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 -
Subliminal messaging doesn't work, ideological messaging does. Both the "look at Falwell saying crazy stuff about Tinky Winky" rhetoric and to a much lesser extent the "look at Tinky Winky being a gay icon" rhetoric presumably contributed to strengthening the social-justice ideological framework in which homosexuality is high-status, leading people to identify as gay and then sometimes even have gay sex. But there's no reason to believe the character himself did, because whether his supposed gay associations were intentional or not (probably not) the vast majority of people looking hard enough to see it already had strong ideological views on the subject. The existence of a character like that does nothing to strengthen those views, while a news story about how one of the enemy is stupid does. Same way crossdressing stories like Mulan aren't what caused the massive surge in transgenderism. Or antifa people attacking people at conservative protests and claiming to be inspired by Captain America or historical WW2 veterans - what inspired them is the antifa memeplex itself.
It is fundamentally missing the point of the recent surge in social-justice "identities", because for the most part it isn't even about the actual features of those groups, it is about the ideology itself. Thus the popularity of things like "grey-asexual" identities that let you be asexual while having sex or "non-binary" identities that let you be transgender without transitioning. That doesn't mean the surge in those identifications isn't connected to behavior, there really are a lot more people having gay sex even if they're a smaller percentage of those identifying as gay. This increase is of course most dramatic with transgenderism, where it's looking like (contrary to the concept of gender identity) there isn't much stopping people from transitioning when their ideology and social circle pushes them towards it. But this transmits through the ideological memeplex, not fictional characters being vaguely non-masculine.
More options
Context Copy link