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 -
The discussion of sexual behavior has generated some rich concepts to discuss how human desire works. Here I want to discuss three terms that have interesting meaning.
(1) virgin
A simple denotation: hasn't had sex. The connotations are varied, and change with context. It could mean:
Something is pure and innocence, untouched by corruption (virgin landscape).
The first time (the virgin voyage of a boat)
Someone hasn't had a life-changing experience (skydiving virginity)
That something is safe (virgin drinks without alcohol).
Insulting someone unable to earn their desire (virgin vs chad)
(2) pornography
Pornography is famously difficult to define outside of "I know it when I see it". Coming from the greek pornographos (writing about prostitutes), it most commonly refers to sexual images and videos that stimulate erotic desire in the viewer.
When used as a metaphor, the scope of "porn" expands to something like the passive observation of the desired object without without the work to actually access it. To fully enjoy it, the viewer must suspend disbelief, and imagine they are a part of the porn in order to pretend the simulation satisfies one's desire for the real thing. However someone who has only viewed porn is often still considered a virgin (but not innocent!), because they haven't actually experienced the desire fulfilled yet.
The SFW porn network (earthporn for nature, quoteporn for inspiro) is pornographic.
Most of reddit has a pornographic nature to it. (eg: relationship drama)
Streamers and podcasts are friendship porn.
Cooking shows are food porn and online cooking videos are pornified
Instragram is status porn (and sometimes regular porn).
Sports competitions are both porn of the game being played, and porn of victory feelings.
Careless blogposts can end up as insight porn consumed for pleasure.
Cards-against-humanity game is transgressive joke porn
(3) cucked
A cuckooo bird will lay it's egg in the nest of another bird, tricking them into raising the cuckoo's hatching. This naturally evolves to refer to situations where a parent (usually the dad for obvious reasons) is raising kids he thinks are his, but are in fact from another man. Which then simplifies to the actual act of watching someone else have sex with someone you want. Nowadays known as a cuckhold fetish.
The concept of cucking has become so broad and complicated that a psychiatrist could write a whole book about it. A sample story might have a husband watching someone else fuck his wife. Which raises the question at the core of the cuck fetish: why doesn't she fuck the husband? A full understanding of cuckholding requires explaining all three motivations. The cuckhold is usually motivated by (suppressed?) feelings of insecurity. He his not capable or worthy of having sex with her. The bull is motivated by either lust or rubbing superiority of dominance hierarchy in the cuckolds face. The cuck-er similarly may be lustful, or could also be sadistically belittling the cuckold.
Racial dynamics add to this swirl. The common case is a white man watching a white woman fuck a black man (with a large penis). This fantasy props up so much there are entire porn sites based on this concept, and plenty of alt-right fanfiction about it. Racial insecurity. There's a secondary market for asian men watching an asian woman fuck a white man (with a large penis), which is related to WhiteMale-AsianFemale couples, and asian masculinity in general.
Some use of "cuck" in practice simply mean coward. Someone with "cucked beliefs". Or a cuck-servitave (cringe conservative). This dilutes the richer meaning of cuckholding. A more proper usage is the bike-cuck meme, in which a man copes with the loss of a bike by imagining someone else enjoys riding it more than him. Perhaps he'd like to watch too. An additional meme is the copypasta that raising a daughter is cucked because the dad is spending his time and effort helper her grow as a person for another man to enjoy. Which is an interesting broken perspective.
....
All porn is cuckhold porn. The object of desire (the sex) is happening on a screen and is inaccessible. The viewer must either accept the cuckholding, or delude themselves into thinking they are a playing a part. This process spirals into insecurity, first from feeling inferior to the object of desire, which leads to a cuckhold fetish to the porn itself, a feeling that one doesn't deserve to fuck reality and should be constrained to the porn. Giving up and accepting that fucking reality is too much wok.
Not directly related, but a similar definitional debate that was had many times during games of Never Have I Ever in grad school: What counts as "Sex" for the purpose of determining Body Count, [Loss of] Virginity, practice of sexual orientation, etc.?
Classically, the heteronormative definition of sex (PIV intercourse to male completion) pretty much covered the concept. But sexual orientation complicates this, it seems ridiculous to say that a woman who has had sex with many women but no men is a virgin. Equally the variety of sex acts can complicated it, and the use of "loopholes" like oral or especially anal sex to claim technical virginity strikes most as intensely silly.
Dan Savage has generally been a proponent of labeling "Last Name Sex" (Oral, Anal, Manual, etc.) as equivalent to intercourse. But standard cultural practice has been to treat them at least slightly differently at different times.
At the same time, you have men who want to claim to have had sex with women when the thing they did seems to have stopped well short of sex. Does masturbating in front of someone constitute sex? Ejaculating on a dance floor with a partner who was just dancing with you?
So we have two major failure modes: the nice Babtist college girl who claims to be a virgin despite the high school nickname Oral Audrey, and the male desperate to pump up his numbers who claims he had "cyber" sex with a camgirl because he paid her to watch him masturbate.
The definition we settled on for purposes of determining who should drink/lower a finger in a game of Never Have I Ever was this: Sex occurs when a person 1) achieves orgasm through the 2) intentional 3) physical 4) acts of another person. When those criteria are met, both the party who orgasms and the party who caused the orgasm have had sex.
Orgasm by one party is necessary to establish that a complete sex act has occurred. It is not relevant if the other party orgasms or not. Sexual acts that don't result in orgasm for any party are categorized as "fooling around." Normally, in hetero relationships, it will be the case that the male orgasms and the female may or may not, but the reverse works as well. I have trouble picturing a complete sex act in which nobody orgasms. If neither could get it done, while theoretically it could have been the whole nine yards but they couldn't hit the target, it seems more likely that it was abortive or farcical, involving physical impotence or alcohol.
The acts have to be intentional, they have to be intended to produce orgasm. So the dancing example, that isn't sex. Or a guy who rubs against a woman in a crowded subway car.* An accidental orgasm doesn't count.
The acts have to be physical, they have to involve touch. Talking someone through masturbation, watching someone, or cyber sex aren't sex.
The acts have to be those of another person. Masturbation doesn't count, if another person is merely present and observing. There is some debate here, if the orgasm is ultimately self-initiated during acts with another person, I tend to lean towards that counting as long as the physical acts are contributing to the orgasm. So masturbation does count if the other person is playing with the masturbator to achieve and intensify arousal and orgasm.
This definition has the advantage of covering all sex acts across all sexual orientations and genital configurations. But there are definitely some "edge"ing cases where it might deliver odd results.
The alternative definition, proposed for purposes of answering the question to partners and friends about Body Counts, is that if you want to claim a high number only penetrative sex to orgasm counts, while if you are trying to claim a low number everything even mildly adjacent counts. So an 18 year old boy claiming to his buddies that he lost his virginity doesn't get to claim anything but PIV to completion; but an 18 year old girl trying to trim her partner count to sound less slutty to her boyfriend should be forced to include anyone who met even 3/4 of the above criteria. This definition is good in that if you follow it, you'll never be accused of lying or hiding anything; it is bad in that everyone wants to lie all the time and will anyway.
What other definitions would TheMotte propose? Are there different definitions useful in different situations?
*This is where we'd fit in an argument about consent.There's no good way to handle it, hopefully it's not that big an issue for any indiviudal.
To be frank, has happened to me a fair few times.
Maybe “intended to”?
Ugh, you try to finish while rolling. Good luck.
I have definitely had “a complete sex act” while on MDMA with no orgasm for either person. (Persons, honestly.) If you go at it for a long while, but you never, uh, seal the deal, but you still have that connection and intimacy, I consider that a sex act.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link