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 -
In late October 2022, the Department of Education began an investigation into alleged discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity at a school district in eastern Pennsylvania. While many of the specific allegations in the complaint focused on conventional culture war -- Pride flags in middle school classrooms, pronoun and name policies, what gender's sex-segregated health class a trans person should go to, some complex questions about during-school-hours protests -- a large portion reflected something far less prosaic: over two dozen (largely-redacted) pages of bullying targeting specific students, and a teacher (redacted in the ACLU's public copy of the complaint, but in other reporting revealed as an Andrew Burgess) was suspended and transfered after reporting that bullying.
The school district has, in response, investigated and released its own report:
This was not a one-off:
Nor was it specific to just faculty at the school:
To be absolutely clear, this is not a neutral analysis by an disinterested third party: the report is written by Duane Morris LLP at the request of the School Board, which does not require mind-reading to find somewhere other than the bleeding edge of trans activism or jumping to support OCR investigation of their policies. It is absolutely possible that Duane Morris is spinning this as hard as they can, or even playing as fast and loose with the facts as it is alleging the teachers in question did. (though the recommendation that Burgess be suspended without pay is at least raising the stakes, if doing so.)
But they do have some pretty nasty receipts.
It's even possible (indeed, I'd guess likely) that the school administration would not have necessarily acted in accordance with Andrew Burgess's preferred punishment schedules, if perhaps more on the matter of incorrect pronoun use or the awkward 'romantic' (probably not; the report seems to think they were genuine if stalkerish, but that it came through a third party feels more like what's often used as the windup for later mockery) overtures than one the student that allegedly said "I'm going to rape you". I wouldn't be surprised to find someone here immediately start debating whether each particular thing counts as meaningful harassment rather than 'mere' teasing, though given that Burgess and the ACLU listed them as serious offenses I don't think it particularly matters at this point. I wouldn't be surprised if the teachers here genuinely believed, in their heart of hearts, that the school board and principle's policy proposals were strong evidence that they Don't Care About Trans People rather than just Don't Care About Pronouns, or perhaps that they were the earthly incarnations of Satan awaiting the opportunity to break children.
((Hell, it's possible even the most friendly administrators might still ignore a case, without the political loading: joint overdiagnosis and under-diagnosis is more palatable a term than anarchotyranny, but neither is unimaginable or even that unfamiliar. The report details a Buck County Investigation against students who wore t-shirts sloganed with and said "Let's Go Brandon" at Sexuality and Gender Alliance students as an example. And there are genuine policy disagreements over when and what extent requires intervention.))
According to the school district's claims and investigations, which seem to fully match the unredacted portion of the ACLU's complaint, they never had the opportunity to fail that test. And that's relevant less because I care for the opportunities available to a school's upper management, since no small number of the upper caste in public education make it seem like they thought Brazil was a how-to guide, but more because it means that a student (actually, multiple students) were getting left for the bus to run over them, by people that they thought were specifically looking out for them.
I've written before about cases where people elevate Activism above actual things happening on the ground, and while this isn't quite as literal as burning the very people you're claiming to protect on a pyre, it's got my hackles up to a pretty similar degree. Barring some pretty serious revelations from the ACLU or Burgess -- which is possible!... if not likely, given this statement --this does not look like how a teacher would or should act if trying to use every tool available to prevent harassment of vulnerable students. Even had the Department of Education acted on the initial complaint, rather than closed it, Student 1 would have finished a full school year and experienced a large part of a second one before any intervention could have occurred.
This looks more like people who wanted to provide a gift-wrapped case against the school district's new board, which could wrap the controversial or policy questions in with the trivial ones. I can see the utilitarian arguments, for the needs of the many, so on. They just look very bad when, at the end of the day, a trusted adult specifically acting as an advocate for the students is sitting on that list.
I am of the belief that bullying is net positive and our obsession with bullying is another manifestation of over charged empathy.
That doesn’t mean all bully is net positive (some goes too far). But a little bullying is positive.
"The same boiling that hardens the egg softens the potato"
I've found people's opinions on things like bullying or violence tend to just be them projecting their own egg-ness or potato-ness onto others. Yeah, some people will grow character because they got picked on, pull themselves together, become more socially adept etc, but others will just break, curl up into a ball in their own isolated corner, and suffer for it for a long time.
Now you can just say "they should be better," but I'm not sure that's possible. Most things are genetic, and I'd be surprised if fragility isn't heavily genetic as well. There's always trauma adaptation, but that usually makes the person less fragile and also less socialized, so there is a tradeoff there.
The way I see it, the problem is trying to act like everyone is equal. By insisting that this is true, we've left no room for people to exist safely at the bottom of social hierarchies. There's always a sense of "why aren't they better?" that just wouldn't exist in a world where it's understood that yes, some people are at the top, and others are at the bottom, and you each have responsibilities and expectations. Meritocracy has become an excuse for those at the top to ignore the responsibilities they must carry, and an excuse to blame the bottom rung of the ladder for not carrying out responsibilities they shouldn't even have.
I guess. There could be a noblesse oblige for those at the top, but so much of our society is predicated on catering to the bottom already.
Further, it incentivizes the worst kind of bullying — cry bulling.
Pretty sure the worst kind of bullying would be the sort that leads to death (by own hand or otherwise) or permanent physical damage.
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