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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   36204 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 24, 2022

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As many of you know, I am not a Rationalist. My skepticism of Rationalism emerges in a variety of ways, but none are more striking than the feeling of bizarre disconnect when observing the Rationalist tendency to focus on systems, on rules, on formal structures as though they were some durable expression of baseline reality, as though they were dispositive in and of themselves. "well, this is the rule, so this should be the outcome".

This being the Culture War thread, a lot of what we discuss here orbits around questions of Law, procedure, or organizational norms. The problem is that law is not dispositive. It is not the motive power driving our society, or even the steering wheel. In some cases it is the bumper sticker, and in others it is the exhaust. In most ways relevant to our discussions here, it simply does not matter, and if you cannot wrap your head around this, I contend that you fundamentally misunderstand the Culture War itself.

Today's example, via the National Review:

Virginia Democrat to Introduce Bill to Prosecute Parents Who Refuse to Treat Child as Opposite Sex

Virginia Democratic delegate Elizabeth Guzman is seeking to introduce legislation that would hold parents criminally liable for refusing to treat their children as a different sex from the one they were born into. The legislation, which Guzman plans to introduce in Virginia’s upcoming legislative session, would expand the definition of child abuse so that parents could be charged with a felony or misdemeanor for refusing to honor their child’s request to be treated as the opposite sex.

“If the child shares with those mandated reporters, what they are going through, we are talking about not only physical abuse or mental abuse, what the job of that mandated reporter is to inform Child Protective Services (CPS),” Guzman told 7News. “That’s how everybody gets involved. There’s also an investigation in place that is not only from a social worker but there’s also a police investigation before we make the decision that there is going to be a CPS charge.”

The move comes in response to Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin’s latest policy initiatives, which empower parents to exercise control over whether and how children transition gender in school, as well as a speech he gave at a “parents matter” rally back at the beginning of the school year. “They think parents have no right to know what your child is discussing with their teacher or counselor,” Youngkin said.

Sing it with me, all together now: The last several years are best modelled as a massive, distributed search for ways to hurt the outgroup as badly as possible without getting in too much trouble. From the Blue perspective, legally redefining Red Tribe parenting as child abuse is certainly a pretty good way to hurt the outgroup, and options for retaliation are limited and costly. The algorithm is working! And for those who might have concerns, never fear: Guzman's got you covered.

When asked by the local reporter whether she isn’t “criminalizing parents” as many Republicans argue, Guzman answered unequivocally.

“No, it’s not. It’s educating parents because the law tells you the do’s and don’ts,” Guzman answered. “So this law is telling you do not abuse your children because they are LGBTQ.” Guzman was similarly unwavering in her thoughts about whether such an approach violated free speech or religious freedom. “The Bible says to accept everyone for who they are. So that’s what I tell them when they asked me that question, and that’s what I will continue to tell people.”

...I'd love to blame Blue ideology for that last paragraph's worth of mealy-mouthed horseshit, but honestly, I think we all can recognize that Normies shall inevitably Norm. Still, not great. I didn't bother to hunt down her full statement; let's tell ourselves she actually laid out a thoughtful argument about how society requires compromises and hard choices, gestured at trans suicide rates and some impeccably replicated studies showing that confirmed gender identity leads to better outcomes, and then the mean ol' National Review edited all that out to make her sound like a [DATA EXPUNGED] ...less ...persuasive person. Maybe that's even true! Let's not check.

Many Democratic lawmakers and liberal activists have criticized Youngkin’s recently announced education policy changes. Most prominently, the new policies prohibit teachers from using personal pronouns “not on a student’s official records.” They also reverse a previous state policy “allowing students to use bathrooms that align with their preferred gender.”

Last month, students across nearly 100 schools staged walkout protests across the state to criticize Governor Youngkin’s policies and defend transgender rights.

...It bears mentioning that those student walkouts were almost certainly partisan political actions organized by public employees. Red Tribe doesn't get to do student activism in public schools, and it certainly doesn't get to use schoolchildren as political props. This is in fact a perfect example of why the actions they're protesting are needed... but I digress.

This proposed law doesn't matter. It doesn't matter even a little bit, and not just because it hasn't passed yet. It's very clearly a violation of religious freedom so it should be flatly unconstitutional, but of course the Constitution doesn't matter either. None of the surrounding legal, procedural, or policy questions matter. None of it matters. Not even a little bit. These things aren't the engine. They aren't the steering wheel. They're the bumper stickers, and they're the exhaust. They are the effect, not the cause. If this law is struck down, another will replace it. If this law passes, the core issue will not be resolved. The Constitution should prevent this, but it won't, nor would amendments help.

The cause is the Tribes, Blue and Red, and their manifestly incompatible values. Blues/Reds do not Like Reds/Blues. Contrary to arguments presented here for years, we do not share values, moral intuitions, a workable understanding of The Good. The Culture War is not about mistakes, and people are not going to come to their senses any minute now and realize all this was just a whole heap of silly goosery. The Culture War is a conflict. We cannot all get along, because we have lost the fundamental capacity to agree on what "getting along" consists of. We can't agree on what constitutes murder, rape, child abuse, spousal abuse, what constitutes crime, what constitutes Justice. These are not the sort of disagreements a society can have, long term. Something has to give, and probably a lot of somethings.

Laws, norms, procedures, all of those are well downstream of Culture, of social reality. You need everyone more or less on the same page before you can even attempt law; trying to keep law together in the face of mutual values incoherence is... well, it's real stupid, and it's never going to work even a little bit. If you can't get people to agree on central definitions of murder and child abuse, how the Sweet Satan do you expect to run a justice system, a legal system, an election system, much less adjudicate free speech?

This law isn't being proposed because it solves a problem. It's being proposed because Blues hate Reds and want to harm them. That tribal hatred, by no means unique in its character and very much reciprocated by Reds, wants to Do Something About The Bad People. If we held the population constant and completely replaced our entire political system, someone very like this woman would be proposing some action roughly analogous to this law, because that is how tribal hatred works. The hatred itself is what matters; the specific grooves and canals it is channeled through, the details of procedure and custom, norms and institutional traditions, codified policies and so on are irrelevant. This concentrated, willfully malignant essence of humanity, cannot be constrained by ink on paper or dusty tradition. It finds a way. You are not going to prevent that by asking it politely to please not.

