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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 24, 2023

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If it's true the Grossberg lawsuit is the reason for Tucker's firing - (there's also a LA Times story that Rupert thought Tucker's 1/6 coverage might get them in trouble), it proves that the Right needs to learn that yes, you can probably make "cancellable" statements about minorities in a college-educated conservative-leaning workplace, because any minorities who work in such a place aren't going to be upset about it or they'll just agree.

OTOH, making jokes about which female Governor candidate you'd rather have sex with is likely to upset even otherwise quite conservative women at that said workplace, because even in a right-wing space to the right of much of the nation, the median conservative woman is still going to be upset about openly sexual comments like that. 1960's/1970's feminism - aka, I can have my own job, financial independence, not getting fired for getting pregnant, and freedom from open sexism in the workplace is basically believed by 90% of women in the US.

The Right needs to learn this, or they'll keep ending up in the same place.

And where are we going to be in another few decades?

The Right needs to learn that 2010s trans activism - Trans Women Are Women, respect people’s pronouns, etc - is believed by 90% of people even in a conservative workplace.

Someone needs to put their foot down.

Someone needs to put their foot down.

Are you defending people's right to discuss which governor you'd most want to have sex with in the workplace? I don't think that's ever been an acceptable topic. You could probably get away with it in small workplaces where you're joking with friends and it'd never leak, but I think it'd pretty much always cause controversy if it was leaked.

You think that's bad? In the deepest recesses of the Internet, I have even seen people play a sick game called "fuck, marry, kill". Not only do they make light of who they would have sex with, they're even joking about forced arranged marriages, and outright murder. What does it say about our culture that this "game" seems to mostly be enjoyed by adolescent girls? Armageddon can't come soon enough.

I have been in two fist-fights in my life. One was over cheating at cards in middle school. The other one happened because someone nominated my sister as a candidate to marry, shag, or kill. The game is disrespectful, and it is only safe to play with casual acquaintances if you stick to nominating women who are known not to be respectable, such as actresses.

Playing with close friends, or with people who are equivalent such as team-mates on an all-male team with an appropriate level of team bonding, is part of the way groups can bond by engaging in mildly transgressive behaviour. Even so, there are limits, and a female politician who was not clearly outgroup would be pushing them.

Good on you for standing up for your sister, but nothing you said contradicts what I pointed out. As per my explanation, being nominated for one of the candidates absolutely is an insult, but don't try to tell me it's beyond the pale in a broader context. It's also a bit weird you seem to assume this is mostly done by men with female candidates, when the majority of cases I saw was the opposite.

I can’t say I’ve ever seen it played between women. I always assumed it to be a very male-brained game, though perhaps the girls in my social circle in high school were unusually prudish.

I used to browse Tumblr a bit, the women there seemed to find it hilarious. More recently on one of the TERF podcasts I listen to someone threw a superchat with some male IDW figures as the candidates. Can't remember all of them, but Jordan Peterson was on the list.

I am a man, so most of the times I have seen the game played have been in all-male groups. It definitely gets played in mixed-sex groups, but people tend to stay safer with the nominations and stick to celebrities. The way it was played in my social circle, it was normally three "good" choices and the fun bit was distinguishing between which hotties were marriage material and which were only good for a good time.

I realise the other complexity with mixed-sex groups is that there are usually couples present. Asking someone to marry/shag/kill when their SO is in the room is potentially offensive to the SO - although again sticking to unattainable candidates like celebrities makes it less so. I have the type of marriage where I can joke with my wife about the bangability of female public figures, but my impression from my occasional dumpster dives of /r/relationshipadvice is that many people don't. And even then if the woman was ingroup, I would let her raise the issue and not me.