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 -
The problem is we were told for years and years and years that any mental health issue or depression a trans person (and all LGBTs by extension) was facing can be squarely pinned on "minority stress". In other words, the majority should un-bigot themselves and stop punishing victimless acts. Fair enough. But the expectations departed from "stop commenting or interfering in people's personal lives" and segued to "how dare you not care, do you know silence is VIOLENCE, indifference is p-word" (the p-word being privilege, original sin of woke morality). I am a straight man, not religious, I don't care if a man I'll never meet marries another man. But the thought of a man sticking his hairy dick inside another man's hairy poop-chute is just a disgusting fetish to me, even if I'm polite enough to not say it out loud. I also believe sex and gender are the same thing, edge cases notwithstanding. I believe all transgenders are mentally ill and their delusions are encouraged only by algorithm, but I'm polite enough to keep that bit to myself. I don't really care if an adult man chooses to mutilate his own genitals, even if suicide was a 100% guaranteed outcome of transitioning.
But I absolutely do not want any kind of LGBT education in schools. I'll go further, if I could reliably diagnose an "LGBT marker" in my unborn child, I would want to abort it.
Please, let's not make this a decibel contest. There are no objective metrics or units of measurement to quantify which side is "louder and more annoying", even if I should agree to points being awarded for silence. Now who you find louder is heavily filtered by:
Every tribe experiences the other side as overwhelmingly loud and aggressive while viewing their own side as reasonable pushback. Look how DEI threads go in Star Wars and gaming forums. When you point out "why should Luke Skywalker and his bloodline be sacrificial lamb to uplift no-name girbloss", you get responses like "ugh every single time... dude why do you care? Stop making everything political!" from the other side, after they succeeded in having their way after years of complaining and outraging, the things they accuse you of. But it's always a cope deployed when the previously dominant narrative starts facing serious resistance. In any hotly contested issue, both sides amplify what serves them. The side with institutional capture tends to be louder in legacy channels. The dissident side tends to be louder and cruder where it actually has open space. I'll be more honest though. I am super anti-woke, I'm well aware many anti-wokes engage in behaviour I'd find insufferable were it directed at me. But I don't care, because I still agree with their objectives and heavily dislike woketopia.
How do you expect me to not pay attention and also put on performative enthusiasm for pride parades and pride month every year? If your sexual preferences and gender identity should not matter, why can't I just ignore you? If they should matter, why should I not get upset about pinkwashing legacy straight-male oriented media? I am fine with you living your life as you please, but why do I have to celebrate your perceived identity and fetishes? Why are you looking around the room to see who stops clapping first? Why are you expecting me to watch Brokeback Mountain as a media literacy test? Because it's cinematically artful? The raw emotional acting? Or because it's an important progressive conversation? To me, it's just Oscar bait gayslop. I'd rather watch a poor man's Fast & Furious for 12 hours. Everyone gets aggressive if you breach their red lines.
This is a strawman. The vast majority of cishet people don't care about pride and don't participate in any way, and they receive zero pushback unless they go looking for it in the depths of Tumblr. Who, exactly, expects you to watch Brokeback Mountain?
Nearly every major company, from banks to tech giants to consumer brands, performs the annual pride month ritual of slapping the rainbow flag on their social media, homepages, and marketing. Pro-LGBT content is ambient, institutionally enforced, and aggressively pushed into the public square whether you’re looking for it or not. Just try offering the mildest pushback, “I don’t care about this, keep it in your bedroom, I don’t want it in my face constantly”, and brace yourself for a barrage of HR scare words. As for Brokeback Mountain, let's say it bombed. The entire pop culture media apparatus would have blamed “bigoted audiences” for failing to show up enthusiastically enough for this raw emotional (homosexual) experience, and the failure would be clear proof that society is still full of regressive deplorables who need re-education.
So just ignore it? You claimed you were being forced to actively participate. Now you're down to "it exists and and I am aware of it".
Now you're just making things up.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I was at Chicago's Navy Pier the other day and the theater there was showing ads for a play of Brokeback Mountain.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link