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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 21, 2022

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Haven't seen a thread yet on the gay bar shooting last weekend so I figured I would start it.

Sticking to facts in this post, opinion will go in reply.

  • The shooter killed 5 and injured 25

  • The shooter is a 22 year old, Anderson Lee Aldrich

  • The shooter previously was charged after he threatened his mother with homemade explosives and kidnapped her, but the charges were dropped

  • The shooter is the grandson of a prominent local Republican

  • The shooter was stopped by a drag queen combat veteran, who used his high heels to stomp him

Now for the opinion:

I believe that speech is powerful. Words are a means we use to convince other minds of beliefs about the world. Minds act upon those beliefs.

At present, there is a powerful right wing-meme that many people, some LGBT and some not, mostly democrats, are attempting to sexually confuse children for nefarious purposes. This is often described as "grooming" in order to equivocate with sexual abuse children.

Insofar as the reasonable man's reaction to a co-ordinated effort to sexually abuse children is not "I should vote about this and if I get outvoted, I should allow my children to be sexually abused", the actions of the shooter are completely predictable.

You should take care to think about the consequences of the speech you use. If someone were to be persuaded by your argument, what would that cause them to do?

You aren't reponsible for every nutcase or moron on your team. But you are responsible for the logical consequence of your ideas. I know of no society that believes they should be having free and open debates and votes about whether teachers should be permitted to sexually abuse children. If you really believe this, you should act the same as if they proposed legalizing Cannabalism. There is no debate with barbarians, only the sword.

You should take care to think about the consequences of the speech you use. If someone were to be persuaded by your argument, what would that cause them to do?

Well, it would help me to moderate if the meme wasn't so true.

You think it's true that there is a coordinated effort by millions of gay adults and teachers and community-leaders to manipulate children into acting trans and gay and then have sex with them? Obviously "the meme" could refer to a broad range of stuff - but I think that's the gist of it. That seems very outlandish to me. Do you have any evidence?

Yes. My evidence is that they freak out whenever people notice them doing said things and have tried to prevent the passage of transparency legislation. Have covered up actual rapes in their schools, and also that teacher have one of, if not the highest, child sex rates of any profession.

How else can I respond to this besides yes_chad.jpg? You want to make it far-fetched, to make it absurd, but there's nothing so absurd you could suggest that I wouldn't entertain as true, based on my experience and what I've seen in my life. I could fudge a bit on the edges, but they are coordinated, they want to make as many children gay and trans as possible, and they do it through suggestion, social pressure, and grooming.

I used to believe that live and let live was the right way to be. That what two adults do in the privacy of their bedroom is nobody's business. And then I watched those ideas slide down the slippery slope, replaced by trans women are women (they aren't), trans rights are human rights (they aren't) and that children should be allowed and encouraged to explore transsexuality (they shouldn't). I spent my charity already, and I'm not allotting any more to this group. They are evil, wrongheaded, and causing harm to individuals and to society.

@anti_dan's low effort comment was, indeed, low effort--to the point where it might have drawn moderation if it were more directly antagonistic or uncharitable or somesuch. I don't think it quite rises to the level of calling for a wrist slap, but on a different day, maybe it would.

But you uncharitably characterizing a position on which someone else was insufficiently specific does not improve matters at all. Especially when you acknowledge that there is a broad range of interpretations, here. Picking the most outrageous, least plausible version of that and then asking for evidence has some very "have you stopped beating your wife" kind of energy. Please don't do this.

My comment was not low effort, it was accurate. If you think I am incorrect, I suggest a cheese wakeup, After that sleeep.

My comment was not low effort

Yes, it was. You left entirely too much to the imagination of your readers.

If you think I am incorrect

It's not about whether I think you're incorrect. It's about whether you put sufficient effort into being understood. I gave you the benefit of the doubt (and moderated someone who did not) and so did not moderate you. But given your low-key antagonism here: consider yourself officially warned.

I find the moderation hat here putting me in a difficult position since you incorrectly claim I uncharitably characterized it with my question, but 4 other people are replying to my question, "Yes, absolutely that is what influential gay people are doing" albeit sometimes in smaller numbers. It seems I'm not allowed to discuss the non-conspiracy side of this issue earnestly.

you incorrectly claim I uncharitably characterized it with my question

No, on review I was definitely correct.

