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 -
Freddie De Boer and the Limits of Anti-Classificationist Discourse
Typically in my life my views on racial law have tended towards the Anti-Classificationist rather than the Anti-Subordinationist school, or I suppose to represent all sides on the Motte to the Hierarchical or Purity schools of thought. In my mind, discrimination and group conflict follow naturally once you define groups, and therefore the best thing to do if your goal is to avoid discrimination is to avoid formally classifying groups. Religious denomination used to be a very heavily classified, tracked, and studied American demographic. We used to have a Catholic Seat, and then a Jewish Seat on the SCOTUS; now we have only a single Protestant on the Court, with seven Catholics and one Jew. And forget anyone being able to tell the difference between a Presbyterian and a Babtist; I once completely tanked a job interview lunch by asking a woman who had just told me she was on the board of her local Methodist church what exactly the "method" was and she couldn't tell me. Ketanji Brown Jackson was widely celebrated for increasing the Diversity of the court, but almost no mainstream news outlet mentioned that her appointment was striking a blow against Hebrew and Papist over-representation, nor has the decline of the Jewish justices from three seats to just one sparked a series of hand-wringing op-eds about rising antisemitism. Other contrasting examples include Hutus and Tutsis, where the colonial creation of the categories cemented existing divisions and created conflict. Or how people with Norman surnames still out-earn other Englishmen. While the Norman descendants have faced group conflict on terms of social class, modern Britain did not face a large racial clash, because it was not a classification used by English law, and so you don’t have the congealing of the identity groups that creates conflict.
However, reading Freddie’s latest has me noticin’ a little. The core of the piece is asking why the liberal media tolerates Tyson while continuously reviling somebody like Woody Allen:
And the difference seems so blindingly obvious that it’s punching me in the face, and that’s sort of ruining my anti-classicationist plan. Ctrl-F-ing the article: zero hits for White, zero hits for Black, zero hits for Religion, zero hits for Jew, zero hits for Ethnic-, zero hits for African. Freddie doesn’t mention the possible role that race would seem to play, even to refute it. And in my mind this would be perceived as a failure by either side of the political spectrum.
If one views the media as broadly anti-White, one would say that Allen is still in trouble because he is white, while Tyson is forgiven because Tyson is Black, and PC society demands that we forgive the Black criminal and celebrate Black Excellence. Or, at the very least, that weenie turbolibs at TheRinger are uncomfortable criticizing Black celebrities in ways that might code as racist if taken out of context and uncharitably, and that in an abundance of caution the hosts at TheRinger choose to criticize white rather than Black celebs, softer targets.
If one views society as broadly anti-Black, one would say that Allen is still in trouble because Allen’s victims are white, while Tyson is easily forgiven because Tyson only committed violence against Black women. That the act of forgiving Black men for violence against Black women is itself Anti-Black, it is the failure to provision public goods for Black communities; the protection provided by legal and social sanction against those who commit crimes against Black Women, who if only for reasons of proximity will always be primarily Black men. Hence Bill Cosby eventually got his, he drugged and sodomized white women in between as well.
But neither side will see much logic in DeBoer’s steadfast refusal to acknowledge the obviously relevant facts around the cases he is comparing.
Personally, I find it definitely relevant. Tyson is forgiven thanks to a particularly grim version of the soft bigotry of low expectations, combined with racism against his victims by race and by class. Black celebrities are allowed to act in ways that turbolibs won’t tolerate in white men. White feminists love to start panics around college campus rape or similar problems, while ignoring that women in the college age-range who don’t attend college are more likely to be victimized. The prime targets of Feminism are men like Brett Kavanaugh, while they ignore the much more numerous and more violent men like Chris Brown, because for your average Wesleyan Critical Theorist she is under very little threat from men like Chris Brown and much more from men she actually interacts with. Your media or academia or twitterati feminist will never hang out with anyone who looks or acts like Mike Tyson, she does hang out with people who look and act like Woody Allen or Brett Kavanaugh.
It's all making me question some of my anti-classification bona fides.
But there have been white celebrities hit with similar charges and gotten away with it, ie. the multiple rock stars who at least have been accused with statutory rape (or have admitted it). Bowie, featured in the article, is a good example: when he died, sure, there were some stories about how Bowie was actually problematic for this, but the clear majority of things written about him were about his genius, charisma, changes in styles, trailblazer status etc. On the other hand, when Michael Jackson died, there was comparably more stuff about pedo allegations, even though the courts had found him innocent.
I think the fundamental difference here isn't race, but simply coolness. If you're a famous athlete, rock star etc. you can beat the allegations in the court of public opinion; on the other hand, dweeblord extraordinaire Woody Allen and the unmitigated weirdo that was "Wacko Jacko" era Michael Jackson had a considerably tougher time. In recent years Jackson's musical talents have once again resurfaced as his main defining factor, too, since the Wacko Jacko stuff that was omnipresent when I was a child is no longer remembered as well.
Or as I put it, jocks and class clowns can get away with bad behaviour, nerds can't (even if they did nothing wrong).
Plenty of bad behavior happens among the Silicon Valley elite. And although journalists attempt to make hay of it occasionally (ew gross why is that nerd having orgies with recent high school graduates), most people shrug and look the other way.
As much as I find the statement itself reprehensible, I think there's a kernel of truth in an infamous quote from a former president:
High status lets people (almost exclusively men, in this case) get away with a lot, in part because people are willing to put up with more to be with someone high status: Christian Grey's romance plays don't work for anyone who isn't a hot, young billionaire. The quid pro quo is implicit, and rarely spoken about, although I seem to recall a few blow-ups in recent memory where it seemed part of the drama involved (by deceit or misreading) mistakes about how high-status one party was.
And nobody really complains because it's hard to declare that behavior with "groupies" (for lack of a better word) is categorically non-consensual.
I think that one is more because "consent" (which in reality means "the prostitute gets paid for her work", which is why women who work this way push so hard for "non-consentual" to mean "I regret it because I sold at a price that was too low/the
jianjohn could have afforded more, and State power should be used to fix my mistake") can't actually cover the cases where it's the women who are trying to put a notch in the bedpost as an end in itself (there's no real exchange of goods going on there, it's nothing but risk for the woman biologically speaking, and it devalues her product [so to speak/for those that care]- 'having fucked a rock star' must be a serious intrinsic reward, and when we consider the average groupie is more likely to try to impress female peers rather than older men at that age, it very much is).It's hard for a lot of people to deal with that because it's (correctly?) assumed to be a malfunction; grown women seducing boys is another one (for the same reason that it runs counter to biology).
It is odd. I had a classmate (in the honors college no less) that was very open and bragged a lot about have fucked Fred Durst of all people (this was 2003 mind you). She was bragging about this mostly to men as far as I could tell. It was very off-putting and it was hard to take her (and the honors program) seriously after that.
So basically, like any man would do if he got laid at 13?
I dunno, I have a hard time complaining about either of those, outside of those who don't ever get over the fact that happened (more difficult for younger people due to both youth and a lack of general opportunity for the sex they want); liberation is good, but sex is still protected/internal or private.
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