This event is not surprising, and as some of you are no doubt aware, none of what I've written above is even close to novel. I and others were predicting shit like this as far back as early 2016. If you couldn't, and especially if you are one of the OG Blues or Moderates who scoffed or harrumphed when we predicted it, well, is this sufficient to demonstrate the point?

A brief coda, if you'll allow me. A month or two back, we had an excellent thread about drag, kids, and the slur "groomer". A lot of the blues and moderates argued that "groomer" means someone actually trying to prep a kid for sex with themselves or a specific other person, and so applying it to teachers and other authority figures was an instance of The Worst Argument in The World, and so should be frowned on.

I disagree. "Groomer", as I understand it, is a person who's making a covert attempt to directly modify a kid's sexuality in unhealthy ways. I understand that many people here disagree with this definition, but there's something you should understand in turn: when people like me use the term "groomer", we are not saying "I really don't like this person." We're saying that we consider the people so labeled, the officials supporting them, and the section of the public providing their ideology to be a direct, serious and immediate threat to our children.

Perhaps you find that irrational, inexplicable. After all, they're not breaking the law, right?

”Groomer” as I understand it, is a person who’s making a covert attempt to directly modify a kid’s sexuality in unhealthy ways

This is the equivalent of wokes using “white supremacy” to include timeliness, dress codes and objectivity. Maybe you feel turnabout is fair play, but it’s dishonest and is a transparent attempt to leverage conditioned emotional reactions to a different, narrower concept against a newly broadened category

I also really doubt any supporters of this would say its purpose is to punish reds as opposed to “protect trans kids.” I think it’s fair to ask whether “protect trans kids” or “hurt red tribers” is a model more predictive of actual behavior, but you have to actually ask that, because this law is consistent with both so far as I can tell.

I'll pivot the conversation here a bit - if you would disagree with using the term "Groomer" what term would you use?

I see your analogy to white supremacy in some respects.

In others I see a transitive property of sorts. The LGBTQ activists may not be pushing these policies to have sex with specifically your child or even the ones they interact with. But they're creating the cultural environment where they are increasing the supply of sexual partners available to them in general. I really doubt that's a conscious decision but it seems as though it could be a subconcious one.

More specifically, they're creating a cultural environment more conducive to pedophiles raping kids in general. We have decades of accumulated knowledge of youth protection best practices. They are an enormous, bureaucratic pain in the ass, and we follow them anyway because they reduce child rape. Trying to ignore these rules and best practices (for example, prohibitions on sexualizing conversations with kids, or showing kids porn) is insanely suspicious.

I don't know of anyone who advocates showing kids porn.

Pedagogies of sexual identity: Porn can also be a significant source of education for sex/gender diverse young people, with a range of studies indicating that pornography is a significant source of explicit information that supports both sexual confidence and positive community formation for same-sex-attracted people (Waugh 1996; Ruddock and Kain 2006; Hillier and Harrison 2007; Kubichek et al. 2010).

While the deliberate linking of explicit images and texts with sexual health information is relatively rare in health promotion and health education materials targeting young people, heterosexual adults, or same-sex-attracted women, one Australian sexual health promotion project targeting sexually adventurous women has adopted similar strategies (Albury, Constable, and May 2012). Although the project has been active for less than 12 months and is still being evaluated, it illustrates some of the ways that a ‘community-driven’ approach to sexual pedagogy and learning can engage with the tastes and practices of porn consumers. The media campaign was developed in consultation with a reference group of women drawn from Sydney alternative sex sub-cultures. The project website, iloveclaude, is modelled on the social media platform Tumblr, and combines ‘found’ images from soft-core pornography and erotica with commissioned photo-sets, interviews, expert advice and short videos focused on safer-sex and blood-play practices (AIDS Council 2012)

As Buckingham notes, media education programmes focused on non-pornographic texts often adopt ‘a more student-centred perspective, which begins from young people’s existing knowledge and experience of media, rather than the instructional imperatives of the teacher’ (2008, 13). The difficulty for educators in the field of ‘porn literacy’, however, is that they may not legally distribute the object of study to their (minor) students, nor may they legally encourage students to develop alternative pornographic media as a means of developing literacy – a common strategy within mainstream media education. This means that porn education (for under-18s at least), neither permits close readings of actual explicit texts nor allows for direct discussions of specific texts... In an ideal educational setting, porn literacy education might permit a dialogue that offers the opportunity for educators to learn more about young people’s sexual cultures, and for both teachers and learners to extend their knowledge and understanding of the intersections between mediated representation and lived experiences of sex, sexuality, and gender.

...It might also seek to understand how young people’s readings of pornography (and their reception of porn education) can reshape the broader curriculum of formal sex and relationships education. This interrogation would not rule out explicit critiques of misogynistic, homophobic or racist tropes within pornography, but might also offer the capacity to open up critically productive conversations about the boundaries between adult sexual knowledge and young people’s sexual learning; and the ways popular and institutional discourses define particular forms of sexuality, sexual identity, and sex/gender expression as ‘legitimate’ (or ‘illegitimate’) know-ledge for young people.

Due to the contemporary moral climate surrounding the issue of pornography use among young people, but also, more generally, sex-positive teaching (Fortenberry, 2016 ), pornography literacy would likely be difficult to incorporate in school-based health and sexuality education programs

While pornography may benefit sexual minority groups by allowing them to see their own sexual preferences or behaviours on screen (Kubicek et al. 2010), it has been widely criticised for the way it portrays heterosexual sex and reinforces gender inequalities

Does "unfortunately it's illegal because teachers and kids sharing porn would be a Powerful tool for social justice" count? Or "porn is good for kids, but only if it's Queer and Addresses Gender Inequities"?

Like, I just want you to acknowledge here that these "social justice in porn studies" academics only have a problem with kids being given porn if they think it's the wrong kind of cisnormative porn.

To respond to your edits (which I think you ought to have marked as such, out of courtesy, given that I had already replied):

Does "unfortunately it's illegal because teachers and kids sharing porn would be a Powerful tool for social justice" count? Or "porn is good for kids, but only if it's Queer and Addresses Gender Inequities"?

Like, I just want you to acknowledge here that these "social justice in porn studies" academics only have a problem with kids being given porn if they think it's the wrong kind of cisnormative porn.

