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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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