site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 17, 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.

8
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

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:

For his part, Student 1 wrote Mr. Burgess a lengthy e-mail, setting forth multiple alleged bullying incidents, including:

  • having ice thrown at him, being hit, and being subjected to physical threats;
  • having a student yell at him and try to trip him;
  • being “deadnamed” and being told the name he used was not his “real” name;
  • being called a variety of slurs;
  • being repeatedly propositioned for a date, despite turning down theoffers;
  • having food thrown at him in the cafeteria; and
  • being called the “r-word.”

3/3/2022 E-Mail Message from Student 1 to Andrew Burgess [Ex. 41]...

Mr. Burgess then began to organize Student 1’s allegations of bullying and harassment into the dossier, setting forth in a two-page chart the names of the alleged perpetrators, dates and times of the alleged bullying, a description of the alleged events, names of witnesses, and the locations of the events. The remaining two pages of the dossier contain further detail about the alleged events. [Ex. 16.] During his interview as part of this investigation, Mr. Burgess explained that he created the dossier during a meeting with Student 1 and Student 2 during school hours. Burgess Interview at 25–26 [Ex. 11]. According to the dossier’s metadata and contemporaneous e-mail communications, it appears that the dossier was initially created on March 3 and that additional work occurred on it on March 4, when it also appears that Mr. Burgess met with Student 1 and Student 2.

The dossier contains serious and troubling allegations. If true, it shows that Student 1 was subjected to repeated bullying by about a dozen of his fellow Lenape students over the course of months, with some of it continuing on a “weekly” basis or even “3 or 4 times a week.” [Ex. 16.]

During his interview, Mr. Burgess was asked whether he ever reported to the School District the information Student 1 gave him:

Q. And did you ever report any of the information that [Student 1] gave you to anyone else at Central Bucks School District?

A. No, I did not.

Burgess Interview at 26 [Ex. 11].

This was not a one-off:

During her interview, Ms. Gluck, a French teacher at Lenape and moderator of the school’s SAGA club, told us that, around December 2021, she was approached by Stephen Albert, then a former Lenape assistant principal and a vocal activist on LGBTQ issues and frequent attendee at School Board meetings. Mr. Albert asked Ms. Gluck to get information from SAGA club members (i.e., students at Lenape Middle School) about stories of LGBTQ bullying and harassment in the School District that they had heard.

According to Ms. Gluck, in January or February 2022, she made that inquiry of SAGA members at a club meeting and reported the information to Mr. Albert, who, again according to Ms. Gluck, was to send a “compilation” e-mail to a Lenape administrator. During our investigation, we found a February 6, 2022, e-mail message from Mr. Albert to Mrs. Saullo and Mrs. Dowd, which copied various individuals, including Borough of Doylestown officials, Ms. Pray, Superintendent Lucabaugh, and the three Democratic School Board members.

Nor was it specific to just faculty at the school:

Mr. Burgess told us that he sent the dossier—which was replete with allegations of physical and verbal abuse—to Mr. Marshall [ed: an attorney at the Philadelphia Office for Civil Rights], that the two of them talked about the issue over the phone in May 2022, and that he told Mr. Marshall that the information in the dossier had never been reported to the School District. Id. at 197–98.11 Further, in his April 25 e-mail to Mr. Burgess, Mr. Marshall refers to the “the student and family involved in the complaint,” indicating that he appreciated that a child’s welfare was at issue. [Ex. 12]. Yet, with this knowledge, Mr. Marshall failed to notify the School District of the allegations in the dossier and OCR complaint, even though he knew the information had been concealed from the District.

During our investigation, we wrote to OCR about Mr. Marshall’s conduct in this case, requesting an opportunity to interview him about what happened, and asking OCR to cooperate with this independent investigation. On February 8, 2023, Beth Gellman-Beer, the Director of OCR’s Philadelphia Office, wrote us, declining to make Mr. Marshall available for an interview.

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’m surprised the comments here are so supportive of bullying, and frankly I wonder if it’s because it confirms many of our anti-trans biases.

