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 -
That would be how one would back up the assertion that
If a trans person is murdered, and a cis person would not have been murdered ceterus paribus, that counts in my book as 'murdered for being trans', just as a black person who is murdered, if a white person in the otherwise exact same circumstances would not have been murdered, was killed for being black.
No, they try to shame and bully him into not playing with dolls.
Yes. People aren't born with the desire to victimise gay people, just as they aren't born with the desire to victimise any of the other categories of people their families teach them to hate. (Readers of a certain age might remember a Public Service Announcement that said "Hate is a four-letter word. So is love. Which one will you teach your children?")
Extending it to "A person hypothetically causing negative externalities does not give you unlimited licence to persecute them, even if not doing so means that the externalities will continue."
The hypothetical at which I was aiming was one in which you, with your current mind, had been born with female parts. Would you, in that case, feel that the 'F' marker was viscerally wrong? (Or would you look between your legs and conclude yourself to be a woman? In that case, you would be what Ozy Brennan calls 'cis-by-default'. [Thing of Things, January 2015])
But 'what do you have in your pants' isn't very useful outside a very narrow set of circumstances; 'what did you have between your legs when you were born' isn't useful even then!
I don't think it's productive to go through each case unless you also do your own research to find non-trans-related reasons for the murders. The burden of proof is on the ones who assert that trans people are being targeted for murder, not on others to disprove those claims. If there's a specific case that you think is particularly merited, sure, we can discuss it. But I'm not going to sit here and repeat almost the same thing every time. I'm comfortable saying that most of those deaths were unrelated to being trans and only gain media attention just because the victim happens to be trans.
Ok. Surely that's less damaging than declaring him a girl.
News to me. I would like some evidence or sources for this phenomenon.
I agree that people aren't born with hateful desires, but this doesn't make sense to me. I don't think families teach their kids to hate gay people. I think it's more complicated than that. People form their opinions usually through observation and interaction with the specific groups, and learned information from sources like the Internet. Sometimes they will have negative opinions, and that's not because they just irrationally hate them, but because they've taken everything they've looked at and come to their own conclusion. In particular, I think a lot of opinions about gay people can be traced back to the actions of gay people.
I agree with this in the abstract but I suspect that you and I might operationalize this differently. So let me ask, what policy do you think is giving unlimited license to persecute someone for a hypothetical negative externality?
No. I don't know on what basis I could say the marker was wrong.
A gender marker is extremely useful. You're talking about, at a glance, being able to distinguish between 50% of the population. Gender is often the first thing that people notice about others. Cops will call out "suspect is a male" (among other attributes) and so when they are searching, they effectively have 50% of their search space reduced just by ignoring females. Names have to be asked for, weight and height are estimable but fallible at a distance. Race is also helpful, but given that there are more than two races in the world, the reduction in search space is less than 50%.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link