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 -
Some people are already making this argument closer to its joints, but I'll separately argue that "failure" was not the central claim from the linked thread. Even if the Sexual Revolution as a whole was an improvement for a person's life, both Botond173's and WhiningCoil's frameworks apply: quite a lot of individual people bought into a promise of open sexuality with little or no negative consequence, and the modern infrastructure of the movement has not achieved and often repudiated that goal.
WhiningCoil spends more time on the ramifications -- unwed motherhood, sexual possessiveness/unwillingness to be cuckqueened, public shame over past sex work -- but the central claim is not just those have increased (though I expect he can make that argument, and while it's hard to separate the sexual revolution from other causes, it's hard to define the sexual revolution in a way that doesn't make cam work more common), but that their results were things that the sexual revolution claimed even as they occurred would be resolved, and that didn't happen. Being a single mother still sucks even if you don't think the sexual revolution impacted marriage rates, Helluva Boss uses cuck as an insult, people who claim sex work is work will still bleach their underpants (even at far smaller scales and far less readily identifiable ways!), and there's still an absolute mess of stigma and hurt feelings and drama around casual sex even if you think there's no more of it than in the 1950s.
There's a view (and not an uncommon one!) that this just means the sexual revolution hasn't won, yet; if these things are normalized or destigmatized, that at least some of the issues will fade or be solved. But there's another view, that at least some of these issues are issues on their own, and that they cause unavoidable problems. And I don't think the division is Manichean.
More options
Context Copy link