I’m going to get flamed for this but at this point the closest we’re getting to counter culture is the exact opposite…
“Trads”. Young people with super traditional values doing exactly the opposite of most of what you just listed.
No one would seriously suggest the trendiest most mainstream supported or glorified lifestyles (van life, queerness, gig work) are counter culture…that IS the culture; there’s very little cultural risk in living those glorified identities.
But say you’re an 18 year old with radically traditional values…that’s counter cultural now.
What you’re observing isn’t a lack of counter-culture, it’s a lack of monolithic culture, though. In different parts of the country, or even different parts of the same city, the dominant culture is different. Living a “glorified lifestyle,” as you put it, in NY of SF? Sure, no one bats an eye. In the rural south? Different story. On the other hand — white man with “radically traditional values“, whatever that means, in suburban SLC? You’ll fit right in. In the Castro? Sure, you might feel out of place.
Unlike the US of the 1950s, there is no apparent single pervasive monolithic culture — and thus there is no real “counterculture” that can exist in universal opposition to that dominant culture across the US.
But rest assured that to the people living lives incongruent with their communities — including perhaps any “trads” in SF, NYC, etc. — their lives will feel pretty countercultural.
I live in the rural south and went to a private Christian university. They painted the statue of the school mascot a rainbow on pride month. My biblical ethics classes taught the opposite of what the Bible teaches. The students couldn't care less about the traditional aspects of Christianity. My friends at other Christian private universities had similar experiences.
You don't have to be in NY, SF, or wherever to experience the trendy culture. It is pervasive everywhere.
> You don't have to be in NY, SF, or wherever to experience the trendy culture. It is pervasive everywhere.
You don’t, which is why I said:
> or even different parts of the same city
But while it is present almost everywhere, it is not pervasive everywhere. Surely at your private Christian university there are many who hold traditional views — just as there are some at Berkeley, near me — and I’d be pretty surprised to learn that the kids painting your school’s mascot represent a majority perspective there.
Not sure why that would be surprising. Most get all their info from the internet where reactions to speech about traditional values ranges from mass disapproval to outright censorship.
In our culture, almost any values from prior generations are treated as suspect. We live in an extremely progressive time when compared against historical periods.
My particular gripe with this is how religion is viewed in popular culture. Despite our supposed multicultural values, much of the discussion on religion remains focused on Western/Abrahamic religions. Psychology/psychiatry is the new religion which is supposed to be able to guide our mental/spiritual health journey, but I'm of the opinion that it is failing miserably in this area, and we should be doing more to integrate ideas that have survived for thousands of years for a reason.
Just because the culture isn't accepted by every single person on planet earth doesn't mean it's not pervasive. There were plenty of pockets of communities in the early 20th century and late 19th century that didn't follow the traditional norms of Christianity that existed in the west. But I think we would both agree that Christianity/catholicism was pervasive in the west in those time periods.
After all, Nietzsche, Oscar Wilde, Darwin, Marx, Bertrand Russell and more were popular with different communities at the time, even though they were definitely counter to the pervasive culture of Christianity/catholicism then.
And I agree with you about how it's surprising that even at a Christian university, the traditional values of Christianity aren't taught! The example I gave was just one of the things I thought of off the top of my head. There were several other examples that gave me the feeling that the majority of the students weren't interested in traditional values. Chapel was a running joke among the students, nobody really cared and just went since the credit was required. People in positions of leadership that didn't align with the trendy culture slowly got replaced throughout my time there. We routinely got lectured on diversity and equity and how the university was devoted to it. I have friends who are gay that let me know how widespread the lgbt+ community at the university was (among professors and students).
I could go on, but my point was that even in the rural south, plenty of people are afraid to go against the trendy culture. My experience was simply some anecdata to your presumption that the rural South does not have a significant majority of people also following the trends of liberal cities. It's definitely less pronounced, but it's also definitely pervasive.
Not to get into an argument about "pervasive" (and thus whether "pervasive everywhere" as you originally termed it means anything different from "pervasive", I read it as "dominant everywhere") -- but I think we're talking about slightly different things.
College kids on a university campus being fearful of speaking out against "trendy culture" is not evidence of "a significant majority of people also following the trends of liberal cities" -- not least because that is a very small population in the rural south. Even merely attending college is something only half of 18-22 year olds do.
Universities are also one of the specific geographic concentrations I was alluding to in my earlier post, that can exist within an area that is otherwise culturally distinct. A culture being dominant on a university campus does not necessarily make it dominant elsewhere in town -- and it does not mean that folks holding traditional values constitute a counterculture. But do they on a college campus? Sure.
> My biblical ethics classes taught the opposite of what the Bible teaches.
Nothing more biblical than that, since the bible is polyvocal and therefore contains positions that are in tension and even on occasion outright opposition with one another.
> The students couldn't care less about the traditional aspects of Christianity.
Which/whose tradition?
And the youths are sometimes less invested in tradition you say?
> trendy culture
"Trendy" isn't an insight, it's a dismissal, and it's one that misses the insight that the parent tried to offer you.
I would argue that drawing conclusions directly from the Gospel and facts of Jesus’ life has been a Christian counterculture since at least the 70s. Jesus Christ Superstar could not find a venue; it was rejected by the culture of musical theater.
But would you really assert that 1950s in the US was a complete monolith? I think the reason we might intuitively see it that way is because, ironically, we're outsiders. But of course I'm sure you'd agree that there were countless little cultures going on at the time there as well, even within the same cities.
So it seems clear that "mainstream" culture is not monolithic, merely dominant. You can always find bubbles everywhere, but if outside of those bubbles you find one concept being preached endlessly - it's pretty safe to say that that concept is the "mainstream" culture, and those that run contrary to such would inherently be counter-culture.
[Caveat: I'm not an expert here, so ignore all this.]
Well, yes and no. The mainstream culture was far more dominant in the 50s than even 20 years later. And of course there were countless little (and often not-at-all-little!) cultures going on at the time -- and still going on.
But "counterculture" is not merely "alternative culture" -- and no one would write a post describing America today as lacking "alternative culture" because it's both false and also meaningless.
In the 1950s, regular church attendance was over 50%, union membership was at 35% of private sector workers, there were 3 channels on TV, and they predominantly espoused a particular leave-it-to-beaver culture that typified what was perceived as mainstream culture. The fact that it was not actually mainstream in the sense that fewer than half of Americans actually lived that way, is mostly irrelevant.
The '60s counterculture was not merely an "alternative culture"; it was powerful because it made it appear that the progeny of mainstream culture were condemning it; they questioned the power structure of that mainstream culture, despite being its plausible beneficiaries, and they were much more threatening to it than any other alternative cultures at the time (or, maybe, since) exactly because they were perceived as products of that monolithic mainstream culture.
In the US, there is currently no single monolithic culture being preached endlessly in the same way 1950s culture commanded media attention, it's not clear there ever will be one again without a dramatic turn towards the authoritarian, and so it's not at all clear what a national-level counterculture would even look like anymore?
Three channels (at least 3 networks) on TV. Perhaps more than one local paper, but all the out-of-town news came from UPI or AP. Time and Life. Maybe the New York Times. And that was about it. Those eight organizations defined mainstream culture. And their positions were not very far apart.
Nothing has that level of control today. There are more major organizations, and they have much more divergent positions. As a result, the culture has fragmented, becoming multiple cultures. There is no "mainstream" any more. There are multiple major streams, but no one mainstream.
There's one really common fallacy you're engaging in here, largely because our media perpetuates it endlessly. The hippy movement itself was strongly apolitical. I think to many that would be surprising, so I'm going to link to a search [1] instead of any given article. Because this is not an opinion. Okay I can't resist linking to one especially interesting article though [2]. I recall The History Channel on TV turning into complete crap, but they have an oddly great selection of online articles!
Of course people in a movement about freedom, finding yourself, and spirituality would generally respond one way if asked, "Hey should we go get involved in a war on the other side of the world, to try to imperil the reach and influence of a geopolitical competitor?" but the core philosophy was not only apolitical, but largely anti-political: "Do what you want... man." Everything was largely based on a loose interpretation of Eastern philosophy which is similarly much more about the pursuit (and search) for the betterment of one's inner self.
The culture you're describing sounds much more like the Yippie [3] culture, which is something extremely different than hippy. As for authoritarianism - I'd argue that the lack of authoritarianism is precisely what enables counter-cultures. You're not going to see a counter-culture movement in places like Saudi Arabia. And I think something similar is happening in the US. Had the Occupy Movement been treated similarly to the hippies, I think there's a strong argument to be made that it would still exist.
I think you're putting words in my mouth: I didn't make any claims of the '60s counterculture being hippies or any other specific movement, let alone being political. Further, the '60s counterculture was a bunch of groups with often very different goals.
Beyond that, I was not claiming the mainstream culture as authoritarian, only that reconsolidating media control could perhaps be a result of a resurgence of authoritarianism.
I wonder how much of this is due to there not being a majority in many large cities anymore? I'm in LA and there's no white majority. It is a "majority minority" city.
Hard agree. It’s ironic how tone deaf the article comes off, but I suppose that’s another observation for another time.
Another point on trads being a counter culture: You can tell a counterculture is real by the presence of posers and wannabes. Trad culture has this too. Ex: men who hide behind marble statue pfps and are actually single dudes living in a big city.
I think also that “trad” is an umbrella to which many hands hold.
