site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 30, 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.

8
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I'm wondering if you're mistaken in your belief, and if having this possibility pointed out to you might cause you to reflect on it and re-evaluate.

The point is that these two situations (hearing someone talk about the influence of patriarchy who believes it is one piece of the causal network vs hearing someone talk about the influence of the patriarchy who believes it is the only casual factor in existence) are very similar to the listener and very easy to confuse with each other, especially if one of them happens to fit with a narrative you're already familiar with.

Very few people actually hold beliefs of the type 'this entire gigantic complex social phenomenon is 100% the result of sinister conspiratorial brainwashing across every country it appears in and has zero other causal factors affecting it'.

People are dumb, but few are that dumb.

It's much more common to believe your opponents believe something like that, than for them to actually believe it.

But it sounds like maybe I'm not allowed to question your lived experiences or whatever, regardless of the type of claim you're making about other people, so, ok.

I'm not mistaken. I'm thinking specifically of a conversation I had with a friend of mine. This friend works in software design for one of the largest public bodies in Europe and has a master's degree in physics - not an idiot. Nevertheless, when I had this conversation with him, he asserted that the idea that there were differences between male and female brains which could impact upon their career choices was "pseudoscience". When I pointed out that, if culture was the deciding factor, we would expect vastly different rates of female employment in STEM between, say, the US and Sweden - he countered that the US and Sweden were functionally indistinguishable from a cultural perspective. It's been well over a year and I'm still trying to wrap my head around that one (different language, completely different demographics, vastly different rates of religious observance, different climate, different core industries - in short, everything that you might call "culture").

I've lost count of how many times I've been called a misogynist (either in person or online) for even suggesting that the differences between male and female brains might influence men's and women's career choices, or even pointing out that these differences exist. This assertion is routinely rounded off to "oh, so you're saying men are smarter than women?", which I've never claimed, never said anything with even a passing resemblance to that claim.

None of the above should come as a surprise to you if you're familiar with the controversy surrounding James Damore's Google memo. When a well-qualified employee in one of the five biggest tech companies in the world can lose his job simply for (correctly!) asserting that there are differences between male and female brains which impact upon their career choices, I think we're far past the point where you can plausibly claim "oh no, of course woke people recognise the differences between male and female brains, they're just saying culture matters too".

Very few people actually hold beliefs of the type... It's much more common

How do you know? Have you conducted a poll? Conspiratorial thinking is all the rage on the left. Most woke people believe that Trump and Putin conspired to steal the 2016 election, or that the number of unarmed black Americans shot dead by the police in a calendar year is 2-3 orders of magnitude higher than the real figure. I'm not "strawmanning" or "weakmanning" when I point out that a large proportion of woke people believe that American police officers collectively kill 20 unarmed black men a week, I'm just honestly reporting their professed beliefs. The claim that it's sexist to claim that there are real differences between male and female brains is prominent enough to have its own Wikipedia page, and it's not listed anywhere on their list of topics characterised as pseudoscience. Based on all of the above and my own personal experience of frequently interacting with woke people, I wouldn't be even a little surprised if a large proportion of woke people literally uncritically endorse the exaggerated strawman narrative you outlined above. I think you're sanewashing a batch of extremely conspiratorial and unscientific beliefs sincerely held by millions of Westerners. I think this is a big motte-and-bailey argument in which the bailey is "male and female brains are exactly alike and any observed differences are solely the result of cultural conditioning" and the motte is "of course we're not denying that there are differences between male and female brains, we're just saying that culture plays a big role too".

US and STEM were functionally indistinguishable from a cultural perspective

? Maybe you meant USA and Sweden?

Thanks, fixed.