Is there anything more singularly obnoxious than a Reddit thread of smug shots at Elon Musk? According to them, apparently he doesn't know electricity and servers cost money. And firing most of the worthless staff at Twitter was the worst self-inflicted wound anybody could have ever made!
You ask why this causes bafflement, but do you really think these idiots know something he doesn't? That they have a better grasp of tech and its funding than the man who has a history with payment processors, cybercars, rockets, and now social media - and Elon is just bumblefucking his way to success? I'll grant that he is human and more error-prone than his godly 4d troll image would have some believe. But give any one of his businesses to a chump in that thread (or a group of them) and watch it go belly-up or taken away from them under their noses.
Maybe Musks's single qualification over these people is that he doesn't post on Reddit. A lot of Musk criticism clearly comes from a type who thinks they could do the same job he does even better if only the world had been more fair and gave them the opportunity to do so. It's laughable and contemptible in equal measure.
DTulpa
10mo ago
Regarding trans children at least, I don't know how many parents take their cues on child-rearing from online porn. I think there's a general heuristic that the internet is a crazy place, and whatever hot new fad or kink that is expressed from online spaces is just "that weird meme crap my kid ocassionally references that I don't understand or feel like understanding, because the 'net is crazy". It's hard to separate it from "The Grimace Millshake Challenge" or whatever bizarre FOMO meme is being reported on, and you can see your Mom's face screw up in judgmental confusion as you attempt to explain it.
If this is just crazy internet shit, you can hold onto the hope (somewhat reliably) that the fad will pass and all you need to do is hold down the fort as the storm moves past you. Codifying it into education sanewashes and perpetuates the phenomenon, because you can't so easily dismiss an army of smart-sounding educators who supposedly knows what's best for your child and are 'experts' on teaching kids - since you're just some dummy that has the humility to understand some things are beyond your understanding and intellect, so might as well to defer to your betters even if it makes you uncomfortable
I think many people are wising up to the idea that this trusted dynamic has been utterly abused. And resisiting the trans push into education is 'holding down the fort'.
I sympathize with your vexation here. I'm not sure how productive these discussions can be if we have to regularly pause for interjections of "you haven't assigned enough (or any) blame to my outgroup". I think he could have made a better post than that.
At the same time, I also think we would be remiss to completely talk around a very obvious link between female promiscuity and popular progressive feminist messaging. A certain subset of men may benefit the most from modern dating/hook-up college, but this culture has never been broadly or enthusiastically condoned by men, at least out loud. A man may be happy that prostitutes exist if only to satisfy his base urges, but he's not exactly proud of it. And since humans aren't consistent, principled thinkers - while he may be happy that some women sleep around if only for the opportunity for him to get laid, he's probably not thrilled to find out his wife/girlfriend had dozens of partners prior to the current relationship. "X in the streets, Y in the sheets" kinda sums up the attempted propriety.
By contrast, it is feminism that has railed against "slut-shaming", argued that women who sleep around are unfairly judged compared to Chads, whitewashed sexual exhibitionism as personal exploration, and so much more since at least I was in Jr High. I'm not even interested in blaming anybody for our current state of affairs - just an admission that there is an obvious (if not clear) relationship between the dashed expectations of young women and this ubiquitous ideological memeplex. I don't think you can assign more culpability to men for herding women towards the Sex Party - gently pushing against their backsides and reassuing them to not worry, this will all be so fun - versus an industry of Grl Power media that is assumedly produced mostly by women.
As such, I am not interested in curbing or punishing legions of cheating/insistent men that potentially threaten the structural integrity of our society. Not until we dial the lens out far enough to indict a few other groups. Zero interest in "getting men to play by the rules again" when both sexes have defected from them (with women running the full sprint, one could argue), and when the fairer one routinely acts like it never has any agency in these affairs whatsoever - which is unacceptable when you've spent decades trumpeting how you know what you want, you are self-empowered, you don't need anybody to hold your hand or 'mansplain' things to you, and being chaste is just an insecure demand from the patriarchy.