4 other people are replying to my question, "Yes, absolutely that is what influential gay people are doing"

Yep, you can definitely reply to them about what they have said. That would not be uncharitable. This was.

Sure, but an important hinge of this discussion is what 'people' in 'society' are broadly doing. I think all of the posters here practice as minimal sexual engagement/discussion/fondling of children as possible - but when I'm replying to someone who says something broad like 'The memes are turning out to be correct' without being specific as to which ones, I'm required to take a bit of a leap if my comment is to be something other than "Please post some clear sources so that I may engage with what you said." I even flagged this in my first comment here: https://i.imgur.com/AlT6s4m.png

but when I'm replying to someone who says something broad like 'The memes are turning out to be correct' without being specific as to which ones, I'm required to take a bit of a leap if my comment is to be something other than "Please post some clear sources so that I may engage with what you said."

If you're "required to take a bit of a leap" you'll often be better off just not. If you decide to take that leap anyway, then you need to come with the most charitable and steelmanned take you can muster. If someone else in the thread is giving a worse take, then take it up with them.

Really this a good illustration of why we have the rules that we have, and why in general the best approach to rule-breakers is to not respond to them. The comment you responded to really needed more, but taking "a bit of a leap" instead of just asking for more was actually a worse violation of the rules than the low effort comment itself. These things have a way of spiraling rather quickly out of control--one person keeps to the letter of the law, but violates the spirit, the next person crosses the bright line, but only slightly, this makes someone else feel like they are being good community police by slapping them down... and pretty soon we're 15 comments deep into a snarky back-and-forth.

Remember that the goal here is to engage with the best ideas of people with whom you disagree. If someone says something genuinely bad, there's a certain extent to which the mod team will interpret that as offering their own shady thinking up for examination and critique! But when you take it on yourself to impute a certain view to others, you need to do better than you managed this time.

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I barely have an opinion on this, particularly about millions or coordinated efforts. However, I'm a big believer in object permanence, which reasonable polite debate eschews and instead demands evidence of the object being visible right now. A group is not even on par with a two-year old individual.

We know that NAMBLA still exists, albeit a shadow of its prime; it was bigger in the past, when the afterglow of sexual revolution still inspired unreasonable hopes for the slipperiness of the slope in all sorts of people.

We know that a number of French intellectuals who have played an enormous part in shaping Western culture, and particularly its academics, «teachers and community leaders» part, have been defenders of legality of sex with what we consider to be minors, and particularly with boys.

An open letter signed by 69 people, including Jean-Paul Sartre, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Roland Barthes, Philippe Sollers, and Louis Aragon[11] was published in Le Monde in 1977, on the eve of the trial of three Frenchmen (Bernard Dejager, Jean-Claude Gallien, and Jean Burckardt) all accused of having sex with 12- and 13-year-old girls and boys.

The greatest among them, in fact the most cited academic in history, probably sexually abused prepubescent Tunisian boys. His arguments for drawing the line on 13 years can be read here.

(To be clear: in principle, I agree with Foucault there that, regardless of orientation, the obsession with fixed age as a Schelling point, to the complete dismissal of particulars of the case, is indefensible idiocy and the prime example of High Modernist approach to disciplining the society. Conservatives are beyond hope if they believe that high age of consent is «trad» or pride themselves on upholding muh rules and red lines. It's the same issue as their preoccupation with counting and recounting votes and «illegal immigrants»; coping strategy of simpletons cheated out of their inheritance and myopically tracing lines of the fundamentally hostile contract, hoping to find some gotcha, a technical defect in wording. But that's beside the point).

NAMBLA counted among its members the lauded poet and activist Allen Ginsberg, whose Howl was so fruitfully used as a starting point by our dear Scott in his iconic Meditations on Moloch:

"Attacks on NAMBLA stink of politics, witchhunting for profit, humorlessness, vanity, anger and ignorance ... I'm a member of NAMBLA because I love boys too -- everybody does, who has a little humanity."

