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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 24, 2025

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Do we still talk about Scott's articles on this site?

He has a new one out about Conflict Theory vs. Mistake Theory.

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/why-i-am-not-a-conflict-theorist

The general thrust of his argument is that conflict theory doesn't explain voting patterns because people vote against their self-interest. For example, rich elites are generally in favor of raising taxes, which affect them disproportionately. And it was young people, not vulnerable old people, who were more likely to be lockdown fascists during Covid.

But I'm not sure if this adequately explains conflict vs. mistake theory. Conflict theory is inherently tribal, and people will do things against their own self-interest, even their tribal self-interest, to own the other tribe. Dunking on the other team is its own reward, moreso than actual spoils.

Nevertheless, I remain a mistake theorist. More of the modern world developed by accident than by scheming. For example, take immigration. Clearly, this is an area of heated tribal conflict now. But it wasn't always this way. When the US opened up the current era of mass immigration in the mid-1960s, it wasn't an effort to change the ethnic makeup or import voters. At the time, demographers projected that there would be 400,000 immigrants a year, of whom 367,000 would be white! In other words, they were spectacularly wrong.

The rewrite of our country's genetic makeup happened by accident while no one was looking.

Gay rights is another area where mistake theory wins. Clearly there was a lot of conflict in this area. But then, something happened around 2010 and one side just stopped fighting. A new consensus emerged: "Love wins. People are born that way. Queer people just want to be tolerated. They don't want to shove it in our face. They just want to love their partners the same way that straight people do. They definitely won't try to convert kids." And within 15 years, almost everything about this consensus was proven wrong. Even if you think this was the plan of the gay movement all along, it still doesn't explain why Republicans went along for the ride. You might say... they were mistaken.

Sports gambling? Mistake theory.

Marijuana legalization? Mistake theory.

De-policing? Mistake theory.

People generally aren't trying to mess things up. They are just wrong about the consequences of their ideas. Sure, there are like 5 or 10% of people who are true radicals who want to destroy society and will lie to achieve their means. But the average politician or corporate leader just doesn't understand how the world works. They'll buy a load of horseshit because it sounds good and it gratifies their ego. The world changes when wrong ideas face no resistance.

But then, something happened around 2010 and one side just stopped fighting.

Yes that something was a Supreme Court case legalizing same sex marriage across the entire country under the concept of civil liberties. Of course you stop fighting as hard when the supreme law of the land says that it's legal.

And within 15 years, almost everything about this consensus was proven wrong.

What evidence do you have for this? I don't see any large scale proof that a large number of gay people are trying to actively "convert" straight kids into same-sex marriages when they're adults. And don't be citing campaigns based around accepting LGBT students, it needs to be widespread proof that they're trying to convert children since that was your wording.

Evidence could look like a gay version of conversion therapy where straight kids are sent to centers to shame them into gayness, or maybe a large lgbt organization like GLAAD admitting they want to turn straight kids gay. Or something along the lines that there is an active and widespread attempt to take straight children and make them homosexual instead of a genuine (even if poorly executed) attempt wanting gay teenagers to be accepted.

Sports gambling? Mistake theory.

Marijuana legalization? Mistake theory.

Or perhaps, people just have different values for civil liberty like the libertarian viewpoint and the negative externalities of a freedom to gamble or smoke weed is not convincing enough for them to change their mind on that. It's not a "mistake" for people to have different views on a trade-off between freedom from government restrictions and societal health.

Libs of ticktock seems to have gathered plenty of evidence of widespread- if possibly marginal- attempts at grooming in the actual sense.

If your standard of evidence for something being widespread is "I saw it on Twitter" you do you I guess.

Yes that something was a Supreme Court case legalizing same sex marriage across the entire country under the concept of civil liberties. Of course you stop fighting as hard when the supreme law of the land says that it's legal.

That's not what happened with gun control, or with racial quotas or "reverse" discrimination for that matter. Or abortion. Those who fundamentally accept the institution's legitimacy may stop fighting; those who do not, do not. And the latter tend to get what they want, if opposed only by institutionalists.

Yes that something was a Supreme Court case legalizing same sex marriage across the entire country under the concept of civil liberties. Of course you stop fighting as hard when the supreme law of the land says that it's legal.

