site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 22, 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.

1
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Need for specialist-level psychiatric treatment before the index contact (yes/no) and thereafter (yes/no) was recorded.

The impact of the quality of life on visiting a psychiatrist is hard to quantify. Both a patient who is undergoing exposure therapy to better deal with their fear of spiders before moving to the countryside, and a patient locked up in forensic psychiatry after killing someone during a psychotic episode would simply fall in the "specialist-level psychiatric treatment" bin.

The statistics section briefly discusses confounders

They don't:

Ben Ryan: Is it fair to say that just by virtue of having contact with GIS [gender identity services—ie: the gender clinic] and undergoing GR [gender reassignment], the youth in the study cohort would be more likely to be referred to a specialist psychiatrist than someone in the general population, even if they had similar psychiatric comorbidity?

Riittakerttu Kaltiala: No. Specialist level psychiatric treatment is provided in case of severe mental disorders, and the need is assessed with national equity criteria that exist to maintain equal access across the country. Referrals to specialist level psychiatric services by different referring agents (such as primary care, GIS, occupational health, student health, private practitioners) are assessed similarly regardless of where they come from.