Short of actual rape, there's a lot I'd give amnesty to until this conversation space starts looking halfway reasonable. But I'm not optimistic, and it is for that reason I reluctantly agree that this wound may not heal. All the "stitching up" has to happen on the men's side, and women act like they're just oblivious passengers that never saw the dozen road signs warning "POTENTIAL LANDSLIDES AHEAD".
And my point is that assuming children's gender identities or sexual orientations are being shaped by exposure to online porn, then we are from and away from 'born this way', and parents may feel they have a duty to restrict and deny access to such material, its relatives, and all their associated theorycrafting if they they deem it ultimately harmful for their offspring - without having to deal with a decentralized mass of sneering 'betters' who repeatedly/fraudulently cite The Science as being on their side, and who will utilize any mass of power they've accrued to culturally coerce you into behaving differently, up to calling CPS (and why believe it would stop there, left undeterred?).
Parents are often reliant on the integrity and validity of our institutions so they know what to expect, preempt, encourage, or ameliorate when it comes to the acculturation of their children. Instinct can probably get you far, but in a complex society with layers of social/economic/political abstractions, parents are looking for a consensus guard rail that reinforces their beliefs, gently reminding them "Yes, encourage that!" and "No, do what you can to curb that!". Validating the trans phenomenon as 'just some other way of being' after saying something that layman's ears might interpret as "The porn is mind controlling your kid and nobody should be concerned because #Pride" is seriously messing with the credibility of that rail, and the more it is emedded and officiated, the more concerned parents will be left out to dry, because...
"...Holy shit, I can't believe you disagree with the doctors and the teachers and about 75% of politicians (see, this is a totally non-partisan thing!) about the utility of teaching gender fluidity in Kindergarten! You still think it's a memetic contagion run amok? That is soooo 2023. Jordan Peterson is calling, and he wants you to clean your room! Haha."
I'm not sure if the above counts as uncharitable or inflammatory. But I was compelled to write it out and illustrate my point because these are very real conversations I've had too many times to count. I'm not too keen on the consequences of that dismissive disregard getting heavier.
DTulpa
6mo ago
I definitely am discussing Reddit in general. The hot takes and easy karma shown in that thread appear any time Elon or any minimally right-coded figure pops up as a topic nearly anywhere on the site. You'll be browsing a sub for a video game or show you like and then one day there's a "DAE see similarities between Musk and the Dark Lord?" post sitting up top with 6 gold and thrice the upvotes relative to anything else.
Few are immune to smug convictions. But there is something stupefying about the particular thing they are convinced of. I'd frankly find it more tolerable if they accused him of being a grifter, a conman, a snake, or even evil. But dumb and incompetent? It's this reflexive tic among leftitsts where surely your opponents are just straight-up retarded; as opposed to you, brilliant cat man shooting for the 6 figures with your journalism and poli-sci courses (assuming they're even taking those and not just posing). And it's not just Reddit. I dont think a week goes by where I don't get fed an article about how Musk is doing something crazy or inscrutable. Just this morning I was reading about his digs at Wikipedia, and the article hintingly framed this as mental instability.
This started to feel tryhard with Trump, and it's doubly so with Musk.
Something that increasingly sticks in my craw is modern socprogs appealing to the "invisible hand of the market" whenever something like this happens - that is, when they're not accusing free markets of being corrupt, predatory, immoral, unsustainable, and demand more "ethical" dictats to be handed down from authorities.
If the accusations against Brand are made public, and his audience decides to give him 0 dollars the next morning, that is the invisible hand at work.
If a group of journalists, activists, and politicians bypass audience response and go straight to spooking management to cut him off, that is preempting feedback from the market. You are not letting the hand do its thing; you are calling God and demanding he intervene precisely because your faith in letting the market decide doesn't exist.
As if the decisions and personal preferences of Youtube, Rumble, Amazon, Steam constitute 'the market', and all the rabble like you and I don't count. As if those people (their CEOs or their beuraucratic layers that weigh in on these controversies) are what we are referring to when 'let the market decide' is invoked.
