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 -
If you look at the risk of death, the asymmetry is quite small. In the US, the CDC gives maternal mortality of 22 per 100,000 live births (which is probably overstated). The BLS gives an annual workplace mortality rate of 3.7 per 100,000 FTE workers. An absent father is going to end up spending roughly 4 years working to pay child support (20-25% of after-tax income for 18 years), which would give a death toll from paying child support of 15 per 100,000 live births if child support defendants had average workplace death rates. Since men work much more dangerous jobs than women, the true figure is probably higher than the maternal mortality rate. But the crucial point is that the risks of dying due to giving birth or paying child support are of the same order of magnitude.
Except they have to work anyway, and would die anyway. The number of men who die on a job who would not be on that specific job if not for child support payments is likely not that high. Unless there's some society with a much lower workplace death rate that has divorce banned I'm unaware of.
In America (and, to a lesser extent, other 1st-world countries) the socially acceptable way to not work because you don't need to is to retire early - there used to be a soft norm that blue-collar guys retired at 60 if they could. There are plenty of men in their 60's working who would be retired if they had been able to accumulate more wealth, and for a lot of them the reason why they couldn't accumulate wealth was divorce or child support obligations.
I think you are right that the average guy who is irresponsible enough to knock up a sloot is going to spend the money he saves by avoiding child support on driving a bigger truck rather than saving for retirement. But this doesn't affect the moral point I was making, which is that the male role as breadwinner and the female role as mother have similar death tolls.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link