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 -
This might be uncharitable of me, but after extensive experience with 4chan I suspect that the greentext, at bottom, is just the common 4chan theme of "I wish I could just use force to get women to have sex with me", but dressed up in an intellectual argument.
Notice that the author jumps immediately to the idea of war and never thinks about a much less violent way in which men could potentially persuade women to shift their politics. Which would be to simply deny women male assistance unless they have shown that their politics are friendly to men. No giving or selling of goods or services to women if they seem to have anti-male politics. Of course, in the US that would be illegal for a business to do due to various laws and how those laws are interpreted in practice. My understanding is that it is technically legal for a business to refuse service due to a political disagreement, but in practice it is hard to imagine such a decision being ruled legal if it overwhelmingly affected women. But it is much easier for me to imagine men flouting those laws in mass than it is to imagine men literally going to war against the woman-coded side.
I doubt either would happen, though. I think that it is hard for most men outside of a small group of true misogynists to really truly and deeply hate a woman for her politics unless she directly screws you over in some way. If she is your family member, it is hard because she is family. If she is a lover, it is hard because she is a lover. If she is just some random woman, it is hard because women are not as intimidating as men and so they don't push the deep-seated buttons that make a man want to deeply resist the other side.
It is a strange situation because it is true that many women vote for policies that are objectively bad for me, even to the point of endangering my life. Such as soft-on-crime policies. And that is very bad. Yet despite the fact that I know several women who very much are hard-core Democratic supporters, it is hard for me to really feel personally angry at them for it. Instead I generally just feel that they are being naive or stupid, or that they are letting their views about things like abortion override other factors, and I feel that I want to persuade them, not coerce them, into looking at things differently.
I guess in some ways that is a good thing for the same reason as why it is a good thing to not rage at your family and friends over political disagreements. I don't know. Maybe I should be angry at them for voting for policies that I consider total shit. Not sure what that would help, though. Some man being openly angry at them would do the very opposite of moving them closer to my politics. And in any case, while in some cases these women are quite vehement at disagreeing with my politics, I would not say that they have ever done it in an angry way. Just in a vehement way. I have had a few women actually get openly angry at my politics in the past, but their number is relatively small compared to the number of all the women that I have disagreed with about politics. And I have had men get openly angry at my politics in the past too, as I myself also have with others.
This all reminds me of the famous quote, "Nobody will ever win the battle of the sexes. There’s too much fraternizing with the enemy."
Don't get me wrong, I probably do have a breaking point. If like 90% of all women voted to literally open up all the prisons and then put a reparations tax on men for centuries of patriarchy, at that point I am pretty sure that I would just pull a reverse Lysistrata and stop fraternizing with the vast majority of them. There is such a thing as too much. I am not there at the moment though. And I am lucky enough that at least the women I am close with are either politically moderate like me or are hard-core Democrats but are capable of having a conversation with me about politics without yelling.
I am reminded a bit of that one Spike Lee movie where Chicago women said they’d strike from having sex with men until they stopped killing each other with guns. Never actually watched the movie and have no idea what a 4channer would think about it but did want to mention that yeah, the idea of gender relations and withholding crossing with politics isn’t exclusively a right wing thing.
That's a hilarious premise. It'd be as if a bunch of men decided to strike from sex (or marriage, perhaps) until the women stopped using makeup, working out, and dieting. Since the actions they're trying to prevent are the very same things that make striking more costly, you could expect the defections from the strike to happen immediately and overwhelmingly.
More options
Context Copy link
Spike Lee wrote Lysistrata? Huh, so he did.
The Lee version doesn't work because too many women find violent criminals sexy. I expect the Ancient Greek version wouldn't work for similar reasons; the married women may not like war but the unmarried ones like warriors.
Ancient Greek women did not choose their sexual partners and the Ancient Greek mind literally could not comprehend the possibility; that’s why lysistrata was a satire.
Humm.....perhaps the high born didn't choose their husbands but a lot of women in the greek world certainly chose who they slept with. Divorce was also an accepted remedy for a bad marriage in athens. There is little known about romance and marriages in the lower classes of the time.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I think you're close but it's not quite that far. To be sure, a lot of 4channers definitely hold that sentiment, but most probably hold a sentiment more like "I wish women would have sex with me, they won't, and as a result I think they deserve to suffer as punishment". They don't typically have a desire to rape anyone, but they feel a general bitterness and vengefulness.
More options
Context Copy link
I think so. I would not say "I wish I could just use force to get women to have sex with me" is a common theme on 4chan. "Show tits or gtfo" or "women are stupid and/or weak and/or gay" are common themes. I have not visited /r9k/ enough, but extreme incel-ery was mocked on the more normie hobbyist boards.
You would think striking would be a logical step before more serious conflict. Yet, we see plenty of civil wars and domestic strife go hot without general strikes. It's not a necessary precursor to violence or coups.
I'm of two minds. I agree with you that violent conflict seems unlikely. If men have enough collective grievance and mass to try to strip power from the Women's Party, they probably can do so without violence. If they develop collective grievances and identity, but not enough mass, then that's just your average rebellion. Men kill other men over power and all is right with the world.
On the flipside, we're in uncharted waters. If universal suffrage in two-party systems universally approaches a 50/50 gender divide I'm not sure how that's supposed to work or remain stable. There is a limit to what policies people can vote for at the detriment to their spouses, such as reparations tax on men, and those without children/spouses don't create long-lasting dynasties. But of the culture war stuff where the divide is becoming most prevalent?
