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 -
Sorry I posted the wrong link. I mean to link this: https://aibm.org/research/men-and-volunteering-gender-gaps-and-trends/
Admittedly, a 5% gap still doesn't seem like as much of a difference, but you need to compare the proportions of the people volunteering. 27% vs 35% already means that the base ratio of volunteers is 84 men for 100 women. Then add in the fact that the genders choose different types of volunteering-- men are much more likely to be coaches, for example, while women are much more likely to be anything else. Finally, volunteers are going to spend different amounts of time volunteering. It all multiplies together into a crisis of male volunteers for specifically mentorship roles.
I occasionally hateread crystal.cafe and they complain pretty often about unwelcome males (successfully) inserting themselves into female spaces and disrupting them. My priors are telling me to that their complaints are still less relevant than yours, and I'm confident in those priors because if I wasn't I would have them, but I'm not meta-confident in those priors because I'm fully aware that my incentives as a man are to seek out information that supports pro-man priors. Generalizing, I find myself in this situation pretty often when it comes to gender-war stuff-- I'm confident enough in my object-level beliefs to argue for them, but I'm not confident enough in my confidence to accept any totalizing theories because even small changes to my priors should force me to completely rethink the specifics of a broad philosophy.
For example, I was talking to my little brother about the lack of male mentorship recently and he said he thought about doing big brothers big sisters/boys and girls club, but decided against it because he figured if he was going to be doing that sort of thing anyways, he might as well be paid for it-- like he got paid for working as a substitute teacher. If you let your eyes go out-of-focus this generally melds into the "particular gender roles are unfairly imposed on me" supertheory, but in-focus it's completely at odds with the, "men don't want to be mentors because they're afraid of being called pedophiles" theory.
More options
Context Copy link