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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   38489 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 5, 2023

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Can someone steelman why “pride” is still necessary? Seems that you can be gay, bi or trans and it’s more than accepted - there’s a huge increase in kids claiming lgbt status so if there’s stigma it’s not apparent anymore. At what point does it make sense to call a moratorium for social movements that have lost their purpose? What are the “victory conditions” for what homophobia is considered no longer a major issue?

Are you like me also waiting for lust month and gluttony month?

It needs to end so that it can begin again as it's just rainbow propaganda for the TQ+. LGB were sidelined long ago and the function of pride now is just authoritarian mind control.

OP is low effort and many of these responses illustrate why we moderate against that sort of thing. "Pride now is just authoritarian mind control" may even be true, but how would anyone become more informed about that possibility by reading your comment? You're signalling a view without elaborating on the details; you're participating in a conversation without actually contributing anything of substance to it. Please post with more effort than this.

Yes, agreed, very low effort. I'll update in this comment:

It needs to end so that it can begin again as it's just rainbow propaganda for the TQ+. LGB were sidelined long ago and the function of pride now is just authoritarian mind control.

It needs to end because it has been taken over. While many gay people are presumably still participating in the original pride intent, being out and openly gay in a spirit of community, the movement, its intents and symbology have been taken over.

Currently we have an open culture war around gender ideology and an activist movement that seeks social engineering over how we speak, the meaning of words and a challenge to the existing order of human rights. This has nothing to do with gay people, except that they are a convenient vehicle-Denton's playbook, a legal strategy that outlines the approach the trans lobby should take, explicitly states this.

This is about power, the power to get people to say things they don't believe and to accept ideas that aren't grounded in science or logic. The ability to make people say absurd things under group pressure is a standard marker of authoritarian tyranny.

So the rainbow flag, pride event is not about gay people any more, they are in fact definitionally undermined by the new gender ideas, and increasingly encouraged culturally to identify as trans rather than gay. It id about symbolic power and maintaining a cultural hegemony.

“When I am Weaker Than You, I ask you for Freedom because that is according to your principles; when I am Stronger than you, I take away your Freedom Because that is according to my principles.”

The Pride community played the victim until they could mock everyone as oppressors. Asking the question is simply a misapplication of mistake theory.

As outlined by Scott, it is necessary as a collective ritual anchoring the latest iteration of the American civic religion. Liberals who don't care for 4th of July or Easter parades have the same longing for festivities that we all do, and pride fills the gap.

It's more of a celebration than an activist event, so it's going to exist as long as there are gay people around. The same reason there are still Italian festivals, and Polish festivals, and Rusyn festivals. And most people haven't even heard of the last one (most people think they're Russian), so it's pretty hard to claim that they're still experiencing significant discrimination—though there was a time when all "hunkies" were lumped together and discriminated against—but that doesn't change the fact that they're proud of their culture and want to celebrate it. When the various Byzantine Catholic churches in the coal patches and mill towns around Western Pennsylvania stop having Carpatho-Rusyn festivals, you might be able to say that pride festivals will become "unnecessary" in the future.

"Pride is just a celebration, like Polish festivals" is the motte. Few places have month long banners about the Polish festival, and failing to support a Polish festival rarely results in a penalty.

Can someone steelman why “pride” is still necessary? Seems that you can be gay, bi or trans and it’s more than accepted - there’s a huge increase in kids claiming lgbt status so if there’s stigma it’s not apparent anymore. At what point does it make sense to call a moratorium for social movements that have lost their purpose? What are the “victory conditions” for what homophobia is considered no longer a major issue?

Because no country is a monoculture. Even if there's many places where gay, bi or trans people can live lives free of judgement or condemnation, there's still households or towns that have homophobic or transphobic cultures.

Put another way. It doesn't matter if, say, 70% of people in your country of 330 million are at least tolerant of LGBT people, if the people you live with or around happen to belong to the 30% that were intolerant. My friend group has several LGBT people who grew up in conservative Christian families and are now the black sheep of their extended family. They still deal with a lot of baggage because of it, even if they've found a loving community who accepts them for who they are.

