site banner
PaperclipPerfector  7d ago (text post)   23516 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 24, 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.

I think sex has always been the weakest link of free speech in Western societies. There was a long-standing fragile cope with the "know it when I see it" "rule" for porn, but the bottom line is that once sex starts becoming involved, even the most principled free-speech advocate runs out of tolerance for views that go against their preference. Being a drag queen is "speech" in the same sense that performance art is (it is meant to convey something), but it is speech that evokes the horror of the object of your sexual desire being replaced by a male caricature of it, so you label it "indecent" and invoke the right to not be exposed to it. What is the principled way to distinguish this from an argument that speech for any political system that relates to human sexuality at all is likewise "indecent" as it may invoke sexual horror in those who are repelled by some aspect of the system's programme? If you can be protected from disgust at drag queens, why can't a blue-hair campus activist be protected from disgust at Christians?

Free expression and the freedom from exposure can coexist: places advertising sex in abstract (like "NSFW") opaque to bystanders unless they consent.

In public spaces I think it should be the town that decides what's allowed. A problem with today's society is that large states and larger governments intervene in things that should be local: unless it's like child abuse or slavery, people can move (and I don't think drag shows fall into child abuse, although admittedly I've never seen one, I'm thinking more severe cases like physical assault, neglect, and deprivation).

I do think a "freedom of speech + freedom from exposure" set of norms is conceivable, but doing that in a principled manner, too, would require deep changes to how societies are organised. You do get at a key problem in suggesting that the town should decide (because you can't unify one individual's freedom from exposure with another's freedom of speech and his audience, if all three+ of them have to share a space), but (1) why is the town the natural unit and (2) would the results you get really be that much more satisfactory for anyone, if acceptable exposure were fully devolved to towns? You would get quite a lot of blue towns, in which drag queens and Democratic politics are considered decent but Christianity and Republican politics (all rape PTSD triggers!) are not, and red towns, with the converse; and many of them would have a pretty large captive minority of people with their speech much more constrained in practice than it is at the moment.

  1. Towns decide public spaces because they own public spaces. Individuals decide their own spaces (house or apartment interior, car interior, and exteriors to limited extent), groups of towns or states decide buildings that serve multiple towns (e.g. waste treatment plant, nuclear power plant; car exteriors should also be state or nation mandated, because the vast majority will drive between towns, and many will drive between states).

  2. You would have those towns, but many towns (including some cities) have roughly an even split, so I expect they’d be more reasonable. Also, I think the town shouldn’t dictate what people do within their own home or apartment room, although it would be hard to prevent them, it would be hard for them to enforce anything.

That sounds pretty backwards relative to what happened. The blue-hair campus activist didn't use the taboos around sex to argue for political censorship, they spent the better half of the last century using the principle of free speech to take apart all taboos, including the ones around sex, and once that allowed them to get strong enough, they turned around to impose their own taboos on people they promised "liberation" to.

Even outside of that, they don't limit themselves to demands of being protected from views they find disgusting, they demand the right to impose their views on people who find them disgusting.

I never claimed that this is actually the argument that blue-hair campus activists used, historically, to argue for censorship; only that they could use that argument, and it's not clear how you would refuse it on principled ground while allowing the argument against drag queens. The Schelling fence around free speech can only be reliably drawn around all speech, including speech that is optimised to make you imagine sexual scenarios that you find highly uncomfortable.

I never claimed that this is actually the argument that blue-hair campus activists used, historically, to argue for censorship; only that they could use that argument, and it's not clear how you would refuse it on principled ground while allowing the argument against drag queens

That battle has been fought and lost. There is no hypothetical "what if they used that argument" to consider. They did use that argument, and they won. The principle you are appealing to does not exist in any practical sense. Though maybe the real issue is that I'm just tired, tired of fighting this same battle forever. Eventually a person despairs of ever living in peace.

That's true. I can't really give you a logical argument for why it seems much worse to watch someone else's sex acts than to watch someone else's religious rituals. Nonetheless... it is, and I think the vast majority of people would agree with me on that. I suppose this is one of those "I know it when I see it" things, where the law runs into basic human nature in a less-than-perfectly-logical way.

For what it's worth, I wouldn't mind so much if they did it as peformance art in specially marked artistic venues. I have a very high tolerance for that sort of thing! My objection is more that they try to smuggle it in as innocuous behavior that should be accepted everywhere, which seems dishonest when it's obviously controversial.

It's a very obvious motte/bailey, isn't it? I've seen people argue Monty Python or WWI/II British crosssdressing humour is the same thing as all modern drag shows, and if people were fine with the former, they're hypocrites to not be fine with the latter.

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