site banner
naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   36582 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 24, 2022

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.

20
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

But I also view convincing kids to mutilate and sterilize themselves as abuse, and these activist absolutely have that intent.

Aight, hold up, calling you on this one.

No, the activists do not have the intent of convincing kids to mutilate and sterilize themselves.

Be charitable.

Assume the people you're talking to or about have thought through the issues you're discussing, and try to represent their views in a way they would recognize. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly. Beating down strawmen is fun, but it's not productive for you, and it's certainly not productive for anyone attempting to engage you in conversation; it just results in repeated back-and-forths where your debate partner has to say "no, that's not what I think".

If you'd said something like:

But I also view convincing kids to mutilate and sterilize themselves as abuse, and I think gender transition surgery counts as that, and the activists are trying to convince kids to undergo gender transition surgery.

then I'd be fine with it. But right now you're drawing a direct line from your opinion of the outcome to what you believe is the activists' intention, and that direct line implies cartoon-supervillain evil.

And is probably wrong.

So either bring evidence or knock it off with that kind of rhetoric.

Does the commercial for puberty blockers, all cartoonish and targeted at children, which organically popped up for my wife and I while watching Youtube count? I couldn't fucking believe my eyes when I saw it. There it was, piped directly into our fucking home.

I mean seriously, how can you deny this?

No, the activists do not have the intent of convincing kids to mutilate and sterilize themselves.

That is the terminal reality of living as trans. Being permanently medicalized, mutilated and sterilized. If you are attempting to get the maximal number of children "trans health care" as you possibly can, as early as you can possibly get away with, that is what you are doing to them. Or are we playing silly intent games here to? Oh, the activist don't mean to convince children to mutilate and sterilize themselves. It's just the only path to some other terminal goal they have.

You - and all other social conservatives - want to keep children away from sex education so they get pregnant young, maybe not consensually, and then deny them abortions to force them to have children.< / blockquote >

Obviously that's not true! At all! Some conservatives do dislike the current form of sex eduction, and some conservatives don't want minors to have abortions. A few even claim they don't want raped minors to have abortions. but they don't want ... all of that, above. Most of them would prefer the minor doesn't get pregnant young, in particular! You can do this for any controversial position. Democrats are RACIST and have JEWISH QUOTAS IN COLLEGES just like HITLER!

Similarly, trans activists would not say "i want to mutilate and sterilize children. and i'm jerking off as I type this. Hail Marx."

That is the terminal reality of living as trans. Being permanently medicalized, mutilated and sterilized

The point of charitability rules here is that people don't generally discuss 'children being sterilized and mutilated', or 'hitler jew segregation racism', in a particularly useful way. While I'd rather have a totally-freeze-peach style moderation where you can say whatever you want and get moderated if it's not useful, there's clearly a correlation between the two. What productive response do you expect your interlocutors to have to "you are literally mutilating children!" How does that work!

Ideally, the interlocutor would carefully investigate the meaning of that, referring to many irl examples, and figure out precisely what is happening to children, how it matters, how it relates to the traditional nature of sex and modernity or whatever. But, again, that doesn't usually happen when you call someone a "child mutilator".

The thing is, sometimes things as bad as "child mutilation" do happen. And trans may be even, in a broad sense, as bad as "child mutilation". So saying mean-sounding things can be useful, when they are happening. But saying 'child mutilation' doesn't help at all, it just says it's something bad ... happening ... to children. But the disagreement is if it's bad, if wearing girl underwear and getting euphoria <...>s are bad, if HRT and SRS are bad, etc. Both sides are aware that is happening to children. And it distracts from the fact that all of that is happening whether or not teachers push it, because people are coming across it on the internet and deciding to do it themselves. (even censoring the internet isn't a good option!)

No, that does not count, unless you can actually show that the people doing this are trying to mutilate kids. I'm willing to bet what they actually are trying to do is some combination of "provide a service for trans people", "raise trans awareness", and "make money".

You don't get to claim that people have evil motivations just because you think the outcome of their actions will be banned.

Or are we playing silly intent games here to? Oh, the activist don't mean to convince children to mutilate and sterilize themselves. It's just the only path to some other terminal goal they have.

This has been the rule of The Motte since the rules were written. It's literally the point of the place.

Can you find and post it for him to watch? On this issue I'm still torn between "there's legitimate ignorance caused by people's controlled media diet" and "we are being deliberately gaslit by child-mutilating demons," so bringing evidence and seeing how people respond to it is important.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats