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 -
God damn it.
I get what they're going for here. Trans is unpopular and weird. Tim Walz signed a law that all school bathrooms (including boy's rooms) have to have tampons available. Totally weird right?
The problem is that no one cares about girls using the boys room. People do care about boys using the girl's room, but that's not what is evoked by the imagery being used. This plays right into the narrative that Republicans are obsessed with controling the female reproductive system.
Disagreed. Tampons in boys kindergarten bathrooms is looney. If progressives want to push the very fringest policies, then Republicans are correct to point that out as an attack. The median swing voter won't like this gender ideology in their schools.
More options
Context Copy link
The bigger problem is that gay and trans stuff is generally just not a good attack vector for the right. It's a red meat issue to fire up the activists, sure, which is also why the activists often concentrate on it, but insofar as I've observed the normie right-winger would just prefer to not think about LGBTQ-related matters at all, ever. Thus, if there are Pride parades or prominent trans celebs constantly on TV, or so on, it repels them, but if there are right-wing politicians constantly going on about trans or gay stuff it repels them, too, since it also forces them to think about things they would rather just not think about.
I could observe this very clearly about 10 years ago when the ex-leader of the local right-wing populist party, towards the end of his rule, really started banging on about anti-gay stuff all the time; eventually, the party's supporters started going "Uhm, why is this fatty so obsessed with the homos? Is he maybe a homo himself?", and others (probably correctly) clocked this as an issue he was trying to use as a deflection on his utter failure to limit immigration according to his previous promises.
Also, the "No, it's not us that are weird! YOU'RE weird!" attacks on Walz just look like the "Vance is weird" thing REALLY got under GOP's skin and that they're doing the thing that demonstrates an attack has been effective - mirroring the attack. This sort of mirroring rarely if ever works in doing anything more than just giving more strength to the original meme.
I cannot say I'm an expert on right-wing political strategy, but if I had to find an attack vector on Walz, I'd probably just hit him on 2020 and Floyd riots repeatedly. Potential pitfalls there, too, but less than with other stuff.
I'm fairly sure being against child transitioning has been a pretty winning tactic for the Right so far. Youngkin and DeSantis are both examples for statewide office at least.
More options
Context Copy link
It’s ironic that the original “weird” meme could have been easily countered with either of the two classic responses: “I’m rubber, you're glue, anything you throw at me bounces off and sticks to you,” or “I know you are, but what am I?”
Make it clear they’re using playground insults, third-grade level at best, and don't deign to rise beyond that level of seriousness with a considered and unique response.
More options
Context Copy link
Unfortunately the fact is that not ever even having to think about LGBTQ-related matters is a luxury not affordable to the rightist normalfag griller demographic in a society that bends to the will of the LGBTQ lobby every time. If they want to see pride parades discretely removed from Main street and trans celebs removed from prime-time TV, they'll have to politically act accordingly. I'll agree though that devoting too much time and energy to this issue isn't a good idea politically, but you can say the same thing about any other issue as well.
More options
Context Copy link
Yeah it’s very obvious that the people doing/cheering on the “weird” counterattack have really bad intuitions about how ordinary people read situations like this. Like no you don’t beat weird accusations by posting a thousand anti-trans memes and calling Walz a cuck.
I've seen this claim a lot on Reddit, along with the celebration of Waltz's dig at the Vance couch rumors. I think it's either a disingenuous interpretation or a case of the Democrats getting high on their own supply. Here's how I interpret the Right's indignance at both of these attacks:
They are both completely manufactured by the powerful coordination of Democrat politicians, the media, and big tech. The individual claims are a trifle, but it's the ease by which both were able to propagate into culturally pervasive conventional wisdom in hours is pretty frightening. They're also completely transparent in their engineering, which goes like this: 1. Make some oddball claim that is either opinion or invented from whole cloth. 2. Follow quickly with a barrage stories about how wounding this claim has been to Republicans. It's dizzying. I would be that most Republicans hadn't even heard of these attacks until after the round of stories came out claiming how devastating these attacks have been.
It's also notable how inauthentic these two claims are in that the attacks therein are virtues within liberalism, where weirdness and sexual noncoformity are supposedly sacred. So it also exposes a deep hipocrisy within Democrats who will apparently say anything to win (I'm not exempting the GOP/Trumpism from this, BTW, just pointing out that the lack of concern for principles is rarely this brazen and happy to be this brazen).
I'm surrounded by Republicans who don't care about these attacks. They're laughable, absurd even. Except for how powerfully they've been executed.
This whole thing is very "fake it 'til you make it". It might even work, just like following the original saying often does, but I find it hard to believe anyone, especially on this site, actually believes the actual content of any of these claims.
