site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 24, 2022

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

20
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

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.