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.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
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
Trying to tease out this distinction feels a lot more like it's trying to muddy things than clarify them.
If the behaviour you are engaging in makes children more susceptible to paedophilic sexual attention from nefarious parties, I don't think it really matters whether that was your explicit intent or not, you are grooming them. Unwittingly or no, it's still not a good thing to be doing. If you teaching these concepts to children enables and empowers people to prey on them, facilitates those people making arguments like "children can consent, they've all been taught sex ed now!", then you are assisting paedophiles, whether that is your intent or not. If you teach children that sexual stuff is no big deal and normal, and that causes them to not flag predatory behaviour from paedophiles to the relevant adults because they've been taught it's normal and they should know about and do sexual things, then you have groomed those children for the paedophiles. Wittingly or no. And if, when this is pointed out to you, you insist on continuing your behaviour, then you've knowingly crossed the line from unwitting to willing participant.
The attempts to be super strict with the definition of grooming so that you can say "well, actually, we're not technically grooming anyone" remind me a lot of attempts to draw distinction between "paedophilia" and "ephebophilia" as if the distinction makes any kind of actual real difference to the act of fucking someone who's underage. It's a very "well yes, but actually no" sort of objection. It's patently obvious that the motivation in that case is to disassociate the acts the person is committing from the word "paedophilia", which everyone knows is bad and a very serious crime, and onto some other lesser-known word that people don't know as much about or have as much of an instinctive negative reaction to that makes it easier to defend. And nobody gains anything from that but the paedophile in question. I suspect the "well, actually" objection in the case of grooming serves the same purpose. You know it's wrong and you know it's bad, but you want people to think it's less bad than it is, so you attempt to euphemise what you're doing by preventing people from calling it out using the most straightforwardly applicable and widely understandable terms, instead trying to force everyone into using wordy circumlocutions that require laborious explanation and lose the strength of the meaning in doing so.
When people apply the ephebophilia sneer to situations less like "30 and 15" and more like "19 and 17", it devalues the sneer. Would you claim there is no difference to those two acts of fucking someone who's underage?
Destroying distinction between acts that might be disgusting and acts that are disgusting is how you make people wonder "wait, is it really that bad this time?"
As far as I'm aware, the distinction is almost only ever trotted out in the former case, usually by the defendant, to argue that what they aren't doing isn't "actually" paedophilia. I've never seen it used in the latter way personally; and aren't there in any case carve-outs for that kind of scenario in many places? I certainly don't think that definition-arguing would be the cornerstone of any defense case.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link