There's also the fact that tolerance might only be surface level. I've heard trans people talk about trying to get jobs, and in many cases employers will just laugh in the face of a "boy with makeup and a dress" and refuse employment even in unskilled labor, regardless of whether that is blatantly illegal at the state level. It's not a universal experience, but I think there's many reasons why there's a stereotype of computer science having a lot of trans women, aside from the well-known autism connection to being trans. I think computer science is a "disembodied" enough profession that already probably has a higher tolerance for weirdos, and also happens to make large amounts of money that make expensive surgeries that might not be covered by insurance possible.

Because no country is a monoculture. Even if there's many places where gay, bi or trans people can live lives free of judgement or condemnation, there's still households or towns that have homophobic or transphobic cultures.

Perhaps this is part of the entire point, but there will always be households or towns that have homophobic or transphobic cultures (as well as those with the exact opposite ones, of course), which implies that Pride will always be necessary. If perfection is the standard, then it can never be met in any context, and so whatever movement manages to entrench itself as the dominant cause to celebrate is the one that manages to be celebrated forever. Which, again, might be part of the point you're making?

OP was asking for steelmanning of the current necessity of Pride. I can only speculate about the future of the holiday.

I'm sure that Pride has a very different feel and purpose post-Obergefell and post-Bostock, than it did in, say, the 70's or 80's. Like many holidays and traditions, if it sticks around, I'm sure there will be many different reasons given for its celebration over its lifetime.

I think it's entirely possible that attitudes towards LGBT people go the way of attitudes towards left-handed people. Is it possible that there are people in the United States today who suffer greatly because of their left-handedness? Sure. Is it widespread enough that anyone feels the need to start left-handed support groups? Surely not.

I think if LGBT acceptance/tolerance/intolerance/hate in a hypothetical society goes from something like 40/30/25/5 to 50/35/14.9/0.1, and if more things like Trump Pride 2020 happen, resulting in a bipartisan consensus around all LGBT issues, Pride might lose relevance and purpose with no out group to rally against. I think you're already seeing a certain kind of LGBT hipster who hates that police officers and Fortune 500 companies are at Pride.

Agreed -- in my (certainly imperfect and second-hand) understanding, even if the Overall Culture is broadly opposed to LGBT discrimination, most of it occurs in local/familiar settings where the OC has little reach.

Homosexuality is, conjecturally, naturally disgusting for the heterosexual. This doesn’t seem learned — no one taught me that two guys kissing is gross, it was just gross to consider until the normalization propaganda reduced the innate “disgust” alarm. (This would be a very useful instinct because it disincentivizes men to take out their lust on each other; in the same way, humans develop a disgust for the idea of sex with people they grew up with). So there may need to be a constant stream of reinforcement to keep homosexuality normalized. Additionally, if LGBeTc is in any way associated with a desire to transverse norms and exhibit oneself (IMO 60% likely), then its public push could be considered part of the sexuality. It’s also beneficial for Democrats to incense LGBTs against “tradition” or anything that codes right wing… until their polling says the trade off isn’t worth it anymore. Lastly, LGBT pride has a covert psychological effect that may or may not be intended by the deep state, in that it reduces sum total non-sexualized pride; if you want to reduce straight men having pride period (the most dangerous cohort), you would associate pride with gays, transvestites, and transgenders. This is a good technique for reducing people proud of their culture, for instance; there really aren’t many synonyms to the sophisticated construct of “having pride”.

Homosexuality is, conjecturally, naturally disgusting for the heterosexual. This doesn’t seem learned — no one taught me that two guys kissing is gross, it was just gross to consider until the normalization propaganda reduced the innate “disgust” alarm.

I think it is similar to training cats to be okay with being picked up. Most cats' natural disposition is to not like being picked up by a large primate, but with the right training you can use steps to make them more okay with first having your hands on them, then getting their paws on you shoulder, then picking them up all the way.

My guess is that cats might still have slight discomfort with being picked up, but they can be trained to accept that it is safe enough that the discomfort is dialed down to the absolute minimum.