Supreme Court decisions are decidedly not law, they are interpretations of law intended to set precedent. The deliberate conflation of Supreme Court rulings with laws and "constitutional protections" is part of why we're in this king-of-the-hill conflict over control of the SC, because people believe that capturing the court is a pass to end-run Congress and anchor in the policy du jour without going through the actual process of lawmaking, which would involve that ickiest of things, actually having the House of Representatives represent their constituents.

to set precedent

My reaction every single time I read about a US court case is "boy am I glad that I live in a country with civil law system that doesn't rely on binding precedents" combined with "I hope our politicians are never crazy enough to introduce a constitutional supreme court" (thus far there have been no signs at such).

Do you know what makes abuse abuse- the real why of it being harmful? Because it's forcing the victim into an unnatural/undeserved submissive role they didn't assume.

Sexual abuse is that, but in specifically a way that has to deal with sex (just like how racism is this in a way that has to deal with race).

Now, we know what that looks like when men do it- take the sacrament in your mouth, my child- but men tend to dominate physically, so that's the kind of abuse mode we should expect from them. It's inherently playing the short game- sexual domination here has a clear beginning, a clear end, a clear definition, and a translucent white evidentiary trail.

Pre-20th-century schools and churches are overwhelmingly staffed by men and thus if left unchecked tend towards this failure mode.


What happens when the gender that likes to dominate socially/emotionally does it? Well, women tend to dominate socially/emotionally, so what we should expect from them is types of more subtle abuse over time that prevents boys from developing natural assertive/dominant behavior.

So they're playing the long game of attempting to run [sexual] interference on boys. Which includes things like punishing all physical contact (and what physical contact is allowed is colored as being a gay thing), showing them pictures of gay sex in an attempt to force them to see sex like adults do (and that mostly-innocent-yet-still-definitionally-sexual harassment should be treated as violent rape), making sure that boys who act like girls (not necessarily the stereotypical gay man, but deferring to the proper authorities, not developing their own strengths and ensuring that those who do use them are punished) are favored, and things that will ultimately serve to make them submissive, anxious, and above all unattractive. The worst thing in the world is if a girl exhibits male qualities- that should be discouraged at all costs (and if she fails to desist from that trans-gender behavior, the girl should be encouraged to self-mutilate; boys are also encouraged to do this, but for them, it's a Skoptskyist "cut your dick off to prevent you from sin" thing).

Public schools/daycares and management positions more generally are overwhelmingly staffed by women and thus if left unchecked tend towards this failure mode.


See now that attempts to deal with the second using the tools meant to deal with the first fail. A woman being physically sexually dominant towards a boy is seen as neutral to positive in the collective consciousness- men can't be hurt by women expressing dominance in the male way (popularly, "men can't be raped").

Thus, attempts to hold to account sexually abusive women with the same reasoning, and in the same way, that we do sexually abusive men do not resonate with the general public.

See now that attempts to deal with the first using the tools meant to deal with the second fail. A man being emotionally sexually dominant towards a girl is seen as neutral to positive in the collective consciousness- women can't be hurt by men expressing dominance in the female way (popularly, "trans women are women").

Thus, attempts to hold to account sexually abusive men with the same reasoning, and in the same way, that we do sexually abusive women do not resonate with the general public.


The long game can be punished, but you have to fully embrace equity to do that- men and women act in anti-social ways differently, and only punishing men gives women a blank check to be destructive (as they have been). An environment of equality can only punish men, but an environment of equity acknowledges that differences between men and women require, in aggregate, different tools to deal with.

Thus, attempts to hold to account sexually abusive women with the same reasoning, and in the same way, that we do sexually abusive men do not resonate with the general public.

This is because the average person doesn’t see a teenaged boy having sex as a big deal, and most of these cases are female high school teachers sleeping with their male students. It’s actually just a gendered double standard about sexual innocence.

the average person doesn’t see a teenaged boy having sex as a big deal, and most of these cases are female high school teachers sleeping with their male students

You're not defining abuse correctly here. I do not believe most of these cases are abuse, because [abuse] is forcing the victim into an unnatural/undeserved submissive role they didn't assume. Women are instinctively submissive physically by default, so they'll likely be more vulnerable to this physically, while men are submissive emotionally by default, so they'll be more vulnerable to this emotionally.