First of all, I would appreciate knowing what this quote is from. You've said nothing about where you found it, or who said it.

Second of all, it is still not clear to me that it is saying what you say it is saying. "Porn can be helpful in these ways and harmful in these other ways" is very far from an unqualified endorsement. The fact that the person who wrote this (whoever they are) reaches first for a social justice critique of porn is not actually evidence that they think porn is always good for children when it doesn't have those issues, or that children should be given it when they are not choosing to access it on their own.

In particular, I think there may be something important being said here:

This interrogation would not rule out explicit critiques of misogynistic, homophobic or racist tropes within pornography, but might also offer the capacity to open up critically productive conversations about the boundaries between adult sexual knowledge and young people’s sexual learning; and the ways popular and institutional discourses define particular forms of sexuality, sexual identity, and sex/gender expression as ‘legitimate’ (or ‘illegitimate’) know-ledge for young people.

It's not clear from your quote what "productive conversations" would consist of, but I can see two potentially sympathetic things being alluded to here. One of these -- from my second bolded section -- is the lack of access children might have to non-pornographic information about LGBTQ topics. Children sometimes turn to porn because they don't have alternate sources of information, and this can be particularly true when topics like homosexuality and trans identities are deemed off limits for them. Rather than castigating them for turning to porn for information in that situation, it might indeed be helpful to leave room for a productive conversation about what information they are looking for.

The second sympathetic thing that I might be detecting here -- although I would need more context to be sure -- is this reference to "the boundaries between adult sexual knowledge and young people’s sexual learning." I do wonder if this is trying to say that adult pornographic content is not necessarily a good source of sexual learning, and that it's useful to have a boundary here.

My apologies, it is very difficult to block quote from PDFs on my shitty phone, and I ended up making a ton of edits.

I'll just say I think you are trying to read this in any way that doesn't acknowledge its most obvious implication: that porn is a tool for shaping children's sexuality in ways "social justice educators" find appealing.

Just read the first full article where she explicitly criticizes dissuading kids from looking at porn in favor of teachers guiding them towards porn that advocates queer bloodplay and Progressive values. Then check out the cites for even more out there stuff.

At the very least you have to acknowledge that "nobody wants to show kids porn" is not true. I'm just sick of these constant "nobody is saying X" arguments which inevitably end with "I can't believe you still oppose X" a year later.

she explicitly criticizes dissuading kids from looking at porn in favor of teachers guiding them towards porn that advocates queer bloodplay and Progressive values

A CTRL-F for "blood" in that article you linked leads me to one instance, in a section whose heading is "Pornography as (adult) sex education." As in, for adults. So your summary is definitely inaccurate. I reiterate that this does not appear to be an example of someone advocating that we should show kids porn.

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Your first quote sounds like it is saying "children sometimes access porn and use it for sex education." I don't read it as saying that children should access porn and use it for sex education.

Your second quote is about "media literacy" in the context of teaching people who already have access to porn to be more critical of it.

It's important to keep in mind that the term "porn" in the US is often used to refer to material that isn't strictly pornographic and sometimes not even sexualized. The stereotype of us being a bunch of prudes exists for a reason.

It seems very normalized in what we might call Tumblr-adjacent spaces. Come for the Harry Potter fanfiction! Stay for the Draco!mpreg BDSM scenes!

Most of those stories are by adults and for adults. Tumblr's app is rated 17+. AO3 has a box to tick on explicit fanfiction that asks you to confirm that you are over 18. This doesn't prevent younger people from ticking the box, of course, but this is still not the same as deliberately showing porn to kids. Your argument amounts to saying that kids can access porn on the internet, therefore anyone who puts porn on the internet is "showing kids porn." That's a deeply specious mischaracterisation of what is actually going on.

This is fair. I was keying more off the word "anyone", which may have been changed in what looks like a mess of edits upthread. If I were to tie it more to the direct topic at hand, I would note that a sizeable portion of school librarians and elementary school teachers under 40 are "Tumblr-adjacent", and enough of them are quite happy to openly brag about how much they love normalizing kids consuming porn, or encouraging kids to be non-straight/cis to keep LibsofTikTok in business. Honestly, it's not like they have to do much; genderqueer/sexuality is essentially a conglomerate subculture these days and all of these kids have mostly unregulated internet access. Kids are finding this stuff well enough on their own, there's no real need except proselytizing self-aggrandizement to insist on having books in the middle-school library that can't be read aloud at a schoolboard meeting.

More specifically, they're creating a cultural environment more conducive to pedophiles raping kids in general.

Than what? The traditional cultural environments made it pretty easy to rape kids as well. It's different but I am not sure it is worse from that perspective. In one the kids may not report it because the cultural environment around sex is shame and they do not understand the situation. In the other they may have a better understanding of what is going on due to more openness around sex but someone can use that openness to get to them.

I've a background in working with victims of CSE and I am honestly not sure which one is directionally going to result in more child rapes. I certainly don't think it is anywhere near as cut and dried as you say.

Victimizers will take advantage of the cultural mores whatever they are, that much is true, I think.

Than what?

Than schools or professional organizations that aren't doing ideological queerness stuff. I mean, yes, nothing here is really going to stop kids from being abused by their families. But if a coach, a priest or a scout leader want to ensure kids have access to porn, and knows the adult is open to confidential conversations about sex and private parts and they promise to keep it secret from the parents - we would consider that extremely alarming!

And when the adult doings that is an art teacher or librarian with some inane academic word salad to justify it - still extremely concerning!

Making sure gay kids don't hate themselves is a fine goal, but I don’t see any reason we can't do that without dropping existing useful heuristics about protecting kids.

Than schools or professional organizations that aren't doing ideological queerness stuff.

Yeah my point is that this is a point very much not in evidence. A priest in a traditional church can take advantage of the shame around sex that is promoted to keep his victims quiet. And of the increased trust to get easy access.

It's a just so story either way. It is certainly possible that neither is the correct option to reduce CSE.

Yeah my point is that this is a point very much not in evidence.

It seems like it is. There are a decent few states with laws that encourage teachers to immediately affirm kids, and then actively conceal it from parents. Much of the shitstorm over the Florida law was about a provision that forbid concealing that stuff from parents, with an exception for situations where the teacher had a sincere concern that the kid would come to real harm, presumably at which point normal mandatory reporter / child protection stuff would kick in. What should I infer about that mild requirement sparking livid fury?