"Jeff Bezos doesnt like Confederate flags because racism, and now he has banned their merchandising on his storefront! See, you free-market right-wing capitalists? The market decided! You have literally nothing to complain about unless you're a hypocrite. Consumers are rejecting your racism."
That's been a decade-long refrain by now, and it has not gotten less idiotic or obfuscatory (by intention, I've come to believe). I'd wager that all these attempts to cut people off from their sources of income, to appeal directly to a storefront's management to have something taken off the shelf, to algorithmically suppress 'bad content' and 'bad people', are actually driven by fear. The fear that if you went hands-off and let the chips lie where they fell, progressives would have to face the truth that their shit is not as popular as they think it is, and oh gawd these peddlers of hate, sexism, racism, PUA-ism, COVID misinformation, election denialism might have more appeal than us! Or at least enough to make us sweat.
That must be psychically turbulent to experience, so best take steps to avoid that scenario. Just cut off some heads and say "Consumers were begging me to do it! Nothing unnatural occurred at all. Im just following the will of the people". And it really explains everything between the night of Trump's 2016 win and what we see today.
DTulpa
10mo ago
The investigations that ultimately ended up clearing Trump were treated as de facto proof of guilt by the media, Dem politicians, members of their investigative committees, and various NatSec officials in positions of seniority. Even with the Mueller report, the common refrain in its aftermath was "Trump may not have been proven guilty, but he wasn't proven innocent either". Even today, it is nigh impossible to get any plurality of Trump opponents to admit the accusations were bupkis, and there remains a substantial minority that still believes them outright.
As many here are fond of saying, "the process was the punishment". The investigations were blatantly weaponized, leaving a stench even if the shit didn't stick.
The CIA and its affiliates may be totally sqeaky clean and above-board behind closed doors. But since nobody has visibility into that apparatus, and history would indicate that's not particularly likely, I'm giving them zero deference.
So much of what pisses me off about these conversations is that I'm betting your description of her behavior is fairly accurate to a degree. The sticking point for me is the completely-bought framing that any of this qualifies as 'transphobia'; at least in a way that I could give weight to the term, as opppsed to simply granting and swallowing the activist line.
It seems obvious to me that if you dig deep enough, immutable differences between the sexes will reveal themselves. This does not automatically entail that trans people don't deserve respect or the same same basic protections and amenities as any other citizen. To my understanding, this is Rowling's position. And if there's a moat around her stance, its on what would have previously been largely agreed-upon, practical notions like "putting penises in womens' prisons and shelters is a bad idea". Compassion and universalism does occasionally need to reconcile itself with the hard limits of bad actors and material reality.
If the word 'transphobic' encapuslates even this, then it's a dead word to me. I register it as a hostile entity everywhere it comes up.
Now, I'll admit that I actually don't know much about who Rowling allegedly platformed or buddied up with. Perhaps they were truly terrible and a shade too red even for me. But if their statements and conversations are less "Delete trans people" and more "Your neovagina - bluntly - is incapable of fooling anybody", then I'm so over it.
Given that I recently copped a permanent sub ban and a weeklong site-wide admin ban for daring to make a three-sentence tepid defense of JK against activists (not trans people with any specificity) - charged with transphobia and 'promoting hate' - I think my disdain for this word has been freshly renewed, and replanted a few feet deeper towards core of my being.
DTulpa
1yr ago
I've had a similar beef with mod hosting sites like Nexusmods and Moddb regarding their recent removals.
Mods in the past could be downloaded from multiple different hosts and mirrors, but usually required you to have the awareness to seek out the dev's website. Sites like NM gave a lot of convenience of a central location for downloading, managing, and discovering content, with community tools for ranking and feedback. These days it's common for NM to be the only host for many mods, and removals were typically reserved for the truly heinous and illegal. While not perfect, it felt like a spirit of community collaboration mostly divorced from politics (more the norm 10 years ago than now) was working fine.
And now we see mods removed for petty political reasons, with the platform owners basically saying "Tough shit. You're paranoid. Don't like it? Delete your account." And boy would I (I even donated to you guys in the past!), likely while still begrudgingly downloading their hosted content without logging in. But now it seems many mods require a NM accoint, and so my options are to eat shit or just not play the mod. And if you were a modder who wanted to pull your own mods from the site in protest? Too bad, NM has made it so all mods are archived to preserve compatibility with other modlists.
