site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 1, 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.

11
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Talk to actual high school students from not-very-well-educated areas about what does or doesn't count as rape or consent some day. 'If you paid for a nice meal doesn't she kind of owe you at least a blowjob' is far from the most troubling thing you will hear. Don't even ask about drugs and alcohol.

It's easy for well-educated affluent adults to think that 'teach men not to rape' sounds absurd, and must be some kind of dumb metaphorical power-grab in the culture war over where to place societal blame. But it is very much an extremely literal statement that is reasonably commensurate with how bad sex education is in many parts of the country.

Such attitudes are broadly predictable in a society that normalizes both drug use and premarital sex, and where the proportion of women engaging in casual sex reaches a critical mass, so to speak.

Are you saying that you expect such attitudes to be more common in a society that allows for frequent sex and drugs?

I'm like 98% confident that they are way more common in societies that vilify those things, since in those cases anyone engaged in them is 'clearly' already a criminal/demon/idiot/slut/etc and therefore can't really be a victim/deserves what they get/must secretly want it/etc.

Having society disapprove of sex and drugs doesn't mean no one does sex or drugs, it just means there's no societal narrative about how to do it ethically or safely. I'm pretty confident you could go to almost any repressive society and find worse attitudes about this stuff.

Are you saying that you expect such attitudes to be more common in a society that allows for frequent sex and drugs?

Yes. In a society where drug use isn't normalized/tolerated, it's not a common pastime to ply women with drugs in order to manipulate them into sex. It will only remain a rare, isolated occurrence. The same applies to binge-drinking. Also, in a society where extramarital sex is not normalized/tolerated, the general consensus among men will be that only a small minority of women are available for casual sex, so pressuring/manipulating them into having casual sex will not be a common pastime.

You're confusing between acts and attitudes here, I think.

Unless your claim is that when acts are rare, no one will bother to form attitudes about them. But I think that's hugely wrong, people form attitudes and opinions about everything, and attitudes towards rare and taboo things are ussually more extreme and dangerous.

with how bad sex education is in many parts of the country

You mean "what cultural attitudes about consent to sex look like". I guarantee you these kids are not getting their ideas from sex ed, and I guarantee you that if sex ed addresses consent these kids don't listen to it.

Look, I went through fairly high budget abstinence+ sex ed. It didn't work on the kids that it wasn't going to work on- as it turns out, schools actually do a remarkably bad job of changing social attitudes. You can't educate teenaged boys out of what rap songs educate them in to, at least not in an institutional setting. In person mentorship maybe, but nobody with feminist attitudes wants to do it.

Isn't sex education, whether it's done efficiently or not, mainly about 1. contraceptives 2. pregnancy 3. periods 4. STDs? Covering just those four subjects is enough of a daunting task in itself, I'm sure. This notion that sex education needs to mostly focus on proper norms of consent has to be a rather recent phenomenon, mostly confined to feminist activist circles.

I guarantee you these kids are not getting their ideas from sex ed,

Yes, that is what I am referring to by 'how bad sex education is'.

and I guarantee you that if sex ed addresses consent these kids don't listen to it.

Strong disagree. You do have to hit them younger before the culture has fully established other ideas, but if the curriculum is handled well and it's the first time they're hearing about it in a realistic setting with enough detail, you can form their first impressions on the topic, or heavily influence their existing impressions.

'If you paid for a nice meal doesn't she kind of owe you at least a blowjob' is far from the most troubling thing you will hear.

The distaff counterpart being "if you regretted it afterwards isn't that kind of at least not consensual"; but maybe that doesn't count since it's not the poorly-educated that most often claim this.

and must be some kind of dumb metaphorical power-grab in the culture war over where to place societal blame

The main population repeating this line are well-educated affluent women, generally used as a stick to beat over the head of the [well-educated affluent] men who weren't the problem in the first place. It's trivially true this is a power grab.

with how bad sex education is in many parts of the country

A lack of education is not the cause of that problem (and "bad sex education" is more just a refusal to teach basic biological facts and hype up risks that don't exist; father-placating/traditionalist "if you have sex you'll die of turbo AIDS" sex ed is stupid and harmful just like mother-placating/progressive "sex is rape by default also if you aren't on puberty blockers by 12 you'll die of suicide" sex ed is). A lack of conscientiousness is, but that's true of anti-social behavior by default anyway.

I understand you’re going for hyperbole, but try to avoid caricaturing the positions you’re arguing against.