site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 12, 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.

15
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

plenty of cisgender women who are unable to get pregnant would also be excluded.

It's not about bright lines, it's about concept clusters. An infertile cis woman is still much closer to the most central example of "woman" than any transwoman is. And many of those infertile women still suffer serious gender dysphoria about it!

There is an author I enjoy well enough to have read eight of her books. Bu there came a point where my brain just rebelled at what I was seeing, and I simply could no longer believe that this book was written by a woman. I went to google and typed "Firstname Lastname T", and sure enough "trans" was the first autopopulate option. Someone with fewer quokka tendencies than I would have probably seen it in the first 20 pages, just from the male-autistic focus on mechanics and total dismissal of people/relations.

If there are people here who believe trans men aren't actually men, I kindly ask that they also provide the criteria for distinguishing men from non-men.

Generally, same as the way you criticize unmanly men, ramped up a fair bit, with extra asterisks for the medical differences. The actual reason no one worries about transmen is because they are losing privileges, and the reaction to women trying to play life on hardmode is more "LMAO, good luck, short king."

Mind saying the series? That's hilarious--haven't experienced it since wondering why that Andre Norton chap kept writing about space rangers having Meaningful Emotional Moments with each other. I thought he was just European!

One of my favourite moments was, after learning that James Tiptree Jr. was a woman, then reading a review by Harlan Ellison about the Hugos some year that "James Tiptree Jr. is the man to beat this year. Joanna Russ is the woman, but Tiptree is the man".

(I'm going by shaky memory so it might not have been Joanna Russ, but you get the drift).

Weirkey Chronicles.