site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 27, 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.

11
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

what do you think will be mainstreamed after heterosexual anal intercourse?

We already know the answer to that: BDSM/fetishes, "ethical non-monogamy", analingus, camming, sugar babying, and transgenderism and its associated tumblrisms. The question is what's left? Pedos, furries, unironic incest, cyber relationships with chat apps, and the clickbait of people who want to either marry themself or their favourite inanimate object. The consistently conspicuous-by-its-absence taboo seems to be celibacy, which has become half a by-word for school shooting lone wolf terrorism.

Oh, whoring - sorry, I should say 'sex work' - like camming and sugar babying etc. are practically mainstream, doesn't everyone have an OnlyFans account? Poly is just old-fashioned harems with a twist for the neurotic (sorry, any poly people on here, but that's the impression I get from the fawning articles in the media about how Tasha and Jason and Philomel live in bliss with their various boy and girl friends and secondary partners and making it all work because they're so free-spirited and adventurous).

Incest? Maybe, although even with occasional sympathetic treatments in movies and books, that still seems to be a bridge too far for most people.

Furry? Mmmm - still a bit too niche and likely to be confused with bestiality, which again is still a bridge too far.

Pedos? I could see that, with all the spadework being done right now around MAPs. After all, if we say 16 year olds are old enough to decide to have sex, can we really say they should only have sex with other 16 year olds and not a 30 year old? And if 16 and 30 are acceptable, what about 14 and 30? Constant dripping wears away the stone, although I think the really hard stuff about "why yes I do want to fuck 6 year olds" will always be very, very difficult to slip under the radar.

Once again, dissident right hammering on "optimal fertility age" and "men consistently pick 18 when 18 is the lowest age on the poll" is conspicuously ignored, while Janet showing your teens sterile corporate memphis tab A into slot B material is evidence of them wokes laying the spadework. Never mind that the groupie rockstar culture is dead since the 90s and today is more like "you're not adult nor ready to have sex with adults until 25, and even then more than 5 years of age gap is ew".

The dissident right is a very small group of people on the internet. I won’t say they have no influence, but they do have much less influence over the normie or trumpy Republican establishment than wokes have over the DNC. Even very conservative republicans mostly think teen marriage is an unfortunate but sometimes the best of a bunch of bad options scenario.

That's what I mean, half of those are already mainstream or bordering on it and the other half are either radioactive or some form of retreat or exhile from the whole arena of sex and relationships.

Some of these things are not like the others.

In particular, expecting celibacy to show up on the hedonic treadmill is kind of missing the point. But fetish culture delivers; chastity and edging surely have their own devoted subcultures, not to mention the fad of cuckoldry.