On the topic of war, what about a foreign war? If the Women's Party decides war is in the nation's interest they are sending the Men's Party to fight it. If the Men's Party doesn't want to fight it, then I don't see how that doesn't negate the legitimacy of the state. If the Women's Party identifies this problem, and thus never responds to conflict without the Men's Party approval, that similarly seems to call into question their legitimacy to rule.
Same.
It's an interesting trend. A gender divided party system seems unstable and people should probably worry about it. I guess one possibility is powerful women rule over men backed by T-3000 terminators and a matriarchy that provides women with government sponsored AI husbandos.
I don't see that happening without a large number of tech savvy simps making them, there simply isn't a high enough quantity of women with the capabilities (software engineering, hardware/weapons engineering, and manufacturing) to ever make that a reality.
Plenty of 'women' engineers with said capabilities. once the Chinese make AI waifus it'll be a short step before AI husbandos. And outside of reproduction women dont actually need a husband for anything other than carrying heavy stuff and being socially inclined to act first in dangerous scenarios. If the T1000 skeleton does all the actual mechanical work, why can't I just shove that in a Christina Henricks suit instead of Arnold? Just swap the genital unit on demand.
they said Colt made
peoplemen equal. There were some mass shootings by women, and usually they go with less victims and lower killed/wounded ratio (e.g. this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube_headquarters_shooting ) even despite women being very competetive with men in sport shootingi have impression that they are too heavy on hedonism (e.g. videogames)
More options
Context Copy link
In my experience, those 'women' are some of the most misogynistic people I've ever encountered.
please elaborate
Many MtF trans have a deep seated hatred of biological women, and many even see themselves as superior to actual women
The MtF I know are either self-loathing autogynephiliacs transposing a woman are wonderful effect back onto themselves and thus both desire and loathe natal women INTENSELY, or they are mentally injured (usually raped) self loathing depressives whose bodily mutilation are an attempt at deautonomizing their body.
Healthy autogynephiliac men shave and diet to become femboys, healthy gender fluid people just become transvestites. MtF is plain fetishism and narcissism wrapped in a +50 to Oppression skin.
You'll find little disagreement from me here, my default assumption is that 99% of MtF are autogynephiliacs and/or mentally ill, and 99% of FtM are girls who who sexually abused and/or mentally ill. The only part I think is really undecided for me is exactly how the breakdown is for perverts vs. mentally ill vs. both.
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
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Hmm I'm skeptical that there's some sort of hard-coded difference that makes it hard to hate women. I have plenty of anger at women, in fact find it much easier to be angry at them than men, and I'm not a "hardcore misogynist."
Different people have different ways of being in the world and relating to emotions. I'm convinced that proportionally, the current rising generation of men will be much more predisposed to hating women, given how anti-male our society currently is.
That might mean that on some level, you actually respect women on average more than I do. If I prefer to think that women are stupid and naive when they disagree with me, and I find it hard to get angry at them for their politics, perhaps that means I am looking at them as if they were children.
To be fair, I also intellectually do not respect the overwhelming majority of men, and there is a small handful of women whose intelligence I actually do respect.
Still, food for thought.
There’s certainly something to this.
I’m certain some percentage of people on the acquaintance level with me assume I’m a bit misogynist, but no one who knows me even modestly well thinks that.
Although it depends on your perspective, I’ve always been “successful” with women; at this point I’ve been in a good marriage with children for several years and before I was married my had a string of long and generally healthy relationships which generally ended due to outside life circumstances. I have a very satisfying and active sex life and I have since I was a teenager.
I’m not handsome at all, just somewhat tall and very strong and muscular.
I also have a lot of women in my family which I have strong and loving relationships, having many sisters, aunts, cousins, grandmothers, etc…
my parents are still alive, still married, and still in love. I grew up seeing them be kind and loving to each other despite sometimes trying circumstances and very different personalities.
Why do I bring all this up? What does this have to do with anything?
Because despite all that I wrote above, to the women (and men) that occupy maybe the furthest 20-25% of the Feminist memeplex, I’m still “incel-coded” and always will be.
It’s not my politics, I’ve long mastered “hiding my power level” in public as it’s basically mandatory in my line of work and community.
It’s likely 100% how I talk to women, especially in the workplace as my coworkers are often 50% or more female.
I talk to them like they are normal human beings; not men, mind you, as I’m very aware of the differences, but just normal fallible people. The “women are wonderful” effect is simply not active in my brain. I’m incredibly familiar with women and their experiences, and familiarity breeds contempt. I have exactly zero issue criticizing women for poor choices or behaviors, even in public. I’m not intimidated in the least by women or femininity, and that can easily read as misogyny for those who either are motivated to default to that view or lack the intuition to understand what makes me tick.
In my career I’ve actually mentored a lot of women who have gone on to do well for themselves. Part of the process is frank criticism of their work, which many are not used to before they meet me. Most women realize quickly I’m trying to help them and not shit all over them, and that I am actually very fond of women in general. The exceptions tend to be, almost without fail, deep feminist types who are primed to hear any criticism as woman hatred.
The most notable exception was a very privileged young black woman who was clearly very intelligent but intensely arrogant. I think she thought because we shared a skin tone and roughly the same level of verbal intelligence she could avoid criticism, and she was wrong. She blew up at me in narcissistic rage one day, and I mostly avoided her from then on and went back to cultivating talent elsewhere until she transferred to another job and then quit.
She works in publishing in Brooklyn now.
I’m not sure who said it but I’ve always found this amusing; “A misogynist is just a person who hates women as much as women do.”
I've generally seen it attributed to H. L. Mencken:
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