site banner
PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   8176 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 7, 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.

4
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Revisiting In Defence of Transracialism

Rebecca Tuvel's 2017 publication in Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy drew heated controversy and shed light on the cannibalistic nature of modern progressive thought. The thrust of the paper is that "considerations that support transgenderism seem to apply equally to transracialism," and on this basis it should be equally acceptable for one to transition race as it is for one to transition gender. Rather than defuse the argument through rational discourse, there were instead widespread calls for the paper to be retracted and its author was excoriated on social media. Numerous editors and directors of Hypatia resigned or were replaced.

The thrust of the argument is thus: transition between identities is predicated on both how an individual feels - their self-identification - as well as society's willingness to honour it. In the case of gender there is no question (amongst certain sects of society), but in the case of race societal acceptance is close to nonexistent. Objections to the latter amount to disputing whether or not it is possible to feel like another race, or whether it is even possible to change race at all; arguments of the first kind amount to disputes regarding biology, that, even if resolved, "should" be independent of whether or not society should find such behaviours acceptable, while arguments of the second are rooted in the observation that biological attributes of one's person are mutable, while the historical fact of their ancestry is not.

Yet, as a social construct, ancestry is just one determinant of race that intersubjectively has been chosen by society as predominant; there is no reason, a priori, that it should be the primary determinant. Indeed, given the precedent set by society in loosening its criteria for what constitutes gender, it similarly ought to be possible to loosen such criteria for race, and to consider other factors beyond ancestry such as lived experience, culture, upbringing, and indeed self-identification. All such criteria are merely social agreements, and one can imagine a genuinely transracial individual facing persecution at the hands of a society intolerant of their condition, much in the same way transgender individuals only a few short years ago did until societal attitudes towards traditional gender roles and concepts were adjusted. Further objections on ethical grounds include harm done to marginalized races, through either insult and bad-faith, fraudulent appropriation, or the exercise of privilege across an imbalance of power between races.

Enter Canada

The Globe and Mail recently published an article regarding the NunatuKavut Community Council, which, on the basis of self-identification alone, "has received nearly $74-million in federal funding for Indigenous programs or projects related to their claims of Indigenous identity since 2010" - claims which are widely disputed: "They aren’t recognized as Inuit by any other federally recognized, rights-holding Inuit collective," and thus fail Tuvel's second criterion of trans acceptance: society's willingness to honour the identity.

Naturally, the NunatuKavut community affirms its own self-identification: “We know who our grandfathers are. We know where we come from," consequently upholding the prevailing cultural notion that ancestry is a key determinant of race. In which case, should it not be possible for the NunatuKavut to furnish genealogical and/or genetic proof of their ancestry?

Natan Obed, president of the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, "worries a risk-averse federal government does not want to be seen as judging who is and is not Indigenous." This harkens back to similar arguments, now regarded as transphobic, that one should be required to furnish biological proof of their gender, in the form of chromosomes, gametes, or any other number of physical markers. Why should the government need to concern itself with the genitalia or DNA of the citizenry? Tuvel herself notes,

Therefore, anyone who suggests that all women share some biologically based feature of experience that sheds light on a shared psychological experience will have to show not only that biological sex gives rise to a particular gendered psychology, but that there is something biological that all women share.

... evoking "what is a woman" type questions that have already been litigated ad nauseam. Yet she continues, drawing parallels with biological and genetic accounts of race, which are similarly nonsensical:

If the biological account of race were true, this might pose a problem for the possibility of changing one’s race. However, racial groupings of people are arbitrary from a genetic point of view. That is, they are no more genetically similar than random groupings of racially diverse individuals; indeed, we now know that more genetic variation exists within any one racial group than between racial groups (Lewontin 1972, 397).

And although some biologists insist there are genetic differences between human groupings, the human groupings they have in mind do not result from our current racial categories (Blum 2002, 143). If we were to follow these biologists’ racial groupings, then, it will turn out that many of us are in some sense “lying” about our races.

There is also the matter of growing up with the lived experience of marginalization and disadvantage, similarly to how Rachel Dolezal, a white woman who transitioned to the black race, underwent "the humiliating experience of having her hair searched by the TSA and of being subject to police harassment as a black woman (Nashrulla, Griffin, and Dalrymple 2015)." Should society not weight such experiences more heavily in the determination of one's race, irrespective of the accidentals of their ancestry? Having already dispensed with notions of biology in the account of gender, should we not dispense with notions of ancestry in the account of race? Race, as Tuvel establishes, is itself a social construct, and we have arbitrarily decided upon ancestry as a primary determinant of it; yet:

If ancestry is a less emphasized feature in some places (for example, in Brazil), then Dolezal’s exposure to black culture, experience living as someone read as black, and her self-identification could be sufficient to deem she is black in those places. And because there is no fact of the matter about her “actual” race from a genetic standpoint, these features of Dolezal’s experience would be decisive for determining her race in that particular context. The crucial point here is that no “truth” about Dolezal’s “real” race would be violated."

The NunatuKavut's about page tells a similar tale of colonialism and marginalization:

Like all Indigenous peoples in Canada, we too, suffered the effects of colonialism. Outsiders pillaged our resources, brought their own form of government, denied our language and many of our people experienced resettlement and residential schools.

Their story page is replete with historical and cultural artifacts chronicling their story as an Indigenous people:

Hundreds of NunatuKavut Inuit children, as well as children from other areas of Labrador, attended residential schools in the Cartwright area between 1920 and 1964.

While some enjoyed the experience, many felt isolated and neglected. Some even endured physical or sexual abuse. The schools were designed to transform and “improve” the children by separating them from the influence of their communities and by teaching them British and American social values and behaviours. Instead, many simply learned to feel ashamed of their families and Inuit heritage and suffered from being disconnected from home.

