site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 3, 2022

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.

24
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

My list wasn't exhaustive; we can quibble over the "redness" of each individual insult. But mostly they seem no more politically aligned than calling someone a "retard."

I'm also puzzled by "ghoul, vampire, and bloodsucker." Is that really a thing conservatives notice liberals calling them? I'm not questioning whether anyone has ever done this, but just the idea that these are known to be blue insults for reds.

There was a small thing about that's been around since at least the Affordable Care Act. Ghoul's the one that's persisted most, I think. Of course, that turns back into the "inherently bad" -- you could at least write a steelman that they were about criticizing conservative policies, rather than conservatives qua people.

I think there's a pretty sizable number of things along that realm, once you're attuned to noticing them. Their very nature as not politically-aligned makes it harder to notice when they're pointed a specific direction, but that doesn't make it less common.

That said, I think a lot of this distinction is more attuned to Blue Tribe preferences than to generalized ones. Not just in the sense that socons and even non-socons see many of the covered examples (controversially, being gay; less controversially, being queer) as something you do rather than something you are, or that both actual racists and not were often making that Chris Rock Skit as a serious argument, or that the Blue Tribe has put significant effort (for, tbf, reasons not entirely under their control) to define or frame their desired focuses as innate and immutable.

But there's a far more serious matter of it not being especially clear why anyone should find one to be acceptable, and the other an abomination. Why is abuse of parenthesis worse than prolonged mockery of 'magic underpants'? What part of the many bannable terms for correctly calling someone gay in offensive intents are worse than incorrectly calling someone a cousin-humper? Why, given how bad racism and sexism are, are false claims a person is or is motivated by them harmless, no matter how ill-founded or plain false? Why are one of these things a "name that humiliates, demeans, or shames those it's applied to", and the other not?

((I mean, the practical answer is probably that there's been enough organizations with enough power to make these things not mere social faux pas, but potentially a source of legal liability should an employee do it even off-hours and off-premises, or a business not react to it promptly when done by a customer, while the other direction there's... uh, people claiming TERF is a slur, and no one believing it.))

I noticed ghoul thrown around a lot on /r/stupidpol towards, well, pretty much any 'neoliberal' boogeyman they don't like, but especially targeted towards the old right wing flavors like Kissinger and Cheney. This is pure anecdote, but I have yet to notice vampire and bloodsucker.