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 -
I know very little about social work or its culture, but certainly I was educated in ways similar to you, where "sex work is work" was the unchallengeable dogma, in the sense that any parent who would react to their daughter saying "I got a job as a hooker at the local brothel" any differently to her saying "I got a job as a server at the local restaurant" is necessarily a misogynist, and I think it's just another instance of the humanities in academia going off and declaring things as true based on what sounds convenient rather than based on what is actually true in reality. How much time, do you wager, the professors who taught this sort of this stuff, actually spent around real prostitutes working the streets or the internets or whatever, actually learning and documenting what the median or modal woman who goes into this industry would experience? I'd wager that what little time they spent with IRL prostitutes wasn't spent in actual meaningful documentation and knowledge generation, but rather on confirmation bias. It's convenient to just believe a simple slogan and then fit all observations into that slogan instead of trying to modulate one's worldview based on observations. Doubly so when you spend your entire professional and most of social life surrounded by people who all agree with you on this, many of whom have very high status and are willing to heap more status onto you for agreeing with them more loudly. Both logically and logistically, you run into major holes in your belief if you actually start thinking about and observing the way customers interact with sex workers and how sex workers get into the industry and how the employment structures work, but why think about logic and logistics, when there's valuable status to be gained?
I really don't think there's anything deeper than that. It's not an
ogreonion, it's a balloon.More options
Context Copy link