site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 6, 2023

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.

16
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

As others say, this and your previous post seem to be lacking context. It looks like maybe you're worried about masking in the West? But it really didn't seem to be a bunch of East Asian officials forcing that on Westerners, but the Westerners' own leaders, of different ethnicities, largely European ancestry, and the people themselves.

There is a certain repetition of theme through some of these veiling and binding practices of various cultures, which is often tightly bound up with class and leisure. Well off people who can have food delivered and work from home mandating masks, dressing their daughters in burkas, binding their daughters' feet, loading them up with 20 lbs of neck rings, tight lacing their corsets. What's the big deal, surely you don't have to walk and work outside like peasants? Castrate your son and he'll never have to do any physical labor, he can just sing full time and be paid well for it. As others mentioned, this shows up sometimes in various times and places. Now that Western culture has become unusually permissive about (lack of) veiling, people's anxiety is coming out in things like anorexia, bulimia, cutting, dysphoria, and whatever else. Apparently humans get really neurotic and destructive when stressed about mate choice and social standing.

The best solution I've heard of is to have smaller social units that are explicitly told to be kind and understanding to each other like church communities, and have as many different small hierarchies as possible, so that everyone isn't competing for the same couple of attractive husbands/wives or the same slot at the Ivies or the same job at the New York Times or whatever, there are plenty of ways to succeed. My impression is that middle upper class Americans have been feeling the squeeze lately, writing stressed out articles about not being able to get into an elite university, wearing masks in public, and finding new and interesting gender expressions to enforce with zeal. Perhaps next year's fashion trend will be tight laced corsets.

I'm not saying that some ethnic groups don't do more stressed out status competitions than others, but calling it a foreign moral universe seems a bit much.