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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   27235 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 11, 2023

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taking away rights or privileges or respect or acknowledgement or etc. from people who have spent a long hard time and earning it, and trying to do that ussually involves a lot of kicking and screaming and destruction

You would think so, but didn't we just watch this happen to straight white men, and Europeans more generally, with basically no effective pushback? Some days it seems as simple as

  1. Comedians joke about it
  2. Thinkpieces recontextualize it
  3. Comedians mock the stupidest examples of pushback
  4. A few people get cancelled for pushing back

And soon after, countless formal and informal corporate, academic, personal, and government policies change to enforce the new policy. In a way it's impressive how liberal democracies can coordinate to change which groups they marginalize without much violence or state-directed propaganda.

You would think so, but didn't we just watch this happen to straight white men, and Europeans more generally, with basically no effective pushback?

No, we didn't.

First of all, the clause of my sentence that read 'people who have spent a long hard time and earning it' wasn't just for show, I do think that inherited privilege which has existed for centuries without justification is treated differently by society than hard-won rights where the people who fought for them are still alive and speaking to us today.

Second, what you're describing was neither fast nor without pushback. I'm not a historian, but the curtailing of the privileges of straight white men plausibly started with the abolitionist movement and the idea that maybe they shouldn't be allowed to own people as property. The pushback to that involved a civil war, and it's been hundreds of years of violence, cultural and political strife, and making the conflict over this question basically the central pillar of our entire political divide for generations in order to reach the point we're at today.

I agree that slave-owning and the civil war is a good example of a right that took a lot of destruction and kicking and screaming to take away.

I guess I'm thinking of basically everything that happened post-civil rights. Straight white men, and white people more generally, now aren't allowed to form their own clubs, be praised as a group, or advocate for their own cultural traditions or interests in almost any way in the west, and I think that change happened without much serious pushback.

EDIT: Sorry, I guess I didn't address your qualifier 'people who have spent a long hard time and earning it'. Are these individual people, the same individuals who did the fighting? If not, does building a civilization count as earning it?

Because "straight white guys" aren't a group. Now, even in my deep blue super-SJW city, there are Irish festivals, there are Polish festivals, there are Norwegian festivals, where all the things those people did as immigrant groups or whatever can be hailed.

Also, you fall into the problem that a lot of straight white males don't have any interest in the "cultural traditions" a lot of other straight white males do, unlike say, African-American's, where even very conservative religious African-American men like Tim Scott are a tick to the left of all of his fellow Republican's on how great the police are.

The reason why white straight men aren't allowed to organize as a group is the same reason why brunettes don't - because they're not an actual cultural group.

As far as building a civilization goes, it turns out, a lot of people have differing views on what that actually means, and in a world with less gatekeeping, people with more varied views can gain a voice, as oppose to those who want to give all the credit to a small group.

The reason why white straight men aren't allowed to organize as a group

It sounds like you're agreeing with me?

they're not an actual cultural group

As opposed to the group "Asians and Pacific Islanders", or the group of all black people worldwide, including Pygmies and Kanye West?

As opposed to the group "Asians and Pacific Islanders",

A grouping made up by census-takers, which the people inside of it strenuously object to.

or the group of all black people worldwide, including Pygmies and Kanye West?

Also not an actual political movement of any size.

Yes, that's my point. These are equally arbitrary groups, but are legally protected and officially encouraged to advocate for their own interests at all levels of legal and corporate governance.

The reason why white straight men aren't allowed to organize as a group is the same reason why brunettes don't - because they're not an actual cultural group.

Try starting a club exclusive for anglo-saxons, see what happens. Or, you know, just one for men.

You don't get to deny the reality of repressive tolerance by hand waving away that the people being repressed actually don't exist as a culture. Why are they being repressed then?

As far as building a civilization goes, it turns out, a lot of people have differing views on what that actually means, and in a world with less gatekeeping, people with more varied views can gain a voice, as oppose to those who want to give all the credit to a small group.

This is literally the opposite of what happened, and of what always happens. Orthodoxy has greatly increased.

I'm not a historian, but the curtailing of the privileges of straight white men plausibly started with the abolitionist movement and the idea that maybe they shouldn't be allowed to own people as property.

This is a very unusual way to describe abolitionism. Abolitionism was never explicity about stopping White men from owning Black people, it was more universal then that based in Christianity and/or the enlightenment. The vast majority of abolitionists were White and to my knowledge there was no attempt by any other group of people to eradicate slavery.

The pushback to that involved a civil war

A war largely fought by poor white people.

A war largely fought by poor white people.

Hey, they could've joined the Union side, and ended the war in two weeks, basically, or failing that, and not immediately joined up with the rich white people who started the war to take rights away from black people.

World War II was mainly fought on the Axis side by poor Japanese, German, and Italian people. Doesn't make it less right.

Hey, they could've joined the Union side, and ended the war in two weeks, basically, or failing that, and not immediately joined up with the rich white people who started the war to take rights away from black people.

I was reffering to the people who fought on hte union side.

I'm sure you will also agree that the Africans who died fighting European attempts to eradicate slavery should have joined the European side.

World War II was mainly fought on the Axis side by poor Japanese, German, and Italian people. Doesn't make it less right.

And yet, the poor white people who joined the "right" side get the same ill treatment.

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