When I first read this I noticed myself disagreeing that the bullying was important, but after reading some of the arguments in the comments I realized I’m not convinced for any logical reason, just because I am frustrated that trans ideology is spreading in middle schools. I think it should be reserved for adults.

If this child were being harassed for something like believing in God, or an immutable characteristic like a big nose or their race, I would find this situation terrible.

For all the people saying kids need to toughen up or whatever - I firmly disagree. Humans can learn to operate in high trust, net positive ways, and that’s the society I want to build. If we keep creating cycles of kids being fucked up and aggressive in their early lives, adults will continue to act that way too. You can say hierarchical psychological violence is necessary to the human condition or whatever, but if that’s truly the case I say we strive towards something better.

I think part of the issue is that some of the things in that list are very definitely bullying but some of them are things that SJ has unilaterally declared Problematic, and even here nuance is hard.

Yeah, that's probably a good part of it. Even in the Duane Morris report, which (at least by the time of publishing) was trying to highlight the teacher's inaction in the face of bad behavior, it's worth noticing the euphemistic nature of "being subjected to physical threats" and "variety of slurs", given that the investigators had (and attached!) the chart listing exact words. And the ACLU-PA complaint redacted wholesale anything outside of the political and school policy matters.

I emphasized the exact quotes from that report to highlight fidelity, but it did mean it's easier to focus on the less significant and more minimal stuff.

I feel like there is a "Central and non-central example" going on here.

Everyone agrees that the central example of Bullying is unequivocally bad, only that is relatively uncommon; negative social interactions among kids and teenagers aren't rare though. A lot of people are trying to claim bullying, for varying reasons. They might have had poor social experiences but that doesn't mean they were Bullied or even that they were (only) the victim.

Then there are the actual policies, do they help or are they making things worse and only providing an illusion of action and acting as a cover for not taking responsibility for the really horrible events by hiding behind policy?

The same dynamic extends to a lot of issues:

  • Parental abuse

  • Rape

  • Racism

  • Sexism

  • Etc. More or less anything with a claimed victim/abuser dynamic

A genuine but relatively uncommon issue exists and people immediately try to claim victimhood to gain sympathy or rationalize their own inadequacies (often to themselves)/bad experiences. Most claimed instances are so ambiguous that it's impossible to tell who's the victim and who's the abuser, or even if the event took place at all.

Sweeping policy is implemented but is so ineffective as to be possibly be counterproductive in regards to its stated purpose and has a lot of negative unintended side effects, which end up being the primary effect of the policy. Often with stated lofty goals just like the one in your final paragraph.

The cure is so bad that disease not only becomes harmless in comparison but even actively good in the minds of some people.

Bullying is bad, but this whole thing is selective outrage. If someone was bullied there for any other trait, would any authorities have cared about it? Let alone open a Federal investigation?

On one hand, probably not. The ability of school administrations to ignore bullying, or worse to come down like a pile of bricks only on students who defend themselves, is pretty legendary. I've written before about a school district that managed to have its employees walk by some of the most severe crimes: overlooking some thrown food or an implausibly-friendly 'joke' is a lot more minimal than that and certainly happens thousands of times a day across a country the size of the United States.

((I don't think any of the behavior here requires or even benefits from a federal investigation, instead of just telling the offending students to knock it off and, for repeat offenders, something like a detention or separated lunch sessions.))

On the other hand, I've spent six hours in the last month dealing with the fallout of a student making fun of what he perceived or joked about perceiving as (heterosexual, if it matters) flirting between two students. Part of the reason it took six hours to deal with the fallout is that the organization didn't spend fifteen minutes two weeks earlier to recognize that same complaint had shown up in three different contexts and put a stop to it then, but a bigger part is that I didn't want to have three students lose some important opportunities for learning. And that stuff then was far more marginal (I wouldn't categorize it as bullying at all, but if you had to it's definitely closer to norm enforcement than a lot of the described stuff here). And unlike the teachers in question here, making sure students have a conducive learning environment isn't my literal full-time job.

So while I absolutely agree that this shouldn't require a federal investigation, I absolutely would care about it, and would expect other adults in a position of authority or trust to at least consider the situation once brought to their attention. I'm not going to expect or even ask for heroic efforts from every teacher on the planet, and it's not hard to imagine a teacher or school administrator that didn't think any of this was worth the paper it was written on.