It's such a blatant flex - "We dare you bigots to cut yourself off from the primary platform for modding" - and one they can only afford because of their position. I should not be feeling nostalgic about Filefront and Fileplanet.
DTulpa
1yr ago
Too many syllables, and I can't tell who its supposed to resonate with.
Is there a large contingent of Rs that would nod in agreement with the 'sanctimonious' label? Sanctimonious about what, exactly? The things that they already broadly align with him on?
It would be more understandable if Trump was appealing to Democrats with that jab. But it's still nowhere near catchy enough. Disappointed.
DTulpa
6mo ago
People aren't oblivious to the logic. Well, maybe some are. I dont think most people here. But you said this take was out of step with a community thats supposedly grounded to reality. I think from the responses you can maybe see that it is based in reality - such as it is.
One of the consequences of institutions playing favorites with mob violence is that it causes many individuals to second-guess their own definitions. If the BLM riots didn't qualify as violence in popular sentiment, then who is to say J6 should? Am I being cheeky, or am I being serious? Could you even tell? Honestly, I'm in limbo between both states. Where does 'reality' have a say? That's a socially mediated phenomenon, as demonstrated quite clearly since 2020 onward.
'Violent' is one of those fuzzy terms that can mean anything from a playful shove, to murder, to mean insults. We probably had more national consensus on the thresholds for qualification in prior decades, and then that was wrecked in 2020. That you now see so many (what you regard as) peculiar opinions on this subject shouldn't be too surprising. And while it's hard to often tell if this is sincere or troll-ish (just reacting to progressives 'reality'), I think its often both.
DTulpa
7mo ago
Of all the new progressive-led 'ways of doing things', are there any examples of one that got 'refined' and dialed down a bit from its prior fervor?
Will this refinement entail not trying to cut off people from their income based on public accusations made under anonymity and that nobody attempted to bring to court?
DTulpa
8mo ago
There's something so comically simple and innocent about full-on transformations, for me. Like a 6 year old that really wants to be a T-Rex or a sentient tank, and would go full hog if given the opportunity, physical consequences be damned. Wholeheartedly rejecting your human vessel to be something else entirely because 'fuck yeah'.
But being a big-breasted female-presenting tiefling with a futa cock and dude voice? Feels like a strange midpoint. If you live in a world of magic and this can be done easily with a finger snap or a procured service, why wouldn't you go all in one way or the other? I'll admit to a possible failure of imagination on my end, but it just comes off as kink and fetishism. I'm sure there's some fucking official lore about how everybody in FR is pansexual and sexually super liberal (because the author just said so!) and so none of this is strange in-universe, but I think it just renders the whole thing silly and alien.
Any way, I know nothing of the DnD universe other than Planescape Torment and less than a handful of fun birthday party sessions that were never intended to be continued past that single night. But Spider Guy is intelligible to me in a way Ms Potato Parts isn't.
It took decades for Left Inc to finally 'police its own' and issue denunciations when some of them unapologetically stated they had no issue with the externination of Jews - despite this strain of antisemitism being loud and obvious to anybody paying attention and who wasn't wrapped up in the coalition. And this just so happens to coincide with wealthy donors shutting their purses. Sure.
Ditto for the insistence that elite higher education was essentually unassailable, had no duty to accountability or obligation to explain itself to the plebs, and only caved when the extent of Ms Gay's fraudulence became too much to ignore - after bravely standing to her defense with a super-serious official Harvard letter and several weeks of articles accusing her critics of being anti-black.
Compared to the reflexive denunciation ritual every Republican or conservative has to partake in when somebody points to a Nazi and accusingly asks "DO YOU HAVE A COMMENT ON THIS?". Nope. You don't get to casually claim superiority on that front. Perhaps you are saddened that you see less of those denunciations 'over the last 8 years' than before, but it's obvious to me that this fruit doesn't have much juice left to squeeze, and that is entirely your fault.
