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 -
Do men and women political radicalization work differently?
Everyone of us know how riots, revolts and political radicalism are born; a segment of the population, resented or alienated by material means (they are too poor or too isolated by the access to political power, and they revolt by necessity) decide to adopt countercultural ideologies, often violent and revolutionary, in order to destroy the status quo and access the means of power.
But what if our model is obsolete, because we applied it to men and masculinity?
Being a middle-upper class European man, I have a lot of access, both personal and social, to my peers and to what they think. Last day, an homicide made by a men towards his girlfriend happened in Italy, and an enormous cultural war has started with all the related news (including the sister of the victim advocating a "cultural revolution", shame campaign by the media, storms of social media posts by women, and the "fascist" right-wing government immediately folding, promising some kind of introduction of sexual (ergo lgbt) education in the schools).
Well, the model of radicalization that I observed is the following; young, often upper-middle class women with no material problems and often with prestigious (but not high-earning) jobs adopting the position of intersectional or radical feminism in few days, moving quite a lot the Overton window to the left. From this, the following observations I gathered;
Women's political radicalization happen in different echo-chambers compared to the men's ones. While men's radicalization happens because of lack of material means, in women's case it looks like the more they happen to be privileged, the more they radicalize. As if material means have no matter for their well being, and the high status position is the source, not the solution, for their growing radicalization.
Could be that the de-materialization of post-Marxist politics happened because women are anti-materialists themselves and do not care about all this stuff? Okay all the discourses on post-industrialization, post-marxism, Foucault or whatever, but I do not think that, politically speaking, women cares at all about the well being of their societies at large.
Cultural-war-speaking, another demonstration that there is no opposition to the women's tears and resentement in Western Society, and we have still not produced the necessary antibodies to resist them. Far left organisations and ideologies have it far too easy, because they are free to propagandize using traditional medias and social network as an instrument of expansion.
A lot of normie women fell in the vortex of radicalizations. But unlike real radicalized womens, if you speak to them personally, they will not strike back at you. A distinction still exist between the mentally-ill woman and the woman who is only pushed by social media and social pressure to act.
And that I am lucky to have a girlfriend that does not give a damn about social medias at large.
I wonder if voting patterns would be better if votes were limited per household instead of on the individual. Before women had the right to vote, it's possible that votes effectively were treated as single household units. Even if you can't vote, you can certainly talk to your husband about your thoughts. Societies might have achieved better outcomes if their votes had to be discussed, which would likely lead to a more informed, thought-out vote. Now you can just vote without talking with your partner, plenty of men voted for Trump in secret from their wives. At this point though I don't think society will ever take away the ability to vote from people.
I think men in general lack a place to form their political thoughts and opinions. The education system leans heavily left in most states in America and if you get to colleges or universities, good luck finding any conservative viewpoints. Not like men are going to colleges nowadays, at least compared to the number of women going to college.
Young men are seeking some sort of viewpoint outside the socially mandated one, which is why people like Andrew Tate, Jordan Peterson, and Joe Rogan gain popularity, and also why they they are vilified. I think it really speaks to just how little social organizations provide a place for young men. Normally you'd have a father figure in your life, but so many kids are growing up in single-parent households, which are usually single mothers rather than fathers. A woman might be able to raise a boy, but on average can she provide the same lessons and values a father can to his son? There are statistics showing that kids from fatherless homes are more likely to be incarcerated, but not the same for kids from motherless homes. (Note that most sources referenced are quite old, I didn't have much time to look for more recent stats or statistics. Seems difficult to find much on this topic.) So dissenting men have to independently come up with their own political views, or they get it online in niche spaces. You rarely, if ever, see a manifesto written by a woman, but there are plenty of examples of manifestos written by young men before their final acts of horror. In general, I think your average woman has an easier time in life for most things than your average man, so women don't need to get radicalized.
Remember the meme about men thinking constantly about the roman empire? So many women could not fathom why their partners would be thinking about the Roman Empire. Sure, those guys may just be thinking about an idealized view of the Roman Empire, but it's also an undeniable fact that the Romans have had a huge influence on Western culture, government, society, and values. I wonder how many women unironically believe their boyfriend literally have no thoughts in their mind but sex, food, and sports. This is just another example of the notion that there are differences in behavior and interests between men and women.
