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 -
Prelude: The Nashville school shooting is definitely peak toxoplasma, a day later: people cheering everyone who entered that school with a gun, both the shooter and the police. Aidan/Audrey’s acts are a near-perfect scissor statement.
The statement on the shooting by the Trans Resistance Network is particularly toxically tribal. It hearkens back to the days of trying to sympathize with the Columbine shooters, where the narrative is shaped solely by early reporting and people were asking “What made them do it?”
Tangent: drag shows. But the use of the word “genocide” in the TRN’s statement made me stop and ponder: the modern term “genocide” includes not only the actual killing of group X, but also the halting of cultural practices as a lead-in to the eventual rounding up and killing.
Here’s an odd little dynamic: halting drag activities in children's spaces is trans genocide for both sides, but in different ways!
For pro-trans activists, halting them is halting a ritual cultural activity, and hints at a wider cultural desire for eventual trans elimination through murders of the outed and the suicides of the closeted. It also removes an avenue for trans youths to discover their true gender and thus leaves them in a spiral of depression heading toward suicide.
For social-contagion theorists, halting the drag activities in children’s spaces is useful for preventing cis children from being memetically contaminated, and thus memetically sterilizing the trans community. Reasoning: since full transition includes sterilization (thus committing traditional genocide upon themselves rather effectively), trans people don’t breed genetically, but memetically.
Drag =/= transgender. Not even close.
Yeah, which is the trans community nearly unanimously agrees that the desire to keep drag events out of schools is not an attack on the trans community itself.
Why might trans people be worried about people who don't recognize them as the gender they identify with banning cross-dressing?
If that's what they are afraid of, how does pushing a sexualized dance routine in front of a child audience help them?
Why wasn't it necessary to do so, say 10 years ago, when there was less trans acceptance?
Conservatives are mad about drag queen story hour and that's just reading a book not doing a dance. There's a lot of ambiguity in determining whether a performance is sexualized and it's reasonable not to trust a political movement that doesn't think you have a legitimate place in public life to draw those boundaries in a fair way.
If conservatives are merely concerned about sexualized performances near/involving children, one might wonder why they don't have similar issues with, e.g. child beauty pageants, dance recitals, or cheerleading?
Uhhh dance recitals? what are you even talking about
Probably competition dancing that can include styles like this.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=82WwqXyyWXg
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Child beauty pageants are Red Tribe but not particular conservative, and they're generally associated with those with no class ("trash").
More options
Context Copy link
Do schools sign up kids for beauty pageants behind their parents back? Do they invite kids from other schools to perform?
These aren't necessarily sexualized. And last I checked (and from what I remember growing up) conservatives do care about kids not dressing/acting sexually.
More options
Context Copy link
Because the people making the arguments are different.
The conservative (as in, liberal/labor) argument is "I'm trying to have you believe that dressing in a way suggestive of forcing everyone else around me to make accommodations for me and my special brand of ugliness, and that ugliness shall not be questioned ever", or to be a bit plainer, "in the Prisoner's Dilemma, I come with the Defect button already pushed and am of the faction that wants to force you at gunpoint to hit Co-operate". (That doesn't roll off the tongue as well as "we're coming for your children" does, though.)
The conservative (as in, traditionalist/capital) argument is just to complain at the object-level, but they do that about cheerleading and dancing already anyway. The current progressives complain about cheerleaders too, for roughly the same reasons- you're just more likely to see progressive complaining than (yesterday's progressive) complaining because the latter already lost the culture war over them.
Every political stripe complains about child beauty pageants being sexual. None of their arguments are convincing.
Cheerleading also has a safetyist attack given it's injury rate and lack of protective equipment.
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
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link