EDIT: I don't know how I could have written that bit on Claudine Gay and completely whiff on the most odious part of her case: that her fraudulence went uninvestigated, unpunished, and was generally rewarded due to political interests in an institution that is supposed to value academic excellence (ha ha, I know, at least 'on paper'). Gay isnt a bad actor operating all on her own. She gets to her position with the aid of a corrupt system that will crow about their prestige and integrity every day of the year, right before they pivot to "actually, this is pretty normal, and uhh... we don't really need that kind of pedigree for something as boring and unserious as college president". And you consider her an 'extremist'? She's very normal to me, and my only surprise (which isn't, really) is that some Dems are belatedly unhappy with or embarrassed by a creature that is their own making.
Do you have a right-wing closet Nazi analogue you'd like me to condemn? Somebody who isn't a Substack writer, or a third-rate grifter on a platform thats probably throttled to hell and back if it hasn't been outright banned from the Play/Apple store?
Are they anticipating where the market is going, or where the ADL, NYT, and advertisers are going? Of course any CEO is going to factor them into their business proceedings. But it leaves the very likely possibility that the CEO is not demonetizing people or terminating deals because he's worried about his userbase rebelling against him and jumping ship, but because he's worried about a hit piece, ad networks getting the willies, or being subjected to all sorts of extended, motivated muckraking if they decide otherwise. CEOs are also not a separate species from humans; they socialize, fret, have principles with about as much 'integrity' as anybody else, and are subjected to many of the same social pressures most other people deal with, even if their venues and peers are gilded upper-class. I don't think they mind losing some money if they already have a lot, somebody else is willing to cover their losses with ESG funds, or if they can sit in security with no viable competition. And this should go without saying, but they too can be stupid.
I contend that when people refer to the free market, they usually mean a decision or assessment gleamed by the aggregate, collective spending decisions of consumers en masse - if a plurality of citizens respond positively or negatively to a product, as expressed by how much money they threw at it, and if it's enough to keep production going. You are pointing to a small cadre of Lords and Tastemakers who either step in before the product hits shelves - or has them removed because Sprint Mobile doesn't like having a booth next to it or whatever - while using that same term. These are clearly very different things. And if you insist on using that framing with justifications such as "Well, of course CEO anticipations and decision making are part of the market!", that's... fine, I guess. I can't even say you're wrong on any technical level.
But be clear. Because this always comes off as a low-effort gotcha. If the stuff I want to reward or patron are being removed from the menu by executive or committee's political fiat, the free market did not operate as most people would understand it. And yet, many progs will insist it did, if only for the cynical retainment of the feel-good glow around "every voice must be heard" and "power to the people" sentiments you need to half-heartedly pay lip service to so people don't see what's really going on.
DTulpa
10mo ago
Is Fasnacht all that spicy? Some bizarre imagery and some grotesque caricatures, but not really Love Parade circa '99 (RIP). More of a colorful brass instrument party that occasionally invites itself into your pub, killing any attempts at conversation without yelling.
DTulpa
1yr ago
They willingly waded into the no-win scenario that I'm sure many people warned them of. Sympathy seems unnecessary.
DTulpa
1yr ago
People keep repeating this, but none of them have bothered to make the apples to apples comparison of discriminating against political viewpoints versus banning real-time location doxxing. Until they do, this is just more 'Boo Musk' weaksauce.
Wake me up when Elon starts banning people for referring to Rachel Levine by their preferred pronouns.
DTulpa
15d ago
This may hinge on two things.
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Are you a devotee of RTWP? Then BG3 is an abomination (I personally prefer turn-based).
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Do you like or tolerate DnD post-Critical Role, or do you find the sensibilities it has developed to be subtly but omnipresently obnoxious? I'm not well-versed in the franchise, but it doesn't look like BG3 matches the tone of the original games based on some writing samples.
I'm a semi-fan of RPGs, although I'm not good at them. Given their lengths and complexities, I really only have the appetite for one RPG on occasion every few years. And if I'm going to spend multiple hours and nights with one, I need an interesting world to retain me. I don't know where people stand on POE these days, but that managed to hold my interest even after the combat started getting sloggy and boring. FO1 is still my gold standard.
