site banner
PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   27516 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 6, 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.

5
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

The word "home" is encircled by a love heart. I've never even met a gay man who'd do something like that.

That's not what I'm referring to. I'm talking about how the letters are formed and how consistent they are. Look at the note where she's calling her targets faggots. It's all over the place. The letter formation isn't consistent from one word to the next, let alone inside words that have multiple of the same letter. The letters that stick up or go below the line are often smushed to the point of looking like a completely different letter.

None of this makes it completely illegible. You can still tell what letters they are based on context. But that doesn't mean it's neat. Girl handwriting is almost always clean and consistent. Their neatest handwriting gets close to looking like a font.

This is a girls' handwriting if I've ever seen one. How bad can you be at recognizing gendered writing not to see this.

Have we considered ‘uh, she was mentally ill’? I believe inconsistent handwriting is literally a symptom of schizophrenia; it’s certainly a stereotype.

There's also some probably-subclinical things that might make someone's handwriting mediocre or average instead of excellent. Hypermobility is one of them, and trans people are disproportionately hypermobile. Same for autism and the sensory bullshit and weirdness that goes with that. Including, say, mild dyspraxia or clumsiness.

TL;DR trans, a bit more likely to be loose-jointed and a bit clumsy.

I agree a lot of women have very neat penmanship, but I wouldn't say neatness is synonymous with femininity. The handwriting in Hale's manifesto/diary/whatever looks broadly similar to this, and both look distinctly feminine to me, even though the latter example is far from consistent (although certainly neater than Hale's penmanship). It's hard to pinpoint exactly what makes penmanship look "feminine", but for me it's something to do with the broadness and roundedness of the characters: the lowercase As are much larger and rounder than I would write mine. It's referred to here as "bubble" handwriting which I think is an apt description. I think men, regardless of whether their penmanship is neat or messy, generally have a preference for narrower and straighter characters.

I shouldn't even be surprised that (like vocal pitch or gait), this is a trait that transgender people are aware is gendered and go out of their way to train themselves into doing.

While I'd hum and haw a bit about "girls and boys have different writing styles", I can see why the transgender lobby is so desperate that "biology not real". The amount of determinism there about gender roles based on biology, that there really is rigidly a gender binary and two sexes, so that your real sex will show up in the tiniest ways does mean that if you genuinely feel you are the wrong sex (because by now 'sex' and 'gender' have become interchangeable terms and people seem to have ditched 'being transgender is only about the gender you express, not your biological sex' talk) then you have to insist on advanced biology in order to argue that no, this is not a disorder or mental illness, it's totally natural, look earthworms are hermaphrodite!

Your advanced biology link leads to a thread about Lady Gaga having a funny hat. It seems to happen every time someone shares an old.reddit link. The exact same thing happened to me this morning.

Well now that's odd.

It looks like a user-side problem with the Old Reddit Redirect extension:

https://old.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/164uqjg/why_do_ireddit_image_links_go_to_that_ancient/
https://old.reddit.com/r/bugs/comments/15p1ctt/why_does_clicking_any_image_on_reddit_open_the/

https://github.com/tom-james-watson/old-reddit-redirect/issues/99

Developer says it's fixed but as suggested on the Github page I removed and reinstalled the already updated addon and still have the problem.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats