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Can you give a few examples of what you consider a good action movie vs gore filled? People have varying tolerances and definitions. Personally, I enjoy a lot of violent martial arts films because they usually resonate with justice & will-to-power narratives. Many people, myself included, like to see villains subjected to brutality because we have experiences of being aggressed against without the aggressor suffering any obvious consequences in the near to medium term following the event. My hypothesis for those who like slasher films (which I avoid), often have the will-to-power identification with the mass murderer, because their empathy has been shredded to a degree which makes it difficult for them to maintain a sense of justice, or they need an outlet for their rage, but expressing it against the just target is too dangerous or painful for them. Does that make sense? Also, what is it that you like about your average summer blockbuster?

What parameters are you looking for (entertainment, self-help, education, ect)?

What kind of response are you looking for? Since you aren't exhibiting curiosity / asking questions in your posts directed towards me, it's hard to tell. I'm feeling pretty frustrated by your last two posts. After the first one, when it was demonstrated that one of your claims was incorrect, you did not acknowledge that point. You also ignored the question I posed regarding your phrase 'so-called sexual aggression'. Your last post contains elements of moral judgement, without providing clarification or warrants. I didn't feel the need to demonstrate a framework that we have examples of in literally every call-in show. Thousands of people have written or called into the FDR community saying the show has changed their thinking, and they subsequently changed their problematic actions. Whether the issue is spanking, toxic dispute resolution, or abusive romantic / sexual relationships, people have reduced the amount of aggression in the world through this mechanism. New inputs tend to lead to new outputs. Are those examples sufficient to demonstrate "that this actually works", or were you looking for something else? About other critical narratives; if someone is trafficking in sweeping generalizations to the point of being racist, then that is unjust and inaccurate (or bad, if you prefer more general moral identifications). This position is easily induced if you processed my point that Burnett was unjust and inaccurate due to his sweeping generalizations. I'm not sure why neglecting to point that out specifically, rather than allowing a reader to make a simple induction is 'worse' than a decision not to explicate a phenomenon that we have an abundance of empirical evidence for. However, I'm going to induce that you think that it is some kind of 'bad'. I don't accept that premise, but using your own standard, how would you compare that to your neglect at offering your moral opinion of rape or sexual aggression? If your response is somewhere along the lines of, "normal people, or at least those involved in a philosophical community centered on logic and non-aggression, can be assumed to be against things like rape, racism, aggression, ect." then I'd appreciate a retraction of your previous moral labeling. Lastly, your first post stated that you'd demonstrate that rape culture exists and targets men (exclusively, or just more than it does women?). If you had a chance to develop those points, I'd be interested to read them.

As a long-time debater, I'm aware that most people don't care about competitive debate. If you're looking to get broader engagement on your questions, which can spark some interesting conversation, I'd recommend that you truncate your OP. The section explaining policy debate can be largely cut without loosing much explanatory power. If you start with the standards of fairness and education, you'd capture the important internal standards for framework setting in a round, while having a significantly shorter post. I was on the edge of asking for a tl;dr before I even started reading. To your questions: 1 - competitive debate was valuable for me because it provided a framework to hone my critical thinking & research skills faster than any previous educational experience. Learning to get to the point within a short time-frame, and delivering a clear speech are skills that have spillover applications to any profession you will engage in later down the road. Retaining debate structure is valuable because it fosters those skills for most people who engage in the activity. I don't think that allowing the alternate framework is bad, I wouldn't pick up a team that ran that case (unless their opponents became so flummoxed that they allowed the alternates to steer the entire conversation). The aff's job is to run with the motion. Neg might have more grounds for running the alt case, but they can integrate that into the traditional speech structure. 2 - i don't think debate is any more discriminatory than any other school activity that can correlate success with funding. All other things being equal, wealthier teams will tend to do better, whether sports or debate. There are racial / social correlates to wealth, which have been established and maintained through state power, and insofar as policy debates focus on government action, the perpetuated narratives will trend towards reinforcing the interests of policy makers. That would be true whether a policy circuit was in Canada, Morocco, or Malaysia. As such, I think it might be more classist than racist. Despite that, learning to develop critical thinking skills is valuable, even if it takes place in a biased context. My biggest problem with policy is that the debaters' primary goal seems to be destroying the sound barrier with their mouths. The top level debaters in the American high school national circuit win simply because they drop the fewest amount of 'cards' (pieces of evidence). When policy debate becomes a comparison of the length of footnotes, actual discussions about debate paradigms may be a welcome change, even if the current iteration that you illustrated is cumbersome. Exempting the alternative race discussion, what do you think of the state of policy debate?

