site banner
PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   29505 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 26, 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.

6
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

an anthropologist asking one of the famed "third gender" tribesmen if they consider themselves something other than a man, and hearing "are you retarded?" in response, is a thing that actually happened in real life

You can't just drop something that funny without citing your source.

Here you go. Turns out I misremembered it, and they guy still hangs on to the sex/gender distinction, but also insists the way these obscure tribes understand it does not match how the activists are potraying it:

- Can you just share your opinion on like this attempt to blur the boundary between male and female that you see happening specifically in in the western context?

- I think there's an enormous amount of confusion about sex, what is sex, what is gender, and the two get mixed up and mashed up and the conversations very very very quickly become completely unproductive. You know in my class (...) we start off by talking about what is objectivity what, is subjectivity, what is inner subjectivity, what is sex what is gender... um so i i start the class off by really clearly defining these terms, and so i think i think an enormous amount of the confusion is just because what do people mean by sex, what do people mean by gender, and when they mean different things, or when you have two people in a dialogue, and they're using these terms differently, it just goes nowhere almost immediately.

And i as far as using Fa’fafine for example to blur the distinction between male and female sex categories i would say that that is a western project because the Fa’fafine have no doubt whatsoever what their sex is. The muxe [the Zapotec tribe's "third gender"] have no doubt whatsoever what their sex is. They know they're not... they know what their gender is... they know they're not men, and they know they're not women, but if you ask them are you... in terms of your body, are you male or female, they're like yeah... they might not say the word "male", but they're like, yeah... i'm i'm a man, i'm male... So I remember interviewing one... I mean this is how nonsensical things become, when you start translating some of this stuff into a field setting, in a non-western culture... so I remember being in southern Mexico and asking a muxe "you know, are you male or female... you know, do you have a penis or a vulva?" and she looked at me like and she actually said "are you stupid?"

The problem is that the source is a bit of a pain in the ass to cite. It was an interview with Paul L. Vasey, who originally documented the "third gender" phenomenon, and got frustrated with the way his research is brought up by trans activists. Somewhere in this or this podcast, he drops the anecdote. I can give them a relisten and ping you when I have the timestamp if you want, though I also recommend just listening to the whole thing, they're good interviews.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats