site banner
PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   26074 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 4, 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.

Hmm.

Hits a bit different after a section on child sex, though.

I’d be much more alarmed if such a section was actually in the opinion, rather than in the commentary. And I don’t get the impression Polgreen is dancing around the topic, or that she’s blocking out the obvious cognitive dissonance. This tension disappears if one doesn’t believe that sex and sexuality are like tennis.

Notice that Polgreen emphasizes the probable safety or reversibility of treatments. She has to insist that this regret won’t cross the line to sterility, because that’s intuitively no longer tennis. Once reproduction is implicated, the sexuality taboo applies, and she can’t endorse it for children. But so long as it remains on the “gender” side of the line, it’s fair game.

I believe this is downstream of an older strain of feminist, and more broadly liberal, egalitarianism. One is supposed to treat people the same, via rational assessment, after ignoring those petty intuitions which scream “other!” Sex-blindness fit right in to the same milieu that endorsed race- and class-blindness. Note that age-blindness never made it to the mainstream, and for good reason! Utopians assumed away illness, poverty and inequity, but the disparity of experience will remain.

Today’s lines of post-egalitarian argument shy away from blindness. I do find it interesting that Polgreen says “Maybe we should all learn to wear our genders, indeed, all of our identities, a bit more lightly.” A old-school sentiment, and one which runs counter to the modern partisan’s beliefs. Perhaps this is privilege speaking, but I’d have expected more caution from someone who makes her living off taking gender seriously.

I don't see a lot of emphasis on safety/reversibility. Like, there's one line in a parenthetical toward that end on one particular, but there's also:

The possibility that children might make irreversible decisions on this particular question that they later regret is, for many people, simply intolerable. Transition, to borrow a phrase, should be safe, legal and rare.

We allow children to make irreversible decisions about their lives all the time, ideally with the guidance and support of the communities that care for them. Sometimes they regret those decisions. The stakes vary, but they are real. So what are we saying, really, when we worry that a child will regret this particular decision, the decision to transition? And how is it different, really, from the decision I made to quit competitive swimming? To many people — I am guessing most — this question is absurd. How could you possibly compare something as fundamental and consequential to one’s life as gender to something that seems comparatively trivial, competitive sport?

and

According to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, in 2020, more than 44,000 people between the ages of 13 and 19 got a rhinoplasty, the most common surgical cosmetic procedure performed on teenagers. Thousands of kids went under the knife for chest surgery — 3,200 girls got breast augmentations and 1,800 girls got breast reductions, while 2,800 boys had surgery to remove breast tissue from their chests, presumably to help them conform better to their gender identities. Indeed, many if not most of these often irreversible interventions on children’s bodies are designed, in one way or another, to help children feel better about their appearances in a way that is inescapably bound up with gender.

Maybe not so much in this piece, but generally the "puberty blockers are safe and reversible" belief fills the same role as "gays are born that way" did - it's the factual belief that needs to be true for the social change to be accepted. So there's a huge amount of effort poured into insisting that it is true regardless of how strongly the evidence supports it.

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