Again though that is not evidence that you get more CSE in that environment. That is the claim remember. Is there evidence that a more permissive environment leads to more CSE.

This is the equivalent of wokes using “white supremacy” to include timeliness, dress codes and objectivity.

False equivalency. Wokes using "white supremacy" to include anything they don't like about Red Tribe values is qualitatively distinct from using "groomer" to include behaviors that are, in fact, preparing children to be exploited or abused, and then exploiting or abusing them.

Here's how: "white supremacy" is fundamentally the idea that white groups or individuals are inherently superior to (at least some) non-white groups. To call, say, expectations of timeliness "white supremacy" is gobbledygook. If the claim is that non-whites can't be timely, then that claim is itself an assertion of white supremacy. If the claim is that timeliness is a "white value" but not a superior value, and that non-whites can be timely but rewarding timeliness or punish tardiness unfairly discounts non-white values, then it is also a claim that not rewarding timeliness, or even rewarding tardiness, unfairly discounts white values. You can't reasonably hold that timeliness is "white supremacy" without holding inconsistent ideas. (This is a frequent pattern in identitarian thinking: it is very often just self-refuting nonsense.)

By contrast, "grooming" describes the act of preparing a child to be abused or exploited, and some common known approaches to grooming are: asking children explicit questions about their sex and sexuality, exposing children to sexually explicit materials, and encouraging children to keep secrets or distance themselves from their parents. These are all things that wokes have demonstrably advocated for, from arguing for the inclusion of sexually explicit material in children's libraries, to keeping secrets from parents, to refusing to return runaway children to their parents. You might ask whether it counts as "grooming" if Party A is doing the grooming but Party B does the abuse, and whether it's still grooming if Party B never shows up to accomplish the abuse. I myself am comfortable with the idea that abusers can and do sometimes employ accomplices as groomers, as well as with the idea that a groomer who fails to follow through on abuse is still a groomer. This is not self-refuting, and so cannot be aptly compared with treating timeliness or objectivity as white supremacy.

And yes--you could certainly argue that the real abuse was families all along! Many on the left do believe this, and it is a genuine values dispute. Even DeBoer doesn't actually come out and say "families are good, actually"--his position appears to be something like "stop saying they're bad so we can win, maybe then we can actually abolish the horrid institution." But when the wokes are out there actually engaged in textbook grooming behaviors and passing laws to enable those behaviors, it's hardly a "dishonest" or "transparent attempt to leverage conditioned emotional reactions." It's more like calling a spade a spade. As I said in the linked discussion last time--if tabooing "groomer" seemed likely to reduce cases of actual abuse, I'd be all for it. But in the current debate, it seems like the desire to taboo "groomer" is just deliberate obfuscation of a real and serious political problem.

render your child homeless

Isn't that obviously a point where the state has pre-existing authority to step in? Can teachers conceal anything from parents if they merely claim to be worried about the parent overreacting?

I can cite this if need be.

Sure, if you don't mind. How is kicking your minor child out for any reason not an obvious, easy crime to prosecute?

This is the status quo for everything except physical or sexual abuse disclosed to them, as they're mandated reporters for that.

I was thinking more like suicidal ideation, or bad grades, where there would normally be an expectation that parents be informed either due to severity or routine.

All of the "gay" questions don't seem like something where it would be reasonable to go out of your way to tell parents, just as it would be for straight analogues. That probably wouldn't justify lying about it without a specific reason.

I agree, but much red state legislation does not appear to agree.

If it's something like "you must out any minor suspicion", then yes, that is fucked up. The only bill I've read in detail was the Florida one, and that just prohibited deliberate deception, which is not obviously bad.

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What you and /u/FCfromSSC both dance around here ...

The only person dancing around anything here is you.

Should the law require have required my teacher to tell this parent that his son was gay, thus subjecting the kid to homelessness?

Too fucking right it should. It's not the teacher's place to manipulate families based on her own personal values. Schoolteachers are public employees and ultimately answerable to parents. Concealing material information from parents is pedagogical malpractice.

Laws saying teachers don't have to disclose aren't there so that teachers can keep secrets to groom children. They're there so that teachers can use discretion and judgement to figure out what the right course of action is.

That's not a level of discretion government employees get to have over families, not in any sane system. If a child is being physically abused, malnourished, etc. then the law might get involved, and it's tragic and messy but sometimes understandable. If a child is confused about sex or sexuality, that is not the government's business to decide how to address that. By making it the government's business, Democrats are actively grooming children.

If you think it's "abuse" to tell a child that they don't get to date or have sex or wear inappropriate clothing, like, we just have a clear values disagreement. I do think many "transgendered" children are actually victims of Munchausen syndrome by proxy, which is enough like sexual abuse that I might be persuaded that child protective services should also be allowed to intervene in such cases... but even then, absent any other concerns I'm reluctant to get the government involved. I don't know--do you think I should be more willing to get the government involved in such cases?

Show me what's objectionable in these books, and tell me what age you think you should be in order to access this material, and why.

I mean, for starters. Children's libraries are no place for these materials. Making such materials available to children is textbook grooming. Do you honestly advocate for distributing such things to children? If so, you're a groomer, too, by every definition offered in the thread thus far.

Concealing material information from parents is pedagogical malpractice.

... If a child is confused about sex or sexuality, that is not the government's business to decide how to address that. By making it the government's business, Democrats are actively grooming children.

Don't be ridiculous. You're seriously trying to say that it's "grooming" if someone believes that a teacher doesn't have to tell a kid's homophobic parents that their kid is gay? You want to call keeping a secret from someone who will hurt their kid if they know the same as deliberately trying to make it easier for someone to sexually abuse a kid? That is absurd.

You're seriously trying to say

No, I'm saying only what I'm saying--not trying to say other things.

Do you think teachers who suspect parents of hitting children for receiving school discipline should conceal the administration of school discipline?

Do you think teachers who suspect parents of requiring children to be vegan should be permitted to secretly provide the child with meat?