Which is why, on first pass, it's generally considered abuse [by the above definition] when it's a male teacher fucking a female student, but not the other way around, even if the motives were the same. The woman's bearing 100% of the physical risk of the interaction; that's why the response to this is generally "nice". You can't rob someone by sticking a wad of cash in their face, and sex [for most people] works the same way.

The problem is that we're only set up to catch and punish instances of physical abuse. So of all anti-social sexual behavior perpetrated by women we're only going to catch the gender non-conforming behavior (that is, women + physical) while ignoring what they actually do, and trying to use the tools we use to punish physical (most anti-social sexual behavior by men is in this group) abuse by relating the two does not, and should not be expected to work.

And don't be citing campaigns based around accepting LGBT students (...)

Evidence could look like a gay version of conversion therapy where straight kids are sent to centers to shame them into gayness,

I don't see why you get to singlehandedly set parameters for what counts as evidence. If schools suddenly started collaborating with campaigns for Scientology acceptance, and as a result classroom walls were covered with Scientology symbols, and teachers started talking to kids about thetan levels, I think that would rightly be seen as a conversion initiative.

P.S:

Yes that something was a Supreme Court case legalizing same sex marriage across the entire country under the concept of civil liberties.

Really? Is that what happened with abortion?

i don't see why you get to singlehandedly set parameters for what counts as evidence.

There is a difference between trying to accept people for what they are and trying to convert them. For your religious example, allowing prayer vs forcing prayer.

The standards of evidence for a school trying to religiously convert children does not include "We don't stop teachers and kids from praying before class on their own"

Really? Is that what happened with abortion?

Yes that massively shifted the abortion conversation both when it happened and for a very long after. You can even see the remnants of how the ruling pushed it into a states rights where Trump won on a platform promising no nationwide bans.

There is a difference between trying to accept people for what they are and trying to convert them. For your religious example, allowing prayer vs forcing prayer.

The LGBT acceptance of your version of the religious example would be more like the school allowing public displays of affection of same sex couples, to the same extent it allows them for heterosexual couples, and otherwise not getting involved in questions of sex and relationships. It would not look like what we're getting now - the school walls being draped with LGBT / Scientology symbols, and teachers talking about sexual and gender identities / thetan levels.

The standards of evidence for a school trying to religiously convert children does not include "We don't stop teachers and kids from praying before class on their own"

We're way past that point regarding LGBT acceptance.

Yes that massively shifted the abortion conversation both when it happened and for a very long after. You can even see the remnants of how the ruling pushed it into a states rights where Trump won on a platform promising no nationwide bans.

That's not a result of conservative stopping to fight. If you think that phrase accurately portrays all the screeching about Roe v. Wade that I heard without even being American, culminating in the ruling actually getting repealed, then you're using wildly different definitions for words than those that I'm familiar with.

What evidence do you have for this? I don't see any large scale proof that a large number of gay people are trying to actively "convert" straight kids into same-sex marriages when they're adults. And don't be citing campaigns based around accepting LGBT students, it needs to be widespread proof that they're trying to convert children since that was your wording.

The CDC says a quarter of high schoolers are LGBT, a dramatic increase from what it used to be. Acceptance (and celebration) of LGBT students has resulted in more of them. That is what happens when things are accepted and celebrated in societies. Why would it not? Why do you think LGBT is a special case? In what sense have those students not been converted? What is your justification for discounting an acceptance campaign as conversion evidence? No justification is given.

The idea of a "campaign based around accepting LGBT students" is inherently political. It was a choice to make this a value of the state, and organizations like GLAAD put a lot of resources and effort and human capital to make it a value of the state.

The CDC says a quarter of high schoolers are LGBT

Except that the vast majority of those are "bisexual" or "pansexual", but are functionally straight in every way. Or nonbinary, but functionally not transgender in any way. It's probably a combination of kids wanting to feel special, and people who are 75% straight now choosing to acknowledge their 25% gayness because the option exists. Either way, it doesn't have any effect on society other than triggering christians.

