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It's not that it's an unpopular position, it's that the argument is flawed and the point you're trying to make falls flat. First, you lump all of queer culture
by standardUser 4y ago
It's not that it's an unpopular position, it's that the argument is flawed and the point you're trying to make falls flat. First, you lump all of queer culture into one group, a false categorization without which your augment fails. Second, you assert that being in the overwhelmingly dominant racial group, the overwhelmingly dominant sexual orientation and the undeniably dominant gender should somehow be interpreted at "counterculture" even though the group that fits that definition is numerically larger, wealthier, and politically empowered than any other group.
So if you get downvotes, it may be because you made a bad argument, not just because you come off as having an axe to grind.
- alldayeveryday 4y ago> First, you lump all of queer culture into one group, a false categorization without which your augment fails. In fact, I do lump them onto one group. Many subgroups inside a group. You know who I am referring to when I say queer culture. The group exists, it isn't false. Colors keep getting added to the flag. Rather than engage with reality you prefer to have useless rhetorical debates. Let's move past that. >Second, you assert that being in the overwhelmingly dominant racial group, the overwhelmingly dominant sexual orientation and the undeniably dominant gender should somehow be interpreted at "counterculture" even though the group that fits that definition is numerically larger, wealthier, and politically empowered than any other group. Culture is often not aligned with majority opinions, majority positions or majority orientations. The culture of the 60s was hippies. Most people were not hippies. Your premise is false here that culture is the same as majority, or political empowerment. I welcome a more honest response.
- standardUser 4y agoThe culture of the 60s was not hippies, they were the counterculture by any possible definition.
- alldayeveryday 4y agoI guess I just have the view that if I am turning on the radio, the TV, watching a movie, a tv show, celebrity voices, the state department, etc - and I am seeing the counterculture, then I am actually just seeing the culture.
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- yamazakiwi 4y agoSeeing a government body virtue-signal by putting up a flag is not the same as the actual lives that queer people live, which varies WILDLY from the norm thus making it counter cultural. In fact, many queer people force themselves out of the community by living within the norm to feel more acceptance from the majority (counter-counter culture). Your perception is also very obviously specific to where you live on this planet.
- lmm 4y ago> Seeing a government body virtue-signal by putting up a flag is not the same as the actual lives that queer people live The same thing goes for anything that could be described as "queer culture". Plenty of queer people have, and want, nothing to do with the groups and spaces that present themselves as "the community".
- alldayeveryday 4y agoA given queer person's level of identification with the broader community is of no relevance to the question of whether the broader culture of the community is countercultural. When the culture itself is used as a political tool by a state actor, I no longer classify the culture as countercultural. Rather, I see it as a weaponized mechanism of cultural subversion. Sure, the hippie movement was branded countercultural. But to what purpose? Note that during the period, the US government was engaged in a large scale remaking of America both domestically and internationally. Domestically, we saw the remaking of immigration policies to no longer bias towards those of European descent, and instead towards what favored macro capitalism (the import of cheaper and low skilled labor). Internationally the US was scaling up engagement in hot and cold wars and no longer considering itself bound to the constitutional provisions for war. Low and behold, during this period, a "counterculture" arises which glorifies drug use, the dissolution of the nuclear family and pushes forward the vapid strain of hyper individualism that we see today. Suddenly the anti-war movement is associated with drug use and degeneracy, whilst the nation's racial consciousness is broken in time to welcome a new wave of immigrants to help improve the margins of big business. Note that the current "woke" counterculture follows the same pattern. Increased individualism, sublimated racial awareness, dissolution of family, and rampant degeneracy. Meanwhile the state continues its hegemonic march of constant international agitation.
- burkaman 4y agoI'm pretty sure the word counterculture was literally invented to describe hippies in the 60s.
- antod 4y agoI'm guessing beatniks in the 50s myself.
- jhbadger 4y agoClose. It was invented in 1960, prior to the hippie movement and referring to their predecessors, the beatniks of the 1950s.
- burkaman 4y agoI wasn't alive so I'm just going off casual web searches, but most people seem to credit this 1969 book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Making_of_a_Counter_Culture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Making_of_a_Counter_Cultur.... It was not the literal first usage, but the word was definitely not widely known before the 60s: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=counterculture&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=en-2019&smoothing=3 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=counterculture.... But I said literally and it wasn't literally true, so my bad.
- snozolli 4y agoThe culture of the 60s was hippies. The (US) culture of the 60s was nuclear families, medium haircuts, fitted suits, and the Space Race. The counterculture was hippies, mop-topped youngsters, and civil rights activists. Your closing line is laughable.
- goodSteveramos 4y agoCounter to what? Minority groups are in charge of America so the majority traditional culture IS the counterculture.
- standardUser 4y agoIf minority groups are "in charge", why is most of the wealth, corporate power and political power in the hands of majority groups? Obviously cultural norms change over time, and many ideas that were once fringe are now mainstream. But that doesn't mean that the majority white, straight, Christian(ish) majority in America doesn't still wield most of the power.
- alldayeveryday 4y ago> ... mean that the majority white, straight, Christian(ish) majority in America doesn't still wield most of the power. yeah, except for finance, media, academia and politics. I do agree that straight white christian(ish) males do wield the most power in the other intuitions that matter (thought I'm drawing a blank on which those might be).
- goodSteveramos 4y agoSports commentating.
- flangola7 4y ago>except for finance, media, academia and politics. But those are dominated by straight white men. A simple demographic survey of Congress and org executives will show that. What are you talking about?
- goodSteveramos 4y agoDid the janizary rule the ottomans or did the ottomans rule the janizary? The janizary held most if the powerful positions after all.
- epistemer 4y agoThe whole argument is stupid on both sides. There is no "mainstream" culture anymore to counter. Everyone is living in their own little cultural bubble that they believe to be a counterculture to a non-existent mainstream culture. The hysterical thing is the OP said what they said exactly because everyone knows someone would respond with your exact rhetorical devices like an automaton or a bot.
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- LAC-Tech 4y agoYou haven't really challenged the argument. Just made several unverifiable claims and then accused GP of having an axe to grind.
- MockObject 4y ago> Second, you assert that being in the overwhelmingly dominant racial group, the overwhelmingly dominant sexual orientation and the undeniably dominant gender should somehow be interpreted at "counterculture" even though the group that fits that definition is numerically larger, wealthier, and politically empowered than any other group. And yet, it's remarkably unpopular to announce the simple truism that "white lives matter", or that "it's ok to be white", and our top universities interrogate "whiteness" as problematic, so evidently much further nuance is required between numerical size and cultural sway.