Not sure if you missed it, but I did say "After acknowledging that the vast majority of people who are trying to express a grievance aren't philosophically trained, hopefully we can try to elevate the conversation and address each others' concerns." I include self-awareness as a basic component of philosophical training. I don't see these statements as mutually exclusive. Those who lack self-awareness can help alleviate the problem of sexual aggression by working to become aware, and taking further steps to identify and halt problematic behaviors that they engage in. Can you clarify / provide examples of what you mean by "so-called sexual aggression'?

Thanks for the correction. I meant 3.5 billion men. Edited. Your point about narratives regarding black men is interesting for a number of reasons. As I mentioned before, these narratives advising black men to avoid appearing 'thuggish' actually do exist. Some people criticize these narratives for being racist, which they often are / can be, depending on how sweeping the generalizations in any given presentation are. The author of the rape culture article, Zaron Burnett, offered the most sweeping generalization possible on this topic. "Man = part of rape culture" is both inaccurate and unjust. There are people who discuss the issue of sexual aggression with better arguments / presentations (I'd be interested to hear what you think of the vlog brothers video I linked in an earlier post). After acknowledging that the vast majority of people who are trying to express a grievance aren't philosophically trained, hopefully we can try to elevate the conversation and address each others' concerns. Sexual aggression is a problem that everyone can help alleviate. The first steps would include awareness of our own views on sexual relationships, and taking responsibility for our own behaviors. For all of his clumsiness and generalizations, Burnett does repeatedly call for self awareness, which I think is both a reasonable request and an admirable appeal. The bulk of his recommendations regarding other people fall down to confronting them on their aggression. When you say that you want to protect people you care about, and are telling people off for inappropriate behavior, you are operating on the same activism principle that the author is recommending, i.e. people should intervene when they observe unjust or harmful behavior. Holding everyone to standards of non-aggression is consistent with UPB, whether or not you want to take on the additional steps of alleviating other people's fears. I'm curious about your statement "when I care... I must protect". When you use language tied to obligation (must), where does this sense of obligation come from, and how does it differ from your sense of obligation to strangers? Regarding your last points - people can still experience sexual aggression after seeking therapy and acquiring weapons. Writing off aggressors as being 'messed up in the head', which they are, doesn't do a lot to change their behavior, whether the source of being 'messed up' is cultural or psycho-neurological. Prevention being more effective than cure, I instead prefer to engage in discussion that will hopefully raise people's self awareness, which then will have network effects that eventually reduce the acceptance and prevalence of aggression within the culture.

I'd appreciate some clarification. Not sure what you mean by 'concern trolling'. With respect to 'appeals to complexity' (the subject is so complicated that not all answers are known, therefore, my guess is just as good as any) - I'm not sure where I engaged in that fallacy. With respect to 'appeals to emotion' - I'm assuming you are referring to the last paragraph I wrote regarding tjt's quote. When I'm giving an account of the author's normative claim, that men ought to do 'x' because women might feel 'y', and men are in a position to alleviate 'y'. If that's the point of contention, the charge of fallacious argument should be issued at the author of the article. Additionally, even if a particular normative claim doesn't rise to the level of UPB, I think it'd be interesting to discuss the value of trying to alleviate someone else's discomfort, if you can do so at relatively low cost to yourself. I'm not sure that hailing random strangers in the street is the best way to apply that principle. In a different case, if you had a surplus of water, and could treat someone for dehydration, you are not morally obligated to give him or her aid (unless you caused the dehydration), but it would still be a nice thing to do. You are right to indicate that we can't a priori know how someone feels. However, if we do become aware of someone's negative emotional state (whether the othe person volunteered that information or responded when asked), then we are in a position to act on it. One of the basic steps to combatting aggression (sexual or otherwise) is to maintain the basic courtesy of curiosity. Sometimes that will lead to great conversations, other times, people will respond aggressively as "A Feminist" did in the OP. Those incidents are unfortunate, but hopefully we can raise the conversational bar. I hope that addressed some of your concerns, and I look forward to your feedback.