Tradcath: traditional lifestyle Catholics
Trad homeschoolers: arguably some of the most steadfast and longest holding countercultures. They literally have children and raise them opposite or tangential to the current culture norms.
Trad Christian theonomist: complimentarian views on marriage, anti secular government, often homesteaders.
Trad chads: men pursuing lives of purity at any social cost. Staunchly opposed to todays hookup culture and LGBT influences.
>Trad chads: men pursuing lives of purity at any social cost. Staunchly opposed to todays hookup culture and LGBT influences.
I see this becoming the norm in the future. Hook up culture is simply too dangerous (for both men and women) to be sustainable long term. It's a cultural hangover from the days of "free love" that simply does not map to the modern world anymore.
IMO Incels tend to be people who would (if they could), at the first chance, jump at the opportunity to become sexually active. Additionally, incels tend to not value monogamy nor are strictly heterosexual. The inherent value of the individual they're pursuing is also different. This group tends to have a very low view of women (and men too, to some degree) as individuals with meaning, purpose, thoughts and emotions. There is a notable lack of care for personhood.
TC would be different in that the premise is opposite, that they're pursuing heterosexual monogamy and are voluntarily foregoing a life of sexual promiscuity in light of that pursuit. This group highly values the person they're pursuing and places a high degree of respect on the opposite gender.
I've always taken issue with that term. Any guy who bathes, doesn't say mean things, tries to make himself more attractive, doesn't consider a woman unattractive because she isn't an 8+, and learns to strike up a conversation with the opposite sex will find someone sooner or later.
I don't know much about them, but people presented as incels generally seem unwilling to put much effort into any of that. If I had sat at home all day, played video games and really let myself go, does that make it involuntary or just lazy?
Originally it was a label they chose for themselves because they couldn't figure out why they kept getting rejected. It was only later outsiders caught on, then turned it into an insult. Beyond that I also don't know very much.
> Any guy who bathes, doesn't say mean things, tries to make himself more attractive, doesn't consider a woman unattractive because she isn't an 8+, and learns to strike up a conversation with the opposite sex will find someone sooner or later.
And if he doesn't, clearly it must be because he isn't trying hard enough amirite?
There are plenty of guys out there who listen to what they're being told (which is hard, because there's a lot of contradictions), try as hard as they can, and yet can't find anyone.
I'm not familiar with this, but your last point was curious to me. Can you not have "radically traditional values" and be a single man living in a big city? Or at any rate, it's not respected, so these people you are talking about are pretending to not be single and not live in a big city?
Yeah that was probably confusing because I had a specific part of this culture in mind (trad homesteader). My point was that countercultures are often marked by the presence of posers, tagalongs, and idealists who don’t practice.
> queerness ... there’s very little cultural risk in living those glorified identities
Several US states are trying to make it illegal to be trans or even dress in a gender nonconfirming way. Queerness still carries a certain amount of real, physical risk; Norway Pride 2022 was cancelled because somebody shot up a gay bar and murdered two people.
Don't forget the bomb threats at hospitals providing trans care, or the actual shootings that took place at drag & gay clubs, Florida's "dont say gay" bill, you could go on and on.
People are scared to say this, because they quickly get labeled a Christofascist or alt-right something or other, but it's true. Trads are definitely the counter culture now. Tim Dillon made a joke recently, something along the lines of "The most radical non-conformist thing you can do now is wear rosary beads". I thought it was kind of funny, but also because it's true.
I honestly can't tell if this is satire or not. Catholics make up 23% of the US population. How can wearing rosary beads be non-conformist when Catholics are the single largest denomination in America?
An astonishing SIX Supreme Court justices are Catholic. Was there ever a time a countercultural group had that kind of representation in government? Were there ever six justices who were hippies, or beatniks, or hobos? If you sincerely believe that
> Trads are definitely the counter culture now.
may I invite you to name another counter culture that comprised a majority of the US Supreme Court?
The problem is that people conflate feeling aggrieved with being marginalized. The reality is that "trads" have plenty of representation and power, up to the governor or multiple states (like Desantis) and a former president. Self-identified trads may feel like they're exploited, or something. But the reality is they are a huge part of the population with ample political power.
Yes you are right that there are a lot of catholic people, we are talking about _culture_.
How many TV shows, movies, or songs have come out in the last 10 years that featured Catholics in any way or catholic imagery, or even just general traditional values? Like maybe 1?
How many TV shows, movies, and songs have come out featuring gay people or gay culture?
A huge number.
Compare this state to the 60's when the hippies were the counterculture, how many mainstream movies and shows came out featuring them? Were they the cultural mainstream? The answer is obviously no. Movies of that day were being made by the then-mainstream trads.
We were never talking about representation in government. If you want to have an honest conversation about religious representation in government you will very quickly be labeled an anti-semite.
There is no contradiction in what I'm saying. It's the norm for media, especially film, to be produced about marginal groups. How many movies are made about mercenaries or hit men or fathers with "a certain set of skills" whose daughters are Taken? A huge number.
The opposite is also true. How may TV shows, movies, or songs have come out in the last 10 years that featured a guy working in a cubicle making Excel spreadsheets all day? Were they the cultural mainstream? The answer is obviously no.
> We were never talking about representation in government
Who wasn't? Culture isn't just what's streaming on Netflix. It's what people live every day of their lives. Hippies in the 60s weren't counterculture because they were making memes. They were counterculture because they were creating communities that were counter to the mainstream culture of the rest of the country -- communal rather than individualistic, based on chosen family rather than biological family, in pursuit of enlightenment rather than material success, etc.
>If you want to have an honest conversation about religious representation in government you will very quickly be labeled an anti-semite.
There it is! The anti-semitic dog whistle that is the foundation of so much "trad" identity. Literally 100% of US presidents are Christian but somehow it's the Jews who are in control of everything. And if everything is degenerate and wrong, then Jews are the ones promoting a conspiracy to undermine and destroy America.
This is literally the same underpinnings as Nazi Germany. No wonder there is so much overlap between "Trads" and white supremacy.
idk I never said anything about Jews, but calling people a Nazi is a great way to shut down conversation.
I love Jewish people, I have many friends who are Jewish, I have no problem with their representation anywhere. In fact, I have seriously considered joining the Jewish faith.
I am just saying if you go down the path of comparing religious representation in government, you are literally not allowed to have an honest conversation without doing exactly what you just did. All you have to say is "I found the dog whistle, this conversation is over".
> It's what people live every day of their lives.
I see Pride stickers and representation in all forms of media every single day for the LGBT community. How is that not what we are all living every day of our lives?
At this point we're just trying to define what culture actually is.
> If you want to have an honest conversation about religious representation in government you will very quickly be labeled an anti-semite.
You literally said that you can't talk about how Jews (allegedly) have too much power in government. This is a classic anti-semitic trope. To say so and then respond with
> idk I never said anything about Jews, but calling people a Nazi is a great way to shut down conversation.
is dishonest and cowardly.
> I see Pride stickers and representation in all forms of media every single day for the LGBT community. How is that not what we are all living every day of our lives?
What is your conclusion? That pride stickers give people power of some sort? If that were true, transgender people wouldn't be 4x more likely to be victims of violent crimes.
Representation in pop culture is not power. Power is the ability to create and enforce laws, or the ability to not be shot and killed for your religious beliefs, as happened when 11 Jews were killed in a Pittsburgh synagogue -- killed by a man who followed neo-Nazis and white supremacists. Their killer would no doubt agree with you that "traditional" values were under attack, and that you couldn't even talk about it without being labeled an anti-semite.
Alright well I was genuinely trying to engage in good faith discussion here, but you seem angry.
I really don't believe that we can have any kind of productive outcome here. As I said, I don't hate anyone, I don't even have a problem with any of the representation that I'm talking about.
I was simply pointing out that the fact that I see these symbols plastered everywhere, including at Target, means that this is no longer an underground counterculture kind of thing. It's very mainstream.
If you want to insist on projecting your ideas that the world is filled with secret Nazis do it with someone else.
Even this is wrong. The Hallmark channel makes 40 Christmas movies a year, all of them with Christian families, obviously. (Some allow for a character who is Jewish.) These movies attract millions of viewers.
The idea that an underserved market is able to be farmed by a niche cable network supports my thesis. The hallmark channel kind of explicitly Christian entertainment is counter cultural rather than mainstream.
It’s not a surprise to anyone who has studied show business at all. The Boscht belt and its associated Jewish entertainment circuit was a critical incubator of talent for our nations popular music.
No one is hiding any of this, and it’s trivial to read a memoir from many musicians and see a story about how they wanted to feel more included in the increasingly secularized holidays so they wrote music that was about the stuff that included in them.
There's a difference between people "doing what they've always done" or coasting on cultural inertia e.g. people who are Catholic and that means they go to a Catholic church but otherwise has a very small effect on their life and people intentionally choosing to join a subculture, e.g. convert to Catholicism or rededicate themselves to a religion after being one of the folks "doing what they've always done".
The norm these days is for people to fall away from their religion, not to join one. I think this is obvious for anyone to see, but Pew has done lots of surveys on the decline of Christianity in America: https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2022/09/13/modeling-the...
Grew up catholic with a devout saint of a grandfather and the only people who I have seen wearing rosary beads were horrible, horrible cartel guys in prison.
I grew up with a number of rosaries. I would have to bring them into my Catholic grade school and then we'd walk to the church on campus and spend the next hour reciting rote verses and trying to keep track of where I was on the rosary.
