site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 19, 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.

10
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Those terms are meta-exclusionary. They only exclude people who try to exclude others. This is reminiscent of Popper's intolerance of intolerance.

I expect you can come up with new examples that are not meta in this way, but of course, offhand, I cannot.

They only exclude people who try to exclude others.

I'm largely repeating the response below, but I believe the actual causality is reversed: the people who use these terms take people they want to exclude and then deem those people as excluding others. Similar to the whole thing about Popper, which is that, by and large, the people who most loudly proclaim the principle are ones who take people they already don't want to tolerate and deem those people as being intolerant, in an effort to justify their pre-existing intolerance.

Should we then be intolerant of the intolerance of the intolerant...?

Those terms are meta-exclusionary. They only exclude people who try to exclude others.

No they don't. Someone can be a "racist" for having the wrong skin tone and singing along to the wrong song, or refusing to give up a rented CityBike. Moreover, as is increasingly popular on the left, there's a categorical denial that anyone who isn't white can be "racist" at all - thus "racist" itself is a term being used to exclude others.

Similarly with "sexist" and "homophobe." The most common use-case is attacking someone who holds disfavored object-level beliefs regarding, e.g., sexual morality or family formation.

You might be right in practice. I suppose this is the bailey, Esparanza's use is the motte.

Someone can be a "racist" for having the wrong skin tone and singing along to the wrong song, or refusing to give up a rented CityBike.

Actually, the outrage was worse than this. The argument of Twitter activists wasn't that she was refusing to give up her CitiBike. It's that she was trying to somehow steal the bike that the other black men had rented and was using her status/privilege(?) as a white woman to cry crocodile tears, and thus trying to get someone to call the police, and therefore the police arriving would commit racist police brutality on them, and therefore her resisting in that manner means that she was committing literal violence on them, despite there being more black men than her who were all individually physically stronger than her. And of course, therefore, it's appropriate that she be canceled and fired from her job as a nurse.

At least, that was the argument as I understood it. It's all completely incorrect, of course, and I do not endorse it in the slightest.

"White"? "Bourgeoise"?

"Pedophile" is exclusionary and judgmental. Generally speaking, would you argue that Progressives are okay with judging and excluding pedophiles, or would you argue that they object to doing so?

If I say that homosexual acts are a sin, how is that more exclusionary and judgmental than a gay person saying that my moral assessment of homosexuality is bigoted and homophobic?

Also, you (or the progressives you're referring to) are misusing the paradox of tolerance. It applies to people who respond to argument with personal violence.