More options
Context Copy link
Neither. The claim that the attack worked really well is just the second prong of the attack. Vance himself seems to have moved on to attacking Walz.
More options
Context Copy link
What it reflects is a radical moving on from focusing on existential fear for democracy to something much easier for those who struggle with abstracts to be a part of. Finally the Dems have realised that being self serious gives Trump an aura of incredible power that plays well for him. If he can genuinely threaten a hundreds-year old institution, there must be something formidable about him. Moving on from this rhetorical trap has obviously been hugely liberating for the Dems -- finally they can be the ones to mess around and enjoy making schoolyard attacks, Trump's domain for a decade.
Personally I think the new attacks represent something highly authentic though much like Trump's attacks are not to be taken literally.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I don't think the policy has much to do with it beyond a mild justification. The nickname has more to do with calling him a tampon as (supposedly) an effeminate submissive man who exists to "support" a woman.
The deeper policy debate if there is one isn't going to be another round of trans bathroom bingo. It's going to be about casual misogyny, treating female bodily functions as disgusting, etc. Which could make either side look weird.
More options
Context Copy link
#TamponTim definitely falls in the online weirdo category of insult. The problem with this line of attack is that Walz comes across as so extremely normal that if anyone gets into this kind of argument with him the optics are that he's a guy you trust to coach your kid's football team and some deranged looking guy is next to him talking about grooming kids. It just doesn't matter who's the accused and who's the accuser in a situation like that.
Except it isn’t “extremely normal” to put tampons in the boys bathroom. Pointing that out is pointing out that actually Walz is super freaking weird despite how he presents.
If females want to use the boys bathroom, no one really has an issue with it. They're using it at their own risk. The danger comes from males using girl's bathrooms.
More options
Context Copy link
Putting tampons in a boys bathroom makes normal people go “huh, okay” and they shrug and move on. Making a huge deal out of it and calling someone Tampon Tim makes normal people wonder if there’s something wrong with you. Like why is your team spending so much time thinking about girls’ bathroom habits. It really just feeds into the weird accusations.
Don't know where these normal people would live, around here people (even normies) think it's a weirdo gender-bender-cult thing.
More options
Context Copy link
The democrats whole campaign for the last few weeks is “JD is weird.” What is more weird than putting tampons in the boys room? I guess trying to protect pedos as a sexual class…
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
It's not even the weirdest thing they found on him, apparently he signed a bill that redefined the term "sexuality" to include pedophilia.
I don't think this attack works. The new definition specifies that sexual orientation is an attraction to a person without regard to their sex. Age is not sex. "I'm attracted to this person because of their age" would not be a sexual attraction under this definition.
Disagree. The definition is kind of a disaster in general. As you say it states that it is "attraction to a person without regard to their sex" which is not at all the same as "attraction to a person because of their sex". If a person is equally attracted to little girls and little boys, how does this definition exclude him?
Such a person's sexual orientation would be "bisexual" since they are attracted to people of either sex. Whether someone is a pedophile seems to me orthogonal to the question of their sexual orientation under the statute. The age part isn't relevant to the analysis. "pedophile" is not a distinct sexual orientation because it's not about the target of attractions sex.
That seems like what the original wording that was removed in the redefinition Walz signed, "Sexual orientation does not include a physical or sexual attachment to children by an adult" would imply?
If someone was a bisexual pedophile, I would expect discrimination against them based on their bisexuality to be prohibited, but discrimination against them based on their pedophilia to not be prohibited. So I'd want to clarify in law that pedophilia is not a sexual orientation for the purpose of discrimination law. That seems like exactly what the pre-revision wording does.
I guess I view the explicit exemption for pedophilia as unnecessary. The definition of sexual orientation already precludes it. So it was removed for that reason. Rather than because the MN legislature wanted to prohibit discrimination against pedophiles.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
And does the statute protect people on the basis of their, ahem, "bisexuality"?
Sure. If you wanted to fire a person because they were attracted to both men and women, that would be prohibited. If you wanted to fire them because they were attracted to children, that would be permitted.
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
Holy shit that is damning.
The most generous thing you can say about the amended statute is that it doesn't explicitly make paedophilia a protected class. But removing the explicit exclusion while directing the courts to interpret the bill's provisions "liberally" is more than a little alarming.
Black letter law is that you make inferences from what a legislature strikes. So if there was an extant provision excluded X and then the legislature specifically strikes the X exclusion, courts must infer (unless there is strong evidence to the contrary) there is no X exclusion.
This coupled with the explanation makes clear what this law results in.
Sure... I still doubt a court would actually read the law that way (even though I totally agree that would be the normal and "correct" reading), just because WTF. But even if so, there's still no excuse for making the change in the first place.
Haha yeah. The legal implication is clear but sometimes courts will go out of their way to avoid such a crazy thing.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
That…that is something the republicans need to blast 24/7 (after the Dems confirm him as VP).
