War over being nice

I think that there is something of a false binary set up here. Toward the end, the author presents the idea that we should balance culture A and culture B as though this was some totally original idea. In reality almost no spaces hold norms at either extreme. They exist on a spectrum between these two ideals.

One point missed in the initial setup is that the answer to

Bob says something to James. James is upset and goes to have a cry about it. Who is responsible for James being upset? Is it Bob, for being mean? Or is it James, because he obviously has emotional development to do? If there's 100 points of responsibility, how would you apportion it out?

is: It depends.

The author got that it depends on the identities of those involved but it also depends on the space you are in and exactly what you're upset about.

Context matters. If I'm at work. I expect things to lean toward culture A. We are there to get a job done and personal drama isn't going to help toward that goal. If I'm with my friends. I'm going to expect something more toward culture B. The important thing there is that we all enjoy spending time together.

Content matters. If person A openly insults Person B then, in almost all contexts, Person A is totally responsible for the reaction. If Person A asks "where are you from?" (or commits some other trivial microaggression) and Person B flies off the handle then in most contexts, that's Person B's problem.

This could be my Culture A bias showing but I don't think that the Culture B described in the blog post is an accurate representation of the culture we see waging war on Culture A.

In culture B, everyone is responsible for the feelings of others. At social gatherings everyone should feel safe and comfortable.

In practice what we see in a division of society into people who are responsible for the feelings of others and people whose feelings other are responsible for.

Sure, everyone needs to tiptoe around the feelings of those recognized vulnerable identities but if you're not classified as vulnerable (for example, if you're a white man) then you will be openly insulted and if that upsets you that's your problem.

Respect in culture B flows to you from the way you make people in the group feel.

Respect in the culture we are actually seeing comes from taking offense. It's not making people feel good which is promoted, it's performatively feeling bad.

Do these social strategies feel gendered to you? They do to me - if I play the association game, culture A feels masculine. Its "bro culture". Its "guys being guys". And culture B feels feminine.

While I certainly recognise the gender stereotypes in the two Cultures, it struck me more as the difference between ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder) and something like BPD (Borderline Personality Disorder) or some other Cluster-B personality disorder.

Culture B is virtually impossible for someone with ASD to navigate. They are inevitably going to say the wrong thing and become a pariah. Culture A offers simple explicit rules, something that helps people with ASD.

Meanwhile, someone with BPD is going to find themesleves struggling in a Culture A environment where their feelings aren't validated.

The biggest problem with case B is that it has a hard upper limit before the social system reaches criticality.

Namely, any variation on "I'm uncomfortable with being told that I made someone uncomfortable".

This is why every culture, no matter how far it leans towards communal harmony, has acceptable targets and/or acceptable topic. The biggest one is probably that parents are nearly universally "allowed" to make their children uncomfortable, and law enforcement is allowed to make their victims uncomfortable. So we can't really go all the way down path B.

In practice, nobody goes 100% A either. There are some lines that are socially unacceptable to cross.

Which gets us to the "culture war" point. I think (as u/ParanoidAgnostic notes) it's not really an A vs B thing in overall format. It's a question of which lines exist in a given context. In practice, it's not actually "All interactions should be more considerate" -- it's "This set of interactions I dislike should be banned"

At social gatherings everyone should feel safe and comfortable.

Awful, AWFUL idea. Let me give you a quote from one of my old neighbors that's oddly relevant here.

"I don't like black people, I'm just not comfortable around them. They make me feel unsafe."

Making people feel safe against unreasonable feelings of unsafety is terrible, and will lead to discrimination.

Also, culture B has a major problem. Once one starts fearing that expressing their discomfort might discomfort others, it ceases being a culture that avoids discomforting others, because a major component is hiding that discomfort.

A very interesting read. Thanks. TL;DR – In culture "A", everyone is responsible for their own feelings, and respect comes from how you contribute to the shared values of the group; in culture "B", everyone is responsible for the feelings of others, and respect comes from the way you make people in the group feel; culture A feels masculine, and culture B feels feminine; there's currently a war against culture A, in general and in the workplace, but this is misguided, since cultural relativism and work outcomes.

Generally sympathetic to the author's claims, and generally prefer culture A to culture B, but following claims deserve some comment:

[According to some people] communities need to be inclusive and welcoming. Not doing so is immoral, sexist and exclusionary.

