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.

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.

She literally talks about how that same model can be used for children, if you would please read the article instead of Ctrl+f-ing through it. It's not that long, I managed to find and read it on a short boat ride after seeing your initial claim.

Okay, fine, I read it. I really am doing my best, here, to see what you are trying to refer to. I think the only statement that seems like it might be saying something of that nature is this one:

As Buckingham notes, contemporary ‘mainstream’ media literacy education ‘seeks to begin with ... students ... existing tastes and pleasures, rather than assuming that these are merely invalid or “ideological”’ (2008, 14). While sexuality education targeting adults (particularly same-sex-attracted men) currently takes this approach to pornography, education targeting heterosexual young people does not.

This then leads into the concluding paragraphs, which you quoted above, and which are suggesting directions for "[f]uture research (and practical inquiry) into pornography and/as sex education." I think the strongest interpretation I could make of this would be something like "maybe porn literacy classes for young people should start with (and accept) their existing porn tastes instead of trying to prescribe the correct ideological responses."

From what I can see, however, the article is not actually proposing that the rules around not being allowed to show porn to young people should be changed.