site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 28, 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.

3
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Well, from a practical standpoint, I think women are very susceptible to social pressure and telling them that something was traumatic has a good chance of making it actually traumatic. Which ironically enough is what I want in this case--better to be traumatized by something terrible than to seek it out for the rest of your life. I guess there are probably a few people clear-minded enough to see through this, and they need to be dealt with more honestly, but as a society we have no consensus on these things so even something like "that wasn't traumatic but it should have been" is not something everyone will agree on. Probably more effective to say something like "that was traumatic and this is how you process trauma."

That's an interesting perspective I hadn't considered before. But if you dig into that it's kind of like inflicting psychological punishment on someone for their own good. Like if a kid is picking on their siblings, and they don't really understand the long-term adult consequences of being a jerk (nobody will like you and you will have no friends and be lonely), so you spank them so that they learn to associate the bad behavior with pain. You are inflicting pain that previously didn't exist, and could be avoided on the first order simply by not punishing them, because you expect that in the long term it will improve their behavior and make them better off due to second order effects.

Except in this case instead of a parent it's all of society inflicting the punishment, and it's inducing psychological trauma into them instead of physically spanking them, and they're adults instead of children. But it is still supposed to be for their own good. I'm not sure how I feel about that. And as a side effect you also end up inducing trauma into the subset that genuinely tried to avoid being raped, will try to avoid it in the future, but happen to be tough enough not to be traumatized by the experience unless society induces it into them. And those people may be more common than the sort who irresponsibly set themselves up to get raped semi-on purpose.