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 quality contributions roundup has a lot of discussion of fertility. I found it pretty disconcerting to read, since it all seemed to assume that the only way to get women to have kids is to enforce a top down dystopia. This is not my personal experience in my social surroundings★, but of course I live in Israel so I don't count‡.
Anyway, here is my follow-up question:
If you had the ability to set policies that will encourage increased fertility, what policies would you be implement across the board for both men and women simultaneously?
In other words, not "women can't be allowed access to higher education until they've had at least two children", but "people of child-bearing age can't be allowed access to higher education until they've had at least two children". Or "new parents of children are given twenty additional paid vacation days", or whatever. Are there any such policies you think could actually be effective?
★ if anything what I see is women regretting not being able to have more kids
‡ In Israel, fwiw, having kids is simply by default assumed to be a shared responsibility of men, women, and society. It is expected that men take (government paid) sick days to stay home with sick kids. It is not blinked at for the manager to show up to a meeting remotely with a sick kid in his lap. It is expected that men will leave work early several times a week to pick up kids from school — at least in all the places in Israel I have lived I have seen reasonably close sex splits of the parents at pickup/dropoff. I am not clear on whether or not this is equally the case in America — I don't get that impression, but as my knowledge of America is limited to TV and internet discussions, I could be wrong. But I see fathers at the park supervising their kids all the time, and the internet discourse re America is about men getting assumed to be pedophiles for being around kids... So I assume there must be some difference...
What would I do to make myself have more children? Hmm. At the age of 24, the barriers preventing me from having children with my boyfriend are;
I do not have enough money to afford diapers, much less food for another person, so I would increase the minimum wage to the proper rate it should be, which is $20 an hour. I would, in the same vein, eliminate tipping as a substitute for wages as well to eliminate the hostile tipping environment and poor wages encouraged by my state’s poor labor laws. That would include eliminating all Republicans from my state’s government, as they have opposed all measures to do what is listed above.
I am not confident that, should I approach trying to build a career in my state with a child, that I have protections from corrupt, lazy and immoral business owners who would abuse their position of authority over me to compromise my work/life balance. So, I would replace my state’s labor laws with laws similar if not exactly to California, so that I could, for example, have a lunch break and maternal leave for my post-pregnancy complications.
I cannot afford medical care for myself, much less my children. I suppose with higher wages that would be solved on it’s own, but if not, I would change whatever policies need to be changed to decrease the cost of medical care. I am not too verbose on medical care policies to know what the causes for high costs are and how to solve them.
My social network is dangerous for children, as it consists of social conservatives who will try to shame my children into gender roles and disrespect my choices as a parent, and I would not want to reach out for help from them in an emergency. If I had higher wages, I would not need to work so much and I could spend time developing friendships to replace my network. If not that, reducing the cost of interstate travel so I could move to a state with a locale more suitable to my personality would solve that problem. I am not too sure what policies need to be enacted to solve high-cost interstate travel, as I am not verbose in those policies as well.
Emotionally, me and my boyfriend are recovering from the effects of growing up in an abusive, socially conservative household, and need therapeutic services to confirm we won’t pass our issues to our children. I supposed lowering the cost of therapists falls in the same category as “decrease medical costs”.
Sorry, but I can't help but think you're mistaken here - the statistics and science are extremely clear on this point. By encouraging your children to adopt binary gender roles and preventing them from becoming trans or non-binary, they're actually helping to protect your children, rather than making the environment more dangerous. Trans people encounter all sorts of negative outcomes when compared to their cis cohorts, and making sure that your child does not grow up trans is not just going to protect them from those deleterious outcomes, but also save them from the rampant transphobia encountered all through society. You should actually be thanking these social conservatives - the difference in life expectancy, suicide rates, etc for trans people is so stark that keeping your children cis is one of the most powerfully positive things you can do for their life outcomes.
Trans people encounter negative outcomes from social conservatives attempting to enforce a gender binary, so if I wanted to protect my trans children from transphobia, I ought to keep them away from social conservatives, not ko-tow to them. I can do nothing about my children being trans, because it is not a choice. And if my children were not trans, social conservatives would emotionally and verbally abuse them for stepping outside of the gender binary. My sons would grow up misogynistic with little success with women, emotionally closed off from himself, his friends and his family, abusive (see misogyny) and lonely like I have seen every single conservative son of conservative parents turn out as. My daughter would have poor self esteem, be victim to abusive relationships due to that, anger issues and extreme emotional immaturity, like every conservative daughter of a conservative father I have seen.
My father was also conservative, as was his father. I am sharing my opinions on social conservatism and the effects it has on parents and children based on my anecdotal evidence, which is that I have yet to meet a daughter of a conservative father I did not consider nor failed to witness as I described earlier, to include myself. I had a great deal of internalized misogyny which manifested into self hatred because, of many things, my father punished me for stepping outside of my gender binary and made my natural instincts and desires feel wrong. My brother is severely emotionally stunted because my father adhered to Western concepts of masculinity which encourages stoicism over vulnerability.
I am not too sure how it is any more objectively "dunking on my outgroup" to say these things than the many men here who have made antagonistic statements about women based on *their * anecdotal evidence. Subjectively, though, I can understand the reactions to my opinions, although I am not too sure what "defending the honor of our gender" means. I speak for no woman except for myself, because I believe the only thing you and I have in common (assuming you are a woman from "we") by us both being women is similar biological functions. I pushback against broad generalization of both men and women, because I find both to be equally capable of everything sans some physical capabilities which can be remedied with science.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link