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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   36216 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 24, 2022

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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.

Boy named Jack wears makeup at school now, and asks you to call him "Jane".

That seems like the sort of thing a parent might have a serious interest in being aware of. Especially if that involves being referred or funneled towards medical professionals.

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