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 -
A (potentially former?) staffer for allegedly Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Maryland) is making news for filming gay sex in the Senate hearing room. He also, allegedly, yelled "Free Palestine" at Rep. Max Miller (R-Ohio).
I include the last sentence only to clarify the full context for a statement the staffer posted on his LinkedIn about the matter:
I'm struggling with his statement because it seems like the "filmed sex tape at work in the Senate hearing room on Amy Koobuchar's desk" is more of the issue here than the staffer's sexuality itself, but the language used insinuates that he is using his sexuality as a defense for an act that straight people also probably could not have "gotten away" with.
The utter lack of understanding of consequences is also throwing me a little bit. Culture war discussions about sexuality dip into accusations of degeneracy and pleasure-seeking not associated with, necessarily, love that this video emulates. This video will of course be used to further those accusations onto "all gays" instead of the particularly privileged ones who work in the Senate.
That seems pretty common, though. There is quite a bit of "but it's OK when straight people do it, bigot" directed at opponents of gay pride parades and the like.
Obviously the uncharitable explanation is that gay men are all perverts, but that's not the sort of thing that, well actually I guess it could be a quality contribution if you put enough effort into it, but it usually isn't and I don't particularly want to do it. It's also not a particularly interesting explanation. I think it's more productive to discuss what the charitable explanations are- not because I like gays, but because they're probably not all just evil, that's rarely a good model of anybody.
Instead I think there's an experiential gap. Gay male culture is simply accepting of things within itself(very public displays of sexuality, harassment-ish behavior, teen sex, extreme promiscuity, etc) which are controversial to verboten among straight people. I think that neither gays nor their straight allies are aware of both sides of this- gays that it's not considered acceptable to simulate sex in public in the straight community, straight allies that the gay community doesn't care about such things or understand why anyone would. And obviously that has relevance for gay pride parades- a bunch of straight people parading down main street doing the exact same things would get arrested for indecent exposure and public nudity, and I don't think the pro-pride-parades side is willing to acknowledge that. But it also has relevance for all sorts of other things; the gay stuff in schools is controversial, but sex ed was hot culture war when it was "sometimes when a mommy and daddy love each other very much....", too. And in the current case, waving identity about like a shield probably will not save his job, but it might allow him to get a job at some LGBT NGO or other, because there's just a big experiential gap about how big of a faux pas it is.
One easy escape is to just say that most men are perverts, but straight men are usually checked by the preferences of women. I don't think that's a complete explanation, but I do think it's mostly true and goes quite a ways towards explaining many of the differences between gay, lesbian, and straight sexual behavior and promiscuity. When I consider how I would have behaved in my early 20s if I had a group of attractive women that were on the same page as me, yeah, it would probably be about how the typical gay guy spends their early 20s.
If you look at actual (past or present ) patriarchal societies they don't have the straight equivalent of gay pride parades. In fact public displays of sexuality are more taboo than they are in the West. So I don't think it's the preferences of women that are keeping men from allowing public orgies.
I might be the wrong audience here (not a big fan of the pride concept in general) but it seems to me the most pro pride people tend to be straight females…
Noticed this too and confuses me. Even if they normally would react to sexual aggressive/leering men with "thats creepy". Maybe they feel like a tourist viewing a pack of lions on a safe Safari?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Patriarchy doesn't mean "imposed by men on women" It means men take the role of leaders. Like most culture it's primarily transmitted from one generation to the next through women teaching their children. I think it's wrong to model it as maximizing what men want although that is basically how unsophisticated feminists use the term.
More options
Context Copy link
I think this is a misunderstanding of patriarchy- it's the dominance of specifically older men. Younger men do not typically benefit under a patriarchy; patriarchal men prefer the interests of their daughters to those of their potential sons-in-law when those diverge.
You can model patriarchy as a straight man-woman class conflict, but you'd just be wrong. It's patriarchy, not andrarchy. And indeed, a lot of the supposed "feminist victories against patriarchy" were actually driven by younger men smashing systems of patriarchal control intended to keep them from creating scandals with young women; the sexual revolution* in particular was more young men rebelling against their elders with women along for the ride than it was driven by women.
*I'm referring to the second one, if it isn't obvious, but I do think that you can make a coherent case for the first sexual revolution being driven by the desires of returning soldiers more than by early feminism.
Yep. I'd take straight up honest to goodness matriarchy where we are ruled by 60+ year old grandmas over the current status quo, and I personally wouldn't expect there to be any significant difference between a proper patriarchy or a proper matriarchy.
More options
Context Copy link
I think there's something to that but it's still not that women are the ones discouraging high male sex drives, in that case it would be older men reigning in younger men. Though really I think the dynamic is less old vs young it's more that men of all ages have an interest in stopping their female relatives from being pumped and dumped for a variety of reasons. Like if a young man became the patriarch of a family because his dad died young he's not going to let other men sleep with his unmarried female relatives just because he's young and also wants to sleep around.
On the one hand you could say that younger men are harmed by the patriarchy since they don't get to sleep around as much but on the other hand they don't have to worry that their bride has a high body count because her family wouldn't let that happen. It's mutually beneficial in the same way that speed limits are: it limits my freedom to drive at 120mph through a school zone but the upside is that neither can anybody else.
That's just women arranging for the older men to control young men on women's behalf. Women are still ultimately responsible for it.
Based on what? Women have quite a lot power today and they aren't using it to stop younger women from sleeping around.
Because of ideological blinders, though. It's not grannies that have that power; it's specifically credentialed feminists.
More options
Context Copy link
Active attempts to degrade the pool of people younger women would normally be sleeping with (through the standard attacks on young men) is still an attempt to stop this.
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
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link