site banner
PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   22691 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 1, 2026

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.

What frustrates me is not that women abort foetuses who will inevitably develop Down's syndrome. That's a defensible decision.

What frustrates me is that women will do this, then turn around and say that eugenics is Nazi ideology.

Eugenics is broadly popular unless:

  • You call it eugenics or
  • It involves State coercion to remove people from the gene pool

Think about attitudes to choice of donor gametes in the IVF industry.

It involves State coercion to remove people from the gene pool

Personally, I get the impression that the culture war in the Anglosphere is becoming hot enough that quite a lot of people would support forced sterilisation of the (Red)/(Blue) Tribe (delete as necessary). I likewise think certain categories of criminal are so stigmatised (e.g. child rapists) that forcibly sterilising them would enjoy broad bi-partisan support.

In the UK, the number of people who want the culture war to go hot is indistinguishable from zero. In America day-of-the-rope poasters exist, and Musk amplifies their social media posts so they look more visible than they are, but my impression is that the actual numbers are Lizardmen-tier - and I am not even sure if they actually mean it rather than shitposting.

In the UK, the number of people who want the culture war to go hot is indistinguishable from zero.

They might not want it, but they seem to find it likely, which might be the better description of the Boogaloos in America as well.

If nobody wants it, it won't happen.

I'm not sure why randos are telling opinion pollsters that they expect a civil war in the next 10 years, but "they have carefully thought about the issue and made a considered judgement call, such that the wisdom of crowds applies" is not a credible answer.

If nobody wants it, it won't happen.

The people who aren't posting but rather engaging in violence want it.

War and violent conflict in general has this nasty property that not only it can happen with only very few wanting it, it can even happen when nobody wants it, but enough feel sufficiently threatened.

Also, a quick check of history shows that indeed a suspiciously large number of first strikers likes to claim that no, they totally didn't want to do this, the other side just forced their hand. Maybe they're right, maybe they're lying, maybe they're wrong on the "forced" part but were right that the other side really was looking to do the same or some other possibility.

Either way, the situation can deteriorate in some bad ways that don't translate neatly to "people just wanted it to happen". That said, I think that as long as most people get to live a broadly comfortable & safe life, nothing much will happen.

Eugenics as a whole necessarily entails external limits put upon female sexual choice by a state authority which is a notion that is extremely off-putting to modern women. I'm assuming this is the most likely explanation.

This is needlessly limiting criterion, almost example noncentral fallacy. Eugenics is not only a government policy, it is also an ideology and a social movement. Eugenicists are interested in outcome of improving DNA of the population, the means to do that can vary. There were rabidly antistatist eugenicist of old, such as radical libertarian Herbert Spencer. They had more in common with modern technocratic approach of "nudges" - moral stigma, social engineering, subtle subsidies or penalties or outright propaganda in lieu of brute coercion.

My personal theory is, that the whole identification of eugenics with fascists and statists was just a standard Progressive PR campaign to clear the stain and declare post-hoc victory of always being on the right side of the history. But underlying impulse and logic is still there. They are defacto eugenicists, they just don't want to be identified with Nazis.

I don't think that's true. There are plenty of non-coercive policy options for promoting eugenic pairings. For example, education programs, or cash payouts for children born to couples meeting certain criteria. Back when eugenics was a popular progressive cause, a lot of eugenics societies focused their efforts in this direction, and just trying to establish societal norms that were conducive to eugenic outcomes.

There are plenty of non-coercive policy options for promoting eugenic pairings.

That doesn't matter, though, because nearly all of them ultimately lead back to the "male oppressors incentivizing -> suggesting -> forcing me to do my job do the thing that requires I be dependent on a man" thing.

The only policy that will work is to valorize and protect those who do their job, but you can only have that in societies that are allowed to accept their own right to rule. (Which is why women reflexively oppose any social movement that suggests this; after all, according to the stereotype, all social turmoil ever comes from the cardinal sin of ever permitting a man to think he can do something right.)

