them incredibly cringe, as younger people often find older people.
Or it could be that the change of medium. SJ thrived on tumblr, which was text-based. I am given to understand that kids these days mostly use short video platforms, perhaps this organically emphasizes different content.
I still don't understand this past-tense attitude, but in the wild I mostly see young women socializing around gay men and trannies if they're interacting with anyone other than another young woman.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link