site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 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.

7
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

While I don't know the history of "ask" vs "aks", I do also tend to find a lot of stuff like this in descriptive linguistic spaces, which is something that annoys me that I did not include in my original post.
Often when I see someone committing a prescriptive faux pas by questioning certain misuses of language, I see many people rush in to tell that person they're wrong.

Don't you know that use of the singular "they" in English is correct and ancient? Shakespeare used to use the singular "they". The same goes for use of "literally" as an emphasis. And we've always been at war with Eastasia.

I'm not personally equipped to argue back at these people, because I don't know enough of linguistic history, but something just feels like it could be wrong, like they may be misrepresenting history. But I have no way of knowing.
Maybe it was used, but was it "proper"? Must we defend any language simply because it was used at some point in history?

The singular they where gender is genuinely unknown is legitimately old, in the sense of predating middle English(IIRC it comes from old Norse which used neuter for referents with unknown gender), and opposing it is actually a neologism attempting to bring English in line with continental languages which use a generic he.

Using it to refer to persons whose gender can be reasonably implied(the father took their son to the matinee) is as stupid as any other gender ideology neologism.

The singular “they” is often used in a particularly annoying motte-and-bailey fallacy.

Motte: The singular “they” has been used for thousands of years! Shakespeare used it! [Used it—but in the context of an unknown person or unspecified person, as in “Someone left their bag here”]

Bailey: Let’s use the singular “they” to refer to specific, named people! (E.g. “When I asked Jamie what they were doing this evening, they said that they were going to the protest”)