3 ms·

I did find it interesting that the entire post was such an eloquent description of a generalization of cancel culture, yet the author still went out of her way

by buu700 11mo ago

I did find it interesting that the entire post was such an eloquent description of a generalization of cancel culture, yet the author still went out of her way to virtue signal to readers who would reflexively dismiss any allusion to cancel culture as made up or partisan. Probably the right call, since those are some of the ones who most need to hear what she has to say, but still funny. > I think there's a meaningful difference between being a genuine liberal who wants to change how American society thinks about sex, and being a partisan who wants to use puritan callouts as a cudgel on your enemies I mean, those aren't just meaningfully different; they're entirely at odds with each other. You can't have a liberal attitude toward sex and a puritanical attitude toward sex at the same time.

brailsafe 11mo ago
> You can't have a liberal attitude toward sex and a puritanical attitude toward sex at the same time. Sure you can, they are both matters of degree and scope, but I do think going to the extent of weaponizing either is at odds with the other. For example, I don't try to act against anyone's personal sexual or romantic inclinations, and don't think it's the place for government or anyone else, that's a freedom we all should have and defend, but that doesn't mean there aren't societal or personal limits. If any of my friends were polyamorous or in a thrupple or open relationship or anything like that, it's not necessarily my business unless it's presenting problems that visibly affect their life or mine. My acceptance of that is independent of the fact that I'm only interested in a long-term monogamous romantic and sexual relationship at the moment, which has in some cases seemed more conservative. If my romantic partner decided she wanted something else, she's of course welcome to explore that on her own terms by ending our romantic relationship. I guess the nuance really comes down to where the aspect of "morality" comes in, where it's directed, and whether that's fundamentally at odds with a sense of true liberalism. In one instance for example, I found myself prompted to defend monogamy in opposition to someone who would clearly think of themselves as a progressive, and might arguably be liberal in disposition, but was railing against monogamy because she'd had bad experiences with the people she ended up with in those relationships. She was making a grand moral argument, and I responded with a contrary argument, but I don't think that's incongruent with either of us being liberal.
- buu700 11mo ago
  Nothing about what you just described is puritanical or illiberal. You can have conservative personal behavior without attempting to exert undue control over the behavior of others. I don't do drugs or want other people to do drugs, but still don't think it's my or the government's business if people do so. That's a textbook liberal position on the issue.
  - brailsafe 11mo ago
    That's why I qualified puritanical and liberal with matters of degree, rather than being diametrically opposed. Having a large scope liberal attitude towards sex enables my inward facing, relatively puritan(ical) disposition to be a choice rather than mandatory and I don't care to demand that of others. I could very well be someone else with a different strict set of moral standards for me and my immediates with a slightly different scope and still be liberal. It seems to me that only when one weaponizes it does it become puritanical and illiberal; you want the same strict moral guidelines for everyone else that you impose on yourself.
    - buu700 11mo ago
      But they are diametrically opposed. It's not puritanical that I don't do drugs or that you're monogamous. What's puritanical is trying to impose those personal choices upon others. It would be equally illiberal to mandate that everyone do drugs or be polygamous. The illiberality is the imposition itself, not the quality of the imposition.
  - fao_ 11mo ago
    This ideal seems like it works, up until you see the actual actions and effects of conservative parties within politics. Then you realise that actually, only a minority have that position, the vast majority of conservative parties are authoritarian and LOVE sticking their hands in peoples' business.
    - buu700 11mo ago
      Whether the ideal works and the extent to which it's commonly held are two different issues. My view is that both major parties in the US are somewhat illiberal, but average out to a moderately liberal status quo. Despite many flaws, e.g. the Wars on Drugs and Prostitutes, the US is arguably still the world's greatest stronghold of liberalism (for the moment). The War on Drugs is actually a perfect microcosm of how illiberal policy doesn't work. Instead of learning our lesson from the War on Alcohol, we doubled down and funneled untold billions of dollars into Mexican drug cartels via US markets — funding the very problem we wanted to solve. By contrast, our more liberal tobacco policy has been a huge success.
wredcoll 11mo ago
> eloquent description of a generalization of cancel culture, yet the author still went out of her way to virtue signal to readers who would reflexively dismiss any allusion to cancel culture as made up or partisan Probably because we all know "cancel culture" was an invented, highly partisan and ultimately fake concept. The proof is as trivial as noticing the people who complained about being cancelled were doing so to audiences of literally millions of people and there's no viable way to reconcile the idea of someone's ideas being somehow hidden when they had some of the highest cultural recognition of anything at the time. Also, for the last time, stating a fact is not what "virtue signalling" means and I wish people would bother to learn what words meant before they repeated them.
- buu700 11mo ago
  > Probably because we all know "cancel culture" was an invented, highly partisan and ultimately fake concept. No, we don't all know that. There's a whole Wikipedia article on the subject: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancel_culture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancel_culture. Denying its existence is just a lazy rhetorical tactic to deflect criticism of antisocial behavior and censorship. > stating a fact is not what "virtue signalling" means and I wish people would bother to learn what words meant before they repeated them Non sequitur. The factuality of cancel culture's non-existence is immaterial here. If a piece of writing includes a tangent that serves no other purpose than to signal to a subset of the audience that the author is "one of them", that's virtue signaling.
  - wredcoll 11mo ago
    > No, we don't all know that. There's a whole Wikipedia article on the subject: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancel_culture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancel_culture. Denying its existence is just a lazy rhetorical tactic to deflect criticism of antisocial behavior and censorship. There's a wikipedia article about the earth being flat and moon landing hoaxes and so on and so forth. People wanting something to be true does not make it so. You literally prove my point by saying censorship as if that was possibly related. The people who talked about "being cancelled" were wealthy celebrities who could spread their message as far as they wanted. Equating being disinvited from a conference with censorship is incredibly disengenous. So is referring to it as "antisocial behavior". There are, quite frankly, very things that are more deeply a part of human socializing than telling someone else that they're wrong and should shut up. Cancel culture being a thing is one of those memes that people spread, and much like the meme of republicans being good for the federal government, it causes real problems when people start to believe it via repetition.

