innately_inept
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User ID: 1627
innately_inept
1yr ago
I feel like a lot of the discourse around "groomers" is similar to a lot of the discourse around "rape culture". Per Wikipedia, rape/groomer culture is a setting in which rape/pedophilia is pervasive and normalized due to societal attitudes about (children's) gender and sexuality. It's not a literal statement of "everyone in society who I dislike is a rapist/pedophile", but a statement of "our society is implicitly engineered in such way as to enable rapists/pedophiles".
It's not a perfect one-to-one match, of course, and it's perfectly possible to accept one version but not the other. My point is more broadly that, just as rape culture has been a powerful explanatory idea in the past few decades, the idea of the groomer is just now beginning to reach that same status. Therefore, statements like "Democrats are groomers" should be treated with equivalent outrage to statements like "Republicans are slut-shaming"—they aren't being accused of the crime, only of enabling it. There needs to be more evidence brought to the table with these sorts of accusations, but to be apoplectic that people on this forum might consider either of these to be a valid idea isn't going to produce more light.
Walkability and car culture are topics that come up pretty often here, so I figure I'll chip in my two cents: I spent last year living without a car or bike in what is, so near as I can tell, a "walkable city" here in the US. I had two grocery stores within a 10 minute walk; medical clinics, banks, and restaraunts within a 20 minute walk; and a robust public transit system for anything further away. Basically, any part of the city was accessible within a ~30 minute trip. I did have to wait at crosswalks for some destinations, but most of these spots could be easily reached without having to deal with a single car.
Despite this, I severely disliked it. The summers were brutally hot, the winters were brutally cold and snowy, and as a result any excursion outside was uncomfortable. Carrying groceries was a chore, and carrying more than a few days' of groceries was more or less out of the question entirely, which in turn necessitated extra trips to the grocery store. I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of trips I took to banks, clinics, or other essential services, and the slew of restaraunts and nightlife available were simply not worth the trip. None of it was unbearable and I was able to make it all work well enough; that said, it made every task beyond the comforts of my home that much more unpleasant and undesirable.
Part of this is due to the fact that I'm a natural hermit, and my idea of a nice night involves staying home with a good book or an entertaining movie; part of it is due to the fact that I'm a country mouse by birth, and I vastly prefer solitude and open spaces to cramped urban offerings. But the fact remains: 99 times out of 100, I would prefer to travel by car to do my work, play, and chores, and this preference would remain regardless of how many amenities are on tap, how much "dignity" is afforded me, or how great the distances involved are (with exception, of course: if the grocery store were next door, then it would be stupid to take a car, but any city block so dense as to have everything I might need would also be so dense that I would despise living there).
As it stands, the car-centric system we have does an adequate job of meeting my preferences (and, I think, the preferences of a sizable portion of the population). I can enjoy both the peace of rural living and the amenities and services of a large city. Any extra expense that I might cost society by living where I do is amply met by the increased gas taxes and costs I pay, and that's a trade I'm happy to make. There seems to be very little acknowledgement of this point of view, so I'd like to make it clear that there are, in fact, people for whom daily walking is less preferable than daily driving.
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