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 -
So, you think displaying a rainbow flag causes some pct of boys to grow up to get an erection when seeing a naked guy, and to fail to get an erection when seeing a naked woman?
If that’s what it’s going to take in order to finally introduce the Vote Of No Confidence into the American political tradition, then by God, the young hetero men of this country are just going to have to grin and bear it. Show me as many naked guys as you must if it means we can get this new election started early.
More options
Context Copy link
I’m positive that in the formative years where their sexualities and preferences and philias develop (remember it’s not unusual for people to have fetishes they trace to childhood), that these things are causing some percentage of boys to become gay:
Having special days where you show only the positive role models of gays, no evil members, and no positive straight members, which artificially increases gay positive valence
Having a colorful flag for gays and no colors and no flag for straight people. For children, color = objectively better. Color is an objective “attractive marker”
Giving special esteem, attention, and “interesting points” to gays
I note that this is very different from your original claim, which was specifically about the rainbow flag. But regardless, the things you list are going to change what causes them to become sexually aroused, and what doesn't? That seems quite unlikely.
I’m expanding on my comment because you asked a question, and in any case the rainbow flag is a symbol of the whole LGBT enterprise. The question is whether childhood experiences and culture can influence sexuality. There’s evidence that it does:
gays are more likely to have been molested in childhood
boys like the bachi bazi culture in Afghanistan, who are picked regardless of orientation in childhood, grow up to be gay: According to Khan et al. (2009, p. 24), bacha bereesh appear to predominately “grow up to follow a sexually active pattern as receptive males, self-identifying with their femininity and receptive role” as a “third gender” within a trinary gender system of man/woman/non-man
it’s common knowledge that childhood experiences can result in lifelong philias, whether this be the appearance of a mate or a sexual activity
So, IMO, it is established that childhood sexual experiences mold adult orientation. The remaining question is whether reinforcement of sexuality in childhood molds adult orientation. This needs to be studied, but I am positive that it does to some degree, because that makes sense based on what we know about reinforcement.
Right. You made a comment specifically about the flag, and I asked a comment about the flag, but you chose to respond about something else.
There is a huge difference between having sexual experiences during childhood, or even having sexuality being reinforced, and seeing displays of gay pride flags.
Five years ago, before this topic was as heavily discussed in the culture, I took my then-14yo daughter to a concert. Each of the two opening acts and the main act did a "gay" song that involved the waving of rainbow flags, and the 25,000 14 year olds in the arena went apeshit each time. The energy in that place during the rainbow parades was off the chart.
Kids are very susceptible to fads (I myself wore a "Frankie Say Relax" t-shirt in junior high having no idea of its connotations...) and peer pressure. Whether or not the Rainbow flag actually turns kids gay is separate from the idea that this kind of mass celebration reinforces ideas of what is "good," and there probably isn't a wide distance between a kid feeling encouraged to try gay over their innate disgust tendencies, and then forming intimate bonds following experimental gay contact, especially if it's a first sexual experience. If you close your eyes and try real hard to think about how rainbow flags make you special, a mouth is just a mouth, as David Rabe wrote. And maybe there's no looking back after that point.
Exactly
I am curious what percentage of kids who have those innate disgust tendencies (aka, straight kids, as opposed to "curious" kids, who by definition are not disgusted) you think "try gay," flags or no.
Kids have very robust disgust tendencies. Kids find pretty much all foods disgusting unless they are introduced early. Broccoli is famous for this. Kids find all romance icky and disgusting at about age 6. This lasts until some time in the teens. I imagine this is a biological remnant to separate boys and girls to prevent the incest taboo from kicking in. Either that, or girls have cooties (This is a weird Americanism which I did not know the etymology of until I looked it up just now.)
As a more relevant example, 92% of women now claim to enjoy fellatio, whereas it showed up as cruelty in courtrooms in the 1950s. Did women change, or did they just get habituated to it?
The legalisation of no-fault divorce might be a confounding factor....
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Oral sex used to be rarer and more special than vaginal sex, but along came AIDS, and people's attitudes changed. From 1997
I think this is a good example of how cultural norms about sex can change. In the early 70s, oral sex was very taboo and rarely mentioned outside an example of cruelty justifying divorce. Twenty years later, it was normalized for middle schoolers (in New York, according to the New York Times, YMMV).
Even the Kama Sutra disapproved of it: "this Auparishtaka is the work of a dog and not of a man, because it is a low practice"
Perhaps gay sex will follow the same path.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
No, see:
Re:
But therein lies the rub. It’s not a huge difference at all. It’s a little difference. The difference between being molested by a gay man physically, and being put through a gauntlet of pro-homosexuality propaganda, is not actually different from the standpoint of “how reinforcement works psychologically”. If I watch Alizee’s performance of J’en ai marre as a boy I may become hopelessly infatuated with dancing French brunettes, for no other reason than an association was placed in my mind. This happens all the time: associations predicated on reinforcement.
