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 -
Most of the people I know who want to restrict/eliminate women’s suffrage are also very open about wanting to restrict/eliminate the suffrage of many categories of men as well, so what you’re treating as a reductio ad absurdum may very well be OP’s position. I agree with you that simply banning all women from voting probably won’t magically fix all of the problems he brought up, and that the cause of these problems is far more multifaceted than he is presenting.
That being said, there is something to be said for the way that women’s suffrage is uniquely corrosive to democracies in a way that suffrage for, say, minority ethnic group suffrage isn’t: it’s way harder for men to treat women as an adversarial political faction, since men have no choice but to stay on good terms with women in order to, you know, propagate the species. In a multiracial democracy, the majority group can simply politically marginalize and outcompete the minority group - “there’s more of us than there are of you, so you lose, sucks to suck” - but in a democracy with women’s suffrage, the men are absolutely forced to make many concessions to women. Not only because, by definition, women will always be approximately as numerous as men, but also because the nature of the relationship between men and women is that most men will naturally capitulate to the social and sexual pressure exerted by women. So, a society with women’s suffrage will not simply become more feminized in proportion to the number of female votes; the women will actually tend to punch above their weight politically, until the feminine/empathic approach to politics becomes the default consensus in such countries.
More options
Context Copy link