Wearing rosary beads sounds like a counter culture move against the church if you ask me. Rosaries are almost sacred.
> Wearing rosary beads sounds like a counter culture move against the church if you ask me.
Wearing a rosary around the neck is common and accepted in some Catholic cultures and frowned upon in others. There is no general Catholic religious objection to it, it is just a matter of local cultural practice. (Publicly flaunting it while engaging in scandalous behavior is more generally frowned upon, of course, as heaping hypocrisy on top of the already-bad behavior.)
Wearing a 15-decade rosary on the hip, in the same place a soldier would wear a sword, is traditional for the Dominican order.
I'm not objecting to wearing them, my old biases object to them being worn as a fashion element. They are a tool, not a sign of your personal faith. The only people I ever saw with Rosaries every day were the Nuns who used them every day, even the priests would dress down on occasion.
Not sure why you're getting the down votes. I attended a Catholic school and wearing a rosary was certainly frowned upon for the exact reason you state.
I think you are right. The US kinda feels like Asimov’s foundation, especially in the west coast. Fewer people acting like adults and more people chasing dopamine and letting entropy do its damage.
Maybe I just need to stop taking public transportation and walking the city. Perhaps suburbs feel further from the precipice.
I've been wondering lately if it's down to the lack of agency on the part of average people.
Like I see that America is in decline and has a decent chance of falling apart in my lifetime (I'm 34), but what exactly am I going to do about it? Nobody in charge cares, they're too busy fiddling. If you can't stop the decline and have to live it, why not try to enjoy what you have while you have it?
I’m 37 so we’re pretty much the same cohort. And I’ve also reached that conclusion - I get out of the city and ski and hike, spend time with SO, etc. I won’t be dragged into the bullshit doomerism and constant shifting existential crises that online and west coasters seem to be addicted to.
However, my daily commutes through seattle runs me right into the Pioneer square station and I swear it’s like something from “the Wire”. It feels like hamsterdam, a hell on earth. So while I generally resolve to do whats best for myself I still run into the effects of the society I live in everyday and it’s depressing/demoralizing. This city is diseased with an aggressive malignancy.
> I won’t be dragged into the bullshit doomerism and constant shifting existential crises that online and west coasters seem to be addicted to.
The thing that's interesting about this is that human beings in acute distress are less adept at planning ahead and being creative. Which means that people in the doom cycle can't start building new institutions to challenge the old ones that are decaying and pillaging. The perverse incentives that got us to this point are also disincentivizing fixing the problems.
I don't even want to think about what Pioneer Square is like now. It was sketchy when I lived in Seattle and that was 10 years ago. I agree that even with some healthy distance/putting on your own oxygen mask first, it's very demoralizing. My trust in people is much lower than it used to be.
I'm not sure rural or suburban areas are much better. Most of the malignancy just happens in private.
You may be right about the suburban areas, I just don't know. I haven't lived there since I was a kid.
The area around Pioneer square is all boarded up now, even the court house! During the summer/fall it was much worse with indigent drug use and florid psychotics but now that it's cold and wet there's less. The station is still used as a toilet though.
Funny enough the stairs at exit A in Pioneer Square have inscribed on them as you walk up "Why are you not afraid?". And I always say to myself, "I fuckin am!"
Seattle needs some chemotherapy but that would require its citizens to recognize they have a disease and actually seek treatment. Instead they put on their airpods and stare at their phones and completely live in a parallel reality.
The most recent elections clearly demonstrate that Seattle voters are fed up and are ready to try something else. Of the seven city council members whose terms are up in 2023 only one has announced a re-election campaign and four of them have said they won't be running. It's a mess right now but I don't think it's fair to accuse the electorate of living in a parallel reality.
> I won’t be dragged into the bullshit doomerism and constant shifting existential crises that online and west coasters seem to be addicted to
I was part of this so-called doomerism group when I worked in a more traditional 9-5 job in IT about 8-10 years ago. Now I'm solidly in the homesteader/freelancer/homeschooler counterculture.
Maybe there's a natural progression where you begin to question your life/the system/who you're serving and then you do something about it. I'm sure many people get stuck and never make that transition because of the perceived risk in doing so.
You realize that "America is in decline" has been alive and well since the 60s. Not sure anything right now points to it being any different back then. If anything militarily and intelligence wise the US proved the dominance globally by tipping off Ukraine and stopping a full Russian incursion.
The main problems America has are internal. I agree that nobody could realistically invade us or wage war against us, but that doesn't mean we can't have civil conflicts or a period like the Troubles. In those cases, our overwhelming military superiority might be a drawback since everybody and their cousin is armed.
This observation, for me is a rationale for supporting efforts that shift power down. From federal to state, from state to county, from county to local gov, from local gov to individuals.
Public policy discussions that start with the assumption that the only possible solution is for the federal/state/county/local government to dictate policies from above are almost always non-starters for me. The higher up in the hierarchy the more evidence I need to support a solution at that level.
I'm not absolutist on this matter, there are concerns that are best addressed at all those various levels but I prefer to get there through bottom-up policy experimentation and iteration rather than top-down diktats. There are also ample lessons from history about the dangers of expansive government powers.
That debate has been ongoing since before the founding of the country. You are in good company and our system is designed with the idea of distributing power. The key is for people to recognize and exercise their power.
I'm actually very locally active and came to the same conclusion in that I think building local institutions is the best thing that I can do right now.
These decline stories are universal, and probably no more true than 400 years ago: I am French and live in Hong Kong, do you think decline is not what everyone is talking about in BOTH places ? What is a place not in decline in the eyes of its inhabitants ?
It says more about how we view the past than how the present is: we remember only the glorious good times, and forget nobody could read 200 years ago, or nobody could eat 400 years ago. They all said they were in decline, the values of their grandfathers diluted by a constant change.
But while I sit on my toilets, on the 44th floor of my hyper tower, writing to americans in a language nobody in my ascending family can speak, before tucking my trilingual kid to bed, well, I think the decline isn't so bad, if you zoom out a few decades.
Doesn’t look like decline to me. I could cite dozens more examples and not just around technology.
Russia is a good example of a nation in decline: hemorrhaging young people, horrible corruption, cynicism, delusional leaders, and the use of imperial war and dramatic ideology to try to paper over it all.
We do have a lot of dumb problems like a homelessness epidemic that are due more to lack of political will than inability to fix them.
Some are also due to the high priority we place on individual freedom. We’d rather have freedom from detention and to move about than round up the homeless and force them into institutions. We’d rather have shootings than remove the individual right to bear arms. We’d rather have strong property rights than eminent domain people to build infrastructure. Etc.
> hemorrhaging young people, horrible corruption, cynicism, delusional leaders, and the use of imperial war and dramatic ideology to try to paper over it all.
So which of those is missing from the US? I see fewer and fewer young people, the corruption may not be at the level of handing over banknotes but the distrust is just as real, and everything else on your list is much th esame.
I don't think it's bad in the long run either. I think sometimes we need to get rid of old things to make way for new things. It still kind of sucks for those of us who live through it, though. A lot of my frustration is with the current system's inertia as the current decaying institutions do their best to keep alternatives from taking root so all we can do is wait until they're finally weak enough to be ignored. In the meantime, what should we do?
I can only speak to the American (and somewhat the Canadian) situation. I don't know what on the ground sentiment looks like in France or Hong Kong.
I think your social standing has a lot more to do with money than behavior. If you're rich and live in a van you're interesting, otherwise you're just homeless. If your gig is a successful business you're independent, if it's Uber you're barely surviving.
Disagree. I think your social status has more to do with your conformity to neoliberal values than it does money. Sure, money can buy nice things and attract friends. Just look at Kanye.
The richer you are the broader the range of behavior you can get away with. But the spectrum of all behavior in which this acceptable range lives moves.
Warren Buffet can't have a side gig running scrap in an unregistered truck with a Newport hanging out of his mouth.
This comment is totally off topic. The theme of the article is pop culture and whether it's possible for alternative types of pop culture to gain traction anymore given the fact that most of the outlets are governed by algorithms that prioritize engagement - you're referring to toxic culture war politics. Did you even read the article?
The truth is that countercultures often had political bents to them. Recuperation as defined literally included denaturing the political content of something, preserving the artistic or aesthetic quality only.
Here's one small "trad" expression I've seen that got some people riled up in the kind of way I would expect a counterculture to: the sqlite code of ethics https://sqlite.org/codeofethics.html
Most people in the US at least do not slot into any particular subculture. They are "normies" for lack of a better term: they don't intentionally curate their cultural selves -- they may have picked up some "trad" trappings (wearing a cross necklace, possessing handwavy religious beliefs like "believing in God"), and they may have "woke/queer" trappings (flying a rainbow flag on their house, possessing handwavy political beliefs like "supporting trans rights").
There are literal state laws being passed increasingly criminalizing the existence of being trans, right now especially any kind of trans healthcare for kids (some legislatures are looking to extend it to adults). There have been mass killings specifically targeting LGBT+ individuals. Even merely informing someone of the pronouns you go by is almost guaranteed to bring flaming and harassment on most online platforms, often including right here on HN.
I want to be charitable but it's hard to interpret this attitude as anything other than willful ignorance of very obvious facts.
Another hard agree. I always get a good laugh when people in queer culture claim to be living a counter culture lifestyle. Meanwhile the US state department is flying the queer flag at its embassies around the world and using it to agitate foreign conservative cultures.
