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 -
Woman here, and I started out not believing that "men need to feel intellectually superior to women" but absolutely agree with it now. The experiences that tilted me that way:
As a woman, I have had many conversations with men where I curiously asked them many questions about their intellectual areas of expertise. I'm a pretty knowledgeable person and in many of those cases also had credentialed expertise to bring to the table, comparable to what the man was bringing. Following their own monologues about intellectual topics, not one of those men, literally nobody, ever asked me a curious question that indicated their parallel interest in eliciting information from me. Indeed, no non-related man has ever asked me a curious information-eliciting question about anything in my whole life.
In those intellectual conversations where I did chime in with information or ideas of my own unasked, male conversation partners would consistently nod dismissively, then redirect the conversation back to some topic where they could educate me.
As somebody who loves to learn about stuff in conversations, I try really hard to make sure I'm facilitating a real exchange of high-quality information where I know my stuff and the other party is genuinely interested. I have encountered so many men bloviating on and on, with obvious pleasure, about topics where they actually knew very little, to visibly indifferent conversation partners, that it's hard not to conclude that this is actually a dominance behavior intended to make them feel high-status by capturing someone's polite attention, rather than a genuine enjoyment of intellectual contact. Men seem to do this substantially more with female conversation partners.
I have had several disturbing conversations where the principle "most men dislike argumentative women" played out as the man getting visibly angry and breaking off the conversation as soon as I indicated my interest in offering (polite, calm, well-evidenced) counterarguments to whatever they were contending. I have known maybe 3 men who could handle a sustained good-natured debate with me, a very polite lady, without getting angry and insecure and needing to stop, and I loved those dudes so much and desperately miss the ones no longer in my life. Overall, if in an intellectual debate space like this one somebody can unapologetically assert that he dislikes women when they argue with him, I'd say that's pretty suggestive that many men are uncomfortable facing the possibility of being intellectually bested by a girl.
Or rather that the experience of arguing with women is, among men, a universally recognized miserable time and bad idea.
More options
Context Copy link
It infuriates me that many men are too fucking stupid to ask others questions. It's a pattern I see too often myself and hear about secondhand all the time.
When it comes to "debating" women, I have a tough time. The smartest and most well informed women I know will still retreat into parroting propaganda and then - when challenged too hard on it - devolve into naked emotional appeals or literally crying.
Men do this too, to be sure, but I have a tougher time keeping a discussion detached and level headed. Over the years this means I'm just not inclined to engage at all, I'd rather nod and smile.
A second relevant Hanania has hit the thread: “Women's Tears Win in the Marketplace of Ideas.”
More options
Context Copy link
If a woman literally cries, her male opponent loses the debate. If a man literally cries, he loses the debate. That's a pretty major driver of things.
Physical performance of aggression works exactly the same for men as tears do for women, though. A man of 30+ years raises his voice in that sudden deep "dad intensity" mode, makes a sudden threatening physical move in an argument, then walks off, and people will conclude he's really passionate about this topic and he, on the whole, wins the day. A woman raises her voice and clenches her fists, people will titter to themselves about that shrill bitch who is literally crazy, and she's presumed to have lost.
I guess it's possible the male mode doesn't work as well on the internet, given its reliance on nonverbal intimidation rather than words, but it's absolutely a thing and I've seen it work for men on many occasions.
I would immediately dismiss both the opinion and the character of a man, especially one over 30, who acted like this. I would avoid conversation with them in the future, and if possible, even being in their presence at all.
More options
Context Copy link
No, it really doesn't. A guy can try something aggressive against another man, but if his opponent isn't intimidated he loses. If he walks off, the impression those remaining get is "what an asshole!". If he tries it against a woman he loses regardless.
More options
Context Copy link
I guess aggressively calling people cuck faggots works on 4chan? You can even literally draw your opponent as the cowed virgin and yourself as a physically imposing chad.
More options
Context Copy link
This seems to me more fantastical than Lord of the Rings. In my experience, a man who did that would be deemed a pathetic insecure loser who continued his losing ways by losing this particular argument. The only times when physical performance of aggression could be said to "win the day" would be when that physical aggression literally results in some literal victory, such as punching out the bad guy or something. And greater age would be exacerbating, because a man who's 30+ is expected to be more mature than one that's <29 and thus more capable of maintaining composure or arguing his case using reason instead of force.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
This is a pretty good allegory for life in general.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
One of the best allegorical moments of my life:
I was managing a Rock Climbing gym at the time, most of the part time workers were local teenagers. We had just gotten a MoonBoard for the gym and set it up, two of the kids Romeo and Juliet stayed after closing up with me to play with our new toy, both seniors in high school while I was a college grad at the time. Romeo was a pretty good hobby climber who had gotten into it with some buddies a year or so ago, Juliet had parents who climbed back in college before becoming bankers and had been climbing since she was 8, competing in youth level since she was 14.
