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 -
We have just had our two referenda, voting on International Women's Day, and the counting was finished yesterday. Once again, the people have let down the government by our backward ignorance. They're ashamed of us before the neighbours, so they are.
(1) Turnout was pretty low, running around 44% for both referenda. Gosh, who could possibly have guessed that the burning issue of the day in the minds of the public was not "outdated sexist language in the Constitution must be replaced by gender-neutral inclusive language?"
(2) The complaining already started about "far-right" and "ultra-conservative" voices, with The Guardian newspaper taking the tone on the backwards priest-ridden Irish. Though I can't blame the Brits for it this time, as it's their Ireland correspondent(s) who are doing it, and they're likely the liberal chattering class types that want oh so desperately to be cosmopolitan and fit in with the peers in London and New York.
What went wrong, Rory-boo, is that the people exercised their democratic right of self-determination. Sorry if this embarrasses you at an Islington dinner party, or even a D4 one, but the "right" result does not always mean "the way I wanted it to happen".
I fucking wish, but no. You can sleep safe in your beds, The Handmaid's Tale is not about to come true (not for want of the liberals/progressives and their fever dreams about it).
(3) But aren't there ultra-right far-conservatives or whatever hopping on this issue?
Yes, and that's down to Leo Varadkar being a smug prick. Sorry for the harsh language, but let me explain.
Where did the likes of these, who are not - let me emphasise - as yet representative of the conservative views in Ireland, get this notion about two genders? Well, good old Leo (our first openly out and gay politician and Taoiseach) couldn't keep his yap shut and run a sensible campaign. He couldn't stick to the line about "sexist outdated language", he had to drop in "non-binary and transgender" as well. Now, I can't find the specific article where that quote was, so feel free to think I'm a mistaken fool. But he kept hammering on about "gender equality" which allowed a crack in the presentation for people to work at.
(4) The government's campaign was stupid, patronising, and didn't deal with the questions being asked. Just vote Yes/Yes like good obedient little puppets, your betters know what you need and want. The two referenda were (a) Family (redefining the definition of the family as more than based on marriage) and (b) Care (also "women's labour in the home", the old language. Now everybody is a carer, regardless of gender, marital status, or wotsit, ain't that grand?
So the government proposed to protect marriage by... removing language about marriage and stretching the definition of what constitutes a family. It's "durable relationships", you see. What's a durable relationship? Ah, um, well - you'll know it when you see it. Do you send out Christmas cards together? Did you go to a wedding as a couple? That's a durable relationship! While Leo (who did most of the talking) tried to include "grandparents taking care of kids, etc." as examples of "the family not based on marriage", most people would have considered those to be recognised as family members anyway. So it's about cohabiting couples, and the big question there is - what is stopping them from getting married? We have divorce, we have same-sex marriage. If you're just living together and have kids, you pretty much have a lot of legal protections and rights anyway. You can see why some jumped on this as anti-immigrant because suppose someone is legally married to two wives abroad and comes here, that's a 'durable relationship' and now that's a family, even if polygamy is still illegal in Ireland. If there's no definition on what is a "durable relationship", then "we've been dating for three weeks" is as good as "we're living together for twelve years".
The second one was on care, and purported to remove the sexist language about the support women in the home give to the common good. Well, the 1937 Constitution may be sexist, but it recognises the reality: the vast majority of caretakers/caregivers are women. Women who go out to work are now doing two jobs, in 'paid' work and at home when taking care of elderly/sick parents, children with needs, etc. The new wording was very inclusive, but it did strongly seem to be shoving responsibility for caretaking onto 'the family' (read: mothers/sisters/daughters/wives) and stepping back from any duty of the State to provide services.
A lot of people voted 'no' on this one because they didn't believe the airy promises that the State would "strive" to support carers.
(5) So what was the result?
As I said, a low turnout, but a thrashing for the government/Yes side. Between both referenda, 29% voted Yes and 71% voted No. To break that down, for the Family referendum, 67.7% voted No, for the Care referendum, 73.9% voted No.
I have to say, I am both surprised (I thought it would go the other way, with the whole liberal feel-good modernisation vibe of the past few years) and gratified. No, people aren't stupid and they don't believe you and they won't be bullied by "but you don't want to be right-wing conservatives, now do you?" type of propaganda.
EDIT: (6) And already the blame game is going on, with fingers being pointed and fault allotted to leakers:
No, really? Changing the wording would mean legal repercussions? See, the government was promising that no no no, courts never involved, family was still based on marriage, everything was tickety-boo. Of course the courts are gonna get involved, the first time somebody wants to claim inheritance rights or maintenance or palimony based on "we were never married, but we were a durable relationship and the Constitution now recognises this as the same as a married couple, gimme my money!"