NAMBLA quotes proudly:

"An Icon of American Letters" "Despite his status as an icon of American letters, Ginsberg remains controversial. The recent sale of his collection of memorabilia to Stanford University became an explosive topic when the executive board of that august bastion of conservatism discovered his relationship with NAMBLA." Nevertheless, Stanford reportedly paid Ginsberg over $2 million for his manuscripts and memorabilia..

Another poem by Ginsberg, Sweet Boy, Gimme Yer Ass, you can read yourself.

There are many cases of actual, no-equivocation grooming perpetrated by politically salient «allies», and I remember at least two cases where people got off to the idea of persuading boys to take the pink pill. (Some Catboy Ranch on Discord? I don't collect this stuff). Long ago I was also acquainted, hilariously enough, with a very left-wing, very active,«community leader» type gay psychiatrist, obsessed with assholes and dominating femboys, who tried to groom me and a number of my friends and younger people I looked after on the internet. (The main result of his actions was an uptick in pervasive Russian antisemitism). This suggests to me that it is not so rare.

My point is that those movements were/are a tip of the iceberg, made of the most vocal and irrationally daring proponents of the view that fundamentally arises out of rather widespread sexual preferences. Generally people who have those preferences can figure out good positions to preach and help legitimize them without explicit coordination, evil cackling and so on.

On top of that, teenagers are horny. Gay teenagers too, desperately so; you can see people with really wild bios popping left and... left in political debates, and most aren't trolls or LARPers. For one who has been repressed as a teenager, it would not be unthinkable to empathize with that and perceive further relaxation of sexual mores as helping those kids find happiness; don't you think?

Alternative sexualities are trivial distortions of the default reproductive drive, and combinations thereof; deformations of self-identifying and target patterns. Young, prepubescent boys are attractive to a subset of adult men precisely because they are men with a relatively feminine appearance and psyche (this has been acknowledged throughout history, codified in temporary names and dresses and attitudes – from the most benign and non-sexual, like Japanese boys wearing female-styled kimono, to the most explicit practices like bacha bazi). It is an inevitable inference, available to Thai peasants and American doctors alike, that blocking puberty and initiating HRT will preserve and augment those desirable traits.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. If there are incentives for a thing to exist and to stay hidden, means to stay hidden, and past hints of its existence, then it may well exist to this day, and indeed may well have grown.

Certainly not. There's a coordinated effort by a very small number to do this. Think of them as the inner party.

There's an outer party - larger in number - who are happy to get positions of petty power where they push ideologically compliant stories and occasionally hide truthful information that might harm the party. Think: all the journalists/content moderators happy to hide what Kiwifarms/libsoftiktok/NY Post want to reveal, regardless of it's truth. As another example, consider the case of Loudon County covering up a rape because it was done by a transwoman, or the police covering up hundreds of rapes in the UK.

Most of these folks would certainly never rape children. But even if a few leftist drag queens do want to rape children, it's an isolated incident and it's best to cover it up to avoid getting conservatives elected.

And there's a much larger group of folks who believe whatever MSNBC and the NYT tells them, and also believe that if it isn't on MSNBC it didn't happen. These folks can be forgiven for not noticing the small correction the NYT made that Trump supporters never killed anyone on Jan 6, or the line casually buried in the 8'th paragraph that hate crimes the police solve in NYC almost never fit the stereotype of a right wing white guy. If it were important, it'd be on the front page, right?

As another example, consider the case of Loudon County covering up a rape because it was done by a transwoman

This one isn't really a good example for the anti-trans side, is it?

The two students involved were fuck buddies and had met for liaisons several times in the school bathroom. At the time of the incident, they were meeting up, but the girl was intending to cut things off. This doesn't seem like the typical example people think of, when they think of the dangers of transwomen in women's bathrooms. Like, are women seriously scared that they'll arrange a meeting with a long-time, trans sexual partner in the bathroom, and that partner will react badly to them ending things and assault them in the bathroom? No, the fear is always that a stranger will assault them, and there's still very little evidence that this happens often enough to warrant the fear people have of it.

I thought there was also confusion as to whether the attacker was actually trans, or merely a GNC boy. Regardless of that, at the time didn't the school not have policies in place allowing trans students to use their preferred bathrooms? So, if lack of such policies is supposed to protect women, this case would tend to be a bad argument in favor of it.