While obliged to treat you with respect, people in general are not obliged to be your friend and to include you into their community. (This sub is a good example.) This is exclusionary (obviously), and even unfriendly, but it is not immoral, or sexist (We can't hang-out with the boys? The girls?).

Its true that culture B participants [ie who are women more than men] are disadvantaged professionally [eg, by asking for raises less frequently]. ... But it seems like at a societal level we're still figuring out how to answer the question of what work culture should look like given mixed gender participants.

The $64,000 question. But even if people in general aren't obliged to be friendly to others, we might think that employers are to some extent. Thus, they are obliged to give some positive weight to the welfare of others (employees, and prospective employees), and to do so in a non-discriminatory manner. (People need work to live, but they don't need to be on reddit.)

That's why employers are obliged to provide sick leave and annual leave, and to provide a safe environment for people to work in. These things accommodate people's physical and psychological health, but a person's equal belonging to their group is also an important aspect of their welfare (so no bro-culture at work), as is their relationships and commitments to others (so accommodations for parents, which will of course favor women over men, given that they do more child-care). It seems to me that gender equality may well require that aspects of A culture be toned down, but only so far, IF (as suggested by the author) A-values contribute more than B-values to workplace productivity.

Linus Torvalds. He's the epitome of Culture A. He's finally acknowledged that yelling at people over email is a bad idea.

He sounds like a dick. Later on in the piece, the author describes an A-culture person as displaying "openness, emotional honesty, directness, taking responsibility for one's emotions and self sovereignty". You can be all these things while still being respectful of others, so Torvalds is not the epitome (ie, "perfect example of") culture A, and such behaviour cannot be justified, either morally or in terms of productivity.

In a work context [in culture B], once someone has been hired they are welcome and included socially no matter how good or bad their work is.

This is sure to be an overstatement – "no matter how bad"? The more cautious way of putting the point is that individuals and workplaces are mixes of A and B, some more A and others more B, and that in those workplaces that give a higher priority to B-values, there will be more tolerance for poor work, and ways of dealing with it will be more considerate than that might be in an A-cultured workplace. Perhaps this approach is detrimental to productivity, perhaps not.

MOD NOTE: u/phySi0, I'm locking this post until you edit it. Your title doesn't make it clear what you'd like us to debate and your link does not work. Please replace the broken link with a working link and at at least two sentences of commentary about what you'd like the group to debate. Thanks!

This is an interesting post I read on someone's blog about who is responsible for people's emotional reactions, the triggered person or the person who said the words that triggered the other?

I wish the author gave their answer for the "100 points of responsibility" split. I for one think Bob has been acting entirely too insensitive towards James and I've been feeling less friendly towards him as a result.

It makes a case that both cultures have their strengths, and we need to allow space for the competing culture to exist instead of cancelling it where it shows up.

To be clear it presents Culture A as being evidently desireable, and Culture B as having some benefits (and many, many pitfalls). I wouldn't surmise that the article is arguing "both have their strengths" when so much time is dedicated to exploring the vices of Culture B while making the case that Culture A is generally preferred.

Where do you agree or disagree with the analysis of this article? Why or why not? How do you think this analysis or a similar type of analysis can be applied to other gender war battles?

Why doesn't Culture A, the superior culture, simply eat Culture B? /s

The authors premise, B is supposedly dominant right now, and needs to make room for A, is a bit off. The actual discussion we're having is women entering spaces that are supposedly operating under the more productive Culture A, and we're asking for a bit more of Culture B.

The author actually acknowledges this point when they describe the supposed "logic" of why culture A is labelled sexist

Women don't feel comfortable in culture A Therefore culture A is unwelcome to women, and thus sexist Any community operating under culture A is sexist and male dominated

This discussion isn't about whether B will make room for A. It's about if we're willing to admit that A isn't all it's cracked up to be, and a little bit of B will be a good thing.

Also Culture A is only problematic if the Bobs in the community routinely make the James's of the community feel unwelcome and the behavior is excused because "James takes things too personally, no one else takes it seriously because we're Culture A. James just needs to adjust to how things are". Culture A isn't inherently sexist, but there's a problem if it's used to ignore valid criticism. Take a look at this excellent post and the responses it got to see an example of this conversation.

Unlocked!