Children who confide in teachers are placing themselves in an exploitable position. Often it is merely political indoctrination to which those children have unwittingly exposed themselves. Sometimes it is abuse. Parents are the legal and moral guardians of their children. Temporary custodians (like teachers) who withhold material information about those children from parents, on grounds that the custodian doesn't like the things the parent has said about a particular subject (like homosexuality and the likely consequences of coming out), are not helping children. They are imposing their own outsider judgments on the operations of a family they have no business manipulating.

The government is not "deliberately trying to make it easier for someone to sexually abuse" kids. The government is deliberately abusing kids (in the form of exposing them to inappropriate materials), and deliberately doing things that make it easier for someone to abuse kids (like requiring teachers to conceal material information from parents). It's an easy conflation to make, but I encourage you to engage more closely with the facts about what is being said or done, without (twice in one comment) making misleading loaded claims about what I or others are "trying" to do.

I was not intending to mislead. Inaccurate paraphrases by me are the result of genuine confusion on my part as to exactly whom you are attempting to accuse of knowingly aiding and abetting child abuse and for what. You said that it was "grooming children" for the government to be involved in choosing whether to tell homophobic parents about their child's sexuality in the same paragraph in which you referred to teachers as "government employees." As a result, I read you as accusing any teacher who chooses not to tell a child's homophobic parents that their child is gay of grooming children.

Your response suggests to me that this reading was not accurate. I am glad to hear this. Even by the standards of "groomer" discourse, that would be unusually absurd.

Now, since you've also asked me some direct questions, I'll answer them.

Do you think teachers who suspect parents of hitting children for receiving school discipline should conceal the administration of school discipline?

I don't think they should be required to conceal it, but I wouldn't outlaw such mercy.

Do you think teachers who suspect parents of requiring children to be vegan should be permitted to secretly provide the child with meat?

Happens all the time. Seriously, do you know how hard it is to get a slice of the vegetarian pizza when there's just one in the whole classroom and the meat-eating kids think nothing of taking a slice of it while you're still figuring out which one it is?

Now, deliberately trying to make the vegan kid eat meat, or going out of your way to provide it specifically, would indeed be anti-social behaviour. On the other hand, if the kid deliberately chooses to eat meat of their own accord and you don't tell their parents, well, that's less of an issue. I don't think teachers are required to rat kids out to their parents for every little thing the parents might not like.

What externalities have I avoided engaging on?

This wasn't a discussion about externalities, but a discussion about direct costs. By moving to hypothetical "externalities" you simply sidestepped the conversation altogether.

Do parents have an absolute right to know 100% of their teenagers mental contents at all times?

Nobody said anything like that. Your strawmen have no power here.

Should you read your daughter's diary entries?

If you think there is cause for concern, damn straight you should read your daughter's diary entries. Monitor her internet use, too. Kids don't generally need to live in a panopticon but sometimes it makes sense to take that approach. I'd rather my children be upset about an occasional "invasion of privacy" than be confident in the sanctity of their phones or diaries and run off with an internet boyfriend, and that's not a hypothetical example. I had a neighbor whose 12-year-old daughter snuck away with a 23-year-old "boyfriend" she met online. That sort of thing is terrifying. Privacy is just not a very important thing for children to get from their parents.

You want to turn teachers into a Stasi.

Not at all. To the contrary--you want to turn teachers into parents. I want teachers to share material information with parents, because they work for the parents, literally on the parents' dime. If that information does result in abuse, there are legal protections in place for that sort of thing. If a teacher merely believes that information will result in abuse, that's in many cases just the teacher being bigoted, which is also material information a teacher should share. "I hate your kind so much that I will actively undermine your parenting" is the kind of warning teachers really ought to give to parents, so parents can make an informed choice about where to send their children to be educated. (Wishful thinking, I know.)

your current position is that the state shouldn't punish parents who deprive their children of healthcare

I don't think that at all. "Gender-affirming" treatments are not healthcare any more than a nose job is. We do clearly have a straight values disagreement here--you think that mutilating people is "health care," and I don't.

I don't really give a shit if they're in a high school though, because kids find worse on the internet.

Yeah, see above I guess. "The internet is worse, so it's fine if my kid's library peddles porn" is certainly a take, I'll give you that.

Very funny. You're a child molestor. There are gay and trans children out there, and you think they should be molested* by their teachers. You even suggested their parents should be molested* by the state for allowing their child to access gender affirming care.

Well, this is the values disagreement though, isn't it? It boils down to you thinking it's healthy for teachers to talk to kids about sex and sexuality without their parents' knowledge, because some parents might do objectionable things as a result, and I think it's not healthy for teachers to talk to kids about sex and sexuality without their parents' knowledge, because some teachers might do objectionable things as a result. You want teachers to make judgment calls at the expense of the parent-child relationship, and I want parents to be the ones making maximally-informed judgment calls, both because parents are generally in a better position to make those calls, and because I think parents have some right to make those calls. Or in other words:

government employees exist to serve the societal good at large, not your personal whims.

I think this is perhaps the real site of our disagreement. You don't think schools exist to help parents, except accidentally. You think they exist "to serve the societal good at large." But if that's the case, sending children to public school is a horrible choice and no parent should make it. They're just sending raw materials to the collective culture-factory, which will do with those children as it sees fit. I'm sure most public educators would want to walk you back, a lot. Your reference to "personal whims" is of course pure rhetorical bullshit: every school my children have ever attended has been explicit, nay anxious, about ensuring good school-parent partnerships, finding ways for teachers and parents to cooperate, collaborate, and coordinate. Open sharing of concerns and information is central to the proper functioning of a school. Getting lost in value conflicts about the sexuality of children is not only kinda creepy (yes, even in high school), it's detrimental to the whole damn enterprise. It allows identity politics to interfere with what is actually best for the child: well-supported parenting.

you've just dropped essentially every single one of those argumentative threads with no reply

I skipped all the parts where you put words in my mouth; I don't see much use in responding to outrageous strawmen and maximally-uncharitable takes where you impose an invented narrative on me and then castigate me for it. Attributing to me views I do not hold, and conclusions I have not endorsed, is not helpful and clarifies nothing.

Just to furnish one ready example, I have absolutely never called Democrats "pedophiles," nor ever implied that you were yourself one; I never even used that word. Please CTRL-F if you don't believe me! Coming back with "well you obviously meant the word groomer to imply--" No. I meant what I said, and I said what I meant. I rather specifically distinguished accomplice-groomers from groomers-who-go-on-to-abuse; if you missed that explanation, all I can do is ask you to read it again and try to think with nuance instead of rage. I am sorry that this was upsetting to you, but it was your own bad reading that appears to have upset you--not the words I actually wrote.