Obviously, the school shouldn't have tried to cover the incident up. But that is sort of separate to whether it actually supports the anti-trans side.

Recall that I'm responding to this:

a coordinated effort by millions of gay adults and teachers and community-leaders to manipulate children into acting trans and gay and then have sex with them?

The point here is that the millions don't want to have sex with children but will participate in the cover up of child rapes anyway, at various levels.

At most thousands, probably less: people who actually want gay sex with trans children and will act on this.

Hundreds of thousands: Administrators/teachers/community-leaders/"journalists" who will cover up the rapes, or if they are publicized minimize them and make it socially and economically perilous to advocate for stopping them. These are the Loudon county school board folks who use violence against the father of a rape victim and directly cover things up. They are also the reddit/twitter mods who suppress the story, and the journalists who dowplay it when they grudgingly cover it.

Millions: regular folks who pay not very close attention to NYT/MSNBC and are happy to attribute politically inconvenient facts to Russian misinformation or whatever.

This doesn't seem like the typical example people think of, when they think of the dangers of transwomen in women's bathrooms.

Perhaps Loudon county schools should have made that case instead of using violence (perpetrated by police) against the father of a crime victim.

I think the cover ups are a more general phenomenon. There's a reason why LGBT-friendly school districts and the Catholic church react in similar ways to a sex scandal - and a lot of it comes down to power and prestige, and the desire to maintain it. I agree this is a bad thing - all crimes should be aired and given sunlight, but there will always be incentives for institutions, especially highly respected ones in our society, to cover something up.

Our media environment is hardly ideal, but I do appreciate that thanks to tribalism, something like Fox News can occasionally report true negative things about one side of the political aisle. They did report on the story of Loudon, and I think that is a good thing, especially with the father being covered up and spoken over. The only issue is that because of that same tribalism, many people will never read a Fox News article about a bathroom scare and think about the implications of it, and those that do will come to entirely the wrong conclusions.

Perhaps Loudon county schools should have made that case instead of using violence (perpetrated by police) against the father of a crime victim.

I agree. I in no way condone Loudon county schools for their actions. I wish they hadn't done the cover up, and I wish they had policies that would have prevented the boy from going on to assault a second victim.

I also don't think the story, as covered up, is actually a good match for the fears people have of transwomen in bathrooms. If people want to use the Loudon case to speak against censorship, then they go with my blessing. If they want to use it as a case for why tranwomen shouldn't use their preferred bathrooms, then it is a huge reach, in my opinion.

I think the cover ups are a more general phenomenon. There's a reason why LGBT-friendly school districts and the Catholic church react in similar ways to a sex scandal

I do not disagree with this. Though I will suggest there is one big difference - the Catholic church hadn't developed the memeplex to get ordinary churchgoers to ignore it as "Protestant misinformation" or whatever. Unlike modern leftists, they were pretty horrified.

If people want to use the Loudon case to speak against censorship, then they go with my blessing.

I used it as an example of how you can have a very small number of gay tranny pedos but a much larger number of people involved in the conspiracy to cover up their actions. I believe the old time feminists characterized this as "rape culture".

And what about the second girl in a different school this gender-fluid kid assaulted? Were they fuck buddies too?

The amount of justification going on to protect the fuckwits on the school board is amazing. Victim-blaming the girl, blaming everyone except the activist group that exerted pressure on the school board to introduce such policies.

Hey, it was Trans Day of Remembrance recently when the list of "look at all the trans people who got murdered!" is regularly produced. By your logic, it was all their own fault for being murdered, yes? I mean, if a lot of them were sex workers or had fuck buddies, yeah? "Arranging meetings with long-term sexual partners" is their own fault!

The amount of justification going on to protect the fuckwits on the school board is amazing. Victim-blaming the girl, blaming everyone except the activist group that exerted pressure on the school board to introduce such policies.

Don't project opinions onto me. I already said that the school acted in an irresponsible way. I agree that schools with better policies would not have had a second or third victim after this.