But every piece of media I see for BG3 seems to trigger a reflexive disinterest. There's something so self-consciously table-toppy about it that feels LARPy, for lack of a better word. Clearly some people love it for those reasons, but I must have read a dozen pieces about how 'amazing' BG3's narrator is ("Because it's just like having a DM, guys!"), and to me it just seems irritating and pointless. They understand that cRPGs don't need 'DMs', right? You're playing the game, why would you need it described to you?
DTulpa
2mo ago
I don't undertsand why the 'tiny minority' argument still gets play on here of all places.
The issue is not Lizardman's Constant. The issue is society needlessly and uncomfortably contorting itself to accommodate Lizardmen. I've said it elsewhere here, but trans activism has reached into my world on several fronts over the last decade, twisting up everything from hobby groups, to corporate politics, to the software I install prompting for pronouns. This is all possible even without even so much as sharing room air with trans person.
I may be a simpleton, but - there is something infuriating about the follow-up 'What consequences are you so worried about?'. And I'm really not sure in the specifics! Call it a hunch, but I think the officiated dissolution of the man/woman binary will manifest in a thousand indirect and different ways down to the level of how one socializes with other people. And the amount of confusion and irritation it produces will never abate. They're building a house without a ground floor, because they think floor boards are just ugh trivial.
It's been remarked on here before, but it seems nobody particularly cares about FtM trans people. They blend in easier and - more importantly - don't seem to threaten anybody either in physicality or status. I'm not sure I'd be comfortable sharing a dressing room with one, but I wouldn't be eyeing an immediate exit either. The 'disgust' phenomenon seems mostly localized to MtF.
I think Silverdawn's question is assy. But as somebody who is more anti than pro on most trans questions, I don't think increased exposure to trans people will resolve my problems with the movement. My feelings are less 'Enemy Mine' and more 'TNG: Chain of Command' in that people are trying to make me digest and parrot what I regard as an obvious untruth. No amount of positive experiences with trans people will change that I do not see them as their declared sex or gender, and whatever positive experiences I accrue could be suddenly outweighed by negative ones should my stance be revealed and unmoved.
This sorta rubs me the wrong way, but I find it difficult to articulate why. I've had similar encounters with a trans worker in my office, and my occasional slip-up with their pronouns never raised to the level of being harangued about it or being threatened with HR. I did indeed "get better at it", and we continued to work together as well as anybody else until one of us transitioned to other projects.
But what precisely did I get better at? Being polite about something that I think is frankly ridiculous. And while there are many beliefs or opinions I find ridiculous wether religious or political, they never come up in a professional context or require an update to my language model. I have a lot of negative things to say about Islam, but that's neither here nor there when I'm working shoulder to shoulder with a Muslim peer. It just doesn't come up, and neither of us can make any demands of each other.
No matter how much it was prettied up, a falsehood (IMO) was being imposed on me, and there is no escaping or ignoring the sword hanging over my head if I were to continue to misstep, or politely respond that this preferred pronoun business is not my bag, but I still fully respect you as a fellow coworker. Basically, I reject the idea that I am 'slipping up' at all when I refer to them with the pronouns that historically correspond with their birth sex. Even a well-intentioned "No foul! You'll get the hang of it in time" gets my hackles up, as if there is a deficiency on my end requiring shoring up.
I wouldn't say they were being dicks - that's far too strong a word. But I don't think "not being a dick about it" lets them off the hook for what they're doing, because it still boils down "do it or else" in the end. No amount of smiles or soft chuckles about my faux pas changes that.
My coworker seemed fine in all other respects. We could crack jokes about other topics, talk vidya, bitch about work. But I never stopped being on the backfoot about their pronouns, because continued absentmindedness or deliberate refusal would be a road to catastrophe. I could say I used their pronouns because I respected them, but it was also inseparable from the motive of self-preservation. And when the motives are mixed up like that, I don't know if I'm being fully honest with myself regarding my intentions.