I nominate being an unapologetic white male as the counter culture of our current time. Just watch how many downvotes you'll get on any social media platform for having this position.
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.
> 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 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.
Seeing 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.
> 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".
A 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.
You most certainly were not seeing hippies endorsed by the state department in the 60s. (Though, that we look back on the hippies of the 60s fondly does say something about the direction we've charted since then.)
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.
> 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.
If 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.
Cultural power is different from political and capital power. The influence of an musician, a political candidate, and a wealthy CEO can all be different in their scope, message, and the audience that they reach.
The WASPy power structure is still dominant in the corporate landscape and disproportionately high in the political one. But it has been losing ground on the cultural front for a while now.
There's a reason WASPy individuals complain about "the culture war" - it's the one they are losing. The slogan, "get woke, go broke" suggests they have started losing ground on the corporate front as well.
If you are unsure of what he meant, try and explicitly advocate for "majority white, straight, Christian(ish)" people in the same way every other group gets to do in america and see how it goes. And if your knee jerk reaction is to say "well only a racist white nationalist would do that", you have proved my point, and you are using the same fallacious reasoning that leads to people thinking that all gay rights advocates are pedophiles or all criminal justice reform advocates are thugs.
Advocating for those in power doesn't carry the same reasoning as advocating for those who are not in power so it is not the same type of fallacious reasoning you claim.
Edit: I removed my second sentence since it appears to be confusing others of my tone and intention.
>Advocating for those in power doesn't carry the same reasoning as advocating for those who are not in power
Anybody could be in power at any given time. If your argument for why your group should be in power depends on who is currently in power then it isn’t valid because it stops being true as soon as you win. No idea what you are saying about stupid people.
> my argument [“Advocating for those in power”] has nothing to do with who should be in power
Saying what kinds of arguments are acceptable in support of the group in power has a lot to do with who should be in power.
I'll say it again since you edited your previous message to reply to the message following it, I wasn't arguing about who should be in power, or placing my chips in any direction. I was plainly stating that people will have different reasons for supporting the class in power vs supporting outside of that class.
Parent comment was stating that people who support the minority are using the same fallacious reasoning those who support the majority do and that is not true.
In the event the power changes, the people who supported the previous majority class might be the same or use the same reasoning but that has nothing to do with how both groups reason separately.
As an example, imagine it's The Great Depression, The Majority would say something like "Wow I really wish we had more food, I'm going to vote for this candidate who says that we'll get more food". In this instance the Majority is not tied to the ruling class, do you see how implying everyone is knee-jerk reacting is misleading?
>If minority groups are "in charge", why is most of the wealth, corporate power and political power in the hands of majority groups?
Because there is no one majority group. The only way you get a majority group is by drawing dumb lines around non-adjacent cultural groups because they happen to be of the same economic means or vote the same way.
> ... 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).
Case in point—-Name one recent president that didn’t need go pander to christians to get elected. I’ve always found this tiring being a non-christian myself. Christians are not oppressed no matter what the terminally online right-wing on HN seems to think.
I have never heard a republican say something positive about white people. Can you give me an example? For the amount of dog whistling the GOP has done over the years the complete dearth of any explicit pandering to white Americans is actually shocking and deserving of a proper explanation.
Great explanation. Very proper. Much explanation. Thanks for the example /s
Arguments you cant argue against are not a “dishonest script” what does that even mean? Just give an example of what you say Republicans do a good job of.
You are being dishonest because examples of the GOP pandering to white voters are well-documented and easily accessible. Either you never looked, in which case arguing at all is dishonest since you don't know what you're talking about, or you looked and ignored the mountain of evidence denying your view. The "script" part is likely about you shifting the goalposts. Why doesn't dog-whistling count as explicit pandering to white Americans? That isn't to say the GOP are always subtle, either. All in all, it seems pretty clear you're sealioning.
For the benefit of other readers though, I'll bite.
For instance, former congressman for Iowa Steve King tweeting about slavery [0] is pretty explicit. How about the slightly more abstruse but still pretty glaring white supremacist dog whistle [1] in response to a random Dutch guy complaining about muslims. He was in congress 2003-2021.
Of course Great Replacement rhetoric is also pushed pretty openly to rally white voters, with Tucker Carlson saying things like "demographic change is the key to the Democratic Party’s political ambitions", and congresswoman for New York Elise Stefanik running ads saying "[Democrats'] plan to grant amnesty to 11 MILLION illegal immigrants will overthrow our current electorate and create a permanent liberal majority in Washington".
Do you accept these examples or do you need the GOP leadership to issue a letter signed by all party members stating they like white people?
> Why doesn't dog-whistling count as explicit pandering to white Americans?
Because why do they have to dog whistle about it? Why do they have to resort to subtlety at all?
It's forbidden from public discourse to such an extent that can only be found between the lines, hidden in vague allusions, or more likely, asserted as baseless accusations slandering conservative politicians, while the GOP explicitly tries everything it can to promote their non-white figures.
If you read the examples I gave above, they're not vague. Dog-whistles are more for plausible deniability than subtlety, and it's because (shocker) white supremacy is frowned upon. If you think liking white people requires openly advocating white supremacy, and anything else is an implicit statement that you don't like white people, then that really says more about you than anything else.
They try to promote their non-white figures because their agenda and campaigning for the most part is so overwhelmingly targeted toward white voters that they have horrible reach into other demographics.
This is like the Black Lives Matter vs All Lives Matter debacle. Minorities are brought into the spotlight because there are systems and large groups of people actively working against them. Meanwhile, you don't need to "promote" whiteness, because that's seen as the default in America.
But why? If this is really the majority sentiment, why on earth leave any room for plausible deniability?
> their agenda and campaigning for the most part is so overwhelmingly targeted toward white voters that they have horrible reach into other demographics.
Not really, though. Voting levels are low enough that they could conceivably focus their energies simply on getting more non-voting whites to vote.
> But why? If this is really the majority sentiment, why on earth leave any room for plausible deniability?
If you read the comment you're replying to, it answers that question immediately.
> Not really, though. Voting levels are low enough that they could conceivably focus their energies simply on getting more non-voting whites to vote.
They could, but their agenda fits white people better, for reasons that are evident to anyone with critical thinking skills. Hint: think about the dog-whistling some more.
> Culture is not required to take subterfuge in dog whistles. Only counterculture is.
> Culture is what's uncontroversially and fearlessly blasted on front pages, and on mainstream TV.
My comments on dog-whistling were specifically targeted toward the one commenter talking about how politicians don't seem to care about white people.
If you want to go back to the broader discussion, on culture, then yes I agree. And what is blasted on front pages and mainstream TV is overwhelmingly white, with tiny pockets dedicated to other groups. To say that "whiteness" is a counterculture is absurd.
As an aside:
> the millions of white Democrats
The Democrat agenda also fits white people better than non-white people, though they make more effort than Republicans to acknowledge minorities.
As for why non-white Republicans vote that way, maybe they miss the dog-whistles, or maybe they think the racism of the party isn't directed at them (e.g., since they're "one of the good ones") or that it's outweighed by other factors (i.e., they hate taxes), or maybe they think the Republicans are the better of two evils. Not really relevant, since they aren't in this discussion. Do you have the critical thinking skills?
No, I’m not engaging with the dishonest script you’re trying to run me through, and looking at your short post history it’s obvious what you’re trying to do. Have a nice day.
lasftr: those are examples of dog whistles. They dont use the word “white” anywhere. The GOP has dog whistled for decades and the whole point of a dog whistle is that it DOESN’T explicitly pander to white people. Dog whistles are IMPLICIT by definition. I hope that clears up what I was saying. Thanks for trying to provide an answer my question: “Why do you think politicians never explicitly pander to white people?“
Edit: Not needing to do something is not a reason for not doing it. Do you have a hypothesis for why they wouldn't explicitly pander? It seems you adamantly refuse to address this monumental question.
Ok fine, here's my answer then: they don't need to, because their voters know the GOP doesn't work against white people. I suspect it's different from your answer.
But they explicitly don’t wield that power as a group and attack people who suggest that they do. Powerful white men are all liberals who defer to the group interests of minorities and attack the group interest of the majority.
Yeah this is all making me wonder why we're looking for a singular dominant culture to which there are one or more counter-cultures.
Pretty sure one of the canonized characteristics of post-modernity (or the post-cold war era if you dont like pretentious art terms) is pluralism.
This spicy thread seems to reinforce the feeling that the dominant culture has (and maybe always was) some horrifying unknowable ever-changing organic mass of competing counter-cultures.
Paraphrasing some dead social philosopher, history and cultures aren't bedtime stories or cartoon characters and we create dangerous false narratives, policies and hierarchies when we indulge the impulse to reduce them into these.
Really confused by this statement. I think queer culture can be countercultural depending. For example legislation is currently up in some states to ban dressing in a way outside your sex because drag queens exist, but even though drag queens have a tv show and a movie and stuff I'm sure it'll also probably scoop a butch lesbian or two or just a regular tomboy woman.
Legal status is terrible standard for whether something is counter culture. Outlawing something is neither necessary nor sufficient to be counterculture. Some legal and cultural boundaries overlap, some are orthogonal.
There are a great many subcultures that would like legal boundaries shifted, and when they care enough they become interest groups participating in the democratic process.
