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 -
May I ask, does your native culture have jokes about nagging wives/henpecked husbands? Because this seems to be a staple of humour, even in the heyday of The Patriarchy.
The Battle of the Sexes is an old trope, and for any war, you need an enemy. For feminism, that was The Patriarchy (but in practice that meant 'men in general' and not 'the system of society under which both men and women live').
Things have improved greatly, but life is still not perfect. And it would seem that for many women, all the sexual liberation and workplace equality means "in fact, you can't have it all". So they feel they have been cheated out of what was promised, and there must be Someone To Blame for that, and that means "white cis straight (Christian) men" because that is the traditional enemy.
You are completely correct about class versus race; the newer strains of feminism have gone to Intersectionality and how middle-class white women are as much the enemy, because they modelled the feminist movement on what they wanted and experienced and didn't listen to, or silenced, BIPOC women. There is womanism and mujerism which evolved out of mujerista theology, which evolved out of liberation theology, for black and Latina women respectively.
Ironically, a lot of the black/latina women involved in the theoretical and activist work are just as privileged, having been inducted into the middle-class and academia, as the white women they are competing against, which is why the favoured enemy is still The White Male, because that is the ultimate of privilege against which one can measure oneself: yes, I am more privileged than you are, but I am still less privileged than Him.
The battle of the sexes is natural, but alliances within the sexes seems less straightforward.
Every harmony results from some conflict settling at some equilibrium. Men and women have different imperatives, desires, points of view, etc. and these fundental conflicts have to bump up against one another and get settled at some compromise but with some leverage and threat remaining, to keep both parties to hold to their end of the bargain.
Such conflicts even arise between generations and even the most intimate connections like mother and child. Both on a social and a biological level. The embryo already tries to exploit the mother in utero, trying to grab on to as much resources and nutrition as possible, which the mother must defend itself from.
Even one's own cells and body parts are in conflict and this is most apparent in cancer.
Men and women are in a biological arms race too, a lot of deception, signaling, trying to see through all that and more layers of this (with reality providing a grounding through life and death in natural selection, and so an anchor to truth).
But it doesn't follow that members of the same sex are allies in all this. Rather, they just have a different type of competition going on. Especially among males, who are more competitive (that's why they need to be so big). I think the MRA idea of male solidarity is therefore doomed to be low status. A man who needs other men to protect his interests against women is seen as weak. Now women are competitive among themselves too, but typically less openly and overtly and more subtly than men. So the expectation would be that they also shouldn't have too much purely sex-based solidarity to each other in reality, but perhaps more pretension of it at least, than in the case of men.
More options
Context Copy link
I've seen those jokes but you'd be surprised how hard it is to tell what's been influenced or not in a place where the language - and thus history - is oral and the British have ruled since before living memory. I suppose, at a certain point, it doesn't matter.
I sometimes saw - amongst the more educated cadre - a more benign version about the supposedly all-powerful "lady of the house" and I'm really not convinced it's an independent belief.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link