Now the thing about rock climbing is, and why I recommend it to parents so much, is that it is possibly one of the more gender equal real sporting events. All the very best Pros are men, there are grades that no woman has ever climbed, but anywhere below the pro level it is mixed. You are more likely to run into men who are really good climbers in your gym than you are to run into women, but there will be women in the top grades too, and until you are climbing the top grades you will run into women who stomp you. Romeo was a good climber, but Juliet was much better. And worse, while Romeo and I hacked our way up routes with lots of swinging and cutting feet and grunting, Juliet would glide gracefully up the same climb. What she lacked in reach and upper body strength, she more than made up for in balance, flexibility, and coordination. Her technique was perfect. She danced up the wall, while I yanked myself up.
Romeo was a sweet kid generally, well behaved, responsible, a nerdy Fillipino with great SATs who later went to USC, we called each other "Grandpa" and "Grandson." Liberal politics, very respectful of the girls on staff generally (this was a regular problem we dealt with regarding other male staff). He liked climbing a lot, took to it in that classic nerdy-kid late bloomer way that I took to CrossFit and later climbing, it gave him a venue to be athletic despite not being on the football or basketball teams at his high school, it helped his self esteem as he got better.
As Juliet beat him, you could see his self esteem imploding, and he started acting out in ways I normally didn't see. He started making increasingly offensive jokes in a way that was out of character for him, he was almost bouncing around with nervous energy after each time he failed a climb and Juliet flashed it, cracking dick jokes or sex jokes at every half-opportunity. It got progressively worse as the problems went on. When he started in on Jew jokes ("Bet climbing a fence would have helped you get out of Auscwitz" or something like that) I had to ask him to help me with something in the storage room and tell him to knock it off, then told them I had to turn off the lights and I was headed home.
There's a saying I've seen in the Manosphere that women are human beings and men are human doings. Women are valuable in their own right, or at least as objects of sexual and romantic desire. Men are valuable only in the things they do. Disregarding debating its truth value, this is a deep insight into the insecurity of the male psyche, how we perceive the world. Every man hangs his self esteem on something he does. Romeo hung it in part on rock climbing. He didn't have some big crush on Juliet, as I recall, but she was a girl his age who would have been appropriate for him to hook up with, and being a healthy teenage boy he had probably thought about it. She had value inherently as a cute girl, his own value came from the things he did. Then, it turns out she is also better at the things he did, his sense of his own value imploded.
So:
Makes a lot of sense to me. You've taken away their Doing while keeping your Being, it throws off the order of the universe for them, they have no place anymore.
I'll note the irony that I wrote multiple paragraphs to explain a woman's own experiences to her.
I like this comment because of the avalanche of "multiple things can be true at once" it evidences;
Romeo was an otherwise good kid who didn't know how to handle his emotions in one specific context and - were this an office instead of a rock climbing gym - was certainly risking being fired with, perhaps, a lot of downstream career damage.
@FiveHourMarathon demonstrated excellent leadership and tact in the storeroom-lights-out rouse ... but may have technically run a foul of HR policy in my imagined office-centric parallel universe
Men being "human doings" is absolutely how many males self-conceive yet revealing that to women frequently elicits some sort of variation on "oh, get over it! Learn to love yourself." (Side note: this is where a lot of modern psychology utterly fails to help men. Build That Shed)
Male performance related failure absolutely should be met with a constructive "hey, I lost, but I can get better / I can take pride in my level of effort etc." yet will also have a some amount of "HOLY SHIT I AM A FUCKING WASTE OF SPACE" as part of that process.
I don't think you can really separate those two things. Romeo was 17 or 18 at the time, at least four years and a lot of maturing out from any white collar corporate work. It would be a very different act for a 22 or 23 year old college grad than it was for a teenager; and different again to see from 35 year old. Maturing is a real thing that happens!
That's a reason I chose to avoid building a career in the white collar corporate world. Though I wouldn't say it was leadership, just being a few years older and recognizing my feelings from a few years ago in my grandson, and knowing he needed to cool off.
Absolutely. The problem is that showing vulnerability as a man never helps bring you up, only brings you down. This is helpful when people perceive you as too high up for them, when they already like you and especially when they're a little intimidated by you, vulnerability brings you back into level with them and they like you better than ever. But when you're already below them, it just drags you down further.