"hopelessly infatuated" is probably overstating things.
But I'd probably agree with the overall point that it could have a minor effect towards that direction?
More options
Context Copy link
Again, I was responding to your specific claim about the flag.
And, yes there is a big difference.
There is also a big difference between a straight kid seeing a hot dance by a brunette woman and developing an attraction to brunettes, and a straight kid seeing an erotic dance by a guy and becoming no longer straight. But of course we are talking about rainbow flags, not erotic dances.
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
More options
Context Copy link
It's pretty obviously true, there's a marginal bisexual boy who if market forces make being gay difficult might just marry a woman and never really think about men that hard; who finds out it's an opportunity be can take and sexual market forces lead him to be mainly gay.
The utilitarian question being, is that percentage more or less than the marginal really really gay guy who marries a woman and they're both miserable due to lack of awareness of alternatives.
Aren’t there something like 2x as many self reported bisexuals as exclusive homosexuals even among those who engage in same sex behavior?
I have no idea, and our general understanding of bisexuality strikes me as primarily misunderstanding sexual market forces.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
But that is a claim about behavior. The original claim was about sexual arousal. in your hypothetical, the bisexual boy is bisexual before being exposed to the flag.
I don't think they can entirely be separated. The brain is the largest sex organ. Disgust reactions to many things are taught, as are arousal reactions, and can vary completely based on culture.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I don't think it's the flags, small kids aren't going to know what that is all about. It's the teachers pushing it in school and yes I do mean pushing it. Like this loser.
That seems like a very odd example of anyone pushing anything. It is 15 seconds long, and in it's entirety the guy says, "In school I was bullied for being gay, even by my teachers. So I became a teacher. Guess who my favorite students are [rainbow flag]." I am pretty good at steelmanning, but I am struggling to understand how someone would consider that pushing homosexuality, nor why anyone would describe him as a "loser."
"Once upon a time, I was discriminated against. I now practice that discrimination against others and am proud to be doing so."
Rejoicing in intentionally being part of the problem rather than part of the solution leads me to believe that person is a substandard human being. It's not much more complex than that.
Where does he say he is discriminating against others?
I don't discriminate against black students, it's just that the white ones are my favorite!
"When I was in school, I was bullied for my conservative beliefs, even by teachers. So I became a teacher, and now conservative students are my favorites." Would you infer that I am a loser who discriminates against liberal students? Or, would you perhaps draw a more charitable inference, such as that I support conservative students, within the bounds of teacher ethics? I am betting the latter. Yet you do not extend that charity to a member of your outgroup.
Why did you change the example away from race and into political opinions? Please write the same post with the quote being about a white teacher being bullied by black students when he was young, and now whites being his favorites, and tell me with a straight face you'd see absolutely no issue with that.
Well, pay up. Yeah the conservative example seems pretty wildly inappropriate to me. I don't see why he should know his students political opinions, and to the extent they came up in class, he definitely shouldn't be uploading videos on TikTok about how they're his favorites. And yes, a teacher that does upload this sort of stuff to TikTok is very likely engaging in discriminatory behavior. When I was in school some teachers whre playing favorites even when they were doing their best to maintain a front of neutrality, someone who publicly blasts his preferences for everyone to see probably has no breaks in the classroom.
And note that you have now changed the subject. The claim was that the teacher was "practic[ing] that discrimination against others." I.e., bullying others, or somehow harming others. Not the same as giving a benefit to your favorite student (not that that is necessarily ethical). Especially where, in the context of the quote, that means providing emotional support, or sponsoring an LGBT club, or the like (which is perfectly ethical). There is no evidence that this guy is doing anything other than that, and your insistence otherwise says more about your biases than his.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
That's hardly fair. Being just slightly charitable, what they mean by 'favourite students' fairly clearly does not imply any genuine preferential treatment or discrimination in respect of grades, discipline and so forth.
So someone saying "whites are my favorite" also wouldn't imply preferential treatment or discrimination, right?
I don't think the two are apposite. His comments - which I think were kind of silly but basically harmless, I mean it was one line in some guys short video, who really cares - just mean that he is particularly happy to see gay students doing well personally because of the change that represents from his personal experience. I don't know in what context such a line of thinking could emerge in the case of whites.
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
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
To steelman his point, I'd say it would be a lot more like identifying as 'queer', or some other nebulous label that doesn't actually equate to a change in sexuality.
I think perhaps that is stretching steelmanning a bit far. That is not usually what people mean by "becoming gay." Especially those who worry about kids "becoming gay."
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link