Bi/pansexuality has the natural problem of being too expansive a category. While it is technically true that if in a set of a million people you might be romantically interested in, one is male, that "makes you" bi, most people who claim to be bi/pan are going "sure, I could conceive of the idea of a man who looks exactly like a woman being a suitable sexual partner" despite no living human matching that description.

It's 2025. There are men who look exactly like women.

You'll have to excuse me; I've never been to Thailand, so I can't properly judge that for myself.

They have been converted to the civic religion of celebrating each other's sexual preferences.

I mean celebrations of deviant sexuality is definitely a rite of Civic Religion, as are denouncing the Old Ways (Christianity, European derived cultural elements, white people themselves, and capitalism). Basically, while a lot of people see it as cultural Marxism, I see Civic Religion as cultural Maoism — it’s certainly pro-socialism, but just as importantly it’s about shaming, blaming, and disempowering anyone who openly supports those Olds.

And if you go into a public school you’ll see most of it happening. Literature classes no longer focus on English or American literature, instead the focus is on teaching the works of other cultures — Arabian, Latin, Chinese, African. Now while some of it is interesting (im fairly big on Korean Drama and music, personally), I can’t help but notice the double standard here. Kids can read the opening verses of the Quran in a public school, but not a Bible. We can spend a month reading a book written from the POV of and African American oppressed by white people, but not the perspective of white people.

The CDC says a quarter of high schoolers are LGBT, a dramatic increase from what it used to be. Acceptance (and celebration) of LGBT students has resulted in more of them. That is what happens when things are accepted and celebrated in societies. Why would it not? Why do you think LGBT is a special case? In what sense have those students not been converted?

How is that "conversion"? A student being more open about their feelings is not the same as a student having previously been fully straight and having turned into bi or gay.

And as you yourself say "Why would it not?". Of course they are not a special case, we would expect at least some amount of an increase in behavior when it becomes destigmatized. But I would never refer to that as conversion, rather that's just more openness. Maybe this is just a disagreement about the wording, I take "conversion" to be more along the lines of "trying to change their actual feelings" rather than "changing their willingness to be open".

Now conversion could be happening alongside it, boosting the numbers up. But that's not evidence for it occuring.

Being open isn’t an uncritical good. My kid being ‘more open’ to experimentation with substance use is an uncritically bad thing, for example.

It was an ideological choice of the state to decide that deviant sexuality is worth celebrating and kids should be open to it. Of course sodomy is bad- penises don’t belong in assholes, go look at one after it’s had a penis in it and conclude it shouldn’t be exit only- but that’s not the point- public schools are choosing what things to promote ‘openness’ to. Imagine a public school promoting ‘openness’ to a traditional marriage with ten kids. You can’t.

I remember in Catholic schools we had endless propaganda(and that is, literally, what it was) about being ‘open to the calling of God’. In other words think about becoming a priest or nun. Somehow this never extended to preparing for getting married even if Catholic doctrine also sees that as a calling from God. There are choices of emphasis(and parents who send their children to Catholic schools understand the emphasis and accept it).

A student being more open about their feelings

That "more open" was a political and ideological choice by the state. Interest groups lobbied to make "more open" happen. Students and schools did not used to be open about sexual minority identities, but now they are. If you change someone's views, you have converted them.

Maybe this is just a disagreement about the wording, I take "conversion" to be more along the lines of "trying to change their actual feelings" rather than "changing their willingness to be open".

We do have a disagreement about wording, because I am using the actual definition of conversion and you have made up your own incoherent definition. A students "willingness to be open" is a students feeling! If you are try to change a students willingness to be open, you are trying to change their actual feelings! That is what it means to convert someone!

But it is not just being "more open". LGBT is a group specifically and deliberately organized around sexual minority identity. The idea that sexuality, and particularly minority sexuality, should be incorporated into identity is a central tenant of LGBTism. So it is not just being open, because a person being open about something is inherently a person incorporating that thing into their identity.

I'm gonna give the benefit of the doubt and assume you aren't a native speaker because conversion in this context would never be used "changing a person's feelings about how open they can be" and more about "changing them from being straight to being gay" like we see in conversion therapy trying to do the opposite and "cure homosexuality" and make people straight.

