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.
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.
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
More options
Context Copy link