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 -
People claiming it was just a couple of cray kids on the internet.
The thing is, you can certainly point to things that the social justice movement has changed about the world, and be mad about them if that's your perspective.
But those things were not the central claims of the anti-SJWs at the time. The central claims were things about Otherkin and 53 genders and Muslims taking over city and raping all the women and Christians being persecuted into the shadows and of course of course of course children being groomed and abused and etc. etc. etc.
You do the same thing here:
Again, the blood libel that absolutely did come up and that we were saying 'that never happens to' is 'Crazy mothers cutting of their 4-year-old's dick', and evidence is still that this never happens. The best you have is the one Reuters search of giant databases, which even assuming there are zero errors in that medical database with hundreds of millions of entries (which, just, NO, that's not true), lists '56 genital surgeries among patients ages 13 to 17 with a prior gender dysphoria diagnosis from 2019 to 2021'. Which, 1. 16 is the age of consent in most states, 16 and 17 year olds doing things is not the same claim as 'young kids are doing this thing', 2. that's just genital surgery of any kind, no data to indicate it's genital reconstruction surgery for purposes of medical transition, some people need genital surgery sometimes, 3. some people are born intersex or with other developmental abnormalities in the genitals, choosing how to resolve those at 17 isn't the central case for the trans debate at all, and 4. etc.
So, sure, maybe a few years ago, there were a few people saying 'I'm really worried that as many as eighteen 16-17 year olds per year might be getting genital reassignment surgeries, I wish they'd wait another year or two', and the correct reply to that would have been some measured response like 'Well the data is kind of ambiguous and I'm not sure it actually tells us that's happening at all, and since you're allowed to get married and have kids at that age I'm not sure it's hugely important to deny them this one life-altering decision while allowing so many others, and if the numbers are that small I'm not sure it makes sense to have the larger debate about the trans issue generally hinge so crucially on this tiny and ambiguous group of people, but sure, maybe a few people are making questionable decisions and should wait a year or two to be sure, maybe we send around a memo to doctors about that or something.'
But that measured take of 'I'm really worried that as many as eighteen 16-17 year olds per year might be getting genital reassignment surgeries, I wish they'd wait another year or two' is not something that I remember ever encountering from the loudest culture warriors on the other side, who I had to engage with if I wanted to have any public debate on this issue at all. The bailey was very much 'children are getting their genitals mutilated left and right,' to which I correctly said 'No, that's not happening.'
For both the trans issue and the SJW issue, there was probably a motte of people with limited nuanced predictions who were mostly correct, but the bailey where most of the rhetoric took place was very much wrong. This is not surprising or even unusually shameful, my side does it too, it's what pretty much always happens on every issue everywhere all the time. That's why it's such an important idea that their site is named after it.
What I do consider shameful is the perfect-hindsight/moving-the-goalposts tactic of bringing up vague memories of how people rejected your bailey in the past, and then going 'see, here is my perfectly reasonable motte, and remember how the other side rejected it back then? They sure have been proven wrong!'
This is part of why I don't try to keep score and issue recriminations (unless challenged, as here). I'm sure a lot of this is not intentional, that in hindsight you remember the argument being more about your motte, or that you personally did hold the motte in the past and interpreted people rejecting the bailey as rejecting you too. I'm sure I'd accidentally make mistakes like this one if I tried to keep score and issue recriminations. I just don't think it's worth it.
I was thinking of making another top level post on this, but to not spam the top with trans issues, I'll just leave a note here.
The issue with your portrayal isn't so much that it's accusing the other side of motte-and-bailey, as it's that it's portraying the motte as conceding the validity of the transgender care framework. The "reasonable motte" isn't "I wish they waited a few years to be sure", it's "there are serious questions about the scientific and ethical validity of both the theory and practice behind transgender healthcare", and the bailey was something to the effect of "this is all absolute pseudoscientific garbage". The issue that is coming up now is that the bailey looks more and more defensible.
I'm not particularly interested in debating the history of the discourse with you, but if you want to explicitly reject either the motte or they bailey now, that could be helpful in the future.
More options
Context Copy link
Another example would be justifying the anti-vaxx/anti-lockdown baileys of "vaccines are going to kill millions if not tens or hundreds of millions of people within a few years"/"The WEF is going to keep the lockdowns and forced masking and vaxx mandates on forever and ever and ever to turn humans into slaves" by referring to the "Vaccines weren't nearly as good as advertised"/"lockdowns, masks and mandates were pretty useless considering how onerous and divisive they were" mottes being arguably fulfilled.
If compliance had been higher they very easily could have pressed the mandates to being a permanent fixture of life, certainly in europe and the non-american west.
It took a major rebellion to end mandates in canada
The mandates ended around the same time in all Western countries, no matter the level of compliance. A large contributing factor was probably Omicron and everyone getting the Covid anyway, with a contributing factor of Ukraine war wrenching the decision-making class attention immediately to another topic. However, even sans these, I don't believe the mandates would have stuck around; they were just another part of the endless process of trying to find the One Weird Trick to solve Covid, and they failed.
The convoy "rebellion" most likely lengthened the process in Canada, since it made it a question of authority for Trudeau and the rest of the political class.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
If that's another example, would you be willing to defend his portrayal of the trans discourse?
No, not really - the situation seems to concern the status of this discussion in the United States, and I'm frankly too unfamiliar with the actual situation there to comment at length.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
One problem with this is that laser-focusing on genital surgeries, and acting like their low amount is an argument against skeptics, is already shifting of the goal-posts by the pro-trans side. Surgeries (not just genital surgeries, surgeries generally) was deemed to be something so absurd that the idea was used as a progressive sneer against anyone raising concerns - "no one is performing surgeries on minors, chud". Well, turns out they are, so even taking the excessively charitable version of the trans movements' arguments still shows them moving the goalposts, but the excessively charitable version was not the argument they were actually using, that's just a retcon.
Their actual claim was that no one is doing irreversible medical procedures on minors. Taking the second most-charitable version of the pro-trans argument, and counting procedures they considered irreversible at the time of making the argument, you'd also have to consider mastectomies and hormones. Doing away with excessive charity altogether, and just taking the argument at face value, you'd also need to include puberty blockers, which were (and still are) sold as reversible, but aren't.
If you consider it shameful, why have you written a long-ass comment doing exactly that, all throughout it?
Your comment features exactly zero of keeping scores and issuing recriminations, which is a shame, because it would be a marked improvement. I can see how someone like @gattsuru could be characterized this way, and while some people find his habit of linking examples from the past annoying, I find it very helpful. But you are just patting yourself on the back for work you simply did not put in.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link