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Trans/queer; the new punk
A plague is corrupting the youth of Athens. Men dress like women, sport long, dyed hair and refuse to wrestle in the coliseum or participate in polite society. Women dress like men. Both mutilate their bodies to the consternation of their elders and abscond from their parents homes in droves.
I am, of course, talking about punks. And emos, goths and metalheads if I can lump everyone into the same bucket to make my life easier.
Having a fluorescent blue footlong mohawk, tattoos, piercings and a leather jacket made you eminently unemployable outside of menial service jobs and was the fashion equivalent of telling the world to go fuck itself. ‘Posers’ would get a tiny tattoo on their ankle or something and listen to the wrong music, then cover it up for their day job. Plenty of people will be nonbinary on the weekend and just pass as whatever gender they were assigned at birth Monday-Friday. 15 years ago, the mainstream was sharing cringe videos of emos and goths instead of the ‘it is ma’am’ person.
I believe that there are genuine trans people in the world who have always felt uncomfortable in their body. Numerous posts here have already described the rapid rise in trans youth so I won’t belabor the point, but my thesis (which will no doubt tank my career when this account is doxxed) is that a large fraction of these youth are protesting the gender binary and heteronormativity rather than experiencing a true, deep-seated gender identity different from what they were assigned at birth. A man wearing a dress, long hair or makeup is rebelling against arbitrary norms around clothing/fashion that evolved for a vastly different society with different needs. Spend some time on Feeld, okcupid or other dating apps (especially within the poly community), and you’ll see many people who identify as trans or queer and aren’t so much trying to pass as telling the system to go fuck itself by refusing to conform to gender norms.
Boomers and Gen Xers decrying trans youth and trans culture are Barbara Streisanding the phenomenon; the fact that you hate it is what makes it appealing to many kids in the first place! In the same way that being a punk is a nonissue today, the future of trans is becoming a minority of the population who wear the clothes that they want, use the bathrooms they want and nobody cares. Meanwhile, we’ll all be losing our minds about otherkin or pluralkin. Or maybe this guy. This isn’t to dismiss the harms that punks and anarchists may have caused in their time; I can think of a couple small-scale riots and businesses burned in my hometown during Mostly Peaceful demonstrations that got out of hand. The trans movement undoubtedly isn’t an unalloyed good and criticism will likely be valuable to reign in the excesses as it evolves into whatever the endgame is.
History may rhyme, but it’s true that it never directly repeats itself. The punk community, obviously, placed a large emphasis on music and art. While queercore is a thing, as was PWR BTTM pre-cancellation, the trans movement clearly isn’t centered on music in the same way. This could just be a shift in protest/underground culture, as neither punk nor metal carry the same bite that they used to - I saw Rancid about 10-15 years ago and even then no amount of cocaine could give them the energy they had in the 90s. Napalm Death was a hell of a time, but it hits a bit different when the entire crowd is in their 30s-50s instead of their teens. Kids are on their phones instead of listening to the radio, hanging out at the skate park and going to punk shows - as a result, protest culture just looks different than it used to, but I believe the trans movement are the ideological inheritors of the punk movement.
The other major difference, and one place where I expect the most pushback, is that punk was anti-authoritarian, anarchist and explicitly ungovernable. On the other hand, major media outlets, schools and ‘The Cathedral’ are explicitly pro-trans. I would argue that while the progressive activists are genuine they are vastly in the minority, and opposed by an equally loud minority with inverted views if not quite the same institutional reach. The majority in the center make pro-trans noises, but at the end of the day they aren’t going to date a trans person or wear clothes that don’t match their gender.
As an aside, if I can ramble for a bit - the corollary to Cthulhu swimming left is that youth crave rebellion and transgression, only to grow up and normalize whatever was shocking to their elders. Septum piercings and tattoos were ‘big deals’ growing up, whereas I have friends who are academics in good standing with visible tattoos and piercings. Going way back, lindy hop in the Savoy ballroom 12 was viewed as scandalous, whereas now it’s largely practiced by white retirees in their 60s-70s and millenial STEMlords who like dancing predetermined patterns. Elvis shocked the nation with gyrating hips in a performance tamer than 99% of the content on instagram. Punk and metal have vastly less appeal for Zoomers in the same way that the Beatniks and Hippies held no sway over the Millenials; each generation of youth pushes for progress and wants to do something transgressive. I’ll leave it to someone smarter than I to make the case that this freedom and spirit of rebellion is core to what makes America and the West great, but I do genuinely believe it.