Since I am apparently not a party to the conversation happening in your head, I will also now excuse myself from the conversation happening here.

More comments

If I tell my ten year old daughter she's a fat retard every day and I wish she was never born, should the state intervene or leave me alone?

Granting the premise that this comparison is reasonable, the state should not intervene, no. Cultures, religions, and ideologies propogate themselves through childhood discipline. State intervention presupposes that certain psychologically abusive treatment is valid because it instills favored values. (For example, children who cannot stay in their desk and be quiet during class are subjected to quite frightful forced isolation and verbal abuse until they conform to expected standards.) The Amish and Orthodox Jews subject their children to a rather crippling upbringing and it is understood that the government cannot intercede because freedom of religion. The situation with hypothical "fat retard calling" parent is much the same.

Once children become adults they are obviously entitled to judge their parents' instilled culture by themselves and accept or reject it.

Very good, when you publish this research it may inform future education policies. Until such a time, it's unclear to my why I should privilege your opinion is on how transgender children should be treated and insist that it be enforced in education policy.

The current policies and proposed policies are based on politics, not disinterested research, if such even exists for this topic. In any case, public schools are funded by and serve the parents.

Also, that sarcasm is beneath you. "You are not a PhD in this subject so be quiet", as if arguments you see online, in media, or politics are informed by one.

Certainly the red-tribe plan of abusing them out of it has been unsuccessful thus far. [...] where do you believe transgender adults come from? My claim is that prior to reaching age 18, they are first age 17. And before that, they are invariably age 16. And before that...

The "red tribe plan", such as it is, is to ignore trans children to the extent they exist and let them figure it out as adults. This plan worked for most of human history. High teen suicide, whether the cause be misgendering or borderline personality, is a modern phenomenon so I don't think you can lay that on conservatives.

How did you come to this conclusion? What flaws do you see in the studies that inform current medical practice? [...] Fair point, but I feel there should be some burden on those arguing against a vast amount of establishment consensus to show otherwise

A few years ago LGBT activist organizations campaigned against John Hopkins publishing transphobic research results. John Hopkins ultimately retracted. An open letter from 'the faculty'. (Scroll to the bottom to see which departments have names represented, and which don't.)

As faculty at Johns Hopkins, we are committed to serving the health needs of the LGBTQ community in a manner that is informed by the best available science — a manner that is respectful and inclusive and supports the rights of LGBTQ people to live full and open lives without fear of discrimination or bias based on their sexual orientation or gender identity. [...]

Because of the report, the Human Rights Campaign has warned Johns Hopkins that it is reviewing, and may remove from the institution, its high ranking in the HRC Healthcare Equality Index. The national benchmarking tool evaluates health care facilities' policies and practices related to equity and inclusion of their LGBTQ patients, visitors and employees.

In situations where institutions can have their proto-DEI score docked for producing certain results, and where such results prompt a buzzword-filled moral struggle session from the parts of the faculty that study "human rights" and "reproductive health", the consensus of academia is meaningless to me. Academia has been scared into mumbling about other topics. Why not this one?

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From Freddie's linked article:

"Yes, Marx and Engels took their stab at the family, including in The Manifesto, but everything about post-revolutionary life under communism is a little underdrawn, and if we’re going to go to the mattresses for anything the Papas Smurf argued for, I would prefer it not be the family. Because I like the family! And so does almost everybody else, of any gender, race, ideology, or circumstance."

I'll admit that he never said "families are good," but I think you're misrepresenting him.

Not only did he never say "families are good," he said

I understand that there are cogent critiques of the nuclear family or the traditional family or similar.

Furthermore, from Freddie's linked article, immediately following the bits you quoted:

To be anti-family really does strike me as looking for the thing that will piss the most people off, for the least possible political gain. I would prefer it if the most influential socialist press would not casually engage in this kind of useless leftist posturing, when we have so many more important and realistic goals.

His clearest concern is certainly not, "families are essential ingredients of a functioning society." His clearest concern is, "this argument makes the glorious revolution look bad." Furthermore, the "when we have..." is a really interesting qualifier. If he did not have so many more important and realistic goals, would he still regard these arguments as useless posturing? I don't get the impression, at all, that Freddie would stand up for families at that point--in part, because he gives no particular defense of them here. His point is never, "families are good." His point is always, "abolishing the family is, for now, a losing issue."

I will grant that he notices, for example, that

Shulamith Firestone . . . suffered from schizophrenia and likely starved to death in her apartment. Her body wasn’t found for a week. She was a giant of second-wave feminism but she died completely alone. I would suggest that this was a person who could have used more family.

But not, apparently, a nuclear or traditional family? His position is clearly underspecified, but I don't think it is a misrepresentation to observe that nuclear and traditional families, at least, are on the chopping block from Freddie's perspective. But--those are the kinds of family that matter most, on my view! All other arrangements are (deliberate--and often important!) imitations of the traditional/nuclear family, imitations so close we even call them "family," but they seem to just be less stable over a lifetime--so giants of second-wave feminism die alone and unnoticed and icons of gay rights can't even get burial costs covered by the law firm that used them to change the nation.

I think it’s a pretty good equivalency.

Yes, spurious claims of white supremacy are a different animal than substantiated claims of grooming. The correct comparison is what happens when it isn’t obviously, or even debatably, child abuse, but the label is applied anyway. You are looking at a biased sample and assuming it’s representative.

Look at @Tanista’s response. Child transition is probably a bad idea and definitely a moral hazard. It is understandable to apply the “groomer” label for adults recommending it. How much of that should apply to adults who would criminalize gender treatments for minors or investigate parents for child abuse? That’s 26% and 17% of Democrats, respectively (source); I’d expect higher rates for more nuanced polls. Those are people who should not be labeled groomers even if they vote for...inclusion in sports, or discrimination protection.

Both debates are over category membership rather than category existence. There are flagrant abusers who obviously belong in the category, and there are normal people who get lumped in. The right would very much like to have a weapon remotely comparable to accusations of white supremacy. Trans activists—especially the vast majority who aren’t pedophiles—would quite prefer to avoid this.

