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 -
So, one thing I keep wondering about, is does the US have a massive cultural divide with the UK over pornography, or is UK media completely unhinged and unrepresentative?
Like, in the US, it's currently a minor flashpoint that conservative state governments are requiring age verification for pornographic websites, and the websites are choosing to block access from those states instead of implementing age verification. Liberals seem to be low key against this? At least I've seen liberals like Krystal Ball act like Republicans are harming people's sexual health by "banning" pornography in her state of Virginia. It's not exactly a hill they'll die on, but they'll spend some breath on it from time to time. Like liberals seem to be pro pornography, or at least in some sort of weird hyperposition between being pro some abstract form of pornography that's good for sexual self discovery, and against some abstract for of pornography that degrades women.
I know... I know... just.... moving on.
So anyways, a lot of US left coded Narrative following shows seem to be very laissez-faire about pornography, especially with lots of "safe horny" scenes of diverse peoples and sexualities having sex on screen.
A lot of what I can only assume are left coded Narrative following shows produced or co-produced in the UK (Broadchurch, Inside Man, Black Mirror) have as their central conceit that pornography is the singular corrupting force behind evil patriarchy and violence against women. The consumption of pornography repeatedly leads to a chain of events where men rape and/or murder women.
Is this actually a view that the UK public holds? Or is it just more of the same top down forceful lies that gets pushed in the US media, totally out of touch with the people who watch it?
Both.
Mindgeek (i.e pornhub) doesn't oppose age verification for pornography. They just oppose that they've not been given a lucrative monopoly on age verification via a law perfectly designed to match the system they've already made for it. It happens to be strategically useful to blame this on Rethuglicans to rile up Democrats in opposition, but there's no political commitment here.
The problem is, the cultural divide isn't genuinely over pornography. It's over censorship of the internet in general, because, rightly or wrongly, the current and prior British government, and their client media, view free expression online as a major threat to their continued rule. They are obsessed with introducing laws to ban it, and will reach for any tool available as a justification to do so. Porn is on the weapon rack, so it gets used. It would be trivial enough for governments to introduce legislation specifically banning porn. In practice, it only tangentially hits porn as part of laws that fire broadsides at online dissidents, who are the true target. Anti-porn activists get rolled out in situations where, before, they'd have been shut out as too religious and too conservative, because they are temporarily useful.
It would be illegal to operate this website in the UK post the Online Safety Act, for example, because it doesn't meet Ofcom's takedown requirements for content our government doesn't like.
The UK public simultaneously doesn't specifically oppose porn, but loves randomly banning everything. A significant percentage of people will support permanent bans on all kinds of activities for no discernible reason.
More options
Context Copy link
Just generally, non-US serious feminists have a dim/skeptical view of pornography because it’s not exactly politically correct.
More options
Context Copy link
Which liberals?
If you mean progressives, they hate it. The claim it devalues women is trivially correct and everything progressives do is downstream of this.
Actual liberals are generally too busy watching porn to comment.
More options
Context Copy link
British writer Louise Perry, in one of her podcast discussions after her book "The Case Against the Sexual Revolution", made an observation about this. And she noted, basically, that her conservative critiques about the sexual revolution weren't interpreted as being tied to regressive evangelical Christianity in Britain, because that wasn't a movement with any particular force there. So it meant she was free to make something like a secular argument for a return to older Christian ethnics, and for it to be received that way in Britain. Whereas in America, because of the contours of the culture wars (and honestly because of the physical contours of the country, with evangelical Christianity often being coded as a Southern thing, meaning racist low-educated poor losers of the Civil War etc etc etc), that kind of argument is automatically slotted into a pre-existing fight. And I think she had the sense that it was much easier to advance that sort of argument and have it be engaged with in Britain as a result. In a way, it reminds me of the Charles Murray argument that a lot of well-credentialed American progressives of a certain sort seem entirely unwilling to preach what they practice; in their personal lives, they are thrifty and monogamous and live up mostly to a 1950s-ish life script (once they admittedly exhaust a non-martial serial monogamy phase in their 20s), but they're largely unwilling to advocate those positions more broadly.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link