Even the blandest bland blandy that ever blanded is not going to agree with all the laws and societal boundaries being set exactly the way they are. Either that means there's no such thing as a mainstream culture, or we have to understand noisy clashes between subcultures don't make one or the other a counter culture.
I think the way we're discussing that something obviously SUBculture is being confused for a COUNTERculture is an argument in OPs favor that we don't have much (highly visible) counterculture right now.
Subculture vs counterculture makes sense. I'd be curious what counterculture is and how it differentiates from subculture then, if we're not going to measure if institutions exist that are actively trying to outlaw a culture.
A subculture is generally hidden from the mainstream culture. Few are those who display their BDSM subculture in obvious public fashion.
A counterculture is in the face of the mainstream culture, trying to change the cult. It is countering the mainstream. It is activist or, at the least, unabashed with the intention of normalization.
To expand on this, in a democracy-ish country law pretty much ALWAYS lags the cultural reality because legislatures basically never speculatively do things when it comes to cultural issues, they wait for enough people to want something for it to be an issue worth of the political platform. You might get some extremists pushing the envelope by catering to an extreme minority but even then they won't really be far out in front of the pack.
I mean I'm talking about current laws on proposal to ban people from dressing differently without saying "only drag queens". The letter of the law bans butch lesbians and tomboys. These are adults.
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It might get downvotes because you've just said it in a very ridiculous way that indicates you're angry about it.
I think there's a valid point lurking there, but you botched it. Surely you appreciate that multiple things can be true at the same time, and there are numerous ways that white men have advantages still.
Why is it okay for one side to be angry, but not the other? This is such a commonly used accusation to deflate someone else's point. Making them seem emotional, and therefore illogical.
FWIW, I don't think the person you're replying to looks even a little bit angry in that post. The point of view seems well considered.
I think the anger is coming out in over the top descriptions of white males as targets of some kind of cultural conspiracy, or talking about laughing at queer folk because they're not persecuted like unapologetic straight white men ... Those are some pretty odd conclusions that he seems to have wandered into emotionally, and it's hard to think there isn't some hostility there, otherwise why bother saying all this?
If you think he sounds neutral, unaffected, rational, I wonder if it's just that you already agree with him.
Your whole argument is based on the premise that statements made in anger cannot be true. And the focus on emotional state is typical ad hominem attack. You did not refute the content in any way.
In order to put white men in their place, they must understand that their opinion doesn't matter because they are white men. They cannot know adversity, they cannot have any opinion on minority issues. Therefore, if you want to participate in a discussion today your best bet is to try not to appear obviously white or male, and if you must concede that fact you ought to apologize for having an opinion in the first place, since nobody asked for it.
Being an unapologetic white male would imply that you felt like you could give your opinion freely without having someone immediately attack it as invalid because of your race and gender.
But I guarantee that every time a term like this gets used, the replies will imply that anyone identifying as an unapologetic white male is in fact racist.
It's a great demonstration of how the counter culture has in fact become culture. Anybody who really doubts this probably doesn't have kids or spend much time around younger adults.
This is geographic and doesn't address any of the specific demographic claims made, much less the assertion that those who hold power are "unapologetically white."
>Meanwhile the US state department is flying the queer flag at its embassies around the world and using it to agitate foreign conservative cultures.
Oh come on, that is not their main goal. Its all a scam to cover up things like unchecked military spending/war, unchecked government corruption at the corporate level among many other things.
There is a reason why this meme continues to float around the web.
I guess the question here is what does the words, "mainstream supported" mean? Most corporate brands and media try to appeal to certain minorities. Is this what you mean?
The thing is despite the media focus, it still is the actual case that such minorities do not have actual power in society in terms of actual statistics, but the media is just a mirage, the reality is that certain disparities still exist, despite media representation. This might be the slightly different aspect of modern culture, that it does not amplify the already existing power group explicitly.
Interesting point. I guess the question is: is power inherently related to culture? And if so, to what degree? If culture is the outline of the dominant group in a society, perhaps the counterculture are those who occupy and inhabit its shadow.
So, I'm not sure this is obvious, but the current "progressive[0]" culture is pushed by the dominant group that does have power. By raw statistics, white men still wield most power in American society (and thus the world), and so the progressive culture that is dominant in media is the culture being written and put into vogue by people who are white men if you merely draw on the statistics. If you've ever observed twitter, a good chance is someone bleeting about "white people be like X" it is a white person doing it. A good meme on housing twitter is nimbys doing land acknowledgements while no Native Americans (or POC really) are actually present since they are economically excluded from said community.
The thing is the statistics still speak for themselves. Despite the media, the PR campaigns, for example, software development still skews largely male. The spoken culture extols DEI, but the actual reality is still what is it by statistics.
On some level, this might just be recuperation in action, but the point is that it still is ironically the culture of the majority. It isn't being "pushed" by the minority because the minority is by definition, the minority. It is being adopted (even recuperated) by the majority, often into a form that is acceptable for it. The difference is that the majority isn't really centering itself in that media. Except that on some level, if you listen to Slavoj Zizek, it actually is.
Anyway, whether media or external culture really makes a difference materially (like minority representation in workplaces of high paying careers matching that of the population) it at least clear at this point that it either would take a lot of time to take effect, or possibly (probably even likely at this point) it has no real effect on actual power relations in society.
[0] putting this in quotes because progressive encompasses more than what is accepted by the mainstream culture.
> By raw statistics, white men still wield most power in American society (and thus the world), and so the progressive culture that is dominant in media is the culture being written and put into vogue by people who are white men if you merely draw on the statistics.
Those would primarily be "progressive" white men though, which still gets to the in-group/out-group dynamic where they will more closely associate with a racial or sexual minority then they would to a conservative white male (a value match vs a skin color match). So the effect is the same, is it not?
I think this is ridiculous, LGBTQ is a minority. Trads are part of a waning majority.
All evidence points towards LGBTQ always existing but just becoming more open.
Trads being Counter Culture? That's the same double speak that gets us Citizens United and Right to Work. Where did these trads get their radically traditional values? From the majority.
It is a minority, but if I go into work and announce that I am trans and will now be transitioning and my name is now X, people will fall all over themselves be supportive and congratulating me. It literally happened recently when Chris became Christina at my work. But, if I come in and announce that I have decided to become Catholic or Evangelical or Mormon there will be a lot of awkward silence with maybe some "okaaaaayyy, anyway, let's continue with the planning for the next project..."
Because no one needs to change the way they act around you. Christianity and Catholicism are strongly majority groups in the US. You were already treated as a Christian because that's what the majority of our society is based on.
Or no one feels like it's a change worth celebrating, whereas there's a strong streak of culture (particularly in more liberal areas) that makes congratulating trans people on their transition/gay people coming out of the closet a social obligation even if you're neither trans nor gay. It's almost gotten to the level of congratulating a couple for having an infant. If you don't think it's worth celebrating you're seen as an asshole.
My wife and I are fairly traditional in that I work full time and she's a housewife/mother. Most people are mildly surprised that she doesn't work, and there's definitely been the occasional awkward social interaction where she was clearly being judged by other women (notably non-parents) for that decision. This is in an extremely blue city, I imagine if we moved out even into the suburbs things would shift.
No, where I live you are considered to be a freak if you are religious. Announcing that you have joined a religion is like announcing you are trans in Alabama 50 years ago.
Agree with the sibling you would have a much higher chance of being discriminated against. Particularly in an interview. If you were wearing a cross necklace or some other visible indicator of your membership in Christianity, you would be way more likely to be turned down for a job in the Bay Area.
Same as you would have been discriminated against for being trans, gay, or black 30 years ago.
What's worse?
Not getting a job or getting murdered?
Not trying to minimize the discrimination of the religious but can't you see why most would try to minimize discrimination against a class who has a history of discriminating? Additionally, the severity is not comparable. Maybe if we were in the Crusades things would be different...do you see what I'm saying?
Having worked in the Bay for ~9 years I never met anyone that cared what religion a fellow employee was. So if we're just running off anecdotes and impressions, there's mine.
This is such a known situation that HBO's Silicon Valley did a whole bit on it in the show. Be thankful you've managed to avoid it in your 9 years in the valley!
I'm using to prove that the allegation, that people are careful being 'out' as a Christian' exists, not to prove that the religious discrimination, which would be illegal, exists. Your point is that it couldn't possibly exist because you've never even heard of such a thing. I'm saying that it's entirely possible for it to exist, because everyone else seems to have heard of it to the point that a popular TV chose to lampoon it.
> Your point is that it couldn't possibly exist because you've never even heard of such a thing.
Oh, sorry if I gave you the wrong impression. The point I was trying to make was not that it doesn't exist, but that it's not widespread and not significant enough to worry about. It exists, but I don't believe being Christian today is like being gay or black in 1990. You're more likely to be discriminated against for your height than your religion at this point.
No, but you would be discriminated against. Announcing you are religious would be the quickest way to be sidelined on projects and slowly forced out of the company. Announcing that your are LGBTQ is the quickest way to advance in the company and receive accolades. And this is a Fortune 100 company that nearly everyone on the planet has heard of. Where I live, LGBTQ is very much the mainstream and the most acceptable lifestyle.
That doesn't mean anything. Discrimination is a matter of degree. Everyone gets discriminated against pretty often to lesser degrees. If you tell me about your horoscope I'll roll my eyes and probably not want to hang out with you very much because of your spiritual beliefs.
