site banner
PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   16184 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 1, 2025

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.

4
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

To properly assess it, we sadly need other essays from the class. Did similar levels of progressive pap get a C+? What did the A essays look like?

I can't imagine what a similarly-constructed paper from a progressive view would even look like. The only half-decent analogue I can think of is if the progressive response contained poorly cited infographic statistics, in which case it would at least gesture toward empiricism and the ways of knowing endorsed by the psychological sciences. I think Fulnecky has a greater intellectual burden than a similarly-abled progressive student to justify her choice to appeal to the Bible, which defies the conventions of the field. She did not meet that burden.

It's because of the evil white man that kids are brainwashed into teasing to enforce gender norms. We must empower Black and Brown Queer youth to smash fascism and dismantle patriarchy

The progressive reverse to this essay appealing to Biblical inerrancy is an essay appealing to narcissistic, naval-gazing identity-having. I would be surprised if there were zero students in that class who functionally just vomited two pages worth of "AS A BLANK, THIS ARTICLE MADE ME FEEL THAT" - but not as shocked as I would be if one of them were graded harshly.

I can't imagine what a similarly-constructed paper from a progressive view would even look like. The only half-decent analogue I can think of is if the progressive response contained poorly cited infographic statistics, in which case it would at least gesture toward empiricism and the ways of knowing endorsed by the psychological sciences.

We did have recent Darwin discourse, if you want in-the-wild examples.

I'm not sure that 'the ways of knowing endorsed by the pyschological sciences' are anywhere near what you want to motion toward as a different class of thing, or that it's clear from either the rubric or the typical essay in this category of course that such empiricism is actually supported or required, given the quality of academic psychological research. Maybe if schools weren't treated the Stanford Prison Experiment like a real experiment rather than a play it would have bite.

But ignoring that for now, there's a lot of pretty well-regarded sources that are respected in modern psychology and have little more than ipse dixit behind them. I'm extremely skeptical that a writer pulling from Julia Serano to talk about trans rights would have gotten this style of response, but they've got about the same experimental foundation.

That's... kinda the problem. If the quality of thought and writing from the graduates of these programs were better, you could just motion about this slop being slop. But then you look at the professor's response, and it's not like it's doing any better, either! Look at the middle lead from the professor:

You argue that abiding by normative gender roles is beneficial (it is perfectly fine to believe this), but to then say that everyone should act the same, while also saying that people aren't pressured into gendered expectations is contradictory, especially since your arguments reflect a religious pressure to act in gender-stereotypical ways. You can say that strict gender norms don't create gender stereotypes, but that isn't true by definition of what a stereotype is. Please note that acknowledging gender stereotypes does not immediately denote a negative connotation, a nuance this article discusses.

There's a lot of this whole disagreement that makes me want to slap everyone involved -- including the student -- in the face with an embossed copy of "https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/cFzC996D7Jjds3vS9/arguing-by-definition", and I get that a) they probably haven't read it, and b) the professor has to write comments on a lot of bad essays and is only getting in national news for the worst. But look at that claim, and compare:

Gender roles and tendencies should not be considered “stereotypes”. Women naturally want to do womanly things because God created us with those womanly desires in our hearts. The same goes for men. God created men in the image of His courage and strength, and He created women in the image of His beauty. He intentionally created women differently than men and we should live our lives with that in mind....

Gender roles and tendencies should not be considered “stereotypes”. Women naturally want to do womanly things because God created us with those womanly desires in our hearts. The same goes for men. God created men in the image of His courage and strength, and He created women in the image of His beauty. He intentionally created women differently than men and we should live our lives with that in mind.

Yes, this is just ipse dixit and incompetently written, but it's not making the argument that the professor is criticizing; to rephrase it in left-friendly terms the student's argument is that a lot of what people present as the result of stereotypes are really underlying interests (aka the Damore), and people would enjoy their lives better if they were allowed to act in alignment with those goals. This might be (almost certainly is) wrong! But it's not the same as "to say everyone should act the same". Worse, the professor's contradiction between "everyone should act the same" and "while also saying that people aren't pressured into gendered expectations" is a textbook philosophy error.

Or, later, compare the professor's:

Additionally, to call an entire group of people "demonic" is highly offensive, especially a minoritized population." You are entitled to your own belief, but this isn't a vague narrative of "society pushes lies," but instead the result of countless years developing psychological and scientific evidence for these claims and directly interacting with the communities involved.

to

Society pushing the lie that there are multiple genders and everyone should be whatever they want to be is demonic and severely harms American youth. I do not want kids to be teased or bullied in school. However, pushing the lie that everyone has their own truth and everyone can do whatever they want and be whoever they want is not biblical whatsoever.

The latter is written very poorly, so for a casual reader, the confusion is understandable. But diagram the sentence out. "Society pushing the lie" "is" "[D]emonic", not an entire group of people. There's a fair critique that the student isn't engaging with the argument being presented, but in turn, it's undermined if the academic measuring this stuff can't do much better.

Agreed. I'm definitely not an "empiricism above all else" sort of person, especially regarding psychology. Forgive me for the sloppiness. I guess when I say "ways of knowing" I simply mean that Fulnecky's appeal to the Bible is generally not considered a valid truth claim in the field of psychology. Saying that "God gave women womanly desires" is incomprehensible with the vocabulary of psychology. Plenty of concepts in psychology are a bit fluffy on the empiricism, no doubt, but they are at least arrived at from some case study or line of reasoning. I do wonder what would have happened if Fulnecky laid out her reasoning neatly, in the "proper way," and still expressed the same viewpoint, but that's not a counterfactual we have access to. The instructor here is not a bastion of neat argumentation either and is reading the paper a bit uncharitably, but I think overall the critique, that the response is without grounding in psychology, stands.

"God gave women womanly desires" is incomprehensible with the vocabulary of psychology.

With a little bit of critical thinking you can tell it's the equivalent to "women are born with" or "women are innately inclined towards". Of course the obfuscation is not ideal but if you actually engage with the work it has a meaning from a psychological perspective.

In general the mainstream christian views on science don't believe that god has a personal involvement in reproduction. They believe that god created life with intelligent design, but biology, chromosomes, eggs and sperm ... heck even natural selection and evolution are all real phenomenon that stem from god's original design.

For sure - the claim "women are innately driven toward XYZ," is not one I take tremendous issue with. However, the metaphysics implied in the specific statement "God gave women womanly desires" is then used throughout the rest of Fulnecky's response to justify the argument that deviating from gender norms is detrimental because it defies God's will, to negative spiritual and social consequences. That does not seem to me to be easily or responsibly "translated" into academically validated psych-speak.

You keep talking about what is considered a valid truth claim within psychology as if that’s meaningful.

First, fields can be wrong. Appealing to consensus is bad form.

Second, psychology is a bullshit field. Most of the famous theories don’t hold up to scrutiny. With respect to gender, most of the literature is just bullshit ipsie dixit. Besides many arguments not raving being empirical, the empirical studies are riddled with failure to replicate or publication bias. Even the NYT acknowledged that WPATH was hiding studies that cast doubt on trans agenda.

So the professor is literally casting stones from a glass house. But alas, I think the professor is probably too retarded to even know that. There was a massive logical error in literally every sentence the professor wrote. The university should fire her for being so stupid.

PS the paper sucked but probably sucked about the same as a number of other papers.

Just speaking personally, and airing my elitism, I haven't written an essay that bad since at least middle school, just from a writing perspective. But I didn't go to Oklahoma. I don't know what the other essays looked like.

If they looked like essays I've written, then she deserved the zero. If they all sound like that but said gender is socially constructed, she didn't deserve a zero.

Any other argument about the quality of the essay lacks rigor.

If they looked like essays I've written, then she deserved the zero. If they all sound like that but said gender is socially constructed, she didn't deserve a zero.

Interestingly, this implies that the purpose of a grade is to rank a student among their cohort rather than to an objective standard; that if you throw a bunch of morons into a university-level class, you curve scale and give an A to the best of them rather than just fail them all.

Empirically, this seems to be exactly what happens, but it leads to grade and credential inflation as ever more unprepared students are sent off to college; just another institution to spend 4 years doing pointless busywork until you get a piece of paper, high school 2.0, except that now you are four years older, 5 figures in debt, and there is not a virgin girl left among the graduates.

College delenda est.

I mean it might be the University of Oklahoma, but it's still the University of Oklahoma, that is, a state flagship. It doesn't get the serious bottom of the barrel students- in the local neighborhood Texas Tech or Kansas State would be the schools notorious for graduating students who are barely literate. This isn't some HBCU or Police-Department-Requires-a-Diploma mill.

Well clearly they had one student who wrote this way, we have to see how other students wrote before we can judge whether there's politics involved in grading this essay so low.

I remember helping my dad grade essays when he was a professor, and I followed a strict rubric. The ones at the end of my grading scored much higher than the ones at the beginning (until I went back and re-graded them), because my expectations at the start were a lot higher than by the time I got to the end.

lol, reminds me of my year as a math teacher. Halfway through, I went from "I want right answers to these homework questions" to "I want to see that you tried" to "just turn in something so that I can give you a grade". That's about the time I gave up on teaching and focused on surviving until summer, when I got nonrenewed.

The mental image of a younger you thinking that being a teacher would be about teaching warms my heart.

I can't imagine what a similarly-constructed paper from a progressive view would even look like.

The obvious direct analogue would be a similarly-irrelevant appeal to the inerrancy of $OPPRESSED_MINORITY_CULTURE, in which trans and other gender identities are always considered unconditionally heckin valid

And according to the rubric, that essay would not deserve a zero either. The quality of the argument isn't even a criterion. Just... does the essay show student read the article, did the student provide a 'reaction/reflection/discussion', is it coherent? Time Cube would deserve a zero. A well-organized treatment of sports betting would deserve 5 points.

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