site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 22, 2024

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
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Well, 2 things come to mind.

  1. I know gang bangs are icky, but the analogies up thread to american football are stark. We all need to be more comfortable explaining to young women that if you go home with a contact sports player or musician the chances of having a train run on you are enormous.
  2. I do find it amazing that you can even have video evidence of consent and it doesn't matter. How exactly is anyone supposed to differentiate between the people who want this and those who don't? Because there's a substantial group of the former who will fold instantly if, say, their mother points out that society looks down on being tag teamed. A multi million dollar pay out possibility being some decent cake icing.

I do find it amazing that you can even have video evidence of consent and it doesn't matter.

You can have video evidence of consent that matters. For example, if there's a video of the same woman shot in a safe space before the gangbang telling the camera how excited she is to have sex with not just one, but five hockey players.

When you are in a hotel room with five guys who are built like literal hockey players and they are growing increasingly frantic about you giving them video evidence that you willingly had sex with them, even if the room is not locked and they are not barring your way out, the inherent power disparity means that lying on camera is the safer option than risking one of them snapping.

Sure, you can in theory coerce someone into making multiple admissions of consent.

I haven't seen the videos, but the fact that the players presented them as evidence means they should in theory have value in their defense. Otherwise it would be more evidence of coercion!