Most people here in the US (and I assume most of the native English speakers) understand that because conversion therapy has been practiced by religious groups against homosexuality for years. Now the end result has been suppression (because they fail) but no one says "You're trying to convert X!" when they mean being more accepting.

A sexually-reproducing non-eusocial species has 25% of it's population "gay" and we just didn't know it the whole time? At some point, one has to realize one is just engaging in creating "just-so" stories to justify an unjustifiable belief.

Except depending what gay means that is perfectly plausible. Consider that homosexual behavior in prisons becomes much more prevalent, even if those imprisoned would prefer women/men. Consider the idea of being "Lesbian until graduation". The prevalence of men who have sex with men but do not identify as homosexual etc.

"The LGBT slang terms lesbian until graduation (LUG),[1] gay until graduation (GUG), and bisexual until graduation (BUG) are used to describe primarily women of high school or college age who are assumed to be experimenting with or adopting a temporary lesbian or bisexual identity, but who will ultimately adopt a heterosexual identity."

Along with Kinsey reporting that sexuality seems to be somewhat more fluid than just gay/straight for many people (particularly women) and the idea that a quarter of the Gen Z population are LGB in that they would consider sexual acts with their own sex, under certain circumstances even if in general they will prefer the opposite sex looks to be well supported. And would have very little impact on sexual reproduction.

If those people identify as bisexual or pansexual, (so boosting numbers who identify as LGB) generally end up with the opposite sex, the circle is squared. They are both LGB AND will end up in a relationship capable of sexual reproduction. And handily the evidence of numbers we have supports this:

The biggest growth in identification as LGB is among bisexuals and women specifically. If you look at the breakdown in Gen Z, 73% of women who say they are LGB are actually just B. Only 22% of those who identify as LGB are L or G. It is the huge increase of those who are bisexual which is behind the vast majority of the overall increase, indeed the L or G percentage has only increased from 2% among the Silent Generation to 5% among Gen Z. And most of those Bi women will end up in conventional male/female relationships. And historically would have identified as heterosexual even after some experimentation with women. Now they identify as bisexual. Behaviors have not changed much. Just identification.

Back in the early 2000's some 20% of women admitted to same sex contact, but only 5% identified as lesbian or bisexual. Now about 20% of Gen Z women identify as lesbian or bisexual with 25% of Gen Z women admitting some same sex contact. Labelling explains pretty much the entire increase here. Hell upwards of 60% of women admit some same sex attraction. It's quite possible all or most women are technically bi-sexual!

This is no unjustifiable belief. Just a change in how (primarily) women label themselves.

Some excerpts to add anecdote to data:

"Once upon a time in middle school, I came out to my mother as bisexual. Like many girls that age who have non-hetero tendencies, I had a mother who didn’t buy it. It’s normal to experiment with other girls, she told me. "

"In high school, my label shifted to lesbian. Though I felt a rush of nervousness around my friend’s Goth guy pals, in addition to an embarrassing crush on one of my older sister’s hockey-and-football-playing friends, I wanted a relationship with a girl."

"Ten years later, I’m living in San Francisco and married to a man. My existence is still label-free, but my story is a hard one to explain to those who haven’t experienced any fluidity in their sexual identity."

"Research on human sexuality is pretty limited. The evidence we do have suggests women are “sexually fluid” creatures, which sounds like some kind of secretion issue but actually refers to a mix and match approach when it comes to the sex of our lovers, and not necessarily in equal proportion. I’m a member of this group"

Research on human sexuality is pretty limited.

Can't imagine why.

The only people who would even want to research this in the first place are already relatively sexually open [at least, in theory], so the results they get aren't going to be couched in language that makes it applicable in a way to the average man or woman that doesn't instantly just turn into more ammunition for the gender/culture war.

This.

If it looks like a social contagion, spreads like a social contagion, and quacks like a social contagion...

A student being more open about their feelings is not the same as a student having previously been fully straight and having turned into bi or gay.

Isn't that isolated demand for rigor? Can you come up with examples of students having previously been bi or gay and having turned fully straight due to hetero conversion therapy?

We can certainly come up with examples of cultures that have been previously bi/gay and were turned fully straight.

