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 -
People have sexes, languages have genders. Anything more complicating than that is unprovable hibby jibby. This idea of gender as "socially created psychological programming" is the result of a modern propaganda campaign.
I think even if we taboo the word "gender" we still have the following distinct things from sex:
Sex roles: The roles a particular culture assigns to the sexes, including cultural fictions like hijra or kathoey, or artificially created categories like eunuch, trans, etc.
Sexual proprioception / Internal sense of sex or sex role: The bodily and psycho-social feeling of having a sexed body or belonging to a particular sex role in society.
I don't think any of these require "unprovable hibby jibby." Sex roles are obviously separate from sex itself, since there's nothing inherently "female" about dresses, or "male" about suit jackets.
And the existence of people with a sexual proprioception of different genitals or secondary sexual characteristics would hardly be mystical. If Scott's recent posts are anything to go on, there are people around the world in different cultures who are convinced the witches are stealing their penises, so it's not insane to believe that "sometimes brains do funny things, and people feel like they have different body parts than they physically have." They might be a minority of modern day trans people, but I don't think it's a crazy implausible claim to make that such people might exist. That would also of course be separate from how we deal with them on a societal level.
Similarly, the idea of having an internal sense of sex or sex role isn't crazy to me, even if it isn't a fundamental part of human psychology. I'm sure that the King of England feels like the King of England, even though there's no way he evolved a mental faculty to specifically feel like the King of England. Is it so crazy that there might be a female-bodied human that has an internal sense that they should occupy the male sex role? Insofar as the male sex role is separate from being male, why should we deny entry into that category?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link