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 -
I’m not sure I’m understanding the mythology of the Gallup survey. It sounds like if you ID as some form of gay, you can choose multiple versions of gay, but if you’re heterosexual you can only choose heterosexual and nothing else. Depending on how they count the results, it seems like you could end up counting a person who IDs as a transsexual lesbian asexual three times (once as trans, once as lesbian, and once as asexual) which would obviously inflate the number of people IDing as some form of LGBT.
Sounds much more plausible to me that a purple teletubby wearing a handbag caused this.
Kidding aside I also think the Gallop survey is picking up a big uptick in women who don’t identity as “straight”, but have only dated men. For example girl makes out with another girl at a bar would previously be considered straight still but now she checks bi.
Skip that whole last sentence. The median woman we picture being bisexual is hot, practicing, able to get both men and women as she pleases and having done so regularly.
The modal woman who publicly flags as bisexual seems to be fat, an "unfuckable mess" (RIP Silvio) who isn't hooking up with anyone at all, and the median bisexual woman almost certainly hasn't had her tongue on a woman's mouth (let alone her clit) in the past year, and often never has and never will.
Bisexuality among women is the most faked identity, while also when genuine being one of the toughest to carry.
There's some utility to distinguishing between 'practicing' and 'non-practicing', and there's probably some number of 'socially-bisexual' who wouldn't pull the trigger for anyone short of a movie star dropping naked into their beds, but this framework risks defining a lot of monogamous or virgin bisexuals as 'fakes' in a way that obscures more than it hides. Even from a pure pragmatics perspective, there are a lot of places where it matters even for people I would rather gargle arsenic than see pantless, and that's before problems like "you don't want to see my internet browsing history" or "oh, you had some custom artwork prints framed, can I see them- no?"
((And, conversely, measuring just by activity redefines a lot of actually-gay people into bisexuals or 'straight', even if they absolutely didn't enjoy it and don't plan on trying again and might not have even been able to complete the act.))
It's not really that I'm deriding them as fakes, just that I'm deriding them as irrelevant.
If Ferrari is the favorite exotic sports car among those with net worth above $1mm, and Lamborghini is the favorite among those with net worth below $20k, Lambo has many more fans but far fewer customers. And they can pump up their fan numbers among poor people all they want, all they'll sell is a $20 poster not a $200k coupe.
I'm significantly less interested in how people identify, than in how much gay sex is actually being had. If 100 years ago 1% of people identified as gay, but 5% of people engaged in same-sex sexual intercourse in the average year; and today 15% of people identified as some form of gay, but only 3% of people engaged in same-sex sexual intercourse in the average year, I'd call that a decline in homosexuality not an increase.
I'd appreciate if you would explain this, the link just seems to take me to the same joke about Arsenic on Twitter.
Why are you interested in how much gay sex is actually being had?
It's a far more interesting question than "how many people identify as lgbtqwerty?" in terms of societal moral decline. And the question of "Is our society in moral decline?" is certainly an interesting one.
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