Honestly, the more I interact with cats, the less I understand their psychology. That’s not a metaphor. I just watched one reach out to bat a pet rabbit, get no response, and then go back to peacefully (?) coexisting. Somehow this has been a stable equilibrium.

Growing up in a conservative part of the US, I felt a little less lonely seeing images of people living openly gay lives in, say, New York. Now the gay teens in my high school are probably doing fine, but I wouldn't be surprised if some soul in Egypt finds hope in some bland pride gesture from a sports team or influencer from my hometown.

Your first mistake is assuming that pride is mostly a form of activism. It’s a holiday. It happens to be a holiday celebrating something I don’t like very much, but whatever, it’s still a holiday.

I suspect the answer to ‘why do gays get a whole month’ is that if it’s a whole month of celebrations you don’t have to give any of it off from work(compared to Easter where most white collar workers expect to be off on Good Friday or Christmas where they’re off for a week).

Beyond stigma, some part of Pride was also about Raising Awareness, and in the literal sense rather than the crude fundraising schlock of a Pink Ribbon campaign, and there are still places where a slightly more useful understanding and awareness would be helpful. I've had a coworker gently inform me that a pilot wasn't always a woman, and this was probably meant well than an intentional break from norms, but a lot of his description still at best reflected a pretty bad misunderstanding of what happened there. And events like Pride, rather than movements like Pride, are slightly more useful ways to resolve this than actually revealing my power level to a coworker. The trans stuff is more overt, simply because most people didn't know at all about trans stuff a decade ago, a lot of it's very private, and it's still something that's really outside the realm of discussion for most normies, but it's not the only place.

But more generally, something something parades are civil rites. Quite separate from any overt or direct political goals, there are benefits to having open-air Schelling Points for celebrations.

((And, yes, some people are using them to make often ham-fisted attacks on their enemies or to be annoying.))

There's a bit of a dogpile here in the vein of "Well why do we still celebrate ${holiday commemorating event}??" which I think doesn't grasp the point you're trying to make.

Pride Parades used to be more in-your-face, freak out the squares squares type events that were held as protests. "We're here, we're queer, get used to it!" Now that everyone's either "used to it" or afraid of drawing the wrath of HR and/or Twitter mobs, there should no longer be any need for protests.

But Pride Parades turned out to be great opportunities to siphon off bit of the heady nectar of the latest "civil rights victory." If you're queer, you can go there and celebrate defeating bigotry and bask in the righteousness of the cause ("Fuck hate! Love conquers all!") If you're normal you can go there and enjoy the same as an "ally." As mentioned in this thread, corporations got involved to sell stuff and also to get a little of that civil rights glory for themselves, likewise for the city government. And so it is no longer a protest, but a big, well-funded party where you can have a blast and showcase your righteousness.

Seconding @4bpp above.

But also and entirely completely: It's Fun. I have fun there. Many people have fun there. It's a big trashy street party where you drink and have fun. I'm straight, but I don't have a stick up my ass about it, I go there and have a great time. On occasion my wife has met a nice girl there and we have had a fantastic time. You drink, there's a parade, there's dancing, there's smoking, there's sex, there's music, there's a sense of occasion and togetherness.

And for the most part, there are absolutely no qualifications to participate. Queer culture's long running effort to be inclusive, just now starting to trim itself, has welcomed straight outcasts as "Allies" if they simply didn't hate Queers. So many people who need something to do, can find it. Where Christians tend to be initially open but eventually get sticky about the Baptism thing.

One of my goals for the upcoming year is to have more days of occasion. I want to find local Catholic sites that it would be practical to pilgrimage on foot. I want to celebrate things.

That's the main thing. As long as people are having fun at Pride, Pride will self-perpetuate.

And corporations, as @astraganant points out, will find ways to stick their blood funnel into it and turn that fun into consumption.