Are people refusing to sell you good and services? Calling you names? Throwing bricks through your windows?
Is it putting more of a damper on you living a happy life than the occasional moment of discomfort because someone thinks something you think is dumb? People think lots of my beliefs are dumb, and that's fine, as long as I can go about my day.
> Announcing that your are LGBTQ is the quickest way to advance in the company and receive accolades.
First, I doubt a gay new hire can reach C suite with nothing but a couple of rainbows and dildos for qualifications.
Second, office politics are crappy, but you either cope or move on, with maybe a lawsuit if you have a legal leg to stand on.
I don't think likelihood of violence from a belief has much to do with counterculture status, moreso that the people that don't like queer people are more violent than the other way around.
This is patently absurd. I'm neither trans nor religious but hypothetically I'd much rather announce that I joined a religion anywhere in the US than announce being trans in the small town where my grandparents live today. Let alone Alabama 50 years ago.
Yes in very progressive environments you will get more support for announcing the later but that's because being in the later group is actually a challenge while religion has built up a reputation for maligning groups of people for things out of their control and for generally anti-scientific beliefs. Being part of a group that largely denies evolution and climate change is obviously not going to grant you any favors in groups with an academic (especially STEM) background.
No, what you experience is people who personally aren't pro-religion, often for reasons of personal experience. It's nothing like the brave people hosting home churches in China, or an even better example, the people telling their stories in the bible, where the entire culture/government and it's moral basis is against your religion.
> no one needs to change the way they act around you.
This is only because Catholics and Christians often don’t mention when workplace behaviors make them uncomfortable. I’ve been in multiple situations where coworkers have used names of God as expletives or made jokes about things I consider holy.
And if you’re a Catholic and “trad” and planning lunch with colleagues, things like “is it Friday” or “is it a Friday in Lent” would affect others (except that, today, there’s a lot of vegetarian options for independent reasons).
Abstinence is a form of penance. Frankly if the office doesn't bend over backwards for your self-flagellation every week I'm OK with it. Are you demanding that the entire office fast with you if they can't find a pescatarian option?
You missed the point: if I’m planning lunch with my friends and they want to go to barbecue on Friday, I’m going to be suggesting an alternative so I can get something to eat too. Just like we had to plan lunches around my Jain, Jewish and Muslim coworkers dietary restrictions.
So, in fact, some people will have to do something different to include me in some of their activities.
Queer people also don't mention workplace behavior that makes them uncomfortable all the time...I'm sure it's easy for you to think that queer people don't let transgressions slide, but many times they do so for their own safety or livelihood.
You are not made unsafe because I said the fuck word...
Catholic teaching is that men cannot become women and women cannot become men. Catholic teaching is that lying is sinful. Practicing the Catholic faith by saying "I'm sorry, but I can't 'use your pronouns' because that would be a lie by falsely saying you're a woman when you can't be" will get you reprimanded or fired at most any major US company.
I'm not catholic so please help me out here. If you cannot use requested pronouns, does your religion also ban you from using nicknames? Is it okay for you to be called User23? Is it okay to say someone's cat is cute even if you don't really care for cats? What do you do if your partner asks if they look good or bad in something?
These are all reasonable questions. I'll answer as best as I can, but please understand that I'm not any kind of formal authority.
> If you cannot use requested pronouns, does your religion also ban you from using nicknames? Is it okay for you to be called User23?
I don't know of any Catholic doctrine that says people can't use pseudonyms, nicknames, or even change their name altogether.
> Is it okay to say someone's cat is cute even if you don't really care for cats? What do you do if your partner asks if they look good or bad in something?
Is it a lie, which is to say a falsehood told with the intent to deceive? Then yes it's wrong. Wouldn't you want to be told the truth if you in fact looked bad? Wouldn't you want to know that when you're told that you look good that you really do?
Personally, supposing I didn't think the cat was cute, I wouldn't say I thought it was. I would most likely treat it as a good opportunity to say nothing on the subject. Some theologians put forth a doctrine of "mental reservation"[1] which somehow makes lying OK, but I have to admit I'm not capable of the necessary mental gymnastics in any but the most clear cut cases.
Is it possible to say nothing about a trans co-workers transition then? If Jessica is now Kevin, what's the difference between that and Jacob going "nah call me Jake"? Is it just that you can't call Kevin he/him pronouns? Can you call Kevin as Kevin?
I'm unwilling by act or omission to knowingly indicate that I believe something that the Church teaches to be false. Thus, it depends on whether or not I'm being asked to participate in a deception, which I will not do. On the other hand, unlikely though it may be, if it's somehow clear that "Kevin" has no intent to deceive and is not deceiving anyone about her sex then I don't have an absolute moral objection to calling her that. This scenario is contrived and unrealistic, but it is largely a matter of prudence. Thus if I did surprisingly find myself in a similar circumstance, my actions would depend on the details.
As another Catholic commenter said, we owe Christian charity to all other human beings, including those affected by gender dysphoria. However, charity doesn't mean being "nice" or "accommodating," but it does require respecting the dignity of the human person. One way to respect that dignity is by not encouraging or condoning disordered behaviors or beliefs. I wouldn't offer a recovering alcoholic a drink, even if it was really great stuff.
That leads to another pragmatic matter. No matter what disordered beliefs or behaviors a person has (and I have my own share), we should want to help that person come to a rightly ordered place. There's really no one size fits all approach to that.
To your first point, pronouns and nicknames are not the same thing. Pronouns indicate that a man can become a woman or vise versa which is not what the Catechism teaches. Additionally, calling a cat cute if you don't care for them is lying which is a venial sin (meaning you probably won't be damned to Hell for it but one should confess if they sin regardless).
Catholics are called to Love (God is Love) and to love all sinners but hate the sins. We know that Church is a place for imperfect humans and thus we do seek to purify our souls with prayer, works of mercy and the Sacraments.
So with all the above in mind, we usually tend to avoid pronouns and refer to transgenders by their name instead. However, out of basic respect and good manners we can all call them what they want if they insist.
Jesus commands us that we must be known as his disciples by our love. Christian love begins with basic respect and good manners. Selfless love does not begin with requiring others to conform to our doctrine.
St. Paul said that he became all things for all people so that he may save some. We should do the same.
1 Peter 3:15-16 be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope, but do it with gentleness and reverence,
I know several Catholics who have no problem using a transgender person's pronouns. Trying to use a religion as a cover for bigotry is disrespectful to both the transgender person and other members of the religion.
But who determines what is "OK by the Bible?" A plain reading of it shows a number of clear contradictions, so we naturally can't rely on the verbatim text. Not to mention there is more than one version of the Bible itself.
That leaves it up to personal interpretation and opinion. Considering that the overall message of Christianity is supposedly something about "love and grace" the not transphobic opinions are a lot more compelling.
> Catholic teaching is that men cannot become women and women cannot become men.
People (including Catholics) supporting trans rights agree with that.
Of course, most of the Catholic heirarchy and supporters of trans rights disagree on who are men and who are women to start with, but, I mean, the former at least should be familiar with the idea of an entity having the observable physical characteistics of one thing but being something radically different because of its innate essence.
> Catholic teaching is that lying is sinful.
Catholic teaching is that lying consists of objectively false statements told with intent to deceive. (CCC 2482)
> Practicing the Catholic faith by saying "I'm sorry, but I can't 'use your pronouns' because that would be a lie by falsely saying you're a woman when you can't be" will get you reprimanded or fired at most any major US company.
But this is not something that the Catholic faith teaches is lying, even if some Catholics may see it as lying or some other offense against truth. Why?
(1) As Catholic traditionalists and trans rights activists agree, “gender identity” is not the same thing that Catholics see as binary sex. Acknowledging that a persons gender identity is this or that is not a fact claim about the construct of sex, but also
(2) Preferred pronouns are a distinct (though sometimes correlated) issue to gender identity (people with different gender identity can have the same oreferred pronouns, and vice versa), so even if acknowledging the validity of gender identity waa making a claim about sex, and even if such a claim would be false, respecting preferred pronouns isn’t acknowledging gender identity, its just respecting preferred pronouns.
(3) On top of all of the above, the purpose of use of a person's preferred pronouns by a Catholic in a work environment would, presumably, not be convince anyone of some false claim about the subject's sex, and without intent to deceive, it would not be a lie even if its content were an objectively false claim. (Which, for the reasons discussed previously, it is not.)
If you wanted to make an argument against respecting preferred pronouns that was grounded in Catholic doctrine, you would do better to argue that it is adulation (CCC 2480) from the view that transgenderism is inherently wrongful and doing so, lacking the intent to deceive required for lying, is a form of encouragement; OTOH, you could equally argue that failure to do so, in many circumstances, is detraction (CCC 2477) on the same assumption and calumny (also CCC 2477) without it.
This is some very solid casuistry. Father James Martin, S.J. would be proud.
> Of course, most of the Catholic heirarchy and supporters of trans rights disagree on who are men and who are women to start with, but, I mean, the former at least should be familiar with the idea of an entity having the observable physical characteistics of one thing but being something radically different because of its innate essence.
I'd love to know where you found the teaching that God miraculously transubstantiates people into a body of the wrong sex.
> Catholic teaching is that lying consists of objectively false statements told with intent to deceive. (CCC 2482).
My conscience tells me that it's objectively false and if I say it isn't I'm intentionally deceiving. (CCC 1778)
> (1) As Catholic traditionalists and trans rights activists agree, “gender identity” is not the same thing that Catholics see as binary sex. Acknowledging that a persons gender identity is this or that is not a fact claim about the construct of sex, but also
Motte and bailey.
As an aside what Doctor of the Church has anything to say about "gender identity?" Presumably if this is part of tradition one of them must have had something to say on the subject. In fact, where are you finding any Catholic traditionalist who is leaning on 1970s era radical feminist linguistic novelties?[1]
> (2) Preferred pronouns are a distinct (though sometimes correlated) issue to gender identity (people with different gender identity can have the same oreferred pronouns, and vice versa), so even if acknowledging the validity of gender identity waa making a claim about sex, and even if such a claim would be false, respecting preferred pronouns isn’t acknowledging gender identity, its just respecting preferred pronouns.
More equivocating. Everyone knows the confusion is intentional.
> (3) On top of all of the above, the purpose of use of a person's preferred pronouns by a Catholic in a work environment would, presumably, not be convince anyone of some false claim about the subject's sex, and without intent to deceive, it would not be a lie even if its content were an objectively false claim. (Which, for the reasons discussed previously, it is not.)
Then why would he care when I use pronouns appropriate to his sex?
Do you cast judgement on people that color their hair when it gets gray? Do you cast judgement on people that try and change their body by dieting/exercising?
I've never had random people on the street threaten to beat my ass or make violent threats towards me before my transition, and now it happens a couple times a year. I also way to many trans friends that are homeless because their conservative parents disagreed.
Across every single metric, trans people, especially trans POC face disproportionate adversity. i.e. income, murder rate, housing insecurity, education etc...
At our haircut place there was a husband and wife that worked there, the husband became the wife and the wife became the husband!
And I think the traditional people are doing so in much more subversive ways now - plenty of our friends are going private and Catholic school to get their kids out of the public schools, which are getting pretty wild in the indoctrination.
In a society that actually respected women, people would be falling over themselves to call out his misogynistic delusion that being a woman can amount to a thought in a man's head. But sadly not. That's male privilege for you.
Context: Am LGBTQ person who also has traditional religious views.
Big disagree. You carry a pride flag in the wrong parts of town where I am, you'll get beat up.
Walk around preaching hellfire and damnation and at most you'll get a lot of annoyed looks and at best you'll get people cheering you on.
> In schools these days it's trendy to be anything but straight.
In high schools in my town people get beat up for coming out. A friend who went to college out of state was mocked because people thought he was gay, despite him being straight.
Also, you appear to have a misconception of what the LGBTQ acronym includes.
LGBA - these are related to attraction.
TI - These are for Trans/Intersex individuals and have nothing to do with attraction.
Q - Questioning/Queer. Can be used by those who don't feel as though they are properly described by the above descriptions, or who are opposed to them for some reason.
There are other letters, but for the most part they are subsets/synonyms of the above labels, at least as far as the use case here is concerned.
Yeah it seems you can have wildly different experiences depending on where you live in the US. Probably why we are so politically divided, at this point we're living in different societies.
Anywhere in California you would not experience any of that. In fact it really is as OP describes. Look at polls of kids in elementary schools where 50%+ of young kids are identifying as non-binary because it is trendy.
the people beating up anyone are the cultural underclass/proles, be it rural whites or ghetto blacks -- by definition these are not cultural elites.
Physical violence (and any indicator of physical needs- shelter, food, safety) basically signals 'cheap animal unit', and animals are useful tools to be managed by the machinery (of capital, patriarchy, globalism, blah blah etc whatever left or right wing flavor of 'power structure' you mentally choose to sketch it out, it's there churning, by whatever name you like)
you seem to confuse elite signaling and countersignaling with personal sufferings when in reality, both are exactly how it's supposed to go
The cultural machinery works thru contradiction and desperate elite mimicry, people trying to aspirationally sound like the class right above them, leading to tragedy of the commons, for example:
Rich women support bail reform/ islamic immigration/ transgender craze/ porn-culture that gets poorer women raped/ scared/ fired / cheapened, and that's the new feminism
Pragmatic feminists/terfs/lesbians/mom groups/anti-vaccers are the new witches to be burned as the purity test for desperate psuedo-middle-class aspirational women, supplying the cultural fodder content mill, while Republican women/Christian evangelicals make popcorn...
Abortion rights are a cheap voting lever, the more passionate you are the more the machine knows how to use you, people are putting their carrots and sticks in their bios, announcing the best ways to control them with a smile lol
Women in Iran and Afghanistan not allowed to go to school, that is defacto no longer a feminist issue but something something 'why not both' meme-mumbles by nonbinary mental illness connoisseurs.
Gays getting beat up by rural whites so they move to metropolis and work for the rainbow utopia of corporate America is exactly how the machine eats :)
Let's try to disentagle this gish gallop shall we :) ?
> the people beating up anyone are the underclass/proles, be it rural whites or ghetto blacks -- by definition these are not cultural elites.
But they do make up the culture of the parts of society people actually live in.
> Physical violence (and physical needs, shelter, food, safety) basically signals 'cheap animal unit', and animals are useful tools to be managed by the machinery (of capital, patriarchy, globalism, blah blah etc whatever left or right wing flavor of 'power structure' you mentally choose to sketch it out, it's there churning, by whatever name you like)
"People who have needs are manipulated by people who have money". Shocking.
> Rich women support bail reform/ islamic immigration/ transgender craze/ porn-culture that gets poorer women raped/ scared/ fired / cheapened, and that's the new feminism
> (Pragmatic feminists/terfs/lesbians/mom groups/anti-vaccers are the new witches to be burned as the purity test for desperate psuedo-middle-class aspirational women, supplying the cultural fodder content mill, while Republican women/Christian evangelicals make popcorn...)
You uh... might want to back of the OAN/Fox
> Abortion rights are a cheap voting lever, the more passionate you are the more the machine knows how to use you, people are putting their carrots and sticks in their bios, announcing the best ways to control them with a smile lol
No machine cares enough about an individual to look through their bio.
> Women in Iran and Afghanistan not allowed to go to school, that is defacto no longer a feminist issue but something something 'why not both' meme-mumbles by nonbinary mental illness connoisseurs.
"People put the most focus on issues directly impacting themselves". What a shocking discovery you've made.
In my church, there's a frequent saying "you can't help others until you've helped yourself". You have to have yourself on a stable base before you can lift others. In addition, there's a conversation to be had about interventionism in there, it's bit off topic but clearly didn't go so well last time.
> Gays getting beat up by rural whites so they move to metropolis and work for the rainbow utopia of corporate America is exactly how the machine eats :)
I'll admit this part confuses me. You go drop all the right wing talking points up above, and then go "All the right wing people are being manipulated to make educated lgbt people go to cities and work"... and instead of the solution being to help educate more people, it's to make things worse for LGBT people everywhere?
sorry but discussions of culture trends can't be easily parsed by people who can only think so ...literally
why not just get stuck on 'what IS culture even', 'what is a trend Really??', and other forms of useless filler-think that magically only crop up when a middle class smart-and-friendly-smile type person is made uncomfortable by working class people actually 'noticing things' with their eyes and ears...
Policy-wonks aren't gonna be in the family rooms where people say things that matter to them, where populism and/or prejudice brews.
Get to know some immigrant communities, they don't understand english to watch fox or cnn. Black folks didn't make vaccine decisions based on what channel you think they should watch. Wealthy white people buying property or voting with their feet/dollars aren't going to tell all the friends they went to college with exactly why, revealed preferences and all that.
I'm a radical feminist, if american conservatives/rep have common cause then all the better
Imagine understanding capitalism, the state, warfare, or the history of any nation at all.... and still having party loyalties??? sad :)
Indeed, I now hear acquaintances on the right referring to them derisively as the 'alphabet mafia.' I wonder if maybe it's gotten meaningless when there are so many letters. Sometimes I see "+" used instead, after the first few letters. In that case, do the members of the groups that come after feel marginalized compared to the big ones that make up the first few letters?
And what about the people who self-identify as one of the groups but don't want to advertise it as their defining characteristic? What do they do? That's a hard one, I think there are quite a lot of people that are in that situation.
I suppose the holy grail will be if/when we just decide that such labels don't matter.
For me, it's nice to see the full acronym in places where it makes sense or are already LGBTQ focused.
Outside of those spaces, I generally prefer LGBTQ or LGBTQ+ for that reason.
That holy grail would be nice to reach some day.
For those looking on and saying "well, you're doing it to yourselves":
The answer is that currently we _have_ to do it because any many parts of the USA/world people who fall under that umbrella aren't able to live in a way that brings them joy.
As such, they need a banner to organize under and belong with. Once that need passes eventually so will the labels.
> Indeed, I now hear acquaintances on the right referring to them derisively as the 'alphabet mafia.' I wonder if maybe it's gotten meaningless when there are so many letters.
Despite the number of letters increasing, it's still a minority. Additionally, the rate of popularity is slowing.
I am still on the fence whether or not this is a left-handedness situation. (The number of people who are left-handed sharply increased within 1-2 generations once we stopped beating children for primarily using their left hands. But this was generally not considered a social contagion or some grooming behavior from left-handed teachers or something.) If it is, then we should see identification level out within a generation or two.
The actual traits described are not a choice, but identifying as part of the LGBTQ culture absolutely is. Not everyone is comfortable advertising their sexuality to strangers.