Do you think Libs of TikTok really cares about her false positive rate? “Groomer” doesn’t need to be taboo; it needs to be selective.

Those are people who should not be labeled groomers even if they vote for...inclusion in sports, or discrimination protection.

Okay, but no one in this thread has labeled people groomers on that basis.

So I will do that now!

Both of those view characterizations obfuscate real issues, some of which are also potentially connected with grooming. For example, "discrimination protection" to the extent of allowing this kind of thing looks to me like just another way of shielding a paradigmatically grooming behavior (an adult presenting to children in an indecent, hypersexualized way). Even the inclusion of males in female-only competitions can put young girls in situations where their self-protective instincts toward e.g. modesty get treated by adults as essentially pathological. Finding ways to erode those instincts is also textbook grooming (in the vein of "let's play silly naked games"). So, yeah, even those people have subjected themselves to the label of "groomer," though they may be sad to hear it.

Now, there are surely many people (including many non-Democrats!) who want to make sure that transsexuals aren't being assaulted for it, or losing their job over it, or getting poor healthcare because of it. I, too, believe that transsexuals should enjoy the same legal protections as everyone else! But by and large those are not the issues Democrats are proposing laws about--and certainly those are not the issues addressed by the law proposed in the OP. When someone points out that Democrats are in fact proposing legislation to protect plainly grooming behaviors, it is no answer at all to say "but you have to admit that some Democrats just want rights for transsexuals!"

If you want "groomer" to apply more selectively, start by convincing Democrat politicians to stop legislating the grooming of schoolchildren against their parents' wishes at every opportunity they get.

The right would very much like to have a weapon remotely comparable to accusations of white supremacy.

Looking at the poll numbers, the right may have gotten exactly that.

Trans activists—especially the vast majority who aren’t pedophiles—would quite prefer to avoid this.

I have seen some trans activists publicly support Republican efforts to prevent Democrats from legislating the grooming of schoolchildren against their parents' wishes, so good on them. But it is not at all my impression that they form any kind of majority; certainly they are not a vast one. What their actual sexual preferences are is irrelevant. As far as I can tell, trans activists are overwhelmingly in favor of empowering public schools to groom children against their parents' wishes. This aligns completely with my broader experience of leftist politics as explicitly anti-family.

inclusion in sports

In my opinion no human, no matter their genitals or gender identity, should on these grounds be excluded from the open/mens category.

But demanding womens category be opened up to biological men, while claimining it is "exclusionary" to refuse to do so, is like calling discrimation that a person whose age-sex is 25 years, but who claims their age-gender is 14 years, isn't allowed to compete in a U15 tournament.

In my opinion no human, no matter their genitals or gender identity, should on these grounds be excluded from the open/mens category.

Even if they're taking testosterone supplements?

Can natal men also take testosterone supplements and participate in the open/mens' league?

We should just get rid of the women category in sports. Let’s them compete at making the most beautiful, smart, compassionate children instead.

But demanding womens category be opened up to biological men, while claimining it is "exclusionary" to refuse to do so, is like calling discrimation that a 25 year old agefluid person isn't allowed to compete in a U15 tournament.

Similarly, claiming it is discriminatory to reward athletes in the open men's tournament better than athletes in the restricted women's category is like calling it discrimination that a 14-year old doesn't get the same rewards for winning a U15 tournament that a 25-year old gets for winning the open.

More or less.

I find banning the performance-enhancing drug testosterone from the women’s group to be perfectly reasonable; the linked polls suggest I’m not alone, as it’s the most popular restriction across party. This is a decent barometer for the level of discomfort Americans feel regarding trans inclusion.

It’s also a good example of policy debate that isn’t tied to “grooming.”

To TLDR for you: Grooming is not an ends. Grooming is a means. Everything gender activist are doing to kids in schools is text book, to the letter, grooming. What are the ends? Doesn't matter. Could be fucking kids. Could be talking them into cutting their tits off. Could be getting them to drink the magic cool aid to catch a ride on the Hail Bob comet. Could be nothing, but I doubt it. Grooming as a means opens the door wide to enormous, unaccountable, irreversible damage. It removes probably the single oldest and most effect reality checks, the involvement of the family. The fact that Democrats endorse it on a national, institutional level, is horrifying.

By contrast, "grooming" describes the act of preparing a child to be abused or exploited, and some common known approaches to grooming are: asking children explicit questions about their sex and sexuality, exposing children to sexually explicit materials, and encouraging children to keep secrets or distance themselves from their parents. These are all things that wokes have demonstrably advocated for

Even if we put that aside there's a serious risk that puberty blockers entomb kids into the ideology they've been "groomed" into. Most people who suffer gender dysphoria desist but the study on those on puberty blockers showed that nearly everyone persisted in the new identity.

So that alone would be chemically and medically assisted "grooming" which is imo much, much more egregious than some of the other examples. Especially given potential health risks of blockers and the hormones that apparently inevitably follow.

Most people who suffer gender dysphoria desist but the study on those on puberty blockers showed that nearly everyone persisted in the new identity.

This is comparing apples to oranges. Studies showing high levels of desistance often include children who are "subthreshold" for diagnosis. By contrast, children who actually go on puberty blockers are subject to stronger constraints on access.

Studies showing high levels of desistance often include children who are "subthreshold" for diagnosis.

That article only takes a look at one study and makes contentious claims about it, e.g. Jesse Singal takes aim at the claim that the researchers did no followup and just assumed non-responders were desisters, which would be pretty egregious

By contrast, children who actually go on puberty blockers are subject to stronger constraints on access.

Maybe when using the Dutch protocol which, iirc, is stricter. There's a reason UK and Sweden have shut down gender clinics and stopped applying puberty blockers outside of experimental trials and have walked back claims of them being "totally reversible" - stuff like that was used precisely to open up the use of blockers.

“The methodology of those studies is very flawed, because they didn't study gender identity,” said Diane Ehrensaft, director of mental health at UCSF’s Child and Adolescent Gender Clinic “Those desistors were, a good majority of them, simply proto-gay boys whose parents were upset because they were boys wearing dresses. They were brought to the clinics because they weren't fitting gender norms.”

Yeah, I think that's exactly right even today.

I think "we're coming for your kids" answers that one pretty well. Pretty good singing too.