It sounds like Mardi Gras with a few exceptions:

  1. I don’t think (could be wrong) people believe it is acceptable to bring kids to Mardi Gras.

  2. If someone publicly objected to Mardi Gras, they wouldn’t be fired and ostracized from polite society.

  1. Idk, there are definitely kid friendly Mardi gras/faschtnacht day celebrations I recall going to.

  2. Cancel culture might be a side effect of Pride, but it isn't why Pride exists. Assuming your opponents do things out of purely malevolent intentions tends to leads to big blindspots, most people do things because they enjoy them or believe them to be good.

This is making me think of the cavalier-Roundhead cultural and ultimately civil war in England. The cavaliers parodied the roundheads as joyless puritans who wanted to destroy "merry England" and at different times very much used procedures to make the Book of Sports legally mandatory fun.

Is Fasnacht all that spicy? Some bizarre imagery and some grotesque caricatures, but not really Love Parade circa '99 (RIP). More of a colorful brass instrument party that occasionally invites itself into your pub, killing any attempts at conversation without yelling.

It's not spicy at all, which is kind of my point. We have the same holiday, Fat Tuesday/Shrove Tuesday/Mardi Gras/Fastnacht Day that are all the day before Lent begins on Ash Wednesday, for the purpose of celebrating and feasting immediately prior to the period of fasting when celebration and drinking would be inappropriate; and it is celebrated in different ways across places and cultures and times. And even within the same overall "culture" of American Catholicism, you have N'Orleans Mardi Gras which I understand that you would emphatically not attend with children, and you have Fastnacht day in PA which I mostly associate with going to the local bank branch with my mother to get a free donut.*

In the same way, OP and others seem to be conflating leather daddies in the Castro with Target selling rainbow T shirts with blood sucking corporate law firms handing out "Dewey Cheatham and Howe LLP Ally" Stickers. Those are all under the heading of Pridetm but they are very different things. Just as my parents taking me to get a donut at Local Bank doesn't mean that either my parents or Local Bank endorse young women flashing their breasts for beads in Louisiana, it just means they endorse donuts; similarly parents getting their kids a rainbow lollypop at Local Bank doesn't really mean that the parents or the bank endorse capital-P-Perversion, it means they endorse rainbow lollypops for kids.

Now I understand the deeper questions of "Where do we draw the line?" or "How slippery is the slope?" or a general question of buying into a complete cultural package from the biggest to the smallest aspect. But to ask the question "Why is Pride around anymore?" and not acknowledge that part of the answer is "People enjoy it" is kinda silly.

*Seriously, they were so good. I still remember getting a warm donut in the bank lobby, spreading it with cinnamon sugar butter. It's such a shame the Canucks came in and bought that bank.

Sure, but there's a major difference, in that drunkenness and sexual debauchery are not a central, or even licit part of Catholicism, while gay sex is central to gay sexual identities, and things like BDSM are all explicitly celebrated under the umbrella of Pride.

The analogy of "Target selling kids rainbow shirts is different from the gay sex" to "Mardis Gras debauchery is different from Catholicism and Lent" doesn't really hold up.

In fact it's the opposite. One is a family-friendly expression of a concept that is centrally about adult sexuality, while the other is a debaucherously expression of a concept which is explicitly chaste.

Sure, but handing out a Fastnacht also doesn't imply that you endorse many concepts central to Catholicism. I strongly doubt that even the coincidentally Catholic employees of Local Bank thought of themselves as taking a position on the trinity, on transubstantiation, on papal supremacy, on the ultimate fate of heretics and non-believers. I would bet a significant number of people eating those fastnachts would disagree, strenuously, with those points of Catholic doctrine.

You're arguing for sexuality as a special zone of inappropriate discussion in public, that nothing even second-hand associated with sex can be discussed in public. Which is fine, but it is clearly not a broadly held belief. It rings hollow to me as a universal principle.

You're arguing for sexuality as a special zone of inappropriate discussion in public

I'm not arguing for anything here, it's that it's the relevant dimension here, and the comparison to other secular festivals is different on this specific ground. To equate Pride with them, is a game of hide the pickle.