Do you think only the 'traditional dominant culture' has a desire for personal privacy? I tend to view privacy as more fundamental, and in my experience most people want a good amount of it. I do not feel unique when I say that regardless of who I am attracted to and/or having sexual relations with (or nobody at all), this is only my business (and my partner, if they exist).
I can name a number of people in my family who are openly gay but not politically active. If you asked them if they identified as LGBTQ+ they would probably say "sure" but they don't wave flags, have stickers, clothes, or anything else proclaiming their sexuality. They're not trying to hide it (as if that were possible, they're all married to partners of the same sex), but it isn't a fundamental part of how they interact with the world.
And I know people in my family who are quietly bisexual or gay, too. Plenty of folks would accuse them of being in the closet, as if that were bad (because they should want to advertise it, right?). It must be fear of bigotry that keeps them in the closet, right? In my experience, no, they aren't actively hiding anything, not using subterfuge to make people think they are straight, they just keep their sexuality to themselves.
I've heard a good part of younger generations think differently. I get the impression the pride thing represents more than sexuality to kids who don't share the same context as older generations. They almost treat it like a brand.
I agree 100%. I have two middle school-age kids, only one of whom has entered puberty but both have extensive thoughts on what LGBT(+) means. I do a lot of smiling and nodding, and just listening, because they really see it quite differently than any adult I have met. It's very much become an entire culture that is only loosely related to actual sexuality.
I am very interested to see how it plays out with my kids as they mature, and as their cohort matures into adulthood. It's fascinating, a little overwhelming perhaps, but not particularly threatening. They aren't at all militant, and I don't know if that's an age thing, or if the culture is evolving away from it.
Sexuality seems to not be a choice, but gender expression (which people sort of mentally lump in) can be a choice (obviously gender dysphoria is not a choice, but not all gender expression decisions are made due to the presence of absence of dysphoria).
In my social mileu (highly and elite educated, coastal, etc) that's not accurate at all. I am literally the only one of my friends who adheres even partially to a traditional organized religion and believes in traditional values. My friends don't quite know what to do with this. Some are gay themselves, none of us think twice about it.
I mean yes, physically they are a minority. Culturally, they are incredibly mainstream. There are examples everywhere.
There are tons of big movies and TV shows featuring gay people coming out.
_Every_ company changes their logo during pride month.
Look at the Apple Watch or iPhone, they come preloaded with Pride wallpapers and watch faces, they produce pride bands for the watch, which sell very well.
Disneyland has Gay Days.
Defcon has a massive attached event called Queercon that dwarfs all other subcons.
Googlers who are gay are called Gayglers.
So many famous actors and politicians are openly gay.
Biden literally just did a major interview in the Whitehouse with a TikToker who's only claim to fame was making videos about becoming trans.
I could list SO many more examples of this everywhere in our culture, and these are random things I could think of off the top of my head, but they are decent examples of culture I think.
I don't have a problem with any of this, I think it's great.
But there is absolutely no way you can claim that this is not the mainstream now.
It sounds like you consider talking about trads that way to be dangerous, like it might bring them back or something.
You're confusing the fact that the existence of LGBTQ people is being acknowledged finally in the mainstream with some sort of shift of what the 'dominant culture' is.
All of these things you listed merely acknowledge that non-cis gendered people exist, that's it. There is no massive shift in the mainstream culture. In fact, there are legions of reactionaries incredibly aggrieved by having this existence "shoved in their faces" such that they will push for laws banning discussion of sexuality in schools, call bomb threats in to hospitals, or lose their shit when gay people kiss in a movie.
The dominance of queer culture goes much farther than simply existing.
Criticize it in even the most mild way at most companies and expect to be fired from your job.
The dominance goes even further. Direct criticism isn't necessary. Try to promote straight culture and you'll also get dogpiled and fired. (Brandon Eich)
How many Christians do you know who fast, or pray the daily hours? How many who are devout enough to respond when someone takes the name of the Lord in vain? As a cultural stream "Trads" are definitely distinct from Conservative Protestantism or the evangelical movement.
Before making such an effort in thought were you even aware of such a subculture?
I get why you might not want to participate in the those things but the point that Trads as a counterculture phenomenon are new and distinct from the previous mainline Protestant or evangelical Christian cultural movements.
That is an interesting point. What do you do when your minority position goes mainstream? When so much of your identity is based on assumed oppression, what does it look like when that oppression vanishes? Do you oppress those who oppressed you in the past in retaliation?
That just drives home the point that we need clear, universally accepted terminology for when we are referring to mental identity versus physical attributes. I feel like a large part of the disagreement on policies towards transgender people today are manifestations of this ambiguity. Other languages do a better job than English, for certain.
I would argue LGBTQ stuff is being shoved into the mainstream because trying to fit in didn't work for them. If we just granted gay people gay marriage when they asked politely for it then they wouldn't have needed to build such an in-your-face political movement. We can see this in early documents during the gay equality movement and the AIDS crisis. There were gay people trying to say "we're just like you, but gay, please help us, we're dying", and nothing got done about the mass death and suffering until they started protesting en-masse and throwing the ashes of their community members on white house grounds.
Obviously, if an entire community needed to be loud to survive, that community is going to retain its loudness into the next generation. The "original sin" as it were was ignoring their suffering in the first place.
That's a little disingenuous. A lot of people are pushing for trans rights that goes well beyond being recognized as an equal member of society. There are 100% legitimate discussions to be had which get shouted down with accusations of bigotry.
An easy example is insisting that trans people be allowed to play in sports based only on their identified gender. We have separation between mens' and women's teams because in many cases men have a biological advantage that would mean women did not ever win.
Insisting that an MTF woman be permitted to compete on equal footing somehow feels like offering equality to the trans person, but it does so at the expense of everyone else she competes against.
A perfect example is the MMF fighter who as a man was decidedly mediocre, but absolutely dominated when fighting as a woman. That is grossly unfair to the women she was competing against.
Trans supporters are fond of loudly, but falsely proclaiming anybody that holds this position is some kind of bigot. Except that biology is real and it is distinct from gender identification. Conflating them isn't helpful.
I disagree that "trads" are counter-culture, just looking at the numbers that is pretty ridiculous. But you could consider the more extreme groups counter culture, like alt-right, q-anon, incels, 8-chan or wherever they are now. They are the worst of course, but I think they fit the description.
It's always been "radical" to have "radically traditional values". Just look at the Amish or Orthodox Jews. It's just that the definition of "radically traditional" shifts in our own lifetimes, making cultural ideas that were normal when we were teenagers seem appalling 30 years later, and continued adherence to those views becomes radical.
I agree with you and I'm definitely not a trad person.
Specifically I think the counter-cultural part in terms of the rise of like...young trad Catholics/religious people is the idea of not partaking in the world. Our current attention economy spends a lot of time trying to get people (including adolescents) to spend their time watching/consuming/interacting, be constantly available, etc. The idea that you don't have to participate is the counter-cultural part.
Do these Trads have long standing institutions in their local communities for support of their culture? Why yes, they are called Churches, which don't have to operate underground in the USA like they do in China (expect when they are strange polygamy cults that often skew towards multiple underage wives), and they receive special state recognized privilege such as tax exemptions, within a society and government unabashedly based on 'judeo-christian' values. So, in line with the government under which they live, supported by longstanding cultural institutions well established in the community. Super counter culture.
But it's not more a problem than the LSD-heavy semi hoboes partying in woodstock in the 70s: both interrogate us on how far we should go in our ways, propose ridiculously extreme alternatives we have to compromise with.
Letting the trads speak a bit more might shock us just as much as the past minorities shocked our forefathers, but look where are: we evolved have't we ? Maybe we can ditch some dictat we imposed on ourselves in our chase for ever deeper reactionary counter-traditionalism.
I don’t think trads are counter culture because they are the vast, vast majority outside of major cities anyways. It’s about as normative as you can get.
IDK. Maybe “radically” is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence, but I live in the upper Midwest and what you’re describing is the dominant culture.
I think you're onto something, but you're missing a really key point of what makes a counterculture.
Consider the 'culture'. Whose side is the balance of power really behind? There are massive influences and money behind traditional christian and conservative values - they have a practical stranglehold on the politics of roughly half of America (by landmass). Is it really 'counter' the culture to embody those values in areas where they are the norm?
I think we don't have 'a' counterculture because we don't have 'a' culture, a unified one, in this country. Trad is as counterculture in California as radical queer/left ideology is in Alabama, and it gets muddier when you look at individual pockets of the opposite in rural areas or cities respectively.
If anything, this cultural split over core values would make anything else - 'radical centrism' for instance - a counterculture in and of itself; except, that tends to be the tack taken by a lot of media (NPR, Meet the Press, etc.). Can that be counterculture?
Alternatively, consider outside of mainstream politics. Co-op organizations, hacker/DIY circles, and protest movements are all certainly 'counter' the norm, but do they all have their own 'culture?' At best they have shared memes, no real ideological unity or even goddang clothing preferences.
“Trads”. Young people with super traditional values doing exactly the opposite of most of what you just listed.
No one would seriously suggest the trendiest most mainstream supported or glorified lifestyles (van life, queerness, gig work) are counter culture…that IS the culture; there’s very little cultural risk in living those glorified identities.
But say you’re an 18 year old with radically traditional values…that’s counter cultural now.
Not supporting either direction. Just observing.