If society sees fit to heed such stories of hardship, abuse, and marginalization often ascribed to Indigenous peoples, and yet continues to gatekeep race on the basis of documentation or ancestry, then perhaps it is the societal norm that ought to be changed. Otherwise we run into dilemmas reminiscent of individuals assigned male at birth who identify as women and yet face persecution due to a lack of societal tolerance for their transgender self-identification, on the basis of biology or otherwise.

“Why would you want to take food out of the mouths of our people? Why would you want to hurt our people and our communities?”

I do not understand why we use mental energies on the philosophical why of things when we have the perfect answer. Transgenderism empowers the left, transracialism does not. So the first is logical and the second is not, simple as.

indeed, we now know that more genetic variation exists within any one racial group than between racial groups (Lewontin 1972, 397).

Have seen this cited many times, just now got around to giving it a read.

Given it’s 1972 of course the authors aren’t working with fully sequenced genomes, they’re using 17 blood group markers. They’re also using racial groupings that put South Asians in the same category as the Irish.

I expect that genes correlated with traits that people associate with race such as skin color, epicanthic eye folds, height, etc. will vary between groups as they do according to visual observation.

Nah, "more variation within than between" is still true when using full genomes and removing bad faith parts of classification. What they don't tell is that it's also true for recently diverged species and that one trait is influenced by many genes (and vice versa). Suppose there's 20 genes affecting trait X, and population A has 40% chance to have X-increasing allele in each gene, and population B has 60% chance to have X-increasing allele. Looking at genes in isolation, there is no pattern, but overall pattern that B was selected to have higher X, and looking at two individual phenotypes, it's a chasm between them.

They’re also using racial groupings that put South Asians in the same category as the Irish.

if splitting to 3 major races, it's as it should be. What is bad faith is when they introduce small mixed race populations as members of race which isn't greatest in the mix, and give these small populations same weight as large ones.

I took anthropology classes in college. They loved using "more variation within racial groups than between them". They didn't cite sources for that claim. I'm rather hoping there is some sturdier basis than that 1972 paper. I would still suspect it is false, but they should at least cook up some rigorous-seeming papers to support it.

There's a sense in which this statement is trivially true- the khoikhoi and hadza and pygmies are all black.

This sense has the disadvantage of not addressing the question, but it is literally correct.

Let me generalize:

Suppose that it's costly and disadvantageous to be X. But there is a benefit to being X, in certain circumstances; in particular, there is the benefit of in-group support from other X-ers if one is a recognized X. If that's the sole benefit, then only the criteria set by these other X-ers matters. Either there is a way to for a non-X-er to join (restricted or now), or there isn't.

Now suppose that a powerful entity wants to benevolently help out the disadvantaged community of X. Then those who are not-recognized-X now have two different incentives for becoming recognized-X: in-group support, and/or a slice of the entity's largesse. If the form of that largesse is finite, then it incentivizes the already-recognized-X-ers to vigorously insist on the X-community criteria for recognition of X-ness. But the tighter those criteria are, and the higher the benefits flowing from the entity, the more likely someone not-recognized-X will insist that they're really X--to the entity or the larger community that entity is trying to impress with its benevolence--even if that gains them nothing from other X-ers but hostility.

So, I predict:

  • If top Chinese universities institute affirmative action quotas for Uygurs, there will be applicants claiming to be Uygur without any documented Uygur ancestry but whose grandma traveled to Xinjiang that one time.

  • If Medicaid becomes available to any recovering alcoholic, there will be applicants who insist they fit the bill because they used to make fools of themselves while tipsy at parties and are still embarrassed by that.

  • If UCLA decides to give scholarships to furries, there will be applicants who say they qualify because they once dressed up as a sexy fox for Halloween.

Goodhart's law strikes again....

In hindsight, one of the things that struck me as odd and continues to strike me as odd about Tuvel's paper was the way that defenders sought to minimise the significance of the paper itself. I remember some of its defenders saying things like "this isn't very significant, it's trying to nitpick a slight clarification about the way we use language, this is what philosophers do all the time", and so on.

It seemed strange to me that philosophers would be so critical of the significance of their own profession. What Tuvel does in the paper is argue for an equivalence between transgenderism and transracialism. That would seem to leave two options, if we wish to be intellectually consistent. Either 1) we ought to treat transgenderism and transracialism equivalently (whether affirming both or denying both), or 2) we assert that Tuvel's argument is wrong somewhere (and implicitly ought to show where it goes wrong). Those are your options, if you take philosophy remotely seriously. Either Tuvel is right, in which case we should treat the two situations the same, or she's wrong, in which case it's incumbent on the objector to show where she's wrong.

Either way, that isn't a minor clarification of a point of language - it's an argument that leads to either radically revising what we think it means to be of a particular race, or else rejecting transgender identities along with transracial identities. If that argument is correct, it's a big deal. It's not a silly linguistic game.

It seemed strange to me that philosophers would be so critical of the significance of their own profession.

There's actually a long tradition within philosophy of doing just that! Although in this case, that's irrelevant; it's clear that all of the criticism of Tuvel's paper was politically motivated.

It is ipso facto more reasonable for a white man to become black, or red, or yellow, or whatever, than for a man to become a woman. Of course the contradiction would be noticed eventually in a feminist journal. Academics have many vices in thought, but few of these people are dumb in the conventional sense. Honestly much of the ‘work’ of academia in grievance studies these days seems to be reconciling different claims in leftist dogma. So an exploration of two dogmas is to be expected.

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