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 -
A man can be reasonably expected to be up to no good towards any woman not outside of his immediate family, and indeed that is the norm everywhere in the world except in the West and very recently. Both men, young and old, who really should know better have again and again been tripped up by biological impulse. Indeed, feminism of a certain wave tarnishes the entire sex as morally culpable.
Because most men can be manipulated with sex, women who do so are rightfully shamed. Because it is a obvious weakness that takes incredible reserves of willpower and fortitude to resist, but trivially little effort to tempt. You say 'be moral' as if it is a meaningful statement. But even with direct financial and reputational incentives to not fool around, men do it anyway. You are ignoring the biological reality of the procreative urge.
Does the pithy dismissal 'do better?' form on your lips?
Testosterone is one hell of a drug. Traditional societies know this as a truth of which our modern ones fervently deny. Don't be alone with strange men! Don't even create the temptation! Because the inevitable will happen, no matter how moral they are. Don't put your hand on the stove. Don't put your dick into an hole smaller than its circumference. Obvious best practice to avoid harm, ignored for egalitarianism. Well, in this case, our ancestors really did know better. They knew better than to moralize the whole business and focused on outcomes.
If you do not believe you are capable of controlling yourself, I will not argue with you. But you should not typical-mind yourself into believing that no man can resist fucking a woman if he thinks he can get away with it. If this were true, there would be almost zero fidelitous married men in the modern age, and rape would be much more common than it is.
We are subject to many primal urges. Greed, lust, gluttony, pride, etc. Maybe lust is the strongest, I don't know, but yes, "be moral" is actually the response to those asking "How can you expect me to resist temptation?" "Lock the temptation away and keep it tightly controlled" is not.
Yes, men can be manipulated with sex, and women can be manipulated with promises and threats, and I agree that the current state of affairs (driven heavily by modern feminism) is not healthy, but "retvrn to treating women as property" is immoral, impractical, and frankly, ahistorical.
You misunderstand me.
In many workplaces, there are requirements to wear steel-toed shoes to prevent crush injuries to the toes. Not because there is an inherent moral judgement involved, or that we are all clumsy idiots, but that we are obliged to laws of nature that do not care for our reasons or intentions at all.
If people didn't have accidents, then we wouldn't need PPE. To extend this analogy, if all men were gentlemen and kept their marriage vows, we wouldn't need laws and customs to prevent rape. I am of an ideology that reasonable concessions for safety can be made at the price of liberty. If, indeed, a woman can go into the public space with the reasonable expectation that she not compromise herself then we can take her at her word when she claims that she has an unwanted suitor.
I don't think I do. You think "I couldn't help banging a pretty young girl/pressuring her into having sex with me" is equivalent to "I couldn't prevent something from falling on my head."
Your behavior, unlike gravity, is something over which you have control. Traditionally, we punish people who are unable to control themselves, we do not blame whatever triggered their lack of control.
And if no one was violent or greedy, we wouldn't need laws against assault, murder, theft, etc.
Sure. Most people believe that, but where we set that on the sliding scale between "absolute freedom" and "absolute safety" is pretty important.
And here is the sticking point. What, to you, is a "reasonable expectation that she not compromise herself"? What is "compromising herself"? Showing too much skin? Smiling? Appearing in public without a male chaperone? Voluntarily entering a room alone with a man (which, according to others in this thread, means he should thereupon have the legal right to rape her)?
Even back in Ye Good Old Days of whichever century you think was the height of sexual propriety, the rules for a woman in, say *Victorian England were quite different from the rules for a woman in, say, modern Afghanistan, and what with the "Islam is right about women" memes I am not encouraged that you want to place essentially all responsibility on women to not tempt men.
* Fun fact, the Victorians were actually stricter than previous generations. Even the Regency era, about which Jane Austen wrote, allowed women much more freedom to socialize and appear in public, hence several of her novels showing her heroines going to parties and thus being placed in compromising situations. Yet even writing in the 19th century, Jane Austen, hardly a modern feminist, was able to view both men and women as having both agency and responsibility with more nuance than our "Make women property" advocates seem to.
You don't need to go back to the Victorian era. You can talk to people who live in your country right now as to functioning rules of propriety. (The Pence rule is quite illustrative.) It is a reciprocal responsibility. Is it prudish? Is it backwards? Perhaps. But compared to the current state of being, which you recommend assigning moral valence and blame, which has brought about untold chaos and perhaps the permanent alienation of the sexes from one another, it is indeed perferrable, less our societies reap the fate of South Korea and the country dies out in three generations.
I prefer axiomatic rules that do not assign culpability or blame rather than wading into the hazy morass of he said, she said. Perhaps that's the autism speaking. Let it be stated this way. Rather than women being property of paterfamilias, she is keenly aware of the possession of her chastity and virtue is indeed a valuable thing that she injures at her own peril. And we have a word for a man who would do her harm, we call them cads, decievers, rapists.
And if she decides to associate with disreputable men, she cannot cry foul that she was taken advantage of. She knew perfectly what she was in for! You, who put so much value into judging men morally, don't say anything about this particular stained flower of Gaiman: who willingly had an affair with a married man. What do you make of her morals, who made herself a slave of this celebrity sex pest?
If she is a feminist, she should own up to her own actions, and if she is not, she ruined herself of her own volition, against the advice of men who actually care for her. As much as you dislike this worldview, it makes sense and is internally consistant. I am completely uninterested in adjudicating individual blame and responsibility because I have no need to. Both of them are in the wrong, and thusly the matters is beneath public interest.
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