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.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Take that, conservatives?
I do not know why there’s a progressive idea that pro-life laws exist to boost the white fertility rate by controlling women(no reasonable person thinks that they do this- pro-life advocates are well aware of the color of the women getting abortions). But it seems like they literally actually believe this?
Of course being a sterile woman is not a good idea if the based patriarchy actually comes about.
I think some of this is a failure of theory of mind. I mean, I've seen plenty of examples, across both political and cultural divides, of people going "those people can't possibly believe what they say is their reason for doing this thing, so I need to figure out what their actual reason is." Nobody could actually believe a fetus is a human life, so therefore the pro-lifers must have some other, real reason for wanting to ban abortion, therefore…
Or an exchange about Hispanic votes in the election, which went something like:
Or the Native woman I stood in line behind at the welfare office about a decade ago and the half of her cellphone conversation I overheard, about her brother's legal trouble and about how, even if white people believe plenty of stuff, not even they could actually believe the theory upon which her brother was being charged, and that clearly they're just pretending so as to add further humiliation when locking up innocent Native men.
I mean, we can observe pro-lifers and find that many of them seem to value "enforced monogamy" a lot, but "lives for the sake of lives" not so much, and infer their actual motivation for banning abortion from that.
Based on how pro-lifers talk, I can see clearly how pro-choicers believe the conservatives don't care about the babies, they just want them to "take responsibility" and "not have casual sex".
Sure, it's not just "lives for the sake of lives", the child's innocence of any wrongdoing also enters the picture. Responsibility and the wisdom of having casual sex is mostly orthogonal to this issue.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I mean, calling them Latinx also didn’t help the democrats. I’m really not surprised that someone who used that term unironically has no theory of mind of Hispanics(or anyone else- ‘we’re inventing a new and difficult to pronounce term for you because you might be transgender’ is, uh, not a way to appeal to blue collar people. And yes, that -nks sound is quite difficult for a native Spanish speaker to pronounce, just like those Russian and German consonant clusters are to Americans.)
The native woman also doesn’t shock me; people tend to take personal tragedies as so obviously unjust that they’re evidence of malice from whoever imposed them.
It’s the whole white nationalist plot to enslave women that seems strange to believe. I can get my head around a few people in ivory towers believing unevidenced things that can plausibly be connected to some real rhetoric(there are people who will cite demographic change as a reason to oppose immigration, and great replacement theory is really a thing that republicans believe). But white nationalists tend to be mostly aware that the women seeking abortions are fairly black- and everyone else is too. It just seems strange.
In that example, the thing that was so stupid not even white people could believe it? Well, she said things like "they'd been kissing," "she went into his bedroom," and that "everyone knows what happens after that" and that no human being on Earth could possibly believe a woman gets to "back out" once she's gone that far with a man, so charging him with sexual assault is just the White Man dunking on another innocent Native with a patently bogus "crime."
That doesn't actually fit my experience. The times I've talked IRL to left-wingers of my acquaintance, they've been rather ignorant of the racial breakdown of abortion in America, and rather surprised when I've introduced them to the stats.
Really not difficult to believe someone could think the current conception of consent is fantastical and ridiculous. I 100% believe that woman had the right to back out at the last minute, but that right was granted by man, not nature. Some primitives finding it shocking isn’t a surprise, especially when they’re closely related to the man in trouble for it.
Hmm. You seem to know more progressives than I do, although it seems like common knowledge.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Yeah, the Republican women in my life are having the same sort of confused reaction, going “wait, they think that them choosing not to have unprotected sex is some kind of strike against the pro-life movement?”
But the framing is that the point behind pro-life advocacy is the goal of controlling and impregnating women. Fuentes and the teenage boys doing teenage boy things aren’t helping. But the fact that there’s a significant part of the population that’s going “wow, Fuentes is really showing us what the right is really like” instead of realizing he’s a shock jock provocateur who’s intentionally trying to troll indicates just how ingrained this interpretation is on the left.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link