Anyways. I, for one, can’t wait to see 60-70 year old millennials trying to dance like this. See you all grinding on the nursing home stripper poles in a couple decades.
Obligatory statement to head off some remarks: minors being able to medically transition against the wishes of their parents makes me deeply uncomfortable. I don’t support public school children being forced to attend drag queen story hour, but have no problem with people who want to bring their own children. Most other trans-associated culture war topics (pronouns, bathrooms, clothes, whatever) I'm fine with.
I'm old enough to remember when punk happened, and society was not pushing punk the way trans issues are getting pushed now. Nobody was doing the equivalent of "everyone share your pronouns".
Trans is not punk (heck, punk is not punk anymore either, it's become a fossilised little niche, and I mean in particular the American love of creating sub-sub-divisions of everything and listing off a tick-box checklist of what each involves; this is why you guys created a magic system for DnD after all and why Brandon Blinkin' Sanderson is so praised because he has a meticulous baseball average worked out magic set of rules and by-laws in his writing).
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Transgenderism was less popular when it was more counterculture and rose in popularity after being promoted by elites.
The narrative of current progressive movements representing a reaction against a stiffing conservative order is not true. It rose after the liberal institutions promoted much more aggressively in the 2010s such agendas that they have been promoting in a weaker fashion before. They especially did this for the trans issue where there has been a bigger disparity in the fervor in 2010s and how they promoted it previously. And it rose in an age that wasn't conservative except by the standards of the progressive movement. Where conservative appeasement has been a reason for things turning in a progressive direction and not the solution. Conservatives compromising with progressives will not lead to progressives to back down, but to double down. This doesn't mean that conservatives should be purity spiraling, but they should refuse to compromise in many issues of principle and maintain wise standards.
Without such elite push, youthful transgression energy would focus on something less harmful. To the extend it is true that there is a social contagion, this is an argument that favors the conservative side in the trans debate. Even if as you argue there are also many that aren't going to seriously live the trans life. Better for people who had such inclinations for transgression, to be something like goth, punk, etc. Or even for their transgression to be limited to rebelling against illegitimate authority, like corrupt power abusing political factions, or warmongering.
An escalation of transgression isn't something that must be respected as a law of the universe when the consequences are severe enough.
To give another example. Lets say that to an extend there has been a fad of anorexia among teenage girls, or even of self harm which also relate with transgression having an appeal. Someone could claim that many of those affected might not kill themselves, or get over it. And yet it is still harmful, and more decisively harmful for a part of those affected. This kind of transgression is the kind that should be suppressed and not encouraged.
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I guess I broadly agree, but I think reducing queer to punk ellides some of the most important differences between them. Punk never demanded anything of society, like the sweeping political movements of trans. There was no imperative that I, personally, needed to change my behavior because punk exists. I was never accused of participating in a genocide against punk. And knowing something about women, I'm severely skeptical that one day soon trans will get to use all their bathrooms and no one will care.
As for the rest, I agree that trans is a sort of youth rebellion, or at least a subculture that can pretend to itself that that's what it's doing.
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Going by the STD rates in old age homes, I would strongly advise you pack wet wipes and start prophylactic antibiotics for your UTI.
Is there any truth to the "retirement homes are STD hotspots" meme?
It sounds like one of those facts that's too good to check. My bullshit detector blares loudly whenever I hear it.
Here's what I found after a quick look
https://www.forbes.com/sites/claryestes/2020/02/26/historic-high-rates-of-stis-among-older-americans/?sh=4a2b7c884c39
https://nursinghomesabuse.org/nursing-home-injuries/infections/stds/
I haven't chased all the inner links down myself. The former claims increased rates in Americans over the 55, the other claims to be corroborated by the CDC.
At any rate, I stand by what I said, if you're gyrating on poles at that age, you likely already have a UTI and don't want it getting aggravated.
I remain skeptical as this information seems low quality, but...
While seniors are much less sexually than young people, their risk per encounter is much higher as the risk of nearly all diseases skyrockets with age. So maybe 1/10th the rate of sexual activity leads to the same rate of STDs.
Equally likely, grandma getting chlamydia is a "man bites dog" story that is remarkable due to its rarity, and is therefore amplified in people's minds.
We probably agree about all this.
I'm no expert on STD rates in American care homes. I do know they have a similar reputation in the UK, and in India, ain't nobody getting poon at any age.