My view of healthy male self esteem mostly resembles what Rao calls "Losers" in the Gervais Theory of Management or whatever it was. That we label the same philosophy of life as "healthy" or "losers" probably says a lot about at least one of us. Healthy male self esteem comes from having a variety of Doings in one's life, a variety of accomplishments in one's history, which one can fall back on. I have been mogged by a hot tattooed 100lb female at the crag flashing my project; it doesn't lead me to implode or lash out because I have confidence that other things I've done, professionally or personally. I know I have a beautiful wife, got into elite schools, deadlifted a good weight, so when any one of those things goes wrong I think of the others. When you have nothing to fall back on, every injury kills you.
10,000% The only thing that actually matters in life.
The one thing you can really know. The iron never lies to you.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Your story makes me vividly imagine cutting her safety equipment and hearing the snapping sound as she breaks her neck.
I'm not a good man.
Well, this certainly isn't a good comment. Banned for a day.
Can you tell me which rule I broke, and whether the decision to ban me came before or after identifying that rule?
Unkind, unnecessarily antagonistic, not writing like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion, egregiously obnoxious, and multiple user reports.
I banned you for breaking the rules, so yeah, the decision to ban you came after identifying the rules you were breaking. But the case was, as you can see, wildly overdetermined. Coming back to open a rules lawyering session (as your aim appears to be here) is not going to benefit this account's longevity, though.
You misunderstand me if you think I'm interested in rules lawyering. What I'm curious about is how committed you all are to the rules-based order. So far, between me and the Jew-posters, you seem to be committed to banishing assholes more than having legible principles.
The commitment is to the foundation:
The rules are crafted in service of that, moderation is conducted with it mind, and where the rules and the foundation might seem to conflict, the foundation trumps.
I mean, one of the very first rules is "be kind," so banishing assholes is definitely also rules-based. Of course the rules are not self-enforcing and the mod team is not a calculator, we aren't always perfectly predictable and we aren't always right. But the vast majority of our users seem to get on just fine. In general if it looks like you're even trying to follow the rules, you'll be fine. It's the people that go looking for just how far they can go without getting banned, who tend to be the biggest problem.
In principle, it's fine to ask questions about the rules, and discuss them when it seems warranted to do so. But in practice, the vast majority of the time I get questions about the rules, it is from people who are looking for ways around the foundation itself, rather than ways to understand and follow the rules better. (Weirdly, it's also almost always from people who are obsessed with Jews for some reason, including one particularly persistent troll who has rolled literally dozens of alts at this point--like, think of the good such a person could do if they directed their efforts toward literally anything else! But this just seems to be an all-too-predictable symptom of the age.)
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
How old are you?
Physically, middle-aged. But in my mentality towards the opposite sex I fully identify with the male character.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Does it bring you comfort to be the opposite and equal of the black women who murderously hate those who have committed the crime of being better than them?
I have never felt comfort in four years and four months.
A shame. But then it would cost you nothing to at least keep such thoughts private. Candidness is appreciated, but this is particularly unconventional candidness because it demonstrates a lack of any virtue to your position (at least the guys who itch to run over protesters in the street are operating from some understanding of law, justice and the right to drive on the road their taxes paid for). Because of your comment, my (and others' perhaps) opinion of those who share your viewpoint on women will be diminished, and the preference for the dominance of the woke will be marginally raised as opposed to the preference for the dominance of, yes, those known as incels. Better my sister, girlfriend or daughter be canceled than murdered.
I'm well aware you're not the type who cares about moralizing or even pragmatic advice.
I would swear that you're female because I try to remember those few who mention that incredibly important in my eyes fact in this forum, but your latest comments in this thread suggest otherwise. I don't know what to think, but either way, the catharsis of me expressing how much I'm hostile towards the female half overshadows any infinitesimal effects it might have on the course of the future.
Well, it might be just my female-centric cucked socialization speaking, but in my observation, settling into the groove of thinking thoughts that are negative, unproductive and revolting is not worth the catharsis overall. Maybe if it was only two of the three...
The count depends on the viewpoint. For example, Ted Bundy wouldn't find my thoughts revolting, and he's the female sex symbol.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Why is it a shame? We can't exist in harmony and never could, don't you like that my existence is miserable? I have no power to exact revenge on the sex which I consider a major part of my misery, while you hold all the cards.
You have a very warped understanding of the way typical people think of those like you if you think sadistic fantasies are common. For the most part, I do not think of incels, the homeless or the destitute third worlders at all. I do not "like it" that your existence is miserable and likely wouldn't unless you actively wronged me.
If you think I'm some sort of a winner Chad or a woman because I found your comment distasteful, your inferenced are wrong and miscalibrated as well.
Dude, I think it's established that you're a dude, dude, we all measure others by ourselves, I wish my mailman died. Though from how old he looked and how long ago I saw him last, there's a fair chance that the bastard croaked already.
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
More options
Context Copy link