I don't really blame the girl for what happened. Obviously, the moment she ended their relationship, the assailant should have accepted it with grace and left her alone. However, I also don't think it is advisable for teenage girls to have sex with guys in school bathrooms, and while "he might take it badly when you end things" isn't the first item on my list of reasons why, it could certainly serve as one pragmatic reason why.

Hey, it was Trans Day of Remembrance recently when the list of "look at all the trans people who got murdered!" is regularly produced. By your logic, it was all their own fault for being murdered, yes? I mean, if a lot of them were sex workers or had fuck buddies, yeah? "Arranging meetings with long-term sexual partners" is their own fault!

Again, you assume too much of me. I don't victim blame, but I do accept pragmatically (not morally) that trans sex workers being at higher risk of being murdered is not the same thing as trans people in general being at higher risk of being murdered. I would prefer no one get murdered, period. But if people in risky professions get murdered, it is probably a sign that we should arrange society in such a way that either people don't feel compelled to go into those risky professions, or we limit the harm as far as possible of people entering those risky professions.

Kids also aren't supposed to be fucking in the school bathroom in the first place. An example of a boy lying about being trans to gain sexual access to women-only areas is not exactly a glowing endorsement.

Kids also aren't supposed to be fucking in the school bathroom in the first place. An example of a boy lying about being trans to gain sexual access to women-only areas is not exactly a glowing endorsement.

It has been a while since I've looked at the case in depth, but I don't believe that the boy was lying about anything of the sort, and certainly not just to get into the bathroom for consensual sexual encounters. He was just gender non-conforming and wearing a skirt. The skirt did not grant him access to the bathroom, since the school did not have policies allowing children to use their preferred toilet at the time. It was just two stupid kids engaging in risky behavior, until one of them took a rejection particularly badly.

I agree that ideally, schools should not be turning a blind eye to students having sex in the school bathroom, but I think this probably happens more often then most people expect, and in the vast majority it involves a boy and a girl with no pretense on either one's part of being GNC or trans. They're just blatantly breaking the rules.

The skirt did not grant him access to the bathroom, since the school did not have policies allowing children to use their preferred toilet at the time.

This is... a little more complicated than it sounds at first glance: see the second half of this post

You think it's true that there is a coordinated effort by millions of gay adults and teachers and community-leaders to manipulate children into acting trans and gay and then have sex with them?

Why does it have to be millions, when our institutions seem to be shaped by determined minorities, and why do they have to be gay, if a lot this ideology is peddled by straight/cis people? The second point is my immediate issue with the "groomer is an anti-LGBT slur" - it doesn't actually target LGBT people.

Look up "Dr. Sidhbh Gallagher tik tok teens breast removal 'yeet the teat'"

Then look up "Dr. Sidhbh Gallagher malpractice rotted tissue"

I won't post images.

That name is actually Sadhbh, not Sidhbh.

Very nice old Irish name, pronounced "sive".

This bitch seems to be mangling the name, as well as all the teenagers and young women she's surgically mangling. It should be "Sadbh", pronounced "Sive", but this is how she spells it.

Seemingly she's from Louth, so she should know how to spell it, but maybe this is on her parents. Nominative determinism? "I have a fucked-up version of my name, now I can give you a fucked-up version of your body!"

Oh right, I didn't realise that was the spelling she's using herself. That's totally, totally stupid if it's actually legally spelt that way; Sadhbh is already a name you need to know how to pronounce, so why bother chsnging the vowel and not the cluster of consonants at the end? Maybe to avoid having the letters S - A - D in her name?

But if I were anglicising that name I'd just spell it "Sive".

"sive"

Does that rhyme with "dive" or "give"?

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I have no doubt that a for-profit plastic surgeon has an attempted viral marketing campaign called yeet the teat, but I googled that (in a private tab) and the first result is her saying that gender surgery isn't the same for everybody and some people won't ever need or want it: https://tiktok.com/@gendersurgeon/video/7168239778415103278?is_from_webapp=v1&item_id=7168239778415103278

Is this an example of a coordinated effort by millions of gay adults and teachers and community-leaders to manipulate children into acting trans and gay and then have sex with them or just a questionable surgeon profiteering off a trend?

The rotted tissue hysteria is similarly underwhelming: https://lolcow.farm/snow/res/1703905.html (first google result again)