I agree it's low quality evidence, but it was a lead up for a low effort joke heh.
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No, if there's a new punk (and there isn't), it's "straight white male". Punk was counterculture. Trans/queer is culture. As you said, "Having a fluorescent blue footlong mohawk, tattoos, piercings and a leather jacket made you eminently unemployable outside of menial service jobs". Declare yourself trans/queer and you'll have affinity groups supporting you at high-status jobs. Trans/queer isn't rebellion; it's following fashion.
Trans individuals earn significantly less than their non-trans peers and are more likely to work low-status jobs in food service or retail.
Aren’t they also more likely to be unemployed, as well?
Yes until recently an extremely high percentage of transwomen were prostitutes and/or homeless. It’s not a high status population unless you transition once already upper middle class at least.
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Did anyone ever ran that study controlling for other mental issues, which iirc are highly comorbid?
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Can you provide a source for this claim? I don't find it hard to believe, but it warrants a lot more context than a single-sentence drive-by.
This feels familiar to the gender wage gap discussions: one side alleges their fact demonstrates prejudice and burden, the other side alleges an assortment of methodological trickery and revealed preferences...
And on the gripping hand, every major company in the US has several outreach/scholarship/early acceptance pipelines explicitly for promising young women and virtually zero such aid explicitly for men across all of them combined. I don't think there's any question that trans advocacy and institutional support exists within companies for transgender individuals - if not at all major companies, certainly at least at "high-status" ones.
Supposing you're correct that a substantial achievement gap exists between trans and non-trans individuals, this makes it all the more appealing to portray oneself as trans for all the usual affirmative action reasons, with the added bonus that, unlike pretending to be a different ethnicity, your transgender portrayal is fundamentally unfalsifiable: there is (to date) no biological evaluation that can be conducted to verify "transness." If you're a smart, talented, conscientious youth in the US, but you have trouble standing out against your enormous pool of peers and you have no affirmative action points in your favor, and you discover that you can pretend to be unfalsifiably, invisibly, inconsequentially victimized by your own body in order to cash in on a sudden surplus of free pity points (almost as good as affirmative action points, definitely better than nothing)... Even if you have to dress up, run a few circles around a shrink once a week, and pretend to be mad when people use the "wrong" pronoun, it doesn't sound all that demanding compared to what it already takes to break into a high-status job without knowing the right people. To be clear, it's not One Neat Trick to get a job or anything, it's just something that might improve your odds.
I've been begging the question, so I'll hold myself to account: what about the majority of transgender who are underperforming? Are they all faking it to stand out too? I suspect not, and I'd suggest that there's probably some social contagion and autism spectrum comorbidity effects at play, but my thinking here is underdeveloped. I have several years worth of direct evidence at my employer suggesting there exists a performatively transgender grifter class that isn't completely inept; and I think there's at least an order of magnitude more transgender people I'll never encounter who couldn't make it past the phone screening - I don't think they could keep up the grift, much less benefit from it. But even without having a very articulate theory of what's going on with the underperforming majority, I think both you and nybbler can be right at the same time, and that you're talking about two (at least, maybe more) very different cohorts, unfortunately captured under the same label.
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4072893& https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/diversity-and-inclusion/being-transgender-at-work
If you want to, you can dig around and find more. Many are the product of explicit trans advocacy, so your mileage may vary, but I haven't been able to find any sources that make the counter-case.
I'm sure someone, somewhere has done this. I also find it believable that per OracleOutlook's example, coming out as trans (spuriously or not) could get you a stay of execution as HR makes sure it has all its ducks in a row before pulling the trigger to avoid a lawsuit. Nevertheless, I raise two points:
a) I've seen this theory suggested before (for other categories as well), and I think the people advancing it are underestimating the difficulty of faking your identity for the purposes of exploiting affirmative action-type programs. Especially given that a lot of high status jobs aren't real big on work-life balance, you never get to take off the mask, ever. It's not just putting on a pantsuit for work. Also, frankly, if you're not queer you're probably going to have a hard time faking to other queer people in particular. You're not going to speak their language or understand their in-group norms, and the consequences of being outed as a faker are generally disastrous.
b) I think in general conservatives vastly overestimate the benefits to be gained by posing as trans (or most marginalized groups) and underestimate the costs. Even in nominally trans-tolerance spaces, you're often trading minor procedural benefits for a slew of implicit social disadvantages (in some cases, more than an actual trans person, since they're more likely to be making a serious effort as passing whereas you're going to be a dude named Elizabeth). And the tolerance can be extremely nominal (e.g. I work with feds and contractors in a milieu when managers putting pronouns in their email signatures coexists alongside regular anti-trans jokes).