((I don't agree, and to no small extent I think this organizational willingness to accept disruption and student-student conflicts is one of many small reasons that some of the worst schools manage to be so incredibly bad, along with having negative effects for normal students at normal schools, but I could be persuaded that it's better than the alternatives. And there's nothing in the Duane Morris report suggesting the discipline problems in this school were outside of the typical range.))

But this teacher did decide that it was something he Cared About, enough to file with the feds and involve the ACLU. Just not enough to do anything in the meantime.

Would you care? If yes, why don't you make it a Federal issue?

It's not up to me what gets made into a federal issue. That's up to the feds.

Yeah, that middle school was a horrible horrible time for me, filled with with what would rightly be classified is ongoing physical abuse and verbal harassment in an adult context. The setting of middle school makes bullying a much bigger issue than most people will ever encounter as adults.

I don't know what the best solution is -- I don't want kids' lives getting ruined because they were a dick as a 12-year-old -- but I think it's perfectly appropriate for a school to investigate and take serious action on it.

I think changing the setting has to be the start. That some teens are abusive dicks is one thing. That you (and I) felt obligated to go back everyday to the place where you are regularly abused, to sit in forced confinement with people you hate, is insane.

No need to ruin any lives. The solution is simple: anyone caught bullying gets punished in a horribly embarrassing manner. Spanking, maybe? Something that would make them the object of mockery, to reduce their social status and impede the social dynamics that encourage bullying.

The process is then iterated. Anyone caught bullying the former bully is also punished. After a few passes, everyone will be too terrified to bully.

This won't be implemented because (1) the required punishment is not permitted in Western countries and (2) teachers generally don't actually care about bullying.

This is a terrible solution. A punishment can't really be embarrassing unless the one doing the punishing is higher status, and I don't think bullies generally respect teachers. A teacher spanking a bully wouldn't lead to him being bullied by his former friends, it would lead to him and his friends beating up the previous victim for snitching to outsider authority.

I don't think respect for teachers matters. You think a 12-year-old being spanked in front of the whole school wouldn't be embarrassed about it? You think his peers wouldn't laugh at him?

They would laugh at him for getting caught, and not taking the punishment stoically enough, and then go right back to being his friends and bullying the previous victim/the snitch. Friends laughing at each other does not make them lower status amongst themselves.

The idea was to embarrass the bully in front of all of his classmates etc., not just his friends.

But OK, it might not be a foolproof plan. Maybe I just don't understand middle school social dynamics well enough.

or all the people saying kids need to toughen up or whatever - I firmly disagree. Humans can learn to operate in high trust, net positive ways, and that’s the society I want to build. If we keep creating cycles of kids being fucked up and aggressive in their early lives, adults will continue to act that way too.

I was with you until this part. Kids do need to toughen up, but bullying is not the way to do it, unless we're using a very broad definition of bullying. The problem with bullying is the mob dynamics, not that they might get into a scrap.

It depends what is your plan for your children's future.

If they will have to live in the jungle where only right is might and only laws are teeth and claws, they do need to learn how to be animals.

Of course, when you are the biggest, strongest and toughest jungle animal, you are still jungle animal, and some people another ambitions for their lives.

If they will have to live in the jungle where only right is might and only laws are teeth and claws

I'm sorry, but what the hell are you talking about? I missed the part where I advocated for might makes right, and law of the jungle.

unless we're using a very broad definition of bullying.

That seems to be both the commonly-used definition and the most common form of bullying nowadays. Most people I know have said they were bullied, and when I asked how it essentially boiled down to "I didn't have many friends" or "I faced social repercussions for my actions."

Oh. I was thinking more of cases like this, where someone is picked on precisely because they seem unlikely to retaliate, though here the bully meets karma. OTOH, this example isn't even so egregious, because all the other kids let them sort it out one-on-one. What I'd consider bullying would be when the bullies friends would step in, and beat the crap out of the victim for daring to retaliate.

Yeah that's definitely closer to actual bullying.