site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 26, 2024

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.

6
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

In the Culture Series by the sadly departed Iain M. Banks (not to be confused with his more mundane doppelganger Iain Banks) humans can decide to change sex entirely and actually become the opposite sex in a very real sense, they are exactly like someone born that sex including womb or sperm etc... Often couples that want 2 kids will take turns doing the gestating.

If humans go on long enough a perfect sex change will indeed be possible at a genetic level. Would anyone living hard in the trans debate still have a problem with it then? How could they?

I say this as someone that thinks it is ridiculous that a man can DECLARE FEMALE Michael Scott BANKRUPTCY style and crush swimming records and smackdown college girls in basketball.

If humans go on long enough a perfect sex change will indeed be possible at a genetic level. Would anyone living hard in the trans debate still have a problem with it then? How could they?

In my opinion, and the 'mainstream' tracks this as well, the current hormone mix is good enough for many transwomen to be indistinguishable from ciswomen. They may not all be 'pretty'; but the majority of them will have the hormonal and physical appearance of women as far as their secondary sex characteristics are concerned. The whole 'transwomen are women' and all that...

In general this debate is quite well settled at least from the perspective of the establishment and mainstream professional opinion. People may have issues with it, but I don't see this being overturned and I would predict that trans-rights will be even more embedded over time as the phenom becomes more normalised.

I don't. Seven or eight years ago I think it was South Carolina tried to pass a bathroom bill and the entire media and a shitload of huge companies and sports leagues and such all flipped their wigs and threatened to basically boycott the state until it caved in and the bill was gutted. You'd think they passed a bill to legalize slavery.

Nowdays, not so much. There isn't as much media hoopla, companies are way less eager to wade in, and bills have passed in a number of states. That's not the way this was "supposed" to go. If anything, the last couple of controversies have actually put the boycott shoe on the other foot.

I mean thanks to Hogwarts Legacy it's now been conclusively shown that progressives flipping out on social media over "transphobia" can be safely ignored while promoting your mass-market media product. Sure enough, Rowling sits on Twitter shitposting at trans activists all day like it's 4chan and that hasn't stopped the head of Warner Bros from publicly touting her involvement in the new HP show as a positive.

Compare that with the shitstomping Bud Light took for letting a mere hint of transgender activist marketing waft in the general direction of their product. Behind the scenes people have clearly had serious conversations reassessing what they do and do not need to care about in regard to public opinion. The amount of shits given about progs mad at transphobia has visibly plummeted.

Besides, statistically it's not like the people saying "trans women are women" would actually date one. The number of straight people willing to even countenance such a thing is essentially just a lizardman's constant, and even among the rest of the LGB community the proportion is shockingly low. This is a social/political signalling meme, not something people are living when the lights go out. Memes like that can have great power to be sure, but eventually they run their course.

Sure enough, Rowling sits on Twitter shitposting at trans activists all day like it's 4chan

I do have to laugh about that. It may not be edifying, but she didn't buckle to the pressure to self-flagellate in public as a wicked sinner and change all her views. She leaned into "okay, if I'm Lady Hitler, let me do that!" I think that's why the aggravated are throwing "she's anti-Semitic, the goblin bankers* are Jewish caricatures! she's pro-slavery, look at how the books mock Hermione trying to free the house elves!" accusations at her. Anything at all to pull her down and let them be the victors. And it's not working, and it's driving them nuts.

*They're not caricaturing anything but the gnomes of Zurich, and if you want to tell me that Swiss bankers are famously Jewish, uh I don't think so.

she's anti-Semitic, the goblin bankers* are Jewish caricatures!

I think that argument has been quietly dropped since Oct 7. Its very difficult to argue that *she's * dog-whistling by setting the goblin uprising during a year when something bad happened to a Jewish community elsewhere in Europe, but that chanting a slogan used by an openly genocidal group isn't an anti-semitic dogwhistle.

It will, of course, still be vaguely remembered on the internet that of course she's been proven to be anti-semitic and that the details don't matter, but that's just the way things always work. (And, as an aside, that sort of thing really pisses me off in a general way - that the accusations are bunk, but get forgotten and stick regardless)

I think that argument has been quietly dropped since Oct 7.

I've still seen it in the wild.