State authorities already place external limits on female sexual choice (e.g. a female high school teacher raping one of her male students is just as illegal as the opposite pairing).

Ah, but the only reason they do that is to protect female class interests when the law has to be symmetric for some reason (women want it to be illegal to fuck young women more than they want the right to fuck young men [which affects a rounding error number of women, and the women who do engage in this are the pick-me-est of pick-mes so they're also hated by women in general]).

Eugenics is different, since the median woman assumes it'll affect who the median woman has babies with.

You sure about that? I know the law sets equal boundaries, but I have my doubts about the legal system doing the same.

Teachers caught doing this are prosecuted. South Park nice jokes aside, this is taken seriously by courts and law enforcement.

Do the police pursue it with equal zeal? Do the prosecutors put as much effort into getting the same punishments? Do judges and juries treat them equally? I'll grant that there are external limits on their choice, but that's a far cry from being just as illegal (unless you treat illegality as a binary, in which case it's just as illegal as walking with ice cream in your back pocket or whatever zany oldtimes law you can find).

Consider Nick Olivas: At 14, he unknowingly fathered a child with a 20-year-old woman. Later, he was pursued for child support and the mother was never charged with any crime. Hermesmann of Hermesmann v. Seyer "contributed to a child's misconduct" when a 13-year-old got her pregnant. There are a few more in this pdf, but I think the pattern is established well enough: Women who commit statutory rape against boys are not consistently prosecuted, even in the face of incontrovertible evidence.

Let's imagine the opposite situation, accounting for biological reality. A girl in her early teens becomes pregnant, gives birth, and gives up the child. Later, the (significantly older) father claims paternity, which is confirmed. The state shrugs its shoulders, gives him the child, and goes on with its day.

That's even less of a legal burden than the real cases have, and yet it feels pants shittingly insane. It would never happen in a million years. If you could find something one tenth as crazy, I'd consider it a significant blow against my stance. Can you?

Do they get equivalent punishment?

I think most people are not intelligent enough to and/or do not have the will to see how coherently their various opinions fit together into a larger picture, including second-order effects. The average person who supports people being able to abort Down's syndrome fetuses yet views eugenics as fundamentally wrong is a person who simply does not make the connection that those two things are related in any important way. It's not that they realize the two things are related but have a logical reason to support the abortion but not other kinds of eugenics. It's that they don't realize the two things are related to begin with.

Why do they not realize it? Because they are not in an information environment where they are regularly exposed to the idea that the two things are related. And, lacking the spark to figure it out on their own, they continue to not realize it.

  • The average person who supports people being able to abort Down's syndrome fetuses yet views eugenics as fundamentally wrong is a person who simply does not make the connection that those two things are related in any important way.

There's an easy way to resolve this if one takes the term eugenics to carry an implicit meaning of an external authority or pressure on the parents.

Which given the definition of eugenics you can often find has something like this in it.

the practice or advocacy of controlled selective breeding of human populations (as by sterilization) to improve the populations' genetic composition

It does seem like a valid interpretation that it's an external force doing it for their Greater Cause as opposed to the parents own decision regarding what QOL they are willing to accept in raising a child.

It's just progressives. They have to violently flinch from the E-word because if they don't then the technocratic element of their ideology inevitably flows into "LMAO we are so obviously the baddies" territory. Many progressives were very pro-eugenics pre-WW2, to the point where some of their organization leaders openly bragged in the 30's about how wonderful it was that a European nation had a strong leader who was taking their obviously correct ideas seriously.

The frustration is not with the individual sentiment, but the communal one. Eugenics was not a left or right position, among the most committed eugenicists were as everyone knows moderate Swedish social democrats. What is taboo is the idea that one can improve human stock societally.

I'd argue the reason why this is a taboo is that it necessarily entails external limitations on female sexual choice.

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