site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 4, 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.

8
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

It disturbs me that battle of the sexes has apparently become the leading interpretation of this election result, which is somewhat nonsensical given that Trump won White women. Men vs women strife is much worse than racial strife in my opinion (yes I understand that racial strife can lead to wars and genocides in a way that gender conflict doesn't, but I'm talking about at the non-violent levels we are currently experiencing).

I wish there were a battle of the sexes instead of the one-sided bullying we've seen for the last 30 years. Men haven't even begun fighting back, they have just started to imply that further bullying might meet more resistance. The only blatantly anti-male policies we are thinking about rolling back are some of the more egregious instruments with which campus kangaroo courts are punishing the crime of men slighting their moral betters (something that the first Trump admin adressed which was then immediately reversed by Biden). And if Musk actually starts with his anti-bureaucracy crusade, we might lose some of the predominantly female sinecure positions. But that's about it. And women act as if they were thrown into that weird rape-fantasy of handmaid's tale.

for the last 30 years

In truth this has been closer to the last 150 years (when automation really began to replace men in the workforce, and reliably brought women's physical productivity to within [insert wage gap statistic here] of men's), but from August 1945 to some time in the late '70s female bullying could reliably be ignored.

We've had this problem for 5-6 generations; nobody's quite figured out how to crack it yet (lying flat is about the best men have been able to do).