Break out the template by it's components, the "Holiday Festival" starter kit, from the inside out:

  1. The core concept

  2. The values, priorities and value-system embodied by the concept

  3. A particular instance, example, or memorial of the concept forming the holiday

  4. Pious observance of the holiday

  5. Secular celebration and festivities connected to or an outgrowth from the holiday

  6. 'Spicy', 'Adult', or 'inappropriate' takes on and circumstances of indulgence in the festivities.

Take Mardi-gras:

  1. Catholicism

  2. Catholic morality, esp. pray, fasting, and alms-giving

  3. The Beginning of Lent

  4. Shrove Tuesday traditions

  5. Mardi-Gras

  6. Drunken carousing, partying, sex, and nudity.

4th of July:

  1. America

  2. American Patriotism & Democracy

  3. The signing of the Declaration of Independence

  4. Patriotic Displays, memorials, Bank holiday, etc.

  5. Picnics, parades, fireworks, boating at the lake.

  6. Adult parties with booze, etc.

In both of these instances, (and many more), one might criticize the inappropriateness of them on account of 6, or be specifically upset by children being around too much 6. And, like you have done here, we can rebut that the adult themes in 6, are not central or even necessarily relevant to 1-5. Neither does partaking in or exposing kids to 5, imply any sort of approval or support for 6.

But this doesn't work with Pride because adult themes are central to #1 and #2. There is no instance of 4 or 5 that is divorced from themes of sex and sexuality or divorced from values of sexual liberalism.

And while some things in bucket 6 like boozing, nudity, or sleeping around are not central to PRIDE, they are not nearly so divorced or in contradiction with the core themes as in other holidays, secular and religious. Acceptance of sexual liberalism, breaking of taboos and social mores, and celebration of eroticism are a core component of PRIDE, not tacked on or in tension with.

While there are plenty of prude, chaste, and modest LGBT members, perhaps even most of them, PRIDE itself is not remotely about integrating same-sex into heteronormative forms of disgression.

Pride is about sex and is adult themed. You can accuse me of wanting to specially zone that out of public modesty, but it's the opposite, you need to defend PRIDE's special and unique inclusion of it, and comparisons to other, non-sexually themed holidays are a motte and baily.

Why do the French still need to celebrate the storming of the Bastille? What are the "victory conditions" for monarchism to no longer be considered a major issue? Alternatively, same question for the US's Independence Day and the threat of the British yoke.

If you only want to count civic ritual evolved from an act of defiance the historical object of which has arguably disappeared, the Tea Party movement in the US is a good example. If your answer is that they protested what they saw as modern counterparts of British taxation-without-representation, well, there's your answer for Pride too.

Why do the French still need to celebrate the storming of the Bastille? What are the "victory conditions" for monarchism to no longer be considered a major issue?

There's a major issue, and then there's a major issue. It's unlikely that anyone would be fired for refusing to celebrate the storming of the Bastille.

Do people commonly get fired for privately not celebrating pride (as opposed to insubordination if the company orders them to perform pride-celebrating actions in the name of their company)? Conversely, I imagine that someone boycotting their company's Bastille Day celebrations would be in some amount of trouble (all the more so within the first few decades after the actual storming), and if you worked at one of those companies that gratuitously put "proudly manufactured in the USA" and US flags on their product packaging, would refusing to get involved with any patriotic display when your company does July 4th stuff really be without consequence?

I was thinking more like posting to someplace that you refuse to participate in Bastille day and being cancelled by a mob getting your employer to fire you.

Also, I doubt that the company would have either a Bastille day or July 4 celebration that consists of anything more than "stay home for the day" and which is mandatory.

Should only those things exist which are "necessary" to exist?

Seems that you can be gay, bi or trans and it’s more than accepted - there’s a huge increase in kids claiming lgbt status so if there’s stigma it’s not apparent anymore.

Surely there is great regional variation in the truth of this statement, as @raggedy_anthem points out below.

At what point does it make sense to call a moratorium for social movements that have lost their purpose?

Can you be more specific? What kind of action does calling for this moratorium entail? What does such a moratorium actually look like?

What are the “victory conditions” for what homophobia is considered no longer a major issue?

