site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 16, 2023

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.

10
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I read the article, and was surprised to find I agreed with most of what she said. Every one of her opinions is about as manosphere/redpilled/motte-ish as you could imagine being printed in the NYT in 2023.

The new book being discussed is about how modern feminism has not just failed men, but effectively forbidden productive discussion of their problems. Bravo!

I think it's worth pointing out here that our three biggest media rape spectacles of our lifetime are probably the Duke Lacrosse team, Rolling Stone's UVA frat, and Kavanaugh confirmation hearing. Based on every piece of evidence, not only was there no gray line crossed, but the accused(s) had never even met the accuser. Nonetheless the claims were considered by many to be true in some sense and led to more protections and measures against the imagined crimes.

On the other hand, quietly we are learning tens of thousands of English women, and increasingly now French, Dutch, and German had been subjected to extremely hard core rapes by muslims. We're talking group orgies of adult men on teenagers with forced consumption of alcohol and narcotics and victim intimidation. When possible, police suppressed the evidence. The media never reported any of these allegations and even convictions never made it into a news cycle. This was never allowed to become a talking point in immigration debate.

Even far outside anything like college bar scene, we Westerners now all live on eggshells in any "institution" - since any accusation, no matter how frivolous or demonstrably wrong can destroy our career. The court system is designed to take a maximalist view of harassment, where simply psychological damage can be seen as grounds for million dollar settlements.

Stepping back and examine the system, we see it is clearly not in place to protect women, or even render them justice. It is in place to ram through socially engineered change at the cost of millions of women raped, and millions of men ostracized or imprisoned, leaving almost all of us worse off ... except the skilled manipulators who use this system to their advantage. As such there can be no reform of the system - the Media/HR/Academia sex-police - or engagement of its defenders. It must be completely destroyed.

Every one of her opinions is about as manosphere/redpilled/motte-ish as you could imagine being printed in the NYT in 2023.

manosphere/redpilled/motte-ish? I don't understand what it means.