site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 9, 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.

"Latinx: a word used only by gringxs."

Where do you stand on 'Latines' or 'Latinaos'?

I've noticed the use of 'hispanohablantes' in the wild. While this sounds like a politically correct euphemism, it's at least a reasonable term to use in writing that doesn't, say, break the rules of Spanish grammar and pronunciation.

Hispanohablantes is real and commonly used in the spoken language, it just means Spanish-speakers.

I have never heard an actual Spanish speaker use the term Latinx though, or Latine/Latinao. The furthest Spanish language political correctness goes is 'Latinos y Latinas' or 'chicos y chicas'. Even then, the PC versions are more commonly used by European Spanish speakers, Latin Americans are more likely to use the more concise, masculine/neutral versions.

Willing to believe that(and the translation is literally correct), but to a second language speaker of Texas Spanish it sounds like a politically correct euphemism for which the usual term is 'Latinos'.

It definitely has an academic ring to it, a bit like saying 'anglophones' in English.

Well yeah, that would explain how learning Spanish by talking to cooks and construction workers makes it sound like a weird but perfectly intelligible euphemism, sort of similar to 'sight-impaired' for 'blind'.

As a US-born spanish speaker "Latines" is obviously the correct term, but is also rarely used outside formal/academic settings. Colloquially everyone just uses "Latino" or "Hispanic"

In the meantime nothing screams "I am an illiterate gringo with a room tempreature IQ" like "Latinx".

In my opinion, latines is as woke as Latinx or Latinaos. Granted, It's the only spoken term that is seeing a push in latino-american, but it's correctly mocked when encountered. The plural is Latinos or Latinas if the group consists entirely of females. Wokies must accept that there are gendered languages.

"Latinaos" I have never seen in my life.

"Latines", (and "e" as gender neutral in general) is indeed the form south american leftists actually use. It seemed ascendant for a while, but luckily there has been a pretty big pendulum swing, so I'd say we have at least another decade until it takes over normal life.