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ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   35343 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 26, 2022

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From @DuplexFields, in a thread about erasure of right-coded identities:

At my workplace two days ago, I walked in on a conversation about fast food, and one of my co-workers actually said this: “I won’t eat at Chick-fil-A because they sponsor charities that commit genocide against LGBT people in third world countries.” I looked around incredulously, but the other two people in the room just nodded sagely.

Huh. I remember hearing that conversation years ago. It probably just said "gay" instead of LGBT, but other than that it was basically identical.

At the time, Chick-fil-A's charitable arm had been in the news for anti-gay activism. The specific complaints I recall were funding conversion therapy and supporting Uganda's rising restriction of gay rights. Some quick Googling suggests these would have been Exodus International and the Family Research Council. There's a pretty unambiguous motte in which

  • Chick-fil-A donates money to WinShape Foundation

  • Winshape donates lots of that money to Exodus/FRC

  • Exodus endorses conversion therapy, including prominent support for Uganda

  • FRC lobbies (for weaker language, not against?) the US resolution condemning Uganda's bill

  • Uganda continues to debate assigning the death penalty to homosexuality

Naturally, by the time any of this was hitting the broader news, it was a messy conflation. The bailey, intentional or otherwise, was more akin to

  • Chick-fil-A donates money to evangelists and conversion therapists

  • Evangelists run missions in Uganda

  • Therefore Chick-fil-A evangelists must be running conversion therapy in Uganda

  • Uganda considered the death penalty for homosexuality

  • Therefore Chick-fil-A endorses literal genocide

And that was the state of Chick-fil-A criticism in Texas circa 2012.

By 2014, the bill had been amended to life-in-prison, passed, and overturned on procedural grounds. Exodus International had walked back their stance on conversion therapy and then also imploded. The FRC had been targeted by an incompetent gunman who intended to "to kill as many people as I could ... then smear a Chicken-fil-A [sic] sandwich on their face" in protest of Chick-fil-A's donations. This didn't seem to affect their continued domestic lobbying, including hiring rising star Josh Duggar.

It's hard to imagine this drama as anything other than dead and buried. Chick-fil-A hasn't funded these groups for a decade now, sticking to safer investments in summer camps and youth leadership. Unless I've missed some fresh drama, that conversation is a prime example of tribal signaling rather than an object-level stance, a good reason to be frustrated with the state of identity politics.

It's the end result of a cultural game of telephone, fossilized by sheer memetic fitness and alignment with the Current Thing.

Thank you for the clarity. And yes, it was definitely a tribal signaling argument.

It did have the secondary effect of giving me the gut punch of certainty that I work in “enemy territory,” which I thought I had already intellectually accepted. Honestly, it hurts, once again being on the outside, but this time in a place with geeks in tune with the geek culture I love so much.

I'm not sure a game of telephone is the right model. That happens, but for most it's a grudge, the same reason that the same people continue to boycott Hobby Lobby over Burwell even if HobbyLobby's policies no longer matter, or why a lot of gunnies have and will continue to tell Dick's Sporting Goods or even Smith and Wesson. There's some level of apology that makes up for a severe violation of your values, and these companies hadn't done it.

The reason I chose telephone is because of the second- and third-hand knowledge. In the early 2010s Chick-fil-A managed to cross the threshold into having a reputation such that ten years down the line, this conversation happened. I would be willing to bet that neither of the plaintiffs had a particular incident in mind, not in the same way as S&W haters.

I'm sure that happens to some extent, but you're probably being overly charitable to the S&W haters (or the Ruger anti-partisans before them). There were a lot of people even in the 90s and early 00's that summarized it as "compromised with gun grabbers" or even had a partially-wrong list of objections.

I mean you're right, it's just signalling. I'd bet those people who said they'd never eat at Chik-fil-A are lying or simply don't like it and happen to be telling the truth for that reason. I've seen numerous woke people just give up caring when it comes to boycotting anything they like. Sure, Chick-fil-A and In & Out* are "piece of shit" companies but they still order it anyway they just make sure to let you know that it's wrong to do it. It's also possible there are people taking a principled stand that just don't talk about it but every single person I've met, or seen online, who's talked about this issue (and recently, too) has admitted that Chick-fil-A is a bad or piece of shit company and then still bought Chick-fil-A.

People I've seen, for the most part, have no idea about the object-level reasons why someone or something is bad. It's the same for anything political, really. They get given a vague idea by someone else who summed it up and their mind is made up. JK Rowling might be a perfect example of most of these people being the most informed about the reason why they're supposed to hate, but I bet none of them know what she's actually said. They just know that she's anti-trans. But they'll still see the next Fantastic Beasts movie and buy the next Harry Potter game.

I will admit this is stronger on the left side of things. The not knowing part, but I wonder if that's partly because of their cultural dominance and maybe the fact that right side people maybe feel like they need to look everything up several times to verify it because they don't trust a left source which would be most of them. And part of the cultural dominance is keeping the signals straight and in line with each other. On Reddit right now there were about four or five coordinated stories about Jordan Peterson crying about being called an incel by Olivia Wilde. But actually he cried for incels in general but nobody read the actual article or the video it was about. Most people repeated things about him that were patently false to signal to everyone that they know he's bad news. I bet they believe it. Once it's about politics/culture war information becomes useless. It's shocking to me how cavalier people are with their hatred.

