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 -
Australian boys make spreadsheet of girls attractiveness, national media, federal minister and state premier rush to condemn them. I'm pretty surprised this got any media attention, doesn't it seem trivial? This all happened on some discord server, it's not like they were parading it around. Does anyone think this would happen in their country?
I can't see how 'unrapeable' could possibly be a threat. Saying someone is vulnerable could be a threat, calling someone invulnerable is not... OK it's very rude, suspend the ringleaders - do police need to be involved? There's a certain level of hysteria here, you get the sense that the male principal fears for his job unless he takes this as seriously as humanly possible.
It would be pretty crushing to be labelled unrapeable or 'get out' by your male peers, though I don't see how a counsellor could help.
Context: Australian media and govt have been panicking about male-on-female violence for a few weeks now. We recently had a mass stabbing by a mentally ill man, who targeted mostly women. Accordingly, male on female violence has increased statistically and the government has thrown a lot of money at various NGOs.
Additionally, there has been a lot of concern about Tate corrupting the minds of the youth. So this lets the media hit two talking points at the same time.
A related matter - youtuber argues that ranking women's attractiveness upsets the Byzantine system of female intrasexual competition, where every queen is praised as a 10/10 regardless of ugliness. I found the video pretty decent albeit a few minutes longer than it needed to be. It features the infamous Gorlock the Destroyer claiming to be a 10/10 (sarcastically?), which does make you think. There might be something to it - ranking women by attractiveness seems more dangerous than one might naively imagine.
In the male-dominated patriarchal society of the distant past, accusing men of being bastards or having incorrect lineage was a very serious matter. Legitimacy and preventing cuckoldry was deeply important to men, it informed the whole structure of European politics, inheritance and succession. Perhaps in the emerging future it's female sexual dynamics that will take priority and we'll see more of this kind of thing.
Premier (woman): "This pattern of violence against women — not only does the act of violence have to stop, but these displays of disrespecting women. Like, it's just disgraceful."
Lèse-majesté: an offence or defamation against the dignity of a ruling head of state or of the state itself.
I'm not sure it's as complicated as that. Observing girls from a distance and sexually commenting on them is pretty archetypical "creep" behaviour in most people's minds. You could remove the ranking element - these guys could have been compiling a list of all the girls who they fantasise over and dream of naked - and the reaction would still probably have been "eww" from most of the girls involved (unless the guys were particularly good-looking or had high social status). Throw in the concept of some of these girls being "un/rapable", the dominance of progressive ideology in schools and the media, how easily this can be framed in terms of the widespread panic about the influence of people like Tate, and maybe a slow news week, and I'm not surprised this event got picked up in the media.
I think you're getting at an important point. People don't like to think that others are doing things to them mentally. We make a compromise - don't make your thoughts other people's problems. If you want to masturbate to a classmate, you can't be stopped, just don't tell them you did that.
Of course, the pronoun/trans thing is a deliberate and willful violation of that compromise.
(That the faction most supportive of breaking that compromise in that way is apoplectic when anyone else does it is... illustrative.)
The appropriate analogy would be "don't tell a trans person you don't think they're the gender they claim to be", not "don't tell people their evaluation of your sex doesn't match what you say it is".
No, this is more "you can think you're [opposite gender] in your own head/in private, but there's no valid reason to do that in public outside of wanting to make it someone else's problem".
Going out and screaming "it's ma'am" in people's faces and insisting that "because I think I'm a woman, that means I get to be classed as one in their sporting events" are, in my opinion, central examples of "making your thoughts other peoples' problems", and is as intentionally destructive/disruptive as publicly announcing you're using hot-or-not on people when they interact with you. (Same thing with casual racism/sexism/ageism, come to think of it.)
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