site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 29, 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.

9
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

“But but but it’s not gross men like that who transition,” says the intuition of trans rights activists.

The only thing which can resolve warring noncentral fallacy accusations is statistics, and I don’t think anyone will be satisfied by the stats on “actually a gross man”/“actually a pure and innocent woman cruelly given androgens by the wrong genes and forced to age up past puberty by a patriarchal and binary system”.

It's really hard for me to believe that is their intuition. It's too contrary to human nature. I suspect it's that their morality demands they ignore their intuition. Their intuition is bigoted and transphobic, and denying it is necessary to be a good person.

Interesting thought: they use their gut reaction as a signal that bigoted people would be offended by it, a form of transference to resolve the cognitive dissonance.

Perhaps even a delusion where they think it’s not their feeling they’re feeling, but the psychic vibrations of people they assume are bigots.

Dave Sim’s Cerebus warned me that some people honestly believe they can read others’ minds (feelings/intentions, not thoughts/concepts), but until now, I didn’t have a model of the delusion’s mechanism.

I'm a bit hazy on Cerebus, but I seem to recall he had a bit of a brain-break during Church & State II. Where, like, not many of the remaining 200 issues were actually worth reading.

Gorgeous scenery, though.

It does sorta go off the rails because he went off his rocker, and meanders while he parodies genres, but the arc prior to 200 is a solid run and 200-250 are fantastic, some of his most memorable. The third- and second-to-last phone books are heartbreaking. The final one is 60% text, but worth it for the self-reflective nature of Dave losing it once more vs Cerebus losing it. The final issue is stupendous.

Related: the only people who still associate fantasy orcs with black people are people who find the association problematic