*I'm not sure that In & Out has even done the getting sullied with a game of telephone thing, but simply being openly Christian is mostly enough and the rest is filled in with whatever their head made up, incidentally this is why Chris Pratt is a "piece of shit". I've heard this about him several times. But I bet you they still see the next Chris Pratt movie and then make a big point to complain about him when they don't even know what he's bad for except that he's Christian and/or Republican.

JK Rowling might be a perfect example of most of these people being the most informed about the reason why they're supposed to hate, but I bet none of them know what she's actually said. They just know that she's anti-trans. But they'll still see the next Fantastic Beasts movie and buy the next Harry Potter game.

I have been a little disappointed in the anti-Rowling hypocrisy I see. I remember one thing that rubbed me the wrong way a while back. I was at a Ren Faire, and one of the performers made a "You're a wizard, Harry" joke and immediately followed it up with something along the lines of "Don't worry folks, that's only time we'll mention that TERF shit."

Like, either own the fact that you're making a Harry Potter joke or don't make one at all. Making the joke, and then virtue signaling that you shouldn't have made it and won't make one again seems like trying to eat your cake and have it too.

I've actually read Rowling's essay and tweets, and while I disagree with much of what she says, I can at least understand the emotional place she's coming from as a victim of abuse at the hands of a man. I'm not thrilled about the effect she's having on the conversation about trans people in Britain, but I haven't made the decision to boycott her.

Practically, I couldn't really "boycott" her nowadays anyways. The first Fantastic Beasts movie didn't wow me and I never saw the others, and most of her post-Harry Potter wizarding lore (particular her American lore) has been underwhelming to me.

I think I'll just do a matching donation to a pro-trans charity if I ever buy any official Harry Potter merch going forward. (I already did this on a recent trip in London, where Google guided me to King's Cross station, and I decided to pop into the Platform 9 3/4 store because I had time to kill before the train arrived.)

There's definitely multiple groups at play here.

You might well be right to make that bet; I don't know what the relative frequency is like. But there are sincere boycotters just like there are for Hobby Lobby or Nike. Our ridiculous level of prosperity means that most companies are selling commodities--a substitute is readily available. That can make it easy to switch to something else, and I think that keeps the number of hypocritical evangelists low.

Not understanding object level concerns is a separate issue. Tribalism is a powerful and convenient heuristic and really, what good does knowing Chick-fil-A trivia do...for anyone who isn't an activist? You only need to be ready to debate JKR's stance if you are trying to lead the charge. Otherwise, it's enough to follow your friend group.

JKR also happens to be a good example of how right-wing boycotts can look pretty different. It didn't take a Twitter hashtag to get Christian social groups denouncing her books. There is an industry of Christian reviewers and commentators who will tell you, in whatever level of detail you want, why a movie or book is un-Christian. I don't think the right is somehow more inclined to look things up. Easy heuristics are good enough for everybody.

See also Too Good To Check.

As a final note, I have never bothered to find an article that explains the problem with Chris Pratt beyond "he's into a culty church." But my sister was able to give a detailed summary of his comments about his autistic son to make it clear why she didn't like him. This was in the context of her choosing not to watch the Terminal List. So n = 1, at least some people are capable of committing to the bit.

A Google guy told me a story a few years ago about going on a conference road trip. Stopping at Chick-fil-A was their "what happens in Vegas" moment .

What a crazy and stifling environment.

It's hard to imagine this drama as anything other than dead and buried. Chick-fil-A hasn't funded these groups for a decade now, sticking to safer investments in summer camps and youth leadership.

I had thought that the drama was dead and zombified rather than buried, but perhaps it really is buried by now, from seeing this news about Chick-fil-A opening in Boston last year, 9 years after Boston's mayor had publicly announced that Chick-fil-A would be kept out of Boston specifically for their perceived anti-gay politics.

Wait, is that legal? Can the mayor of a city just target a specific business on ideological grounds like that?

No, but chic fil a is a predominately southern chain that wasn’t about to expand into Boston anyways.

Probably not

That was 10 years ago (and Chick-Fil-A did indeed open more Chicago locations). Today, due to the American Bar Association's Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion policy, Chick-Fil-A would find that they could not get a lawyer as it would be unethical to represent them.

Oh nonsense. Go show me an actual state bar code of ethics that says it is unethical to represent actual racists, etc. You won't find one. And I guarantee that they have a lawyer in this suit

I don’t think the 1A covers businesses like that.

The 1A definitely applies to cities, not just feds and states. It has a complicated history with corporate speech such as advertising and solicitation.

As long as residents can get a service somewhere relatively close, it appears restrictions are okay, even on businesses serving constitutional rights.

It depends on what action the mayor would actually take. Writing a letter about how a business isn't welcome in the town? Probably fine. Denying them a permit or otherwise taking some adverse action under color of law? Probably a 1st amendment violation if the basis is their speech.

IANAL, but what laws would you expect to be in the books that that would violate?

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