Such as?

Such as ancient Greece and Rome, and yes, I know it was not the same conception of homosexuality that we have now, but the facts are that it was at one point common to bugger young men (and even act as if it's better than women) and later on, very much not.

hetero conversion therapy

This would be outright illegal in many areas.

It’s not hard to find people who are ex-gay.

Evidence could look like a gay version of conversion therapy where straight kids are sent to centers to shame them into gayness, or maybe a large lgbt organization like GLAAD admitting they want to turn straight kids gay. Or something along the lines that there is an active and widespread attempt to take straight children and make them homosexual instead of a genuine (even if poorly executed) attempt wanting gay teenagers to be accepted.

I mean, many people would call these places "public schools" and after the NSA leaks, and the fact that we have seen many teachers, counselors, etc get caught on various social media platforms talk about "hatching eggs" means this isn't some non-mainstream thing.

  1. "Hatching eggs" is a trans thing, not a sexuality thing as the original comment is about and what my reply is for.

  2. I've not seen that much but even if there are a few teachers who do so, as there are apparently 3.8 million public school teachers in the US a few examples would not be much proof of a common issue by itself. Likewise you can find examples of teachers dating students or heck, things like this case of a superintendent trying to mandate a prayer video. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/oklahoma-officials-religious-department-schools-classroom-lawsuit/. It's not that they aren't problems of teachers pushing LGBT identification or dating kids or mandating prayer videos (they seem to exist given the articles on it) but if it's a few hundred/thousand people out of 3.8 million it's not much at all. I don't know the exact amounts so I'm open for evidence that suggests it's a decently large percentage.

  • -12

"Hatching eggs" is a trans thing, not a sexuality thing as the original comment is about and what my reply is for.

The gay community has consistently embraced the trans community. They are one and the same. The burden of proof is now on them to show they are different.

To be fair there are gay groups that separate themselves from the trans community, but they're unsurprisingly ejected from the mainstream, and seen as basically Nazis.

I don't know why I'm responding to bait, but if parents had discovered secret school policies about hiding teacher-student relationships from them, it would be sensible to be concerned about it. This is the status of "egg-hatching" teachers.

Hatching eggs is a trans reference, not a gay reference.

If you're opposed to degeneracy and degenerates this is a distinction without a difference.

Edit 1

Despite the ban, there is no 'boo outgroup' here. The distinction being made is only relevant to their 'in group'. I'm not sure if there's some qualitative claimed difference between this particular sort of trans grooming vs. non-trans homosexual grooming. The grooming is the objectionable behavior regardless of the specific sort of devients undertaking the grooming.

Unless and until someone wants to make an effort post on non-trans homosexual grooming being less bad or different than trans grooming I stand by it being a distinction without a difference.

Edit 2

It's not railing about degeneracy at best it's observing and noticing. Nor sadly in current year is it exclusive to homosexuals or other sexual minorities, western culture is largely awash in sexual degeneracy and perversion of all sorts. Homosexuals and other sexual minorities seem especially over represented in education and schools. I don't see anything uncivil in the original or subsequent edits.

'Sexual Degeneracy' is not untactful it's an accurate description of the behavior undertaken by a cohort that frequently attempts to destigmatize the behavior in an ongoing effort to appeal to youth. It's not even the sort of coarse language I'd avoid in mixed company. There are an assortment of uncivil terms to apply to this cohort.

The mod action here was boo outgroup.

If others complain about mod actions for language maybe you should collectively be more precise and explicit about the sort of language you don't want.

I suspect you know I hate sexual degenerates grooming youth. Even when I've not used uncivil language to describe the degeneracy you suspect I'm thinking uncivil things about this cohort and railing against them.

As a former sexual degenerate, I suspect I know this cohort better than you.

You know what, you have the cheek to report your own comment for an AAQC. I have to respect that, if absolutely nothing else.

lol, I used to do that on the subreddit. I don't do it here because the mods can see who reported what.

In response to your edit, you weren’t banned for claiming there’s no difference. You were banned for railing about degeneracy.

Probably the single most common complaint about our moderation comes from people thinking “surely those rules about civility and tact don’t apply here, for my outgroup!”