There is probably not any one answer for this. Different people will think of homophobia as having been solved based on different criteria.

For the same reasons Germans are forced to celebrate year after year the day of their ultimate defeat. The pride in the recent years is about sending a message "resistance is futile".

We don't do that, though. For all of our national self-hate and perpetual condemnation of all that is German, we do not actually celebrate the day of defeat.

We don't do that, though. For all of our national self-hate and perpetual condemnation of all that is German, we do not actually celebrate the day of defeat.

There are no official celebrations of the Day of Europe in Germany?

Official ones maybe, but if so that's a purely bureaucratic affair and does not feature in public consciousness.

Wouldn’t bother me, it was a great thing. I think any german with a conscience had a moral obligation to help the allies and murder any and all authority figures from 1939 onwards, kulak-style. I could argue that the nazis were the ones who really destroyed germanness and caused the deaths of germans, but honestly some things are more important than nationality. I can’t adequately express the disgust I feel towards the worms who thought their duty to the state, or their oaths, trumped morality.

Okay. So whom are you murdering today? Or do we already live in the best of all worlds?

It's tolerable. I try to wait for the mysterious disappearance of my neighbours and my conscription notice before I declare war on society.

I'm sure you will.

I doubt that you will.

In the spirit of charity I hereby express my baseless estimation that I consider it more likely for you to be talking tough than to actually mean what you say, but I have no proof so I suppose I'll take your word for it.

What does talking tough have to do with it? I believe murderous rebellion was justified, and this is presumably what you object to. Or do you agree that it was justified, but assume you would have done nothing out of cowardice? Because Lizzardspawn seemed to imply that it was right and proper for germans to die for Hitler, and my suggested course of action would be "traitorous".

I'm saying your moral absolutism with violent undertones is a luxury belief you would likely be quick to shed were you actually living in wartime Germany. That any one of those "worms" who marched into Russia or France to die for some supposed moral failing had a thousand times the spine of someone who comes in to deride them almost a century after the fact.

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Europe Day is on May 9th, the day Russia claims Germany surrendered.

According to EU itself this is not the reason for the Europe Day, though:

Europe Day held on 9 May every year celebrates peace and unity in Europe. The date marks the anniversary of the historic 'Schuman declaration' that set out his idea for a new form of political cooperation in Europe, which would make war between Europe's nations unthinkable. Schuman's proposal is considered to be the beginning of what is now the European Union.

Considering when it was created and the political circumstances around it, I would guess that the day was chosen deliberately.

It's possible the day was closed deliberately, but even then the probable reason would be to blunt and countersignal the Russian Victory Day, not bolster it.

Possibly so, but we still don't celebrate it.

The Third Reich lost the war. It wasn't undone by karmic justice or by a democratic awakening; it lost because it wasn't good enough at violence. This isn't the stuff that the German Culture Of Remembrance is made of. We celebrate the evilness of the nazis and our not being them; we do not celebrate anything that would not mesh with our vaunted pacifism.

At what point does it make sense to call a moratorium for social movements that have lost their purpose? What are the “victory conditions” for what homophobia is considered no longer a major issue?

Never, if there's money to be made.

And marketing cheaply made rainbow plastered tat at overpriced street parties is apparently profitable.

This comment would be a better fit for the sunday questions thread. Its a little short and lacking meat as it is.

Try to avoid top level comments that amount to:

"[a thing]. Discuss."

There would, to me, seem to be a lot less pride stuff (rainbow flags, regular or Progress version, on the streets, rainbow corporate logos etc.) going on around than some years back, which would seem to incidate it is considered less necessary than before.

There would, to me, seem to be a lot less pride stuff going on around than some years back

I'm sorry what? https://twitter.com/GitNigel/status/1665625502252425216

This doesn't match my experience at all.

I'm mostly talking about what I'm seeing in daily life in the streets - less rainbow flags on shop windows etc - but I also just checked several services I use and their logos on Twitter (the service itself, Spotify, Steam, Linkedin etc.) and the only one with a rainbow logo was Duolingo.

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