Define "mass". It doesn't take a whole lot of people to have an impact on cultural trends. FDR, for example, started with one person who was able to influence thousands of people. Behavior has network effects that lead to propogation of thought patterns and behaviors. .01% of 3.5 billion men in the world (or 150+ million men in the US) is still a huge number, which would definitely be enough to be defined as a culture / sub-culture, even if we are only counting rapists (using your estimate). However, people who discuss rape culture repeatedly state that people who are not rapists perpetuate sexually aggressive or violent behaviors. Obviously, the problem is bigger than rapists congregating in an imaginary city. Everyone with sexual power has the potential to propogate sexually aggressive behavior. This applies to females as well; the article in the OP targeted men, because many, if not most men, are ignorant of some of the ways in which their behaviors are percieved as sexually aggressive. It's nice that you don't think about getting raped on a regular basis. Many people are not as lucky. To call someone an idiot or a moron for trying to bring attention to the struggle that many people face regarding sexual aggression is a logical fallicy (ad hom), and doesn't do anything to improve the conversation. As for the point regarding rape via acquaintances, this was explicitly dealt with in the article, which you would have discovered had you been able to read the entire piece. The author's point was that since rape is initiated so frequently by accquaintances, many people might have an elevated fear of sexual violence from strangers. He didn't try to say that this was a rational fear, or explain its statistical legitimacy. Rather, he as pointing out that it was a fear that existed, and people in a position of power (in this case, the [male] reader) should take steps to allieviate this fear when possible. Please don't lable statments as propaganda if you aren't going to make the effort to understand the context in which an anecdote or a normative claim is issued. Actually, criticism of how black men present themselves have been ubuquitous since well before Booker T. Washington's time. Google searches of 'crime culture' and 'thug culture' each return millions of hits. Not all of those are directed at all black men, but the collection of such writings is quite large.

James, I'd like to point out that you've made a false accusation / issued an unjust lable, if the 'people' you are refering to include 'A Feminist'. 'A Feminist' did not call the OP a rapist. She did not say that she approved of Chris being called a rapist (at least within the screenshot). To the contrary, she explicitly stated that, "[men] are a part of rape culture because they have been perpetuating it forever. (Which, Chris, doesn't mean that they promote actual rape... The article doesn't "essentially" state that at all.)" There is a lot of general confusion surrounding the parameters of the term 'rape culture'. Here is a nice, gender-neutral video that outlines rape culture, without using the emotionally charged label. I think a decent definition of the phrase encompasses "norms in society that increase the prevalence of sexual violence & agression".

Not the first thing I would have thought of, since the desses and the coder would be different symbols referring to personality sets, but your explanation makes sense. In any case, I can't think of too many bad reasons to watch another Sterling video. Thanks for sharing.

Huge fan of Lindsey Sterling. This video is my personal favorite. What about the video reminds you of IFS? This reminded me more of the Matrix or Sims than IFS, since she is responding to the coder's frameworks, rather than a competing set of internal desires.

What emotions came up when you ran into that unexpected agreement? I imagine it could either be disconcerting or exciting. Have you had any other follow up conversations with her since your last post?

Nope. Have you?

Whenever I've tried to reintroduce sensitive topics of conversation, I start by asking how they felt about the last talk. If she responds with more curiosity about her religion, you can talk about the inconsistencies that she has found in Christianity. If she talks about social tensions, then you'll have a better idea of the kind of pressure she faces from her community.