And yes, do you want me to find endless supporters of the bill on Reddit thirsting at the idea of jailing red parents? Gotta do something with all those prisons after "prison abolition," after all.

And no, that reddit admin that was luring runaway teenagers to his house and giving them drugs was grooming children. Discord admins who do the "oh ur 14, that's heckin cute and valid here put on these thigh highs and send pics, we'd better get you on girl juice before it's too late sweetie hehehe" are grooming children. The art teacher who tried to encourage me to come to school wearing panties because it would be our little secret was grooming children. There's literally zero allegory involved in calling any of this grooming!

All of it should be punished. But most of them are just going to get away with it, because sex offenders are very good at blending in with whatever gives them the best camouflage, and joining whatever coalition offers to enable them.

The past few years have been an education in how many people are willing to enable predators for fear of standing out, causing a row, or "letting the team down". It makes you realize how abuse gets so normalized in prisons, schools, Hollywood, scouting, etc.

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Another aspect common to pedophiles and pro-trans activists is the exaggeratiom of childs capability to form an independent will, which both groups elevate above those of the childs parents.

The former by claiming that merely convincing a child to say words "I consent" is sufficient, the latter by its claims that a child mouthing the words "I am a girl" is a statement which isn't merely an expression of a momentary feeling like "I am a robot" or "I am a dinosaur" but of a stable and permanent one.

Citation needed. The usual requirement for child diagnosis of gender dysphoria is that the claim to be the other gender is "insistent, consistent and persistent." Your claim that merely saying the words "I am a girl" is taken to imply a stable and permanent identity is contrary to the facts. You are straw-manning your outgroup here.

Citation needed. The usual requirement for child diagnosis of gender dysphoria is that the claim to be the other gender is "insistent, consistent and persistent." Your claim that merely saying the words "I am a girl" is taken to imply a stable and permanent identity is contrary to the facts. You are straw-manning your outgroup here.

So I will admit that I am not someone who collects folders full of bookmarked links for ready deployment, nor am I a Graham Linehan or LibsOfTikTok, making a career out of outrage-harvesting nutpicking. But I have read a fair amount of this discourse from the both the pro and con sides over the last few years, and the impression I get is that there is definitely a motte and bailey going on in practice.

On paper, yes, diagnosis of gender dysphoria and recommendations for transition have a lot of guidelines and safeguards meant to ensure we're actually dealing with a dysphoric individual who genuinely identifies as another sex and whose best outcome is supporting them in transitioning. You're not supposed to just tell a boy who says "I'm a girl" that they are in fact a girl and put them on puberty blockers.

In practice, though, how many times have we heard from doctors (including here on TheMotte) that actually telling a kid (let alone an adult) who says "I'm a boy/girl" that maybe they're not, and that gender nonconforming thoughts do not make you trans, can result in accusations of transphobia, even formal complaints, and that it's becoming increasingly hard to push back against a kid who might just be going through a phase? That in fact, even suggesting things like "going through a phase" or "social contagion" is itself transphobic and failing to affirm someone's gender identity?

I'm willing to accept that maybe in the real world this is actually not happening as often as the anti-trans side says it is, and that maybe gender clinics do turn away a significant number of self-identified trans people, or at least tell them and their parents they need to spend more time thinking about this and considering other options before putting a child on puberty blockers or hormones. But I am also quite skeptical that none of these stories of kids being transed on demand are real. I think the direction of public discourse (failure to affirm is literally murdering trans children!) cannot help but put pressure on well-meaning doctors and clinicians and parents and teachers to basically take a child's words at face value, at least on this very particular subject.

That was how it worked for my adult friend. First time she saw any kind of medical personnel in years she got put on estrogen. Weeks later, she got her first round of bloodwork back showing serious endocrine issues, namely a critically low testosterone level, which apparently did nothing to give anyone any pause.

Now, this is an adult and not a child, but aren't there something like 1000 similar complaints being alleged at Tavistock?

If we are making facile derogatory comparisons, this is also a commonality between free-market capitalists and cannibals, who both exaggerate the individual's capacity to enter contracts in their own interest.

You could even go a bit further and talk about the aspect common to pedophiles (of the subset that does not particularly care for consent) and anti-trans activists, who both believe in the parents' absolute authority to make decisions about the child's sexual development. Statistics are circulating that something like a third of child sexual abuse cases are perpetrated by parents or close relatives, and I'd imagine that the vast majority of the Eastern European suggestive underage model pictures that flooded the *chans back in the days were created with the support of the parents. Surely only someone who is anti-family would presume to interfere with the parents' judgement there!

What is the ratio of Cannibals to trans activists in our society? and that is without the disproportionate impact that trans activists have when they introduce or modify laws. I'm unaware of cannibals trying to pass laws related to their proclivities.

Give it time. I hadn't heard of would-be eunuchs trying to pass policy related to their proclivities either until last month.

The MAJOR roadblock to anything cannibal related is that it requires eating someone or parts of someone.

Well, eunuchs have some spare parts...

yeah, but wouldn't cannis just get tired of eating dick all day?

In the simile, the cannibals map to the pedophiles, not the trans activists.

The ratio of interest would be cannibals-to-capitalists. Like pedophiles, the former are thankfully rare.

Though a complete lack of cannibalism-enshrining laws, coupled with the existence of any cannibals, does imply they are underrepresented.

Like pedophiles, the former are thankfully rare.

I think pedophilia is quite a bit more common than cannibalism, unless you start counting things like communion or chewing ones nails as cannibalism. For instance, the BBC quotes an estimated prevalence at 1% of the adult male population.

(to /u/4bpp too) Problem being that unlike the lack of relationship between cannibals and capitalists, the trans activists are actively promoting rules, regulations and concepts that would benefit pedophiles in their pursuits (minors capable of consent, keeping secrets from your parents, etc.), which is why I'm interested in the ratio of the problematic populations as Capitalist don't advance the canni agenda but transactivists indirectly (and intentional or unintentionally) do so.

As a note, I don't think it was appropriate that Meiwes was convicted. With the caveat that Bernd Jürgen Armando Brandes was of sound mind during the episode (which I very much doubt) but isn't mentioned in the Wiki article one way or another.

I consider the capacity to enter contracts with another party as a fundamental part of liberty and individualism (social contract as one example), not something exclusive to capitalism.

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