DTulpa
9mo ago
Checks out with my perceptions. Female co-workers who get pregnant are in zero rush to return to the office, often registering glee that they get to duck out of staring at a computer screen for 8 hours a day; a good number strongly hinting that they have no intention of resuming their work, but don't want to tip off their superiors yet. Those that do return often only do so for a little bit before checking out entirely. You follow up with them on Facebook at a later date and see they have fully transitioned to homemaking and child-raising, with maybe a small side gig.
I've only known one exception; lady formerly in the Navy on her third pregnancy who has always taken the bare minimum of maternity leave before jumping back in the workforce. I once joked that she should milk it for all its worth, and she actually registered some serious judgments against women who do that, and recalled that even in the Navy she noticed how many peers would suddenly find themselves knocked up when deployment came up. "Freeloading, fucking whores" were her words.
The entire thrust of my post wasn't a concern over the porn, but how we expect society to react to it and its attendant psychologies. You do not need to put some bizarre scenario in my mouth about 'CPS being called because the parents don't show porn to their kids'. You can ready my post again, notice that the 'CPS' comment was in reference to the generic 'coerce you into behaving differently' (which does, can, or may soon include affirming your child's stated gender and using their preferred pronouns at home, depending on where you are) - and since you are a regular poster here, you could probably reasonably assume that's what I was referring to, instead of inserting an absurd caricature of my statement.
The existence of leather fetish porn does not necessitate a Grade School level understanding of fetishism and sexuality for young children, nor does it require some passive acceptance and validation of every strange, oddball choice or behavior a child may exhibit. It's not that I want children who are soon-to-be fetishists to be locked out of any understanding of themselves. But if social contagion is real and the teachers are installing 'Leather Week' on the calendar where they dress up and make the whole thing a fun game and are way too interested in preemptively identifying their student candidates and absentmindedly 'nudging them along the path', I don't think it's a worthwhile tradeoff. Consider that reality, and then compare it to another one where every PTA or school faculty member might say "Hey, your 6 year old probably doesn't know what they're doing, but it might best if he doesn't wear the Kink Boots/Dog Mask/Ass Chaps he steals from your closet to school every week". If you are concerned that the internet is leading your kid astray (and quite likely is), it is of no help to you when all your institutions shrug their shoulders and ask what the big deal is.
And of course, I consider this whole thing to be an element of a multi-part problem. Candidly, I think a world where everybody is 'OK with trans' is a world where huge swathes of the population (if not a majority) have been so buried under propaganda and deprived of sound critical arguments (that do exist); to such a degree that they have to delude themselves and preempt serious argument to maintain their views, or are too brow-beaten and self-preserving to argue against it. I say that based on what I see today as extremely flimsy evidence with a disproportionate level of dismissiveness of counter-arguments and emotional blackmail ("If you don't affirm, your kid will commit suicide"). Now, should these people be catered to any way? Maybe so! That is certainly a valid possibility! But 'the majority decides what's right and just' is so boring and obvious. I am interested in separating good ideas from bad ideas, to the best of my ability. And if society wants to gorge itself on a bellyful of bad ideas, I can't stop it, but I can record it.
You're correct that the specific predictions didn't pan out as stated in the 90s and 00s. To cut them a little slack, nobody really anticipated a hot debate about the definition of 'man' vs 'woman' or the 'gender spectrum' to enter the fray.
However, that the Left enabled that kind of blindsiding has shown me that they can't be trusted to not flip the board and mealmouth things that I find rather horrid, like puberty blockers. I have to say that my trust for the Left to stay within reasonable lines has done a complete 180 on this topic, and I wonder if the 'kink wing' of the party is just waiting for more favorable conditions to finally push through. And they could very well do so even if the vast majority of their compatriots don't like it. We have not slid to the specific point that moral conservativism predicted, but I don't want to be distracted from the fact that a slide did occur, even if indirectly.
My suspicion is you will ultimately be found correct. There won't be a mass normalization of beastiality and pedophilia. But that's predicated on my faith that surely people don't change that quickly, and I don't know how I justify that. So personally, I'm going to extend the deadline to 2040 and see where we stand after swimming in AI futa cocks for a decade or two.
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