My man, you've convinced me to switch to the default Motte theme in my profile so I can both flashbang my eyes and also see what kind of record of past rule-breaking you've been up to.

My eyes are burnt, and so is your standing with us mods. I see a long list of past warnings and temp bans, and not a single good thing to counteract that. You've been warned for low effort commentary as well as booing the outgroup more times than I want to count.

Banned for a month, and I leave it open to the others if they want to extend this.

If you are posting on a forum for clarifying shady thinking about culture war topics, it is a distinction you need to make anyway, even if you would rather conflate every outgroup activity you dislike.

It's a real shame that the traditionalist position tends to be trivially reducible to "peepee in but = bad", not that the progressive one (which is just "peepee in vuhgina = bad") is any better.

Honestly, I'm more interested in the mechanisms of why it might come to pass that a child might somehow be "converted" into a Gay. I would rather hear "well, you constantly said Man Bad so I became [a reflection of] a woman instead (coincidentally complete with all the negative attributes, or at least lack of positive ones, thereof)" than it just being chalked up to XXX-rays.

I am continually told it happens but without a claimed mechanism of action unique to sex (since most "grooming" is not, in fact, based solely thereon: how could it be, if convincing you to have gay sex was the hidden goal?)- indeed, the entire point of "grooming" is to make someone do something sexual they do not want to do by psychological tricks that work on those without the self-confidence to resist them- I can only have the elementary schoolboy understanding of why the gayness is bad. Occasionally, I see "well, you can't raise kids with two dads", which is trivially true but similarly taken for granted, and every single relationship failure mode claimed unique to gays are also failure modes when straights do them.

So I notice that I am confused about why sex is magically special, why having a bad sexual encounter is a life-ending event (outside of the sociobiological need/instinct to pretend that it is). And without that understanding I can't pass the Turing test, but if "peepee in but = bad" gets me most of the way there, should I continue to believe there's anything deeper?

Both are the opposition. Does it matter that for the trans it's egg cracking and for the homosexuals it's grooming acceptance / pride? Not really, for both it's indoctrination into sexual degeneracy. I've yet to hear a convincing argument that there are differences other than degree or semantics. Certainly were we to parse out all of the various degeneracies or comorbidities and plot them on a venn diagram for any individual in this cohort there would be much overlap for those on this spectrum of degeneracy.

In the same sense it does not matter you're a balloon fetishist but don't pop them and think the balloon poppers are not true looners.

It may matter in some intra-sexual degeneracy hierarchy but for those on the outside the inner political drama of quarreling foreign tribes is of little consequence, all are the enemy.

A community the gay movement has had ample time to distance itself from, and has, instead, done the opposite.

Here's a story in City Journal about a 10 year old immigrant girl who was groomed and transitioned by her teacher in Olympia, WA.

The teacher and the school tried to keep it from her parents, but eventually the parents found out. The family fled the state and then went back to India. After she left school, the teacher was emailing the student trying to get her to leave her parents and come live with her.

Weirdly, I think even this teacher's disgusting behavior was a form of mistake theory. She probably thought she was helping.

Seeing how horrible everyone here says India is, it was probably helpful to try and keep the girl in America even with the risk of regretful medical operations later in her life.

This is both a single instance and presents little evidence that the child was "converted" rather than a teacher trying to be accepting of a student who said they were trans. You don't have to believe that children or teenagers could be transgender to understand how those would differ in intent.

Also this is about trans people, the original comment is about homosexuality.

  • -17

this is about trans people, the original comment is about homosexuality

If you're opposed to degeneracy and degenerates this is a distinction without a difference.

  1. It's not happening
  2. That doesn't count it's actually the bailey and we're talking about the motte
  3. This is only a single instance
  4. Ok it's happening, and it's actually a good thing.

I assume by being on TheMotte you are aware of concepts like lizardman constant, the Chinese robber fallacy and nutpicking.

Yes out of 3.8 million teachers I'm sure some of them are nutjobs in completely insane and weird ways. The question isn't if you can't find a few instances of teachers doing something insane, but if it's common enough to be worth worrying about.

Even if just .001% of teachers do something, you still get 38 who try it. Which is say don't use a single newsworthy instance to try to argue something happens often.