site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 10, 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.

14
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I once was in a Philosophy class with a (female) teacher who brought up trans children as an example of a social issue worth considering the pros and cons. It was fairly relevant to the course content, I remember.

There was more negativity than I expected but there definitely seemed to be a gender divide. The men were mostly against it but gave their opposition in a muted, lukewarm way. I pointed out that we live in Australia where, in most states, it's a criminal offence for people to give a tattoo to someone under 18. On the basis of consistency alone, I implied trans kids should not be a thing. The teacher indicated that it could be reversed later on, which is technically true I guess. Some things can be reversed, at a certain cost in time and pain and energy and lessened development. Tattoos can also be reversed, though it's not easy or cheap. I got the impression that she was in favour, though unwilling to abandon objectivity. The others who supported it tended to be female.

If you look at the Twitch debate scene

Zizek-I-would-prefer-not-to-Tshirt.jpeg

Twitch is where Vaush came from. Somehow this guy has a position of influence, despite being incredibly cretinous.

He reasons about real life violence from Marvel movies: https://youtube.com/watch?v=kVuqXQYwD30

He backflipped from 'rape and sexual assault of women is such an important, underappreciated issue that society tragically ignores' to 'bullshit, she's lying, Muslims would never rape white women in Australia' in real time. This isn't just standard politician inconsistency but completely refusing to believe evidence after it disfavours his cause - in a matter of seconds.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=mhZ0JqQOsDA (broken link, can't seem to find the original again)

Twitch and streaming generally has been an absolute disaster for political commentary.

The last video you linked is showing as private to me.

It was probably the same video as discussed here: https://old.reddit.com/r/TimDillon/comments/vzuhtk/vaush_is_a_sociopath/

I'll transcribe (most) of it for sake of discussion:


Vaush is commenting on a video of a group of women talking their experience with sexual assault.

Vaush: “Do you think it speaks to the fact that we have a rape culture, when we put six women in a room to talk about #MeToo and they've all been raped and they all can barely choke out a coherent sentence. Do we think this perhaps maybe slightly speaks to the fact that there is a problem? [..] Almost every female friend I have has been the recipient of sexual assault or violence or rape or whatever at some point in their lives. It's such a common thing. 1 in 4 is probably understating it significantly. I wouldn't be surprised if the rate for sexual assault on women over one's lifetime is as high as 1 in 3 or 1 in 2, we just don't know, because nobody fucking reports! Because reports aren't being taken seriously! That's what #MeToo is about.”

Woman on the video: “...but things impact you in bizarre ways. Because the perpetrator wasn't white, and because he was part of a certain religion...”

Vaush: “Wait. Are we being real?”

Woman: ”And the police were basically like, we can't, because of cultural differences, which I don't feel like is such a great...”

Vaush: “What? Bullshit! Are you fucking kidding me? Did she turn her fucking rape confession into how the rape-fugees fucking Ahmed and Mohammed raped her and the police were like, uh, we can't prosecute brown people. Bullshit! Bullshit!”


In his defense, he didn't say he thought the woman was lying, or that Muslims never rape white women, but he said that connecting her rape story to refugees/Muslims was “bullshit”. I do agree he is hypocritical, but that's because apparently he doesn't want people talking about rape at the hands of Muslim immigrants, even when it was allegedly grounds for the police to dismiss her report, but presumably he would have had no problem if she had described her abuser as a Catholic priest, or a native white man, or any other group that is deemed okay to hate, even if it's not relevant to the story.

I've not watch all that much vaush, only more than a couple minutes linked form elsewhere on one occasion and I got the impression he was attempting to hypnotize me, he has a way of just repeating the same basic assertion in tons of different ways over and over again and just strongly implying this is making his argument more robust and not just more repeated.

Oh, I copied it from an older comment where I said the same thing.