There is also the claim that women just adopt the political viewpoints of their partners, people point to personal anecdotes of girls that completely changed from being conservative type girl to full-on socialists or vice versa. I'm not sure how true this is as a general observation, and I'm sure you can find equivalent examples for men.
More options
Context Copy link
This seems to be an apples to oranges comparison. Feminism is not an ideology in the sense anarcho-capitalism, Stalinism or National Socialism is; it is a branch of identity politics which seeks to empower women relative to men. You don’t get radicalized into feminism, rather you always support the current form of feminism, which has indeed gotten progressively more radical as women’s emancipation marches forward. Some, such as Muslim women who support wife-beating, oppose feminism to the extent that they have internalized male authority, which has historically constrained women’s will to power. As for actual political ideologies, let alone radical ones, the common wisdom is that women have zero interest in them, which I see no reason to doubt.
More options
Context Copy link
Yes. Female radicalisation looks to me to be largely a status game against other similarly privileged women. In the same way that left-wingers will often "nobly criticise their in-group" which isn't actually their real in-group at all, privileged white women will "nobly self-sacrifice for the good of minorities" as long as they themselves aren't actually sacrificing anything at all and all the actual cost is borne by outgroup members who happen to share their race. Middle class white women are masters of nobly sacrificing the prospects of working class white men to placate minorities. The second there's a snowball's chance in hell of it affecting them personally, they'll immediately recant, such as we see with feminists now disavowing the gender ideology nightmare they helped birth and nurture. It's not that they're anti-materialist, they're just able to appropriate others' materials to power their ideology.
Because the costs are externalised onto people they don't like (poors, whites, men) there's no limit to how extreme these virtue signalling contests between affluent white women can get. Think of a group of people you don't like; if you were able to advocate appropriating their assets, even if it wasn't of any direct material benefit to you, wouldn't you?
The fix to this would be to somehow force these women to have skin in the game, but society as a whole is massively allergic to making women face any kind of consequence for their actions at all, as we see with sentencing disparities.
No, not because I wouldn't want to or wouldn't feel a satisfying feeling of karmic justice if they lost everything they own, but because I recognize those thoughts as selfish and anti-social and thus would not publicly advocate them. This might be one of those things that's being lost as Christianity declines, but people seem to be losing the perspective that you, yes you, are filled with evil and some of the things you want are actually bad and should be resisted. I hate people that I hate, I would be happy if they died, and I recognize that as wrong and if given the opportunity to secretly push a button that caused them to die I would recognize that as wrong and choose not to press it. (With exceptions for people who have done heinous acts that would be sentenced by the death penalty if caught but have so far escaped justice, making their death for the greater good of society rather than my personal feelings)
More options
Context Copy link
I suppose I don’t really understand this status game. What do they gain from placating minorities? How does that increase their stature in any appreciable way?
The actual action is more or less arbitrary, the status game is simply advocating ever more extreme self-sacrificing-but-not-actually policies in order to look the very most noble in front of each other. Whoever advances the most extreme anti-white policies is the most virtuous, noble and self-sacrificing (except again, not really, all the cost is borne by white men) and therefore "wins".
It's like competing to donate the most to charity... by pickpocketing other people. The actual charity being donated to doesn't much matter. Just being seen to be giving the most (amount of other people's money).
Interesting. How do such status games arise, so as to replace the previously predominant status games?
Traditional status games are shows of material wealth; but among those whose material comfort is both assured and relatively equal, moral fashions seem to be the next battleground. Ordinary working people scraping by day to day don't much care for these moral status games, it's only when someone's material needs are secure that they turn to worrying overmuch about their spiritual/moral health -- possibly out of a sense of guilt for being so well off. This lines up with the theory of luxury beliefs I've seen floated around before.
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
Can you please briefly describe the context? I suspect it may be relevant here.
In Europe there is a campaign to make "femicide" a legal concept, portraying woman particularly at risk of homicide despite most murder victims being male (In Italy 160 women and 370 men were killied in 2011). It would be defined as a killing of a woman, because she is a woman, with this sexism imputed on any heterosexual man who kills a woman due to jealousy or other love related reasons.
This is the story I assume OP is talking about.
The extent to which this campaign seems to be astroturfed is almost bizarre.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
There are a couple of problems with this question.