I'm not sure if it's sufficiently substantive. Do issues like this motivate people at the national level?
I feel like “dude wants to protect pedos” plays.
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
More options
Context Copy link
Rogd is a bigger issue in teen girls, and schools supporting this / putting them in risky situations by encouraging them to use mens rooms is definitely an issue, even if not as immediately off-putting as men using women's rooms. At the same time, they're two sides of the same ideology coin anyway. Putting tampons in mens room comes with letting biological men into women's rooms, and I think people get that.
It all falls under the 'woke teachers are grooming children' category.
Do the ROGD girls actually use men’s facilities? I’d thought they hung around their own and tended to use the women’s room because they were scared of actual natal males.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I'm already seeing subversions like #TamponTim is going to stop the red wave.
More options
Context Copy link
I think #TamponTim could stick.
It's weird to want to put tampons in the boys room.
On a visceral level, people think tampons are a bit gross, and it will make Walz look a bit pervy to be so interested in them. This of course isn't really fair, but that's politics.
It also just seem woefully prone to the triumph of ideology over pragmatics.
I'm absolutely pro-trans in the sense that I think trans men shouldn't have to duck into women's rooms to get tampons. I'm also familiar enough with how teenage boys work to realize that it would take minutes for men's room tampons to end up up someone's nose. Yes, having tampons at the nurse's office will be ever so slightly more uncomfortable and awkward. But it's an answer that doesn't sound like it was thrown out of an ivory tower.
A high school boys bathroom can’t even be trusted with paper towels. Someone was always clogging the sinks with them at my school.
More options
Context Copy link
I mean, it seems like a middle or high school should have feminine products in the nurse's office anyways, as it's presumably a common-enough issue with adolescent girls to worry about.
I believe that having them in nurse's offices is common, though I can't say for sure if it's universal.
The theory for restrooms is that periods are an incredibly embarrassing thing that might come up with little notice or have to be handled multiple times in a day, so they shouldn't be only available through the nurse's office. I don't know that it needs to be a law, but it's not fundamentally unreasonable as a policy, and there's at least plausible funding authorization reasons.
It's just the men's room bit that's hilariously dumb.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I dunno, I think highlighting your opponent's weird ideological obsessions is a good play. No one is threatened by jewish space lasers either but if Marjorie Taylor-Greene were Trump's VP pick you bet we'd be hearing about them.
The problem is that Walz reads as such a turbo normie that an attack like this just ends up highlighting YOUR weird ideological obsessions.
I have no opinion on Walz directly, due to having only learned of his existence with the VP nomination, but the whole narrative surrounding him, as well as the Harris candidacy in general, reminds me so much of that Game of Thrones line "a king who must say he is king is no true king." The past few weeks, all the messaging that I've perceived "in the wild" in places like news shows and articles or political advertisements has been talking about how Harris's nomination was so energizing to the party and gave everyone hope that we might be able to actually defeat Trump, but the actual displays of energy were few and far between. For Walz, I keep getting told that he's a "turbo normie" (in different terms, of course, that a normie might use) instead of it being actually demonstrated. The whole thing also reminds me of Clinton in 2016, when we were constantly told that she was the most qualified presidential candidate ever, which screamed insecurity versus just showing off her credentials and history and letting the voters conclude what they will about her qualifications.
Maybe it's early enough on in their campaigns that they're just warming up the applause lights before their actual demonstration of the underlying qualities that actually give hope for winning the correct states in this election. That in itself would still signal insecurity, but at least there'd be more of a there there.
More options
Context Copy link
I think this is the crux of the issue. There's a difference between objective weirdness and perceived weirdness. The higher your social status, the lower the perceived weirdness of any given action will be, and in today's world turbo-normality probably gives politicians close to peak social standing among people who just don't want to have to think about politics that much.
More options
Context Copy link
Maybe for someone in Blue Tribe spaces this is true. It is not for Red Tribe people.
More options
Context Copy link
I too can just baldly assert things. Things like:
Walz does not come off as a turbo normie. And he looked freakin' strange on the stage next to Kamala in a way that Vance doesn't.
We’ll see when they start polling Walz but the Vance favorability polls speak for themselves.
If you want to make a case for his favorability ratings versus Vance, I won't argue with it. I would contest that this anything to do with him being a 'turbo normie', which you claim as seemingly self-evident.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I don't buy this at all. He's more personable than the average Democratic politician, but the progressive wishcasting that he's got an aura of normalness so strong that he can define weirdness and normality by force of personality is nonsense. Walz talks up his small town bonafides, but he's not winning small town votes. He's winning Minneapolis votes, and Minnesota is a sufficiently urbanised state that that's enough.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link