by buu700 11mo ago

brailsafe 11mo ago

> You can't have a liberal attitude toward sex and a puritanical attitude toward sex at the same time. Sure you can, they are both matters of degree and scope, but I do think going to the extent of weaponizing either is at odds with the other. For example, I don't try to act against anyone's personal sexual or romantic inclinations, and don't think it's the place for government or anyone else, that's a freedom we all should have and defend, but that doesn't mean there aren't societal or personal limits. If any of my friends were polyamorous or in a thrupple or open relationship or anything like that, it's not necessarily my business unless it's presenting problems that visibly affect their life or mine. My acceptance of that is independent of the fact that I'm only interested in a long-term monogamous romantic and sexual relationship at the moment, which has in some cases seemed more conservative. If my romantic partner decided she wanted something else, she's of course welcome to explore that on her own terms by ending our romantic relationship. I guess the nuance really comes down to where the aspect of "morality" comes in, where it's directed, and whether that's fundamentally at odds with a sense of true liberalism. In one instance for example, I found myself prompted to defend monogamy in opposition to someone who would clearly think of themselves as a progressive, and might arguably be liberal in disposition, but was railing against monogamy because she'd had bad experiences with the people she ended up with in those relationships. She was making a grand moral argument, and I responded with a contrary argument, but I don't think that's incongruent with either of us being liberal.

buu700 11mo ago
Nothing about what you just described is puritanical or illiberal. You can have conservative personal behavior without attempting to exert undue control over the behavior of others. I don't do drugs or want other people to do drugs, but still don't think it's my or the government's business if people do so. That's a textbook liberal position on the issue.
- brailsafe 11mo ago
  That's why I qualified puritanical and liberal with matters of degree, rather than being diametrically opposed. Having a large scope liberal attitude towards sex enables my inward facing, relatively puritan(ical) disposition to be a choice rather than mandatory and I don't care to demand that of others. I could very well be someone else with a different strict set of moral standards for me and my immediates with a slightly different scope and still be liberal. It seems to me that only when one weaponizes it does it become puritanical and illiberal; you want the same strict moral guidelines for everyone else that you impose on yourself.
  - buu700 11mo ago
    But they are diametrically opposed. It's not puritanical that I don't do drugs or that you're monogamous. What's puritanical is trying to impose those personal choices upon others. It would be equally illiberal to mandate that everyone do drugs or be polygamous. The illiberality is the imposition itself, not the quality of the imposition.
- fao_ 11mo ago
  This ideal seems like it works, up until you see the actual actions and effects of conservative parties within politics. Then you realise that actually, only a minority have that position, the vast majority of conservative parties are authoritarian and LOVE sticking their hands in peoples' business.
  - buu700 11mo ago
    Whether the ideal works and the extent to which it's commonly held are two different issues. My view is that both major parties in the US are somewhat illiberal, but average out to a moderately liberal status quo. Despite many flaws, e.g. the Wars on Drugs and Prostitutes, the US is arguably still the world's greatest stronghold of liberalism (for the moment). The War on Drugs is actually a perfect microcosm of how illiberal policy doesn't work. Instead of learning our lesson from the War on Alcohol, we doubled down and funneled untold billions of dollars into Mexican drug cartels via US markets — funding the very problem we wanted to solve. By contrast, our more liberal tobacco policy has been a huge success.

wredcoll 11mo ago

> eloquent description of a generalization of cancel culture, yet the author still went out of her way to virtue signal to readers who would reflexively dismiss any allusion to cancel culture as made up or partisan Probably because we all know "cancel culture" was an invented, highly partisan and ultimately fake concept. The proof is as trivial as noticing the people who complained about being cancelled were doing so to audiences of literally millions of people and there's no viable way to reconcile the idea of someone's ideas being somehow hidden when they had some of the highest cultural recognition of anything at the time. Also, for the last time, stating a fact is not what "virtue signalling" means and I wish people would bother to learn what words meant before they repeated them.

buu700 11mo ago
> Probably because we all know "cancel culture" was an invented, highly partisan and ultimately fake concept. No, we don't all know that. There's a whole Wikipedia article on the subject: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancel_culture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancel_culture. Denying its existence is just a lazy rhetorical tactic to deflect criticism of antisocial behavior and censorship. > stating a fact is not what "virtue signalling" means and I wish people would bother to learn what words meant before they repeated them Non sequitur. The factuality of cancel culture's non-existence is immaterial here. If a piece of writing includes a tangent that serves no other purpose than to signal to a subset of the audience that the author is "one of them", that's virtue signaling.
- wredcoll 11mo ago
  > No, we don't all know that. There's a whole Wikipedia article on the subject: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancel_culture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancel_culture. Denying its existence is just a lazy rhetorical tactic to deflect criticism of antisocial behavior and censorship. There's a wikipedia article about the earth being flat and moon landing hoaxes and so on and so forth. People wanting something to be true does not make it so. You literally prove my point by saying censorship as if that was possibly related. The people who talked about "being cancelled" were wealthy celebrities who could spread their message as far as they wanted. Equating being disinvited from a conference with censorship is incredibly disengenous. So is referring to it as "antisocial behavior". There are, quite frankly, very things that are more deeply a part of human socializing than telling someone else that they're wrong and should shut up. Cancel culture being a thing is one of those memes that people spread, and much like the meme of republicans being good for the federal government, it causes real problems when people start to believe it via repetition.