Those are very distinct phenomena. Conflating them is highly problematic.
This is not very clear, but if it is meant to refer to economic deprivation, it has been clear for decades that economic deprivation is a poor predictor of participation in political violence; at best, the relationship is highly contingent. Eg:
More options
Context Copy link
In 1915 the Bolsheviks were a sausage fest. In 1989 it was dominated by women. In 1922 the NSDAP was a sausage fest, in 1938 it was supported more by women than by men. Putin got more male than female votes in his first election. Today he has a solid lead among female voters. Here in Sweden the socialdemocrats consisted of young radical men a century ago, now they absolutely dominate women with a massive rift between female and male voters.
Women are rarely actual extremists, they rarely support causes that get them in trouble or are controversial. They seem to mainly virtue signal the values of the system. The modern day SJW is the reincarnated church lady. It would be difficult to differentiate the values of these new radical feminists and the values of the HR department at IBM.
Women's radicalism isn't really a problem and it has historically played an important role as women have been the enforcers of the morality of the society they live in. Had women not policed men we would have devolved into degeneracy. If a man lives in a clean house, has good manners and is well dressed it is probably because a women at some point in his life forced him to behave.
Had these women lived 90 years ago they would have been the biggest Mussolini supporters.
I see women’s role in political movements and frankly most social and artistic movements as normalization much more so than radicalization or avant- garde adoption of ideas. Once a movement captures the attention of women, it tends to go mainstream pretty quickly. I agree that women tend to be gatekeepers. And I think they do so mainly by controlling sex. If your political, social, or artistic tastes are things that you’ll likely at minimum keep quiet about it lest it hurt your fuckability levels.
More options
Context Copy link
Evo psych offers a simple explanation for this. For men with little or no status, engaging in high-risk, high-reward activities makes objective sense. For women in general, it's the opposite that make sense.
Sources please, so that this isn’t a just-so story? :)
It's not a just-so story it's simple biological reality. A man can impregnate multiple women, but a woman can only carry one man's child (or children) at a time, thus the availability of women will always be the chief reproductive bottle-neck. Individual men are disposable from an evolutionary perspective.
More options
Context Copy link
From Wikipedia:
Thank you, that’s exactly what I was looking for!
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
If all of this is true, the trick is simply understanding how to switch these masses of women to your side, and let them enforce whatever policy you create. The problem here is, imho, that the entrenchment of female power and powerful media has created a block that is too strong to destroy.
I don’t see how. As a political group, they’re a status quo anchor with heavy susceptibility to ‘care-based’ arguments and other immature, conventional justifications. You can’t use them as trailblazers and schock troops. They’ll just follow the mass of winners and push them a bit further by inertia. One should always emphasize self-interest, conformity, and good intentions when speaking to large groups of women, but that also applies to large groups of men (where it is referred to as ‘populism’).
The power of women as political actors is overrated. Like black people and other ‘oppressed’ groups, their privileged legal position and the prestige they enjoy in mainstream discourse is not down to anything they did, it has been granted to them by others, and can be taken away.
This implies that women were not the main force behind the women’s right movements or various waves of feminism in the 20th century. Is there evidence for that?
Famous suffragist Susan B. Anthony said that woman suffrage laws "probably never would have passed if it had been up to women to vote on them," and that men were actually more progressive about women's suffrage than women were (1902).
Women’s suffrage happened first in states where there were less women.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0014498313000119
Wasn't that due to powerful madams getting women the right to vote in places like Wyoming?
More options
Context Copy link
Probably the most interesting book I've ever read on the topic was Jane Jerome Camhi's Women Against Women: American Anti-Suffragism, 1880-1920.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
All of this let us assume that "political violence" is a good tactic when you need to move women's opinion.
Controlling the status quo is useful for moving women’s political opinions and applying political violence can be a good way to control the status quo.
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
I think you touch on a huge number of interesting questions in this post.
My view on why 'material' (ie 'orthodox marxist'; economic) socialist views have declined is that the average quality of life for the 'urban proletariat' is vastly higher than it was at the high point of communism. Especially if you look at the richest, most industrialized countries (where Marx predicted the revolution would happen first), ie. Germany, the UK, the US, the 'high point' for massively popular radical leftism was 1880-1930. Even by the mid-1930s in the UK (I choose because Germany saw democracy end in that time, while the US had a weird double dip recession due to extremely stupid policy by FDR) newfound prosperity had marginalized the truly radical left, which had its last great moment in the general strike of 1926.
