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 -
I've been asked by a mod to repost this here, so here goes!
What Is The Problem With Women?
We've often discussed, and it seems we will continue to discuss, what is going on in the Battle of the Sexes. I have to hold my hands up and admit that very often in such dispatches, I am the one defending women and criticising the behaviour and the attitudes of men.
But it is also undeniable that some women are fudging stupid. Or at the very least, so it appears. We've argued over "women prefer the Bad Boys to the Nice Guys" but there comes a point where it seems to be sheer self-destruction at work, because how could anyone stick with a guy like the one in this story?
So, to do justice to the gentlemen here with whom I have argued, here is the sorry story of a woman who apparently had not a brain in her head. Her family warned her off, her friends warned her off, even on a first date she knew this was a bad idea - and she still ended up marrying him and having two children with him while he was irresponsible, controlling, and abusive.
Why? I can't explain it to you in any way that makes sense. Even she doesn't know why, looking back. There are some hints that, in line with theories of such behaviour, she was drawn (for whatever reason) to abusive men, like a typical victim who keeps going back to the same kind of relationship after getting out of the last one. But as to what was at work here, who knows? I can't imagine any evo-psych explanation for this that makes any sense at all, not even the "women evolved to tolerate rape because women who resisted rape got murdered when the barbarian horde over-ran the village and killed all the men and took all the women" kind of thing.
An Irish divorce story.
It gets worse from there, until finally she won't put up with it anymore and leaves. Why she didn't run a mile after the first date, I have no explanation. This is a stupid (and indeed, dangerous) choice she made of her own free (so it seems) will. Nobody was urging or forcing her to take up with this guy, indeed it was the opposite. She had plenty of chances, and plenty of warning signs. She got pregnant, of her own accord again, (I strongly suspect the first pregnancy was the usual hope around 'a baby will fix this' and the second time, what, she had no access to contraception? highly unlikely) and brought two kids into an unstable situation where the father had no interest in contributing to the family. It was only when things finally became intolerable that she left.
And I genuinely, honestly can't blame men or The Patriarchy or anything else for this. The guy in question was a shithead but she knew that from the immediate start. There's nothing in her story, as told, about her family pressuring her to get married or settle down with anyone, much less this guy. She did it all herself.
Depart from the realm of the rational and into the magical kingdom of narrative for a moment.
Imagine you're a woman with 105 IQ, hyped up on romantasy slop and feminist empowerment and blank slatism, what have you. The bad boy gives you the tingles, but it's not his fault that he's bad - it's society/his parents/mental illness/the patriarchy/capitalism. You, oh enlightened Liberal Woman, can heal him with your soothing therapy speak and magic vagina. Go out there and make yourself a martyr on an 80 IQ thug with no self control! I can fix him! You go girl!
Many such cases.
The Hollywood actor Barry Keoghan by all accounts had a very difficult upbringing: drug addict mother who died when he was 12, spent years in foster care. He was in a romantic relationship with the pop singer Sabrina Carpenter, but they broke up, with her apparently no longer being able to tolerate his drunkenness and loutishness. Her song "Please Please Please" consists of Carpenter pleading with an unspecified lover not to get drunk and embarrass himself (and Carpenter, by extension) at a public event. Keoghan, naturally, features in the song's music video. One of the most interesting lyrics in the song is the below:
As an Irishman who likes a drink and who has made a drunken tit of himself on plenty of occasions, I bristled at Carpenter's claim that Keoghan might have defended his bad behaviour on the grounds that he's Irish. Being Irish is not a blank cheque to get falling-down drunk and embarrass your girlfriend. But I wonder if, when Keoghan said this to Carpenter, he wasn't just telling her what she wanted to hear. Carpenter is a Gen Z American woman who's a conspicuous advocate for assorted progressive causes: no doubt she's "done the work", understands that the body keeps the score, that everybody has trauma. And Keoghan, in turn, doubtless knew that Carpenter believed all of this. So the two of them go to a party, Keoghan has too much to drink and makes a fool of himself, Carpenter has to carry him home, and the next morning she gives him a bollocking for having embarrassed her. Eager for her to get off his back, Keoghan gives her some bullshit pop-psychological explanation for his bad behaviour, when the truth of the matter is more prosaic: he's a drunken lout. Carpenter is mollified by this, nodding sagely while Keoghan knocks back his hair-of-the-dog. Rinse and repeat.
I wonder how many physically abusive men, when "apologizing" to their wives for their most recent outburst, have excused their behaviour with exaggerated or invented claims of being victims of abuse themselves. I wonder if abusive men even deliberately/unconsciously seek out gullible or suicidally empathetic women who'll be more susceptible to these kinds of rationalisations.
Tangentially related: so many convicted child molesters purport to have been molested as children that it's a cliché. But I read an article once* that found that, when you hook convicted child molesters up to a polygraph, the proportion who claim to have been molested as children plummets. Polygraphs, as we know, do not detect if someone is lying: they test proxies for that like heart rate and sweating, but there are lots of reasons a person might be nervous other than lying. But many people believe that polygraphs are literal lie detectors, so connecting someone to one is an effective countermeasure if you want to be sure they're telling the truth.
*Here's the study I was thinking of. Over two decades in Malheur County, Oregon, clinicians ran a treatment program for sex offenders. By 1983, clinicians had grown increasingly sceptical of the claims made by participants in the program, and decided to vet them via polygraph test. (Interestingly, participants were promised conditional immunity if they confessed to additional sex crimes during these sessions.) The results are striking: in the five years prior to the introduction of polygraph vetting, 67% of offenders claimed to have been sexually victimised as children. After the introduction of polygraph vetting, this figure fell to 29%.
Maybe child molesters make that claim to garner sympathy? It's like a reflex when they're confronted about the crimes they commit, as if being a victim removes their capacity to victimise others. I've said many times that if we had to let go of the pedophiles who were also victims, we would have to let go of every single pedophile.
Absolutely, I rather think that's the subtext of the study.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link