Una Mullally: Let’s not get sucked into fighting culture wars over snowmen

“You can’t say woman any more.” I was in a taxi the other day when the driver dropped this gem.

“Sorry, what?”

“Isn’t it a crazy world we’re in? You can’t say woman anymore because it has the word ‘man’ in it. I heard that the other day.”

“Where did you hear that?”

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“On Brendan O’Connor’s programme.”

Just as the celebrity news cycle now orients around what famous people have said on social media, from faux pas and spats with other celebrities on Twitter to revealing statements in Instagram captions, the news-ish and current affairs-y cycle manufactures phoney “culture wars” and controversies.

We have to stop giving undue space to the cyclical nature of recycled, meaningless, made-up controversies

Why does this happen? Probably because there are seductive elements to drumming up this negative energy. These controversies – the gender of snowmen, the word "faggot" in Fairytale of New York, Peta gagging for attention by offering "bringing home the bagels" as an alternative to "bacon" – become avatars for "political correctness", are purposefully set up. They are constructed as ridiculous, in order to be derided and interpreted as emblematic of the supposed intolerance of liberals and the fun-spoiling "PC brigade".

We have to stop giving undue space to the cyclical nature of recycled, meaningless, made-up controversies – you can’t say “Happy Christmas” any more for fear of offending someone! You can’t hold the door open for women any more! They are largely nonsensical and detract and distract from the real battles we should be fighting. Why do these fake controversies so easily monopolise a section of traditional media (particularly the churnalism of hot-take comment pieces) and social-media chatter? Because media is lazy, and social media is weaponised laziness.

Fake controversies

The idea of “progress” to some is interventionist. It warns them that things are being taken away from them. It says they can’t act how they used to. That civil rights are claiming territory within the patriarchy. That things – such as equality – have gone “too far”. The manufacturing of fake controversies feeds into this narrative, serving as (falsified) evidence that people who want the same rights and opportunities as everyone else are frivolous, pedantic and annoying, and therefore their fundamental demands in society should also be undermined or brushed off.

I enjoyed the pithy tweet the musician Scroobius Pip made on the matter: “No Feminists or LGBT campaigners care about the gender of snowmen or Santa. This is nonsense drummed up purely to demean and demonise positive causes and to trivialise the things they DO care about. Don’t let the media (social or otherwise) play you like a f***ing idiot.”

They are so seductive because they allow those dominant in society to retreat to a place of comfortable avoidance

Earlier this year, a Russian video went viral purporting to show a “feminist activist” throwing bleach on the crotches of men who were “manspreading” on trains. “Manspreading” (men taking up multiple seats and space on public transport by spreading their legs wide where they’re sitting) is irritating. It has become a touchstone for women as a physical manifestation of men literally taking up too much space. Some people reacted to the video gleefully, delighting at such a confrontational response. Many others were appalled by the action. It was a culture war made flesh. The problem is, it turned out to be staged.

Of course, throwing bleach on people’s crotches is a completely excessive response to a bloke spreading his legs on a subway. But this was faked in order to provoke a backlash against feminist “activism”.

Manufactured war

Therein lies the crux of the manufactured culture wars: they are so seductive because they allow those dominant in society to retreat to a place of comfortable avoidance. They re-enforce the fallacy that the oppressed are more extreme and out of line than the oppressor. They offer the perfect opportunity to bat away and ridicule those who are oppressed, and therefore throw the baby out with the bathwater. The fundamental issues within which the manufactured controversy resides – misogyny, homophobia, transphobia and so on – can now also be ignored. And crucially, many are just made up. The more these phoney culture wars are manufactured, the more people feel liberated from interacting with the fundamental issues.

This is compounded by the perceived scolding nature of online wokeness, where anyone who missteps is ridiculed or insulted instead of taught and helped to learn (which, yes, is also tedious). Many take an overblown interpretation of such discourse as a reason to cop out. Why engage when you’ll just get shouted at for saying something out of line? These people fighting intolerance are so intolerant!

It's far easier for talk radio to do an item on "people" (whoever they are) wanting "faggot" in Fairytale of New York bleeped on the radio, than actually talk about homophobia. It is far more fun to talk about how feminism has gone "too far" – like the ridiculous claim that you can't say the word "woman" – than examine the ongoing devastation the epidemic of sexual and physical violence against women causes in every society. It's much more gas to trivialise trans rights by talking about the gender of snowmen than address the actual discrimination faced by trans people.

For those who secretly – and sometimes not so secretly at all – resist equality and representation in society, manufactured controversies are a blessing. Let’s cop on, and cut them out, and pick the real fights.