You just can't compare the 'material conditions' of a miner in Lancashire in 1905, or a worker in a steel mill in Pittsburgh in 1890, to the conditions of a modern 'American proletarian', like a nurse, a content marketing manager, a mid-level employee of the local municipal government, or even a skilled blue collar worker like a modern steel industry worker. In 2010 pay for a fresh miner, in a huge recession, right out of high school was $70,000 a year in West Virginia. Still tough work, but much more than many 'white collar' jobs paid at that time fresh out of college (if you could get one at all), and in a state with a low cost of living.
This has happened every six months since the invention of social media, and nothing changes. As the old quip goes,
Lesbian separatism failed for a reason (well, many reasons, but one primary reason); women like men too much to commit.
Well - you actually can. If one thing they all have in common is that their only source of income is their wage/salary i.e. their own labour is their only means of survival, and they have (practically) no savings, no inherited wealth, no silver, no gold, no stocks, no livestock, own no land, and don't own any real estate besides (maybe) the one they live in, then yes, objectively speaking, according to socialist terminology, they are the proletariat. Whether they use smartphones or not, what color their collars are, whether they perform physical labour or not, is of no importance.
Marxist definition has a big 19th century assumption that the proletariat actually produces the material goods keeping the society alive and can threaten the existence of the entire system if they simply stopped.
This largely doesn’t hold anymore since most of the manufacturing is shipped to a myriad of third world countries who are willing to use extreme coercion on their workers (which was common in turn of century western countries as well and eventually got an ideological banner under European fascism) to keep the production going. If the workers of a manufacturing country somehow gets the upper hand, the country is cut out of the international trade system and replaced by one of 50 other willing nations.
Western proletariat in this system still technically fit the Marxist definition but not really. They are by and large service workers who don’t hold such power because usually they don’t make anything really crucial to the functioning of the economy. Their role is not to produce but to manage some steps of the production happening abroad, and to serve the wealthy few who got rich from being adjacent to offshoring. Their strikes can hardly cause a nuisance and are easily broken.
Labour immigration acting as inverse offshoring also has a strong effect here. Many lower level jobs are held by foreigners who don’t even have citizenship rights and are glad for the opportunity. They will gladly act as strike breakers.
So no, this isn’t really what the word proletariat was meant to apply to.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The class that is most precarious today are surplus elites. The low income high status people struggling to not fall into the working class. An electrician with a good salary and zero risk of unemployment benefits from low taxes. The sociology major or artist who makes less than an electrician is dependent on state handouts. The class represented by the modern left isn't the working class, it is the state handout class. This can either mean underclass living on welfare or art history major managing a project that is supposed to help the underclass (don't ask for statistical evidence of the efficacy of this project). Canceling student debt and more money for modern art benefits people with upper middle class parents who didn't make it to medical school yet are terrified of becoming a nurse. The modern left is in a conflict with the working class as the working class doesn't want to pay for LGBTQA+ certifications while the downwardly mobile middle class desperately needs it so they don't end up in the working class.
Especially women tend to end up with college degrees that are difficult to find employment for without left wing politics. There would be a lot fewer HR jobs if it wasn't for all the regulations that have been passed. Meanwhile the actual workers find most of the HR-stuff bizarre and alienating.
These social media campaigns work, they provide new jobs for chief diversity officers.
And this is a self re-enforcing cycle; the more it becomes a default that mentally healthy non-underclass women have degrees, the more women get degrees in communications and psychology(typically the two least rigorous majors) because women are susceptible to societal pressure and low-rigor degrees make it difficult to get a job, which means there’s outcry to make more jobs specifically for degree holders.
Feminism doesn’t help- the way to break the cycle would be to acknowledge that most but not all women should just be homemakers, yes often for men who make $65k/yr, but it isn’t the root of the problem. Pretending that everyone can be an elite is the root of the problem.
More options
Context Copy link
I think it'd be more accurate and simple to just call them intellectuals.
Elites who didn't develop some great new tech, trade their way to a career on wall street or become a surgeon.
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