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I know anecdotes aren't data but there are two people I know:
A software developer at my company was on a performance plan for poor quality of work and poor communication with others. Also, the thing he excelled at and the reason he was hired, web development, was no longer a thing our company needed, so he was stuck doing something he wasn't interested in. People throughout the organization constantly complained that the tools he built were terrible. His bosses were discussing firing him for years and were about to pull the trigger.
Then he transitioned, divorced his wife, left his kids behind, and told everyone he was a woman. Suddenly she was untouchable for six months. No one dared criticize her or her work for a while. Then eventually the effect wore off and she was fired about a year after transitioning.
Someone who transitioned as a teen who then worked odd jobs but had poor attendance due to the side effects of her medication. At one point she was my kids babysitter, but she would have to leave the baby alone for 30 minutes at a time while she processed her bowel movements. After she left us, she went to work for a major tech company as a game tester, where she was let go a month later due to poor attendance.
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That doesn't mean he's wrong, if you are already working in a highly paid industry, and declare yourself tans.
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I don't think simply being uncool equals punk, though. Punk is being counter-cultural plus being dramatic about it in a somewhat stylish way. Someone like Sam Hyde is punk, but your run-of-the-mill white guy isn't punk, he's just not considered fashionable by anyone.
Which is why I said there isn't a new punk.
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Indeed… “counter-culture” nowadays is basically being a white- or Asian-adjacent heterosexual male without tattoos (or at least, minimal tattoos), unapologetic and unashamed of who you are.
(Pop-) punk bands, to the extent they were famous in the 90s-10s, have their views well-represented in academia, government, and Hollywood. It’s like the Babylon Bee headline: “Man Who Agrees With The Media, Universities, Corporations, And Hollywood Thinks He's Part Of The Resistance.”
If you’re salary-grinding at XYZ Corp, it’d be far less controversial or eyebrow-raising to say to your coworkers that you’re a fan of Good Charlotte or NOFX, than to say you were a fan of Paulo Costa, Tyson Fury, or Nikola Jokic.
I guess Paola Costa got accused of battery once and Tyson Fury said some anti-gay things, but as far as I know Nikola Jokic has never been involved in any controversies other than a rough foul against one player while on the court and a retaliatory shove against another. You'd have to work at the very most extreme of extremely SJW companies for you being a fan of either of the former two men to cause you any difficulties, and as for Jokic, I can't imagine being a fan of him causing problems at literally any company in the US. The Nuggets don't even have any long-term rivalries with any other teams that could cause a problem.
As mentioned, it’s relative to (pop-) punk bands like Good Charlotte or NOFX.
We’re barely or not even a year removed from when the race-card was (successfully) played to agitate for Embiid getting the MVP instead of Jokic, to essentially zero pushback on the idpol front.
True, but that MVP decision has been widely mocked and considered a mistake by basketball fans even on Reddit. I also am not sure that it really had so much to do with race as with a reluctance by voters to give a third consecutive MVP to a guy who had, at that point, never won a championship.
You are right that being a fan of a punk band would be absolutely no problem in any corporation in the West that I can imagine, unless maybe it was Nazi punk or something. More mainstream punk is not politically controversial, although there are probably still very many workplaces where dressing like a punk would seriously impact one's ability to get hired. Modern society might be nearly completely fine with the punk movement but still, generally speaking probably most people would feel nervous if a surgeon or an airline pilot was rocking a giant blue mohawk.
Only ex-post at best, as Redditors fence-sat and waited tentatively to see that the coast was clear, especially since the Nuggets won the 2023 championship. "I'm one of the good ones, but DAE think that Jokic should had won his third MVP instead of Embiid?"
Yet, for much of the 2022-2023 season, including up through at least the midseason, Jokic was the favourite to win his third NBA MVP. In another words, at least until then and more, markets expected that voters were more than fine with rewarding Jokic his third consecutive MVP. The race-card playing that began a few weeks later corresponded to a drastic decrease in his chances.
To be fair, Embiid was on fire the last couple months of the season last year, and the race baiting wouldn't have worked if it wasn't at least a close race.
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