What people were most concerned over, though, was the whole notion of the role of carers and State support for same. If now the State is only going to "strive" to support people who need help, what does that mean, exactly? Can they claim that they've done their duty but no, sorry, no help for you? Again, courts are going to get involved here.
The Yes campaign by the government really did treat people as being stupid, and now they're trying to blame far-right and ultra-nationalists and bad old religious conservatives for this defeat. Well, they cut the rod for their own backs on this one.
"I don't have a
wifegirlfriend*durable partner, just a girl who would be very upset if she heard me say that"More options
Context Copy link
I suppose it's ultimately better for Ireland to scapegoat them than if the government decides it needs to put more effort into pushing progressivism.
Oh, they've already decided the problem was they didn't push hard enough on the progressive angle. "Wait, is it possible we were fucking idiots about this? No, impossible, it's the stupid electorate who let us down!"
Seems like, if the post-mortems are to be believed, Leo was the one pushing for this on International Women's Day so he could have a big symbolic vote validating the progressive agenda. Well he got the results, but not what he wanted.
The usual opinion formers are losing their lives about this, but they can insult the No voters all they want, the fact remains is that their arrogance was unjustified.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The Irish goverment is ridiculously ideological in a left wing direction. Including its reaction to migration issue and the stabbing in Ireland, and its support of hate speech laws, which are hyped to be some of the most extreme and one sided in europe. I doubt it advertised what it was before it got elected. Apparently it is the liberal conservative party of the progressive center. And wiki has it as a center right party!
These kind of "center right" parties end up more culturally leftist than the left. Or at least there isn't any sizable, difference, you are getting the same cultural far left. Nice to see them lose this referendum, but is there any alternative in Ireland which would be a substantial change from this? My impression from my very short "research" is that all major Irish parties are pretty interchangeable, unfortunately.
On another note, I think one of the problems of current democracy is that voters are too inflexible and avoid stopping voting for major parties if they push bad policies, or ones they disagree with. Or go to different parties with similiar agendas, scared of voting outside of what they are used to, or for parties branded as far right.
More referendums and direct democracy would be one way to get better policies which avoid the agency problems between ideological left wing extremists acting an an authoritarian manner where the people's are too party loyalist for their own good, to kick all of them out. The result wouldn't be always in line with the cultural right, but mass migration for example has been quite unpopular in most countries. The same people running a system that demonizes the alternative views, passes hate speech laws, and does as it pleases is not going to allow enough of that, of course. I do sincerely believe it would lead to something closer to a country run by the people, for the people, and better governance than that of ideological far leftist extremists who see opposition to their agenda as completely illegitimate. Even if it is not the ideal governance, it would be an important improvement.
More options
Context Copy link
The Irish government seems to care much less about the opinion of its constituants than the median European government, but still, 71% has gotta hurt.
Losing a referendum is always a humiliation because only a fool would call for one they couldn't confidently win, but losing it by that margin? You can't even handwave it away as a fluke like Brexit, this is more than a supermajority of people telling you to go fuck yourself.
You'd think a loss like that would fall the government. Any inkling of that?
There’s a problem in that nearly all of the opposition parties were also campaigning for a Yes vote. Besides a few independents and Aontú (a party with 1 seat) there’s no one in opposition ready to capitalise on this.
Yeah. Similar to the one in Australia recently on the Indigenous voice where the opposition were campaigning around the lines of 'This is not the appropriate way to recognize the Indigenous and may be an overreach' instead of 'Ha! This is an absurdity' direct refutation. Which makes it a bit harder to capitalize on the failure.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The referendum didn't fail because of some ultra catholic silent majority - it comes on the heels of large wins for abortion and gay marriage in referenda. Most people are still good liberals. The fact is that these amendments were half baked from the start.
More options
Context Copy link
Next general election scheduled for a year from now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next_Irish_general_election
More options
Context Copy link
I don't think so. People don't want to pull down the government over this because, frankly, nobody cared about "sexist language in the Constitution" except for the usual activist types. And nobody wants an election with uncertainty when the economy is doing marvellously!/people can't afford rent or buying a house.
But it should be a slap in the face to the government as to the mood of the country. Nobody believes them about "this is for the carers" because with our health service and social support services, we see the reality: there's no money, there's understaffing, there's waiting lists out the door. A fancy amendment that commits them to 'more of the same' is not worth voting 'yes' for.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link