site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 23, 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
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

"My neurodiversity makes me exciting, quirky and unable to be held accountable for any of my moral shortcomings; your neurodiversity makes you nerdy and lame; his neurodiversity makes him a creepy rapist."

Emotionally and descriptionally true from the female first person perspective.

The usual Women’s Wonderfulness and infantilization vs. the male burden of performance and accountability. The same behaviors that would get men mocked and ostracized can be forgiven, overlooked, neutral, or even moderately positive for women.

I recently had a pretty negative experience with a woman who genuinely WAS neurodivergent, moreso than my awkward ass. I found it incredibly disheartening to find out that she didn't have the same "resents normies but desperately wants to be accepted by them" complex as me, almost as if despite her awkwardness the world had still welcomed and cherished her.

Me and neurodivergent women:

"Oh, what I thought was eye-fucking this whole time was just you being slightly autistic."

I found it incredibly disheartening to find out that she didn't have the same "resents normies but desperately wants to be accepted by them" complex as me

Why?

This complex doesn't seem particularly helpful or conducive to positive outcomes, and I'd say that her lack of it seems more psychologically healthy. It seems like you're aware that this is a maladaptive pattern - is it something you're working on resolving?

Well, instead she just resents normies and lives in a leftist hugbox.

This is an adult woman who complains that straight men always assume she's not an aromantic demi-asexual, who hasn't yet learned that most straight men interpret her eye-fucking, sharing intimate details, and saying the other person is pretty as flirting.

Reminds me of that tweet like

Short women: Tee hee, I can't get things off the top shelf ha tee hee!

Short men: The streets will run red with their BLOOD for how they treated me.

False symmetry. Height is a masculine trait, and its absence is a feminine trait. The counterpart to short men isn't short women, it's tall women - short men and tall women are both wrongly-heighted. The counterpart to short women isn't short men, it's tall men - short women and tall men are both superbly-heighted.

The point I was making is that women can be afflicted with a particular trait which presents no obstacle to their socially flourishing (autism, being short) but the same trait can often be ruinous if a man is afflicted with it. Maybe tall women have a rough time of it, who knows - the parts of the internet I frequent seem to actively fetishise them in an only half-joking way, many unusually tall models and other female celebrities are widely considered sex symbols (e.g. Taylor Swift, Claudia Schiffer, Famke Janssen, Elle MacPherson, Brooke Shields, Sigourney Weaver, Uma Thurman, Nicole Kidman, Gisele BĂĽndchen, Rebecca Romijn), and I'm not aware of any equivalent to complimentary adjectives like "Amazonian" or "statuesque" for short men.

Do women mock other women for being tall? That could be the source of any reported rough time.

I've heard tall women essentially complain that it narrows their dating options. It's a reasonable desire for her partner to be taller than her. Luckily, most men are taller than most women. Short men can date slightly short-er women.

A 5'2" woman expecting any partner she has to be 6'6" is an unreasonable desire. She's allowed to have that preference, but her having difficulty finding a partner isn't some grand injustice, it's self-inflicted.

I'm not aware of any equivalent to complimentary adjectives like "Amazonian" or "statuesque" for short men.

I believe they've started calling them "short kings," but I'm not convinced it's complimentary.

Oh, to be clear, I didn't mean to imply that tall women are precisely equivalent to short men, or that tall men are precisely equivalent to short women - different sexes are different. It's just closer than the other way around.