site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 29, 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
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I think I should state a clear position rather than just responding.

Fairness, and broad equality of burdens, is important to me. This means I'm somewhat happy to go with any one of:

  1. We put exactly the same burdens on men and women, and expect the same behaviour from them both. I don't think this is wise, because of innate differences and consequent disparate impact, but it's fair.
  2. We decide that men and women have different natures, and thus should play divergent roles to at least some degree, but try to keep the burden somewhat fair. Both men and women are punished for poor behaviour and/or failing to fulfill their role.
  3. We are paternalists and decide that men are stronger and women weaker and more delicate. Men are given more burdens but are also given more power, respect and rewards. This applies at the bottom of society as well as at the top. Women defer to men.

To my mind we live in a society that nominally believes in equality (1) but rewards womens' hurt feelings with all possible aid plus harsh coercion/punishment for men, and rewards the difficulties of men or even physical violence towards them with contempt. What makes me very angry is when traditionalists, on the Motte or elsewhere, shrug and say, 'well, we might advocate for (2) or (3) but in the current political climate, all we can do is make sure that men hold up their side of the bargain and women will have to do their own". In practice this means that traditionalists will happily pile onto men with the rest of society, and then make awkward faces and back off whenever women do something that these traditionalists are supposed to be against. Self-declared traditionalists become indistinguishable from the most sadistic of man-hating feminists.

By contrast, I and at least some of the 'double-standard' Mottizens advocate for (2) or (3) but acknowledge that for now we are supposed to be living in (1) and demand to be treated fairly by that standard.

To return to the object at hand, I am quite happy with punishing the boy for bad behaviour, just not giving them a violent beating. Likewise, I think the girl should be punished for instigating a violent beating for a boy who had not actually physically harmed her and also "punching and stomping" them. Likewise, since I believe men and women are different (2) I doubt that you will find this exact scenario reversed but there are plenty of cases where girls gleefully ruin a boy's reputation and make him miserable for fun and I think that they should be punished just like the boy in this scenario.