site banner
PaperclipPerfector  27d ago (text post)   26060 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 22, 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.

5
Top Bottom New Old Controversial
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

There's a lot of hilarious edge cases that proposal invokes -- could a gay man defend his partner's honour by claiming he just sucked at topping, missed the button every time? Was too short, just let the tip in? The Texas law in question prohibited stimulation with a sex toy (by a same-sex partner), but I've never seen evidence it was enforced; are we just giving up on that here? What happens with a penis sheathe? Strap-on over chastity cage (50+ images on e621)?

There's a lot of hilarious edge cases that proposal invokes

"Constructive Possession" should create lots of hilarious edge cases as well. They become less hilarious when the government simply deploys a YesChad.jpg.

To be clear, this is not an endorsement, but rather an attempt to highlight the fact that the "struggle" inherent in law enforcement is not an innate feature of law enforcement, but rather a choice the enforcers are making. The truth value of the statement "This would be impractical to enforce" often smuggles in a number of assumptions about the nature of enforcement.

Yeah, that's absolutely fair, and 'constructive possession' is in many ways just the tip of the iceberg, as bad as the shoestring machine is. Stuff like autokeycard, the various recent regulatory changes, Abramski, so on, very much show the limits of textual formalism as a control protecting the actually disfavored, even to the point of blocking defendants from raising the text.

For the first type of edge cases, the same thing as sucking at marksmanship or having an insufficient weapon to penetrate the target. For the second type, are you arguing that piv sex in condom is not piv sex?

eta: chastity cages should be outlawed separately, for the reasons of their misandristic nature.

For the first type of edge cases, the same thing as sucking at marksmanship or having an insufficient weapon to penetrate the target.

Charging someone with attempting sodomy, if we're taking the metaphor that direction, kinda just makes it funnier.

For the second type, are you arguing that piv sex in condom is not piv sex?

Dunno. There are sheathes that are like condoms in being full-enclosed (still not rated or tested as contraceptives, though I'd expect that regulatory reasons drive that more than practical ones), but most of them range from an eight-inch to more than a quarter-inch of silicone all around. Their point is to alter texture, appearance, and/or girth/length, but especially since some are dual-use as dildos or even intended for women or trans men to wear, the line between stimulating the prostate with a sex toy and stimulating it with the top's dick isn't very clear.

At least to my intuitions, a condom is very much the same underlying sex act, but there's a point where a gal wearing the same sex toy can hit the same button that makes it a lot harder to call the penis doing the stimulation. But my intuitions aren't anywhere near yours.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats